{RP} The S.S. Wishmaker - Tides of Witchcraft

[Neo Emolga]

The Diamond Ladies
Central Park
Affected RPers: @Chakramaster

After heading back to their room, taking showers, and getting cleaned up and dressed, Cassandra, Jarena, and Violet headed out to go through Central Park to grab a quick drink from the cafes before heading to the Windjammer Marketplace. The hallway leading from their room was mostly vacant, save for a young boy playing tag with his Rattata.

As they were walking down the hall, Jarena had noticed Cassandra was no longer keeping her large bag of books and regents with her, and she couldn’t help but smirk.

“I guess now you believe me?” Jarena asked with a smug grin.

“You have a point, but let’s not get too reckless,” Cassandra replied, rolling her eyes. “I picked a new hiding spot under the bed and stuffed an extra pillow around it. If you need to get to it, don’t touch the pillow without ‘cleaning’ it first.”

“I gotcha,” Jarena smiled.

And by “cleaning,” Jarena knew exactly what she meant. The pillow itself was hexed and moving it or touching it with their bare hands could spell disaster, although even gloves usually didn’t prevent any kind of affliction. As Jarena was quite familiar with what would result of that, usually they wanted no witnesses to things of that nature, just like the incident last night. Someone being pesky or giving them a hard time could be subdued with a simple hex or spell that would induce sleep, vertigo, or temporary sickness. But anyone that could tell others about what they found that could potentially expose a critical amount of information had to be transformed into a Pokémon that posed little threat and render them incapable of testifying or providing evidence to authorities in the form of human verbal communication. Hence, why such spells had to be used as booby traps.

There was also the concern of what could they do if they had unintentionally hexed each other with spells. They knew how to remove spells and hexes placed before they were triggered, but after the fact posed complications. Usually, they couldn’t be dispelled so easily if they had already made their mark on a victim. And it had happened once with a vertigo spell that Cassandra had made but unintentionally struck Jarena, leaving her dizzy for at least a whole day. But if a Pokémon transformation spell had affected one of them, they wouldn’t know what to do, though Jarena felt it would only be a “we’ll worry about it if it happens” situation. As they had discovered, only a few times did they last for a temporary amount of time. Usually, it was permanent and those that had been struck by it were still Pokémon.

Upon arriving through Central Park, they saw the room become more spacious and filled with trees, shrubs, and foliage to mimic the feeling of an outdoor park, though there was still a ceiling. Meanwhile there were pathways and benches to sit down and relax. The three girls were passing though and noticed there were only a few people here at the moment. Most of the time they had turned heads, and it didn’t take long for them to be recognized, though most people didn’t say anything to them.

There was one avid trainer who approached them, looking excited while holding a glossy Pokéball and a black permanent marker in his hands. He was a young and naïve teenager with long, brown hair, a yellow t-shirt, and blue jeans.

“Miss Cassandra!” the trainer called out, excitedly trying to get her attention as he tried to push his way through the other guests. “Oh Miss Cassandra! Could I get you to autograph my Pokéball, please! It’s my favorite Whismur’s Pokéball!”

Cassandra just sighed and rolled her eyes. She just wanted a cup of chai tea and to see if there was anything interesting on sale today, not deal with this.

“Good lord,” Cassandra sighed as Jarena giggled and Violet grew impatient. “Why now?”

“Oh please, Miss Cassandra!” he pleaded, stepping right in front of them and blocking their way. “It would mean so much to me. Actually, could you all sign it? That would be great!”

“First of all, no,” Cassandra told him bluntly. “Second, my last name is Silvers, so it’s Miss Silvers to you. And third, why even train a Whismur? They’re neither cute nor powerful, and have you seen what they evolve into? Exploud isn’t a Pokémon I would keep with me even if you paid me to.”

“Aww, but I think she’s cute,” the trainer remarked, trying to convince her otherwise. “But if you don’t want to autograph the Pokéball, I can just take a signature.”

“I said no,” Cassandra snapped at him before pushing him aside.

The three girls then walked past him, and despite being rejected, it still didn’t bring down his spirits as he felt he could try again when maybe they were in a better mood.

“Maybe we can battle sometime, it would be fun!” he called out as they left him behind. “Say, what’s your number, I’d love to treat you to dinner sometime!”

“What a loser,” Violet muttered just out of earshot of the trainer.

“He does that again…” Cassandra told the other two, “…do your worst. I’d rather see and hear him throwing up over the side of the boat from ‘sea-sickness’ than go through that again.”

“Aye-aye,” Jarena giggled.

Halfway through their walk through the park, they had been interrupted again, this time by a male Pikachu. As soon as he spotted the three Diamond Ladies, he immediately perked up and tried to get his trainer’s attention, who was taking a break on a nearby park bench. For a minute, it seemed odd to the three girls, and suddenly Cassandra was wondering…

“We’re sure one of them became a Minccino,” Cassandra whispered to Jarena. “The gray fur and paw prints were pretty obvious, but what about the other one?”

“No idea, they could be a number of others,” Jarena replied. “You think that could be the second?”

“Only one way to find out,” Cassandra replied.

As the three lades knew, to make a Pokémon transformation hex or spell work, they needed a small sample of the Pokémon in question, and usually what they used were fur and hair stains as they were the easiest to acquire, especially from common everyday Pokémon like Minccino and many others. Also, they typically used unevolved Pokémon fur samples in case their victim tried to retaliate, though that had yet to happen. However, with many fur samples at hand, Jarena didn’t specifically track which fur strain originated from which Pokémon, she just kept them all together in a bag and took a pinch out when she needed them.

“Say, you have a cute Pikachu,” Cassandra told Jimmy, not sure if he was the Pikachu’s trainer or if in fact the Pikachu was potentially the other operative trying to get the attention of the closest human he could find. “Where did you get him?”