[Jodie Rey]

Jodie didn’t often go into classrooms. They were little boxes with windows and a door - perhaps two - which each looked exactly the same as the one a door down, save perhaps for the arrangement of chairs. You see one, you’ve seen most of the rest, and Jodie had only ventured into the empty cloned rooms a handful of times. She’d only gone into an occupied room once. By accident.

But now she scoured one of these empty rooms. She’d been doing so for the past ten minutes - Gengar was out, searching along with her. Deduction so far: this was a fairly standard classroom, with just over twenty student desks, a large teacher desk, and a white board the last instructor had forgotten to wipe off. One wall was lined with cupboards, another with windows. The last two were said white board and a wall separating room from hallway.
Jodie scanned it all again for the fourth time, and failing for the fourth time, sighed. “Find it?” She called to Eddy.

The gengar drifted down from the corner of the room and shook his head. She rubbed the back of her head. This seemingly simple task had already taken a turn for the odd, and it wasn’t even past lunch.

“Maybe if we look up in the ceiling?” Jodie pondered. “Give me a lift?”

Gengar obliged, letting Jodie grab onto his back before floating them both to the top of the classroom. Their heads slipped through the holed ceiling panel as the ghost type phased them through.

The ceiling was dark. Jodie pulled a flashlight from her bag, clicked it on, and revealed many, many sets of wires, a couple of pipes, and no clear idea of what was what. This was going to take a while.

[Jack Ward]

Jack was wandering through the halls of the Academy, making rounds and reminiscing about his early years here. in the Teaching Center, he noticed a small frame slipping into one of the classrooms. "Flash, Sol. Eyes front." With that simple command, the two dog-like Pokémon enter hunting mode. The trio walk up to the classroom and barge in.

The classroom appeared to be empty, which confused Jack. Flash and Sol, however, began to sniff around the room. They make random circles throughout the room and finally settle on a single spot. Still searching, the pair look up to the ceiling and snarl. "So whoever it was went up there?"

He pulls desks together and stands on top of them. He lifts up a ceiling tile only to find a petite girl and a Gengar. "What the hell do you think you're doing up here?"

[Jodie Rey]

For a better searching angle, Gengar had spun upside down, putting Jodie’s head quite near a running water pipe. It was for this reason that she was unaware of the newest occupant of the room until the ceiling panel was pushed aside and it was impossible not to notice. She looked down at the man - not boy, and therefore faculty, not student - and then at the revealed floor. She realized that if she were to lose her grip, it’d be a good ten feet face-first to the ground. The same could be said of this fellow, who had only a stack of desks to stand on. Better not slip.

The guy was much bigger than her, sported a unique hairstyle, and was demanding her business. She was wondering the same of him. She did have to say something, but if that was the introduction he gave her, she was under no obligation to be peachy back. Jodie cleared her throat and prepared for her short answer to his question. “Well, you see, this morning I woke up and went to check the cameras as usual. It’s a dull task, really, but one that has to be done, and I was resolved to getting it over with quickly. Imagine my surprise when one of the screens was out! I may be new here, but this was the first time this’d happened. I couldn't very well carry on with the rest shift with the camera in this state, so I went about attempting to fix it. I tried everything - messing with the controls, kicking the processor, swearing at it - obviously none of that worked, so I figured the next course of action was to go check it out in person. So, I found out which room the screen’s camera was in, walked a bit, and ended up here, only to be met with my next problem. I can’t find the damn thing! I know what a security camera looks like and where you put them, but the corners of this room are absent of any and all recording devices. As is everything else. Thought I’d check for its wireing up in the ceiling, but whoever put this place together was less organized than the first year students. Still haven’t-”

Gengar, unlike his trainer, had remained focused on the task at hand. He had been methodically scanning, floating down, and scanning again until, at last, he found what he had been looking for. Jodie was cut short as she realized her pokemon was pointing at something. “Ah, there it is.” She said, joining her gengar in the pointing.

“Or, isn’t.” She realized. A knob stuck out of the ceiling about a yard away, which was indeed what she was looking for. However, The important bit, the camera, was missing. No wonder she hadn’t seen it until now; only a small black stump and two wire ends remained.

[Jack Ward]

First impressions: this girl talked too much, she did not appear to have any amount of timidity, and she had no fear of strangers. Her appearance appeared to be frail, but she was obviously not sickly or she wouldn't be up in the ceiling looking for broken cameras. Her clothes were kind of dark and seemed like they were just loose enough to move around in comfortably. Her eyes appeared to be red, but it was hard to tell with just a flashlight to light up the area.

Jack was a bit taken aback when the girl mentioned the cameras. Either this was a student with a knack for getting into placing she didn't belong, or she was an Origin Spy. Suddenly, a third option revealed itself. There was another recent hire for a Security Professional. It seemed unlikely that she was Security, though. She seemed entirely too young to Jack.

Even though Jack was a Security Guard, he hadn't really looked at the cameras. He knew they existed, but he figured that doing doing rounds would provide more Intel and ensure the students and other staff that they would be safe. So when the Gengar and its trainer found the missing camera, Jack had no clue what to do with it.

"Miss, you're gonna have to come with me and show me some ID. You look a bit too young to be snooping around the campus. Especially with altered eye color." Below him, Flash and Sol were still on all fours, watching their Trainer, awaiting further commands. Noticing them, Jack gives them the command to relax. Their faces seemed to soften as they sat on their haunches, but still watched Jack and the other person.

He reaches out his hand to help the girl down, but in doing so, his weight shifted. The series of desks he had been standing on were no longer beneath his feet. "Oh, sh-" Instead of the girl's hand in his, both hands were now clinging to the thin bar that stretched across the ceiling. He looks down, feet dangling, both Pokémon staring up at him. He sighs. Welp. There went his serious authority. With the floor only a couple feet below him, he kicks the remaining desks out of the way and drops all the way down.

He looks back up to the pale girl. "How'd you get up there, anyway?"

[Jodie Rey]

Had this interaction happened only a few months earlier, she would have given him a quick apology before Gengar phased them both up and through the ceiling. Pushing back that reflexive response, Jodie instead felt like laughing. This guy was stealing all her lines: “you’ll have to come with me”, “can I see your ID”, “What are you doing, snooping around around and such” - how many times had she said the same to students? Wow, she sounded like a kill-joy.

And then he slipped. Thankfully he reacted quickly enough so as to not fall on his head, meaning rather than making sure he wasn’t hurt, Jodie could focus on suppressing her laughter for the second time since meeting the fellow.

She may as well humor him, as he had her. While Jodie dug into her pocket for her wallet, Gengar answered his final question by phasing through the ceiling panel besides the opened one (which would have been too small for him to otherwise squeeze through). He stopped just a few inches from the floor, and Jodie hopped off like she would the last step of a staircase. “Good work, Eddy.” She expressed. The ghost type flashed a smile but became immediately more interested in the two dark types, both of which Jodie had seen before but had never managed to catch. She did give him credit - he had good taste in pokemon. The absol in particular took her interest; the last two months of her time in Hoenn, an absol had continuously appeared before her - up on a cliff or something similarly teasing - just before something went terribly wrong. It had all been kind of strange. His uncanny timing, not the mishaps - she was used to those. The pokemon was on her list of pokemon from Hoenn she'd wanted to catch but never had the chance to. Perhaps he’d have some advice.

“Name’s Jodie.” She said friendlily, getting back on track. Gengar continued to stare at the two pokemon while absently rotating clockwise. “And these are contacts.” She closed one eye and held the other open like she was going to take the small lense out. “Do they make me look that deceptive? I was really hoping to get that feel across.” Her sarcasm was palpable, but she gave him a grin and began again on the ID. It took her a second to find it in the disorganized wallet (akin to that of a first year student), but Jodie located and pulled out her fancy and officially stamped card. Offering it out and extending her other hand, she said, “Trade?”

Now one mystery would be solved. Guesses to who he was included: an angry teacher she hadn’t yet met (though she had met several), an upset parent with far too much time on his hands, a deceptively old looking and full-of-himself student, another security guard (the most likely, judging by his questions), or the ghost of a security guard who still haunted this place after an unfortunate and gruesome demise.

To answer your question in the chat, she got accepted to the job 6 months ago, but that doesn't account for time before she could start and travel time. I've been playing her like she's settled into the job a bit, so at least 2 months? I'm going vague. X3

[Jack Ward]

"Trade?" Jack wasn't one to hand out his ID easily, but seeing her card settled it.

"Ah. I see." He pulls his ID out of the inside left pocket of his trenchcoat. "Jack." He hands her his ID, practically identical to hers, and takes hers to inspect it. He holds it up to the light, leans it this way and that. Content that it was, in fact, an official ID, he hands it back to her.

"I apologize for my manners. I'm fairly new to the job, so I still forget to say that I'm security." He reaches out a hand to shake. "I'm Jack Ward. Security Professional. It's nice to meet you." When he notices the Gengar eyeballing Flash and Sol, he figured he should introduce them as well. "And these are my oldest friends, Flash the Houndoom and Sol the Absol. They've been with me since I started the Academy."

[Jodie Rey]

As far as Jodie could tell, Jack’s ID was as legit as hers. She knew this by turning it in the light to test the shininess of the seal, failing to spot any sore discrepancy, and from her great knowledge on the subject extended only to the bit of training on the subject she got before she started her job. She should probably take a class on how to spot fakes. For now, she just handed the card back, returning her own to the depths of her wallet.

“It’s fine, Jack, gotta be cautious and all that. I was being young and suspicious.” She said half teasingly. His card had gleamed her his age, and apparently “too young to be snooping around” would’ve included him two years prior. Content she’d now taken both of her sniding opportunities, Jodie crossed her arms and dropped her smirk to a smile. “This is Eddy the Gengar, who also happens to be one of my first pokemon. I probably owe my soul to him at this point, he’s saved my butt so many times.” She guested dramatically to the pokemon as though she were introducing him on stage. Charisma not part of his personality today, Gengar payed her no mind. “Nice to finally bump into you and your team. You say you’re also new, but not new to the academy?” Jodie continued, paying Gengar no mind in turn. “How’re you liking the job? Got any good security stories? Oh, and did you hear one of the gym classes is teaching Hyper Beam today?”

Jodie knew she things to do, such as her job, but she was so glad to have met another person who would know said job - the walking the long and empty hallways, the upsetting people because you jumped to conclusions for the greater good, the lies ranging from hard sci-fi to joke book in quality. She let herself indulge in a little idle chat. Nothing was that pressing.

[Jack Ward]

After she handed the ID back, she asked Jack about Security stories. He mulled it over a bit, but he didn't have any good stories yet. He starts to shake his head, but remembers a story from his Academy years.

"Hm. I don't have any recent stories, but I have one from the Academy." He starts picking up the desks that had fallen. Flash and Sol move over to the door and sit.

"Hyper Beam, you say? I remember that class. Sol here still knows it, I believe." By the door, Sol nods in affirmation. "I guess so. Heh. It takes a lot of energy, so we try not to use it in singles unless we know we'll win. Besides, even with its power, it will phase right through a Ghost-type like Eddy.

He starts moving the desks back to where he had gotten them. It didn't take him long, so he turns one of them around. He sits on top of it with his feet in the seat. He motions for Jodie to pick another desk. From what he'd seen, though, he found it more likely that she would hang on to Eddy.

"Bare in mind that this was a little over ten years ago. By this time, Flash had already evolved and I had assembled most of my current team. I was working on strengthening them for my third Gym Badge. I already had the Lava and Nature badges and had decided to get the Wave badge next, so I needed stronger Pokémon.

"I was at the Academy's Edge looking for something to help. Apparently, there was some sort of event going on. Some visitors or something were trying to get the Edge turned into a Restricted Zone because it was too dangerous or something.

"At the time, the main Security Guard was an old man named Rex or something. Tyrann Rex, I think. His team was mostly Ghost-types and Fossils. He saw the Edge as a playground. To prove that the Edge wasn't as dangerous as the made it out to be, he and his team started climbing down the cliffs and stuff. It looked like fun, so I joined in. That got the public's attention. The other Security Guard was a stickler for safety. Can't for the life of me rem- Stan! Stan Fields. Stan hated when people tried doing stuff like that. His team was pretty much a bunch of Pokémon that could rescue you if you got into a dangerous area.

"You could probably guess that Stan was horrified by this point. Just to mess with him, I 'slipped' and fell. Before I got too far, though, I called out Ryu, who was a Dragonair at the time. Every visitor started applauding the save. Stan? Stan was furious. Not only did he realize that I had played him, but Rex was laughing his ass off, too.

"I had Ryu carry me back to the top. When he set me down, I took a bow. I'm pretty sure that's where my penchant for entertainment began.

"What about you? Got any good stories?"

[Jodie Rey]

Jodie opted for the seat suggested by Jack; sitting atop one of the other desks with her feet on the head of the chair. Real adults didn’t sit in chairs. As Jack’s story went on she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists.

This Tyrann Rex fellow was interesting; love for ghost types and dangerous places, she wished she could meet the guy. The other character of Jack’s story, Stan, was also of interest to Jodie. He was exactly the kind of security guards she hated to run into. They were the sort that shut any and everybody out of anything remotely entertaining if they at all have the power to do so, and she’d always avoided them as best she could. When she had first met Jack, Jodie had worried he might number among that type - perhaps it was his large frame and his apparent partiality to dog pokemon - but his story had absolved that first impression. This guy was way more fun than she had expected.

And then he asked if she had any good stories. “Of course I do.” She chuckled. The floodgate had been opened; now the hard part, which to tell? “Here’s a good one; so Kanto’s got this big volcanic island. Not as big as this one, but the structures on it - that weren’t destroyed in the last eruption - are a whole lot older than the ones here. I made a point to stop there when I was in the region a number of years back. It was just covered with great places to explore, but there was this one old mansion up to the north that was especially interesting. The place was probably about as big as the academy's main building, and was two stories tall, smelt like mold, and was completely haunted. My greninja Nanami, who was a frogadier at the time, found this hatch in one of the closets, hidden under some old wooden crates. It opened into a flight of stairs, heading down into this stone basement.

“So the two of us went down there, and were looking around. There was all this old equipment, a lot of it seemingly broken, and a bunch of books that’d turned yellow with age. It was pretty dark, even once I found the light switch. Broken glass littered the floor. Both Nanami and I were seeing shadows shift in the corners of our vision - granted, that’d been happening all day, with the little pokemon who had completely infested the upper floors. We got several rooms into that basement, and then we found this room that looked like a library. Two of the walls were covered with bookshelves, another with shelves that had a bunch of shattered glass vials on it. Against the last wall was this big table that’d been more stacks of books than free surface area. In the center was this leather-bound journal.

“We both knew there was something else in that basement with us. We knew it was probably watching us. Ever since we entered the library, Nanami’d been glancing over her shoulder every five seconds, but when I picked up and began to thumb through that journal, it suddenly wasn’t so dark in the basement anymore. In the other doorway, this giant, flaming bird appeared out of nowhere. The three of us all just kind of sat in this startled silence - that was a moltres, a good bit smaller than the legends said, but I was too startled to think of that at the time. It was waiting for us to react.

“Nanami threw a smoke screen and the two of us booked it out of that mansion. We didn’t stop running until we made it back to camp, at the foot of the hill. We’d set up about half a mile away, and felt pretty safe with that distance between us and the mansion. Somehow, in our haste, I’d managed to bring the journal along with me. I think I’d just not bothered to drop it. Obviously, I had to see what was up with this thing, to trigger that encounter, so I gave it a look over. And couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I was, oh, fourteen, fifteen at the time, and it was so filled with jagran I was completely lost before I’d gotten anything out of it. I kinda wish I could read it now, or have brought it to someone, but the mansion wasn’t ready to let go of it.

“So, we thought we were done with the moltres. My four pokemon and I were just settling into bed when, out of the forest, came a roar and bright light. The bird came charging at us. This thing wasn’t going to leave us alone, so we engaged. Then, while my pokemon were dodging flamethrowers and shooting back their own attacks, I felt a chill run up my spine. I spun around to see the figure of a man, dressed in clothes decades out of style. He’d come out of nowhere, and didn’t seem to be… fully there. He was a ghost, obviously, and he was motioning to the journal.

“My four pokemon ended up defeating the moltres, who, thank Arceus, was actually just a ditto. While I’d heard about ditto, that was my first time seeing one, so the possibly of one hadn’t crossed my mind. That wasn’t my first time meeting a ghost, however, and I asked him what he wanted. The journal, he’d said, and that I cover back up the basement. So I did just that; put the journal back on the table, tended to the ditto, who seemed to also be guarding the place, and slid the crates back over the hatch.” Jodie paused, realizing her story had gone on a little long.

She’d turn the conversation back to him. “So you went to the Academy, huh? Did you catch your two pokemon here on this region?”

The small, responsible part of her mind wondered if she needed to get back to work, or if there was immediate work that needed getting to. It seemed not a day went by when someone didn’t get terribly lost, or attacked by a pokemon too strong for them to handle, or fell down a hill. Kids here were very good at getting themselves into trouble.

[Jack Ward]

Jodie's story was quite a bit more interesting than his own. A Legendary Pokémon Encounter? A real ghost? Hell, a Legendary Pokémon encounter that was actually just a Ditto? That's pretty funny. Jack chuckled a bit. He had never come across a Legendary before, he had a couple Pseudo-Legendary on his team. They were almost as strong, but they lacked the rarity that came with the title of Legendary.

She seemed to be quite interested in Flash and Sol. He grinned. "Here on Harmonia? My brother bred with one of friends while at the Academy. His friend wanted one of the Pokémon on his team, but they ended up with a Houndour. His friend didn't need another Houndour and my brother didn't seem to like Dark-types a lot, so he gave her to me. Sol was one of the Pokémon that my family brought with them from Johto. I think he was one of the Pokémon that my dad had caught as a child, but never really used."

He looks at the clock on the wall. It had been quite a while since the two of them started talking. "Oh, crap. I guess it's been too long since I've actually talked to people. It's been good talking to you, Jodie. But I've gotta get back to my rounds. I'll see you again some other time."

[Jodie Rey]

There was no helping it. Jack bringing up the subject of getting back to work was enough for her responsible part to win out. Jodie hopped off the desk and stretched, the mind fog of having to get back to work already settling in. At least she’d have to find that camera, she told herself. That was a mystery to solve and far more interesting than other things she could be doing.

T’was a shame neither of his pokemon had been caught on the island (per say). She’d need other leads on where to find two such pokemon. Perhaps a trip to the library (having nothing to do with research and all for security’s sake) was in order later today.

For now, it was time to bid adieu. “Same, same. It’s been nice to talk, Jack. Glad to know you’re the guy I’m working with.” Jodie said with a nod and a grin. “Oh, but before you go,” she remembered, clapping her hands together, “let’s trade numbers. For backup purposes.”

Gengar was already getting back to work, looking around for any signs of anything of interest, as she pulled a slip of paper and a pen out of her bag and jotted down her string of numbers. She offered it to him. It’d be nice to know if she needed a bit of help there’d be someone she could call.

[Jack Ward]

Before Jack could leave the room, Jodie stopped him. She wanted to trade numbers? He figured that made sense for co-workers to do it, he just hadn't thought about it until she mentioned it. "I suppose you're right. Just a second." He pulls out his phone. He takes the slip of paper and adds Jodie to his contact list.

When she put in completely, he calls Jodie's phone to make sure it was the right number and to give Jodie his number as well. "There we go. That should do it. Ah, one more thing: I like to have faces to go with my contacts. Do you mind if I take a picture? If you do, I'll just use a Gengar."

(Sorry it took so long. I left my notebook in my car when I got off work.)