The Making Of Sizzle

The first time Kavi laid eyes on Sizzle, she had been a Salandit. It had been his sister holding her up, a slip of hissing white and red, doing her very best while she was being cuddled in a blanket to make sure that he knew that she, while perhaps very small, was a threat.

It had been love at first site. "You didn't!" 

"Oh, but I did. She was one of the ones we were hatching out for the experiment, but I couldn't just let her be part of the study-- they're keeping them from being socialized, so we can get a better idea of how they act in nature." He had smiled and cooed as she tried to hand over the little lizard, and dutifully reached up to gently prise her away from his twin.

After a few moments acclimating to her new situation, the tiny Salandit went back to pretending to be fierce, this time hissing at his sister.

He had laughed with 'Cho, sitting next to her and marveling at her-- how pretty she was, with her handsome white scales, and her little red stripe that glowed whenever she tried to conjure fire, even though she wouldn't be able to do so until she gained a little more life experience. "Does she have a name?" "Well, we've been doing an ordinal naming system. She was the nineteenth female we hatched..." "So she was going to have an S-name. All right, well. She can be Sally, for now."

'Cho had laughed, a clearly derisive note in her voice. "That's a terrible name, Kav." Kavi couldn't help but smile defensively, leaning back to regard her with a cool expression. "That's the point. It's not meant to be a good name, it's just there for now. It's short for Salandit, or Salazzle. Sally."

He remembered the way she had leaned back in, leaning to curl an arm around her shoulders to look at the bundle of blanket, hiding all but a nose-tip... and, upon further examination, a remarkable length of tail. "Sally. Well, I guess it's better than calling her Salandit." "It's more personal, at least." "It is." They had sat that way for some time, until one of them started to nod off.

-~-

The outbreak had happened less than a year after her hatching. He'd since named the Salandit, calling her Sizzle for her spicy nature and willingness to, eventually, forgive-- but not before being a brat. His sister had been busy with her new internship, and while he was busy working on his art degree, she had been left at a pokemon daycare on the edge of Groveheart. Something about the ability to wreak havoc out in the open meant that she was remarkably less likely to set fires, and while it meant forty extra minutes of travel time to pick her up, she'd seemed happier, and the daycare staff definitely were.

It had been the middle of the day when he'd gotten the call-- shortly before his presentation. Even years later, the words "Something happened to your pokemon" haunted his stress-dreams on occasion.

He'd left class immediately, citing a personal emergency to the TA, before calling for a personal cab to drive him straight away.

And the Sizzle he'd been confronted with was pissed. The handsome once-salandit had the same white hide as before, but her neck bows had flipped out and gained her fiery coloration, and her nose now turned up in a soft, distinctive point. She was clearly distressed, or perhaps angry, by something that had happened to her, and it was hard for him to watch. Even while the owner tried to talk to him, he drifted away, walking towards where she was making a scene-- staging a standoff between three of the daycare handlers with no sign of letting up.

She hissed at him as he approached the semi-circle of trainers around her, expecting an Ember to come, and making an angry barking noise when she couldn't, then pressing herself against the wall. She puffed back up when he kneeled down, clearly agitated, until he opened his jacket and pulled his shirt out, making room for her to curl up with him-- at which point she scrambled up, just as heavy and almost as warm as she had always been, at least when she wasn't playing too-hot-to-handle.

He laughed a little, patting his stretched out shirt as he adjusted his jacket, making sure she'd be secure where she was. "It's okay, brat. We'll manage-- and you're still the prettiest thing."

It took several moments before he turned to face one of the staff members. "We're sorry," she had started, "We usually give an oval stone to each of our pokemon, but I think a wild one may have used Thief, and--"

Kavi shook his head, patting the warm lump in his clothing reassuringly as he moved from kneeling to stand. "It's okay. She's... honestly, she's probably madder about being stolen from than anything else," he said, placatingly.  "What matters is that she's not hurt.

"As for everything else, we'll find a way to make it work."