bottlecaplogs | mayaka's april catch-all !

"You think he'll throw in a free gift to really butter us up?" She whispers back, barely hiding her giggle. Rapture was home to many a sleazy salesman. She owes her life to one, in a way. The city just attracted those sorts of people. The Great Chain couldn't move without them.

It's quite funny, though. The Bay doesn't use currency so much as it does bartering - perhaps this is just another human behaviour they're mimicking. Give Farfetch'd six Oran berries and hope it's a fair enough deal.

She isn't going to be doing that.

"No thank you." Eleanor shakes her head and begins to tug at Mayaka's hand to pull her away. Easier to just dodge them entirely - she's seen far too many people of all types attempt this in her life and in her memories that aren't quite hers.

The Farfetch'd clicks his tongue as they leave. Then, he swiftly redirects his attention to the next passer-by willing to listen to his sales pitch.

As they move down the street, Mayaka scans the stalls they pass for items resembling what she has in mind for Noelle's gothic lolita look -- all while squeezing through feathers, scales, fur, and other strange textures in the dizzying crowd. When they push past a Kangaskhan and her kid, Mayaka loses hold of Eleanor's flipper. She quickly latches back onto the Brionne's frills.

Just as she's ready to declare that there's nothing of note in the market, Mayaka spots a black cloak hanging on display.

"Elly-chan, what about that?"

She turns to her friend, only to realise that what she's tugging on isn't a frill, but the skirt of an annoyed-looking Gothitelle who is now towering over her.

"Ah... sorry?" Mayaka chuckles weakly, momentarily caught off guard.

The Gothitelle looks down at the pair inquisitively, having seemingly not appreciated her skirt being yanked. Behind her is a woven rack full of sparkly trinkets that, to a human, may resemble brooches. Some of them are fashioned into the vague shapes of Pokemon, like Paras. She tilts her head to try and get a good angle on the two Pokemon below her.

"Can I... help you?" She asks, her tone simultaneously irritated and confused.

Eleanor's eyes widen. This is the one she's seen around town before! She'd never gotten a name (or even a chance to speak with her), so this should be as good an opportunity as any. Even as Mayaka stares, almost shell-shocked.

"Yes!" The Brionne nods hastily, gesturing to her friend. "We've been looking for something that looks.. almost exactly like you? For a friend of ours."

Mayaka nods quietly, taking the chance to recover her bearings as Eleanor does most of the talking.

Realising she should show the Gothitelle what they have in mind, the Sneasel scrambles to unroll the sketch of the outfit and present it to her.

"Do you know where we can get a hat that looks like this?"

Gothitelle's eyes widen, almost sparkling. Pride swells in her chest as she looks down at Mayaka's sketches, taking the paper out of her claws gingerly to flip through. She nods, humming to herself for a couple of minutes before looking back to the two teenagers. "Of course! I can make you some, come on." She gestures towards them, almost excited and having already forgotten Mayaka yanking her moments before.

Eleanor tilts her head. That was easy enough. She glances to Mayaka with a soft smile, seemingly proud of how well she handled that. Gothitelle certainly seems impressed by the darling little drawings she's been shown.

She flashes a secretive smile to her friend and holds up one claw to ask for a high-five.

"Some?" Mayaka repeats as they follow the Gothitelle. "Just one is enough. It's for a friend."

Eleanor looks at the gesture and tilts her head in confusion, failing to reciporocate. The smile gets returned alone, instead.

Gothitelle leads the girls along and glances back at them. "Oh. Of course." She's having a hard time containing her excitement, despite her outward appearance conveying an entirely different demeanour. "What is your friend? A Doduo? Perhaps a Vespiquen?"

"A Deerling," Eleanor responds, "her name is Noelle."

Mayaka continues to say: "It'll be difficult, making clothes that could fit a deer, so we were hoping to find a hat that matches-- !!"

She barely avoids crashing into Gothitelle, who has stopped abruptly mid-walk. The trio now find themselves in one of the quiet backstreets, the bustle of the main shopping street faint in the background.

"Too difficult? Who do you take me for? Some amateur?" Gothitelle laughs as she walks up to the entrance of a small atelier and unlocks the door, ushering them inside.

Just before entering, Mayaka exchanges glances with Eleanor, checking that she thinks this is a good idea.

The atelier seems inviting enough. Sure, a back street might be suspicious to some, but this just seems to be where Gothitelle lives and works. Nothing wrong with that, Eleanor thinks. She lives in a hole. She nods to Mayaka and moves to follow the Gothitelle in first.

"We must be very lucky to have ran into you, then," she smiles at the larger Pokemon.

"No, my dear, it was fate!"

Gothielle unveils her beautiful atelier, opening her arms in an elegant flourish. There's a workbench where she crafts her brooches, and rows upon rows of different coloured stones. Most of the room is filled with knickknacks and objects relating to the jewellery trade, but at the very back of the room are some bolts of black cloth and lace prompted against a desk. There's a Gothielle-shaped mannequin, semi-covered by a piece of clothing that's currently being worked on.

"How rare it is to find like-minded individuals who can appreciate real fashion. To survive here, I've had to rely making small trinkets. But my true calling is most certainly this."

She looks at the sketches once more, inspiration burning in her eyes.

"Now, let us get to work!" Gothielle declares, not giving either of the girls time to respond.

"You! Fetch me the scissors!" She points at Mayaka. The Sneasel dutifully does as she's told, not wanting to question the authority behind her voice.

Then Gothielle turns to Eleanor, brandishing a measuring tape.

"And you shall be model."

Eleanor stands for a second, gobsmacked. "Me--"

Gothitelle cuts her off before she can fully articulate her one-word question, pulling the Brionne over to begin taking her measurements. She sort of had no choice beyond letting it happen, raising her flippers when asked and so forth. Every so often she casts a glance at Mayaka with a giggle, clearly having more fun than she'd been anticipating by the time Gothitelle had begun to hold up bolts of fabric to her form to try and gauge what tone would work best.

The scissors meet fabric after the lines have been chalked out, and they glide across like Swannas. She doesn't appear to be following a pattern, instead closely matching Mayaka's drawings. She's totally eyeballed how each piece should come together, humming as she fastens the first pass to Eleanor with pins. And then the second, and the third, and then she finally decides to begin sewing it all together. The cycle repeats anew again with another dress -- one clearly more suited to the Brionne -- flies through production at a much faster speed. The seamstress seems to have entered a flow state, humming to herself and commenting every so often, but mostly muttering to herself about hems and so forth.

After the second outfit is finished - now two with full accessories - she turns to Mayaka. "Your turn!"

The girls have been here for hours at this point.

Mayaka, who'd been lying on a rug on the floor and scrawling in her notebook, looks up in surprise. She's been sneaking moments between Gothielle's instructions to quietly observe and sketch.

"My turn?! There's no need...!"

Gothielle ignores the Sneasel's protests, snatching her up by the scruff of her neck and placing her in the center of the room where Eleanor had been tasked to stand. Mayaka opens her mouth to continue resisting, only to be shushed by Gothielle pushing a hand to her face.

"Don't interrupt until I am done."

And that's how another couple of hours pass before Eleanor and Mayaka are finally permitted to leave the atelier, decked out in matching outfits and carrying a package containing the third for their friend. It had been the afternoon when they entered with Gothielle, and now the sun has already begun to set.

Edited 2026-04-16 15:46 (UTC)

Eleanor looks a little dazed after the encounter, trying to get a better look at the outfit Gothitelle had styled for her. In spite of how restrictive the style looks, it's actually quite loose. Manouveurable, even. Not that she's really planning on wearing it to do the things she needs ease of movement to do, but--

She's grinning.

The Brionne glances up at Mayaka. "We should get this to Noelle, come on!"

In contrast to Eleanor, Mayaka feels like she's been sewn shut into her outfit. She's wondering how she'll take it off, but that is something she'll have to worry about later. For now, she can't help but feel self-conscious about the entire ensemble despite how well-made it is.

It's one thing to design cute clothes for others to wear, and entirely different when it comes to wearing them herself! This is practically a super embarrassing cosplay she would never catch herself wearing as a human!

But then, she sees how happy Eleanor looks, and forces herself to take a deep breath to calm down. It seems that the Brionne doesn't have a preconceived notion on what's considered cosplay and what's normal attire. Maybe it's the same for everyone else here. Thinking about that makes Mayaka feel a bit better.

"You look really cute, Elly-chan," the Sneasel says with an awkward chuckle as they make their way towards the Spire. "Have you ever worn something like this before?

Eleanor takes a good while to ponder the question. Never anything so fancy, she supposes. It feels almost girlish, like a porcelain doll she had once seen in a shop window before being hurried along. Something girlish... what she wore as a girl hadn't been so decorated. Puffy, yes, but overly decorative pieces were the sorts you'd only see worn by Cohen's cohort of apprentices and models.

"Never anything so nice." She's still trying to get a good look at it. Now, granted, she has never had the opportunity to choose her own clothes. And she's not quite sure if this is something she would have picked out herself if given the chance. But it's still lovely. And she got to spend all that time for a friend. "What about you, Mayaka-chan?"

Now that Eleanor has mentioned it, Mayaka's never worn something this intricate too. Perhaps the closet comparison would be a kimono.

"I like reading fashion magazines and admiring cute clothes, but I've never worn anything like this either. I don't think it suits my personality," she says with a shrug of her shoulders. The shrug is miniscule because of how tight the sleeves of the dress are.

"What sorts of clothes do you like to wear, then?" Her head tilts to the side curiously.

Eleanor probably won't be all that familiar with much of what Mayaka says, given that she's several decades behind everyone. And that's not accounting for her already being a decade late on trends in her own world. "Like, dresses?"

"I don't have that many dresses. I prefer shorts and overalls. I like denim too. Stuff that I don't need to fuss with or mind how I'm sitting as much."

She looks back and forth between them, appreciating how the fabric of the skirts scrunches and bounces as they walk down the path. "But... dressing up once in a while like this can be fun too."

Kind of like how she puts in effort to cosplay a character once in a blue moon.

"Maybe I should start thinking about this stuff more."

Her fashion knowledge is so little, and woefully stuck in the early fifties. Honestly, Brionne already appearing to wear something similar to her was enough to make her forget about it. They're animals, anyway, it all seemed a fuss. "I had so much fun. Gothitelle is, uh. Intense, though."

"You should!! There must be a style you like! Even if we're Pokemon, we can still dress up and express ourselves how we want! Just like Gothitelle and L-chan."

Noelle's a trendsetter! And if Mayaka had her bookshelf from home, she could show Eleanor all the different kinds of street trends and fashion from the magazines she's collected to do character studies with. Maybe the Brionne could take inspiration from there. That sounds like something fun to do together. Huh.

"You know, the last time we talked, I said I don't really hangout with others much. If it's with a friend like you, I think I wouldn't mind. Doing stuff like this," Mayaka admits bashfully.

"What I'm trying to say is, I had fun today too."

Really?!

Eleanor grins even wider, proud of herself for how far she's come in this. But, hm. A style she likes... she'll have to think about it. See what other people brought for Noelle, at least. Surely everybody had different definitions of how to style her the way she wanted. She knows it's a simple pastime girls her age engage with - she has vague memories of another girl doing it. Rapture was equally as limited as the the Bay, she had thought, but--

"Perhaps we should hang out more often, then."

"Mmm! I'd like that," she says, trying not to be too self-conscious. This is difficult, given how elaborate her current outfit is. At least the overwhelming crowd from the market earlier in the day has already gone home.

Noelle must be in her room now, so the pair make their up the path to the Spire. Mayaka's thinking about what she'll have for dinner afterwards, and how to store her outfit since she doesn't really have a closet in her room. Come to think of it, where are the zips and buttons on this thing?

She starts checking the dress using the limited range of movement she has, and arrives at a belated realisation.

"Um... I think I'll need help getting out of this once we meet L-chan."

mayaka's april catch-all !

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nooo eleanor bb u need to learn hi fives .·°՞(≧□≦)՞°·.

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(we can montage this ??)

makeover!!

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good to wrap~