ROCKET CLARISSA wants to battle!

Rocket Grunt Clarissa Rennard is here for glory and for profit! This is a closed RP blog for rockethqtales. Played by Lo. All art shown on this blog is mine unless stated otherwise! Trainer-sprites by the talented kayxsavage. ♡ Tracking tag: banditaid

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TMI Tuesday

//Clarissa's askbox is open, if it takes your fancy.

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//Clarissa used Double Team! It’s Super Annoying!

//(Pose referenced from here!)

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OOC; Important!

//Clarissa now has a permissions page!

//I always used to keep one for my RP journals back on DW, but it never occurred to me to make one for Clarissa until now. Anyway, it would be super helpful if everyone who plays with me would give it a quick once-over.

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Clarissa & Petrel: Arcade camaraderie

[medical-mishap]

She doesn’t seem to get hung up on it, which is good. Petrel has enough people with dumb grudges in his life, he doesn’t need another one. Of course, in his infinite wisdom, Petrel is easily convinced that  he is now firmly in the green with Clarissa, the next words out of Petrel’s mouth happened to be, “but it’s not a stupid assumption if you get hurt all the time.” Because she did. In the infirm, all the time. It wasn’t an assumption if it was true, now, was it?

But there’s no more time to think about that, because video games are afoot. Petrel can’t forget why he’s here, after all—to find a safe, fun place to use to expose Shugo to the outside world—and now Clarissa is listing off a bunch of games, only a handful of which Petrel has ever heard of, that being, Mario Kart and Soul Calibur— Tekken rung a bit of a bell, and it looked like a fighter, so he supposed it was probably good.

“Super… Street Fighter?” he repeats after her, tilting his head, “the hell is that? I mean… a fighter obviously, but…? What makes them super?“ Still, a game was a game, and he placed his hands on his hips, striking a power stance. “If you show me how to play, bet I can beat you first play. Is it suitable for kids?”

[banditaid-blog]

Hold the fucking phone, skipper, Clarissa thinks she just heard something so ridiculously stupid that her ears and brain are quarrelling over whether or not it could possibly have been legit. No, not Petrel’s insensitive-assed comment about her injury-prone tendencies—that sails by unremarked upon (for now). Clarissa stops dead in her tracks, slack jawed with disbelief.

“Wha— No. You can’t not know Street Fighter. I won’t believe it! No way, no how. C’mon, Piotr!!” She makes a desperate grasping motion with her hands, as if squeezing the air in vain hope of finding some shred of reason left in the fabric of this crazy reality. “Even a foreigner like you has gotta at least have heard of the series? I can’t believe that you haven’t! It has international appeal!! The whole point of the single-player campaign is that you’re in this huge damn tournament where you beat the crap outta other martial-artists from world over to prove YOU’RE the best. There’s even a Russian guy!”

She sets her feet wide apart, raises her fists into the air, and, in the thickest, fake Russian accent she can manage, bellows:

“I am the protector of Russia's skies! Siberian! Blizzard!! Intercepted!!!!”

A member of the arcade staff and a few patrons whip their heads in her direction to see who’s about to lay an epic combo-move smackdown causing such a vocal public disturbance in the middle of a work-day lunchtime. Clarissa is far from done being loud as she brings one hand down to point her finger dramatically at Petrel.

“You think a noob like you—” (Do people still say noob? What year is it??) “—can beat ME at Street Fighter when you don’t know your Ryus from your Zangiefs? Bring. It. On. But be warned, Piotr, I’ve been playing Street Fighter since I was nine!”

...Well that answers the question about whether it’s suitable for kids? Maybe.

[banditaid-blog]

Clarissa & Kay: Spaghetti and meaty discussions

[kay--savage-deactivated20181216]

“Uh?” Kay paused in taking a bite and looked over at her. He thought for a moment. “Yeah of course. Why? What’s wrong?” he noticed Clarissa was acting strange.

[banditaid-blog]

She’s quiet while she swallows her mouthful of food— Well, quiet, save for the choking. Clarissa immediately wishes she’d chewed her spaghetti better (look, it’s been a long day and she’s hungry, alright? And Kay’s home-cooked meals beat the stuffing out of the crappy microwave packet alternatives, she can’t help but wolf her food down. Thankfully she somehow avoids spilling her plate all over Kay’s floor). Once she’s gotten her breath back, she’ll continue, one hand still held over her chest. Goddammit, she thought she could see the bright lights of eternal salvation/damnation (probably the latter) for a second there.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured. It was the same with me too, I always celebrated my birthdays. But do some people...not do that? I mean, I always assumed everyone did.”

[banditaid-blog]

Clarissa & Sapphire: Lab brat

[shadowedsapphire]

As soon as the words leave her mouth the air in the room thickens. Sapphire is far too familiar with this, it happens with changes in mood, shifting emotions. When she has infuriated Damian, and knows she has said the wrong thing. Defiance. Not tolerated. Pain. Sapphire stands still in her place, not moving, barely breathing.

When Clarissa speaks it is like a punch to the gut. 

Of course it was! she wants to scream, but if the last two years have taught her anything, it’s how to hold her tongue. Find different words. It takes Sapphire a moment, but when she finds the words her voice is soft. Sapphire takes the vial, and shakes the offered hand after she places it back on the lab table.

“I guess…. yes and no. I could have chosen to die– the day he tried to kill me, I could have just given up, let him win. But I chose to be defiant. When he kept me captive for months I could have antagonized him enough to snap.” She looks up at Clarissa with a hard expression. “But there are people I have to keep safe, and even if it means leaving me at the mercy of a madman– so be it.”

“So yes. I guess you could say I chose to be here.”

[banditaid-blog]

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Clarissa glowers, her cold steel-blue gaze taking a dagger-sharp edge. Her eyes never once falter away from Sapphire as she begins to circle the other ‘Rocket’, like how the feral Meowth from the alleyways of her scummy city hometown would circle with their fangs bared and bodies crouched low to the ground as they sized up a potential threat standing on their territory.

“Coming here because there are things in your life that will be wrecked if you don’t is not the same as choosing to be one of us.” Clarissa’s eyes flash on the word and she punctuates her point by bringing her hand hard against her sternum in one sharp gesture, fingers spread outward across the R she covets, her heart rate quickening beneath her palm. She can feel the fire rising within her. “I know what all those oh-so-moral trainers on the outside think about all the shit we do here...what Rocket does to people and Pokémon. What do you think happens when this guy’s game ends, huh? I doubt my bosses will just let you walk free, not with you knowing all our secrets and all. Are you really alright with this way of life, outsider? I hope so—because Rocket’s a lifetime kinda deal.”

She had known. Maybe...maybe as a naïve and restless teenager Clarissa hadn’t fully understood the implications, what it would really mean giving herself to Rocket. She doesn’t regret it, but that doesn’t mean it’s always an easy thing, either. But she’d still known she’d never even get the chance to go back on her word. That was fine. There hadn’t been any hope for her anywhere else, not that she could see.

...And it’s inevitable, after all, that when you choose to ally yourself with thugs and murderers, thieves and crooks, you’re tying yourself into a dangerous web. Any blood that’s on the organisation’s hands is now on yours...and the actions of one person can affect the whole in a big way. Clarissa’s learned from watching the way traitors have been dealt with in the past—brutally, with no mercy—that if one person falls, the whole organisation risks falling. And that, when given the slightest chance, she won’t allow it.

She stops in front of Sapphire, reaching out and flicking the other girl on the chin with her index finger.

“How do I know that I can trust you?”

[bearie]

cleffa ¹⁷³ • clefairy ⁰³⁵ • clefable ⁰³⁶

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Clarissa & Kay: Spaghetti and meaty discussions

Another evening, another dinner at Kay’s dorm. This was beginning to become something of a routine.

Clarissa normally liked to eat out; if she was taking dinner before a shift, then it helped zen her out being away from the base while she went over the pre-meet memos one last time and got all psyched and in the zone for the job ahead. Also, she can’t cook for shit.

But eating out costs money, money that she doesn’t always have. It’s nice to be able to enjoy dinner without the lingering worry that the stolen credit card currently in her wallet had been cancelled already, lest she end up with a stitch when she has to dine-and-dash after a huge meal.

...Yeah. Yeah, it’s nice just to be able to take things chill. And eating with someone other than her Pokémon is nice too, because for once her conversations are two-sided.

Clarissa’s been a little quiet this dinner-time though, looking unusually pensive as she swirls her spaghetti in circles around her plate. She’s slumming around on the floor as she always does, sitting cross-legged like a girl absolutely shouldn’t when wearing such a tiny skirt. It’s okay, the strategic bicycle shorts underneath protect her modesty—the female grunt uniforms are so impractical, but Clarissa’s learned a few tricks over her years of duty to help make them more accommodating. Bicycle shorts stopped you being wolf-whistled by the male grunts every time you had to bend over, kept your skirt from riding up when bolting over walls, and protected you from any chills in unpleasant places whilst Flying.

She’d brought the bread, as requested—it’s your usual basic bitch supermarket-brand white sliced loaf, since Clarissa knows fuck all about bread other than that it goes all hard and gets green speckled when she accidentally leaves a bag of it open in her room for too long, but if you ask her it still tastes pretty great when soaked through with tomatoey, meaty bolognese juices. Fuckin’ yum. But still, something’s bothering her.

“’Ay”, Clarissa begins through an open mouth full of bread and spaghetti. “D’like... Did you, like, celebrate your birthday? Like at home ‘mm stuff.”

[medical-mishap]

“Look, I just don’t see the point. What’s the big deal about adding another counter onto your existence? Yeah, you’ve been here for another full shitty year, big whoop, and no, you’re not guaranteed anything for it. Point and case, you just mentioned his dead fucking parents. He’s definitely not guaranteed anything for managing to continued breathing like a fucking person.”

“Besides, it’s not my money, it’s my uncle’s. I’m broke as shit right now, you really think I got cash on me to waste on birthday cake or something?? He’s not even going to be around me by the end of the week, he’s moving out and he wants nothing to do with me. So I really don’t see why I should be lavishing in unearned spoils when there’s plenty of other things I could be doing.”

[banditaid-blog]

“I’mma stop you right there, Captain Killjoy. You can dish out blank cheques for a grunt you barely know to buy dildos but you can’t sneak just P5.00 of your uncle’s money for a fucking cake for the Rocket brat who’s crashing under your roof?? Even I’d have been able to cough up a fucking fiver if you’d just asked me.”

“You know what, fine. I’ll throw him the best damn birthday party he’s had in his goddamn life, all by myself. It’s gonna be so fucking celebratory he’ll be spitting-up party confetti for days. We’ll be sure not to save you any cake!”

[medical-mishap]

banditaid: (from X)

“He’s not my kid. And what do you mean birthday presents? No one told me it was his birthday. Besides, what’s the point in buying people shit for this kind of thing? Who cares if the day marks whether or not their parents banged however many years and nine months ago? It’s not like it’s an achievement to get older, or anything.”

[banditaid-blog]

“Well I can’t be mad at you for not getting him anything if he didn’t tell you it was his birthday in the first place, but what’s with the fucking anti-birthday-gift rhetoric? I already figured you were a miser back when you were shitting on Discount Chocolatemas, but this takes the birthday cake.”

“I don’t know if you were just a super deprived child or what, but birthdays are like the one day a kid gets to feel like king of the world, ya know? Like no matter how busy with work your single mom is or how poor you guys are, it’s the one day of the year you’re guarenteed love and attention from your folks. And spoilers, his are fucking dead and it’s his first birthday without them around.”

“Come on Exec. If you can afford to let me buy dildos and video games with the mountains of dodgy money you apparently have just lying around the place, then you can at least get the poor stupid dweeb a cheap cake and like, a shirt or something. I’m sure he’d be jazzed.”

[medical-mishap]

Sent on the day of Shugo's birthday: "Does that kid of yours play any videogames?? I'm asking because of reasons".

“You know, I’m not really sure. It’s not like he talks to me, much. But…. now that you mention it, sometimes I come back to find the playstation controller on the couch instead of on the console where I leave it, so maybe he does. Why do you ask?”

[banditaid-blog]

“Because REASONS, Executive! Secret reasons I am not at liberty to disclose. PS did you actually not get your son any bday presents, or are you just waiting to surprise him? Because if you didn’t that’s kinda fucked up man, what sort of parent are you?”

[dreishzu]

It’s Jiravril! Or Jirapril in English!

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//The art style on this is so GOSH DARN GOOD.

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//The gym I go to posted this to their Facebook page 😂

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Clarissa & Archer: Zero chill

Thanks to Petrel’s generosity, Clarissa recently found herself in the possession of a brand new New 3DS (complete with snazzy star-pattern faceplates...which, by the way, it’s a miracle she managed to apply without snapping anything in half. In her frustration she had resorted to trying to ping the featureless default plates off of the machine with a screwdriver, before she had finally looked at the manual and realised she should have been using the stylus. Getting the screws back in had been some tedious, fiddly shit as well).

So she once again has a gaming handheld...and way, way too much choice in what to play. The sheer number of games released over the duration of her four-year absence from the face of planet Earth makes it excruciating to prioritise. She’d taken to the internet and researched and deliberated until she had scrawled a messy list of potential titles, but oh— When she’d tapped into the Nintendo eShop and seen that familiar-looking banner? Well. That cinched it.

Sure, she could dip her indecisive toes into the uncharted waters of 2012-2016 gaming...orrrrrrrrr she could re-live the controller-smashing frustration of her childhood. F-Zero? More like EFF YEAH.

...It really is just as difficult as it was when she was six, though thankfully thirteen more years’ gaming experience and much longer fingers are granting her at least a slight edge over her younger self. She’s holed-up in the break room, looking so settled-in that this might as well be her own living room. Her hat lays on the break room floor directly beneath her head—which is hanging over the edge of the couch—her legs leaning up against the back of the seat. If you approach the couch from behind, only her feet can be seen sticking out from over the top (it’s impressive how many holes her socks have accrued when none of her clothes are older than a month and a half, ish). Her shirt has ridden up to expose her toned midriff, the tip of her tongue sticking out of her mouth and her expression intense as she mashes buttons on the 3DS held upside down in front of her face. The sound is on full, filling the room with the whizz of engines, followed by an explosion sound effect as Clarissa, who’s been looking more and more tensed up the longer she’s been lying here, misaligns her jump. She yells in anger as the Blue Falcon careens into the pixelly abyss, dropping her 3DS onto the floor and running her hands over her face.

“DAMMIT PORT TOWN 1!!”

Grumbling, she reaches for her game (Dammit! One more go! Just one), not looking up senses another person drawing near. She doesn’t know or care to see who’s decided to join her on the couch, eyes locked to her screen with fierce determination as she tells them: “You can sit there but you better not throw me off my game!”

[banditaid-blog]

//LMAO LAST ONE I PROMISE. gotta get my Rocket game on!!

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Sweet, Sour, or both?

“Both, both is good. I love sour candy. You know, like Warheads and Toxic Waste and Chewits Extreme. If the roof of your mouth isn’t sore by the end of the pack then it’s not sour enough.”

[banditaid-blog]

What's your favorite way to relax after shift?

“Most of my shifts finish in the early hours of the morning, so I just roll straight back to my dorm most nights unless I’ve got a booty call, or if I finished early enough to catch the tail-end of the clubbing scene. There’s no point hitting the clubs after 3am.”

“Normally I’ll go grab some food, like takeout or something, head back to base and stay up a while longer playing video games. Turns out a lot of hit horrors came out during the years while I was...on break, so I’m slogging through the backlog.”