I Sting (Pokemon Poison Type Specialist)

Chapter 73

Virah heaved as her feet met the concrete roof of an abandoned office building.

Slowly, she checked on how ragged her breathing got and decided that this was when she needed to take a breather.

Virah stopped running and walked on over to the edge of the roof, she looked down and passively gazed on the front of the building.

As expected, she saw nothing but a building which has long since turned decrepit from abandonment; windows were boarded up from the outside, parts of the walls were cracked or moldy, in some cases even both, and yet despite all of that, the building remained standing.

'This says more about human architecture honestly,' Virah thought glumly as she sat on the edge, moments later, someone landed behind her with an audible thud.

Virah looked away from the empty street below her legs and towards Grene, who, much like her, wore a concealing mask to cover her face, the martial artist had respectively chosen something from wrestling, a Luchador Mask, as she called it.

Said mask covered her entire face, it was black in color with yellow whisker-like strips that ran from her mouth to the sides of her cheek, there were two circles surrounding the eyes and her mouth was nothing more than a thin, white line.

"Are you okay?" Grene's muffled voice echoed out from the mask.

Virah nodded, "yeah… it's just…" the poison specialist let out a sigh to gouge out her breathing, "I'm tired, that's all,"

Whitney dropped from the skies then and both of them faced the pinkette, it had been her who had been excited the most when they talked about secret identities and because of that, Virah and Grene expected her to put on something childish but surprisingly, nothing like that happened.

Instead, the two of them found Whitney wearing an oversized pink hoodie which hid her otherwise accentuated chest, a pink face mask, pink sweat pants, and sunglasses to further hide her identity.

Was it blatantly obvious that she was Whitney?..

… Yes, sort of, but Virah thought that if people make the connection, then they would most likely dismiss it given Whitney's age.

Hopefully at least, Virah wasn't really betting on that though, no, both she and Grene blatantly relied on the fact that Whitney's Aura would pull most of the legwork in hiding her identity.

Even now Virah felt that the pink thing in front of her wasn't Whitney, and that was even when she was using her own Aura to counteract Whitney's while at the same time, knowing her actual identity beyond the costume.

"Maybe you should rest for a while?" Whitney suggested.

Virah pulled on her mask and nodded, "I should," Virah turned away from her friends and directed her gaze towards the street below, "you two should go ahead of me, I'll see if I can find something interesting down there,"

"You mean you'll take a walk on the streets?" Grene asked to Virah's nod, "are you sure?"

"I'll be fine," Virah shook her head at the martial artist to convey that it was okay, when Grene backed down, she faced Whitney and saw that the pinkette looked pensive.

"I'll take it easy and go undercover to gather information on the gangs around here," Virah hoped that what she just said was enough to get through Whitney's playful way of thinking.

"But aren't you too weak? What if you get caught?" She asked.

"I can still walk," Virah replied, "and besides, you two can just rescue me can't you?" The poison specialist rebuked, though she didn't really believe if her friends could even do that, "I'll be fine, trust me,"

"… If you say so," Whitney backed off, "well, uhm, we'll be keeping an eye on you but still be careful okay?"

Virah nodded, "I'll do that, thanks,"

Her friends soon left and after a moment's rest, Virah got up and walked on over to the side of the roof, she looked down on the alleyway between the buildings and searched for a possible pathway to the ground, there were two fire escapes on either side, both looked stable, and she deemed that a 10 feet dropped shouldn't be too bad on her knees.

Virah thought that it was a decent plan and got to work, first by stepping onto the topmost fire escape and checking if it could hold her weight, when she saw that it could hold her just fine, she started making her way downward.

She didn't run, instead she chose a casual pace, fast enough to not waste time but also slow enough that she wouldn't disturb the ancient structure she was traversing, and in the off chance that she did somehow ruin it, she was moving fast enough that she could halt her momentum anytime.

Fortunately, nothing happened and she was able to land on the bottom of the alleyway without needing to switch between the two fire escapes and after a second or two to give her legs respite from her fall, she continued walking.

Virah turned to the skies when she got out of the alleyway and saw dead buildings, titans that have long since lost their luster and life.

What was left of their concrete bones were mutilated with wooden boards to build makeshift platforms and barricade their windows, choking them even more.

Damages from Pokemon battles were seen everywhere as well, some were repaired haphazardly, others were left in a state of ruin, most of these were nothing more than cracks, singe marks, or acid burns.

But the worse of them were holes on the walls, either from powerful gust of wind or tossed boulders, some buildings were brought down, not by the forces of nature and time, but the very same strength that made these titans into what they are.

It is known that Ground Types, for what they're worth, are just as capable of bringing down buildings the same way they could build them.

However, something of that caliber is only really shown on gym battles or professional play.

In this case, it was because of several factors, with the most obvious being the lack of maintenance the buildings had.

But even then, the strength needed to bring down a 2 story house was still great and Virah wanted to believe that someone used Magnitude and got lucky but she didn't want to take that risk.

'I should probably ask around,' Virah mulled to herself as she passed by the ruins of what was once an apartment building, now, it was nothing more than a pile of rubble.