It was quite rare that anything so needlessly destructive interrupted the calm of that forest.  The hyperbeam had torn a swathe of desolation through the trees, ripping several from their tightly rooted bases and otherwise turning the hardly packed soil into dust and mud.  As one lone individual surveyed the remains of a desiccated trunk, she noted the broken form of a caterpie twitching in the muck.  It wouldn't survive for long.  A small blessing.  Several pidgeys glared at the wanderer with unconcealed annoyance, eager to feed but unwilling to risk a fight over the meal.  Without so much as a word the figure turned away.  Feeding was not high on her list of things to do.<br/><br/>Obdura hefted the weighted club against her left shoulder.  For a cubone, it felt only natural to feel the smooth bone against her scales, gripped firmly in the palm of her hand.  Hers was a bit unique, in that one end had been broken off and carved into a crude blade.  Sometimes a battle required subtlety, and a mace was hardly the sort of tool for that.  She was far from ordinary in that sense, though her peculiarities didn't stop there.  The heavy scarring was hardly noteworthy, but the battered human skull grafted to the back of her own was more than a little disconcerting.<br/><br/>She knew this by the numerous odd or outright frightened looks she received in every town she passed through, and this small rural city was no different.  Her saving grace was the fact that most humans assumed her to be some poor sap's catch.  Wild types almost never dared wander the streets, unless they were naturally city dwelling creatures.  Still, that didn't stop some from alerting certain authorities anyway, though she had a million and one tales for any nosy officer who cared to humor them.<br/><br/>There was only one reason for her to be in the city today, and he was standing casually outside the Pokemon center with what seemed like a look of perpetual satisfaction on his face.  Obdura did not know his name, but she knew his type far too well.  The cause of the destruction in the forest, and a source of curiosity.<br/><br/>She came up from the side of him and leaned against the wall tiredly.  The bone club slid into the belt about her waist, and her arms crossed beneath her breasts as a foot pressed against the Center's brightly painted side.  One eye slid up to look at Adrian from her skull's socket, though her head remained firmly level.<br/><br/>"The beginning of an interesting day."