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Beau didn't want to admit it, but the longer he stayed in this place, the more bizarrely at peace he found himself with it. It helped that he had company, and Eddie's boisterous, upbeat personality had been probably some of the best company he could ask for if he'd known he was going to be spending time in some kind of weird pseudo-afterlife a month ago.
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Though there wasn't really a 'sun' to set, technically, they'd made it through the night with very little fanfare and Beau had taken it upon himself to press on their exploration. From platform to platform, bridge to bridge, he led their hike, and was only now arrested by the presence of a rushing, white-capped waterfall on the edge of one such platform, the water descending into nothingness below.
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He rubbed his chin as he surveyed the falls, glancing over to Eddie with a solemn expression. "This seems suspicious," he proclaimed, Torben nodding decisively behind him. "You play any video games, brah? There's always a secret room behind the waterfall."
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Advancing carefully, Beau grabbed Torben's paw with one hand and carefully extended his leg, pushing his foot through the waterfall and feeling around for the continuation of the ground. Finding purchase, he took another careful step and vanished through the waterfall, coming through on the other side to an enormous cavern, at the center of which was a large stone seal, cracked and filling the air with a sense of...resentment?
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"Whoa," he gasped, taking the sight in. "What happened here, brah?"

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"Eddie? Holy shit." Anxiety constricted in Beau's chest, but there was no mistaking it - he'd spent too much time with the man on their shared missions into The Border to not recognize the man by his build alone, even with a mask that completely obscured his features.
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He leaned to help the other man into a sitting position, frantically reaching to lower Eddie's arms when he saw him reaching for his mask - too late, as his cellmate choked and sputtered, but he at least gave up faster than Beau had, which might have been a credit to his future health. Beau splayed a hand on the man's back to steady him - but what comfort could he give in this place, really?
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"Look, I dunno what's going on or why we're here, but don't go for your mask, or this thing will choke you out." Beau murmured as quietly as he could, indicating the Toxic Chain around his own neck. Before he could elaborate, the sound of the platform descending in the middle of the ward had his head turning reflexively, and he gaped.
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"What three-day war?!" he spouted indignantly at the exposition. "I wasn't even there, were you even payin' attention to who you were grabbing?" The Megalopolan guard who dispassionately slid a pair of mochi through the bars was unperturbed, and indeed didn't so much as blink in response, let alone give an answer.
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Across the ward, someone else also had the idea to raise a little hell, and Beau went from vindicated to horrified in the space of a moment as the rabble-rouser was forcibly extracted between the bars of his cell. When the Okidogi began further abusing the twisted, crumpled body of the prisoner, Beau turned his head away, feeling the gorge rising in his throat.
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"Eat that," Beau offered flatly to Eddie, his tone unreadable. "We're walkin' outta here as soon as we find a way, but you ain't gonna be that thing's next Stretch Armstrong." Was it cowardly to acquiesce? Yes, part of him responded viciously, but another part of him rationalized that he couldn't help anyone if he was the next bundle of bones to get squeezed through the metal bars.
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He popped the mochi into his mouth and clenched his eyes shut as he chewed, having seen directly what it did to people. Only this was...sweeter than he expected, and when his chain lurched over to join with the bars of the cell and offer him a way into the center, he felt a little thrill of hope. Just a little one. "Just, uh, bonk me on the head if I start talkin' about mochi, yeah?" he murmured to Eddie before he rose and moved slowly to the waiting crates of crystals.
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The guards were almost too quiet as Beau recovered a cluster of stone and crystal, examining it before smashing it against the hard stone floor. It juddered free of his grasp, skittering across the stone to land at the feet of Okidogi. The larger pokemon turned to look in the direction of Beau and Eddie, and the younger man instinctively moved forward, shuffling to block the space between Eddie and their apparent jailer. He reached for the stone, an apologetic frown furrowing his brow as he tried to keep his gaze averted from the brute.
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Sneering, Okidogi plucked up the stone in one massive mitt first, examining it almost coyly before drawing its arm back and hurling the rock at Beau with a snide laugh. The stone impacted the side of Beau's head and he reeled, falling to his knees.
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"Dammit," he hissed. Hopefully the mask blocked the worst of the potential damage, but his head throbbed and he couldn't see straight when he reached blindly for the stone. He had to play along, he had to do something, or he knew this thing wouldn't think twice about turning him into pulp as easily as it had the other man.
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Discomfort registered first as Beau slowly came awake. Dripping with sweat and feeling fabric bunched against his body in all the wrong places, he could only assume groggily that he'd managed to kick his sheets off of him again. He really had to get his A/C looked at, but who had the time?
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Stretching, his hands encountered an unforgiving stone wall. Blinking in alarm, he sat up hurriedly and sucked in a surprised breath, hissing through the surface of the mask that he suddenly registered on his face. What the hell was going on? He ran his fingers along the edges inexpertly, trying to pull it off, and felt something tighten around his neck as he did so, causing him to choke. The chain tightened the harder he pulled, until he finally relented with a gasp, light-headed and frantic.
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Breathing heavily, he looked around to take the scene in. He was in some kind of cell, and the guards wandering around had the same- oh no. Feeling carefully at his neck, he traced the smooth, rounded shape of the same Toxic Chains he'd been responding to all month. Panic shot down his spine as he frantically put his brain to work, limited though it might have been. Was it because he'd been so sick? Had getting too close to those things done this?
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He jolted in alarm as he surveyed his cell and noticed another figure slumped against the opposite wall, sporting an identical Toxic Chain and a mask that he assumed must be like the one he was wearing. Scrabbling to his feet, he moved to see whether the man was breathing, and heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the other's chest move.
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"Brah! Brah, wake up," he hissed, crouching and facing away from the barred entry of the cell as he attempted to nudge the other into wakefulness. "What the hell is going on?"

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Beau lifted the sunglasses from his face as he approached what should have been the beach. He knew he'd been probably a little too optimistic when he'd gotten the dispatch notification to clear up an infestation of Poison-type pokemon from the area, but seeing the sludgy mire that had resulted from the outbreak was still more than he'd expected by far.
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"Oh, hey!" he called, waving back at Gunner Graves as he approached, a grin coming to his face despite the circumstances. "Yeah, you too, brah - takes more than some monster t'take us down, right?" He extended his fist to the other, obviously expecting a bump of some kind.
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Behind him, a small ursine pokemon tottered along the path to catch up, small limbs windmilling until he came to rest just beside Beau. The Kubfu paused, breathing heavily, before leaning backward to look at Gunner's face with a determined expression. Bringing up the rear was Torben the Pangoro, who regarded Gunner with a single grunt before nudging the Kubfu with one foot.
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The Kubfu started forward, surprised, and dropped into what was obviously a rehearsed martial bow to Gunner with a grunt that sounded almost more like a squeak. Torben nodded, satisfied.
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Beau watched this exchange with an amused grin, clarifying to Gunner: "Torben's the big guy, an' Orson's his little pal. We found him shiverin' half to death, so Torben's takin' him under his wing. Seems to be enjoyin' it so far," he laughed.
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Beau surveyed the area briefly, his mirth dissipating as he took in the magnitude of the job they had before him. "Shoot, this is a mess," he sighed. "Think we oughtta try t'clear out the critters first, see if we c'n disperse the source before it gets any worse. What're you thinkin'?" he inquired of the other man with a raised eyebrow.

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Beau doesn't register Klaus's words so much as the proximity of the other man, and comes to realize two things very quickly.
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One, he's awfully close without having asked permission, and judging by the fact that Klaus has looped an arm around him, it's too late for him to get out now without further awkwardness.
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Two, if he were to somehow extricate himself from this predicament, he'd be faced with having to deal with the damn movie by himself again, which could result in the same thing all over again. That wasn't really an ideal scenario either.
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Klaus's breath against his ear made him shiver, and while clearly his ear was in the way of Klaus's mouth, he couldn't really do much from this angle to correct his mistake or get his ear out of the way. He tried wiggling it to make sure it couldn't move on its own.
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No such luck.
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What was the right course of action? He turned his head slightly, cracking one eye open to regard the screen, which now depicted a gaggle of teenagers having a party. This seemed a little better, and he relaxed slightly from his position against Klaus.
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"I know," he rumbled sullenly against the other man. "'S just a movie."

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The gorge rose in Beau's throat as the scene around him shifted and reformed, and it wasn't because of the transportation, this time. Had that been him, really? Could that have been him if he'd been a member of Rocket?
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Shuddering, he patted himself down, clawing at his own clothing until he looked down and realized he was in his usual attire and not the uniform of a Rocket officer. Turning his head, he caught sight of Torben looking equally disgusted, with a skewer of dango in one huge paw. Wait, dango? Where the hell did he pick that up?
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Looking around, he determined that they were within the grounds of a festival, and as he cautiously made his way through the crush of people, he bumped square into a slight festival-goer in a strange green mask. "W-whoa," he exclaimed, holding his hands up defensively - still not over the events of the previous simulation. "Sorry about that, little brah!"
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Torben loomed as the small figure struggled to stand mutely, bending over and offering the dango to the other party. The green-masked figure took the treat cautiously, sizing it up from behind its mask. "You alright?"
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Beau could only stare, awestruck, as the pair of spirits reunited and ascended before his eyes, a spectacle that he never thought he'd see himself.
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He didn't know, not really, whether there was something waiting after this life, but he hoped. Otherwise it would be too bleak, in a way. Seeing this had his mind racing, a rarity for him perhaps, but he couldn't help but think that there was something to it after all. A chance, maybe, that he'd see those he loved again.
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Eddie's voice broke him from his reverie and he shook his head reflexively, surreptitiously scrubbing at his wet eyes. The smile he wore was soft and genuine, and the hope he'd felt was so far removed from his experience the last time he'd come into this place that he didn't know what to make of it.
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Running was the last thing he wanted to do, now.
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Glancing down, he grinned and gave a thumbs-up to his shadow, which returned it exactly as a shadow should. He turned his attention to Eddie and shrugged. "No kidding, brah, not at all. And, uh, hell naw!"
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A bit of enthusiasm crept back into him as Eddie mentioned dinner, and he jogged over to his own pack, beginning to rummage through it. "Might as well set up shelter here. If the googly-mooglies aren't coming after us this time, we might as well see how far we can get, yeah?"

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Weary. He was simply weary.
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Beau had been called to more sites of these outbreaks than he could reliably count over the preceding weeks, and each incident was worse and worse.
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His stomach churned at the sight of the Rabsca and their corrupted larvae, and frustration boiled through him. He couldn't get too close to the affected pokemon to even attempt to help - he'd tried, and the malaise lingering inside him almost brought him to the ground.
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Instead, he was relegated to commanding Finley from the fringes of the outbreak. the Garchomp DIGGING beneath the sand as easily as swimming through water, the violet fins sweeping through the loose dunes before erupting upward to stun and disable the Rabsca before their SPEED SWAP could take effect.
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He fought to remain standing - how weak was he? Not even in a direct fight, himself, and yet the toll taken on him by numerous levels of exposure to these strange Toxic Chains was kicking his butt. If he wasn't careful, would he be one of the next ones chanting about mochi?
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Arceus, he hoped not.

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"I dunno, man," Beau rejoins as they make their way through the fringes of Area Zero. "It seems like every other month is bringin' somethin' that's end of the region big."
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He gestures to Torben, who moves a fallen log from the path with a low grunt, dropping it off the side with a thud and moving to rejoin his trainer, dusting his paws off lazily.
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"I keep away from 'em, but I've been responding to every notice I've gotten about somethin' going on, and they're all over the friggin' place," he grunts. "Even not coming into contact with them doesn't stop me from feelin' like my guts wanna come up anymore. It's almost too much to handle, but we gotta do somethin', right?"
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He grimaces, conscious of not showing his frustration to a higher-ranked Ranger, but not enough to keep him from making his comment. "What can't we wait for? If we keep throwin' ourselves at this stuff without knowing what the heck it is, won't it end up worse for us?"
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He tried to divest himself of that particular train of thought - if he didn't focus on the mission, they'd get nowhere, or worse, eaten by one of those weird dinosaur-looking things. He'd follow up later. Surely.

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The main processing room of the Pokemon Center was little challenge once Beau actually arrived, and it didn't take long at all before he emerged from the wrecked door of the building, toting a heavy case with Torben carrying two more behind him.
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He caught sight of Jack walking back up the road from what looked like a good time and greeted the man with a proud lift of his chin, indicating the case in his hand.
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"Job's done," he quipped callously. "Time to beat it, Boss is out."
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And like that, he's striding down the street, his Grunts filing out of the Pokemon Center with their own loot. Notably, those who were trapped inside the building do not follow.
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