The moment the younger man mentioned ‘Rocket’, he scowled for a few moments.

“Do I look like a member of Team Rocket to you?” would be his initial clap back while he held onto the helmet in his hands. “Also, seriously?”

Of the three Pokémon that approached, two of them were definitely familiar—he recognized the Manectric on sight; as well as the giraffe-looking…

“Excuse me. You called… what?” he blinked, tilting his head in the giraffe Paradox Pokémon’s direction.

He then pinched the bridge of his nose.

“How… how sure are you that’s even the real Raikou?!” he would exclaim afterward.

The moment she mentioned that she hadn’t been granted avatarship, he was about to let out a sigh of relief when she’d also mentioned the ‘yet’.

There was this look of utter dismay that flashed across his face—what was it with people he knew who so desperately wanted to become an avatar?

Didn’t they know that it was way too dangerous to commit to that?!

Either way…

“So you’re telling me,” he would continue in that same quiet tone, “…that you want to be an avatar?”

Boy.

Just how many people did he have to dissuade from getting embroiled in the supernatural before they got in way over their heads?!

“Mind if I call you Mike?” was what he began with, the moment he’d regained enough spatial awareness that there was a Charmander not too far away from where they were.

“You can call me Lars… it’s a thousand miles better than ‘Laurence’ and besides, only our parents have divine right to call us by our full first names,” he would introduce himself after returning the handshake.

Thankfully the other man didn’t look too wet around the ears—oh gods, that would be another mountain and a half—and so he continued.

“I know this is going to sound absolutely corny, but. You know, we’re out here. What survival know-how do you already know to do?”

There, a little nudge to get the ball rolling.

Of course he had too much time on his hands.

Of course he was going to be running deliveries around the nearby area…

He was about to gun the motorbike and move past the area where he was travelling when he realized…

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

He then pinched the bridge of his nose before attempting to park his motorbike as quietly as possible out of sight, out of mind as he hopped off (and took the keys, of course) to take a peek at what was going…

On.

“Mamma mia,” he would hiss quietly under his breath as he realized just what he’d witnessed.

As they say… the best ‘defense’ is a good ‘offense’ so to speak…

“The fuck are you doing?” he would begin as he stepped out from where he was half-hidden, taking the motorbike helmet off so the younger man could see who it was that was about to either bust him, or chastise him, or tell him off about doing stupid things!

Would they stick the landing? He certainly hoped so!

Thankfully, the Aggron was ‘fast’ enough to catch the Gardevoir in time (with a bridal-style carry, to boot, oh boy Gareth would be pissed if he found out) before she waved her arms while in the Aggron’s hold—

They had to take advantage of the Misty Terrain while it was still on the ground!

Another series of Expanding Forces would then emanate from the point of ‘impact’ where the attack had been applied on, so to speak—

Hopefully the Aggron would be able to catch at least one (or both) Pokémon in a juggle so that they could get a set-up and nuke them out of the arena!

For she (they) had plans.

“Thank you, Gron!” he would call out from his side of the arena. That was too close to tell!

---

Gardevoir is out on the field! Psychic Terrain (4 / 5)

Lynette the Gardevoir sticks the landing, bridal-style, in the Aggron’s arms before using Expanding Force once again in an attempt to catch at least one (hopefully both) Pokémon on Lam’s side of the field in a trap to set up for Gron’s next move!

“Anything you should be aware of… well, asides from the fact that the worst cases we get are Purrloin stuck up in trees or some of the kids that live around here want to play with the off-duty Rangers? That’s about it,” he would nod her way.

Because, yes, Verdanturf was that quiet the worst thing they ever got were very trivial concerns!

“Oh, and… before anything else? Eli? I kinda own a local brewery now,” he mentioned. That was completely out of nowhere.

“If you want beer after work, then you know where to go.”

He’d seen so much shit going down.

It was like that previous time all over again, only exacerbated because of all the clearly poisonous mochi that were being left behind at the multiple ‘crime scenes’ across the region.

Thankfully, though, there were enough capable people who were actively working against the tide of infection. Kind of reminded him of that mass outbreak a few years ago that sent most everyone into isolation…

He kept forgetting he wasn’t a person of authority anymore, so he’d almost replied to her in such a way he was about to sound like he was her boss or something.

Thankfully he caught himself in time.

“Too many things going on all at once,” he would muse quietly.

“With the number of poisoned seeking treatment—especially the wild Pokémon that need to be rehabilitated after they recover and are released back into the wild? We’ve all got our hands full.”

At least Oldale was one of the quieter towns!

“You ever felt like a headless Torchic running around so many places all at once trying to solve all the problems at the same time?” he would ask her some time later after he returned to make a drop-off of crates that needed moving around.

His suspicions were correct—the moment cousin dearest had reassured him that everything was going to be alright, well…

It suddenly wasn’t, all things considered, because right before they could advance, a sudden rippling of the air and a space-time distortion would catch them dead in their tracks!

“Whoa!” he would yelp; wondering if his cousin was thinking the same thing he was—that they’d been lured into a false sense of security.

“I knew it!” he would exclaim afterward as he pinched the bridge of his nose. While he couldn’t look directly into the inside of the space-time distortion, the uneasy, prickly feeling that it was leering at them like an evil eye would remain.

“Urgh…” he would add before the space-time distortion would disappear, quick as it had come.

---

• TOTAL OF ROLLS MADE BY ALL WRITERS REACHES 666. - A rift to the DISTORTION WORLD opens briefly, like an opening eye. Peering into it fills your characters with dread. You can not enter this rift, but one may theorize the DISTORTION WORLD is attempting to map out this new area in order to create an antimaterial counterpart for the world.

It was like… that same sinking feeling of déjà vu would begin bothering him once more because…

Why did he have a feeling that there was something about to appear if they went further? Granted, they hadn’t met the Regirock (not yet at least anyway) however fact of the matter was that his instincts were screaming at him that—

Something, was definitely coming.

“Usually around this point, something appears and—” he would trail off, mentally crossing his fingers and hoping that this wasn’t just a fucking coincidence, however there was… there was a pattern that usually happened leading up to Regirock’s sighting.

---

• dorime

He was about to make a crack in Doug’s direction when right on cue; the same prickly feeling that he’d associated with space-time distortions (as the local scientific community called them) shimmered into existence; winking at them like an eye—

Before he could get a closer look at the inside of the damned thing, though, it had vanished just as quickly.

“What the fuck, those normally stay much longer than a split second!” he would exclaim at the sudden phenomena surrounding the distortion; before a shadow caught their attention; taking a spectacular leaping run and landing with a resounding booming noise not too long afterward.

He was about to remark about the time when he’d first seen the Suicune-adjacent Pokémon, but now was not the time—he had to get moving, and fast!

“Go, go chase it down! I’ll back you up!” he would continue once the presence had made itself known.

---

• TOTAL OF ROLLS MADE BY ALL WRITERS REACHES 666. - A rift to the DISTORTION WORLD opens briefly, like an opening eye. Peering into it fills your characters with dread. You can not enter this rift, but one may theorize the DISTORTION WORLD is attempting to map out this new area in order to create an antimaterial counterpart for the world.

“Did—did you notice the chains on their hands?!” he would call out her way; having just recovered from the ruffled state that he’d found himself in. His Blaziken had shot off to deal with even more Tinkaton swinging around those colossal-sized hammers like they were feathers; before realizing…

Something.

“Normally their… oh, cazzo,” he would bark out as the belated realization hit him when he managed to put two and two together, now that he didn’t feel so sick around the poisonous areas.

“…haven’t you noticed, one of their signature attacks usually forces them to wait some time before they can use it again? It’s like… it’s like they can do it now, repeatedly, without even recoil…”

Oh, shit.

---

• this is carrying over right after the events of pp2: hammers
• apparently, they took hammer time a little too personally

He couldn’t help but snicker her way, before she came in with an actual serious question—

“No, nothing that looks the same as what we found earlier before the earthquake came passing through,” he would reply her way.

However—there was that one incident where… well, you know…

Regirock would appear from out of fucking nowhere and try to squash anyone that it found hostile in their path; but he wasn’t going to disclose that, right?

“Let’s keep looking,” he would add a few moments later.

They hadn’t found anything too suspicious—at least, not yet anyway.

---

• dorime