“Do you know her Pokégram handle?” he asked as he went back to edit the tags in the picture just so they were (unintentionally) adding fuel to the fire.

Once he would give him said Pokégram handle, he saved the post and had to refresh it a few times because why not?

All too soon the merry-go-round came to a stop and he alighted from the ride first, before turning to face the other.

“You wanna go over to the drop tower ride next?” he asked with this unreadable smirk on his face.

---

prompt: n/a

Fate worked in strange ways, didn’t it?

For once, for bloody once Lars had a day off to himself. Rather than spending it at home (like most days) or with the few people he knew (they were all busy) he decided to drop by the Funtasia faire…

And immediately ran into a problem: someone was running late for work, apparently! He approached the carny who looked rather lost (not to mention wet behind the ears, a total and complete newbie) before realizing that they’d gotten themselves lost first day on the job to boot.

“Eh, no big, lemme get you to the booth where you have to go.”

Bonus points of being a beanpole, he immediately spotted the lost and found station where they were supposed to be headed; him going through the crowd and making sure his companion was able to keep up.

In no time, they’d reached the lost and found booth only for Lars to blink and do a double take at the person who was behind the booth—

“Hey, Emmett. How’d you end up there?” he asked the other Ranger, a hint of bemusement on his face as the actual carny who was supposed to be on duty entered the booth and apologized a thousand times over.

---

prompt: help a carny with an issue

“You got a lotta frown lines to erase, though,” he cracked back, before fishing out his phone from his pocket.

“Hey, Ollie…” he trailed off, quickly flipping the camera on and making sure it was facing the two of them.

“Smile!”

Without warning, he would snap a picture of them both (never mind if the other may or may not be in the frame) before quickly flicking Pokégram and opening it.

Damn it, had it really been a while?!

Either way, he then uploaded the picture along with the caption, ‘just two guys being guys’ and then scrolled for the Funtasia tag and added that in, too.

---

prompt: share your carnival experience on a social media of your choice under #Funtasia

For now, he pockets the ‘space rock’—there’ll be time to go over the finer details later. Just as he’s about to address the Copperajah in the room—

“Are you kidding me?!” he yelped; but only the words come out in Alto Marean instead as the room, quite literally, goes to shit.

(Rest in pieces, Callan Young’s room.)

Having a split-second to actually react to the situation, his gaze immediately goes over to ollie morales (who may or may not have a Flying-type on him) before he makes the jump; never mind if it’s one hell of a leap.

“No way in hell you’re not—falling down to your death, idiota!” he yelled as he concentrated, very hard, hoping against hope that something, anything would happen—

And while it doesn’t summon the Iceborne Mirage per se, it does make the wings of ice appear—although in this case their appearance is more worn-down, frayed; several of the ‘ice feathers’ even look to be missing. Were they molting? He didn’t know.

“Hold on!” he hollered; never mind if he held onto the other in a death grip as the fall stretched down, down, down into… somewhere.

Hopefully there were no rough landings due to falling so far down. It felt like the fall went on forever, at least until he (they?) land in a cavern that has an eerie bluish glow.

(Glowing things never really did mean anything good was bound to happen, right?)

There was a reverberating noise from further within, and he shuddered. Visibly, shuddered.

Am I going to die down here?! he thought, frantically swatting the thoughts away.

Because of all the times, his claustrophobia just had to rear its ugly damned head!

“You okay?” he asked the other man first, before redirecting the question at large. “How’s everyone?”

He’d managed to… calm himself down, somewhat; the wings of ‘ice’ shimmering out of existence. Maybe things were even worse than he thought between himself and the Iceborne Mirage.

“…maybe things aren’t so hot between me and them,” he quietly admitted to his best friend.

He caught sight of the frayed ‘wings’ mid-flight earlier; normally they were from the ‘purest’ kind of ice, however due to the disconnect between them lately, even his ‘blessings’ weren’t functioning as they should be.

He then turned to the general direction of John Sullivan and dahlia goode, however the next statement was for the Commissioner herself.

“Do you have another way of fixing the broken connection between an Avatar and their patron?”

---

• he takes back the space rock, we can go over the finer details later
• and then shit hits the fan, oh deer where are we going this time
• realizes that Ollie may not have brought a Flying-type along, in the chaos he makes the leap and tries to grab onto him
• ice wings let’s go… or maybe not 100% ice wings but they’re there
• one eternity of falling later they’re in a cave, they set down, he asks Ollie if he’s okay + redirects the question to everyone else at large
• his last question is for Dahlia, though.
• bolded thought: Am I going to die down here?! thanks claustrophobia

He looked over at Razz Kingsman, wondering why he had to bust out his paperweight strange space rock and just his alone.

“I’m sure asides from my rock,” he began in illeana reyes’s direction, “you can also have the other scientists examine Razz Kingsman’s space rock as well. Faster if you have more samples to examine with, wouldn’t you say? Rather than have just one team focusing all their attention on one rock—more heads thinking, faster we can all make use of this down the road.”

He then pursed his lips into the same thin, quiet line—he was used to being burned by most around him. however, when ollie morales spoke up, he couldn’t help but give the other a rare, fleeting smile—one the other would know was genuine enough not to be one of the ‘faked’ ones he would use all the time.

His look alone towards his best friend was more than enough while he processed the information that was being laid out in front of them to best gauge the next plan of attack.

“Should we succeed in taking the city back, though,” he said once most everyone had given their input, “…wouldn’t that leave Team Rocket open to take another in its place? Won’t that lock us into the same cycle of sieging, and recapturing, whatever city falls next?”

First it was Slateport, now it was Sootopolis. He didn’t even want to think about the potential fallout should the City in the Crater be razed—after all, even though he wanted to deny it to his dying day, the place was still home for him, at some point.

“We have to end this between them, once and for all. However, should there be a way to take the city back without it looking extremely suspicious that the Legendary Pokémon on our side are the ones behind it and it looks planned, then I’m all ears for that.”

No matter how flawed it would be, a plan was still a plan, at least.

---

• mentions that there’s more than just one ‘space rock’ that the science team can examine + work smart, not hard since there are 2 rocks, why not have more teams look into the phenomenon so that the turnaround time is quicker in general
• he doesn’t want to be the red herring in all of this, however he does bring up a point mentioning that should they get Sootopolis back, won’t another city fall in exchange?
• it’s time to cut off the Hydra’s heads once and for all, so edgewise he’s agreeing that the city has to be taken back
• provides his sort-of agreement with the ‘natural disasters’ shaking the city option as opposed to an outright raid because wouldn’t a direct ‘attack’ on the city by League cause uprest for the civilian population still residing in there?

Honestly, though, how the hell did some of the stuff here work even after staying underwater for so long?

He would… have to take the Incense he’d found a couple of days ago out for a spin. If it turned out to be a salt incense, he would just… laugh his ass off because what the fresh hell? Really?

Either way, he could tell the last days of summer were coming, so it was time to make these dives… well, count.

Off into the swirling, murky depths he dove.

“Bitch,” he shot back with this smirk on his face. “How’s that even possible?”

Before he could retort back with another snarky comment, their ride was off. It must’ve looked insane seeing two of Hoenn’s top figures riding something absolutely dinky like this, but here we all were.

(And for the record, much as he wanted to get on the Articuno, someone had beaten him to it so he had to go for the Suicune for now.)

“Look, I… my sister was the same way. Even if she was under the height limit she also wanted to go on all the big, scary rides. Hell, Claude was even worse since they both wanted to go but only I could… guess who got a growth spurt so early on?”

There was just a little hint of sadness in the smile on his face, should the other notice it.

“Oh? Crack me up, then.”

He wondered if the line at the Magikarp Fishing booth was long, considering that was a game of skill and he wanted to take the other there next.

---

prompt: reference a Magikarp Fishing game

The moment he realized what the theme for the merry-go-round was, he let out another guffaw of laughter.

“Mercy,” he cackled as Ollie decided to get on the Raikou (hello Josh Devlin) and so, by process of elimination he chose the Suicune.

Why was real life imitating art, anyway?!

“Oh, you did?” he hummed as he waited for the ride to get going. “I know you told me you have many siblings, but exactly how many… you didn’t specify I think, you just said ‘a lot’ so I just went with it!”

And aww, the mental image of… a younger Eva Morales, being under the height limit? Wasn’t that cute.

“Which rides did you end up going on? I bet she wanted to go on the big, scary ones.”

---

prompt: ride the merry-go-round

“You bitch,” he cackled afterward the moment he realized that Ollie was not sorry at all for what happened.

“Well, it was more Claude than me, but still, we were both grounded and shit. It was still crazy, though!” he continued as he wiped a tear from his eye. Ahh, the good times.

Giving the Articuno plushie another stare, he had to resist the urge to roll his eyes so openly.

“You know what, funny story—but I’ll tell you later.”

In the end, he ended up buying both the Articuno and an Yveltal plushie (the bacon bird) because of the inside joke…

Now that they were back towards the middle of the fairgrounds, he looked around—the explosion of color was literally everywhere.

“Why not? Ride everything we can before the fairgrounds closes, let’s go! Lead the way!”

---

prompt: n/a

“Mamma mia he was like, beyond mad. He was fucking furious when the Voltorb just kind of… exploded and made a massive mess of the boat deck,” he recounted, unable to hold back the wheezing noise that bubbled up in him, which he eventually released because holy fucking shit that was literally one for the ages.

“We kinda… oh, who am I kidding, we were so fucking grounded for the rest of the summer… and the summer after that,” he continued, sinking to his knees now that he was unable to control the noise that escaped him.

Now that they’d wandered over to the Joyland pop-up souvenir booths, he had to resist the urge to roll his eyes because… there was an equally-tiny Articuno plushie there, too.

“Haha, look.”

---

prompt: visit the Joyland Pop-up souvenir booths

He couldn’t help but laugh—a real, genuine laugh and not one of the ones he faked so much they sounded genuine enough to anyone who heard it—at his companion’s exclamation.

“Yeah. Several, in fact… and you know what me and my idiota brother did with that Voltorb?”

He’d already made his prize choice—hilariously, a Voltorb plush toy—before holding it in one hand and continuing with the tale.

“He actually thought it was just some random ol’ beach ball, so he asked me to help him kick it… and then it kind of went… flying towards one of the yachts.”

He didn’t need to fill in the blanks as to what happened next. While not necessarily a totally destroyed yacht, it did cause some mayhem in which they had to make a quick-ass getaway before they got scalped alive!

---

prompt: pick a prize from the prize wall at one of the carnival games

So the two Clamperl were settled down, that was good—

And now he belatedly realized just how much stuff he’d gotten from diving. Wasn’t it just like last year; only he’d missed a few days because of emergencies?

Well, then!

“Hmm,” he mused as he extinguished the cigarette he had with him before disposing of it properly—and then going for today’s dip in the murky surf.

What waited for him down there today, though?