with a tuck of his wings, the gunk shot flies overhead. spatters of it rain down on freya's armor, making it hiss, and she grimaces as a few drops mar her cheek. committed to the evasion, lyune is forced to swing by the poipole and curve in a wide turn through the air. 

melusine, outpaced by the noivern, fires off a hydro cannon in frustration. with noivern, rider, and poipole now caught between the two dragons, freya snarls another order.

lyune's maw gathers with more draconic light as he aims a dragon pulse at the nimble creatures. 

Lulu Flint

salamence uses dragon pulse
roaring moon uses hydro cannon

☉

meeting others from that time reawakens the memories. softly, in snippets, blurred shapes on the corner of her vision. riddled with holes as memories tend to be, leaving her wondering just how much of it is her reminiscing and how much of her is filling in the gaps. but she remembers the coming together of so many wayward, timesick souls, finding solace amongst each other over food and drink. 

she remembers him at the head, a wife and...children at his side. their faces are gone, lost to time, but a pang of guilt flits over her face. she'd forgotten herself. those who do remember may not want to. 

a brow raises alongside her coffee cup. she follows isaac's gaze and has to admit to herself that with the help of his pokemon, the rest of the ship's crew are getting on with the work. if anything, she'd only be helpful with supervising at this point, and that seems extraneous in itself. 

the dragons patrolling the skies are all the safety they need; her job is done. 

her boots sink into the sand as she reluctantly agrees to humour him. she perches on a piece of driftwood and thinks about setting her coffee in the sand, but then thinks, ew, sand, and opts to cradle it in both hands. 

she realizes she's been quiet this entire time. 

"i'm not good at small talk," she apologizes. she's not good at filling in the spaces. most of the time, she's content to simply be. in galar, that meant sitting quietly beside Eva Morales while she studied her books, or taking night watches on the wall, or patrolling the skies.

"what's your idea?"

Isaac Merlo

☉

black scales fall towards the water and lyune rights himself. gravity's weight settles once again over freya's shoulders and she watches with cold satisfaction as the paralyzed charizard plummets from the air. 

though she knows not to turn her back on an enemy. 

energy pulses and lyune's claws flex, muscles rolling in anticipation of the fight. the charizard's awakened dragon-typing makes it an entirely new threat, but that doesn't stop lyune from meeting the pokemon head-on. blue flames lick around his fins, scorching his face. embers spark over freya's cheeks and she grimaces through the heat, ducking her chin down, pressing palms to lyune's shoulder blades as his claws glow with matching blue light. 

in close quarters, he attempts to score a slash across the black dragon's hide. 

BARNABY FINCH

salamence uses dragon claw
3/15 total raid arrows used

☉

it feels a futile race against the clock. she must make an imprint, shore up her defenses, provide substance to her short tenure to protect herself against FERNANDO SILPH 's retribution. and perhaps he only wants her scared. perhaps he'll leave her to her own device, waiting for her to crash and burn all by her lonesome.

if all of this is truly by his design, she is already doomed.

her office door is open, inviting. they're new hours and unusual among the upper echelon of the league, so not many know of them yet. she spends those scant couple hours to herself, most of the time, taking time to catch up on paperwork and incoming news.

now, with half of her time used for her duties, eyelids drooping, she closes the door and consents her body's need for a nap. her lashes flutter as she sits back down, but she hasn't even relaxed her shoulders before there's a knock on her door.

surprised, she opens the door and finds herself face-to-face with a king. recognition flashes and is promptly smothered.

she's learned to take care around those who may not remember.

and besides, he looks like he wants to punch something. this will undoubtedly be awful.

"here for the office hours? come in."

Caleb Harcourt

☉

her demeanor changes. at first, freya thinks she's going to argue, spine ramrod and mouth terse. but then she blinks it away, digesting the councilwoman's words, and freya's own gaze softens. for a moment, at least. 

she listens intently, nodding here and there. and when tsubaki is finished, she laces her fingers back together and props her chin atop them, looking her over briefly before her gaze flits up, to the painting of sootopolis' main cove. 

"it's not fair to you, the horrors you've had to witness. no one deserves to have their childhood stripped of them. but you're right. you don't strike me as the type of person who could be happy living in ignorance."

her expression is pained, almost sheepish. clear in the curl of her lips and the crease of her brows is the acceptance that tsubaki is more like her than she realized.

at the mention of rocket, she sighs. 

"vengeance is a poison. it may fuel you. give you venom in your teeth, an edge in combat, and maybe you'll get a lucky strike, but it will always rot you, tsubaki. slowly enough you may not even notice, not until your life's gotten away from you."

she takes a few papers from her desk and crumples them up, shifting in her chair so she can drop them in the wastebasket beside her. parts of a resume are visible amidst the trashed papers, letters not matching tsubaki's own. 

the lingering paper on her desk is tucked into a folder and then shoved in her top drawer. she stands. 

"walk with me. and tell me what you'd like to run towards."

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

he affords her anger. he is not a self-righteous statue wearing the skin of a person, perfectly unperturbable. he is not the calculated cut of a scalpel, dissecting her every worst fear and throwing them onto the table to analyze her horror. 

he is just a man, thrown in over his head, ideals too big on his shoulders and a weight too heavy balancing on top of his spine. 

"you are not a bag of meat, nor are you kindling for the fire." not bait. not a throwaway body.

the implication of her own stupidity makes her teeth clack. 

"others are swayed by their patrons. by no means should MATIAS SILPH and PENELOPE LIVY be given the exception to the rules - in fact, their inability to control themselves in the face of sudden danger incenses me to no end - but they have their reasons for their show of ineptitude. you, on the other hand - " 

running to the flame. running towards something. is that why you hate him? because it wasn't away? because he wasn't running from it all? like you? 

"reacted before any of us could get a word in edgewise. if you'd have waited a moment, i could have told you not to touch the dragon's fucking hoard."

Michael Navidson

☉

"we're always adapting," she says and there is a pang in her words, a rip-tug-tearing at already-fraying bonds. her smile is sad and then it is wistful and then it is decisive. her fingers run along the interior of the celesteela. above, two origami warriors watch the trespassers with an eerie curiosity. 

aeris and sypha remain unaware of their onlookers, too wrapped up in their own worry for their mistress. 

"they hate me, theo. not all of them, but the ones that matter." she sighs. "it's a cruel world, needing to sacrifice happiness to do what's right. do you think it's the same here? in this world?"

THEO BECKETT

30 depending on the lunar phase, your character's moods may be affected for better or for worse.

☉

FAMILY

you are the moon, looking down in that roughshod, cobbled together house. the shingles on the roof, askew from last summer's storm, split at just the right angle, allowing a sliver of your light to fall upon the tresses of your mother's hair. 

her skin is waxen and pale, brows terse and knitted. pain wracks over her in waves and you dance dust motes over her head, a ritual with little power in this day and age, but still it wards away the worst of the shadows. keeps the scent of rot and decay at bay for those precious seconds. 

long enough for her to grit her teeth and grip his hand and to push, and push, and push. the blanket under her is sodden with red. there is a twisting, awful pain in her midsection and you touch her skin, the curve of her breasts, her bare, swollen stomach, and you hear your fluttering heartbeat. 

her own, weaker with each passing moment. 

your father has tears in his eyes. she told him she could do this, but their first two accidents had been life-threatening. a splintered apart marriage, crater in the house, a broken dream destined to fail, believing you could save them. such a burden on your shoulders and maybe that's why you twisted yourself around, stubbornly grasping at the umbilical cord, screaming as she told you no and thrust you into the waking world. 

blood soaks the mattress and she looks upon you fondly as you grasp for that vision of yourself in the moonlight. eyes wide as saucers, squealing mouth gone slack in awe, awash in that glow. 

you see the crown of her head, the sticky wisps of hair matted to sweat-laden skin, and your father's hand, brushing her hair back. the moon - you - fading from view as the sky shifts, tilting on its axis. 

you stare wistfully at the stars and hear a murmured ripple, a soft hiss, your voice sung in a language forged by ancients, and all the rest of it slips away. 

OCT 1 - DREAM DROP DISTANCE
341 WORDS

☉

ye, most of it is. 

her lip quivers.

he gives her the ultimatum she's been looking for - the way out. the solution. the promise of a future for them, unimpeded by the storm she brings. it would be easier to do this as she was - poised and composed. 

but now she flinches under the weight of his i love you. her eyes keep leaking and she has to wipe a small dribble of snot off her nose with the sleeve of her hoodie. how can she fix this? how can she put them back together? 

she knows how his pieces fit, but it's dangerous. it's too - 

"i'll tell you," she says, throat raw. she takes his hand from her chin and draws it away from her. around the bed, under the mattress, she tugs free a worn leather journal and holds it out to him. its front is spattered with brown stains. she smooths her palm over it, hesitates, and then holds it out to him. 

tugs it back slightly before he can take it. 

"it was a long time, king. a long time of you being unhappy." a long time of you blaming me. seeing her in me. "i didn't want you to...feel that again. because it's - " awful. 

she blinks away and stares down at the half-packed duffel bag. 

KING WAYLAND

☉

she lifts her head. ages have past. there is a weariness in her, the weight of two decades pressing on her heart. and all she wants to do when she looks at him is kiss him and hold him and pretend that everything is going to be okay. 

she thumbs the crown. tears stain her cheeks, drip off her chin and onto the relic spun out of time. her voice is hoarse when she finally finds it. 

the truth. 

"it's my fault. maybe not all of it, but enough." her mouth twists. "galar. elisabeth...

"fernando." a crack. teeth clenched, hissing, crown thrown aside with a sense of finality. who was i kidding? i can't stop this. i can't stop him. and that's my fault too.
because she asked for it. she wanted it. she went to him, willingly, and she begged for change. for mercy.

"how could you still want this?"

me?

KING WAYLAND

☉

twin dragonair surface beside her and she pauses, wringing out her hair. aeris looks dolefully at her and then exposes her back. she obliges, sliding into the water. it laps at her chin, cheeks, and then draws over her eyes as aeris' body slices through the water. 

her palms fit in the grooves behind the dragonair's oily feathers. bubbles trail from the corner of her mouth. they're under long enough for freya's lungs to complain and as soon as it does, they resurface. 

sypha's head bobs up and she trills lowly. freya follows her gaze in time to see someone dive under the water alongside a cloyster and an arctovish.

"call the others," she murmurs. sypha dives and freya urges aeris forward. the dragonair spins under the waves, waiting until the distance between herself and freya is long enough before her tail starts sparking. 

Victoria Beckett

aeris comes in with a thunder wave

☉

in the wild, the weakest of the brood are consumed or left for dead. most of her salamence were bred in captivity, hatchlings separated nigh immediately to prevent casualties, save for the few lineages they'd continued breeding in the traditional sense. lyune had never sired, but those she calls upon in battle are all victors. killers. survivors. 

she looks on in astonishment, bewildered he'd even consider asking such an asinine thing. the nuances of her life's work - her family's life's work - won't be turned into some quick-fix for some rocket degenerate in over his head. 

then perhaps a demonstration. 

"i said go."

and she stands, legs drawing free from saddle straps, balancing poised on the back of the enormous mega salamence. a low hiss in the back of her throat, a raising of her hand, and lyune begins to hum. in their circle, at her command, the rest of them thrum the sound of death.

"or die."

Kouji Matsubara

freya says no in her own special edgy dumb way

☉

lyune's rage is hot and vivid beneath her. melusine can handle lulu, but freya made the call because she's absolutely certain the salamence won't rest until the aggravating pest faces some retribution. he hisses at it as they near, incendiary cloud spurting from behind his teeth and into the air. 

stone is laden on melusine's arms. the noivern's bite finds purchase on her neck. she raises a thick arm, muscles bulging as the stone edge erupts like shrapnel.

Lulu Flint

salamence uses flamethrower
roaring moon uses stone edge

☉