Run.

Instinct screams at him but Gavin's limbs are heavy, his lids heavier — eyes slip closed for a moment before a guttural snarl from Lucario sounds directly in his ear. He jolts, eyes wide and unfocused as they slide over his fellow underboss, his friend.

Only it's not his friend anymore, is it?

His skin isn't supposed to be dark, shimmering crystal. That sound, that horrible fucking sound like splintering ice or snapping bone—

The thing that is not Chu-e Choi turns to look at him with vacant eyes and Gavin lets out a strangled sound between a gasp and a groan. Run, his mind screams but his muscles won't cooperate and this is surely where he's going to die, at the hands of one of the people he'd trusted the most. He's too exhausted to appreciate the irony, his thoughts a haze of pain and fear.

Lucario growls. It's standing over him, protective, as 'Chu-e' turns to leave.

The next thing Gavin registers is the sound of his name, a voice that registers familiar. He groans but doesn't open his eyes.

Tempest Quinn would be met by a Lucario that was for once frantic rather than repulsed, the canine letting out a sharp bark when another enters the room. As if attempting to communicate, it gestures at its fallen trainer and fires off a HEAL PULSE before shaking its head.

There is an ice cold flare of heat down Temps' spine when he really takes in Cillian Quinn.

Oh god, he's dead. rings in his mind as he drops to his knees beside Gavin. He half ignores the Lucario, barely knows how he absorbs what it's trying to explain, his fingers going for pulse points and checking for any obvious wounds or signs of trauma.

"Oh god." His hand presses against the wound on his hide, where Chu-e had tried to gut him.

Temp is kind of freaking the fuck out. He's not a doctor and even he can see this is really fucking bad. He also knows that, right now, he can't help him and needs to get Gavin somewhere else.

"Clear a path!" While Lucario is not his pokemon, he grits out the order as he shifts his weight to a squat. Gavin is completely manhandled, up onto Temp's shoulders in a fireman's carry. Gavin's heavy but Temp is fueled by adrenaline as he books it towards the infirmary.

Gavin's pulse is weak; he's all but unresponsive as Tempest Quinn flutters over him. The knife is still jammed against his ribs, the only thing stopping him from bleeding out even faster.

It shifts when Temp lifts him, and Gavin blacks out.


He wakes to the hum of medical equipment and the rhythmic beep of a heart monitor. The air smells sharp and sterile and though drugs have numbed the worst of his pain, Gavin feels a dull ache above his hip. Bandages are wound tight around his bare torso and an IV drip is hooked into his hand.

His mouth is dry and tastes of iron.

He can't quite remember how he'd got here; his mind is clouded by medication and trauma.

His eyes open slowly, lids heavy, and he blinks as if struggling to focus.

"Temp?"

His voice rasps in his throat.

The doctors hadn't let Temp stay. There was a part of him that wanted to fight and kick and stay with Cillian Quinn. In the end, though, he knew it was for the best not to get in their way. As satisfying it might be to clock them and stay by his friend's side, he wasn't that irrational.

That left him and the Lucario. Temp didn't have it's pokeball or anything. So, with nothing but time, he offered his hand to the blue canine and walked it down to the mess hall.


"Gavvie?"

Temp almost drops the knife in his hand. When Gavin was in that space between sleep and wakefulness, it would have been a steady 'shf, shf, shf' noise to join the beeping- a small knife slicing the skin off an apple in one long curl. On the bedside was water and a little plate of fruits; cut up and shaped in stars, hearts, rabbits, dolphins, flowers... it was clear that Temp had been at this a while.

What he had no was quickly placed down, his hands going to take one of Gavin's. He hoped that Gavin would forgive him for the traces of sticky juice still on his fingers.

"Take it slow. You need anything?"

Panic was laced in his laced in his voice along with his eagerness to please.

He's never liked hospitals; the risk of doctors asking too many questions weighed heavily on any visit. But even in his disoriented and heavily medicated state, a quick glance around the space reveals the metal sheen of the submarine's walls.

He exhales softly; when Temp takes his hand, he'd find his grip weak but relaxed.

What did he need? His brow furrows.

"Water," he croaks.

With his free hand, he gestures toward the water set on the bedside table; he can't reach it without pulling his other hand away. The grip is comforting, grounding.

"Can you...?"

He notices the bandages wound tight around his wrist, frowns.

"Chu-e," he remembers suddenly. His heart rate spikes. "Where—?"

Temp is quick to act on the request. One hand stays in Cillian Quinn's, the other grasps for the bottle of water. He twists the cap off with his teeth, spilling a bit on his pants, but more than reluctant to let the other go. For better or worse, in the end it does make it to to Gavin.

"'Chu-e'?" There is a visible moment of confusion before- "Choi? He's not... do you want me to go get him?" Gavin was Underboss, so maybe he really wanted his other Underboss present. It did seem like he had been attacked, after all. A traitor on the sub? An accident?

Before all that, though.

"Are you okay? What happened?"

Though some of the water is spilled between their efforts, Gavin sighs with relief as it soothes his dry throat.

That relief is short-lived. His eyes widen with the offer and he gives a sharp shake of his head. It sets his head spinning thanks to the drugs they've got him on but he can barely focus on that through the blind jolt of fear.

"No," he hisses, fingers clenching around Tempest Quinn's own as tight as he can manage in his weakened state. "N-No, he—"

But how could he explain what had happened?

An anxious glance is cast around as if expecting reprimand before he drops his voice low and leans toward Temp.

"You can't tell anyone," he insists, knuckles white with the intensity of his grip. "Promise me."

The reaction has a flare of anger surge bright and hot in Temp's chest.

Was he going to have to beat Choi's ass?

He squeezes back, uses his now free hand to brush hair out of Gavin's face and cup his cheek. Keep him steady.

"I'd die before I told anyone, Gavvie." Said low, deadly serious, a promise as well as a pledge. He keeps his eyes locked on Cillian Quinn's and lifts his hand, doesn't resist the grip, to press a kiss to the back of his hand. A knight showing loyalty to his king.

Gavin notes the flare of anger behind ordinarily warm brown eyes — it floods him with something warm, the welcome thought of a protector before it's replaced by anxiety. If Tempest Quinn challenged Chu-e Choi, he'd lose.

His mouth opens but his thoughts are sluggish with the meds. His brow furrows in frustration as the words he wants to speak refuse to form themselves upon his tongue. Temp's fingers are gentle as they brush the hair from his eyes, cup his cheek; he leans into the touch, too weak to fight his own desires for comfort.

"No dying," he protests, mumbled.

Lips brush the back of his hand and his cheeks flush hot.

He takes another long drink of water to gather his thoughts, lest Temp rush out to assault his fellow underboss before Gavin can get the explanation out.

"He's not himself. There's something — wrong." That was a fucking understatement. "H-He attacked me, but it wasn't him."

Temp doesn't argue with Cillian Quinn. The other is too weak for that. He would die for Gavin if he chose, if he thought it was what the other needed. Because, for some reason, Gavin was the person that Temp had practically imprinted himself on. The person who made him feel the most alive. It was because... well, fuck. He was thinking about it too much again.

Shying away from his own feelings as always, even when his heart lurched in his chest.

"It wasn't him?" Since Temp was, in the scheme of things, just a Grunt in this organization, one who was more an on-base worker than someone who did missions too, he didn't have a lot of pull or sway. He'd never met Underboss Choi. Had never needed to. Some might even see his relationship with Gavin as strange if they didn't know their history.

Temp doesn't know anything about crystallized alien gods.

"Was it.. someone pretending? Or uh... like, a pokemon?" Hadn't something like that happened with the commissioner, where some pokemon pretended to be here and killed someone?

"No, it was, but—"

So much for a coherent, straightforward explanation. He can barely think straight.

His fingers tighten their grip around Tempest Quinn's hand as if to physically anchor the other, though in reality it would be incredibly easy to break that grip on account of Gavin's weakened state.

"This is gonna sound weird," is all the warning Temp gets before Gavin drops a bomb on him. "So I fought this thing in a wormhole last year. It's how I got my weird shadows. Anyway, I brought back some fragment of — fuck."

He cuts himself off, eyes wide with alarm.

"I-In the room, did you see...? It looks like a black rock—"

He's shifting as if with the intent of getting out of bed, injuries be damned, not caring how it causes the IV to tug against his arm.

"It's alright." A thumb strokes under Cillian Quinn's eye. "Take your time."

Temp listens but it just raises more questions than answers. If not for the panic, he would be convinced that Gavin is having some type of breakdown right now with all he's saying. Then again, there was the war with the aliens just last year...

At least the last thing he can help with.

"Ai!!" With maybe a little more force than is needed, given how weak the other is, he makes sure that he keeps himself in bed. No escaping!

"Whale Mama yelled at me to find something like that." Reaching into his pocket, the crystal is pulled out- complete with the perfect imprint of Chu-e's teeth.

Tempest Quinn shoves him back against the prison of his infirmary bed and Gavin definitely doesn't spare a drug-addled thought for the other's strength, how easy it is for Temp to overpower his escape attempt. A flicker of annoyance is offset by the flush of his cheeks.

Gavin grabs eagerly for the fragment, eyes wide.

"It didn't do anything to you? You didn't lick it or anything?"

Which is a very silly question but he seems entirely serious when he asks.

He tucks it the fragment against his scarred palm, adjusting to the new shape of it against his skin. He shivers as he remembers teeth of black crystal carving through the diamond-like material like it was butter.

"Lugia spoke to you?"

Belatedly, he registers the meaning of 'Whale Mama'.