As Temp worries at their garden plot, Gavin picks out a spot for the cooler and pours fresh water into a bowl for the dogs that swarm him in hopes of treats. He shoos them away, his glare half-hearted and spirits high.

Cil.

A smile breaks over his features as he turns his head toward the call.

He sees his partner kneeling in the dirt, admiring the view for a moment before turning to the cooler as requested and fishing out another bottle of water. He loosens the cap so that Temp won't have to scrabble at it with dirty hands.

Szzt.

Gavin nearly drops the water, tightening his grip around the bottle and causing liquid to slosh up and over the rim, cold against his hand. Then the water is all but forgotten as he looks up to glimpse a fractured sky of purple veins. Not again.

"Distortion!" he warns, sharp. "Get up, we have to—"

Go, he'd likely said, but his voice is swallowed by another crack as the tear in their reality widens to spill forth foes.

Tempest Quinn

Maybe Temp would have been more worried. His last two trips to the distortion had been... fairly calm. Sure, his Qwilfish was fucked up and weird now, but she was still a very fine fish who was doing her best. So, the whole crack in reality ripping open takes him more by surprise than it does Cillian Quinn.

"Huh-? Wha?" Still, the warning has him jump to his feet, garden forgotten for the moment.

The purple gloom spreads, oppressive as it always felt. He's quick to call back his Psyduck/watering can, knowing the pokemon was too young and weak.

A slice downwards almost takes his arm off, Temp narrowly avoiding it only thanks to sheer luck. He ducks away, towards Gavin, as another massive axe almost crashes down on him. A large pokemon he's never seen before, eyes seeming to glow red.

"What is that?" His hands are already going for Pokeballs. It's times like this that Temp wishes he trained his non-Gym pokemon a little better- they were all aquatic pokemon, after all, and a fish wasn't so much help on dry land.

A massive, strange white fox lurched from the brush and Temp weighed his options.

Then, gritting his teeth, tossed a single Dive Ball out.

Bongo landed heavy on the ground. The Zarude glanced around before snarling fangs at the weird axe pokemon. A howl and he thumped his chest with fists then charged forward, making Temp spit out a curse.

He'd nearly drowned during his last foray into a distortion, so Gavin is on edge from the moment the first crack splits the sky. Still, with the ground solid beneath his feet and his partner nearby, his concern is directed toward Temp more than himself.

Fear lances sharp through his chest as the axe-like arm of a creature he'd seen once before nearly takes his lover's arm off at the shoulder. When Temp ducks toward him, Gavin steps forward as purple-black miasma swirls around them both. His pupils dilate, adrenaline flooding his limbs as his avatar powers take hold. Once the creature has its attention on him, he lures it with a step and dives in the opposite direction, buying a moment of time when it slams its axe into the mud.

"We saw them in the Tree," he grits out, getting back to his feet with alarming agility. "Not that, though."

He nods toward the white fox, who is set upon in short order by the Lycanroc pack who'd got up from the picnic site to defend their master.

If only it weren't so dense, here...

But there's nothing to be done; Lugia wouldn't be able to fight in the close confines of a forest. So Gavin allows the pack to harry the fox while Temp's Zarude distracts the other.

"Are you all right?"

Gavin steps back toward Temp, eyes never leaving the wild Pokemon, prepared to lunge to his defense if needed.

Tempest Quinn

Distract the other it does. Bongo slams himself bodily into the axe-armed pokemon, screeching all the while. He's wild, tearing and clawing at the other pokemon with bared fangs. His loud hooting is sure to draw more things in- Temp just hopes they're able to handle it.

"I'm good, just- shit."

He sticks close to Cillian Quinn for now. Did Gavin think he was defending Temp? Hell no! Temp would shove Gavin out of danger and take a hit himself if it came down to it. Just because he didn't have fancy powers didn't mean he wouldn't do his best to protect his fiance!

"Ugh, who..." Temp's emptied his pockets, a few small capsules in his hands which he sorts through. "Fuck. I don't think any of my other pokemon can handle this, Cill." The ones he had with him were literal babies or aquatic.

Perhaps another might be alarmed or put off by the savagery of the Zarude, but Gavin looks to Bongo and thinks only of his shadow Pokémon. They were equally as savage and feral, only they bent to his will like flowers before a breeze.

Temp expresses concern for his Pokémon, and Gavin's golden gaze gleams.

"Mine can."

A flick of his wrist summons shadows to his side, the miasma swelling to encompass them. His Corviknight clashes with an airborne foe that somewhat resembles a Braviary, and the dark-spined Sandslash intercepts attacks with its steel.

Where Temp is alarmed, a certain fervor has enveloped Gavin. For a moment, it looks as if he might leap into the fray alongside his Pokémon — until he looks to his partner, and reaches for his hand. The miasma curls around them both.

Tempest Quinn

Cillian Quinn's hand is taken and Temp feels more secure.

The battle rages around them.

Bongo shrieks and exchanges blows with the axe pokemon. It's brutal to watch, blood and spit mixing in globs that rain on the ground. But the monkey gets the other down. Stands on it's back.

Roars out in victory as he pulls the insect's arms free from their sockets, tears flesh with a wet ripping that Temp won't soon forget. The pokemon cries out on the ground and Bongo leans down to grab it's head, covered in thick blood.

Then it's over.

All of it.

As quickly as the distortion appeared, it's over. The pokemon are gone, even the bodies, attacking being left to hit nothing. The air is tense and Temp waits, expecting another attack.

It comes.

Bongo, his rage not sated, shrieks and goes for his Trainer. "Fuck!" Temp steps away as if to shield Gavin, grabs for a pokeball, but the ape slaps it away. Temp cries out as something in his arm audibly cracks. The pokeball flies into the air.

The threat fades, and with it Gavin's bloodlust.

But not Bongo's.

There is but a precious few seconds to relax and catch their breath before the vicious Zarude turns on its trainer. Temp steps in front, and before Gavin can pull them back and out of the way, the sickening snap of bone can be heard.

Anger overwhelms him, blinding, consuming.

And Gavin, in spite of the shadow Pokemon around him, lets go of his fiancé's hand and leaps on Bongo himself.

Tempest Quinn

"Cill, no!" Temp cries out, futile, as Cillian Quinn launches himself at Bongo.

The massive monkey shrieks and gnashes his fangs, grabbing for the man. Bongo is not aiming to wound or maim- he aims to kill. And he tries with sharp claws and jagged fangs and grabbing hands. Only Gavin will know the damage it, really.

Temp, still clutching his quickly bruising arm, freezes for just a second before he goes into action.

Except, it's trying to find out where Bongo's pokeball had been flung.

Leaving Gavin on his own for just a precious few seconds.

Gavin barely hears his fiancé over the pounding in his ears and the shrieking violence of the furious ape. He's strong, catching the feral creature off guard enough to drive them both to the ground, but in his panic for Temp he hadn't thought through the Zarude's strength in turn. It wrenches free of his grip, pins him down with its weight and aims its claws for his throat.

Gavin's reflexes save him with an arm brought up to catch the blow, deep red gouges slicing through flesh. He lets out a strangled cry of pain and fury, gropes with his free hand for the knife at his belt and yanks it loose.

Fortunately for Bongo, Gavin's shadow Pokémon are faster.

Steel wing feathers fly like daggers through the air, sinking into flesh. One of them catches Gavin's thigh, but enough of them find their mark with the monkey to draw its fury elsewhere. Bongo's rage is intense, but it's matched by the frustration of the Sandslash that leaps to tackle him away from its master.

Gavin's head is spinning, arm blazing with pain, but he scrambles to his feet and thinks only of Temp. Adrenaline keeps him going where he might otherwise have been writhing in agony.

"Are you...?" The words are rushed, frantic. "Did something break?"

Tempest Quinn

Bongo shrieks and grapples with the pain. He's ready to rip Cillian Quinn in two, blood between his claws as he reaches for the human.

A flash of red and Bongo is sucked back into his pokeball.

Temp flexes his hand and drops the pokeball on the ground with a thump. He thinks, hard, about crushing it under his foot.

Only barely does he resist.

"I don't know." Quiet, his voice rough. "Are you...?"

"I'm fine," he says, too quickly, before looking down at his bloody, shredded arm. He blanches, clamping a hand over the gouges to stem the flow of blood. "It probably looks worse than it is."

He shrugs off his blazer, winding it tight around his arm, then steps forward to embrace his lover.

"Sorry," he mumbles against his shoulder, "I just — I saw it go for you, and..."

He's seen the devastation even a single Pokémon could cause in Kanto. In Hoenn, even, at the hands of his own feral shadows.

"You got any healers? I've got my Lucario..." With his good hand, he curls his fingers around a luxury ball. "But she can only do so much. Don't think I should fly with my arm like this."

Just in case.

Tempest Quinn

Temp leans into the embrace. That was... for a moment there, he was really worried he would lose Cillian Quinn. And then what would he have done? Even if Temp had managed to get away from Bongo and the then-freed Shadow Pokemon, what would have been the point?

His shaky fingers parse through his pokeballs again before he shakes his head.

"My-" He has to pause, lick his licks and clear his thick throat. "My Amolomola is the only healer I have. She's not with me." This made it... difficult. Especially since: "I don't think it's broken, but I can't move my hand." It just kind of felt like nothing. There was a white-hot ache and now it was just tingling and numb.

"Cillie... I'm not..." A small sniffle but Temp only teared up. He refused to cry this time. "Please don't do that again, okay? If something had happened to you...." 'because of me' is not said.

"Okay," Gavin says, nodding as he processes. "Okay. That's okay. Niamh can close up my arm and we can walk to Petalburg. They've got rotomi in the Pokemon Center that we can use, and I can get my Claydol to teleport us home."

He's feeling a little lightheaded and his arm is starting to hurt more as the rush of adrenaline dies down, but Kanto had taught him how to push through far worse. It helped that Temp was in danger, too; his focus immediately shifts into protecting what's his.

So, naturally, Temp's little sniffle tears at him.

"If something happened to you and I just stood there and did nothing? I'd never forgive myself." He had seen so many possibilities in that fraction-of-a-second before he'd leapt on the rampaging Zarude, most of them ending in a bloody mess. His expression softens. "I'm tough, love. I can take a lot. But I promise I'll be more careful."

He's an avatar, but he's not invincible. This had been another reminder of that.

Niamh is released from her ball, and Gavin winces as he unwinds the blazer from his arm to let her life dew drip into the cuts. Four angry red lines mark the path of Bongo's claws, but the healing move brings him out of immediate danger, at least.

"I don't know what it'll do for a sprain or break," he says apologetically, "but she can try?"

Tempest Quinn