the intruder is knee-height and chirping up a storm.

it’s a shinx; a small runt of a thing, with bright curious eyes. either blissfully unaware, or wilfully ignoring the sombre atmosphere, it patters in a circle around jayden’s feet, bouncing on its front legs, chirruping merrily. yet, even as it dislodges pebbles with its wandering feet, it stays carefully away from the flower budding at the cliff’s edge.

and from behind, another intruder emerges from the mist — heralded by the clattering of loose rocks, and the heavy footsteps of someone on their last legs.

“watson — ” nagi huffs, every inch of his sedentary body regretting his ill-advised decision to trek up a mountain. he stumbles up the rest of the way, before leaning forward to rest his shaking arms on trembling knees. “ — you’re not supposed to run.”

except, through his wheezing, the end of his sentence isn’t so much spoken, as much as breathed out, in a continuous gust of air.

jayden cross

☉

with the backside of a sweaty palm, nagi gently bats the offered bottle back to jayden cross . “m’okay. s’gonna come right back up anyway.”

he’d already made enough of a ruckus, wheezing his way up the cliff on watson’s tail. desecrating the graves of the honoured dead with his undigested pasta lunch was probably one discourtesy too far. bent over his knees, he heaves a few more stuttering breaths, before levering himself up into a position as close to upright as he can manage.

“sorry about...” he gestures at his shinx, who has taken the attempt to touch noses as a declaration of eternal friendship, and has begun frolicking around the eevee in an invitation to play. “was watson any trouble?”

just as he says trouble, watson looks up — sees the floating, balloon-like figure of a passing munna — and goes leaping for it with a joyful cry. the air sparks with a wild discharge, a ball of blue and pink tumbling into the dirt.

before watson can go on tumbling his merry way off the edge of the cliff, nagi springs into panicked motion, fumbling with a pokeball and flinging it at the munna.

jayden cross

☉

nagi's expression of frozen panic melts into a small smile at the sound of the eevee's bark. played like a fiddle by alako's eager expression, his finger drifts downwards to give alako's waiting head a tentative scritch — before he stops with a start.

"ah, sorry." he watches jayden's expression in case he's overstepped by petting the other trainer's pokemon. "he reminds me a bit of…"

as if summoned, watson trots up between the two men, pokeball held in his mouth just like alako did moments before. he drops it on the ground, nosing it towards nagi's foot before looking between the duo, tail high in the air as he waits for praise after a job well done.

"you absolute menace," nagi says, but obligingly scratches at watson's scruff anyway.

jayden cross

☉

as jayden's crobat dispatches the litwick, nagi spots a tell-tale tuft of blonde peeking out from behind a rock: a smoochum, drawn by the ruckus. nagi nudges watson with the side of his foot, and like a small blue rocket, watson jets off.

“nagi,” he replies. less hesitant now that he has jayden's permission, he runs his fingers through the smooth fur on alako’s head, absent-mindedly scratching behind the eevee's ears the way he usually does with watson. he keeps one eye on his shinx, who is — as far as he can tell — extolling to the smoochum the virtue of chasing his own tail. the smoochum looks confused; nagi can empathise. “and you?”

when he next looks down, watson has returned to his side, the smoochum riding on his back like a princess upon her steed, both their eyes turned pleadingly up at him. nagi sighs once, both baffled and resigned, and bops watson’s new friend on her head with a pokeball.

jayden cross

☉

“that was the original plan, yes.” [break][break]

the originally-planned slow hike had devolved, predictably, into a frantic chase partway up the mountain, nagi walking (scrambling) to the beat of watson’s drum. the expression on michail's face as he glances down at watson brings a wry twist of a grin to nagi's face — he can make a good guess at what the other man is thinking, if only because he has had that same thought multiple times himself. [break][break]

after a squeaking conference with the smoochum on his back, watson charges off again. the princess knight and her trusty steed, riding off into battle. their first conquest as a pair is an unsuspecting banette. chilled with powder snow and shocked with discharge, the ghost pokemon reels backwards, disoriented from the sudden tag-team assault — nagi tosses a pokeball at it before it can turn on them in retribution. [break][break]

with a final, gentle ruffle, he withdraws his hand from alako’s head. michail’s sudden question gives him a momentary pause. his eyes follow the other man’s gaze, to rest on the small, budding blossom, surrounded by the barren dirt of the cliff. [break][break]

“... not much.” cursory knowledge of tropical habitats and temperate biomes; medieval herb gardening techniques and factoids on parasitic plant life. all trivia, and nothing particularly constructive to cultivating a green thumb. he bends over (legs shaking like a baby deerling — oh, wow, ow. his thighs) for a closer look at the bud. “did you plant this?”

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] jayden cross [break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]