Annalise, to her credit, doesn’t visibly appear to have the wind knocked from her sails by the proverbial Snorlax in the room. Memo does think, however, it’s a shame they can’t weaponize the death glare she gives the slumbering giant, because that would’ve taken care of all their problems, right then and there. Hell, Dahlia would have flown down on her golden cloud, or her warp star, whatever the fuck the commissioner zoomer around on, and procured it for the government. Bye-bye meteor.

He snickers, and masks it with a yawn. Okay, maybe he’s a little slap happy. But pulling so many strings in so little time is bound to wind anyone a little tight.

“Sorry, not laughing at you,” he says, “just the… situation.” He makes a noncommittal fluttery hand gesture towards their current problem.

“The ice idea is promising, but I’m not sure we have enough power to physically move this behemoth. Getting it up and going under its own power seems like the best bet.” He scrubs his hand over his chin, considering. “Good thinking. My team can wake him up and-- get him well pissed off, to boot-- and then once he’s out of the way, your Altaria can sing him to sleep.”

He flashes her a thumbs up.

“Just tell her to sing her heart out, so I don’t get squashed, please.”

Low points on the creative scale but definitely up there for speed of resolution.

annalise henderson

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Memo grins. He’s decided he likes Annalise. “Narcolepsy?” he offers, grabbing two Pokeballs off his belt and spinning them in his fingers. He watched Annalisa release her own, the Altaria, and was briefly breathtaken as the beautiful, cloud-winged creature stretched in the early morning sunlight.

“Right,” Memo said, feeling more and more confident in this plan as they went, “got it.”

What could possibly go wrong?

As Annalise rose through the air on the back of Cotton Candy-- a great name, honestly-- Memo released his own Pokemon. Acero and Bazelgeuse appeared in a flash of light and with the clangor of a stack of dishes being dropped down the stairs. Acero, the Skarmory, was immediately pissed off to be awake so early, and began rattling her wings in protest. Bazelgeuse, who leaned more towards the ‘intelligent’ side of the spectrum, took one look at the sleeping Snorlax and rubbed her scaly claws together.

Briefly, Guillermo thought on the poetic justice of the gorgeous, splendid Annalise and her gorgeous, splendid Altaria-- and then there were his two bozos, whose job it was to be as annoying as possible.

His grin grew. The world was right, sometimes.

“Get to it, girls,” he said, and get to it, they did.

Bazelgeuse spun one way, then the other, imitating someone cracking their back, before scooping up a large armful of dirt. She compacted it tight, like a rock, then hurled it, up and over the Snorlax, to land on its face; Acero took a more direct approach, hopping up onto the beast’s belly, wings smacking together noisily, before firing off a metal sound directly in the Snorlax’s ear. It was horrible, the most painful, obnoxious, shrieking, screeching noise-- like a thousand metal nails on a chalkboard, or the world’s worst violin player.

The noise and annoyance continued for a few seconds, Guillermo having to cover his ears or risk losing his hearing--

--then the Snorlax’s eyes flashed open.

annalise henderson

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“Yes!” Memo pumps both fists in the air as the Snorlax begins to stir, earth groaning with the weight of its motion. It aims a sleepy swipe at Acero who dodges it by leaping onto the thing’s dirt-covered head, giving it a sharp peck for good measure, then flying up and away, wings clattering.

The Snorlax roared something between whale song and rending metal, and turned over, coming up onto one arm like a giant, demonic teddy bear. The ground beneath it was still depressed with the outline of its body.

Bazelgeuse wound up and threw another rock slide boulder, point-blank, into the thing’s face for good measure. “Bazel!” Memo yelled, jumping and sliding a bit to get as far away as possible without looking like he was bailing, “We have to get it to move!”

Bazelgeuse turned and, very bravely, ran away.

They were almost in the free and clear, with things going pretty well to plan, until the Snorlax pushed forward off of its arm, folding into a ball and rolling. A thousand pounds of rollout was heading straight into the woods. Bazelgeuse barely had enough time to dodge to the side as the spinning Snorlax, gaining up speed, crashed past.

annalise henderson

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Brave he might be, but bravery and stupidity are often two sides of the same coin, or… however that saying goes. If there was a third side, it’d be ‘crushed to death by a rolling Snorlax’, but luckily Memo is back far enough that he avoids the thousand-pound crush. Acero has to hop up and fly out of the way, the tree beneath her snapping like a toothpick and being churned into the earth.

Safe from the escape with death, Memo shades his eyes with his hand, like a dad looking over a sliced golf shot. It’s only when he realizes that Annalise is rushing to get out in front of the Snorlax that he opes into motion, darting forward with his heart hammering in his chest.

He loses sight of her in the tree canopy-- what little remains-- for a brief second but watches the Snorlax take a mighty swing; then Cotton Candy is plummeting towards the ground. “Shit, shit shit shit.”

The Snorlax, angry and now very much awake, turns its attention on Annalise and Cotton Candy-- but before he can ground-pound them to smithereens there’s an angry, screaming, clattering metal bird on his face. Acero rakes through the off-white tone of the Snorlax’s forehead with metal claw, leaving stinging lines in its flesh; the Snorlax roars in anger, swinging wildly, spinning in a slow circle as it bats at the irritating Skarmory slicing up its face.

The distraction lets Memo get to Annalise, Bazelgeuse in tow.

“You okay?” he asks, hoisting her to her feet and pulling her eagerly backwards, back towards the trees and cover. Bazelgeuse hefts Cotton Candy over her shoulder and follows just as there’s a victorious roar and the sound like a hundred tin cans falling down a flight of stairs as Acero is knocked out of the sky and into the cliff face, smushed there like the coyote in an episode of Looney Tunes.

“Can you sing it to sleep now?!” Memo asks, trying to fight down the rising panic in his voice.

annalise henderson pocket sand skarmory

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“It’s fast for being so big,” Memo agrees, partly out of fear, partly because it’s true, and partly because he doesn’t want Annalise to feel bad-- which he realizes is a ridiculous sentiment in the current situation, but hey, his heart has always been bigger than his brain.

He goes with her gentle prodding but doesn’t need it. His legs are shaking and he feels crappy not going back for Acero, like literally a part of his heart is wrenched out of his chest, but his only solace is the Snorlax’s attentions are on them, now.

Also, Acero will be fine. She always is.

On Annalise’s command, Bazelguese holds Cotton Candy up like Rafiki in The Lion King, with the leg kicked back and everything, and the Altaria begins to sing. It’s a beautiful, somewhat haunting sound, that makes him hide a yawn behind his hand, but if he were to fall asleep now he figures all he’d have are nightmares.

Bazelgeuse, to her credit, holds on as long as she can, swaying slightly, eyes squeezed tight shut; the loud thwomp of the Snorlax’s body falling is echoed by the jangling of her scales as she, too, succumbs to the drowsiness, though she manages to put Cotton Candy on the ground before she keels over, snoring gently.

He feels the absence of Annalise’s hand more than he realizes she’s let go of him, and his palms are sweaty-- sorry, Anna. He wipes them on his pants and tries to catch his breath, heart hammering in his chest.

“Yeah, I’ll go,” he says, forcing himself to walk the direction they came, “I have to check on Acero, anyhow.” The rigidity of his steps wears off after a few strides. Pausing briefly to check on Bazelgeuse and Cotton Candy, who both seem fine, save for a few bruises on CC’s end, he goes as close as he dares to the edge of the trees--

--where he sees the curl of the Snorlax’s head, and can make out the mass of its back rising and falling with gentle, slumbering breaths. It fell face-down, forehead snapping a tree or two on the way, but it was out like a proverbial light.

Memo swallowed and released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, fishing for Acero’s Pokeball at his belt. He turned and flashed Annalise a thumbs up before carefully skirting around the sleeping giant to get in range of his poor Skarmory to pull her back into her ball with as little noise as possible.

That done, he beat a hasty retreat back to the safety of the woods, where he immediately slumped over, hands on his knees, and tried not to vomit as the adrenaline faded from his system.

“G-good job,” he said, a little shaky. “God, that got a little scary, dinnit?”

annalise henderson

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