There’s a motion at her side and-- oh, it’s Eris.

Cyg returns the aggrieved smile, remembering the last time the two of them met. The freaky, glowy flowers. Mayumi didn’t die, or explode, or anything like that. But she did have a freakishly powerful baby-- but you didn’t see that one coming, Halla.

“Yeah,” she says, watching as a rainbow cuts through the spray of one of the Wooper trooper’s water guns. “You’re the smart one. Any ideas?” But there's relief in her tone that she's not tackling this problem alone anymore.

Eris Halla | mission: a whale of a problem

☉

Cyg nods. “Yep. Good plan.” She steps back and gestures forward, looking at her Gengar. “Welp. Pitter patter.”

Elisabet tilts her head, frown deepening. As Melmetal and Eris’ Quagsire begin to endeavor to push the Wailord towards the ocean, Elisabet waggles her tiny arms as if to say, but boss, I have tiny arms.

“I know you miss your hands, champ,” Cyg said, genuinely sounding regretful, “but I believe in you. You don’t… need hands for this?” Her voice hiked up and trailed off and it ended up more of a question than she wanted it to be.

Elisabet did not look convinced.

Cyg sighed, the kind of tired, but loving noise most often produced by, she assumed, older siblings and time-travelers, whose younger versions of themselves are making the same mistakes they had made previously. She wouldn’t know-- she wasn’t an older sibling or a time traveler. But she did feel a certain familial warmth as she reached out and touched her Gengar’s forehead.

“I bestow upon thee the-- the power.” She grinned. “I believe in you. You can do this.”

And Cyg’s pocket began to glow.

Eris Halla | mission: a whale of a problem

☉

As Elisabet hovers closer to the remaining Wailord, she begins to glow, starting a dark purple and rippling, rolling, expanding to a vibrant white; when the light fades, she’s--

“Holy shit.”

Elisabet turns back, confused, then startles her own self with her hand-- leg-- post-- things.

“HOLY SHIT!”

Cyg runs forward like she’s going to hug her mega evolved Gengar, then pauses, making little gasping noises of disbelief. “Lis! Lisbet, you mega-evolved!”

Elisabet looks equally as shocked at this happenstance.

“Oh, my god. Okay. Okay! The whales. Lis, the whales.”

Lisbet hops, remembering. She turns to the remaining whales on the beach, puzzles over them briefly, then--

--raises her post-hand-legs, and shoves. And like a building falling into another building (or dominoes, Cyg thinks, dominoes would be a more apt, less macabre metaphor) the Wailord roll in the mud-slick earth, and ploosh, ploosh, ploosh, slide out into the sea.

“Fuck yeah!"

Eris Halla | mission: a whale of a problem

☉

Cyg’s laugh squeaks up as she claps her hands and stares at the majesty of her now weirdly shaped Gengar. Lis successfully returns all the Wailord into the sea, nothing left of them but a smear of wet sand and the vague scent of fish.

“Solidly, completely, 100% out of my ass,” Cyg says, pulling the little pearl of a Mega Stone out of her pocket and holding it in her hand. She has an accessory for it, she’s sure, but it hasn’t made its way there, yet. “Like a fucking Cloyster.”

Job done, Lisbet’s body goes into energy saving mode, and the Mega-Evolution fades, leaving a normal Gengar in its place.

She yawns and scratches at the back of her ears.

Eris Halla | mission: a whale of a problem

☉