He emerges like a strange creature birthed from primordial muck. He had been stuck in a road block, same as hundreds of other civilians. Slowly filing forward. Waiting to be let through. Michael Navidson, Navy to everyone that knew him as more than a name on a docket or signature, had eyes sharp enough to see.[break][break]

Something is going on. There’s trouble. The thought hardly finishes crossing the byroads of his mind before he is pulled out of his truck and into the rift. He tumbles through bad dreams for a moment that spans eternity before being plopped out with no ceremony on the ground near the entrance to a cave. Like a trained gunslinger of old, his gloved hand shoots for a weapon holstered at his belt.[break][break]

It’s cruel to call a Pokémon a weapon, but that is what they are. He, too, is a weapon. Something that carves a path to truth. He releases a green helmed knight from its ball. Roland, a Gallade named after a warrior in a white dragon helmet.[break][break]

Roland is no Gardevoir. He is not a trained empath like he would have been if Gabe, his original trainer, pushed him down a different path. Yet the touch is there. He senses Navy’s state. He moves to guard his trainer. The red eyed warrior says nothing, but nods towards a stone. The nod is all he needs.[break][break]

Navy trusts Roland. He knows him well enough, even with his own mind driven into frantic fear by the midnight sea, to know he’s sensed another person’s emotions.

“Come out.” He orders. “Crap’s hitting the fan. You’ve got something to hide. You’re either a Rocket or a pig. And either way, I don’t take kindly to your type.”[break][break]

He stands resolute.

[break][break]

+ 10 MP

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

The man who slides out from behind the rock is handsome. Even underneath the mask, Navy can see that. His beauty is like a snake’s. Something he would rather admire from a distance.[break][break]
There’s sense in his words. Some part of Navy understands that. He’s worked with criminals before. He probably will again after this is all said and done. Unlike all the people up top, like Lopez, Melody, and Josh, he’s a creature of the dirt. A fixture of seedy bars. He’s as much a part of their world as he is the League’s.[break][break]
But a man has to pick a side. And even if Michael Navidson isn’t an angel, he’ll fight for them. It’s what his brother would want.[break][break]
Navy is one of the first people on that long, arduous day who will experience the immense sense of paranoia that being so close to the rift induces. Scanning the edges of the man’s mask, trying to find a face, the paranoia makes him understand the omissions in his words.[break][break]
“Yeah, you can help me out?” A fire’s building inside of him. A fire that threatens to burn him from the inside out. The fire that’s been stewing inside of him for months. Years.[break][break]
This man is just some nobody. He’s not the grunt who killed Gabe. This is a pointless fight. Two insignificant parts of this greater battle that Navy knows will inevitably play out, as these things always do. Nothing either of these men do will change the outcome of what’s going to occur down in those caves.[break][break]
But that doesn’t change the here and now. The fact that another idiot in a ridiculous getup is charging into hell on the wrong side.[break][break]
“Can you bring my brother back? Your buddies back in Sootopolis killed him. That’s the kinda crew you’re runnin’ with, buddy.” He takes strides towards the masked man. Roland senses how he feels. Knows how this will soon go.[break][break]
“Red sun.” It’s a code phrase. He has them for all of his Pokemon. People announce their attacks in ways that let others retaliate. Navy finds that stupid. So, he steeps his commands in a code only he understands.[break][break]
Roland disappears. To Navy’s surprise, he does not reappear by the trainer. Instead, he’s out of sight. Behind the rock. Attacking the hidden threat he sensed. A blade of pink psychic energy forms along his hands, making him look like a swordsman with a blade. He cuts out at the mysterious Pokemon while Navy lunges for the trainer.


[break][break]

+ Kaname Fujihara 30 MP (2 posts + 10 for paranoia)

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Roland is relentless. He is blasted with the force of the bug’s psychic energy. He is pushed back by the sheer force. If he had ears, the psychic scream would make him bleed from them. Roland looks at the Pokemon with somber eyes. He does not want this battle. Indeed, he would love nothing more than to feel what this Pokemon is like while it is simply enjoying its life. Doing good deeds and feeling gratitude sweep over them, that’s the essence of the Gallade known as Roland.[break][break]
But his trainer has ordered him to do battle. And so, to the best of his ability, he battles. To Roland’s credit, he is a magnificent warrior. He’s human enough to understand strategy without Navy having to beat it into his head. With one foot in the language of Pokemon and one in the world of humans, he can communicate well to the rest of Navy’s team. In some ways, he’s like a commander.[break][break]
But here, in this meaningless skirmish, he is just another knight. A piece on the chessboard. He feels no fury in his heart, but his attacks are powered by the emotion. Powerful swipes, based on his observation of Scyther. He projected a long, sharp blade over his arms. They mimicked the scythes of the dragon resting at Navy’s hip more than Scyther, to their mutual detriment.[break][break]
Navy threw the man to the ground, falling on top of him. With a raised fist, he endeavored to bring it down. Channel the fury he had built up for the past six months. Screaming in raw, red rage.[break][break]
“I’m sick of you! Sick of Rocket! Sick and tired of how you keep getting away with it!”

[break][break]

+ 40

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

Once upon a time, Roland was given a choice. He was a young Kirlia. Navy and his brother raised him together. They offered him a choice. Would he rather be a Gardevoir, an elegant creature who danced I the backlines, or a knight charging the front?[break][break]
Roland was and always will be a warrior. It’s what he was good at from the time he was a Ralts. His mind calculates the ebbs and flows of a battlefield. In the midst of all this chaos, he feels peace. Content. Zen. A dazzling hypnotic rainbow flashed before his eyes.[break][break]
Calming.[break][break]
Peaceful.[break][break]
A gambit that would on four of the other Pokemon on Navy’s team. The great wyrm Vortigern’s heart beat with rage. He wants nothing more than to fight. Cassius would fall to the dazzling patterns for a calm fighter is no fit fighter, or so the Machamp believes. Ironsides would just see it as an opportunity to give up. Junior would spy a butterfly in the patterns and chase them.[break][break]
Roland is always calm. Battle gives him euphoria. He dances around the barrier. Attacking it from all sides. Slashing it again and again. He wishes that he could simply communicate a telepathic message to the beetle. Tell her to take her master and run. Alas, he chose the martial path. The might of a Gardevoir’s mind would not be his.[break][break]
Every path a man takes in life requires a sacrifice. The same can be said for Pokemon. He is content with the path he has chosen. That acceptance lets him see the dancing patterns for what they are. A distraction.[break][break]
And he persists in striking the barrier, even as his ears bleed. Even as the light threatens to blind him if he is not careful. His scythe blades rush to find purchase. Just enough to knock the bug out. A skilled warrior can disable without killing. He is not the dragon.[break][break]
The dragon is the one standing over the masked man. Slamming his fist down onto someone that has nothing to do with his problem. He looks at the man with unmistakable rage in the beaten metal of his eyes. His knuckles bleed after the third hit. This is but the opening salvo in the long day that is to follow and he is already injuring himself for this fight.[break][break]
It’s the principle, really. It’s the repetition. Navy hates the Rockets, but somewhere deep in his heart of hearts, he thinks they have a point. For a thorn like this to persist like they do, cropping up time and time again, the League truly must be incompetent. There’s a flaw in the system somewhere.[break][break]
“Hell no it won’t!” He agrees with the man as his fist thumps against his forearms. Navy has no formal martial arts training. Everything he knows about brawling, he learned on the streets. As his dragon is the creature of the wilds, so too is he born from the urban jungle. A beast great as any Rocket to ever hold that title, with a beast’s anger in his eyes.[break][break]
“But. It. Sure. Feels. Good.” It’s all the frustration he’s felt all these months. Hating himself for trying to find salvation in the bottom of the barrel. Cursing himself for letting bridges burn. Letting Kohryu die like that. Letting Gabe die like that.[break][break]
If he’d just been there at Sootopolis, this full of piss and vinegar, maybe his brother would be alive.[break][break]
So, he strikes. He rages against a man whose story has nothing to do with his own. A man at the wrong place at the wrong time when a rift pulled this dragon from the truck that acted as his cage.

[break][break]

+ 50 MP Kaname Fujihara

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

The queen falls. Roland looks down at her with quiet, dignified eyes. She fought well. He picks her up, holds her close, and nurtures her with his life dew. He has seen the grief that can take seed in a human’s heart after the death of a trusted partner. Even sensing his master’s hatred, he refuses to do that to this unknown human. As the waters of life wash over her, he turns and takes her back to her trainer.[break][break]
He arrives just in time to see another Pokemon slip free from its ball. A baby, practically. Nothing that can stand up to Navy’s monsters. With added speed in his step, he sits the beetle down near the humans. Close enough for her to slip into her pokeball when the human notices.[break][break]
It gives the chivalrous Pokemon enough time to jump and catch his trainer. Navy is taller than his Gallade by a decent margin, but it’s the thought that counts. Roland sits his master down, wiping blood from his lips. The waters of life wash over him too, and the other human as well.[break][break]
“What’s the bright ide-”[break][break]
Before Navy’s anger can be redirected at his Pokemon, his ball rumbles at his side. It trembles. It shakes. Vortigern stirs. The slumbering dragon awakens. It has sensed prey. It has tasted blood. For the first time since Meteno, Vortigern bursts from his Pokeball as one of Navy’s pokeballs.[break][break]
Behind the man he was just assaulting is a cave. Navy’s eyes go wide. It should be telling, given the hatred that was just there before, that he only says a single word. A word laced with concern.[break][break]
“Run!”


[break][break]

+ 50 MP Posts + 10 MP Paranoia + 100 MP Completed Mission + 50 Participation + 200 MP Winning + 10 MP Knocked out a Pokemon = 420 MP

[attr="class","pokeclass"]