Time loses all meaning down in the darkness. You’ve been running since Arceus knows how long. It started with a murder. For once, you are the culprit. You’re running, desperate, through the tunnels. Alone and afraid. Every time you find comfort in another person, you get separated. Lost. Torn from comfort. This place, whatever it is, denies you rest.[break][break]
Your jacket’s torn in four places. Long claw marks leave marks on your body of where Pokemon and trainers have torn you apart. You’re still going. A cruddy first aid kit and memories from a class you took four years ago keep you going. The stitches aren’t the best, but they’ll hold, and you’re not bleeding much. In every defeat, there’s a little slice of victory if you have the right kind of eyes.[break][break]
It’s a bitter victory. You trudge through a maze. Something that would hold the legendary bull Pokemon of a distant land’s myth. This cave’s design is impossible in a way only caves can be. This place was forming still when your ancestors first settled this land. It was warped by the battles that formed this land between Groudon and Kyogre. You are but a trespasser in a domain that will be here when you are long dead.[break][break]
A man stands in your way. Smoking a cigarette. He’s a thug. His fashion sense is good, but he’s still just a thug. Someone who isn’t important enough to be out hunting with the Beasts. Hell, he looks like a guy you wouldn’t mind sharing a drink with, were things a little different.[break][break]
But this is the reality you find yourself crawling through. He’s in your way. Down the passageway, your dragon is rampaging. It might well kill someone else if you don’t catch up to it in time. There’s only one way through.[break][break]
You’ll have to force your way, Champ in the making. Through conflict. That’s how you want to define your life, right? The very best, like your brother wanted?[break][break]
Well, would-be, Top Champion. It’s now or never. The work that you want to define you. Not a detective. You have eschewed every practical Pokemon that would help with your detective practice. The biggest, baddest Pokemon. Trained to perfection. Time to use one.[break][break]
“Sorry, bud. You’re in the way.” There’s a sickening moment. Something churns in your belly. It doesn’t sound too different from what someone might have said to Gabe in the long-ago, when he died in Sootopolis.[break][break]
You find you’re too tired to care.[break][break]
You release a monster from its pokeball. When you found Junior, he was a little Larvitar. Unlike most of his kind, he always smiled. He loved to play pranks. He was a good kid.[break][break]
Standing before you, dwarfing both you and your opposition, is the monster you warped a gentle child into for your own dream.[break][break]
“Hope you’re ready.” A sandstorm is whipped up by its mere presence. Sand filling the cave. You have just long enough to throw on goggles. Junior lunges for the man through the sand.[break][break]
You pray this is over quick. For his sake, and for yours.


[break][break]

+ Shred 10 MP

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

They’re shadows moving through the sandstorm veil. Toxtricity. The guy has style. You’ll give him that. Style in spades.[break][break]
Really, why did you have to meet him like this? You wouldn’t mind if this guy was some rough character you met during the course of an investigation. You could share some spicy insights on human character, open his mind like a can, and depart from one another’s lives in peace.[break][break]
There is no place for such things here on this battlefield. This isn’t about the fate of Hoenn. This isn’t about anything but you and all the pain Rocket has put you through simply by existing. People like this man are culpable. If people would just stop indulging Rocket for a quick buck…[break][break]
You’re not a poet or a romantic. You’re a practical man, and there is a practical problem in front of you. Junior is being attacked by a faster opponent. A slim, slick little lizard. A furious purple haze in the whipping sandstorm winds. You have a small advantage in that you’ve worked with your Pokemon before under these conditions. You can manage.[break][break]
Junior’s built to endure. You trained him to endure. You and your whole menagerie of monsters trained so hard to live up to your little brother’s legacy. He can take the bite. He’s tough.[break][break]
Speed is a trap when your opponent anticipates you.[break][break]
Toxtricity’s claws find inevitable purchase against the beast’s flesh. Perhaps poison takes in his veins. Perhaps not. Pokemon are built different from humans. It will take days upon days to kill him even if he is poisoned. A more pressing issue would be the coma poisoned Pokemon tend to fall into. That’s not something you’ll have to worry about for a while.[break][break]
Especially not here. Not now.[break][break]
“Give him some payback.” You order your beast. Junior’s keen mind knew the order was coming before you even issued forth the words. He moves like the monster he is, striking out with claws and fangs, bringing forth retaliation against the toxic lizard.[break][break]
While, of course, the wind whips against you. You ascertain it probably doesn’t feel very good for your opponent, but it beats you down. The sand antagonizes the edges of your wounds. You cover them up so the stitches don’t come out in the winds and sands.[break][break]
“You’ve got this, Junior.” Your urge your Pokemon on. The sooner you can move on, the better. Every little disruption of Rocket’s a gain.

[break][break]

+ Shred 20 MP

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

It seems the name of the game is going to be mutually assured destruction. You tumble back at the explosive burst of noise. It makes your ears ring more than any mosh pit you’ve ever rocked in your life. Your head’s spinning. Junior’s probably worse off than you are. He’s at the epicenter of the blast. His hardened skin, the natural armor, all the advantages given to him by nature are about to be useless. Sound doesn’t care about armor. It pierces you, down deep, down into your bones.[break][break]
You barely make out three words over the chaos. It’s a miracle you hear them at all. Between the wind, the blast of sound, and your fatigue, there’s a lot in the way. You chalk it up to your training as a detective. Staying calm and observing, even when things get this bad, is part of your job.[break][break]
…well, if you think to remember this little slice of the story when the Dewford Incident is all said and done, that’s what you’ll say. For now, you’re in the present, looking for a way to save your Pokemon. Its own weight and strength are about to be turned against it, and all you can do is watch. Some great strategist you are, huh?[break][break]
“Junior, code 3—” You realize it’s pointless. Your Pokemon can’t hear you. Whatever Junior does next, it will be his own decision. You think again what you thought before. He was once a good boy. An innocent, sweet little Larvitar. Someone whose idea of being malicious was to tie your shoes together in a meeting and then snicker at you about it afterwards.[break][break]
Junior decides to roar as he falls into the earth. Roar, and whip about, and flail. To rage, rage against the dying of the light. Your training has made him strong. He will not go gently, nor easily. He is a primordial creature that has persisted through sheer strength into the modern day. By all rights, Tyranitar as a species should have gone the way of the Kabuto long ago. It is a species that has not developed in centuries.[break][break]
It hasn’t developed because it doesn’t need to develop. The sound of its roar causes the walls to quake. The ground under your feet is shaking. Within the sandstorm, Junior is fighting. Writing. Digging his way out of an impossible situation. Every tremble along the ground sends a rumble through the cavern. You look up and duck just in time to avoid an errant rock falling through the sandstorm.[break][break]
Part of the cave is collapsing. The toxic lizard collapsed the floor, Junior collapsed the roof. He trembles. He shakes. He climbs free. And by the mere act of moving with his full power and screaming with all his might, the earth trembles before its apex predator.


[break][break]

+ Shred 30 MP

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

You don’t back down, but you sure beat a tactical retreat. A warrior doesn’t show his back, right? So you simply don’t turn around. Your back gently presses into a wall. You slump down. Junior, when he was a little Larvitar, was a good boy. There is still goodness in his heart, despite the nature your training has imposed on him. When the toxic lizard does his little trick, he seems more confused than anything.[break][break]
More scared than angry.[break][break]
How convenient that would be for your own peace of mind, to say he is a monster. To say he rampages. He does not do that. He flails about in confusion and fear. When a meteor loomed high in the skies above Hoenn, Junior did not make an appearance. He watched on from his pokeball as people died. As Kohryu died. As the last vestige of Gabriel died thanks to your blistering incompetence. He has grown into his power too soon.[break][break]
Burying this great rock beast in the earth is a mistake – not just your opponent’s, but yours as well. It spells doom for everyone involved. His stone edge hurts him as much as it does everyone else. Rocks fly like something out of a bullet hell game. They soar. They hit. They crash. They go wide. Some hit. It’s a rapid fire barrage. All while he flails. All while the little Larvitar you raised screams in fear.[break][break]
“Get out of here!” You shout to the Rocket. Is that concern in your voice? For him as well as Junior?[break][break]
What a wimp. You can’t even stick to your guns and hate Rocket.


[break][break]

+ Shred

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

It’s a sick scent. Did he say it’s supposed to be sweet? Your own Salandit can produce this aroma. It’s no better on his nose then than it is now. Covering your nose, you try and brush away the scent as an earthquake destroys this tunnel. It seems to calm Junior down, and you take some small solace in that.[break][break]
Before the tunnel fully collapses and the world gives way to dust, you pull out a ball and return Junior. He’s been injured and poisoned by this fight, but he’s still alive. Your opponent cries out as he retreats. He wants a rematch one day. You hope that you’ll be able to give it to him. Again, he doesn’t seem like a bad guy. You wish you had just met him in a bar. You’d love to talk shit about new music with him.[break][break]
“Bet on it. I’m not the kind of guy who backs down from a fight.” You move in the opposite direction of the cave-in. Where you’re going, you don’t know. All you know is that you can’t stay here. You’re needed elsewhere. Caught in the middle of all of this, you hope that the League doesn’t actually need this particular tunnel.

[break][break]

+ ooc notes

[attr="class","pokeclass"]