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[attr="class","text"] He has no choice, really. The dense close of mist stretches wide and high. He can’t go over, he can’t go around.[break][break]

The familiar seep of bubblegum pink in misty tendrils is unsettling, but if he intends to reach his drop point, through is the only way to do so. And so Lam forges forward, despite the warning bells in his mind. At his side, his daschbun treads cautiously.[break][break]

Instead of his hope—a foggy, uneventful trip, the mist warps the world around him. One moment, he’s on the shoreline and in the next, an endless hall. His pidove coos on his shoulder.[break]break]

Light eeks out of an open doorway. But instead of it leading to the end of the mist cloud, it opens up to large chamber. Bright lights and consoles. The blink and chime of an active arcade.[break][break]

It is not a face that greets him first, though, but a voice.[break][break]

Lam’s nose wrinkles as the somewhat familiar voice reaches his ears. A king perched on his throne, clearly comfortable with his current lot. He’s only met kyle lopez on occasion, but the whole thing is…odd.[break][break]

Wait, what’s he even thinking? Of course it is. He’s in a frickin’ pink cloud dream zone…place.[break][break]

“Kyle? Uhhh, yours. I think? I’ve never been here.” A faint smile pulls across his mouth.

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The outburst is…unexpected to say the least.[break][break]
Someone needs a nap, is the dry thought that flits through Lam’s mind as his brows raise sharply. He doesn’t say as much aloud, though. At least, for the time being. There’s no real sense in getting worked up.[break][break]
For all he knows, Kyle could be a figment of the mist too, right?[break][break]
Tentatively, he moves forward, closer as the imagery suddenly dissipates, leaving them in the swirling pink fog again.[break][break]
“What?” his face screws up at the demand, “For real, man. Are you okay?”[break][break]
Why would someone actively want to mess with this shit?[break][break]
Even as he says as much, though, the mist plucks bits and pieces from his own mind. Not that the shores of Mele Mele are all that interesting as they begin to materialize.

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Lam shrugs, “Frankly, no. Sort of wanted to hear it from you, though.” Any chance that Kyle was going to tell him why it was that he wasn’t in his right mind? Guess he’d have to figure that out, but true to Kyle’s line of thought, it’s something he rolls with. If only because he’s not unaccustomed to navigating absurdity.[break][break]
“I think it’s a step up from Slateport,” he replies with an amused huff, “but that’s just me.”[break][break]
He’s not too surprised that this is the shape his dream world takes, because it is the place his unconsciousness takes him many nights of the week. Soaked in childhood nostalgia and homesickness.[break][break]
In the distance are city sounds, bright and cheerful as they clash with the softer push and pull of the ocean lapping at the shore.[break][break]
“Hm?” Lam hadn’t realized that his attention had fully fallen away from Kyle until he speaks. “Is that where it first revealed itself?” He’s not familiar with how it came to be in league custody. Just that it is.[break][break]
“Makes sense, though. A beach.” When it appears as if summoned by the top champion, though, it is not the simmered Tapu Koko he’s encountered with the help of AQUA advocates. NATURE’S MADNESS flares outward in their direction as the peaceful scene is stripped away as the wind picks up and thunderheads rumble overhead in the rapidly darkening sky.[break][break]
“What’d you do to piss it off?” The question is blurted out without thought as he glances at Kyle. It’s not because he actually blames Kyle for the island spirit’s aggression. More that he assumes it because it seemed to come from the other’s mind, not his own.


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Lam looks back at Kyle with a lift of one brow. A quiet uhuhh following as the Tapu Koko hems and haws before them.[break][break]
“Can see why it might take that personally,” he replied with the shrugging lift of one shoulder. “Much as I like Tapu Koko, though, I’m not too sure I would, either.” It just seemed like more responsibility and expectation than it might’ve been worth.[break][break]
It was his home island’s patron, and the spirit was revered yes, but being tethered to it was a different thing entirely.[break][break]
“Maybe it feels a little extra spurned because you chose someone else,” he offers as his arm lifts to shield his face in the crook of it as sand is sprayed at them. “But that also makes it seem like you want to be mad.”[break][break]
But a challenge is a challenge, he supposes. And as laidback as Lam normally is, there’s a certain competitive streak that’ll always get the better of him. In a flash of light, the dachsbun that was trotting alongside him is swapped out for a steely corviknight.[break][break]
Butternut caws as the storm continues to whip up around them–sharp wings extending to shore up with IRON DEFENSE. A hand lifts to the flight goggles hanging around his neck. A keystone embedded in the side glows as it activates, and soon that same light engulfs the corvid as well.

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“Oh, my bad,” he attempts to amend quickly, “doesn’t seem like a very benevolent thing to do.”[break][break]
Conferring power without choice doesn’t exactly sound like the right way to forge some sort of substantial bond. At least to Lam, anyway. But who knows—maybe it works for Kyle.[break][break]
“Right, it probably still looks like a snub.” And judging from the way Tapu Koko flits about with the crackle of electricity bursting from it, that’s exactly the case.[break][break]
It’s the second time today he’s seen a naganadel. It distracts him from the way Kyle’s smile warps oddly at the idea of angering it further. Hopefully this ultra beast will prove as powerful as Elisabeth Fiorelli’s had been.[break][break]
Corrosive matter warps the clean beach scenery, and inwardly Lam frowns at the tampering of an idyllic piece of his memory, but sends his corviknight forward regardless.[break][break]
Butternut’s steely wings propel back the tapu koko’s attack. “Blow it away!” Those same wings beat harder, drumming the air up into a frenzied torrent before he unleashes the full gust of G-MAX WIND RAGE at the wrathful deity.

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The power of the guardian of alola displayed in actual form is something he’s only heard stories about as a kid. Not something he’s ever seen in person. Well, until now, obviously. His head tilts up as electricity surges out around them and the island spirit rises up to tower over them.[break][break]
“Woooooah.”[break][break]
The empowered Tapu Koko smacks his corviknight down just the same as the naganadel—like it’s absolutely nothing but a pesky fly. The bulk that came with Butternut’s mega evolution fades as the bird drops from the air, and Lam too, has to scramble to recall him before he crashes into the beach.[break][break]
He looks to Kyle with the lift of a brow as a dry scoff of laughter slips out in spite of himself. “Oh, you think?” he bites his tongue on the suggestion that it’s Kyles attitude toward it that incensed the deity’s desire to invoke rage to this extent.[break][break]
Instead, it rolls off of his shoulders (mostly,) he backs off as well—feet skidding in the sand as they try to make a retreat before it swipes them with that massive, swatting hand too. “Yeah. Maybe. Can it do this too?”[break][break]
If it can, he’s maybe a little skeptical.

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If it were not a dire moment, Lam might have shared that enthusiasm. “Woahh, that’s so cool.” Okay so maybe he did still, just subdued because they were, y’know, being targeted.[break][break]
“Fair enough,” he concedes without argument there. “They definitely didn’t seem this bitter.” At least, they hadn’t been when Lam had encountered them with MATIAS SILPH.[break][break]
Replacing one bird is another, naturally. Fire terastralization kicks in quickly, coating his talonflame in an extra buffer against any other wayward attacks. Peeved at being ignored and then rebuffed, an ELECTRO BALL hurtles between them— fortunately cratering in the sand instead.[break][break]
“Yeah, sounds good. I’ll take the real deal, easy.” A hastily spoken agreement, punctuated by a short nod. Lam hops on the back of his talonflame, who lifts off and zips forward to follow the champ and his manectric.[break][break]
An extra burst of speed is gusted up in the form of a retreating TAILWIND as the Tapu Koko, despite its size, and the rest of Hau’oli begins to grow smaller in the distance before being swallowed up by dense, foggy pink again.[break][break]
It makes sense to Lam. He found Kyle in all this mist in the first place, so he must know the right way out, right? Hope so.
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