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He was probably being overbearing.[break][break]
Robin might not have pushed back against it, but there was likely something stifling in his check-ins and careful observation of her moods and behaviors. Lam didn’t mean any harm by it, of course he didn’t. It was just…worry. And it was innate. It came naturally, without any doubts or second thoughts. He worried because he cared. What a double edged sword that was.[break][break]
Lam’s gaze shifted between the altaria and Robin thoughtfully. “Well,” he started, rubbing his chin as he approached the large bird. “I’m no scientist, but I have a hunch it was more reactive to the crystabloom in my garden than my other pokemon were.” Obviously that was the case, or he wouldn’t be shimmering with luminescent glow. “I think the care shown toward him when you caught him made him receptive.”[break][break]
There had been well-meant intent behind the act, after all. Maybe that was a fanciful theory, but he liked to think that her hands could create good. And maybe she was in need of hearing as much after everything. Even if she didn’t say it out loud.[berak][break]
He watched the klefki jingle in the air, nose wrinkling at the idea of dealing with toxapex. “Think I’ll pass on the slimy sea creatures, thanks.” He wasn’t sure he’d really ever divulged his dislike of most fish and aquatic sorts, but really? It was probably better that Robin didn’t find out that particular tidbit.[break][break]
She needed no more ammunition against him.[break][break]
“I’ll have this one scout overhead,” he remarked as they set off, giving Dandelion a pat on one downy wing before the altaria lifted into the sky. Lam swayed with the nudge, eyes rolling as he elbowed her back. “Whaaaat? Why would I push for you to skip out on all your matches? Was getting my badge as a freebie not good enough?”[break][break]
His head tilted, “Even if the idea of watching you whoop Greyson is entertaining.”[break][break]
There was more to it, though, of course. A clear line between what was sport and what was true combat. Gym battling wasn’t the same as duking it out against the sorts of people they might come up against today. And it was important to know that difference.

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“Yeah…maybe?” Lam shrugged, “I mean, I don’t know that for sure, but none of my other pokemon reacted to it the same way. So maybe there’s a connection. It’s a nice thought, anyway.” Or just an overly sentimental one that he himself was applying to the situation. It seemed right, though, so he wanted to believe that it was that act of giving that allowed Dandelion to be affected by the crystabloom’s infinity energy. “I sure didn’t do anything special, myself, though.”[break][break]
All Lam had done was let the altaria out in his backyard to stretch his wings.[break][break]
He puffed out a breath, and then dissolved into laughter at her disgust. “Glad we see eye to eye. They’re on the beach all the time, so it’s easy to almost step on them if you’re not paying attention in the shallows.” He grimaced. It was a way to make light conversation while they worked, he supposed. Above them, the altaria glimmered and circled them. As if he could protect them with his brightness alone.[break][break]
“Ha!” His head tipped back. “You know, formidable as Grey is…I buy it.” Lam gassed her up easily despite her tendency toward heckling him. Unaware as he was of the seed he’d planted in her mind back during their trip to Dewford, he didn’t think twice about how it might swell her ego.[break][break]
In any case, he believed it. He was certain Robin would dig her heels in and refuse to let up against the Elite Four member. “Don’t tell him I said that, though,” he added after a prolonged pause.[break][break]
His attention remained ahead of them as he scouted for anyone that might have been displaced and needing assistance–oblivious to the idea that trouble would come from underfoot.[break][break]
Starling as Robin stumbled, he tried to snag her by the arm, but was a beat too late. “You okay?” The impulse would have been to call her clumsy, if not for the dugtrio. Lam whistled, pulling Dandelion back toward the area. “Look for anything else!” He called up to the altaria. Or anyone, maybe he should’ve said.[break][break]
Dandelion’s wings drummed against the air, and then he seemed to glow even brighter before a wide SPOTLIGHT haloed the area. It swept back and forth in search, looking to lock anything else within that beam.[break][break]
“You think so?” he asked, looking down at the trapped dugtrio warily. He offered Robin a steadying head, but she’d already risen back to her feet. “You cool?” In asking again, he meant her ankle, of course, but there was no telling if she would interpret it differently.[break][break]
as they looked down at it, the dugtrio's red eyes flashed with warning and the earth began to rumble ominously with earth power.[break][break]
"that can't be good." Spoken seconds before he was uprooted.

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Lam frowned down at the dugtrio as it seemed to glower at them, but his focus shifted unsteadily toward Robin at the hard edge in her voice.[break][break]
That frown only deepened as she sent out her toxitricity. The shadowy aura wasn’t wholly unfamiliar to him, but it wasn’t the reliance on this pokemon that had his head snapping back toward her. “Hey,” his hand shot out toward her to grip her arm. “What’d you mean you know what we do?” His own tone grew clipped, but there was a harsher edge there to match hers.[break][break]
There was something wildly familiar about the moment. His mind flashed back to a particular trip to the border, well over a year ago now. MATIAS SILPH goading him into an unprovoked attack on an unassuming group of rocket operatives. Down to the aggression of a shadow pokemon and all.[break][break]
But he wasn’t quite the same as he was back then. As Tox charged the Rocket, who was both too stunned and injured to move, Lam lifted a hand to his mouth and whistled. Virizion, who had been circling them at a distance bounded toward them in graceful leaps, but it was Dandelion who interceded first.[break][break]
The altaria, with his feathers aglow, descended—his cottony down SAFEGUARDING the effects of the toxitricity’s poison.[break][break]
Though the feeling it provoked was uncanny. Doubt cast a pallor in his expression as he regarded his little sister, the same as when he’d looked at Matias with new eyes in that moment. The concern he’d felt before for her frame of mind only intensified.[break][break]
“Robin.” He set a firm look on her, lips pressed in a thin line. “We aren’t out here to fight. If anything, we need to bring them in. We’re here to find civs, not make unprovoked attacks.” For all they knew, that dugtrio had acted of its own accord. Shadow pokemon were unpredictable in that regard.[break][break]
Absentmindedly, his hand found a particular pokeball attached to his belt. An unassuming net ball, but one that emitted a faint aura of darkness. He didn’t carry it often, and he wasn’t sure why he’d brought it today. But if he needed to fight fire with fire, he could do that.


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A visible flinch rippled across Lam’s features as she spit back at him, words steeped in vitriol. It would have been easy to fold, to step away and agree with him, but Lam didn’t want to let Robin have her way when it was…overkill. “I didn’t say help. He’s already incapacitated It’s better to just apprehend him and bring him in to Oldale’s PD for detainment.”[break][break]
The added firepower for the Rocket wasn’t necessary.[break][break]
“You’re not even listening to what I’m saying,” he countered. He pointed at the Dugtrio, and then at the hapless man peeking out from behind Dandelion’s wings. “It’s a shadow pokemon, does he look like he sent it our way? It probably acted of its own accord. That should be what we take out.”[break][break]
His eyes skirted to the pokemon, taking his attention off of Robin at the wrong moment to ensure that it was still held securely by Klefki.[break][break]
Expecting her to pull away, he let out a quiet oof as she turned inward instead. His limbs went rigid, locking in place as he tried to wrestle her back and push her away. “Robin, what’re you doing?” Have you lost your mind? The second question didn’t fall from his mouth, but it was likely obvious in his face as he grit his teeth and locked arms with her. Her anger was a palpable thing, and he could practically feel it stoking his own ire. The long fuse of his patience suddenly burning up at a rapid pace. “Back off, now.”[break][break]
Virizion watched, head held high as Lam grappled with her, and then turned to the Toxitricity. Weathering the loud clap of its boomburst, they sprang forward as the sound flared out and leveled both the grunt and the altaria. Dandelion let out a keening sound, head shaking on his serpentine neck. The glow of his feathers dimming as he collapsed into unconsciousness.[break][break]
But Virizion persisted as they surged toward Tox. Head swinging low with a steely glow as their sacred sword battered him back.[break][break]
His fingers itched to reach for the shadowed ball at his own belt as his ears rang from their own proximity to the attack. To let out the dark-feathered psyduck contained there. To let it reflect his own burgeoning anger as it countered its likeness in Tox. He felt one of the balls at his belt shake, and he thought that maybe it was about to break loose of its own accord, sensing that fury like blood in the water.[break][break]
Instead, Tornadus loomed over them. Arms folded as he sized up the two humans with piercing gold eyes. Then, one darted out with swinging force— the ARM THRUST aimed at pushing them apart. “You’re being childish,” he said then, “it’s like you’re going out of your way to make me regret covering for you in Dewford.”

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Lam between Robin and the maimed Rocket, obvious in his incredulity. “Robin, they’re bleeding out on the ground. Not to mention Dandelion had them locked in his spotlight. I don’t think they’re going anywhere or doing anything fast.” There was no need for a verbal surrender when they were already caught. Locked in the struggle they are, he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Had she always been so cut and dry about this?[break][break]
“Because they’re still a living person, Robin–how is that the most difficult concept to grasp here?” His face twisted up as she raged at him, and he told himself that this wasn’t about him, it wasn’t. It was just the aftershocks of what she’d been going through, and she was just lashing out at him, but there was no reason to think that–[break][break]
His gaze snapped to hers as everything inside of him went cold. Like being dunked in an ice bath. “What?” His voice was small–piteous before the anger flooded back in. “The fuck did you just say to me, Robin?” His hands moved to shove at her, but Tornadus’ interception prevented him from making contact. “You don’t get to dictate things like that, just because you have some sort of gift.” His hands rose again, that time to curl air quotes around the word.[break][break]
Not because he refused to believe in her ability, but because he wasn’t sure whether it was a gift or a curse. If it made her act like this, he began to believe it was the latter. Virizion, battered back from being ganged up on, staggered in place, but remained resolved abandoned their plight against the toxitricty. Head held in austere authority, they came to stand behind Lam as they eyed Robin coolly. Where Tornadus had sought to separate, they absolved to be the sword in their knight’s hand in the face of obvious threat.[break][break]
"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"[break][break]
It shut him up quickly. The tension in his shoulders went slack as his lips parted, but no cruel words rose up to roll off his tongue.[break][break]
“You don’t mean that,” he replied as his face fell, voice carrying the sort of note as though he’d been slapped. Lam paid no mind to the duskull as it crept free. Not until it swallowed her up and spirited her away to leave him with the silence that neither confirmed nor denied.[break][break]
“FUCK.” He howled it to the open air, and the empty space she left behind. Blood beat loud in his ears, his heart thumping as the heat of anger slowly bled from his system. It wasn’t long before regret slipped in to settle over his shoulders, “Shit,” he cursed again as he let out a long breath, a hand pushing through his hair out of anxious habit. Without the immediate pushback of her rage present and tangible for Lam to retaliate against, he was left with the sudden drop of exhaustion.[break][break]
He didn’t regret preventing Robin from causing more damage in a situation that could’ve been handled a lot easier than it had been. But he was still left with the distinct feeling of guilt. It turned over in his stomach as he shifted to look up at Tornadus. The djinn eyed him, and he could almost sense the aura of disappointment. He was probably imagining it. But whether he was or not, it didn’t lessen the feeling any.[break][break]
“Yeah. I know,” he said aloud, looking back down at the empty path ahead. He should’ve handled this better. He should have been better. Maybe if he hadn’t waltzed out here with her, or if he’d been more disapproving of her participation, then... If he hadn’t snapped, if he’d shielded her from the destruction breaking apart everything around them, it wouldn’t have culminated in this outburst. Or the one in Dewford.[break][break]
The inward blame turned to a cement block that sat heavy in his gut.[break][break]
He should have seen it sooner. He should have known it was bigger than one moment in her childhood home. This was on him.[break][break]
There was an impulse to cave to the anxiety that itched to take over. It crawled under his skin, jumping through his nerves like an electrical current. He should’ve been a better brother. “take care of the Dugtrio,” he said then to Virizion, who seemed equally as eager to have the situation settled and through. “Make sure the Rocket doesn’t make any sudden moves.” They obviously weren’t. Lam looked up at Tornadus again as he issued the request, reluctantly so, as he fished out his radio to call back up to bring the culprit in.[break][break]
Even then his mind rang with the chorus of his little sister’s scorn, and the wild oscillation between she didn’t mean it, and what if i had done more?



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