❧

mcflurry comes from the opposite end of rusturf tunnel, melding in from the deep black of the rocky crevices -- and looking terrified the entire time.

she's shaking. literally shaking. it's almost a match for the SNORUNT currently in her arms.

"i, uh, i'm really mcsorry -- i'm not used to mccaves, but i mcneeded to get to rustboro mcquickly... i thought your rockruff was a mcwild pokemon, and, you see, snorunt..."

mcflurry starts driveling on and on about type weaknesses and how it'd be bad for snorunt to fight a rock-type and how she'd like it to evolve into a glalie (who can mega evolve, if you didn't know,) but she'd also like it to not get too hurt in the process and how back in fiore, training wasn't really a thing so she wasn't good at it and a billion different other tangents that don't matter.

her verbal tic goes off every other word and it's fucking insufferable. moreover, her voice is echoing and bouncing off the walls the entire time.

Cillian Quinn ● at least he has a dog

[attr="class","wildbgroc"]

[attr="class","wildtitle"]A WILD GRAVELER APPEARED!

[attr="class","wildshiny"]

[attr="class","wildpkmnbox"]

[attr="class","wildtab"]

[attr="class","wildbgroc"]

[attr="class","wildtitle"]A WILD NUMEL APPEARED!

[attr="class","wildshiny"]

[attr="class","wildpkmnbox"]

[attr="class","wildtab"]

[attr="class","kheader"]

[attr="class","kthread"][attr="class","rocket"]

She's shaking.[break][break]

Gavin regards her without words, allows her to ramble on. Did his reputation precede him, as hers had? Or was she this much of a bumbling fool regardless of which face she was met with? He makes no effort to hide his disdain.[break][break]

Her words suggest to him that he's a stranger to her.[break][break]

"Stop talking," he advises dryly, somewhere in the midst of her tirade. "I don't care what you think of Rockruff or what you're trying to do with that Pokemon of yours: I care about what you've been doing elsewhere."[break][break]

Wild Pokemon encroach. Still firmly in the grips of puppyhood, Gavin's Rockruff stumbles over its own feet when he signals it to pursue the Graveler. Though tiny in comparison to the living boulder, Rockruff uses its ROCK CLIMB to find purchase on its back and scrabble up out of reach of the thing's arms. It's a hilarious sight, the little dog riding around on enraged pile of rubble.[break][break]

Gavin throws a pokeball while the Graveler is distracted, then returns an icy gaze to Mcflurry.[break][break]

"Rocket has no room for idiocy."

[break][break][break]

❧

mcflurry shuts up when he tells her to, only listening somberly as he scolds her, her short stature slumping, eyes wandering literally elsewhere as a wave of guilt hits her hard, like a hydro pump crashing against a wall.

and then she nearly jumps as a numel cry erupts from right behind her, a poke ball swiped into her hand and chucked at the ground.

even as she's staggering, her snorunt leaps out of her arms and opens its huge mouth with a CRUNCH, biting down on the numel's nose.

as the numel flails about, its EARTH POWER quakes through the earth and causes mcflurry to lose even more footing from before, finally falling on her ass.

snorunt finishes off the numel with a BLIZZARD, freezing the fire-type solid as mcflurry scrambles to throw a poke ball at it from the ground.

however, it's at this moment that gavin delivers his ultimatum, even as mcflurry struggles to pick herself up from the ground.

"ow, ow, ow... i really don't know who you are, b-but, but i'm -- mcsorry..."

mcflurry finally gets her ass up, her face contorted with worry.

"i've been... doing the last few mcmissions successfully, i, i mcswear. p-please don't, please don't fire me o-or get me... get me mcfired..."

absolutely miserable.

Cillian Quinn ● thats right gavin give her the works

[attr="class","wildbgroc"]

[attr="class","wildtitle"]A WILD SANDSLASH APPEARED!

[attr="class","wildshiny"]

[attr="class","wildpkmnbox"]

[attr="class","wildtab"]

[attr="class","wildbgroc"]

[attr="class","wildtitle"]A WILD SKARMORY APPEARED!

[attr="class","wildshiny"]

[attr="class","wildpkmnbox"]

[attr="class","wildtab"]

[attr="class","kheader"]

[attr="class","kthread"][attr="class","rocket"]

Even when she's knocked on her ass by the trembling earth, Gavin makes no move to help her.[break][break]

Her babbling apologies might as well have been addressed to the wall for what little effect they have on Gavin's sympathy.[break][break]

"You think you'll be fired if you fuck up again?" He scoffs. "That's not how this works."[break][break]

Would she catch on to the threat? He's not certain. She strikes him as some half-wit criminal who had little grounds to call herself a Rocket. Who the hell was recruiting people these days? He makes a note to look into it.[break][break]

"If you don't know who I am, that's your problem." No way he's giving her his name so that she can blurt it out to the next person she bumps into — from what he's heard, he wouldn't put it past her. "Fuck up again and you'll find out. You'd better hope you don't."[break][break]

Much as he loathes her for jeopardizing Rocket, Gavin himself hopes the same: violence, murder, they were some of his least favourite parts of the job.[break][break]

A pained yelp draws his eye. Gavin turns to see Rockruff in the claws of a Sandslash that's burrowed up from beneath, likely disturbed by the tremors. Whether it mistakes his pup for the culprit or simply seeks to take out its rage on the nearest living thing is irrelevant to Gavin — he sees red.[break][break]

Sandslash slumps unconscious, three WATER SHURIKENS embedded in its soft underbelly. Gavin's Greninja scuttles up the tunnel wall and vanishes behind a SMOKESCREEN, its vengeance exacted.[break][break]

Gavin bends down to check over the wounded Rockruff, absently tapping the Sandslash's body with a ball.

[break][break][break]

❧

mcflurry takes a step back in fear as gavin keeps railing into her, switching into death threats and more. she's shrinking into her own body, naturally curling up under his words.

"p-please don't kill me..."

and then a caltrop full of SPIKES lodges itself into her shoulder, and a spray of blood splatters across the cave walls and likely on gavin.

the fear of death instilled in her and her heart going a thousand miles a minute, mcflurry goes woozy -- but finds the fortitude to release a poke ball on her waist before she faints, bleeding out, unconscious. the shock gets her.

ARCTOZOLT sees its trainer unconscious behind it -- the girl who'd been taking care of him since she'd been ten, the one who'd been tending to his abomination of an existence for twenty years. he smells blood. snorunt's crying, trying to cover her wound to help her.

arctozolt sees red, letting out a roar of anguish. it sounded like a wingull out of hell itself.

CHARGE.

CHARGE.

DISCHARGE.

suddenly, a gigantic wave of lightning and thunder erupts forward as the arctozolt blasts everything in front of it. the rockruff. the greninja's smoke screen, and the wall it ran up. the skarmory flying in behind gavin. gavin.

the skarmory itself crumples, falling unconscious mid-air and crashing to the ground in front of gavin -- before a stalactite dislodges from the cave ceiling and falls on its skull.

the discharge had rumbled across the entire cave system, even into the ceiling, and stalactites were beginning to dislodge themselves after hundreds, thousands of years, on the verge of crumbling and cascading and caving in rusturf tunnel. 

the arctozolt roars again, tears flowing from its dopey eyes. it prepares yet another attack.

and the entire time, more pokemon are awakened -- more pokemon are now drawn to the fight, eager for dying prey.

[attr="class","wildbgroc"]

[attr="class","wildtitle"]A WILD PHANPY APPEARED!

[attr="class","wildshiny"]

[attr="class","wildpkmnbox"]

[attr="class","wildtab"]

[attr="class","wildbgroc"]

[attr="class","wildtitle"]A WILD HONEDGE APPEARED!

[attr="class","wildshiny"]

[attr="class","wildpkmnbox"]

[attr="class","wildtab"]

[attr="class","kheader"]

[attr="class","kthread"][attr="class","rocket"]

Gavin doesn't get the chance to respond with further derision before her blood sprays across his chest.[break][break]

She collapses, and Gavin's already on the offensive: under threat of violence, the most feral and vicious of his Pokemon emerges. Sandslash bursts from its capsule in a flurry of ice and claws. A BLIZZARD blasts through the cramped tunnel and leaves deadly frost in its wake.[break][break]

He does not expect the attack from the Arctozolt. There's time only for a brief glimmer of recognition — a fossil Pokemon, Galarian, a taste of home — before its discharge of electricity blasts him off his feet. He's slammed against the wall and narrowly avoids being impaled by a stalactite crashing down from above. His Greninja and Rockruff have been rendered unconscious.[break][break]

Sandslash endures, filled with more rage than ever, snarling as it picks itself off of the ground. Its frothing fury is enough to keep most wild Pokemon at bay, FRUSTRATION rolling off it in waves.[break][break]

Gavin realizes the thunder has deafened him, tinnitus making him dizzy and disoriented. Survival instinct kicks in: disable the threat.[break][break]

Gavin's Steelix takes up a significant porition of the tunnel — more so when it glows in response to the keystone Gavin pulls from his glasses. It summons a SANDSTORM upon its release, SAND FORCE lending it strength as the metal titan hurls a ROCK SLIDE toward the offending Arctozolt.[break][break]

A Honedge lies unconscious nearby, seemingly obliterated by the discharge of energy. Gavin carefully avoids touching the hilt as he taps it with a ball and struggles to his feet. Everything hurts, his ears are ringing, and Mcflurry is bleeding out.[break][break]

He could let her.[break][break]

The thought is quick to cross his mind: he could let her, and she'd no longer be Rocket's problem.[break][break]

Logic shoves it aside. The tunnel would see more foot traffic. If they rescued her, and she sold him out—[break][break]

The spike through her shoulder offers gruesome flashbacks to Gavin's own still-healing shoulder injury. He knows better than to remove it. It's likely the only thing stopping her from bleeding out entirely — that, and the little Snorunt desperately trying to help.[break][break]

Gavin makes an attempt to return her Arctozolt to its ball, lest it be suffocated by the fallen rocks. Then, he does his best to apply pressure to the wound as he pulls out his phone and dials Wendy Peterson's number.

[break][break][break]

❧

mcflurry's arctozolt does not decline in its anger, even as the sandslash proves to be a one-man army against the incoming wild pokemon. as a blizzard leaves half the cave frozen, the arctozolt only continues to CHARGE.

without a trainer, it doesn't know what to do other than attack blindly. with a stomp of its feet, the ground rumbles once more, before debris, rocks, items, and all start rising with an ANCIENT POWER.

soon enough, the entire salvo was hurled at the sandslash, enough to flinch it out of its fury -- a frozen-over PHANPY is hit by a stray poke ball, one of the objects caught in the telepathy, and is captured within as though mcflurry herself through the ball.

but that doesn't matter. the arctozolt puts up a fight as the mega steelix fills the cave with blistering sand. shooting without vision, the arctozolt froze the cave over even more with its own BLIZZARD, even encapsulating some of the sandstorm in it --

-- before a barrage of rocks crashed into its torso, one of them hitting its tiny head and incapacitating it.

all that is left is a number of pokemon forcefully returned to their poke balls as their newfound trainer grows accustomed to a pool of red.