[attr="class","samjermain"] Sometimes it doesn’t seem fair to him that in times such as these he has to pick between certain death and riding away from it on the back of a dragon that would love nothing more than to eat him for breakfast.

He doesn’t really want to switch mounts but Alex seems pretty adamant about it. Puck flips over backwards of Gabe and Memo drops seamlessly onto the dragon’s back. “I’m here,” he says, resisting the urge to pat at the crispy skin on the back of his neck, “let’s go.”

Alex’s djinni— which they still hadn’t talked about, Memo realized— summoned a massive storm in their wake to throw the Kartana off their trail as they escaped.

Away from the bleakwind storm, the silence is deafening.

“We’re here,” he says, sounding far more confident than he feels— he’s wrapped his arms around Alex’s waist and has to physically make his hands open, like ratcheting a lever— “we’re alive.”





+ final post get. Jumps off togekiss onto Salamence and flies away with Alex

[attr="class","samjerpoke"]

[attr="class","samjermain"] “What? My effortless intimidation? Or my undeniable charm?” He struck a pose he though he’d seen in The Three Muskateers and then reached out and gently poked Alex in the cheek. “En garde, handsome.”

Alex had been morose about the restructuring of gyms since the announcement had gone out. Just another bone to pick with Dahlia’s government. Memo was more or less doing this for his boyfriend’s wellbeing, to show him the non traditional challenge was not as dead and cold and in the ground as he maybe imagined.

“Nah, I’m good.” He hupped up onto Nike’s back.

“Get that? No friendly fire,” he growled into her ear. If she tried anything and Alex got hurt, he’d never forgive himself.

He’d much rather have done this with Sibella, but she wasn’t up to flying, yet, and maybe never would be again. Pushing that horrible thought out of his head, he sat back and let her take flight, the hum of her wings echoing the pulse in his ears.

[attr="class","samjerpoke"]

[attr="class","wownewtag"] Elinor Anderson illeana reyes Raziel Beckett wren rourke

[attr="class","wownewmain"]Look, when you had two Skiddo that were always together, it was easy to get them mixed up. So he’d brought both, which was chaos.

He had to keep grabbing their attention, because Vie wanted to taste-test everything in the forest, while Saba, more fastidious, wanted to go back to his safe, sanitary home.

“Saba, please,” Memo said, gently redirecting the caprine back to the task at hand, “just a taste. It’s for, you know, science--,”

Saba took a bite out of the tree and Memo realized at once that this was Vierdon. “God damn it.”

A short jog later, he returned with the proper goat, who had sneakily been trying to escape. Saba made squinty faces at the tree in question, like a child being asked to eat their lima beans.

“Please,” Memo implored again, weakened by the stress of kid shenanigans. “Please.”

Saba grumbled in protest, but delicately stuck their tongue out for the lightest taste.

[attr="class","wownewpoke"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]For a long time after their little trip to Cyberspace hell and Alex’s injuries, Memo had been adamant that he was not challenging Alex’s gym.

He was going to, in no way shape, form, or reason, give himself the chance to contribute to any further harm to he person he loved most in this world.

There had been some verbal convincing. And some physical convincing. And some special physical convincing. Either way, ultimately, he was convinced.

He selected a long green pool noodle and gave it an experimental swing. It whacked satisfyingly against the other noodles racked up like spears in a castle courtyard.

“This one will do nicely,” he said, “for when I kick your butt.”

Nike, his Flygon, trilled happily in excitement. She imagined the butt-kicking to be a bit more literal, probably.

[attr="class","samjerpoke"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]He doesn’t want to bring Alex specifically for… reasons. Reasons that he knows he should feel bad about. But climbing up a volcano with a magic drum is one thing and willingly diving through a rift into another universe full of unknown dangers is completely another.

He knows they’ve talked in the past about babifying Alex for his bleeding condition but Memo could literally never forgive himself if something were to happen so close yet so far from home that would cause Alex’s death.

But Anna doesn’t need to know that, so he just gives her as confident a smile as he can.

“I’ll be careful. Cross my heart.”

He swallows a sigh. Alex has a temper and it has become increasingly more hair-trigger, of late.

“I’ve already pulled in the police and any military we have stationed here,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck. Looking at Alex, he says, “We’re really not an island. With the dome gone, we can get supplies in and out. We can move people away from the damaged zones.” Looking at Anna, he says, “Unfortunately, I’m not sure we have time to wait for the League to figure this out. I’m also not sure the League does have it entirely under control.”

He pulls up a stool and sits, because he doesn’t want to lecture, but he also kind of does.

“Fact of the matter is dahlia goode, and her council’s decisions-- regardless of their overall intent-- have put Fortree and its citizens in danger. While I can accept they couldn’t possibly expect these specific repercussions, I refuse to believe they didn’t prepare for any.”

Alex was convinced the League was going to wash its hands of them entirely. Memo wouldn’t let that happen, of course.

“But we also can’t go screaming up to her doorstep and demand-- a blood price, or something,” he adds, with a pointed look at his boyfriend. “We may not be able to keep the people totally calm, but we can avoid panicking them any more than they already are.” Fortree is a bit of a tinder box at the moment. “I’m trying to get a meeting with her.”

I just wanted to get my feet underneath me, he thought, wincing internally at himself. It was silly to expect him to be able to take a breather, in and amongst all this chaos. How Alex thought they were going to be able to go on vacation was a complete mystery to him.

Still, this wasn’t Anna’s fault. Well, it wasn’t all Anna’s fault, though he had to admit her blind faith in Dahlia’s League was a bit disheartening. She didn’t understand that he couldn’t just sit and wait for the League to decide Fortree was a priority. His willingness to roll over at the Ranger conclave was proof enough of that-- those decisions had led to this, after all.

He tilted his head questioningly.

“A proposal?” He echoed, and his tone was polite even if her words made his gut twist with dread.

[attr="class","samjerpoke"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]In most unhelpful fashion the first thing that pops into his head when Alex yells what are those is the shoe meme. Thankfully while his brain was supplying PokeTok visuals Alex was leaping into action, intercepting the incoming Kartana (though Memo did not know what they were) and filling the air with fire. Eurgh. Fire.

With Alex in the air and Remiel pulling out some whacky ghost-type moves down here, Memo keeps close to Elinor in an attempt to protect the councilwoman-- though he’s starting to feel more and more useless by the minute. This is going to be another one of those events where he does absolutely nothing, isn’t it?

A second wave of Kartana churned the air, shards of sunlight glinting through the clouds off their impossibly sharp paper edges.

“Councilwoman, you’re hurt,” he said, helpfully, for lack of anything better to do, using his general knowledge of injury care from leading rangers into battle to lift her wounded arm above her heart and apply pressure to the slice to help stem the bleeding while she attempted to… commune with the Kartana? Must be a politician thing.

Luckily it didn’t seem like any major arteries were damaged because once they were working against her blood pressure the bleeding slowed. He tore off a strip of his shirt to bandage the wound. Her eyes went wide and he followed her gaze just as Remiel was yelling--

“Oh, shit.” In a burst of light, his Togekiss was out again, but instead of taking off northward with Elinor and Remiel, he flew straight up, working against the pull of gravity to Kirby-star up to where Alex was and offer some extra firepower, literally.

The first line of Kartana broke upon them, but Puck was fast enough to keep out of the way, zigging and zagging as he led them on a merry through the blistering puffs of flame Alex’s Delphox continued to spit. Memo would channel them into a funnel and run them through the flamethrower, diverting their attention from the rest of the group in an effort to buy them time to escape.

Self-sacrifice wasn’t necessarily a Ranger skill, but it was a Guillermo special, and that made it so.

One lucky Kartana made it through their evasion tactic and jabbed Puck in the stomach, causing him to buck up in pain. Memo went airborne for a second, waving his arms and feeling his gut drop; the bottom edge of Aira’s flamethrower bubbled across his back, like a casserole under the broiler. The smell of burning cotton and the faint scent of cooking meat filled the air for just a second as he squeezed his eyes and bit his lip against the pain.

He managed to catch himself on Puck’s back, three-point landing and driving the Togekiss down. “We gotta go!” he yelled, as he flexed his shoulders and felt the skin crackle up across the back of his neck; but he wouldn’t leave without Alex.



+ personal prompt ranger expertise scattered in some wound care and his normal self-sacrifical bullshit to make sure everyone gets away
+ prompt 06 suffer the status condition burn
+ Alexei Ivanov can we run away now

[attr="class","samjerpoke"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]The request is a kind of summons, Memo realizes, though until this exact moment he hadn’t known what he was trying to summon.

It had been simple: help each other get stronger by playing off of each other’s strengths. Alex was amazing in the air, like he and his Pokemon were the same creature, the same being. Memo, meanwhile…

…yeah, he was struggling to come up with a positive description of his fighting style. He didn’t really even have a style, per se. But maybe that was it! He was creative. There. There you go.

But he did have a tendency to throw himself face-first into the fire and think about the consequences later.

Alex, meanwhile, didn’t enjoy traditional battles. So they could consider this a trade.

“The thing you’ve got to realize about fighting,” he explains, stretching in the light streaming in from the Gym’s open ceiling-- he’s wearing several layers because it’s still freezing and he hates the cold-- “is it’s not really the big guy you gotta worry about.”

He says this as an old pro. He’s lived on the streets, slept under park benches, woken up to strange people in his hostel rooms. He knows this grind. It isn’t the big people you have to worry about.

It’s him. And the people like him. Wiry, clever, quick. Survivors.

[attr="class","samjerpoke"]