He woke up slowly, like coming out of a night terror. His mind kept reverbing back on itself, like he was repeatedly waking and saying something, but then he realized he wasn’t actually await.

"Al-lex.”

Finally, finally, consciousness dug its fingers into his brain. He was so ungodly tired-- just wiped, completely.

He felt Alex’s wet face press into his shoulder. He felt him shaking. He weakly lifted one arm to set his palm on Alex’s back, surprised at the lack of strength in his own limbs.

"Alex.”

It was the only thing he could say. The only word remaining in his lexicon. For as much as Alex was physically clinging to him, he was clinging to Alex, mentally.

“‘m…. okay….”

Tl;DR

Alexei Ivanov

+70 MP for post in a spin-off thread
+50 MP for participating in a battle
+100 MP for getting your pokemon knocked out
+200 MP for losing a battle
+410 MP total

He was cold. He was so ungodly cold. He didn’t think it was possible to be this cold-- but he wasn’t shivering. It was like being in a dream: everything was muted and desaturated and blurring together.

He heard the distant sound of a familiar voice but he was too far gone to recognize it. He was barely holding on when something forced his chin up-- he curled, cradling Shivani closer to him-- and something soft and vaguely floral (he could still smell? touched his forehead.

Then everything went black.

He didn’t stir when Alex scooped him up. He was just limp and cold, and Shivani’s form tumbled to the ground. The heal pulse poured over him, and slowly, ever so slowly, the color began to return to his skin.

He coughed, soft, and then again, harder, a splutter accompanied by full-body cough. Faint purple flecks of darkness escaped him, hit the air, and dissipated.

"A--Alex…” his voice is destroyed. His eyes flutter open.

Shivani stirs in the dirt.

Tl;DR

Alexei Ivanov

+50 MP for post in a spin-off thread
+50 MP for participating in a battle
+100 MP for getting your pokemon knocked out
+300 MP for losing a battle
+500 MP total

Memo opens his mouth to give another order and coughs, instead. His mouth tastes like the memory of a split lip, a bit tongue-- old blood. He licks his lips and smears black ichor over them, another cough bringing more up to stain his teeth.

Shivani was torn between worrying about her trainer and continuing to fight her opponent. It is hard, to wield a weapon untrained, fresh. You’re constantly thinking about the weight of it in your arms, how to counterbalance with your legs; you make the most mistakes, new to the field.

Such is the case now. Shivani panics. She releases the chokehold she has on her vicious energy, and it dissipates with the sound of riotous, cruel laughter, shifting up into the air in deflated-balloon shaped spirits. So concerned with the ebb and flow of Memo’s life-force, she didn’t catch the Tsareena’s movement until it was too late; the mangosteen limb crashed against her, dealing the force of her attack back two-fold. She is knocked back out of her effluvium and hits the ground, bouncing once, twice, like a tiny, limp doll.

Harmless. Defenseless.

In his last conscious act before the darkness overtakes him, Memo lurches forward, throwing one arm out to drag her back into the cradle of his body, forming a protective shell around her. His forehead comes to the earth as he tries to remember how to breathe.

Tl;DR

shivani the banette's mega evolution ends!
shivani the banette is hit by payback! she faints!
suffer or feel nothing.

Elisabeth Fiorelli Alexei Ivanov
+40 MP for post in a spin-off thread
+50 MP for participating in a battle
+100 MP for getting your pokemon knocked out
+200 MP for losing a battle
+390 MP total

They’d discussed this before, briefly, in that very Memo way where Memo talks and Shivani listens. It had been their shtick, their gimmick, their bond since day one.

You know, your Pokedex entry says that Mega Banette’s power is so great that it even curses its own trainer. Wonder what that means?

It’s a disconcerting feeling, he thinks, to slowly feel your life seeping out of you. It feels like laying on a limb for too long that the blood supply has been dimmed and its gone numb-- but in every single one of his extremities, from his fingertips to his nose; tunnel vision steadily starts to set in, like the noises of the battle are so very far away.

Elisabeth Fiorelli will notice the sclera of his eyes slowly starting to turn black.

Almost stranger than the gentle feeling of gradual death was the rage that exploded within him, watching the Toxapex heal while Sibella had to suffer so. His revenge is stolen from him when its called back into its Pokeball.

“Shivani, gunk shot,” he orders, but it comes out warped, warbled, like a shout wrapped in a whisper in a voice not his own. Shivani hesitates, for the briefest of seconds, casting him a concerned look over one shoulder. “Do it. Now.”

It doesn’t hurt. For that, at least, he's thankful. The veins on his neck begin to darken. Shivani conjures up a foul-smelling beam of ichor that fires through the air at the Tsareena.

Memo doesn’t realize when he drops to one knee.

Tl;DR

shivani the banette is mega evolved (turn 2/3)
shivani the banette uses gunk shot!
suffer or feel nothing.

Elisabeth Fiorelli Alexei Ivanov
+30 MP for post in a spin-off thread
+50 MP for participating in a battle
+50 MP for getting your pokemon knocked out
+130 MP total

Chess was far too strategic for Memo’s playbook. He much preferred to kill with kindness, and, in the event that tactic failed, he usually followed up with a lot of firepower.

Most of his strategies were self-sacrificial, actually, which was a fact that was going to drive Alexei Ivanov into an early grave. Probably.

Sibella was almost over the Toxapex, now, the waves of sound rolling off of her forcing it into the ground, blowing out chunks of earth and sending pebbles flying. The temperature dropped again, the constant flux of it making him even number than he already felt, and before he realied it he was running, running towards his stupid, self-sacrificing dragon, wondering why in the god damn were all of his Pokemon so fucking selfless.

She froze in an arch above the Toxapex, caught somewhere between diving on it and drawing in glimmers of moonlight from the sky. After a seemingly long battle of wills, Sibella versus her body’s innate reaction to the cold, she slouched, falling to the side seconds before the beam of her Pokeball could reach her.

He’d screwed up. He’d imagined, in his head, this beautiful, shocking, ethereal aerial battle, where he dove around his enemy on the back of his mount, delivering sharp and destructive attacks from the safety of the air.

But now Sibella was down and he was far, far too close for comfort.

Before he could really think another Pokeball went off in a pulse of red light and Shivani was a dark shadow streaking through the air. He hadn’t even realized he’d reached for her Pokeball. He didn’t realize anything except how fucking angry he was. Angry that this kept happening. That he kept seeing his friends get knocked down for his sake and he didn’t fucking do anything about it.

Shivani’s mega stone began to rock and glimmer with a strange, dark light. Ephemeral, she looked at him, her zippered face turned into a frown.

You know not what you do.

But he was pretty much done with this losing shit. His vision goes black for a blink and a moment later she hovers between him and the Toxapex.

He didn’t think his body could go colder.

Tl;DR

sibella the noivern attempts to use moonlight but the move fails!
sibella the noivern faints!
shivani the banette is called out and mega evolves!
suffering awaits.
Elisabeth Fiorelli
+20 MP for post in a spin-off thread
+50 MP for participating in a battle
+50 MP for getting your pokemon knocked out
+120 MP total

Sibella wasn’t in the air long before the temperature dropped and she cried out in pain. Ice crystals began to form on her wings and she was forced to the ground, ectothermic body fighting against lateral recumbency.

She landed opposite the Toxapex, icicles dangling from her ruff, forming over her dark skin. Her ears flared, the delicate membranes within pulsating with energy as she fired off a boom burst that furrowed the ground and drowned out the sound of all other noise-- but the icy wind made her sluggish, and she had little recourse save a slow but frantic retreat or attempted self-destructing.

As she continued to crawl forward, and much to Guillermo’s horror, it seemed she chose destruction.

Tl;DR

sibella is hit by icy wind! it's super effective!
sibella throws herself at the toxapex and uses boom burst! memo is horrified!
Elisabeth Fiorelli
+10 MP for post in a spin-off thread
+50 MP for participating in a battle
+60 MP total
im so sick of this mf coding i swaear tae god

One second he was offering someone help and the next the world seemed like it was being ripped apart around him. Whatever Littleroot had thrown at him before, this was certainly worse. Sibella managed to snag him up as she rebounded from her attack on Alexandra Briarwood and it was just barely in the nick of time as the ground began to rend and lurch beneath him.

It was a test of Sibella’s athleticism as the bat was forced to maneuver around pillars of stone that were forced into the air. Memo pressed himself close to her back, seconds away from closing his eyes and waiting for it to be over. But he trusted his Pokemon-- he did-- and she managed to pull them through it okay.

In the mass confusion and the sheer magnitude of the changing battlefield he lost track of Alexei Ivanov which, while alarming, was not something he could afford to focus on right now. Especially since--

--there was a strange feeling, like static electricity, but everywhere, everything, all at once. Sibella’s wings flexed once, then she plummeted the few feet to the ground, landing on her chest and sending Memo spilling overboard as the two of them tumbled a short distance, ending up in one pile of limbs and wings.

Memo huffed, the leathery flap of Sibella’s wing membrane rising and falling with his breath. His tailbone was bruised and he probably had dirt on his face and in his hair, but he was okay-- and Sibella was, too, by the way she popped up quickly and chirped. Their genial moment was short-lived as through the flying grit and distant sounds of battle a figure cut the haze. She was dressed in an amalgam of lime motorcycle suit and a cosplay of Snake Eyes from G.I Joe.

He found himself walking towards her as Sibella took to wing.

“You know, that’s exactly the kind of cliche shit I’d expect you boring punks to wear,” he said, brushing dirt off his shoulder.

---

Tl;DR
so i guess i kind of wasted my first turn? oh well. anyway this is the person memo was always supposed to be: talking mad shit and getting his ass kicked.
locks eyes with Elisabeth Fiorelli (love you boo)

☉

The scent of something warm and spicy filtered in through the bedroom door. It was tempting. Memo stared long and hard at himself in the mirror, wondering if maybe he should just… put it all back up and deal with it later. But he knew that if he didn’t do it now, while he had time, then later might not ever come around.

Alex appearing in the doorway drew his eyes away from the mirror.

“Oh, no, nothing’s wrong,” he assured, mouth curling into a small smile. “Just… dealing with this.” He pointed with the shears to his head, took one of the twisted ‘locs in hand, and snipped the last inch or so off, where it fell to the garbage bag he’d stretched out on the floor beneath his chair.

Alexei Ivanov

Memo’s shoulders physically creaked as Alex finally let go of his wrists. A second later and he was being tugged up.

With Alex leaning over Memo was the perfect height to press his forehead against his boyfriend’s, eyes fluttering shut, suddenly incredibly tired.

“You die,” he whispered, shocked at the seeming betrayal of his own voicebox. “In all of them. You you die in all my nightmares.”

[attr="class","mintag"] Alexei Ivanov

“Depends on the company,” Memo said, capping the eyeliner stick. He figured he’d fuck with it later. He reached his palms back and leaned back on the bed. “And how fast you vamoose when we get there.”

It was a gentle plea, said in a joking tone. Please don’t leave me.

“Yes,” he said, shameless and eager, excited at the prospect of it actually working. If Alex hadn’t put so much effort into his costume and makeup, Memo would literally be throwing himself at his boyfriend right now. In a dramatic, fake-swoony way.

“You hardly need your intuition to know I want to fuck you six ways from Sunday,” he said, aiming to get that red in Alex’s face fired up, “and maybe we can keep the ears on?”

Alexei Ivanov
this song has been stuck in my head since this mission came around

☉

“Yeah,” Memo said, thinking Alex was agreeing with him, thinking that was the end of it all, and they could move past it, “everyone’s stressed.” Now they could-gag- carve their pumpkins, eat some candy, watch Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, and have a nice evening.

Alex admonished him for the sheer amount of sugar he’d brought home. He doesn’t comment on how his pet names are worming their way into Alex’s vocabulary, but he notices it, and it makes him smile. “Have as much as you like. It’s for-- well, not all of it is for us. But it is for us. And I didn’t know how many Trick-Or-Treaters you usually get and, you know, with the dome, and supply shortages I-- I didn’t want to be underprepared.”

He was stressing again. He exhaled a long, measured breath.

His smile grew when Alex revealed what his pumpkin was going to be.

“Oh, that’ll be so cute. You should put them in a witch's hat or such.” He thought of their little gaggle of lambs all dressed up in costumes. “Actually, we should do that in real life.”

Alexei Ivanov
tricking or treating

☉