Memo had a feeling Alex would be struggling with the heat-- it was like a furnace out here, and though Memo felt it, he didn’t mind as much. He was always running hot so it wasn’t as much of a factor.

“You look like you’re positively melting,” he agreed, voice full of endearment. Even red-faced, covered in sweat, and decidedly over-dressed, Alex was so cute.

Around them, the terrain lifts and falls. Oona rushes ahead and back again, a being of constant movement. Bazelgeuse walks a comforting patrol next to Memo and Alex, head on a swivel, looking out for any danger.

The ground turns dark. Lightning bolts of magmatic heat zip through the obsidian, vein-like fissures betraying the mountain’s living, breathing core. They descend down into a tunnel, the air a thick crush of warm sulfur. Oona charges forward, ricochets off a wall, and flips backwards, a quick pew-pew-pew of motion that sends the red-and-white weasel leaping in a three point arc around the dead end.

Alex’s Arctovish makes short work of a barrier as well as bringing a well-needed chill to the air, cooling the sweat gathering on the back of Memo’s neck. He frowns in consternation. Releasing Zuza, he gestures vaguely at the issue at hand.

“Help?”

She fixes him in a stern, but loving, stare, the air around her beginning to warp and sizzle as the psychic energy rolls off of her in waves. She begins to disassemble the wall, rock by rock, pink light leeching into hidden seems and pulling it apart; the extraneous clumps of stone are tossed over their heads to fall behind them.

It’s a slow but frenetic process that doesn’t quite get them all the way through. After a while, even the stoic Zuza loses patience, and she shakes the entire barrier roughly with a focused confusion, a frustrated, final blow.

It crumbles to dust before them.

“Easy as pie,” Memo says, flashing his unicorn a thumbs up and rubbing a gentle hand down her sweat-slick neck.

---

psychic type moves totaling 140 power
psychic (Base power 90) + confusion (base power 50)
wearing

Alexei Ivanov

☉

“Thanks,” Memo says, unable to stop from preening under the (region renowned) professor’s praise-- even though Titanic was doing all the work. He patted her head gently, like a proud father appraising his mid-life crisis sports car. “She broke my nose when I first found her. And then almost broke my neck when she evolved.”

For her part, Titanic was content to float calmly in the shallow water, occasionally moving forward with a little twitch of her fins or pulse of her tail when the currents moved her about. She wasn’t at all bothered by Eva’s approach-- honestly, after sitting and drying out on the beach for fifteen minutes trying to get Alexei Ivanov to climb on her back, anything was preferable.

“She’s pretty calm,” Memo said, looking down in fond appreciation. “But she’s definitely a Ghost, of some fashion or another.”

Alex’s Ghost-dar had pinged fit to bursting, so that was confirmation enough.

“Oh, pictures!” Memo said, a lightbulb going off over his head. He stumbled forward a little bit. “I can get out of the way, hold up.” He sloshed up towards the shore.

Eva Morales

☉