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As so normally seems to happen, everything begins to spin out around them in spectacular fashion.
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Molly helps him up and frowns at the trickle of blood steadily leaking from the solid gash in his calf.
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His teammates begin to call out attacks and moves but Thomas finds his confidence shaken to his core. He looks up at Molly with pleading eyes, expression clouded with fear. His Gardevoir is greatly affected by her normally stoic trainer’s sudden collapse. She telekinetically lifts him, settling him bridal style in her arms, and whisks him away, retreating with the rest of their company.

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“What kind of cruises have you been on?” Thomas asks, the laughter in his tone vibrating in the half-liquid air. He continues to lead on, buoyed by a sense of confidence he hadn’t felt since he was young-- several surgeries ago, and continents away.
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His conviction keeps him going until he steps on a piece of warped flooring and it gives beneath him, his forward motion transferring to a downward impetus as he topples forward. Something sharp bites into his calf and he swallows a hiss, gritting his teeth together. Molly surges forward.
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The entire ship lurches. Black smoke begins to drift upward from the hole where Thomas’ leg is now disappearing. His Gardevoir helps him shift backward, his confidence slightly shaken.
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“Maybe… we save the rest of it for next time,” he says, sounding only slightly nervous.

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“I did, yes,” he says, testing the stability of his footing as he steps down a level, ensuring he doesn’t slide on the ice-slick stone. “And though I greatly enjoyed it, there is only so long one can spend sitting on a shelf.”

He grins in the low light. “Despite my affinity for them, I am not a book, and age does not look quite so noble on me.”

They carried on. Thomas paid little attention to the Pokemon around them, caring more for the company.

“I’ve lectured on about myself. What about you?” he cocks his head, cheeks ruddy with exertion and cold. “What is it you seek in these grand caverns?”

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He watches with grim fascination as the little ridges continue to sprout between his knuckles, puckering the skin and breaking free like a Growlithe’s set of adult teeth. Thin tendrils of blood bloom in the water, and maroon swirls that cloud around his fingers.
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It is an odd thing, to behold one’s hands. Used so often and so often taken for granted. He remembers, once upon a time, when his hands seemed to be the only thing on his body that functioned on the regular. He had metal plates in his spine and a bum leg. But his hands, with graceful long fingers and wiry strength, capable of so much…
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“More’s the pity,” he says, softly, letting them fall by his sides for the moment.
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He was untouchable, once. He can be so again.
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The stinging pain is nothing compared to what he deals with on a daily basis. He gives mint frost a small smile. “Yes, I’m fine. Thank you for your concern. Shall we try the front door, then?”
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giada morgan , wreathed in bone-white seashells, suggests kicking in the front door. Then ollie morales calls his Lanturn out and just… blows a hole in it. Thomas’ mouth thins into a line. “Well. there’s tact, and then there’s… whatever that was. We continue.”
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He pauses, briefly. “Giada, dear, you--,” he’s about to tell her of her new ornamentation (which is quite fetching, in all truth) when something dark wriggles free of the destroyed ship; it takes a moment for Thomas to realize it is not One Thing but Many, as the serpentine bodies break apart from the singular mass and twenty maws of gnashing teeth flash in the low, ambient bioluminescence.
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At present, he is the only one who is bleeding. So of course they all track on him.
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Molly is quick to act, eyes flashing magenta and casting hypnosis as a protective barrier; any that touch it fall into slumber and drift towards the abyss below. She can only do so much, however, and one Huntail slips by-- just about to dig it’s teeth into Thomas’ leg when, in a burst of light, the Huntail is suddenly subsumed by a massive, red mouth.
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A sea monster of unparalleled comparison, Thames dwarfs even the size of the group of serpents as a whole. The Gigantamax Gyarados, caught as if by accident during the Splashfest festivities the previous summer, looms above them all. With one flick of her tail, she has consumed many of the Huntail and Gorebyss, leaving the remainder scattered in the space between.
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“Thames shall stay here and watch our six. Into the woods we go, we go.”
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And he stepped into the breached hull.

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Despite their strange surroundings and the proportionate unknown of his comrades, Thomas is very fond of the little party they’ve accumulated. He supposes it all has to do with the fact his superiors could never quite beat the socialite out of him.
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While Giada and Mint prefer to swim through the air, Thomas keeps his feet firmly on the ground. Having a bum leg and metal in one’s spine will do that to a guy.
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Giada points out the odd growth on the stranger’s shoulder and when basic attempts to dislodge it don’t work he seems to just write it off in a way that has Thomas’ mouth crooking up into a smile.
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“Not a bad idea,” he says, of Ollie’s suggestion they explore the remains of an alien-appearing vessel, not too far away from them. As he passes Mint hovering in the… the air? He adds, “It is quite a swimpressive wreck.” And gently elbows him.
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The puns were not lost on him, entirely.
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His bias for remaining on his own two feet is tested by the breaks and gaps in the caverns and tunnels, and he does, eventually, find himself having to slightly jump and breaststroke towards the strange fixture on the sea? Floor. Molly assisted with moving him along by providing a gentle wrapping of psychic energy so he didn’t have to use his legs all that much.
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Nearing the vessel, he once again returns to standing, thumbing across the back of his hands to ease the strange burning sensation building there. He doesn’t think much of it-- he lives with chronic pain every day of his life, after all-- and it’s only when he reaches up to brush fingers across letters (‘QUE, and then a big dent mars them) that he realizes--
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--between his knuckles rise small ridges of flesh, sharp and pointed into triangles. They seem to grow even as he watches in abject horror as the skin splits and a faint trickle of blood peels away into the water. Something shiny, pointed, and slightly serrated protrudes from his skin.
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“What. On earth.”

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