Remiel Calcifet // rt: smog (2/2)[break]

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Lam looks back at Kyle with a lift of one brow. A quiet uhuhh following as the Tapu Koko hems and haws before them.[break][break]
“Can see why it might take that personally,” he replied with the shrugging lift of one shoulder. “Much as I like Tapu Koko, though, I’m not too sure I would, either.” It just seemed like more responsibility and expectation than it might’ve been worth.[break][break]
It was his home island’s patron, and the spirit was revered yes, but being tethered to it was a different thing entirely.[break][break]
“Maybe it feels a little extra spurned because you chose someone else,” he offers as his arm lifts to shield his face in the crook of it as sand is sprayed at them. “But that also makes it seem like you want to be mad.”[break][break]
But a challenge is a challenge, he supposes. And as laidback as Lam normally is, there’s a certain competitive streak that’ll always get the better of him. In a flash of light, the dachsbun that was trotting alongside him is swapped out for a steely corviknight.[break][break]
Butternut caws as the storm continues to whip up around them–sharp wings extending to shore up with IRON DEFENSE. A hand lifts to the flight goggles hanging around his neck. A keystone embedded in the side glows as it activates, and soon that same light engulfs the corvid as well.

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[attr="class","text"]“Fair enough. Still leaves an impression,” Lam replied, a short sigh growing wistful at the idea of being able to indulge in something so mundane and nice. But there they were, the both of them left fretting over their fallen pokemon. All of his bravado and bluster from the prior days were long gone.[break][break]
A moment that felt ridiculous, if he were to be wholly honest.[break][break]
His head lifted again at her suggestion, and Lam carefully watched the woman who really wasn’t all that far away. Neither of them were really all that much of a threat, were they? Not like this–that much was for sure. He looked up at Mac for a moment and the toxitricity shrugged, leaving it definitively in his trainer’s hands.[break][break]
Lam raised one hand, fingers curling in a thumbs up. “Yeah, yeah. Truce.” Maybe that would be frowned upon, but he was running on empty. His team was running on empty. Surely it wouldn’t be too problematic if a white flag waved from both sides for just a minute. He was on his way out, after all.[break][break]
Carefully, he collected his psyduck into her pokeball after another moment of fawning over her. Then, cradling his arm he flopped backward. Mac plopped down next to Lam in the sand to keep a quiet watch as both sides succumbed to short lived sleep.[break][break]
Granted, Lam didn’t realize she had drifted off too until he woke to see her there with her drowsy Sableye. Figuring Mac deserved as much rest as the others, he swapped the toxitricity for his xatu. Using TELEPORT made him nauseous, but by that point Lam wasn’t keen on being stopped by anyone else.[break][break]
Finding a random twig, he carved a succinct message in the sand for her before he made his exit–[break][break]
T H A N K S[break][break]
For a moment, it was easier to remember there were normal people mixed up in this. On both sides of the drawn line. And right then, it made him want to go home that much more.

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The shoulder pat is met with a lighthearted shrug.[break][break]
“Ha! Champion now, huh? One thing at a time.” It’s accompanied by a laugh, a shake of his head. “Gotta make it out of all this first before any of that can happen.”[break][break]
It’s grimmer than he cares to usually be. But that’s how all of these conflicts end up feeling, when push comes to shove. A momentary pause button slapped on his actual life because there’s no resolution in sight between the two groups.[break][break]
When he says he’ll think about it, though, he does mean it. And it was very true that he didn’t see himself in the same capable light. He didn’t fault Greyson in his encouragements. It was nice to be believed in.[break][break]
It just felt rushed. But isn’t everything sort of rushed in Hoenn?[break][break]
In the silence that elapses, he pauses when his friend does. “Yeah.” And by yeah, he means the lack thereof.
Lam whistles for his own pair, and Artichoke pops around the other side of the shipping crates while the flamigo flutters down to follow. His eyes flit to his decidueye. “You watch the cargo.”[break][break]

Then he looks back to Greyson. "Do you remember which direction he disappeared in?"

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onyx straub // rt: sea (3/3)[break]
(i dunk my son - i can take loss or draw?)[break][break]

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[attr="class","text"] “Dragons are nice and all,” he gave a Ladon a pat as if to emphasize the point, “but I think it unwise to underestimate these lil fellas!” The DRAGON PULSE did indeed blast Poppy back, but rather than continue to attack, she retreated to where her trainer waited—opting to use the allying dragon as a ROOST while she smoothed out her feathers.[break][break]
Now it was his turn to roll his eyes, though he didn’t fall for the bait and turn back toward her. “And my destiny is to be crushed under your heel, yada yada, I’m sure,” he replied dryly as Ladon’s wings beat furiously, as the dragon pushed the soundwaves out with aggressive force, switching focus away from the butterfree. Barreling toward the naganadel in an aimed DRAGON RUSH, it put her dragon between them.[break][break]
And what a lucky call that turned out to be.[break][break]
Dusted in the butterfree’s SLEEP POWDER a few of the pidove drift, suddenly drowsy with sleep. As Poppy lit on the top of Ladon’s head, the flygon zipped away and dropped lower so that Lam could catch the falling birds. It was only then that he shifted his mount to face her again.[break][break]
Only one of his normal flock evaded the incoming attack. A keen DETECT carrying the little bird out of harm’s way— but that didn’t mean he intended to be useless. While the other pidove were caught to nest in the slope of the flygon’s neck where Lam sat, this one darted away with blustery twittering.[break][break]
“The other thing is—pigeons are just so charming!” Lam chimed as he watched that one pidove on his own while the other three slept. “And persistent!” Emboldened, the pidove dove from above, tiny talons aiming to tangle in Elisabeth Fiorelli’s with furious little yanks and pulls.[break][break]
Lam cupped a hand around his mouth, “Consider yourself grateful he didn’t use other methods of retaliation!” After all, no one really likes getting hit on the head with bird shit, do they? “You foresee that in your destiny?”[break][break]
For a moment, his attention turned to his primary pidove, who continued her ROOST. “You almost ready to rock, Pops?” Her dark blue wings fluttered as she issued angry, determined coos with fresh revitalization.[break][break]
It was only a matter of choosing where to lock in.

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With the talonflame contained, he can turn back to the task at hand– but he realizes too late how exposed it’s left him. The sting catches him and sinks into the meat of his arm with immediate effect.[break][break]
The BRAVE BIRD drops down, with batter wings and beak and claw to push the beedrill back despite its now-larger size. Even at the cost of inflicted pain and sting, the corviknight caws with furor until Lam’s hand presses against his back with a low whistle that means pull back.[break][break]
Until he can get an antidote in his system, there’s no point in pushing forward. So he relinquishes the ground he had gained and pulls into a retreating maneuver, unsure if the beedrill and its hidden trainer will be appeased with this or if they’ll give chase. The flare of pain as toxin seeps from the point of puncture doesn’t keep him dwelling on it for long.[break][break]
It won’t keep him away for long, of course. The defense might be too impervious there, but he’ll find another way around.

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[attr="class","text"]He shrugs. “Fair enough– kinda lame banter, though. Just sayin’.” It’s probably stupid to goad the man behind the electronic mask too much. Though, it’s weird. He’s almost kind of familiar, in a way, but Lam doesn’t put too much thought behind it.[break][break]
There probably are people he knows playing for the other team right now. He’d rather not know.[break][break]
Indra lets out a flurry of squeaks as he’s battered back by the slicing cuts leveled at him. The bisharp’s speed catches it up, and soon the mouse’s fur is streaked with bright blooms of red. In a flash of light, he’s recalled–no matter how willing the alolan raichu was to continue, it’s Lam who’s unwilling to take the risk.[break][break]
Instead, a weavile takes Indra’s place, and it comes hurtling out of the pokeball with sharp claws that slash back with dark energy (NIGHT SLASH).[break][break]
Lam barely has the time to make the swap while still fielding moves from the other. “Maybe kinda tarty actually.” It comes out like a dry, unbothered observation.[break][break]
His hands meet the rocket’s forearms in the struggle to get a hold on him. It’s not like he’s trying to throttle the guy, he’s not that intense. It’s more of an attempt to take his feet out from under him as he hooks a foot around blue dude’s ankle and yanks back. “I’d rather get to a different dinner later in one piece, so thanks, but no thanks.”[break][break]
Despite the sheer size of the gyarados, Pepper holds fast, teeth sinking harder to its scaly side. As power builds in the back of her throat, she finally releases her jaws and lets the HYDRO PUMPblast at close range, the force of the underwater jettison propelling her backward.[break][break]

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[attr="class","text"]It was all he could do to keep his eyes open in the back of an examining room of Lilycove’s general hospital. Of course, it had been nauseating and bright, bursting pain when the doctor had to set his bone so that it could be properly bound in a plaster cast around most of his right arm.[break][break]
But then he’d been given the good painkillers which kept him from fidgeting and wincing, and Noodle sat on his lap throughout the whole thing. Numbed to it completely. Or mostly, anyway. Even more than that, though, the fatigue that he’d staved off over the course of the last few days finally crashed over him and he found his head lolling at moments before it snapped back up.[break][break]
He knew his decidueye was being similarly worked on–battered, mangled wing in need of even more repair than his arm. But he’d been ushered away from the pokecenter with the insistence that he return tomorrow after he’d looked after himself. Artichoke would be just fine with the Lilycove’s Joy.[break][break]
At least he felt level headed and calm this time. The pain was grounding, exhausting as he was. There had been no deaths among his pokemon this time. They’d all fought hard, and survived. It was good all things considered, and the losses he’d seen from others. The arm was also the worst of it. Sure, he had some scrapes and bruises from the scuffles he’d been in, but those weren’t so bad.[break][break]
Still, Lam knew how he looked. And that was cause for some uneasiness.[break][break]
As relieved as Lam was to be leaving the last of the seemingly endless battling and conflict behind, he was admittedly also a little reluctant to return to the haven of his home too. The FaceTime call he’d had with Rook earlier…well, that hadn’t gone well at all, had it?[break][break]
Maybe it was because he was mad enough at Lam that he didn’t really protest to the insistence that he didn’t need to meet Lam at the hospital. His stomach turned over, now with uncertainty of what waited for him rather than aching pain. Or both.[break][break]
He didn’t want to argue, but he felt like he was definitely still in sleep on the couch territory. Rook had been upset— not that Lam could fault him for that, but he felt that he’d done so much better![break][break]
It was probably dumb of him to think that nullified the reaction to a broken bone.[break][break]
He sighed as he settled up the last of the paperwork at the front desk and turned to let his xatu out for the quick trip home. But when he turned, he spied a familiar face in the waiting room, his heart both ached with relief and lurched with sudden nervousness at the same time.[break][break]
“Rook?” Noodle had already run over to his partner when Lam hadn’t been looking. “I thought… you didn’t wait at home?” Even if he was wary of incurring more frustration, the sagging droop of his shoulders and tiny smile made it obvious how glad he was to see the other.

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[attr="class","text"] Again, he feels the slight turn of his own awkwardness as Cian asks– no more than a small laugh slipping free until it finally clicks for the other.[break][break]
But then he’s quick to shake his head, both hands waving as his eyes go round.[break][break]
“Oh, no way! I couldn’t– that’s not a small thing.” It’s a kind offer though, really. “I can just ask my dad if he can spot us, it’s no biggie.”[break][break]
His dad isn’t exactly rich, either, but he still makes more than Lam has in the time since he moved to Hoenn. But he’s used to that. Never being even solidly middle class. It was never really an issue, so long as he could buy charcoals and birdfeed and cup noodles.[break][break]
“It’d be nice, though. Seeing home.”

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MATIAS SILPH // mission: dive into distortion[break]