[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]Fox didn’t respond to Lars’ instructions because he was already moving, ducking into a side hallway and bursting through a door. With a series of precise kicks and punches, he knocked down a rush of guards that came at him.

“The boxes--,” he said, pointing, “--across the way.”

The leadership would never sit in the cheap seats; they were up in glass-encased viewing boxes, lounging and smoking and drinking and eating fine food.

“Phage,” Fox released the Duosion, “future sight!”

Phage glowed faintly pink for a moment, but nothing else perceptibly happened.

[attr="class","samknoxt"]
boxing bouncers
Laurence Anderson

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉

[attr="class","icon"]

Whomever his new friend was, she had a very expressive face; it was not difficult to discern that she was having a difficult time finding empathy for the rather homely Cormorant, especially given its baby-eating tendencies.
[break][break]
“It’s hard,” he agreed, watching the little ones as they bobbed up and down on the smaller waves that crawled up the beach. “But our intervention here isn’t damning anything. Many of these little ones will get eaten by undersea predators, and the Cramorant will find food elsewhere. Our effect is quite small, in the grand scheme of things.”
[break][break]
He stood up, brushing sand off his knees, as the blonde woman brought her own parcel of terrapins to the surf. She requested Arceus bless them on their journey and Fox, to his credit, did not roll his eyes.
[break][break]
Then everything exploded: the Cramorant dove for the nest; Inari snapped its neck in her jaws with a vicious bite, shaking the seabird back and forth. Scores of other dark bodies were careening in, and now some Wingull had joined the barrage. A Lycanroc jumped in to join the fray.
[break][break]
Inari tossed the Cramorant with a heave of her head and settled her massive bulk down over a small array of nests, protecting them from the ravenous seabirds and snapping her jaws at those who came too close.

[attr="class","bottom"]Lydia Magnusson [break]

Fox gave the man a small smile and stepped past him into the office, taking a brief look around: neat, concise, organized… and everything shaded in yellow from the writhing mass of cocoons currently organically glued to the windows.

“Oh. Of course.” Fox shook Frank’s hand, smile growing apologetic. “I’m Fox.”

Introductions done, he stepped to the window, squinting through it.

“Mmm, I don’t like using the word ‘easy’,” he said, “but I should be able to handle it.”

He plucked a Pokeball off of his belt, rolling it in his palm.

“Nothing a little cold can’t fix. Do these windows open?”

Frank Caffey
for the swarm

☉

“That doesn’t answer my question!” Fox snapped, kicking his leg to dispel the black mist slowly creeping up his shins. “What does it do?! What am I going to see?!”

He shooks his head, and shoved Lars hard in the chest, pushing him away. His voice became thick, in word and brogue, and it becomes apparent just how much of his accent he fights down on a regular basis.

“Cannae hap’ we're standing 'ere talking. We need tae shift b’fore that-- that thing comes back, or b’fore we're tae exposed tae this drow. Move y’arse, commander.”

He stumbles a few steps forward, his vision blurring.

"None o' it's real, none o' it matters "

Laurence Anderson
stretch of the imagination

☉

Fox snapped his mouth shut, brows knitting together in a look of incredulous anger.

“Yes, I fucking saw it, Laurence,” he snapped, “I’m not blind--,”

He cut off abruptly as he felt something touching his ankle, slipping down the inside of his boot. With delayed horror, he looked down to see one of the little black tendrils of fog writhing over top the laces and curling against his lower calf.

“What…” he started, voice hoarse from shouting, “What do the… dark ones do…”

Laurence Anderson
stretch of the imagination

☉

“No one!” Fox yelled, frustrated and fed up with Lars’ inherent focus on what everyone was calling him. “It doesn’t matter! LOOK OUT!”

He grabbed Lars at the waist and dragged him to the side as a huge, hulking green figure came shooting through the gloom at them, footsteps crushing into the ground and leaving massive three-toed footprints that would have certainly smashed them into goo.

The strange, metallic-looking Tyrannitar wild charged past them and into the depth of the dream smoke.

“What the fuck was that?” Fox asked, as the monster screamed in frustration in the distance.

Laurence Anderson
stretch of the imagination

☉

[attr="class","icon"]

Fox huffs a sigh, eyes rolling for a final time.
[break][break]
“Just take my fucking hand, Lars.”

Lars seems to be talking mostly to hear himself and less for Fox’s benefit. The shouts and screams from the fog behind them warp and distort, sometimes far away, and sometimes right at the back of their necks. They range from ear-piercingly shriek to demonic and rasping.

Fox presses a hand in the center of Lars’ back, to let him know he’s still there. “Go, go!”

They’re running at full pelt, until--

Help me, Lachlann! A different voice, high, feminine, warped in pain and misery.

Fox stumbles, slows-- doesn’t want to stop, knows he shouldn’t, and Lars is still pulling him along--

--something big and green steps into their path, teal-colored lights flashing through the smoke.

Laurence Anderson
stretch of the imagination

☉

[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]Lars goes low and Fox goes high, vaulting over him and hurling Olera’s ball. The Gloom explodes out of her containment sphere and launches a deep purple toxic across the area directly in front of them, sending people screaming, clawing at their eyes, and gagging.

Another Pokeball reveals his Bayleef. “Guard the back door,” Fox orders, and the sauropod is off to do so, bringing people down with well-aimed magical leaf daggers stuck into thighs and ankles.

[attr="class","samknoxt"]
boxing bouncers
Laurence Anderson

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉