it's a one person job. it's a solo job. surely she can do this. that's what she keeps thinking to herself while she tries to unsuccessfully move the gaggle of sleeping pokemon out from the literal only way through the jagged pass. she's been here nearly an hour now and has had to sheepishly tell other hikers the trail is closed, please go back down, sorry for the inconvenience!

hoenn is weird, people! she can't help it!

she's tried everything. screaming. shouting. throwing dirt on them. letting oleg tickle their weird shiny scales, but the orthworms are all coiled around one another, content to hibernate for, like, probably eternity at this point. 

in a last ditch effort, she plops her phone down on olg's head. his eyes flicker and then he opens his mouth and starts blaring one of sven's newest tracks. 

what she doesn't anticipate is her rockstar childhood friend meandering up the path too, made to bear witness to the death metal lullaby coming from oleg's alien mouth.

Greyson Connors
mission - blocks your path

☉

okay, she definitely still misses monday, but this is way more than the woman has ever interacted with her. and - AND he's talking about environment science! she buzzes with excitement, geeky smile twisting up her lips as the rest of her raincloud thoughts clear. the sun is shining (well, the ultra crater moon is shining) and everything will be good!

"yeah and have you seen them when they're babies? they don't even evolve, but when they start to shed that outer layer of what i think is a crazy carapace made out of chlorophyll, they like, fill in with limbs. it's like they learned how to evolve without actually doing the whole magic show and sudden shock to their dna.

"they make me think of onions."

@haoyu

☉

"yeah! gotta be prepared for anything these days, y'know?" her family's lucky the cabin hadn't been swallowed up by the icelands, but the thought still haunts her. the environment's been on the fritz for years now. there's no telling what the future brings. 

all they can do is prepare for it!

"oh yeah, it sucks. they've had us working down to the bone with all the crazy it brought. i mean, not that i'm complaining that he died and we gotta work, just - well, you know." she plops down and rolls some of the sand between her fingers. 

"are you keeping busy? you look good! super sandy and windblown, but good."

Sasha Huang

☉

back here again, but this time without dr monday (Lulu Flint). she tries not to be sour about it, but she doesn't greet haoyu with the same enthusiasm as she might have her older friend (not that he'd notice, really, because even an unenthusiastic 'hello' is a million times more energetic than most anyone else's). 

kirin trots a few paces behind, nostrils flaring in greeting when she spies the grookey. after a few times of being here, she's less unsettled by the mountainous celesteela dotting the landscape below them.

she says, "hiya. ranger volosenkova reporting for duty. oop, watch out. these celesteela can leave you with a nasty leech seed if you're not careful." she gestures towards the ingrained root right beside him.

@haoyu

☉

sasha baby birds her, as per usual, and she's reminded with a brief stutter of why they hadn't talked in a very long time. she swallows some of the embarrassment that threatens to rear its ugly head and is thankful for the storm - it hides her struggling smile. 

she's fine, though, by the time they find a pocket of nowhere. kirin's big booty struggles to fit so saskia ends up recalling her. she plops down at an angle where the sand won't hit her as it brushes past and tugs off her go-goggles. 

"oh, i've never been in a sandstorm before," she says, "so i wanted to try it." as though that were the simplest thing in the world. 

she fishes some sand out of one ear and grimaces.

"wait, why're you out here?"

Sasha Huang

☉

it'll take a miracle and a half to get her back on track again because she is starry-eyed. enthusiasm sends an excited jolt all throughout her body, zipping through her veins, and she has to stopper herself from running all over his words with some of her own. 

but at the same time she's enraptured that someone - someone finally! - seems to get just as freaking excited as she does about this.

"like, it's so crazy to think that underneath us, literally everything is so connected. and they're all just up here living their own little planty lives, you know? we can learn so much about native resistances to root pathogens just by digging in some dirt. and now i'm like, okay guys why are we hopping to other worlds when we still barely understand this one?"

porter holmes

☉

there's a difference between a scary ghost story said around a fire out in the woods somewhere and a ghost story said within said haunted house, where the spirits of those left behind might not like that their dirty laundry is being aired. very unlike sasky, she hangs on to robin's every word, completely enthralled by the story, and even though she's right next to mimi, she absolutely doesn't see the yamask as it slowly congeals behind their storyteller. 

so she startles and yelps and nearly squishes morena as she falls over the glaceon in her hurry to get away from the scary thing.

"WAH, WAHNO, WAIT!" she says before dissolving into a fit of terrified giggles.

Mimi Hirose robin coello

☉

they are attacked. so much of this place hates them. it wants them out. she's meant to protect lands and their pokemon, even if they're not her own, and look what she's done. look at how they come at them and how monday tears them down so ruthlessly. 

saskia wilts and when oleg feebly goes to fight, she cradles him close like a teddy bear. 

their last time here together. because at the end of the day, she's not good enough. no matter what she does or how hard she tries, she just doesn't grasp it all the way. not fully. not completely. never like she's supposed to. 

the back of her neck prickles. her hand twitches. oleg hums mournfully and she looks behind them, eyes going glassy and then misting pink as, impossibly, she sees another moon rise into the sky. 

'wait, monday - look!" she says, turning, reaching, only to find she's already gone. 

Lulu Flint

☉

saskia can't see kirin's fur fluffing up, nor can she see it almost immediately relax when she reaches probing thoughts out to get a sense of their supposed adversary in the sandstream. some sembleance of familiarity graces her conscious and she tucks her head to push against saskia's back.

the ranger tips forward and trips into the intrepid adventurer, recognizing her as her arms come around her with an oof. 

"oh sasha HIIII!!!! what are you doing up here?" she shouts, though much of her voice is stolen by the wind. 

Sasha Huang

☉

she'd never met kyle lopez, but maybe she should have. after all, he was supposed to be the best of the best at what he did: training dogs. so many people have promised to help her with maugrim, but none have followed up.

sven works too many gigs. Greyson Connors is busy doing superhero elite stuff. and none of her other friends are dog extraordinaires. she wants to find him. she really does, because if anyone's gonna help her train maugrim, it's that guy.

but as it is with most things with sasky, she gets sidetracked by the first interesting thing she sees. a cute glitchy rotom is one of them.

"hiya!"

Zoey Hart

☉