Having come from the caramel apple stand and holding two caramel-dipped apples (one had extra chocolate, which he was biting into) he then heard a familiar voice.

“There you are!” he exclaimed as he made his way over, fighting through the crowd of people that were swarming the area to either get food, get souvenirs, or fall in line for the rides—or all at once, really.

Once he’d arrived, he handed her the other caramel apple to take.

“Here you go, I got you a caramel apple,” he offered her. “Can’t miss these, they’re really tasty.”

He the chuckled at the ‘baby holder’ that had a curious little Riolu strapped in it.

“Aww, cute!” he tilted his head in the Riolu’s direction.

---

prompt: offer a carnival treat to someone else.

Count on his words failing him at that exact moment—what was that interjection the Galarians loved spamming… oh, right. ‘Bloody hell’!

(Not that he’d ever hear Guillermo Marceliño saying it but then again, hearing him actually saying it would be hilarious!)

“I am so sorry my mind just decided to clock out of the building!” he continued, embarrassment coloring his face as he remembered. “You see, uh…”

He looked around.

“Give me a few minutes, let me just get that Wooloo balloon.”

One quick exchange later, he returned with aforementioned Wooloo balloon trailing behind him. It was at this point he remembered what he wanted to ask her.

“Oh, right! Do you… do you do autographs? I’ve been trying to cobble together a gift for… for someone and I wanted to surprise him with music stuff. Th-that is, if you don’t m-mind!”

Great, Alex… just great.

---

prompt: buy a balloon Pokémon.

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t so hot with that… Magikarp Fishing mini-game booth over there…

How many paper nets had he ruined just trying to catch one?! Well, he knew that if Guillermo Marceliño was there watching him, the other would’ve literally schooled him in the art of winning things from said carnival.

(As he personally maintained: all of the booths offering prizes were a fucking sham! Honestly! They were rigged so bad!)

So now here he was, wandering around (surprisingly, without his boyfriend beside him because well, the other was most likely trying to prove him wrong that the booths weren’t rigged and all that) alone, and had spotted what he thought were balloons—

Aw, none of them looked like Phione. But one of them looked suspiciously like a Wooloo…

Before he could even approach the seller and buy a balloon off of them, he saw a literal explosion of pink, and—

“Oh, hello!” he began, waving with one hand and shaking the other. “Wait, aren’t you the—”

Count on his memory to utterly fail him right then and there. However, he was more than certain she was one of the musicians on the rise in the region, that was certain!

---

prompt: reference a magikarp fishing game.

So he’d found a… okay, that was a shocker. An actual Clamperl.

(Wasn’t last year’s goal a little different, though? Or was his perception of the passage of time so fucked up he was getting shit mixed up already so soon?)

Either way, today was another day to dive—so what would he find next in the churning, dark waters of Slateport Beach?

Down for a quick dip with just one floatie on an arm!

(That was silly.)

He idly wondered what and how his boyfriend would think if the other saw him here… trying his shit luck again at the dunk tank.

Because he could honestly swear, the last time there was a dunk tank around he would always end up missing the throw!

So was this like, making up for lost time?

“Sorry!” he yelled as he threw the Pokéball-sized baseball with as much force as his noodly arms could muster.

He wondered how his boyfriend was doing—he knew the other was looking for an excuse to go surfing, but alas no Mantine Surfing this year.

(Maybe next year again? Was it like those rotating things that came and went so as not to get people too sick of them every now and then?)

He then checked the contents of the bucket, before realizing that it was time to take another dip—and he had only one floater on, this time, just to be on the safe side. Even if it made him look a little lopsided…

Into the murky surf he dove!

“I’ll… I’ll keep that in mind,” he remarked quietly at the words of advice that were imparted on him. He knew that there was going to be a long road ahead of him, however—what better Pokémon to accompany him than—

“Carina…?!” he exclaimed as he saw the familiar shape of a Ribombee approaching him—however, the voice that came out of the minuscule Pokémon’s mouth was anything but nice.

“Oy, this the guy I’m accompanying?” the little fae-like Pokémon asked the other, before getting no answer in return. “Yikes, you look like you’d trip over with a single gust of wind!”

What…?

He couldn’t help but crack a quip or two.

“Ex—excuse me,” he began as the Ribombee then alighted on his shoulder, “…are you really like this?”

“What’cha think?!”

Oh, shit.

The good thing about this was that he was aware of Cobalion’s existence—hell, he knew of the existence of all of the Swords of Justice running around here—and he had to fight the look that was about to rise on his face from appearing because just how many Unovan legendary Pokémon were running around so far from home?!

The moment they descended into the ground, he had to brace himself—but this was the path he’d already chosen for himself.

(Well, to be fair, it had taken some time before he decided to make this trip. However this was going to be a long one, and there would be no returning at this point.)

“Bring your worst.”

He hoped the other didn’t have to ask him to engage in close-quarters combat; as there was a very particular reason he couldn’t do that. At least, he wasn’t ready to share the reason yet.

“That’s good, at least,” he hummed quietly once she reaffirmed that the other man was willing to talk things out with her at some point in the future.

“None of that sudden breaking up for no reason at all business.”

He had a suspicion as to why the other man may have reacted the way he did—it also may have had something to do with the ‘peasantry’ back in that blasted version of Galar sharing features that reminded them of the people they knew here in this world.

“Because, Miss Elise, and I shit you not, if anyone. And I mean anyone, does that to any person I consider a friend. They won’t know what the fuck’s going to hit them.”

Was it just him or did his voice get a little scary there for a few moments? A literal ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment.

---

who ordered even more emotional damage?! timelined after this as if he didn’t have enough already good grief

“Yeah,” he remarked with a concerned furrow of his brow. All things considered, Washi had been like that even before he’d ended up with him.

“The friend of mine who gave me him said that he’d be going on a long journey. As to when he would be coming back, I have no idea—however yeah… he’s just a little quieter than the rest of this peanut… gallery hovering around my feet,” he added with a chuckle as the other four Rufflet were now all busy pecking and snapping at the treats he’d scattered around him—anything for the noise to quiet down.

“Must be because my friend, who was his previous owner, was also quiet. But observant,” he went on as the more subdued Rufflet began hanging around her more.

“Aww, he likes you,” he cooed as he then turned to the stink-eyeing red-plumed Braviary and gave him some treats, before sharing the rest with the other avians that were just about ready to take off for their afternoon nap.

The moment she mentioned that she had a Farfetch’d variant, he looked over.

“Wait. Wait, wait, hold up—you have a—wha?”

He was still not over the fact that his boyfriend’s Cursola was white and not pink.

Just like Guillermo Marceliño had told him sagely before, “All the Corsola in the Galar region are dead.”

He swore the entire… concept behind the dunk tank was ‘cursed’.

It had… last year had really turned him off from lingering too long around here—at least unless the other half of his soul Guillermo Marceliño was sitting on the throne ready to be iterated sent to an early unexpected bath…

“Am I really going to subject myself to this again?” he muttered, picking up the Pokéball-sized baseball and flinging it as best as he could.

Never mind if he was noodle-armed and all that shite.

He was more than certain one of his wily ovines who was back home at Fortree right now was sneezing his face off…

“How? He decided to be a cute little… oh, djinni, let me just show you the pictures,” he went on, quickly retrieving his phone from his pocket and then scrolling all the way back to a certain point in the camera roll—it was a good thing they’d taken pictures of that day!

“See, see that Wooloo with the little crown accessory behaving like a useless Yamper? That’s him. That’s William. Literally embarrassed me in front of Memo,” he recounted, unable to hold back the fit of laughter.

It was just too much!

And things afterward had never been the same for the two of them.