Bash fought the urge to grunt when the man-- the doctor-- shifted awkwardly and leaned more of his weight on him than anticipated. It wasn’t his fault, really, that the size different was so awkward. “Counterweight, Fragarach,” he instructed, and the Doublade flexed and tugged, and that, in tandem with the guy’s shifting, made the going easier.

“No training. Just common sense.”

They pulled up to let the Voltorb pass, then hobbled together in the indicated direction.

“Do we let you down, now?”

benji sawyer

☉

“You have to worry about yourself too, you know,” Bash tried to argue, especially when a thin trickle of blood rolled down the man’s leg and smeared against his own.

Maybe it was petulant of him. Maybe he’d spent so long on his own, self-serving in the face of other’s self-serving, that he was unused to the idea of someone being self-less.

“I-- watch a lot of movies,” he half-babbles away his sudden disaster-preparedness in a pseudo-explanation. It is not a lie, but it is not the whole truth, either.

The man was significantly taller than him-- Bash was dwarfed even in the crook of his shoulder-- but between acting as a human walking stick and Fragarach levitating here and there to offset his hindered balance, they managed.

In their hobbling, they passed someone getting wheeled by on a stretcher, and paused as a Voltorb rolled across their own path, like an ominous red-and-white tumbleweed.

“Ok, doctor mister, where too?”

benji sawyer

☉

Bash freezes, eyes and recognition bouncing between man hand gun badge gun in quick succession-- his brain supplements hand hook car door, unhelpfully-- and he raises an eyebrow, half wondering if he was too chronically online and half in awe at the fact that the guy lived in a world of magic swords, giant blade-handed rodents, and electric sheep and thought a gun was going to be threatening.

Still, he doesn't make any sudden movements. He's not been shot before, but he can't imagine it feels great.

“My name’s Bash. I’m looking for a missing kid.” He points to the shoe print, and the handful like it that slowly disappear as the mud becomes thinner and the ground solidifies.

Fletcher Hyland

☉

Bash wasn’t a detective; he wasn’t a police officer, a League operative, or a Ranger. But he was, unfortunately, in the wrong place at the right time for one desperate mother to grab his arm and beg for his help-- she was asking everyone, anyone-- in finding her child. He could still feel the claw marks her fingers made in his flesh.

He didn’t think he was a good person-- he wasn’t doing this out of any sense of moral superiority, or even duty, really-- but he was (again, unfortunately) burdened with empathy.

Low-lying branches scratched against the back of his neck as he pushed through them, following the white and green flashes of Striga as she wove through the canopy. A shrill whistle caught his attention, and he came to stand underneath her.

There, in the tossed, loamy soil, spotted by the owl’s sharp eyesight, was a footprint.

It was very small and had a pokeball imprint on the tread-- a child’s shoe, certainly.

Striga shrieked again, and Bash looked up, another human-- this one an adult-- coming through the underbrush.

Fletcher Hyland

☉

It would be easy to say that Hoenn wasn’t normally so chaotic. It would also be wrong.

If it’s not cultists gathering in the hills, it’s war bubbling at the fringes of everyone’s vision. Bash would be lying if he said it didn’t seem like the region was balancing on a needle’s point. Maybe this rolling Voltorb death embargo was just a symptom.

Luckily enough, his injured man looks like he’ll pull through-- his leg has a gash in it, likely the result of some shrapnel or debris, but the blood is stemming, his color looks good, and he’s still breathing. Sort of.

A weak hand-- a large weak hand-- flaps at his forearms and Bash clicks his tongue. “God save me from the delicate flower of Hoennian manhood,” he grumbled, reaching out to take Fragarach in hand and sliding out of his jacket at the same time. With a quick slice he removed one sleeve and used it to hack-patch up the guy’s leg.

Flashing lights and more yells cut through the din. Emergency services have arrived, thankfully.

“What are you going to do? Crawl?” the sarcasm in his voice was bitter, but he pushed himself up, and continued to help, anyway. “Frag, help me get him up.”

The Doublade swiveled in the air, proffering her handles to the downed man to help lift him into some semblance of standing, wherein Bash could interject himself under an arm, and they could hobble to the next poor sod.

benji sawyer

☉

Petalburg wasn’t the normal gathering point for Voltorb. Its grassy knolls and old stone buildings attracted some of the more natural types of Pokemon-- birds, and bugs, and the like.

Not veritable hordes of rolling Voltorb, flashes of red like landmines in a thick blanket of fog. As he watched, one of Petalburg’s main streets entirely vanished, leaving him and the assorted group of daily travelers appearing to be floating on a mist-shrouded plain.

Bash wasn’t really the type to try and help or protect others, but he felt it prudent to point out the common sense of the matter.

“We should try a different way,” he said, begrudgingly looping them all in together in an attempt to divert them away from the street filled with rolling bombs.

Half of them didn’t seem to notice he’d spoken, heads bowed to their phones, and the other half snorted or made derisive noises. All of them charged ahead.

Bash pressed his fingers into his eyes. “Just walk away, Bastion. Just walk away.”

Then the explosions started. The fog began to billow and burst, like bilious bubbles on a rotting corpse. The smell of burnt stone and charcoal and ozone and electrical charges.

And the screaming. Human and Pokemon.

“Oh, god damn it.” Fragarach was in his hands as he carefully stepped into the clearing mist, coming to the first bloodied body and the blown-out crater next to it.

He let his Doublade go, who set up a small perimeter to gently knock away any rolling Voltorb, and pressed his hands into the bleeding wound on the man’s leg. Someone nearby was still coherent and babbling for help into a cellphone on speaker.

Bash just hoped they made it in time.

benji sawyer

☉