The sight of all of those weird magma Pokémon reminded her of the various volcanic peaks back in Alola.

There was even a particular ‘fable’ going around about how one of the most active volcanic peaks had some sort of guardian deity that was pissy enough to require cigarettes and alcohol as a periodic sacrifice to keep the volcano from losing its fucking shit.

“That is so messed up,” Andrea muttered, grumbling. Her daily training grounds were now desecrated with all manner of literally ‘living lava’ Pokémon. “Come on, hurry up and get moving!” she groaned, crossing her arms over her chest and waiting for the slowpokes to clear the hell out so she could go climb the mountain in peace!

…then again, she had an afterthought and threw a vacant Pokéball at the horde, who knew if she was going to get lucky.



+ @tag
+ referenced a Pele mytho in the entire second 'paragraph'.

“What the—fuck?!”

That was all Andrea had time to scream before the ground literally fell out from beneath their feet!

She was screaming—for all of five seconds before she realized that she had a Flying-type Pokémon who could literally save her ass! Rummaging through her pockets, she found the Pokéball she was looking for and released her Staraptor, who emerged from the burst of red light in mid-air.

The screaming echoed all around, but the Staraptor was faster, quickly swooping in and using Wing Attack to blast away some stray projectiles before catching Andrea on its back.

“Tom, Sel, what the fuck are you—?!” she exclaimed, hanging on for dear life as they continued to fall. Gods, the wind was too loud and she couldn’t hear herself thinking!

+ Raziel Beckett, Selena Desmarais, Thomas Benoit
+ using Wing Attack! (Flying-type move!)

“Huh? No. Not that I remember,” Andrea remarked, seeing the strange thing that was pulled out of the bedrock that looked like…a slab of something.

There were… words on it? Blowing on the surface before eventually wiping it down with one of her arms, she made out the words, but… that was it.

“…the fuck’s this supposed to mean?” she asked, turning it every which way. “That’s it? That’s all it says?!”

Grumbling, she turned her attention to the wall and turned to face them. “The shit’s this supposed to mean anyway?” she grumbled in Kalosian, before pulling out another Pokéball and throwing it forward, revealing a hyperactive Gible.

“Go for the lower left… but don’t get too excited and bring the wall down, okay? Dragon Rush!” she continued, switching back for a few moments before watching the little dirt land shark throw itself at the lower-left spot, digging away with its tiny, furious little paws.

+ Raziel Beckett, Selena Desmarais, Thomas Benoit
+ using Dragon Rush! (100 BP)

“Hey, it’s not my fault I was swept up with trying to better my physical know-how!” she ribbed back in Selena’s direction as she noogied the pinkette back in teasing.

“Can’t let my skills deteriorate now can I?”

To her brother, she turned and easily switched, “Well, if you ask me, you can cut him a little slack, man? Even I sound rusty to all hell in this,” she gestured, quickly unballing her Typhlosion before pointing at the weakest point of the wall.

“Willem, Rollout!” she called, switching back for a few moments and eyeing her brother—was there some suspicion in his gaze? She couldn’t be too sure.

She then watched as her Typhlosion balled himself up before literally throwing his entire body weight at the wall—and she then stood back waiting for the rest of the wall to shatter and fall away.

+ Raziel Beckett, Selena Desmarais, Thomas Benoit
+ using Rollout! (30 BP)

The voice coming from the bubble was somewhat distorted, and it took her a few moments to process what was going on—however seeing the incoming Mareanie made her groan. Hanging on tightly, she pointed at the incoming… band. Rogue.

Whatever a group of them were called at this point.

“Disorient them with a Moonblast for me, will you?” she urged, pointing at the growing horde of Mareanie approaching them; having noticed a distorted bubble of what she guessed was Psychic energy, maybe this blast of lunar energy raining down onto the horde of Mareanie from the surface of the water would be enough to distract them…?

“I hope that distracts them! Can you lift them out of the water?” she called out, having to raise her voice in case the water distorted it.

At the same time, she gestured at the Mareanie, before making several hand movements indicating that they were to be lifted up and out of the water and enclosed in a net of some kind.

+ Selena Desmarais
+ lesgo

“Same here,” she nodded.

Truthfully, she’d heard a lot about what had happened over the past several months, and it was quite frankly a mess. What with so many Pokémon being poisoned, nature getting contaminated, and to top it all off—blue-skinned people coming out into the open and trying to take over the entire place?

Everyone had their hands full, alright.

“I was helping with taking care of kids during the outbreak,” she admitted. “I don’t have too many in the way of Pokémon, so I volunteered to keep an eye on the kids instead while their parents were away fighting on the front lines.”

Of course, she didn’t want to add on to the fact that she was at an orphanage, and shit, the number of kids turning up there during the war was—rather alarming, to say the least.

+ hendrix emmerson
+ :eyes:

“You’re from Cyllage?” she turned to inquire of their companion.

“Well, well, me an’ Tom here are from Shalour,” she added a few moments later as she pointed in Thomas’s direction. “So yeah, we’ve seen a lot of people enter the Tower and come out looking like they’d been wrecked and handed a pink slip or two,” she continued with an immodest chuckle.

“Though of course, we also had our own fair share of pushy parents.”

Seeing that the way was now clear, they came face to face with another wall. This time, it was something she was confident that she could tackle.

Sending out a familiar-looking (at least to Thomas) Staraptor, she pointed at the segment of wall they were chipping at.

“Aerial Ace, and make it count!” she called out, watching as the avian flew forward and attacked the same lower-right side of the wall they were now all looking at, wondering what lay hidden beneath…

+ Raziel Beckett, Selena Desmarais, Thomas Benoit
+ using Aerial Ace! (60 BP)

At the mention of ‘Rockets’, she chuckled. Mentally, though, she was sweating bullets! She hoped that the other hadn’t dug in too deep about previous Rocket activity in the region.

While she didn’t do anything too much to draw attention to herself during that time, she was more than certain with the way Selena was always so… inquisitive, so to speak, it was only a matter of time before the truth came out. Sure, her brother knew about it—but anyone else finding out?

Andrea hoped that wasn’t going to be the case.

“Did you really have to jump in,” she called after the other, never mind that she was now drenched from the impact of the other woman literally throwing herself into the water. She decided to handle this the… ‘normal’ way, so to speak.

Unballing her Primarina, she then pointed at the pinkette.

“Follow her,” she said as she got on her Primarina’s back, and before long they too, were in the surf, keeping an eye out for savage Mareanie.

+ Selena Desmarais
+ lesgo

Andrea watched as Bryan began to literally break down in front of her the moment she’d mentioned the lack of Wooloo that they were supposed to be guarding.

Looks like today’s going to be a long day, she thought to herself in the back of her mind as she began pawing around and found what she was looking for—a marked Love Ball which she popped to full size a few moments later.

A Kirlia made an appearance, nailing the graceful landing as she bowed in front of her human companion.

“Okay so uh… we’re missing some sheep. Wooloo?” she continued, not sure of the dual-type could understand her. “They’re supposed to be somewhere around here. Can you help us look?”

Nodding a few moments later, the Kirlia used Teleport, beginning the search further away from where they stood.

To Bryan, she said, “Whoa, whoa, uh, hey—calm down there,” while gesturing at his Lilligant. “She’s panicking too. Let’s take a deep breath and calm down, and we can start looking for them. Surely they haven’t gone too far away, right? There’s a fence and all.”

She hoped that for both their sakes, she was right…

+ bryan delarosa
+ she is so casual I am so sorry lol

Thankfully today was going to be an easier day than most—if not for the fact that they had both managed to secure some time off to relax and unwind.

While the idea of looking through the Slateport Museum was a little on the odd side, considering Rikiya’s preferred choice of entertainment, she pondered if he was actually getting some ‘taste’, so to speak.

Chuckling to herself, she then checked her pockets to make sure she hadn’t forgotten her wallet and her strawberry-flavored vape… of course the first thing she would smell on the briny air near the Slateport Museum was the very familiar blueberry-scented smoke of her boyfriend’s own vape stash.

“Hah, did you wait long?” she asked as she sidled up to him before giving him an affectionate noogie as a greeting.

+ Rikiya Oshiro
+ a peaceful date? XD

“It looks beautiful,” she remarked, leaning over the fence and gently taking the flower crown from the Lilligant. Dang, that was one of her dream Pokémon, but she hadn’t had any luck so far finding one.

“Thank you,” she said to the Grass-type, before perching it in her hair and then ever so causally lkeaping over the fence and landing on the other side.

“Yep, that’s me, call me Andie—most of everyone does these days,” she introduced herself to Bryan, giving a two-fingered salute.

“So… where’s the Wooloo?” she asked, looking around behind him and trying to see if any of the fuzzy little critters were rolling around. Apparently these ‘Wooloo’ had a tendency to roll away from people they didn’t like. Why was that? She had no idea.

Anyway.

“Been here long? Sorry if I kept you waiting,” she apologized a few moments later.

+ bryan delarosa
+ she is so casual I am so sorry lol

“Oh, no, I’m not from the Kalos branch,” she clarified, chuckling. “Alola, actually. Kind of fit, considering I spent a considerable amount of time there. My brother went to the Unova branch… well, he worked there until recently,” she added as she wiggled and settled down.

“Let’s just say they sent me here on a long-term assignment, still on-going,” she added a few moments later. “So… what’ve you been up to these days? Still bring all ‘Gadget Boy’ in the labs?”

Or maybe there was something she’d missed and had forgotten? Either way, she was surprised that most of the Hoenn branch was either undercover or pretending it didn’t fucking exist, so she was kind of left high and dry at the moment.

“Or have you been chasing other interests lately?”

+ hendrix emmerson
+ :eyes:

“Ahh, Mareanie. Brings me back to the beaches…” Andrea mused with a chuckle. “They can get all over the place, though, and it can get kind of annoying as well to handle all of them at once. Don’t even get me started with all those. Fucking. Pyukumuku,” she groaned as her shoulders sagged at the mention.

Once upon a time, back in the Alola region, part of her morning training routine consisted of ‘weight lifting’, which was actually chucking as many Pyukumuku back into the water because the beach she did her morning exercises always seemed to be inundated with the damned things.

“Ooh, what’d Tom do for you?” she inquired, now all curious. Of course, as the older of the two, she had every divine right to poke and snoop around her brother’s happenings! What? Could anyone blame her?

“And here I was thinking you went out into the wild to chase your dreams of becoming a world-class journalist. What happened there, hm?” she teased a few moments later.

As for the Gym Challenge…

“Well, you know me. If there’s like a martial arts-theme to it I’m all over it. Anyway, you ready to shoo those Mareanie away?”

+ Selena Desmarais
+ one eternity later