Stonjourner.

Characters: Orion Lykos[break]
Request: premium gacha - rock type (-150PD)[break]
Thread: <-- in profile[break]
Moderator: staff completes this field

@chloe looks away, and Orion is quick to follow suit. His own cheeks are aflame, hotter even than the air around them, and he busies himself with taking off his pants. It might have seemed an odd way to combat the anxiety — removing more clothing would hardly help the feeling of being exposed — but the reason for it is revealed as he slips into the water.

He'd gone in quick, without allowing himself to acclimate to the heat, and he hisses through his teeth at the temperature change.

He looks back at the young woman, relieved that she seems equally flustered, and lets out a nervous laugh. "I am, yeah, that's gotta be it. I'm sorry, I don't know your name, I meet a lot of people..." Had he ever learned it to begin with? "I'm Orion."

Celia Auclair.

It's not a name he's likely to forget.

He's not surprised the Galarian embassy were involved, though that the ambassador himself had spoken to her gets his attention. Then again, if she'd march right into a councilman's office without appointment, he has no doubt she'd have treated Remiel Calcifet the same.

"No harm came to your son under League supervision." He chooses his words more carefully, now, as a clearer picture of Blackadder forms. She'd wield his words as weapons against him. She reminds him of his own mother... if that woman had ever cared about him as a son. "He spoke to a member of the Council and was held here until someone came to retrieve him."

He's not here any more, the statement further implies.

Orion usually avoids the springs. They're beautiful, relaxing, but the thought of social interaction is ordinarily enough to warn him away. After a long hike through the Jagged Path, however, his muscles are screaming for respite. If he's lucky, they'll be empty. Surely it happened, sometimes.

He thinks he's in luck, at first, finding the steaming waters devoid of company. He pulls off his heavy duty hiking boots, sets down his bag of supplies, and has just taken off his shirt when he realizes that his luck is as sour as usual.

He was not alone.

The springs were empty, but a girl sat with her Vaporeon on the surrounding rocks. The Absol at Orion's side tilts its head as if examining the strangers for any sign of threat, then huffs and curls up much like the Water-type to sun itself on the rocks.

If @chloe meets his gaze, Orion looks like a deer caught in headlights.

"Sorry, I, uh, didn't mean to interrupt." His cheeks flush, shirt dangling from his grip. That they're in a public place and he's not doing anything wrong does not seem to soothe his embarrassment. He squints. "Have — have I seen you before?"

Orion's still formulating a proper response to leo del río's comment on Oldale when he's taken by the hand and tugged toward the garden, thoroughly scrambling whatever train of thought he might have had.

Once, he would have jerked his hand back and snapped at the other. Now, with PR training for the Council, he internalizes his distress and allows himself to be led.

"Fortree has a lot of stuff like that," he says at last, watching Leo plant his sapling. The councilman's expression is strained. "Community stuff, I mean. It's a city but it feels more like a town, I guess."

Was that a poor way of wording it? It wasn't Fortree's size that gave him the opinion, but its atmosphere: in Lilycove, he'd felt like a stranger. No one had known who he was before he ran for Council and became a public figure. In Fortree, he felt like a hometown hero. His neighbors greeted him by name. Even the Pokemon felt friendlier.

Despite being dressed more like a councilman than a Ranger in his suit, he kneels down in the dirt alongside the other man with little regard for ruining his pants. That's what washing machines were for, after all.

"I, ah, never got your name?"

Relieved when the Trapinch are driven off by another, Orion turns to flash the man a quick and awkward smile. "Thanks."

Unfortunately for Orion, that man recognizes him as a member of the council, and relief sours to discomfort. Was it intended as mockery? It wouldn't be the first time someone had sneered at him due to his job. kris flynn-edwards didn't sound mean-spirited, but politics had taught Orion how easily others could smile as they lied through their teeth. Uncertain of the other's intention, he can only let out a strained laugh.

"I was in the area, figured I might as well pitch in."

Zac Ramsay's criticism of the half-trimmed trees doesn't go unnoticed, and Orion tenses defensively. "I was in the middle of it, but that misty incense brought out all the Trapinch, and then we had to fill the pot holes..."

He trails off, and reluctantly admits to himself that Zac is an accomplished tree-trimmer. Aside from messing up the Roselia that Orion had left incomplete, he'd done a better job than the councilman believed he'd have done himself. Deflated, Orion remembers someone mentioning a pie.

I could go for some pie right about now...

So he does.

One of the pies seems to have been devoured already, so Orion takes out a knife with a Pyroar handle — Oh, cute! — and cuts himself a slice of the other. It's not half-bad, he decides, watching the parade of people marching up and down the stairs. He'll join them after, he thinks. Noticing the Electrike, Orion covers the remaining third of Chu-e Choi's pie with some foil to discourage the dog.

TASK: 'PIEBREAKER - CHU-E' 2/3

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Orion's resting under the apple tree in the garden, getting ready to return to trimming the trees, when the garden suddenly comes alive with burrowing Trapinch. He yelps in surprise and then laughs, using the trunk of the tree as support to get to his feet and step carefully around the distressed ground-dwellers.

"I guess they don't like the incense, either.

It makes sense; they do become dragons themselves, some day. One of them snaps at his ankle on its way past, tearing through his pantleg and scraping against his skin. It's a superficial wound, not serious, but it hurts like a bitch!

Once the pain fades, he resigns himself to filling in the holes Trapinch have left. It wouldn't do to be pottering around the trees and trying to trim them while trying to avoid falling in holes, after all! And now that the Salamence has fled its roost upon the garden shed, it's not difficult to find a shovel among the scattered garden tools.

As a Ranger, he feels obligated to check each hole for Trapinch before filling them in, not wanting to rudely dump gravel onto them. It means the work is slow-going, and he's going to need some help!

TASK: 'POTHOLE FILLING' 1/2

confirming, swampert is gacha from here

PRIZE REDEMPTION FROM ADVENTOURS

to orion's account
+755PD

to my PC
1 LEVEL TUTOR, 1 TM/TR, 5 POKEBALLS, 1 INCENSE, 1 MEGA STONE SHARD, 1 ICE MEMORY
1 'GACHA' AERODACTYL, 1 'GACHA' HEATRAN

FIRE MEMORY was swapped for Stormy Silph's PSYCHIC MEMORY. [trade link

confirming!