❆

mcflurry looked around nervously. she originally signed up in a burst of loneliness, but it just felt a little surreal that she went all the way to fortree now that it was actually, uh. happening.

"y-yeah, mchi! nice, uh, to meet you."

mcflurry gave an unsure smile, before spotting the absol. letting out a small noise of surprise, she sent out her glalie, the ice-cold pokemon automatically dropping the temperature a few degrees.

"s-sorry, i didn't mcknow we were, uh. b-bringing out our pokemon. yeah. this is glalie! my glalie."

"hssshh..."

mclaren mcflurry ● sven korolev

❆

the woman sighed when she heard he didn't actually have teleport available. gonna have to do it the hard way then. 

mcflurry just grumbled, glaring a hole into the ground at that comment.

"if — if you do enough of them, you're mcgonna h-have a bad streak... but i'm f-fine with exploring. i just don't want guests to get mcmurdered in my — uh, shoal cave."

she partly noted her own slip of tongue. wow, she was really going full caveman over this place. however, as she wandered through the upward path, a mild blizzard suddenly blasted past, enough to knock out any weaker pokemon.

mcflurry was not weak nor a weak pokemon. sighing, she snapped her fingers. her steelix dug into the ice before reappearing on a further side of the tunnel, catching something in its teeth, putting it in a death roll, and tossing a pink humanoid-looking thing at mcflurry's feet.

"mcstop it."

she caught the smoochum easily enough, and the steelix returned to her side.

"— 's just that, uh. this place is my only real home away from home. my job, mccifically. my coworkers are — are mcdicks, a-and after all the megalopan activities..."

mclaren mcflurry ● Chu-e Choi  ● catching smoochum

❆

mcflurry shrugged, guessing they should just continue. there was some good loot so far. albeit, mcflurry felt a little jolt under her skin. she knew the wall was going to collapse soon, from all her time in shoal cave.

still, if they did this right, then it'd collapse to reveal something new, by the looks of it. she could see a little indent of more space past the wall.

either way, there was a fossil there, and mcflurry was definitely invested in uncovering that. helping the sableye out, mcflurry called out her budew again.

"minty, use extrasensory on the wall!"

---

NOTES:

- budew used extrasensory (80)
- 80+80=160 so far

mclaren mcflurry  ● oscar clayton  ● maverick noah ryder  ● Alexei Ivanov

❆

after hours of weak ice-types and delving further into the caves, mcflurry finally reached the end of her path. letting out a shuddering breath of white air, she looked upon a sea of water, an entire underground lake in front of her.

and damn, looking at the ceiling, this was one of those frozen-over air bubble pockets of shoal cave, wherein sunshine filtered in from the ocean above. basically an entire glass dome, entirely naturally made.

mcflurry would have taken in more of the beautiful environment if it wasn't for the next thing.

a shiny lapras, stranded on the coast of the lake. it looked weak and bruised, and was only slowly breathing. swallowing her nervousness down, mcflurry sprinted towards the lapras.

following the water where it was facing away from, mcflurry saw what looked to be a crack in the ice pocket that had been filled up with dirt, likely from the suction effect. it must have been stuck in here.

a solemn look on her face, mcflurry pulled out a poke ball and caught the lapras, eager to get it back to the surface and into the hands of a pokemon center.

mclaren mcflurry  ● catching shiny lapras

❆

"i-i'm fine, i'm just mcworried about you..."

mcflurry sighed. well, at least the guy was fine. he had his pokemon there with him, after all. steelix flew closer to the new passages, lowering its head so that mcflurry could jump off.

mcflurry grunted and leaned her body so she could look back up at the cliff. shit. that caused that section of the cave to block off. she could dig through it, but it'd be too risky with two people involved.

"we're gonna have to mcfind another way out — unless you, uh. want to mcteleport."

mcflurry offered, before a disturbed glalie jumped out and attacked her out of fear. she backpedalled.

"i-i'm mcflurry, by the way! iron tail!"

the woman's steelix shot forward and tanked the icicle crash coming her way. then, whipping its body around, it slammed the glalie over the head and into the ground, where mcflurry groaned and caught it to bring it to the pokemon center later.

mclaren mcflurry ● Chu-e Choi  ● catching glalie

❆

oh, god. nobody's asked her about the legendary canine in forever. even then, the memory feels like a blur that she can't quite recall.

"y-yeah. it, mc. it basically kidnapped me from my hometown then, uh — fall city, it — i dunno, i sort of felt it telling me to go here —"

the explanation is terrible, full of holes, and yet so strangely true, given how mcflurry's stuttering and her eyes are going blank like she's trying to remember.

but then she snapped back to reality, realizing she never actually answered the question.

"i-it was blue. and huge, like the size of two people. it also, uh, had a mist around it every time. and glowing eyes. i — it hasn't mccontacted me since i landed on hoenn."

her gaze fell to the floor.

"m-maybe i did something wrong."

mclaren mcflurry ● Cillian Quinn

❆

mcflurry made a face. ugh, it was gonna be this sort of guy. well, if he wanted to be a smartass without any sense of self-preservation, then she'd be happy to work with that. after all, she has first-hand experience.

"th-this must be how mc-merlino feels about me, rrgh," she muttered audibly under her breath.

sighing, mcflurry looked down the pit, trying to remember what laid down there. then, it came to her after a few seconds.

"n-nothing much. just a delibird nest a-and, uh. an underground lake —"

mcflurry was quickly cut off by a delibird suddenly and loudly shooting off an aurora beam at the part of the cliff she was standing on, its squawks echoing through the cave as the ground begun to shudder and fracture under the both of them.

"haw, mcfuck me —"

groaning like this was more an inconvenience than an actual life-threatening event, mcflurry yelled out a quick "magnet rise!" and jumped off the collapsing cliff, the ensuing avalanche collapsing on the delibird in question and knocking it out — and into the frigid waters below.

mcflurry, in the meantime, had gotten caught by her flying steelix, who jumped into action the moment she gave the order.

flying down and capturing the face-down santa bird in the water, she hurriedly looked around for the stranger who decided to be so devil-may-cry about the fragile steep cliff made of ice.

mclaren mcflurry ● Chu-e Choi  ● catching delibird

❆

however, with every attempt at spelunking came wild pokemon. the sandshrew descended from an icy slope above her, and both mcflurry and her steelix were immediately notified of its presence.

a metal claw came flying down on mcflurry's position, but the steelix jumped in front of the sandshrew before it could it, easily letting the attack bounce off its metal hide.

the resulting battle was a bit of a blow-out. the ice-type was fast and small, landing a series of metal claws and crush claws on steelix, but they had little effect.

in return, the steelix whacked its tiny body into a wall, and as the ice collapsed from where it hit, mcflurry huffed out white air and continued on her way.

mclaren mcflurry  ● skip

❆

mcflurry grumbled as she went deeper in the caves than she would ever offer to tourists, her steelix boring through the walls as she proceeded forth into the depths.

this was pretty much how she spent her free time. well, one of the ways. after her discovery of the glalitite, she sort of wondered how much other stuff was down here, so.

then again, that just meant more wild pokemon to deal with.

mclaren mcflurry  ● catching x

❆

the first time the man had come into shoal cave, mcflurry ignored him, mostly because people were free to venture wherever they wanted, however they wanted.

the second time he came into shoal cave, she eyed him a little warily and had a smaller ice-type tail him, mostly because she'd found several issues in the cave systems after the first time.

this time would mark the third time, and currently, she's following his tracks, because jesus christ, she was certain he was going to cause a cave-in if he kept doing it the way he was doing it.

(not that he would, in all honesty. mcflurry's just very pointedly and purposely ignoring the fact that she'd become very possessive over shoal cave. like it was her territory.)

"e-excuse me, sir," mcflurry started when she finally reached him, steelix at her side, "a-are you sure you should be, uh. going down this mc-path? i-i'm kind of a local, and, uh."

mcflurry looked down at the endless pit of death that the man was about to walk towards.

mclaren mcflurry ● Chu-e Choi  ● catching x