One and Done 2: Parent Trap in New York

WOW!!! Mercury THE Fennekin had been under the impression that the whole world was just constantly in a state of being slightly too cold outside her plushy soft fur, but then like magic: SHE DISCOVERED THIS PLACE!!! It was warm, very big, lots of rock, and it looked like you could jump in and fall forever. Which would probably hurt because of, you know, the rocks. That was okay though, because this many rocks was great for playing one of Mercury’s favorite games: ROCK TOSS!!! Only now-

GASP.

now it would be hot rock toss.

HOT ROCK TOSS WAS LIKE 300 TIMES BETTER THAN REGULAR ROCK TOSS IN EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY.

This place was officially amazing. THANK YOU, strange little brain voice!!! Mercury could now see the intense wisdom that those weird imagination moving pictures that came to her at night and while she was out walking and sometimes when she sat down to scratch herself in that spot right behind her ear we’re capable of sharing. A place with hot rock toss, with no evil dumb water to be there being dangerous!!! Only - wait, without water what was the rock supposed to bounce on? Other rocks? That could be fun!!! Or maybe you were just supposed to toss them down into this big hole??? EVEN BETTER!!!

Man, this hole was big. It was less like a whole and more like the biggest crack that ever existed, actually. Mercury couldn’t see where it began, and she certainly couldn’t see where it ended. What was big enough to make a crack this big??? Why was it so important? For a moment, for just a very brief moment, Mercury wondered why the strange feelings in her gut that had definitely come from outside her gut had decided to lead her to a big ol’ crack in the ground. Maybe the rocks were alive, and they were trying to talk to her. Maybe they wanted to play a game? WAIT- HOT ROCKS PROBABLY LOVED HOT ROCK TOSS. Plus they can’t really move, so they can’t find people to play with!!! SO THEY CALL FOR FRIENDS FROM OTHER PLACES HSHABEHEH- yes it was ALL coming together in Mercury’s head now. She smiled brightly; she was so smart!! She crept up very close to the edge of her very tall rock.

“HELLO!!!!!!?!” she screamed joyously into the seemingly endless decent. “ HELLO ROCKS, I AM MERCURY. I CAME TO PLAY HOT ROCK TOSS, LIKE YOU ASKED WHILE I WAS PICKING JOLTIKS OUT OF KYE’S FUR!!!!“ That has actually been a little inconvenient, but Mercury couldn’t imagine that the rocks knew better. “ HELLO?!?!??”

She leaned as far as she could over her precarious perch, angling her radar-like ears as close as she could to the drop while she listened for a reply.

Mercury the Fennekin - 15 energy

"H-hello?" called a hesitant, confused back. Except it wasn't coming from down from the pit of the fiery chasm, but behind the fennekin currently screaming at the disembodied spirits belonging to the rocks of christmas' past.

Should the fuzzy fox turn around, she'd be greeted by the sight of a slightly bashful dratini lingering about twenty feet behind her, much closer to the ground and far from the edge. It was clear at a glance that the environment was getting to the little serpent, but nonetheless he crept forward a bit. "You know there's lava down there, right? If you fall down you're gonna get cooked!!" he warned, concerned alarm heavy in his tone.

Osiris hadn't quite come here to play lava lifeguard, but when in Rome and all that nonsense. It was a little hard to mind your business when down the road a way was a very curious, loud pokemon talking to seemingly... nobody. It made him want to ask a few questions, certainly, but at this point in his life, he knew better than to run up on just anybody and hit them with what he wanted.

Manners, and all that. And also she was on the edge of a giant rock that he could slip off of and fall to his fiery liquid hot doom. Distance was... good.

Huh. The rocks sounded... really close for being all the way at the bottom of the chasm. Maybe... oh maybe they were speaking into her MIND!!! Yeah, yeah!! Like people in her dreams!!! It made sense that the rocks that gave her weird funny memories that weren't hers could speak directly to her brain. She wagged her tail excitedly and somehow managed to lean in even further without falling in. "WOW!! Rock friends, your magic tricks are incredible!!! Teach me!!!!!" She wasn't worried about hot lava. She wasn't sure what lava was, but if it was hot clearly it was a good thing!! "I'm not scared of anything hot, because I am hot!!! I'm coming down!!!"

She turned around and begun to run down her rock. And then she stopped becausehuuuuuuuuuaaAAAAAAAOHbyJEEz

Was that

A

Small, blue, stripey, SCALEY FEATHER EARED super SMOOTH forever awesome CONCERNED-LIKE-KYE-APPEARING SLIPPY SNAKE FRIEND?!?! with TEETH?!?!?!



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Mercury's small, furry, fuzzy, impossibly tiny but softy brain was SO BlowneresDESTESDERERED that she could hardly keep from falling off the drop off behind her.

"Who are YOU, scaly friend?!?!" Mercury exclaimed as she drew much closer to the new, exciting stranger. "Are you here to visit the mind-talking rocks too??? Did they also send you weirdly familiar moving head pictures and weird feelings in your gut you can explain??? Ooo, ooo!! You must be a very nice pokemon if you're visiting the lonely hot rocks!!! HAHA, that's great! Nice pokemon are great!!!"

At this point, she was bouncing a particularly joyful circle around the boy.

Osiris produced a very unmasculine squeak of worry when the crazy fennekin leaned further off, yelling at apparently no one. Almost against his own will, he crept further up the rock as if he was going to help her. How, he wasn't sure, since he was a snake dragon thing who didn't have hands that could grab things.

His next squeak put his first one to shame, and it chimed out of him when the crazy lady turned on a dime with hardly any warning and spotted him. He could almost tell that she was devoting a significant amount of brainpower into processing what she saw when she looked at the dratini sort of staring up at her, and Iris wasn't sure how that made him feel. Guilty? Shocked? Intimidated? Like a cut of meat at a butcher's?

All of those feelings flooded through him, but it was that last one that was strongest. It occurred to him, at that point, that no one was there with him. His mom wasn't there to protect him, Geo wasn't there to guide him, and Zircon never was there in the first place - not that Iris blamed him. If this thing decided to eat him, he was fox food. And for a moment, that's what he thought was going to happen. The girl exploded into a flurry of movement and joyous, euphoric bubbly dialogue that assaulted his eardrums like sharp, deadly pieces of sickly sweet hard candy.

He flailed in panic for a moment, but as soon as he realized she was sort of... toying with him, he tried to take a stand. "I don't know about any mind-talking rocks!" he blurted, trying to come off as tough and authoritative but probably registering somewhere around panicked and shrill. "My name's Osiris and I'm not afraid to defend myself if I have to!!

"Who are you, fuzzy friend?!" he shot back in a malefic tone, for all intents and purposes feeling like he was throwing something back in the girl's face. It didn't occur to him that this is how this creature simply... was, and that he wasn't being made fun of.

"Defend?" What was "defend?" Mercury was unsure, but she was still smiling and it sounded like a g a m e!!! What other secrets could this soft scaly friend be hiding?!!? The small vulpy was now deeply entrenched in this encounter. "Oh, oh!!!! You talked to me, great!!! You're nice, like Kye!!!" She came to a tentative standstill in front of this new friend's face so that she could talk to him directly. "..."SiE" rhymes with "my"!!! Like my friend, haha! Sie friend!!! My name is Mercury and I have no idea what a defend is!!! Is it a game?!?"

There were so many questions ready to burst forth from her mouth, so many more things she wanted to ask!! Was Sie friend from this place with nice rocks?!? Was he going to play hot rock toss when he was done with defend?!?! She was worried he wouldn't, because apparently he didn't know about the rock friends and how they worked! OH NO!!! She decided she must backpedal a little and rectify this.

"Mind-talking is a thing rocks do sometimes, I guess!" Mercury exclaimed suddenly, giving Sie friend no time to answer her actual question. "Like my mama! My mama could do mind things. They showed me my mama!!! And I heard my name a lot. I think they're lonely, cause I thought about things that kind of made me feel THE S-WORD a little BUT I'M DEFINITELY FINE!!!! I don't have any s!!!" Whew. Close one. Mercury didn't want to scare her new friend away before they even hung out!!! "So yeah!!! What did the rocks say to you?!?! How did they ask you to come?!?!"

"Um..." Osiris gulped a little nervously, more than a bit overwhelmed by... well, everything that came out of the fennekin's mouth.

Where the heck did he even start with this girl? Who was Kye?? Did she really not know the word "defend"? Could rocks actually, really talk to people and feel lonely, on top of showing people their moms? What the heck was "s" supposed to mean?!

Osiris didn't manage to vocalize any of that. After he backed away just slightly, he managed to open his mouth to say something dumb, but nothing came out. His jaw worked a little listlessly while he processed all the information he was given. One thing was clear: this pokemon didn't seem to be toying with him so much as it was just... incredibly eccentric. Maybe even a little loopy. It made him feel a lot better about his own situation - he didn't want to end up as someone else's lunch.

"I... came here on my own, actually. No mind-talking from any rocks," Iris somehow managed to say. "Are you looking for your mom?" he asked, starting to piece together a version of what could be happening here. Maybe she had been with her mom and gotten lost, or came here looking for her. Maybe her mom was a rock-type pokemon, and that's why she was so focused on the, uh, rocks. It'd also explain why the rocks could do mind-talk, whatever that was supposed to mean.

"Oh wow," Mercury gasped with an unending childish awe, "On your OWN?!? You must be like- like someone really cool if you made it here all on your own!!!" Mercury was completely oblivious to the fact that she had made it here on her own as well. That was something else entirely, obviously. For now, her fuzzy head was occupied with the word that Sie friend had just said. Mom. It... actually emptied her mind in a weird way, like suddenly everything ran away and she was just sitting there. Nothing else. It was a strange feeling - she didn't like it. Or rather... maybe she didn't like what had scared everything else away.

"...No. No... I'm not looking for momma. She's asleep, and I know if I go back she won't wake up. Poppa didn't." She continued to feel this pit of not feeling, and it was... not much, honestly. It was boring. Could it stop now? What could make it stop?? "I was wondering why the rocks were talking about momma, but mostly I felt like I should be here!!!"

That's right!!! The smile came screaming to Mercury's face, as did the roaring wave of her thoughts. How could she forget the rocks?!?! "I didn't know why before!! I just felt a tug! But now that I'm here I know it must have been the rocks calling to me!!! You know what it's like, right?!?"

Mercury the Fennekin - 15 Energy

FoxFireAlchemist carried out 2 launched of one Fiery Chasm :

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"... Kinda, yeah," Osiris said, nodding as if he completely understood. He wasn't quite there with her, but he did understand what it was like to be.... called away from your current life, as it were.

Things back home at Grassveil - his classes at Peak aside - were pretty boring. It was practically the whole reason he was here, actually. The dratini wanted to skip past all the lame stuff and get right into the action and excitement; forget living at home with his mom, forget fooling around town and being safe, he wanted to join the guild and be a hero! And the best way to go about that was with a lot of preparation. That meant learning useful things in school, making strong friends so they can join together, and going to places like this to build up experience.

It felt nice to have his continued efforts appreciated, and the dratini preened visibly when Mercury praised him. She wasn't so bad after all, he decided. A little wacky, but wasn't everyone, in the end? He smiled back at her, although his wasn't nearly as... intense as hers. "Do you, um, know why the rocks called to you? Is there something you want to do here?" he prodded, more than willing to help the quirky fennekin with whatever she had going on. It was the right thing to do, he figured.

(30 - 25 entry cost: 5 energy)

the sunset hero carried out 5 launched of one Fiery Chasm :

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"Yes!!! I knew you would!! I knew a cool friend like you knew about stuff like this." Feeling much better again, Mercury felt compelled to set off towards... wherever? She wasn't really sure where she was going, but it felt right to go!! She looked at Sie friend with a big grin, expecting that he would follow.

She chewed her lip thoughtfully as she carefully considered Sie friend's question. She hadn't really... thought about wanting anything out of this, frankly. She only knew that she felt like she had to be here. When she tried to put a "why" to it, though, her mind came up blank!!! It was just, like...

"...I didn't have a 'something,' really... It was like a feeling!!! Like when momma called me home for dinner!! I just knew I had to be here!!" she explained, feeling confident with this answer. "I guess I would like to know why I felt like this, but... this happens to me a lot since I got brain sick!! I don't always get an answer." She turned to Sie friend and began smiling brightly again, her next words easily seen coming from miles away. "I got a cool friend, though!!! YOU!!! That's better than anything I could have asked!!!"

"What, are you to on a date or something?" A snide voice asked behind them. Another Fennekin, this one seemingly sane, had been passing by when they somehow caught wind of this strange conversation. Her nose was curled in something like disgust, or maybe pity. Maybe both.

Osiris had no idea what he had done to achieve 'cool friend' status but he was absolutely digging it. It felt really, really nice to have someone be impressed by him for once, instead of him always nipping at the heels of people around him. He liked all of his friends, of course, but they were all older and stronger and cooler than him! This fennekin seemed to think he was awesome just for making it up here and understanding.

The dratini was just about to say something back—something positive, like "aw thanks even though we just met I think you're a really cool friend too"—but a passingby fennekin cut in. "Uh, no," he immediately replied to the rude fox pokemon, his tone slightly offended. He wasn't trying to get cooties, thank you very much. "We're hanging out, though. What are you doing here all by yourself?" he shot back, feeling very smart for having a comeback at all, even if it wasn't the most imaginative.

"What's a 'dah-tey'?" was Mercury's immediate, innocent, inquisitive response.

The other Fennekin snorted, clearly retaining a feeling of superiority even after Osiris's very valid comeback. Mercury's absolute social blindness wasn't exactly doing him any favors on the "validity" front. "Clearly," the fennekin replied, rolling her eyes. "I have friends. I'm on my way to meet them right now," she answered in a very matter-of-fact tone. Clearly, she was still framing herself as the "normal" one out of the three of them in her mind. "A steam vent just triggered, so we're going to go look at what items it brought up."

Mercury's eyes widened. "Items? Steam vent???" she questioned in awe. What was that?? Besides something magical that spat out i t e m s, clearly!!! Maybe if they went there, she could get a gift for Kye!! OOOO, and a gift for Sie friend!!! A NEW FRIEND gift!!! She got noticeably excited at this thought, but she bit her lips together to try and contain it. She didn't want to give away the surprise after all. "Sie friend, we should go see this!!!"

"Please don't," the other fennekin scoffed with a sigh as she turned to leave. Further out in the direction that she was walking, a few more pokemon could be seen gathering.

Osiris was perfectly content to let the question of "what's a date?" fly by unnoticed as he tackled the more interesting topic of conversation. The other fennekin didn't want them to go, that was obvious... and kind of all the reason he needed to do it, after the sass she gave them. Mercury didn't even seem to pick up on it and she was down regardless, so it wasn't even up for debate!

"Absolutely," he echoed, a grin growing on his snout. "We can't let them take away all of the good stuff!" It'd do that fennekin some good to get knocked down a peg, anyways. Him and Mercury could sweep in, pick up the best items, and be gone in a flash! Or maybe they could play a game for them or something.

There didn't seem to be that many of them, either. Osiris reared up to look for the tell-tale rising of steam—not really an uncommon thing in the Fiery Chasm—and the closest, densest clouds were in the direction the fennekin left in. Prowling around a smoky patch of rock he saw yet another fennekin and, of all things, a houndour. Fun pokemon to play with, maybe? All fire-types, no matter what, so Iris felt safe enough. Everybody knew that fire couldn't hurt dragons.

The fennekin walked over to the other fennekin and the houndour and greeted them promptly, likely dismissing any hopes of "fun friends" as they seemingly began whispering and throwing side-eyes at Osiris and Mercury. Mercury was barely aware of this. Mercury was barely aware of anything outside of watching the terrain intently for this magical "steam vent".

"I don't know what to look for, Sie friend! I only know what trees and rocks look like!!" she lamented with a frown. "I guess we'll just have to check everything until we-!!!"

FvwOOOSH.

Had she not been a fire type, Mercury might have lost half her face to a column of steam that suddenly erupted from a compromised patch of hot rock beneath her tiny paws. Indeed, along with the steam there were a plethora of items, some looking natural like berries while other's looked more like items from pokemon that might have been lost through the cracks in the rock. As the steam subsided, they all began to flutter down and around the area. Mercury looked up and watched them with that same, dumb, happy smile on her face. She began to chase some of the items playfully, but she never actually caught anything herself. Most of the items she chased ended up in the hands of the other pokemon.

This was a bit distressing. She had no presents to give to anybody... let alone to give to herself. But that was okay!! She would just find something on her own!!! Or an item would find her!!! They tended to do that. Right now, she was more interested in SIE FRIEND. "What did you find, what did you find?!?" she asked excitedly.

The three pokemon also began to go through their catches, however... "Hey. That band I lost a while back isn't here. I was hoping to find it..." the houndour lamented after extensive searching.

"Oh... you lost that so long ago though. Maybe it's already been blown back up. It's probably just laying somewhere else!" the second Fennekin replied.

"No, I see it. It's right there," the Fennekin remarked loudly in an accusatory tone, hoping to catch the smaller duo's attention. Out of Mercury's tail hung a small flash of pink.

"I got aaaaa... scarf. And a disc-thingy," Osiris replied after having finished scrambling around for his own haul. "I think you can learn moves and stuff off of 'em." he pondered out loud, thinking back to the time he learned Dragon Tail in the same way. Not the worst haul, honestly. They could have been like rotten berries or something, but he could probably sell these for enough money to get some ice cream. "What'd you... get?" he asked cautiously, looking up and catching onto the fact that there were now three different fire-types staring at Mercury with suspicion and resentment.

The dratini followed their gaze and saw the pink band trapped in the fluff of her tail, gulping nervously at the sight. This probably didn't bode well.

"That's mine," the houndour echoed, having done the same as Osiris and noticed Mercury's prize. "I called dibs! Give it back."

It sounded like less of a request and much more of an order—with consequences for refusal—which had Osiris feeling both resentful and fearful. On one hand, there were three of them and he wasn't sure how tough Mercury was. On the other hand, finders-keepers was law and he would be darned if he turned his back on such a sacred convention. So.

"Maybe... let's run?" He whispered nervously, his eyes flickering from the fennekin at his side to the three fire-types... who were now approaching slowly.

At the words "dibs," Mercury started paying attention to something other than Sie friends much more enthralling account of his prizes. She turned around to face the brand new voice she had never heard before and saw the black doggy staring her down menacingly!! GASP!! Mercury had seen this many times before, being an expert at games and playing them. This doggy was clearly trying to start a game- there was no mistaking it.

"Hello, friend!!" Mercury exclaimed, playing innocent at first. She glanced over to Kye, who seemed to have already caught on- only fueling her antics even more. She gave him a sly, overjoyed smile before returning her gaze to the doggy. "Are you looking for something?" Implying a game, of course. Mercury still had no idea that her ability had drawn an item over to her, nor was she aware that she had an item. At all.

"Well?" the Houndour replied with irritation in his voice. "That's mine." Clearly this Fennekin was not all too bright, and so he felt the need to elaborate.

Mercury was absolutely bursting trying to contain herself. "Oh! Okay!!" she giggled, a little laughter slipping out between each word. "In thaaaaat case... CHASING GAME RUNNING YOU CAN'T CATCH ME!!!" she yelped all to loudly, stunning the houndour. She turned tail and took off like a bullet, calling "RUN, Sie FRIEND!!!" behind her gleefully as she went. The strange "calling rocks" were forgotten completely, and Mercury would not stop running, or even thing of turning back. Not until her little heart gave out first.