ArchivedLogs:Pokemon Training

Pokemon Training
Dramatis Personae Blink, Shane
In Absentia	2017-03-17 "Regular Pokémon have never tried to /eat/ me so it's got that going for it."
Location <XS> Danger Room - B2
The room is large and circular, a geodesic hemisphere of hexagonal ceramic panels. It is the Danger Room, and is thus often full of danger, but is presently not in use and is thus remarkably danger-free. Safest room in the school, probably. It's just turned very cold, in here, and very white; a glittering expanse of frozen-over pond in some sort of underground cave; jagged shards of icicle hang long and uneven from the ceiling high high above and a faint blue-white glow (from within the icicles? from under the water? from everywhere? it's hard to tell) illuminates the space, occasionally catching faint glimmers in the ice. Shane stands at the edge of the frozen water, in boots, X-jacket, heavy black cargo pants, black watch-looking straps around his thin wrists. He's peering across it with a small frown. Somewhere on the opposite shore, a figure is spinning. Shaped -- sort of like an icy cone, with a scoop of white cream on top (that disconcertingly has a wide-eyed wide-mouthed face within it), it spins into view -- then away again in a flurry of bits of ice, melting back into the surrounding scenery. Shane turns his hand upward, brows lifting. A red and white ball thunks solidly down into his palm. "Wellp." Blink is standing next to Shane, similarly dressed though her combat boots have magenta laces. Her hair is braided and tied up in a messy bun, except for long bangs and sideburns that hang down past her chin. She's tilting her head and giving the Pokémon on the other side of the pond an extremely skeptical look. Her hands are glowing faintly purple. "I'll pull it -- uh, flush it into the open." She flicks the light off of her hand and it expands into a swirling misty purple oval. An identical one forms beside the peak in the icy terrain on the other shore. "If I can find it." She hops through the portal in front of her and emerges on the other side, balancing on top of the iceberg and scanning the icy crags below. "Y'think we can eat it?" Shane is licking his lips, taking a sliding step forward to test his weight on the pond's frozen surface. "It looks tasty." The crags below look very -- craggy. Sharp peaks of ice in between which, intermittently, whorls of tiny whirlwinds of glasslike shards flit like so many frozen dust-storms. Blink has only been standing there for a moment, though, before one of those little flurries spools out into a bigger one -- faster and furiouser, spinning upward in a sudden expanding vortex of needle-sharp fragments whirling straight at her. Somewhere behind it, briefly, a blue-white oddly smiling face is beaming out of an ice-cream cone. Blink hasn't stopped looking skeptical. "It's /called/ Vanillish, but I'm not sure what it's actually supposed to be made of? Oh, there --" But then there's a lot of ice flying at her. She flings a portal out in front of herself, which serves to partially shield her and let her hop over to another crag behind the Pokémon, at least behind it a moment ago. "If the ice is too thin, I can portal you across." "Sugar and spite, looks like." Shane's steps are more confident after the first few, keeping his weight even but less tentative one the ice does not creak or crack. Below Blink, the Vanillish has disappeared behind an icy spire, but soon reappears to send another flurry of knifelike shards flying toward Blink. Shane draws his arm back, hurling the red-and-white ball at it. It hits squarely -- with a sudden enveloping glow, the Vanillish disappears. "S'alright, I'm not really a van--" The rest of Shane's sentence is drowned out in a sudden massive cracking, a shattering, a splash. Several large chunks have cracked out of the ice -- enormous cracks spiderweb out from the hole, leaving the area around the break questionably stable. A huge white and blue head with large sharp tusks thrusts out of the shattered hole that Shane has just disappeared into. Large flippers start to pull up onto one of the pieces of ice -- though this piece breaks off, too, leaving the blubbery blue creature to slide back into the icy water with one huge snort. "Yeah, and everything ice." Blink avoids the second attack with a portal-assisted sidestep that puts her back on the first peak she had landed on. When the ball drops to the ground with the Vanillish rattling about inside, she slides down the side of the icy crag to retrieve it. She turns around just in time to see the walrein burst up through the ice where Shane was standing just a moment ago. Her eyes open up wide, slivers of white visible around the huge green irises, and the purple glow envelops her entire body for a moment. But then she focuses it, sends one portal out on the ground in front of her and jumps through it, emerging /up/ through another one high above the hole in the ice so she has a brief shot down at the huge Pokémon before it vanishes beneath the water. She chucks an empty ball down at it, then falls through another portal to land (a little roughly) on the shore again. There's a splashing down below, and then for a moment the water goes still. Soon enough after there's a ripple again; Shane emerges, ball (still slightly glowy, still slightly rattly) held in one hand as his claws dig into the half-broken ice to pull himself up onto a piece. His gills press back closed, his shoulders tighter beneath his sodden jacket. "Ffffuck." His teeth are clenched. "I don't advise taking a dip that's cold as a motherf-- shit." One of his arms is shooting upward, wrist flicked out to launch a glob of webglue past Blink's shoulder. There's a grating sound behind Blink -- a rounded dark stony sphere with a scowling toothy face and two sharp hornlike spikes sticking up from the top is peeling itself away from a nook in the cave wall. With a shudder, a thick coating of icy white armour forms over its stone head. Its teeth gnash -- then stop gnashing at the sudden faceful of sticky /goop/. With another shake, the crust of armour falls away -- reforms, clear of its glue-coating. Shane ducks his head, sheepish. "... kinda reflex." Blink gives a startled meep when Shane shoots webglue past her. She spins around and shuffles sideways to flank the new Pokémon, which is rotating to follow her, teeth chomping. "No, I appreciate it," she says conversationally, backing away. "I prefer it to being ambushed by a giant floating face. In fact --" She produces another Pokeball and hefts it, eyeing the Glalie. "-- would you mind doing it again?" When she throws the ball she throws it into a smallish portal so that it comes flying out of another one -- on the other side of her target. Shane nods as he eyes the ice-covered head, ducking and rolling to one side as it starts to charge forward at them. He lifts his hand to shoot a glob of webglue at him -- though a moment later both Shane and the glob are frozen in place, the air itself around them snapping into icy crystallization. The ball of glue drops to the ground with a shattering. The thrown pokeball, at least, flies through the portal to thwack against the Glalie -- glows, shimmers, drops to the ground still rattling. And still rattling, and still rattling -- no, wait, the rattling is coming from all around them. Shane is still (alas) frozen right where the Glalie left him -- but there's a scratching-rattling-skittering from all the rocks up and around Blink. A hoard of small clawed creatures with red fan-shaped ruffs on their heads are poking out from the icy crags. Staring wide-eyed down at Blink and Shane. The red and white ball on the ground hasn't finished its rocking. Rock-rock-rock -- and then it breaks back open, releasing the Glalie from its prison. It looks Somewhat Displeased. Blink looks increasingly chagrined at the pack of Weaviles appearing around them, and when the Glalie bursts free of its pokeball she just shakes her head. "Nope," is all she says out loud as she loops both arms around a frozen Shane and hauls him through a portal back to relative safety on the far side of the lake. Just in case the angered Pokémon decide to pursue, she opens up another portal near them, which gushes a powerful torrent of icy water to scatter them. Meanwhile, she sets her teammate carefully down, blinking huge green eyes at him and then glancing in the direction of the Danger Room's actual physical exit, unseen to most behind the illusion of the training simulation. Through the mist of water left in the air, the swift darting shapes of Weaviles are making their way across the ice. “Nope nope nope,” she says again, under her breath, and then louder, “End simulation.” The icy cavern, the frozen lake, and the murderous Pokémon all vanish, leaving the vast, barren dome of the Danger Room. The sweat trickling down the side of Blink’s face, though, is real enough. The ice around Shane vanishes with the rest of the simulation; his arm falls down to his side a moment after he is /capable/ of moving again. "{Fuck shit son of a zombified jackal} {sorry} {/that/ went -- well.}" From Vietnamese to Spanish to Mandarin, in decreasing levels of fluency and increasing levels of sheepishness. "Maaaybe next time we'll win." "Maybe!" Blink bows her head. "{Thank you,}" she says in Spanish, then switches back to English, "I definitely have a lot to learn. And I'm not sure playing regular Pokémon is going to measure up anymore." She looks Shane over. "I know it's not actual ice, but that can't have felt good. Let's go raid the kitchen or something." "Regular Pokémon have never tried to /eat/ me so it's got that going for it." Despite the perfectly mild temperature in the room, Shane only now starts shivering. "Kitchen and maybe some hot cocoa. Let's go."