aiko's otter den

for a squall and an outside starry sky - Cerulean Cave supposedly has a monster in it, a powerful pokemon said to level buildings. That is not what Khun finds there, or is it? LGP/LGE AU

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5. Don't Falter

It turns out that Mew had teleported them to their room in the Viridian Pokemon Center. Which conveniently kept them out of the accusations of ‘who sabotaged the gym or the volcano?’. Not that Gustang was saying shit about it. But he never would. He liked making people figure things out. Jerk.

They aren’t asking Khun questions, thankfully, not even his opinion. The current champion could take care of that. He takes a walk instead. He needs to… think.

Altair nips his ear, and Khun pets her absently on the head. In forty-eight hours, he’d gone from camping in a weird cave to meeting a cave boy and finding out the cave boy was an experiment of Team Rocket to finding out Rachel was a member of Team Rocket.

He’s going to have such a long report to the League.

“Do you think they got anything out of the lab?” Hatz’s voice is distant, and he looks like he’s nursing a headache.

“Probably not.” Isu watches the feed, nauseous. “That blast should have killed everyone.”

“Mi-mi, Mew, is slowing it down.” Bam’s eyes are closed. He’s holding Mirai in his arms as she purrs. “She has a limit, but Mewtwo isn’t stopping her. So, she can last longer.”

“Why is she slowing it down?” Khun asks. He leans Bam against him and Bam sighs.

“Mi-mi belonged with Papa. She didn’t catch him,” he adds quickly, seeing Isu choke on his soda. “but they were close. She’s looked after him sometimes. But she has a soft spot for this island because we were here and she wants justice. It’s not… it’s not out of love.”

Why does that matter?

Bam sighs again and wipes blood from where it trickles from his nose. Then before their eyes, on camera, the volcano properly erupts. The gym gets splashed with lava, melting and dissolving like wet tissue paper. The mansion falls next.

“We got the pokemon out,” Bam says. “I made her let me.”

Ah.

Khun squeezes his hand. “Close your eyes and breathe. Is Rachel in there?”

“No,” Bam says. “Not… not anymore. She’ll probably leave Kanto. Viole doesn’t like her much. Even for me, he doesn’t like her much.”

“He tried to kill us, if you missed,” Khun reminds him, gently, but dryly.

Bam sighs. “I know. But he does that a lot.”

“That’s a shitty sibling relationship.” Hatz gives Khun a look, and he flips him off with his free hand.

“I like my mom’s side of the family,” Khun says dryly. “Now that we’re no longer required to flip off Tapu Bulu for dinner at night.”

Bam looks so confused and it’d be adorable if again, he still wasn’t suffering a nosebleed.

Isu’s eyes are still riveted on the spewing magma. It’d be beautiful if it wasn’t setting back technology by at least fifty years, ruining people’s entire livelihoods and destroying a cautiously built ecosystem.

Still, Khun supposes that it could be much worse, and tells himself that to avoid the sting of failure that he couldn’t have stopped it to begin with.

“It’s not your fault,” Bam says suddenly. “None of you. It’s not, it’s no one’s fault.”

“Could we pin it on Rachel?”

Bam blinks. “There are psychic tests?” He doesn’t sound pleased at the idea but he’s sure not against it.

“Not unless we get Eurasia Blossom’s records and I am not dealing with her ass again.” Khun’s brief second gym leader tour had nearly ended with Altair murdering the tiny psychic leader with her teeth.

“She’s probably at the same threshold as Mewtwo. And you, obviously.” Isu pats Metagross’ ball. “That’s pretty dangerous.”

“My power isn’t that strong,” Bam says. “I’m just… stubborn. My only quality.”

“You’re fine,” Khun tells him, but he’s very much nursing a headache.

Isu and Hatz share a look and Khun doesn’t like that. He throws poffins at them.

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Battling with Hatz is an excellent distraction. Isu turns off the news and Bam sleeps on and off. So Khun is free to go absolutely wild on Hatz’s strongest partners. Hatz’s honedge is a menace, but it’s still young. His Sirfetch’d however is an entirely different story.

Letting Diana go wild is great. The Ninetales is quick on her feet but Sirfetch’d is clever and stubborn. They can go wild with hesitation even in the heaviest blizzard.

He calls out and freeze dry explodes in front of Sirfetch’d’s beak. She growls and Khun cackles. “That all you’ve got, harakiri?”

“Eat shit, earrings!” Hatz shouts back, and the sword wielding bird swings down.

“Watch the debris!” Isu calls from where he’s hidden Bam and himself behind a bush. Bam watches them, him, Khun thinks, with interest and intent.

“Dazzling Gleam!” He calls, blood crying in his ears.

The sky sparkles as Diana’s body glows. Right as the attack hits, the door to the pokemon center battle room opens.

“It’s the champion!” Someone shouts and all the rush fades from the room as reporters flood in. Without hesitation, Khun sends out Corona, who roars at them all.

Unfortunately, because they are pokemon trainer reporters, they don’t have a singular sense of fear. Corona stomps a foot and glowers down.

“As beautiful a specimen as ever!” says Lou, a particular pain in the ass of a reporter. “Champion Khun, do you have time for a few questions?”

Normally, Khun would grit teeth and tolerate it, or just politely redirect them to the actual reigning champion. But he follows Lou’s eyes, and they’re not directed to him at all.

They’re looking at Bam. Which he should have seen coming. Bam is the definition of a new, youngster, rookie trainer, holding a single young eevee, sponsored by a Jahad princess and with a key stone around his neck.

How the Jahad princess program didn’t get obliterated when Jahad got ousted as running a politically motivated gang was beyond him. Even F.U.G., who literally existed as the shadow of the international league, was better than this.

So Bam had a lot of juicy gossip to offer just by existing.

Khun will not let them turn him into a gossip mine.

“No,” he says curtly. “I don’t, actually.”

Lou doesn’t take the hint because, of course, she doesn’t. She instead makes to jab her microphone in his face. “Sources tell me you and your companions here were near Cinnabar Island when the volcano erupted. You’re here safe and sound, however. DO you have any comment on that?”

His comment was to let Corona lunge to bite Lou’s microphone, the way her perfectly poised hair shining in the sun just begged for an ember or two to roast her entire head. Instead, he smiles nastily. “I’m sure you’re not implying my pokemon can cause an earthquake strong enough to make an active volcano erupt, if even Leader Yeon’s pokemon cannot.” Po Bidau and Yeon families were a divisive combination at best, after all. “I’m sure you’re not saying I’m more than a gym leader and that the League needs an entire overhaul and I’m sure you’re not implying I break the law to do so, are you?”

The longer he goes on, the more pale and twitchy Lou’s face becomes. And to dare make a story about that based on slander with no evidence, well, people did it all the time, but that doesn’t make it smart. And it would implicate the league in some nasty shit (which it obviously was in). But no reporter wanted to be the one killed first for breaking the silence.

She scowls just a little, and her megawatt smile turns on poor Bam, who is half-asleep and not a fan of quadruple his amount of people in his face. She marches towards him and without a word, Isu sends out metagross.

All the camera-holders groan at once. Isu is not a famous trainer, breeder to be, yes, but not a trainer, but everyone knows of Vespa, his electronics disrupting metagross, and they hate him for it.

“Is there something with him you don’t want us to play on air?” Lou says shrewdly. “It is a trainer reporter’s duty to assess up and coming young talent, is it not?”

“All of you at once? For a rookie?” Khun smiles. “I hope your bosses are interested in making grass grow.”

They’re dogged, definitely, and that she’s still here is what causes Hatz to unsheathe honedge. He’s gotten very good at making it look less threatening than it actually is. The sword thrums in their direction, humming happily at the prospect of death and murder. They all jump back.

Hatz steps closer, one of those frosty glares on his face that says, yes, in fact, he will cut you. He doesn’t have to fight for honedge to be fed.

And they know it.

“Would someone like to spar with me?” He scowls. He doesn’t understand a winning smile, really, only a dry and lopsided one or one reserved for privacy that even makes Khun tease him less. “Since you seem so busy ruining my battle with Champion Khun.

Once again, what Hatz lacks in tact, he makes up for in blunt intentions.

The reporters turn to Lou and she smiles at Hatz. “Competitor Hatz! Do you have time for a few questions?”

“No,” he deadpans, and Khun almost laughs.

Almost.

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