#not tagging the wardens bc they have minor roles and these are already. too many

[randomwriteronline]

The moment a tree is cut in half before his very own eyes, Emmet’s hands grasp little shoulders tighter as if that alone could keep them still forever.

“Absolutely not,” he sentences.

“It’s the only way,” Irida argues.

“That is a safety hazard!” he replies instantly, eyes snapping suddenly to face her own. “Verrry dangerous even for an adult. They will not enter the arena.”

But the Commander has ordered otherwise: this is the child’s duty and nobody else’s, and neither Pearl nor Diamond Clan must attempt to take upon the grievous task in their stead lest they want him to get quite crossed at them - and considering what is known of him, nobody wants him to get crossed at them.

However! Emmet will sooner die than let a passenger (let alone a minor) on a train destined for derailment.

The little kid pulls at his fingers to pry them off of their shoulders; he doesn’t fight them.

He turns around, goes back to the river, refuses to look at the child while they stuff as many satchels of balm as they can in their little bag, and starts making small spheres of mud.

He keeps making them when they make their way into the arena, heart in their throat beating wildly and scared beyond belief.

Once he decides he has made enough, Emmet bolts - runs up the hill hissing through clenched teeth as his bad leg aches and sizzles in pain just in time to see the gargantuan beast descend into the small enclosed space, shining bright and golden yellow with a kind of insatiable blind wrath radiating from every joint of its exoskeleton as the axes of its arms glint like broken glass.

The cry that bellows out of Kleavor shakes the secular tree to its core.

Then something vaguely wet slaps the back of its head before it can charge against the kid.

“I am Emmet!” Emmet announces, and throws another ball against the side of the Noble's jaw. “I will be rude now!”

Mud splatters against Kleavor’s face when it turns to roar at the man.

“Your mandibles are laughable!”

“The Lord doesn’t have mandibles!” argues enraged the young Warden.

“That’s why they’re laughable!”

Miss Zisu be blessed for her insistence of keeping one’s sorroundings as heightened in the mind as possible; by the time the stone-cutting blow soars through the air with a hiss as Kleavor swings one of its blades with a horrid cry in his direction, Emmet has already rolled away to safety.

He hears something crack and fall where he previously stood.

A shrill laugh, all adrenaline and terror, leaves his bewildered mouth; then, once he has the Noble’s attention steady on himself (and not on the child pelting the back of the beast with soothing balms) he throws another mudball, and moves.

The beast follows him in raging hot pursuit as he forces it to crawl in circles around its tree, heavy axes hindering its speed as the wet earth cracks and falls to dust as it hits its carapace - he doubles down whenever it seems to realize there is another presence right behind it, whenever it appears to turn around and the kid begins scrambling for cover.

His bad leg strains. He powers through it.

Well, he doesn’t really.

His foot slips and he thumbles down into the arena gracelessly.

Ouch.

He groans as the pain blooms and spreads further all around his knee.

And now he cannot stand.

Verrry inconvenient.

Emmet looks up to meet the furious eyes clouded by golden light that are Kleavor’s, and feels horrendously cold all of a sudden.

The axes are planted firmly into the ground as the Bug pulls its body back, clearly giving itself the momentum necessary to hurl itself forward like a Feather Ball - no, on second thought its idea has it mirroring the parable of the throw of a regular Pokéball to catch a beast just out of reach, making a long arch in the air before landing heavily onto the target.

The kid yells his name and throws another satchel of balm.

Kleavor jumps.

There’s a loud BONK that makes Emmet wheeze uncontrollably for a moment together with the absolute agony of his injured limb after that very last minute roll to hide behind the secular tree, and all he can think as the adrenaline makes his hands shake and his stomach feel like he’s going to puke is something like oh my god oh my god oh my fucking god oh fucking sweet god oh my sweet fucking god holy mother of fuck that worked oh my sweet fucking mother of god.

A blinding light covers the tree: when he crawls on his good leg and two hands around the trunk he is positively ecstatic to see the child stand, unharmed if not for a couple bruises the few times they fell, before a much calmer Kleavor.

“Bravo!” he shouts (though the word feels weird in his mouth, like he should hear it but not say it) as he approaches the two of them.

The little kid beams at him, immediately trying to help him up.

“Don’t worry! I am fine,” he assures them, “Wyrdeer will carry me. You did verrry well! Are you hurt?”

The little one shakes their head; Kleavor instead nods.

Emmet turns towards it: “Ah! I would like to apologize,” he explains quickly, before the Pokémon gets mad again and tear him into many bloody ribbons, “I did not want to be rude. I had to distract you to ensure this passenger’s safety. Your warden is right to say you’re incredible. You are verrry strong! Verrry charismatic. Yup yup! I would like to battle you one day. If you’d like that too.”

When it’s not full of wrath, twice its size and shining with golden blinding light, Lord Kleavor seems a little bashful when it comes to praise. It chitters something with its deep croaky voice and scurries up the tree in a hurry.

After a moment it’s back down, holding in its mouth a sort of rock slab: it presents it to the little hero.

“A gift?” the man asks, and it nods. “How nice! Thank you.”

“Thank you,” AkaRei echoes him. After a second they add: “Very much.”

And off runs Lord Kleavor again.

Well, Emmet thinks as Lian yells at him for insulting poor Kleavor. Thank goodness the commander never said anything about anyone from Jubilife not taking care of it in the child’s stead.

-

The moment Elesa sees that the nice little Jubilife child at the Diamond settlement and hears that they’re going to stop Lady Lilligant all on their own, she insists on following them all the way to the Arena.

“It’s the only way,” Adaman explains.

To hell with that!, Elesa’s face says.

“You don’t want to get on the commander’s bad side,” the leader warns her, dead serious and concerned like she’s rarely seen him. “It would take him no time or hesitation to declare a state of alert and run our settlement over like a herd of Rapidash. With no help against him... It’s just not worth it, even if you think it’s unfair. Do you understand?”

Of course she does, and she would agree that he’s right. But that kid is what, eight? Why shouldn’t they be sitting on the sidelines and letting the adults handle something so dangerous?

The child pulls at her sleeve: “It’s fine,” they reassure her.

She doesn’t look at them as they stuff the balms for Lilligant in their little satchel, turning around and stomping back down the slope. Her leader watches her quizzically as she then stops, waits, and turns to the side of the cliff.

After a moment or two, right when the kid is almost done, she is running along the elevated land and edges the arena, scraping the soles of her boots against the rocks until she disappears in the mireland’s ashy fogs, unseen as she finally arrives on the small hill right behind the tableau that makes up the arena.

The wind picks up: in the middle of the small cyclone dissipating the low clouds, Lilligant shines brilliantly with her battle cry.

Well. Let’s cross fingers and pray it works.

Elesa takes as long a running start as she can on this strip of land, leaps, and near slams her chin on the cold hard stone as the sudden ground under her feet makes her stumble forward.

No time for that! The child hasn’t noticed her arrival, nervously scrambling around like a headless Starly as they are, throwing satchels aimlessly while Lilligant avoids them with a couple stretches and prepares her attack. She needs to act quick.

One of the soothing projectile landing near her gives her an idea.

Lady Lilligant’s performance comes to a complete halt before it can even start as she hears a wolfish whistle.

Who dares? Who dares?

The Lady turns.

The balm launched directly into her face (the motion of the arm and leg accompanying it to lend more strength to the throw is extraordinarily professional, clearly rehearsed many times) carries so much momentum that it sends her straight to the ground like in a cartoon - whatever a cartoon is.

The kid shouts Elesa’s name with such relief as she hoists them on her own shoulders to limit the harm coming to them that she almost manages out a croak to reassure them.

Adaman, Arezu and Calaba shout her name for completely different reasons, divided rather evenly between ‘what in the name of Sinnoh do you think you’re doing get back here this instant this isn’t a Stunky you can kick across the swamps’ and ‘did you just knock over a Noble with your bare fucking hands, you absolute madness in the shape of a woman’.

She waves in their direction as if to assure them she’s got this (not really but they don’t need to know) and nothing bad will happen (so she hopes).

Luckily her strategy is simple enough for the child to grasp even without her using words or signs - heavy feeling in the legs permitting, she’s going to run circles around this feisty overgrown weed and they just have to throw everything at it until the Lady calms down.

Easy peasy.

Lilligant, shining as golden as the midday sun, raises herself to her feet with some difficulty and turns, gleaming eyes full of fury.

She jumps something like four feet straight in the air.

Fuck.

Elesa is lucky she has such long limbs and a good enough awareness and coordination of every single part of her body that allows her to speed away as soon as the parable is two quarters of the way done, or she would have had her head split in half by, well. That apocalyptic split she just witnessed. And here comes another, and another, and another, each at the very least telegraphed by these immense jumps she does, and Elesa keeps running across the other side of the arena until the Lady loses her patience and jumps faster, landing so close this time that she damn near chops her foot off.

The kid beans the pale golden face with a balm that makes it stumble back. Elesa blesses them a million times over as she regains a good enough safety distance between the two of them and the Noble.

Lilligant composes herself with a spin and leaaps again, graceful and wrathful, and lands... In the middle of the clearing.

Huh?

Oh, no, wait.

There come the shockwaves.

Running was already putting a horrible strain on the entire lower half of her body, which is now ablaze with pangs of pain, and Elesa dreads the thought of having to jump. She tries to time herself and sort of step across the first wave, but it makes her legs howl and nearly knocks her down.

Fine.

She’ll just... Have to tank through this.

Hands grasping the kid’s legs like her life depends on it while they keep throwing balms, Elesa sucks in a breath through her teeth.

Second wave comes.

Hits her right in the ankles.

Third wave comes.

She almost buckles.

Fourth wave comes.

She bites her lip nearly hard enough to bleed.

Fifth wave comes.

The light explodes in a burst of glimmering gold and distracts her from the scream of anguish seeping into her nerves from her bones, and she barely notices she’s trembling.

The kid hugs her head tight, which doesn’t help the way it throbs. She lays them back down, taking the chance to kneel and rest a moment.

Are you alright?, she signs, too tired to wonder if they can understand them.

The kid just nods enthusiastically, searching in their bag until their arms are so full of Oran berries and medicinal leeks and some potions too that they begin falling from them, handing them over to her.

She smiles and drinks a bottle of medicine slowly: what a sweet child.

Lilligant also approaches, a little mortified and worried. Her long leaf arms hold a small slab which she offers to the child, and a petal plucked from her head for the woman, to soothe her aches.

Elesa touches her own chin and pulls then the hand forward.

“She says thank you,” AkaRei translates. “And thank you. From me too.”

Lilligant curtsies very gracefully.

Well, Elesa thinks as Arezu reconciles with her noble and Adaman and Calaba fuss over her. Thank goodness the commander never said anything about anyone from the Clans or Jubilife just helping the child.

-

The moment the kid is spotted speeding around on a large fish towards the other side of the coastlands, Briosa grabs Volo and drags him along while she climbs all the way up to the very end of the cliff.

Her eyes squint: there the little thing is, she can see the trail of tgeur aquatic steed.

“Hey,” she says snapping her fingers so Volo is paying attention before pointing at the speck dashing on the waves, “They’re going directly for the active volcano island, right?”

The apparently younger man squints too.

He nods.

“Not under my fucking watch,” she sentences.

Thank Arceus the madman decides against diving straight into the sea from the top of the cliff; she does however slide down from it back to the beach exceedingly fast, making Volo scramble to keep up with her, then seizes the first row boat she finds, hurls the other on it with little fanfare, and starts rowing away at a frankly breakneck velocity for a guy with such apparently spindly arms dragging along with herself a body roughly twice her weight.

About halfway through her arms start cramping, and a Tentacool has the genius idea of throwing a poison dart at her nose (which is indeed not small and, if it did extend a little further out instead of straight down, would definitely be a good target), missing her entirely.

The Scary Face she glares at it with is enough to make it lose all animosity.

A Pokéball to the face later, the small beast is latched onto the backside of the boat and propelling it with Hydropulsars, and Firespit Island is reached much quicker this way - though the Tentacool does halt and stutter in fear as a horrendous thunder is heard mere hundreds of meters away from it.

With the jellyfish freed (she already has a Water type, and a Poison type too), after knocking out a Venomoth that tries to pick a fight, Briosa drags her associate and ward into the isle’s boiling heart of rock and molten lava.

They hurry between the pits of lava heaving burning heat, dashing past the Magmars and the Gravelers eyeing them quizzically - thank goodness none are quick enough to keep up and simply remain where they stand instead of chasing them, since those pests are rather feisty.

A small group appears as they round the corners: Volo recognizes the young Pearl leader, the dead Lord's warden and that poor Iscan fellow who can't catch a break from neither ghosts nor exceptionally short men.

Beyond them, he also recognizes the enormous shape of an Arcanine.

Which is. A surprise.

Considering the Lord should be dead.

Briosa does not see the three more or less adult bodies before the arena.

She sees an enormous dog on fire, and a very small child in the middle of a sea of lava, on a thin grey pavement.

“SHIT!” she eloquently shouts.

Shedding her backpack and howling at whoever is not currently in the middle of a pool of molten rocks to remain behind the yellow line she bolts off with a Pokéball in hand to get that tiny, very clearly endangered passenger off of the tracks this damned instant.

Thank goodness Walrein is half Water type or she’d be melting in the heat. Thank goodness she’s half Ice type too, or that Hydropulsar would have been vaporized in a second instead of creating a path across the magma.

“Return to the platform!” she shouts as loud as she can.

The kid turns to her, smiles gladly, waves a little; just as the enormous Lord charges towards them, they roll across the temporary flooring in a pinch to evade the monster - and get on the other section of the arena.

“I SAID RETURN TO THE PLATFORM!”

Arcanine roars with a might that shakes the Earth to its very core.

Briosa, who is completely deaf, points her finger at him and barks right back: “DON’T TRY ME YOU SON OF A BITCH, I’LL RIP YOUR TEETH OUT!”

(Behind her, both wardens and young leader stand bewildered, stunned out of their wits in vaguely horrified silence; Volo’s hands run to hide his face within them, torn between screaming, praying this doesn’t completely destroy relations between the guild and the Pearl clan, and desperately holding back an explosion of nervous laughter as a Hydropump slams into the Lord’s side and makes him stumble back into the lava.)

The kid launches something against the very angry beast’s snout and hits it.

“STOP ANTAGONIZING THE MURDER DOG!” Briosa shrieks with such exhasperation that she can almost feel in slow motion which one of the blood vessels in her brain is about to explode with enough strength to leave a fuming crater in place of her frontal lobe.

Another roar, a charge.

Ice Beam hits the Lord right in the chest and has him stumble back.

Other projectiles are thrown, other fragile paths to shore are built on the magma; the kid uses it to move to a different section of the arena, still launching satchels as Walrein struggles to keep the massive beast occupied.

She extinguishes the flaming circle in the middle of the arena, she stops his charges midway, she tries to drown the big bastard on land at every opportunity.

The kid still never returns to more solid ground.

A badly timed roll, and one of their sleeves is nearly incinerated by fire.

For the love of all that is good, if they don’t die nor do her in with a heart attack by the end of this, Briosa is going to kill them.

What takes several minutes seems to pass in just a handful of seconds.

A flash of blinding light dissipates to show a much calmer but still enormous Arcanine, and the child cheers with too much adrenaline in their system to realize their arm has a burn that nearly covers half of it.

They barely have the time to turn around and thank Briosa that a bullet roughly as big as Terusho (the very nice older sibling they got when they joined the Survey Corps, Laventon’s assistant) shoots right towards them and they are uncerimoniously grabbed from under the armpit with a Rillaboom grip, raised in the air, very quickly transported away from any semblance of magma, and settled back down on the ground.

Briosa stares into their eyes with her own that look like rotten olives, and she is absolutely livid.

“PLEASE comply with station staff when asked to return to the platform!” she snarls, but the pitch of her voice makes her a little amusing even with the worry in her tone. She points at the arena, dead serious: “That is LAVA! If you fell there would not be BONES left! You would have been SOUP!”

They laugh nervously. The high is slowly going away and the terror is settling.

Briosa turns them around like a sack of potatoes, inspecting their wounds, muttering of Cheri berries. Something strikes her.

“Why the hell where you there anyway?” she asks, and gestures at the three waiting by at the edge of the arena (a little scared of her honestly): “They’re older. They should be handling a dangerous Pokémon.”

No help, they reply. Rule says only me. Clan no help.

“Who made the rule?” she demands.

In her mind she is replacing the bastard’s teeth with her fists.

They furrow their brow and put their hands under their nose, clearly imitating someone. Good choice, since they clearly have trouble spelling and she’s good with charades for reasons she can’t remember.

A moment and she clicks her tongue loudly - the Jubilife galaxy chief...

She gives them another look to assess the damage.

“First we cure those burns,” she decides, “Second I teach you how to throw someone thrice your size and weight, third...”

She waits a moment.

“You did hear me swear, right.”

They nod.

“Third don’t repeat anything I say ever. Fourth, we get that mustached motherfucker and hurl him into the ocean.”

The kid laughs.

Lord Arcanine approaches sheepishly and very, understandably afraid - he retreats for a moment when Briosa notices his arrival and hides the child behind herself, with a look like death in her pupils and Walrein readying a Hydropump that without the power lent by the frenzy is sure to destroy him.

His little savior stops both threats by pulling at the Ginko sleeve and talking with their hands, and he is free (though under a glare that could freeze his blood) to gently lay a plate from his mouth into their little palms.

“Att’a boy,” the small man comments.

“Thank you,” AkaRei says and signs before gently patting his snout.

Arcanine’s tail wags a little bit.

Well, Briosa thinks as people she doesn’t know finally come over and start talking while Volo eyes the plate hungrily as he hands her berries for the kid. Thank goodness the fucker never said anything about the Ginko guild helping.

-

The moment he actually realizes how the noble is to be quelled, Ingo’s hands grasp little shoulders tighter as if that alone could keep them still forever.

“Absolutely not,” he sentences.

“Now you come to your senses?!” Melli shrieks.

“I had not understood they would have to physically fight Electrode!” the other replies horrified. “This is no task for a child to take on! It’s inadmissible!”

But the Commander has ordered otherwise: this is the child’s duty and nobody else’s, and neither Pearl nor Diamond nor Ginko nor Jubilife must attempt to help them in any way lest they want him to get quite crossed at them - and considering what is known of him, nobody wants him to get crossed at them.

However! Ingo will sooner die than let a passenger (let alone a minor) on a train destined for derailment.

The little kid pulls at his fingers to pry them off of their shoulders; he struggles against them just for a moment.

He watches, uneasy, as they expertly stuff their bag with satchels with Melli’s begrudging help while the gears of his mind churn and turn to find some way to stop this trainwreck of a situation before the kid is grievously injured so much that they overtheat and his temples start hurting.

Considering they’re still alive however, either they have miraculously fought alone and survived each frenzied Noble (something hardly likely, because despite how skilled their battling abilities might be they are still a small and frail and slow 8-year-old), or someone has managed to help them. There has to be some kind of loophole to the commander’s orders, he is certain of that, but where? Effectively, anybody in Hisui has been ruled out.

The child fixes their bag and walks quickly into the arena.

The solution explodes in his brain.

He hurriedly shoves off hat and coat, grabs at the hem of his tunic - Adaman and Melli turn away from him in tandem, suddenly embarassed as they realize he’s undressing, but they’re late anyways: haggard uniform back over his undershirt, Ingo entrusts his fellow warden with both ornate bracelet and Pearl insignia.

His eyes pierce the opposing leader’s: “Please don’t tell Miss Irida of this.”

And then he’s on the rock wall sorrounding Moonview Arena, climbing upward like his life depends on it.

Lord Electrode is akin to a Sun fallen on the ground - enormous, glowing brilliantly, and in an incredibly worse mood than usual. In front of it, the kid looks even smaller than they already are.

It shakes fiercely, beady eyes overrun with wrath, earth quaking with it.

A fulmineous Poison Jab has it rolling on its side with a growling groan.

There is a relief in the terrified child’s face as they recognize the Gliscor soaring just above them that makes his heart hurt.

“I APOLOGIZE FOR THE TREATMENT I WILL BE RESERVING YOU, LORD ELECTRODE!” perched upon the rocky ring Ingo shouts as loud as he can, hoping the volume will break through the anger of the beast turning to face him at least a little: “I CANNOT ALLOW HARM TO COME TO PASSENGERS!”

“Don’t hurt him!” Melli’s voice comes from beneath.

“I WILL TRY TO MINIMIZE THE DAMAGE!”

Electrode shrieks at him and hurls a ball of pure electricity towards him. Gliscor tanks it without a scratch thanks to his Ground typing and replies with another Poison Jab.

A pinkish satchel hits the back of the round body, and a bit of that rage chips off.

The Lord turns around with horrifying speed, fuming. The spook is such that a second balm hits him straight in the face, but the problem is now clear: if Ingo wants to keep the kid alive and in one piece, the distractions need to come in a constant stream.

Gliscor will have to work overtime.

Luckily, he already loves playing with his food.

Even more luckily, it takes very little to get on the Lord’s nerves.

The only thing that can deal at least some noteworthy damage is Poison, so he has to make the most of the one move he managed to re-teach him right before the start of this rodeo.

It’s a game of Glameow-and-Rattata, hit-and-run after hit-and-run, and the only ones having fun seem to be Electrode’s offsprings as they gleefully try to self-destruct in the hovering Pokémon’s face and at the child’s feet. A rogue spark traveling too far from its detonation makes the kid yelp and Ingo want to jump in himself, but that would then leave his partner directionless and thus the passenger vulnerable and--

And the Lord is readying an explosion of his own, its range wide enough to cover almost the whole arena and there’s no way those little legs can evade that.

The child half scream in terror for a moment when a poisoned tail wraps around their middle and they find themselves high in the air; Gliscor, unable to apologize for the suddenness of the situation, does his best to keep a strong but not bruising grip on their little body just like his trainer has instructed.

The detonation blinds and deafens Ingo for a moment.

His ears ring and dark splotches still blot out his vision when a shower of satchels pelts the equally confused Electrode - it seems gravity, though forgotten in the middle of the chaos, came to their aid nonetheless.

A smaller bang of light: Lord Electrode shakes the last bit of frenzy off of himself as the child is lowered back to the ground.

The warden climbs into the arena like he’s just been possessed by a famished Dusknoir, power-walking his way to the very much not completely alright kid, case in point the piece of leg he can see through the ripped side of their pants with is very much getting purplish in color and a little bloody (though thank Sinnoh it’s more akin to a scratch instead of a gaping wound).

“Are you in pain?” he asks immediately, completely skiping pleasantries, one hand recalling his partner to get him some rest and the other rummaging in his pocket for a sort of ‘health kit’ he keeps on himself at all times.

When the kid shakes their head - bravely, but they seem to limp a little - he kneels before them to better inspect their leg and ignores their response, soaking a piece of bandage in medicinal leek juice and wrapping it carefully around their bleeding bruise.

“I apologize - I’ve committed a horrible mistake and made you pay the consequences,” he tells them sheepishly as they shake a little and hiss for the burn and Almighty Sinnoh they are just so small in his hands: “If I had been attentive this morning I might have been able to devise a better plan as we ascended to the arena, keeping you away from the battlefield entirely-”

He would go on if the little arms didn’t hug him tight.

He hugs back. Right. They are shaken. Comfort should come first; there is more than enough time for an apology later.

“You were incredibly brave,” he murmurs.

(Kamado is still going to get his ass handed to him verbally, physically or even both and no force in Hisui is going to spare him from his fate.)

There’s a sharp ‘spock’ sound, like empty wood against wood. When Ingo turns his head slightly to inspect where it came from, he sees the much calmer Lord near the tree that is his home, trying to roll in a few different directions before settling on his side and carefully approaching them, some kind of slab held tight between his teeth.

“Lord Electrode,” he greets him, to give the kid time to retract into his coat if they feel unsafe or wipe their tears away if they don’t want the Pokémon to see them: “I’m sorry for the treatment I’ve reserved you. I had no ill intentions...”

Electrode grumbles amiably through the thing in his mouth - it seems he recalls the apology yelled beforehand and is willing to let bygones be bygones seeing what the situation was. He can be surprisingly level-headed despite... You know. The exploding thing.

He offers the slab of rock very gently to the half hidden child.

“A gift?” the man asks, and he nods. “How kind! Thank you.”

“Thank you,” AkaRei echoes him. After a second they add: “Very much.”

Electrode accepts the Oran berries the warden sheepishly hands over to him rather gratefully.

Well, Ingo thinks as Melli rushes in to assess the damage and pretends he doesn’t sigh in relief at the kid being in one piece. Thank goodness the commander never said anything about foreigners being forbidden from helping.

-

The moment Avalugg emerges from the ice, shining brilliantly in a mound of light, as big as a mountain, roaring hard enough to make the Earth tremble, the child before him seizes with a shiver that even in this weather is more from terror than chill.

Adaman pales into snow.

Irida bites her lip.

“Almighty Sinnoh,” she hears him whisper, “He is a colossus.”

She knew already. She all but grew up on his back, after all.

Gaeric remains immoble next to her, unable to disobey her orders, with a face she isn’t sure she can interpret. She knows he cannot stop the kid after giving them his permission; she also knows, from the tension in his arms, that he does not want that child to be out there in the arena now more than ever.

Nobody can help.

Kamado has finally figured out a way to word his decision that doesn’t leave any breath, any opening, any slightest attempt at circumnavigating it: he’s left the kid alone to fend off a giant with only their Pokémon and nothing else.

But Avalugg is relentless, she knows, and slow and steady: it might take a while before the child has a moment to battle him, and nothing assures their little legs will manage to move quickly enough to evade any of the frozen boulders he hurls at them.

Her nails sink into her palm so she can't bite at them.

Next to her, her fellow clan leader thumbs at his bandages.

Avalugg roars.

Irida turns sharply to Adaman, entire body facing his, a determined look in her awfully nervous eyes; her fist intercepts his a moment too late, and their stiff arm stumble against one another for a moment before the tension in their bodies blocks them.

“I ask for your alliance,” she says with a throat that shakes with the knowledge that she is too young to be ready for war, “In the case Jubilife turns against the Pearl Clan for what I wish to do.”

“I ask for your alliance in the case Jubilife turns against the Diamond Clan for what I wish to do,” he says with a voice that shakes from the cold and the fear, “And your permission to do it.”

It’s her people’s Noble, after all.

Their wrists link for a second, as the enormous beast begins his attack: the contract is sealed.

Adaman darts into the arena without a word more, because he is impatient and an older brother, and he grabs the kid in a roll that gets them out of the way of a ball of ice hurtling their way before tucking them under his arm like a basket of softfoot roots, and Irida briefly forgets their just stipulated accord to clench her fists tight enough to break rock within them and think as strongly as she can that he’s an idiot and she will kill him because who in the name of Almighty Sinnoh would run directly into Lord Avalugg as if it were a sound decision under any circumstance, let alone this one in particular.

The Diamond leader could not hear her if she were shouting at him, busy as he is shielding the child in his haori as he tries balancing them on his hip, evading rows of frozen boulders, and thinks to himself that this was not, in fact, his greatest plan - to run in, Leaf Blades blazing, and set himself up against an enormous creature he cannot dream of attacking; firstly, because Gaeric would kill him on the spot, and he would be in the right; secondly, because the Lord is so much bigger and so, so much angrier than him.

The kid grabs him tight, arms around his waist, yells that he’s not supposed to be there, that Kamado will get angry, and they’re crying a little

Adaman hoists them up in his arms as the beast makes him dance about to not get skewered by the icy shards jutting out from across the length of the arena and gives them what he hopes is a genial, comforting smile.

“Don’t worry,” he reassures them: “I’m not alone.”

Avalugg roars.

The first icicle misses narrowly, the kid holding tighter onto his neck; the second one has him stumbling on his heels and falling backwards.

The third one disappears into the sky.

From where he lays a moment more Adaman recognizes stripes of red on white tails shaking in the wind, and wheezes a blessing at Irida.

The Pearl leader, iron grip on the paraglider carried by Lord Braviary, spares him a glance just to ascertain that he and the child have gotten back on their feet as she flies in circles over the enormous Noble to redirect his attacks somewhere she know he will struggle to aim at. She can tell the wings keeping her in the air strain as the frenzied Avalugg targets them with increasing fury.

A ray of freezing energy grazes Braviary while they fly a little too close, making his mighty wings flap in fright for a moment - the piercing chill escaping her Lord’s maw so violently nearly snakes its way under her skin, but she grits her teeth and sucks cold air through them.

She did not mean to hurl the Eternal Ice at the docile giant so harshly, but from such a height and in such a situation, she supposes it can’t exactly be helped.

Avalugg takes it all, all the balms thrown at him from smaller hands as well as more well-known ones, stunned in place by the dizziness his fully unleashed fury envelops him in. By the time his massive head shakes to regain composure and his eyes are again alight with wrath, the golden glow has drastically reduced its splendor; he still can’t hear his warden trying to plead with him, nor can he recognize the shape insistently circling his head as the little human girl he’s seen grow up under his careful gaze.

Between the small projectiles dirtying his maw and the avian annoyance, he decides the latter is more worthy of his rage.

Braviary shrieks, doing his best to evade the boulders of ice hurled blindly in his general direction, some coming far, far too close to him and his passenger for comfort (on land Gaeric yells something and Sabi, despite her reassurances that all will go well, clings harder to his leg). Irida grip slips just for a moment, half of her Eternal Ice falling to the ground uselessly, wasted, but she steels herself enough to fly to safety.

The good part of her strife is that, down below her, the danger level has been drastically reduced and the kid is getting their arms sore with throwing balms without rest.

That is, until Adaman decides he has a better, quicker idea.

It’s a very good thing that the child has no complaints about getting swung around in his arms like a moderately sized sack of flour, and also that they trust him completely as he jumps off the platform into the arena, a few meters away from the gargantuan rock pillars that are Avalugg’s legs, shaking the ground with every lumbering step as he turns and turns increasingly furious. There’s no doubt he’s too clouded by rage to even realize what he’s stepping on - even if it was a trail or bunch of his favorite treat.

Dozens of satchels of ice crack beneath the enormous weight of the Noble.

A golden burst blinds Lord Braviary for a moment: Irida’s hands slip to cover her face, but the ground meets her halfway.

It rumbles beneath her with an apologetic growl.

Despite his normally still impressive size, the Lord of the Tundra looks so much more docile, much more gentle without the frenzy coursing through him. He turns bashfully to the small humans at his side, shaking his head as if to apologize; his fellow Lord carefully perches hiself on one of its great tusks and rubs the soft feathers of his head against his large maw, crooning softly.

“Irida?” Adaman calls for her out of breath while the enormous beast lays slowly, trying to see past the block of ice and rock: “Are you alright?”

From the flat back of the Pokémon his fellow Leader’s voice comes weakly: “Yes,” she replies; her head peeks from above. “I’m fine.”

He helps her down from the Lord, and the kid rushes to hug her tight.

All three got out of this in one piece.

Thank Sinnoh.

Avalugg digs something up from the dirt: he pushes the plate a little closer to the smaller humans.

AkaRei picks it up, and smiles weakly: “Thank you.”

Well, Adaman and Irida think grimly as Gaeric, Sabi and Terusho (who hurried over worried by the quakes caused by the Lord’s attacks) slide down into the arena to ascertain that they’re alright. Now, to face the consequences.