Adventure Thread - Group A

As the battle between Rei and Tiki reaches a final crescendo, a voice from next to Clay startles him out of the trance.

"Why do they have to fight, Clay?" Holly asks quietly, seemingly trying to hold herself back from rushing in to disrupt the battle.

Holly is visibly shaking at this point, her knuckles white as she grips Honedge's hilt.

Star is exhausted, she flops onto her side to rest, and Hermit is asleep. Enough time seems to have passed for Tiki to regain consciousness. She shakily pushes herself up, and looks around. She looks around to see bodies strewn about. Everyone was breathing, but she wasn't sure who was still up. She looks to Rei, and starts crawling towards her. Tiki can't believe she got knocked out so hard at the beginning. Her anger, and adrenaline pushes through the pain. She finally reaches Rei, grabs her shirt, and weakly shakes her. "G-Get up!.....Y-you won't beat me....s-so easily..."

"REI!" Holly shouts as she rushes to her mate's side. She resists the urge to shove Honedge's blade through Tiki's Pokemon. It's not the Pokemon's fault. This is all Tiki's fault. Tiki is the one who insisted on this fight. Tiki is the one who demanded Rei needed to make a decision (okay, maybe that one is on Holly too), but Tiki is the one who said she'd be okay with whatever decision Rei made, and then went and shut down on them all. She glares at Tiki, half-tempted to just end this nonsense once and for all... but Rei wouldn't want that. Rei is literally the only thing that stops Holly from seriously injuring Tiki for making this entire fight necessary. She wouldn't kill her. Oh no. No, no, no. Death is too good for Tiki for this..this.. Holly doesn't even have the words to describe what this is.

"Oh, damn." Clay mostly doesn't expect Holly to do anything serious to Tiki, but he moves in between the two of them anyway, nudging Tiki away from Rei as gently as she can. Then he calls out Red Child, and Tiki has a giant floof of an Arcanine leaning down over her in concern. "Holly, can you or one of your Pokémon carry Rei? We need to get these two idiots back to the infirmary before Tiki decides to crawl to Celadon."

Aaaand then Tiki passes out again. Clay shakes his head and starts to lift her up onto Red Child's back. "I swear, I am going to sit on these two until they start talking out their problems. I was raised by monkeys and you grew up in a swamp with your sister, how are we the not-crazy ones?"

He turns and glares at Star, then barks a warning. "And don't you start being a pain. I'm taking your dummy to get healed. And then I am getting someone to help her because she refuses to cooperate, so don't complain about humans not helping, okay?" Anybody competent is probably going to insist they can't help Tiki against her will, but he doesn't know if Star would take that for an answer. He switches back to human speech. "Holly, can you find, uh, Hermit's ball and put him back in? I'm not super up for carrying a sleeping pile of goo back to the guild."

Star growls at Clay, but this was what she wanted. She wanted some actual help. She huffs, and moves around to get the unconscious pokes back into their balls. She juggles most of them back into the guild. After that is done she heads to find Tiki to defend her from horrible ghost girl, and stupid monkey boy.

Clay, Holly, and their Pokemon with passengers (and Star taking up the rear) head back to the Guild. They definitely make a strange sight, but nobody accosts them. Even the City Guard, who can be seen lurking about, watching them, don't interfere. Perhaps it's because they see no reason to get involved (the Guard is notoriously lazy, after all), or perhaps they're actually somewhat afraid of going after the strange, blue-haired girl that carries a red sword and travels with a massive Arcanine. Maybe it's a bit of both. Either way, nobody tries to stop them, and most just get out of the way.

By the time they reach the Guild's Infirmary, the Healers actually seem prepped and ready to go. Their Audino and Chansey begin work right away with Heal Pulses. While Holly does recall her Trevenant, she refuses to be shooed away by the Healers. She won't get in the way of their work, but she's not leaving Rei's side either.

"I should have been here for her." She thinks to herself. "If I'd been here... if I'd fought instead of her, I could have stopped this. Rei might not have liked it, but I'm tired of hiding behind her all the time. I'm sick of letting her get hurt to protect me, or to resolve some stupid argument with Tiki. That dumb human girl isn't worthy of Rei's time, and she has so much emotional nonsense going on. First she wants to be my friend (when she first met me after I tried to kill everyone), then she's happy and still wants to be my friend when I turn up out of nowhere. Even when I turned out to be a rival for Rei's love she was still okay with it. Until Rei chose me. Hrmph. Humans like Tiki are way too complicated, and make no sense!"

After a few hours, Tiki stirs awake again. She rubs her temples, and groans as her body is still pretty sore. The ground feels a lot softer, and she isn't in as much pain as before. She looks around with semi-blurry vision. "Uuugghh....Where am I?..."

Clay's head pops up when he sees Rei on her way out and he hurries over. "Hey, hey, no. Should you be up already? I'm pretty sure you should be lying down still."