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As it happened, faced with what looked like an impossible feat of strength on the part of the man they were chasing, the man who it seemed for all the world was kidnapping their friend, Edrick had decided to try the impossible himself. How many times had this group of theirs overcome nonsense beyond nonsense in order to achieve some kind of victory here? If this bastard was strong enough to throw a wyvern, why couldn't he be strong enough to catch her? He owed Peaches that much at least, she was hurt worse than he was or at least he believed she was. He could do this. He could help- And then he received two important reminders. The first was that the people around him cared about him, delivered in the form of Link diving on him from behind and taking him to the ground before he could be smashed by several hundred pounds of flying lizard. The second was that he was hurt... a whole lot worse than he was giving himself credit for. Oh he could hear his mother and sister chiding him now about going off and trying to get into another fight when he should have been resting and letting one of them heal him! So while Link got up off his back he spent a few more moments there laying facedown in the dirt, dazed from the pain and meekly bleeding in the street while he tried to remember how to move. An assortment of noises and voices helped wake him from this temporary stupor he'd found himself in, and while the world spun around him he slowly got up to his hands and knees, bright blonde hair already dirty again from the day's excitement and starting to look a little closer to that black it had been when the others met. Come to think of it, Penelope still hadn't tried to get him to properly wash it yet. Advantages of getting hurt, he thought as he waited until the ground stopped spinning before his eyes and he could make out voices properly again. “You’ve done so well-- You just… I just need you to stop, and stay still. I need you to be okay.” That was Citron... and it didn't sound like Peaches was doing all that well. He could... maybe help tend to her again after this, but there were other things that needed- "She's a wyvern, she'll handle it." That was the new boy... Raju? Raykee? One of those, he couldn't remember right now. But that boy also had a Wyvern... and now he had an idea on how he could help continue the fight. He wasn't catching a horse on foot, he'd tried that for years now and had plenty of proof that wouldn't work, but if he was flying? "H-hey," he managed to all but cough out as he made his way towards the two riders, one arm clutching at his freshly re-bloodied chest and the other holding the lance he'd been using to keep himself up, "I don't think I can help here, and I can't catch Gaston on foot, so... can one of you fly me after him and drop me like a rock on his horse?"

Coconuts, what the heck? "Why would, actually I probably could break it open..." His thoughts about coconuts, which was quickly going into trying to remember how people even ate coconuts, would soon be interrupted by Z. which wasn't the first time they had suddenly interjected themselves into a situation and Clobber was almost getting used to it. "It's not really that bad.....right?" Clobber was growing self conscious about the apparent dirt on his face. He thought it was just stuck on his...sucker things but maybe his face also was stickier than a normal face. Clobber shook his head. "Lay off me why don't ya, so what if I got a bit of dirt on me I dunno if you've noticed but we're kinda in the frigging wilderness out here does it really matter?" He was surprised to see Z. head off like that. "Tsk, guess they're just as reckless as the rest of them huh." To Clobber's great surprise whatever it was they did seemed to have worked. "Are you kidding me, never heard of beating someone INTO consciousness before. Was that how it was in the games or somethin', thought sleep was one of those turn based things...." While he could remember the games themselves some details of the mechanics were a bit blurry. Maybe it'd be a good idea not to think too much about it in terms of video game logic after all. It looked like Jirachi was more friendly than he would have guessed, and even more surprising was that the voice was familiar. Which meant this guy, gal, thing? This Pokemon must have something to do with what was going on. He still was wary that it would suddenly attack again but Clobber started making his way towards the group to ask Jirachi some things.... And then the Rotom and Zorua started to argue. And Clobber found himself turning away once again from the group. He just didn't want to get involved in it is all, what if they wanted him to weigh in what the heck would he say? He certainly didn't think they might start lashing out and break out into a fight. And anyway he had to go wash up right? Just because they were in the wilderness didn't mean being clean didn't matter after all.

Somewhere deep in the recesses of her mind, she could... Understand it, at least a little. The annoyance at the wrong name being used-- it resonated with some part of her that she couldn't quite remember. Like a stray piece of code in an endless sea, or a corrupted file at the end of a broken path, she felt something in the back of her mind struggling to escape the recesses of her cognition, only... To fail; as had anything else she had attempted to remember from her life outside of the forum. The path itself was as if it had been broken by an unseen force, as if the code she had attempted to call had been moved, and so instead her mind pulled nothing save for the scant few emotions that had once been tied to the code that had once been at the end of that file path. Perhaps then, it was because of this unfamiliarity with who she once was, that the lingering trace of sympathy did little to excuse the aggression with which Z. had replied; instead allowing her annoyance to mix and mingle with the frustration that had been mounting since the beginning of their little operation. She was thankful then, she decided, for the certain level of distance she kept between herself and her processors. A buffer here. A buffer there. Each command requiring a certain level of effort, each command and statement being able to be measured, and controlled. Even now she found herself taking yet another step backwards, further from the buffer, and into the formless sea of her mind that she had been attempting to make some sense of as she took a moment to think. So far, she had been so careful, she had done everything she could to be precise about what she said; to keep herself suitably cheery, bouncy, and easy to work with. She had learned long ago that this sort of outward bearing, this sort of free-spirited personality that could go with the flow was the kind of person that others found easy to work with, and so it had become a practiced tool in her arsenal. But now, now, it seemed, as was always the case, that there were those unsatisfied with her performance; and as with all tools, when placed under enough pressure... They would break. "...You're really insufferable to work with, you know that?" Es' voice would come out dulled, slightly, as the static in her voice and flow of electricity seemed to halt disconcertingly. Even the tell-tale glitch that had interrupted her voice failed to insert itself into her words as she spoke, a less enthusiastic tone permeating her every word. "...What a pathetic person you must have been before." And with that, it was over, as her plasma surged back to its full speed, and as she once again began zipping around Jirachi; blue light coming off the electric-Pokémon, as if to accentuate her bright smile. "Anyhoo! Sorry you had t-t-t-to see that, Jiji," she'd chuckle, her voice once again taking a bouncy tone as her electric-coating spasmed with her words. "B-b-but you see what I mean now! Our Four-Legged-Friend here is a feisty one, for sure!"

Z. stared at Hector like the Falinks had grown a third eye, or a thirteenth eye, as the case may be. It wasn’t that they were unused to receiving compliments or thanks (even if the whole “Pokémon” thing meant they couldn’t remember times they had), but Z. hadn’t woken up the Jirachi for anyone else but themselves. They certainly weren’t doing it to save a washed-up ex-mod who had run into them and pressed them against a wall only a few hours earlier. Being right about everything had put them in a good mood, though, so they didn’t do more than that. “Yeah,” they said. Hearing the Jirachi’s voice was where things started to sour. It was a sing-song sort of voice and it talked in a way that implied it wasn’t about to take responsibility for any trouble it caused -- past, present, or future. It was also the sort of thing Z. just knew would be transcribed with a little tilde at the end, just to make sure everyone knew exactly how to read it as if actual god-given adjectives and learning how to write a proper patter weren’t enough tools already. For one particular sporking, Z. wrote, “The author has placed a marker in the dialog letting you know that this character is practically singing their lines. Unfortunately, like the character, the song only has one note.” Healing everyone was a first step toward getting over some of that, but Z. was pretty sure they could do that too now if they tried, so they just found the associated spectacle unnecessary. And things just kept going wrong. Z. had still been ruminating on Jirachi’s non-forgiveness, responding to a potential apology from Z. that would never come when Es decided to continue the introductions -- when Es decided to reveal to the world that she didn’t actually know Z.’s name. “My pal Zed,” Es said. “Zeddy here.” Okay. So. It was probably unhealthy, or at least said something about Z. that they saw so much red now instead of during one of their several fights, both as a Pokémon and as a human, but see red they did. Old forum drama came to mind. Four months after coming out as nonbinary, Z. had announced their name change, which reignited the drama that had flared up when they’d actually come out. It didn’t need to be relitigated here. They didn’t need to think about it again, but they’d had to fight for their name. They didn’t remember doing it in their human life, but they could feel it in their bones. It translated into a different sort of Z. than they had been the past few hours. They were quieter and more deliberate as they spoke. “Cute trick,” they said, looking straight ahead -- not at Es or Jirachi or anyone else, “pre-empting me, saying I give out insults as a sort of compliment, daring me to respond with something else. I do threaten and insult a lot. Maybe they lose their effectiveness with each new jab. Sure. Alright. I’ll work with that.” They turned to Es and looked the Rotom square in the eye, catching her at the end of one of her zips. “Starting now, I will mean what I say. I will be exact, so you know if I say I’m going to hurt you, I am going to hurt you. My name is Z. It’s spelled with a z and then a period after that. If I ever hear you say otherwise again, I will seize upon you, find your asshole, and demonstrate why most things with a head like yours need a flared base. If you don’t have an asshole on account of being a ghost or whatever, I will give you one with my own claws.”

Spider-Kick! WIP

Even after her raucous call to arms that Es had been sure would end in success, as it played out, the six-pack of donut-holes and the nerdy-hedgehog had been the only ones to actually answer her call in the way she had intended; everyone else giving… Less than satisfactory answers. At worst, the replies they gave were infuriating; such as the idiotic frog who wanted to croak about how how stupid she and the living dango had been for ‘picking a fight’, despite the fact that she had been assaulted first. At best, they were… Disappointing: such as the apparent apathy of Zed, and their accusation that they ‘didn’t know how to wake someone up’, followed by an assertion that they were only copying her because she had been the closest to ‘right’-- Whatever that meant. All in all, none of this was the reaction Es had intended; the seeds of division were still littering their group despite the life-or-death situations they had continually found themselves in, and she found herself… Admittedly frustrated, as she hung around in the back of her mind. Even as the events had unfolded in front of her, she had hoped to be able to bring the party together against a common foe; at least… Temporarily, but now this harmony seemed further than ever. On the bright side though, the oddball in front of them was awake now; and happier than ever. That was something Es could get behind. Though she had been paying attention idly in her thoughts at first, what brought her back to full-consciousness from her habitual stay in the buffer was the bright light that echoed out all around her. A single star danced around her vision as she instinctively turned her core and eyes to follow it; rotating until she was dizzy, before… With a sudden burst of light, her plasma once again surged for a moment; non-mandatory systems that she had temporarily kneecapped for processing power turning back to full strength in an instant; a herald for things to come, as she felt all of her energy be restored. Which meant it was the perfect time for her to speak up and show what she had learned about running her systems so far. “Woah-ho-ho-ho! That’s awesome J-J-J-Jirachi!” Es would cry out with a perfect level of energy; electric core zipping over and around the Pokémon as she intentionally fed garbage data into vocal processor to reproduce the tic she had grown accustomed to. “With one wish, all our d-d-d-dreams come true!” she’d add in an approximation of a sing-song voice, doing her best to join in with the other Pokémon’s energy. “My name is Es!” she’d cry out with joy, before stopping; rather suddenly, and turning back to face Zed; continuing to feed speech-data through her buffer as she spoke, vigilant for any major mistakes. “And this here’s my buddy and p-p-pal, Zed” she seemed to object to the very idea of pausing, instead zipping around the fox-Pokémon with surprising speed. “And just so you know-- Zeddy here’s the t-t-t-tough love kind’a person, so d-d-don’t take anything rude they say to heart; I know I don’t!” she’d give an animated laugh, before continuing. “They’re the kind’a person to tell you they’re not c-c-c-copying you because they like you, and then get all bashful and insulting when you take it as a compliment!”