OOC: Just using this as a catch-up post for some other friendly faces.

DAY 1
Active Events: Dread Metal Destruction Derby
Finished Events: Blood Pit Arena, Gracidea Order Victory


Sotka Aldaros the Weavile
Black Lotus - Onyx Circle
Lytala City Underground
Affected RPers: @Death's Spook (Max Clerk)

To Sotka, it was one more dead Crobat. The Ante made it obvious who had found her: The Steel Scavengers. She now knew of the mission and what the Scavengers were up to. To her, it was almost funny how when there was no Tempest Festival going on, everyone was in the shadows, but now, all the players were coming out. But there was a reason this was all going down the way it was in the first place.

Sotka was about to turn around and head out, but then before her emerged the Klinklang. Soon enough, the gears of this metallic Pokémon had begun to turn, and she knew trying to get past him without doing anything first was obviously suicide.

"Oh," Max spoke, with its eyes colored with bloodlust. "Well. This is awkward."

Meanwhile, Sotka knew her X09 Automag machine pistol wasn't going to be very helpful against a Pokémon that was already made of metal. She knew she might as well be trying to break a tank open with a horseshoe. And she realized her trap for the Crobat had been used against her, as she had no way out now either. There was either go through Max, or wait at the brick wall and wait for it to get there. Neither of them sounded like Sotka's ideal way of spending the day.

But on the other hand, Sotka was not one to dismiss creativity. She quickly rushed back to the Esteban the Crobat's corpse, picked it up, turned around, and hurled it at Max Clerk's spinning gears.

"Not to worry, I'm done with him anyway," she smiled.

Esteban's corpse sailed through the air and quite instantly, the bat had begun to go through the violent crushing process as soon as it came into contact with the Klinklang's turning gears. The Weavile quickly made her move, leaping into the air and hopping on top of in-process Crobat corpse and using it like a stepping stone to then jump to safety behind the Klinklang while Max Clerk experienced the morbidity of crushing one of his own teammates in the gear crushing process. She had come close, just barely avoiding getting snagged into the grinding gears by a few seconds. Nonetheless, Sotka had safely jumped her way to the other side.

She simply didn't have the weaponry and tools to deal with Max Clerk at the current moment, but she knew there would most likely be another future occasion. Cowardly or not, she was well aware that sometimes the best defense was, quite frankly, running away.

"Right," she told Max as she sped off. "I'm outta here."

She then darted off, slightly wondering if Max Clerk would actually stop crushing Esteban and be apologetic for turning what would have originally been an open casket funeral into a closed one, or simply just mechanically continue grinding him to a pulp and think nothing of it. But, curiosity be damned, she wasn't interested in sticking around to find out.

As Sotka raced her way out of the sewer tunnels and intended to head back to base, she hadn't been aware of how exactly the Blood Pit match had gone down. She already had a bad feeling about it when it came to Phoebe's survival and how last time she checked, half the Charizard's squad had been killed. When it came down to it, many entrants plus limited squad sizes was going to even the score and she knew Black Lotus would go from always having the advantage to now having to play on an even playing field. There was room for error and disaster, as she had just witnessed.

Once she was back into the open air of Lytala City, she headed back into the streets and had quickly noted how the crowds of Lytala City citizens were reacting. It didn't take long for her to overhear the whispers and murmurs.


Rexor Rondel the Zoroark
Black Lotus - Onyx Circle
Freight Truck northbound on Round 18, En Route toward Connive
Affected RPers: N/A

The ride was silent as Rexor manned the steering rod. There was very little to see on the long road to Connive. Desert wasteland, rocks, decaying plants, and the occasional abandoned vehicle husk were all there was to see as they left the gas station behind them. Meanwhile, the heat of the sun was bearing down mercilessly on the desert landscape, and the road itself had become hot enough to use as a cooking pan if sanitation was not a concern.

Shana looked at the radio, curious to know how the Blood Pit and Dread Metal events were going, but she didn't dare request permission from Rexor to turn it on. There was only the sounds of the truck's engine and the crunching of dust, sand, and stone under the freight truck's heavy tires.

Rexor hadn't ever seen Connive before for obvious reasons, but it didn't matter. There was no home field advantage here. Not with a mission like this. Once they were in Connive, the bets were off. All the eyes were on the games and guards were being dropped. He was "just another" in the field. A nobody. A spectator.

It made him that much more dangerous.

Up ahead, Rexor soon encountered the rear of another container truck on the northbound side of the highway, and he simply stayed behind it as it too, was heading into Connive and was unmarked as well. While it was going slower, Rexor didn't try to pass it or get angry against the driver. He already knew what they were doing and he was going to play along with it. After all, it wouldn't be the first time the Zoroark had worn disguises.

"Can't we just pass this guy?" Shana asked, seeing as how they dropped in speed.

"No," Rexor replied in a dark tone. "We do everything they do. This is now a convoy, understand?"

Shana nodded as she swallowed and looked back to the other truck. She had an idea of what Rexor was planning, but not all the way. There was something about him that made it all hard to piece together and she knew she wouldn't be able to entirely figure it out until it was all done and over anyway.

She had just witnessed him kill a fellow Black Lotus operative over nothing but a slip of the tongue and she wasn't about to question his judgment. As long as she was with him for the duration of this mission, he was in charge. They were his shots. She wouldn't act unless commanded to. It was not her idea of a good time, but all that could change once that was done. She wouldn't need to sign on with him again. It was simple math and she wasn't going to let pride get the better of her on this one.

And the convoy continued on toward Connive.


Tricky Ravken the Raichu
Black Lotus - Onyx Circle
Leaving Syngraft, en route toward Hana City
Affected RPers: N/A

"Uuurrrrpppppffff... blleeeeeffffff," Tricky scornfully vomited into a rusted barrel used to hold trash. "Ohhh... oh, god, that..."

"Shut up..." Kust the Whimsicott complained from the passenger seat of the Ensign carrier. "The more you talk, the more my head bangs."

Tricky had spat one more time into the barrel just to get the taste of bile out of her mouth. She knew she'd feel better later in the day, but right now it was like Giratina had calmly leaned right next to her and screamed into her ear while being violently castrated. Meanwhile, her stomach felt like she had eaten a Muk's egg completely raw and whole and decided to jump off at the highest point of a roller coaster and break the fall with her stomach.

"I just wanna go," Tricky told Kust as she climbed back into the carrier. "This whole... this whole town smells like fiery anal piss. I swear to Arceus I'd rather crawl up Lugia's ass and wait to get crapped out with all the other excrement in there than stick around this town."

After getting inside the carrier and shutting the door behind her, she tried to find where she left the keys, but they had been in the ignition the whole time. It took her a good two minutes before she finally realized it, and when she finally discovered her mistake, she looked to Kust like it was all his fault.

As Tricky turned on the ignition, Kust decided that rather than listen to Tricky talk for the rest of the ride to Hana, he'd listen to the radio to get the updates. He hadn't checked the time, but he figured the events would be starting soon.

He hadn't expected for one of them to be already over.

"In an unexpected turn of events, Athena of the Gracidea Order has solely remained victorious in today's grizzly Blood Pit which, to the surprise of many, claimed the lives of the entire Black Lotus team."

"Is that for f**kin' real!?" Tricky exclaimed in shock as her jaw dropped. "Holy pissing Murhe, Phoebe, how could you of all Pokémon screw that up!?"

As Tricky slowly began to drive with her nerves reflecting her now irate mindset, they listened in on all the details and recounts of what had transpired throughout the entire Blood Pit match. Many Pokémon dead, several had evacuated when the situation looked hopeless, but there was solid confirmation the entire Black Lotus squad was completely eliminated, including Phoebe the Charizard. But the question that came up the most was the incident surrounding the Grand Lady and what she had done to Vurden the Volcarona, along with and the speculation of Ante. They had just left Syngraft when the recap had finished.

"Damn, you think they figured it out?" Kust asked curiously.

"Oh please, you think that means anything?" Tricky asked, rolling her eyes. "I'll admit, Vurden was an idiot, but everything about Ante is something uninformed Pokémon look up in documentaries and conspiracy theories. He might as well have said aliens exist."

"Maybe they do..." Kust smirked.

"Of course they do," Tricky rolled her eyes. "But do you see anyone care? No. No one cares. Oh, Ante? No one cares. Peanut butter bread cheese muffins? No one cares. But it does make me happy I wasn't wasting an hour watching Phoebe's ass get kicked. Turn on Dread Metal. See if that's still going on."

All the while, the carrier headed closer and closer toward Hana.