Metallica Fanboy vs. Meowth

The light overhead wobbles with each rotation of the ceiling fans, causing the Primidux Statue's imposing shadow to shift rapidly on the floor. The effect is almost mesmerizing, especially to easily-distracted referees; for a solid sixty seconds it is several orders of magnitude more interesting than the two pokémon and their trainers waiting a few feet away. The trainers' irritated mutterings do little to refocus him, and it takes the promise of several Steel Samurai videos and coupons for souvenir statue replicas with which he can create all the wobbly shadows he likes on his own time. Quercus Alba the seedot pauses for a moment, wondering whether anyone would notice if the statue suddenly went missing, or perhaps if it went missing only briefly and resurfaced embedded in the referee's head, but the thought passes to the back of his mind fairly quickly. Really ought to keep up appearances for now, after all. Pay attention to the battle and all that.

His opponent, Colias Palaeno the butterfree, sighs and turns away from the statue as well, focusing his attention on the grass-type before him. The office is currently neat and pristine, and he would rather like it if it could stay that way. And seedot, well... as much respect as he has for Quercus (he's still waiting for the old boy to come by and use the drawer full of free coupons he's given him over the years), seedot are such... rolly, smashy, explody little things, and rolling and smashing and exploding would not bode well for the integrity of his office. Perhaps it would be for the best if Quercus simply... relaxed until things could be moved along to the Theatrum or the Rose Garden. His wings flutter industriously, kicking up a gentle breeze that cuts across that of the ceiling fans spinning right 'round overhead. Tiny scales work themselves lose from his wings and drift across the office, many settling on Quercus before the seedot can move cleanly out of the way. The powder's effect is all but instantaneous—Quercus totters unsteadily on his feet and topples over, rocking back and forth where he falls until his eyes finally close. There! Crisis averted!

...Probably! The seedot's rocking doesn't stop even after he is well and truly asleep, and a steady, dreamy mumble can just barely be heard. The mumbling escalates in volume for a moment or two, but in the end doesn't seem to amount to anything; something about "resting up for the big speech" might've been audible somewhere in there, but as Quercus is already out like a light no one is entirely sure what he's talking about.

So, yes, Colias thinks, nodding with satisfaction. Crisis averted after all. He could just leave it at that, but maybe an extra precaution or two, just to make sure that the rolly-explody aspects of Quercus's otherwise affable and totally not malicious nature are well and truly dealt with for the duration of the event. He flutters a little closer to the sleeping seedot, clears his throat softly—no need to wake the poor man up so soon!—and, ever so politely, spits a gob of thick, violently purple goo all over Quercus's shell. The toxic sludge is quick to work its way into the gap between his body and his cap, leaving only a mildly unsettling stain on his face as evidence of its intrusion.

At first it seems as though Quercus is entirely undisturbed by the poison now marching through his system, but then his crotchety mumbling starts up again. This time the seedot is a bit more vocal and active, rocking himself to and fro so rigorously that he actually rocks right back onto his feet. He staggers forward and collides with the still low-flying Colias, startling the butterfree but not managing to do too much damage; Colias flinches and retreats, half expecting the bout of somnambulism to turn into some of that undesirable rolliness, but Quercus falls right back onto his side and returns to a deeper sleep.

The relative silence of the office is next disturbed by a low, persistent humming, generated by more rapid beating of Colias's wings. The butterfree frowns as he flutters, not entirely sure why his trainer wants him to start making a lot of noise just after he'd tucked Quercus in for a nice nap, but he follows orders anyway. The humming crescendos rapidly, first becoming an intermittent buzz and then a high-pitched, keening whine, his golden wings dissolving into little more than a blur as he works away. The office's windows warp and shudder dangerously, all three humans wince and hold their hands over their ears as their eardrums do the same, and for the first time since falling asleep Quercus looks genuinely distressed. The sound waves generated by Colias's wings are enough to send the seedot tumbling backward and rolling into a wall.

Even the combination of cacophony and impact is not enough to wake the slumbering acorn, though the look of consternation on his face does make it clear that his rest is no longer as peaceful as it had been. Indeed, his renewed mutterings are louder and more vehement than before, and this time are accompanied by an emerald aura that flickers into life around Quercus's body. A point of light, the same color, appears before his closed eyes, and within seconds it has ballooned into a respectably-sized sphere of greenish energy that flies up and out with a final sleepy shout. The energy ball hits one of Colias's wings square on, stopping it cold; the butterfree falters and dips closer to the ground while he struggles to get them both going at a regular rhythm again, but on closer inspection the damage is still minimal. He's fine, Quercus is still sleeping, the office is still in one piece... so far, so good. Why, it almost makes him want to give himself a coupon for his good work. It's the sort of performance that deserves a nice discount, after all.

the Primidux Statue did use to be kept in Colias' office, though it wasn't the Primidux Statue, it was the fake one.

It feels a little wrong, Colias thinks, to disturb those who are sleeping with loud buzzing noises. It feels a little more wrong to break into their minds and suck out the juicy, dreamy goodness within. Far be it for him to be disagreeable, however, so with a twitch of his antennae he sends a few invisible psychic pulses through the air. Quercus's fitful dreams--with a little of his life force along for the ride--flow right out of his cap and in Colias's direction, and in spite of the lack of physical contact or any visible signs of damage the process seems to be quite painful; the seedot cries out once or twice and threatens to roll right into the base of the Primidux's statue's display case, although against all reason he remains asleep. Colias flinches just a little with each cry, although he does have to admit that the influx of energy he experiences makes it all feel ever so slightly less wrong.

Quercus seems to be unable to hold his tongue in his sleep, and his yelps and grunts soon give way to more of the familiar mumbling. He wobbles his way back onto his feet, zig-zags erratically across the floor in Colias's general direction, and without warning manages to launch himself into the air. A neat somersault that should certainly have been impossible for a somnambulist sends Quercus spinning straight at the startled butterfree, and the seedot's pointy tip rakes Colias's chest once or twice on the way back down. Once again, however, a closer inspection reveals that the damage dealt was minimal, nowhere near enough to offset the gains from Colias's dream eater. The bug-type lets out a relieved sigh as he watches the seedot roll off a short distance away.

A second tentative dream eater does manage to wake the seedot at long last--the dreams that Colias tugs out of his mind seem to be the last of the lot, and the accompanying jolt of pain causes Quercus's eyes to snap open. He struggles to his feet, still disoriented, and directs a groggy glare at Colias; he doesn't know what funny business went on while he was sleeping, but he is pretty confident that it wasn't his fault and that somebody else deserves to be punched for it. Punched in the face with his whole body.

Quercus takes a few extra seconds to blink the sleep out of his eyes, being sure to get one last good look at his opponent's location before throwing himself into a wild roll across the hardwood floor. Colias, once again startled by the seedot's unexpected turn of speed, is left with no time to get out of the way before Quercus bowls into him with punishing force and runs him right over. There is a faint screeching noise as Quercus continues on past the stunned insect and banks sharply to the left to avoid the desk and roll back around for another pass, his momentum rising steadily all the while.

Colias moans and rubs at his large nose as he picks himself up and sets himself hovering above the ground again. He knows exactly what it is he wants to do to get himself out of this mess, but his trainer has insisted that he wait and see what his opponent does before acting. In retrospect, he knows full well what Quercus is doing, and he doesn't need to hang around so near the ground and wait for it to happen; just as it occurs to him to try waiting a little higher up, however, Quercus barrels into him with even greater force, causing stars to explode in front of Colias's compound eyes. The seedot rolls on unimpeded, struggling to keep himself under control and failing to notice the continued progress of the poison coursing through him.

Colias is quick to flit up and over to the ambassador's desk, opting to have a quick chat with the referee rather than hang around in Quercus's path and risk yet another painful hit. The rollout attack building up steam beneath him is disconcerting, but he is nothing if not prepared--a coupon is probably just the ticket in a situation like this one, and he never leaves home without a sizable stack clutched in his tiny little arms. The stack rests on the desk's blotter, where it is currently subject to idle prodding and thumbing through by the bored referee seated in the ambassador's chair. Colias makes a few hurried but emphatic gestures in the direction of his treasured coupon pile, glancing back several times to check on the seedot rolling in ever-faster circles on the floor. The referee sighs, sticks a hand into the pile and retrieves a coupon, then tosses a coin into the air and watches it clatter against the blotter with general disinterest. Heads--the grand prize goes to Metallica Fanboy, then.

Ignoring Colias's squeaks and pleas to hurry up, the ref crumples the chosen coupon into a ball, throws it in Metallica Fanboy's direction and then forces a desk drawer open to look for something. By the time Metallica Fanboy unfolds the slip of paper and realizes, with some horror, what it says--"One (1) complementary novelty t-shirt"--the ref has already found what he was searching for, grabbed the butterfree by one wing, forced the free shirt over his head and shoved him roughly off of the desk and back onto the floor. The tiny shirt is not made to accomodate a creature with such large wings, so it hangs loosely around Colias's neck with its empty sleeves swaying in the breeze made by his fluttering; even so, it is still possible to make out the phrase "ALLEBAHST SUCKS" in angry red lettering across its front.

Colias moans again and tries to cover the words with his hands in the vain hope that Quercus will not see them as he whizzes past. The effort is rendered useless when the referee, oblivious to his distress, picks up the ambassador's phone, yawns into the mouthpiece and dials an inside line. "Hello? This is the Allebahstian Embassy, right? Yeah, I'm supposed to call someone over there and tell them that I just gave out an 'Allebahst Sucks' shirt... hey, don't yell at me, it's not my shirt! I was just doing what this Palaeno guy's coupon said to do when redeeming it, and... no, I don't know why he had it. I'm just supposed to tell you that there's a butterfree up here with one of these shirts, and... hey!" He flinches and holds the receiver away from his ear. "No need to slam the damn phone down when you hang up, sheesh. What did I do?"

The distant sound of elevators reaching the Babahlese Embassy's fifth floor just barely reaches the office. It is followed by the much more audible sound of dozens of heavy footfalls charging down the hallway. The door rattles in its frame as a powerful fist hammers it, not bothering to try the knob first. "Open up in there! Open this door in the name of Allebahst, Palaeno! We know you're in there, and you've got some explaining to do!" Colias squeaks again and hugs the shirt tightly as Quercus rolls in rings around him, eying the shuddering door and looking decidedly uneasy.

The office door continues to rattle violently as the Allebahstian contingent hammers away at it, and Colias's heart is hammering right along with it. Sure, his physical condition isn't the worst, but Quercus is awake and in a bad mood, and he's wearing a very unfortunate shirt that has surely made the loud people on the other side of the door quite cross with him, and if Quercus keeps rolling like that he might open a hole in the wall or knock down the Primidux Statue and is it getting warm in here? It feels very warm all of a sudden. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

The butterfree probably would have come to the (very logical) conclusion that his rising panic was the source of the heat if he hadn't noticed that all three of the humans in the room were also fanning themselves with hands or crumpled coupons. Even the vehement banging coming from outside the office slows its tempo, and is punctuated occasionally by faint coughs and snorts. It becomes clear that this spike in temperature isn't a simple central air conditioning failure when the referee sniffs at something, then coughs violently: "What the hell is that? Is that... is that smoke?"

A quick glance upward reveals that thick, black smoke is indeed hugging the ceiling, issuing from the air vents overhead and only mildly disturbed by the round right round spinning of the fans overhead; several of the angry shouts from out in the hallway give way to screams of "Fire! Fire in the embassy!" A great deal of shrieking and banging that sounds like over half of the mob fleeing for the nearest stairwell can be heard, and only a foolhardy, determined few remain behind to continue their insistence that Colias let them in so they can do horrible things to him.

Now perhaps in an ever brighter mood than he was before, Colias proceeds to have a breakdown and sends his wings into overdrive without even thinking. The gust of wind generated by his flapping does little to clear the smoke leeching through the vents and now crawling in underneath the door, only serving to agitate it and exacerbate everyone's coughing fits, but it does manage to catch the lightweight acorn currently barreling across the hardwood and toss him back into a bookshelf. Quercus clatters to the floor with an indignant snarl, none too pleased about having his rollout interrupted and needing to build all of that perfectly good momentum up from scratch again; how is he supposed to get back at Colias like this?

Frustration quickly turns into fury when he realizes that he can now get a clear reading of the text on the butterfree's novelty t-shirt. Why, Allebahst most certainly does not suck, and seeing that his so-called fellow ambassador and upholder of peaceful relations would insinuate otherwise sends him into a towering rage. Even Colias's attempt to backwing up toward the ceiling (understandably hindered by the accumulating smoke up there) is not enough to save him from the seedot's anger; Quercus resumes his rolling and manages to vault himself into the air with a few deft turns and flicks of the point on his cap, and he collides forcefully with Colias's left wing. Both pokémon go spinning into the floor; Quercus corrects his course and continues on his wild circuit of the office, while Colias is left to pick himself up from the ground and continue whimpering.

Unwilling to suffer another whole-body punch to the wing, Colias returns to the air as best as he is able. The pain and the smoke make the climb rather more difficult than it ought to be, even with the referee forcing a window open to let some fresh air in; ultimately he realizes that he has to land for a moment and catch his breath beneath the rising smoke. What he needs is a way to fortify himself a little better, withstand more of this pain so that he can better keep himself aloft at just the right height. He allows his multifaceted eyes to lose focus as he redirects his attention inward. His mandibles twitch back and forth as he mutters under his breath, reciting some inaudible mantra that no one would have been able to understand even if they hadn't been preoccupied with rolling around or trying to not suffocate; as he repeats the words, he can feel an influx of strength and solidity entering his body. He does perhaps feel a little heavier—his wings still have a bit of trouble lifting him back up off of the desk—but his nerves are just a bit steelier even in the face of all the banging and the encroaching fire.

Either Quercus does not notice Colias's mumbled curse or he is less than impressed by it, because he flips himself ceilingward yet again in another bid to flatten the annoying insect. Weighed down as he is by the shirt and his newfound bulk, however, this time Colias is able to move to the side and avoid the self-catapulted seedot; Quercus sails past him and very nearly flies out the open window, only his trainer's quick reflexes saving him. Zoroark sets his pokémon back on the floor by the desk with mixed feelings about his decision to move closer to the window for more air; on the one hand he was in just the right place to keep Quercus from smashing himself to bits on the ground outside, but on the other hand catching a flying hard-shelled projectile moving at a butterfree-crushing velocity was a bit less than kind to all of those fiddly sensitive nerve endings in his fingers.

Ever-so-slightly emboldened by his successful evasive maneuvers, Colias dives, takes a deep breath of the clearer air further beneath the roiling smoke, and then sinks his little mandibles into Quercus's shell. The seedot writhes and struggles as best his spherical body and stubby feet will allow, which is to say not very effectively at all—he can do little more than shriek with pain and anger as his shell is stabbed by fangs dripping bug energy and as the leaf stone secured just beneath his cap is broken in two by the voracious nibbling. He wastes no time in expressing his displeasure, revving himself up for another roll as soon as he is released. Colias is too close and just a little too slow to avoid this one, and Quercus doesn't even have to launch himself to collide with the butterfly pokémon's midsection; the blow is deadened somewhat by the results of the earlier curse, but Colias is still plenty rattled by his opponent's mad desire to run him over repeatedly.

He is not, however, as badly rattled as the office door, which gives one final great shudder before several of its hinges give way and the few remaining angry soldiers break it down. The now-clearly-audible crackling of fire in the hallway is momentarily drowned out by a salvo of gunfire as several people shoot wildly in Colias's direction; the butterfree squeals and tries to hide himself in the heavy smoke (and immediately regrets it as he finds it all but impossible to breathe up there), but is unable to prevent several of the fired bullets from riddling the offensive shirt with holes and leaving a few painful dents and cracks in the exoskeleton beneath. Even when the shooting ceases and most of the soliders come to their senses and beat a hasty retreat, Colias is not quite safe: a single malcontent hangs behind when the others flee down the half of the hall that is not engulfed in flames, heaving a large piece of trash at the butterfree when he dares come back down from the cover of the smoke. The thrown debris hits Colias square in the face and knocks him down into the desk right as the man turns and attempts to flee; he trips over the still-rolling Quercus, however, collides with a bookshelf near the open door and sends it crashing down in front of the exit. The hungry flames out in the hall are quick to glom onto the antiqued wood, and soon they spread to the baseboards on either side of the door.

The only route of escape to the stairs thus cut off, the thrower panics, charges past the ref and two trainers and throws himself clear out the window. Ordinarily the ref would have spent a few minutes admiring the lovely red spatter he made on the ground below to help alleviate his boredom, but as he is currently trapped in a fucking burning building he is a little more concerned with the window itself. Rather than attempting to learn to fly, he directs his attention to a length of wire coming in through an opening at the top that he had not noticed before. It appears to lead into the room and disappear into the swirling smoke in the direction of the fans. Hell if he knows why that is, but he does know that he sure as hell wants it. He motions to the two trainers and insists that they help him detach it from whatever it's hooked on so that they might use it to climb out; Zoroark has to be told a few times that he needs to stop crying like a little girl about his stupid hands, but at length the three of them are hard at work trying to dislodge the wire from the fans and from whatever it's attached to across the embassy.

Quercus, meanwhile, simply smiles to himself as he continues his heedless rolling. By now the combination of constant rollouts, poison, heat and smoke has made him dizzy and nauseous almost out of his mind, but damn if that shooting wasn't satisfying to watch around and around and around and... "Allebahst Sucks" indeed! Stupid bug people.

The smoke overhead has become so thick and prevalent that the fans overhead are all but useless, even with the window now open as wide as it can go; in fact, fire damage to the wiring in the room is causing the fans to short and stutter to a stop. Quercus wobbles unsteadily as he completes another circuit, his temperature uncomfortably high and his condition deteriorating rapidly; he can barely focus on the golden-winged butterfree only just picking himself up from the desk, as watching Colias flutter erratically up into the air only serves to make him dizzier. At least the fluttering heralds some temporary relief from his dizziness—Colias grunts, does his best to shift the unfortunate shirt out of his way and then turns up the tempo of his wing beats, revving them up to the same high-pitched drone he'd made a little earlier. The low-hanging smoke parts slightly as the blast of wind and sound cuts below it, the resulting sound waves slamming into the rolling seedot and sending him tumbling back into the bookshelf again. Tongues of flame, only slightly disturbed by the bug buzz, crawl their way onto Quercus's uncomfortably dry and woody cap.

"There!" the ref says, his weary, triumphant smile interrupted by a nasty coughing fit. He doesn't take much notice of the flaming pokémon behind him; he's too busy giving the jury-rigged escape rope now dangling out of the window a few experimental tugs in between coughs. Seems solid enough, at least for now; with any luck, it'll support his weight when he attempts to climb out. Oh, and, uh, maybe Metallica Fanboy and Zoroark and their pokémon and whatever. Mostly just him. What are those pokémon even doing right now, anyway? Meh, the butterfree is still probably whimpering about the shirt that it practically asked for anyway, and the seedot is probably still spinning around in circles not doing anything particularly useful or exciting. He sighs, coughs and gives the wire one more tug, his earlier boredom already edging its way back even in the midst of the smoke and fire. How, exactly, did he get roped into watching such boring pokémon again?

And then Quercus gets his attention.

The seedot's vision is swimming, his entire body is throbbing with heat and poison and pain, and to top it off his head is now on fire. This is it—there is nothing left to do, nowhere left to go. He could not outlast that blasted fussbucket Palaeno, and even though the Babahlese Embassy will be reduced to a smoldering wreck in just a little while, he won't be around to see it. The situation is about as dire as it can get, and his failure is staring him in the eye in the form of a shimmering haze of smoke and flame. This is disgraceful. This is disgusting. This is deserving of an epic punch to the face. And Colias's face. And the embassy's face. Everything will be punched in the face. Quercus takes one final, shuddering breath and, with the utmost in grace, sportsmanship and ambassadorial dignity, explodes.

The blast shakes the entire room, shattering glass and tearing through wood and deafening everyone present. Colias, Zoroark, Metallica Fanboy and the ref are thrown against the far wall and nearly knocked senseless, and the hail of shattered and splintered wood that drums against the wall right after them almost finishes the job. The door of the safe in the corner is blown clean off only seconds before the door and the safe itself are sent crashing through the wall, creating an additional opening through which the now wildly agitated smoke can escape. The flames ravaging the room are temporarily extinguished by the explosion's shock wave, though that is small consolation when the room's structural integrity within the blast radius is now very much in question.

No one has the energy to speak; even if they did, it would probably be impossible to hear with the raging ringing in their ears. Wordlessly, the ref gives the wire a half-hearted tug, not really expecting it to come to anything—surely the explosion destroyed its support—and is surprised to see that it still feels sturdy. There's no time to think about it, then—he motions to the others and does his best to worm out of the window and down the wire, struggling to twist it around his hands as he goes so as to prevent a nasty slide to the ground. Zoroark grimaces as he recalls Quercus, put off by the blackened, smoking nut with feet left exposed through a shattered shell; Colias, still conscious and mostly in one piece, is recalled with a bit less disappointment before Metallica Fanboy begins his descent as well. Flashes of red and white lights can just barely be made out through the glow of the fire, though the sirens are still completely inaudible. The fire department is here and finally trying to get the wild blaze under control, it seems.

Too little, too late.