lifeaftr | Long, Long Ago....

Guzma's been keeping up the rear of their motley crew, dragged along by Luna into this expedition with a bunch of other toddlers...and one red-robed runt. He sighs as he drags his feet, then looks up at all the hammocks lining the ceiling. This, uh...this is a little spooky, and he's certainly anticipating something falling out of them, or occupying them, but it's certainly not what actually--

Wait, is that Passimian whining at them? Guzma blinks, then rubs his face. You know what? This isn't even weird anymore. He just shrugs and accepts it.

"Darlin', I ain't even surprised the not-Pokemon can blabber...." After running into, how many now? A man-goat, a spider-lady, and a big rat--er, mouse. Anyway, scarlet over here is running her mouth plenty fine, so he just hangs back until he can get a word in edgewise.

The lemur surveys the pair of them with an appraising pair of round gold eyes before scuttling along the ridge of the hammock in which it is perched. It's not wholly clear how it is it manages it, but before long the lemur has hefted up a great, dusty tome even larger than it is, and pitched out and over the edge of the hammock.

It lands on the floor with a great, heavy whap. The lemur follows, wasting little time in flipping the book open with the soft rustle of parchment. Delicate claws shined as ink card through the leafs of paper without any difficulty whatsoever, until at long last it clears its throat and darts its look back up at the pair of them.

"Questions, questions, questions. Here I am, playing host to a half-dozen rafts full of interlopers on my island, and all you have are questions." It sounds - disappointed? In any case, an affronted lemur is certainly a very singular thing to witness; be proud! "Your stories haven taken you here. Obviously."

Ruby blinked at how rude the lemur was to them. Jeez, they just got here! She pouted at the creature as she continued. "Even if our stories brought us here - whatever that meant - it wasn't our intention to purposely invade your home." Ruby replied. "We're all quite lost and confused right now, so..."

She let out a small sigh before adding in a suggestion. "How can we help make it up? Though I doubt leaving will help..."

Holy crap, that thing could do serious damage if--oop, yup, incoming. Guzma grabs Ruby's arm because child, why aren't you moving, and yanks her away as the massive book slaps the cold stone of the ruin floor, resulting in a soft cloud of dust as the creature leaps after it. This little furball's not messing around, and it's got one heck of an attitude to boot. Would be more intimidating if the thing wasn't a foot tall, but details.

"'Scuze me, Red, I'm gonna have to interject here a second. I'm sure you won't mind, yeah? Just be a sec, y'all can speak pretty after." Guzma smiles, but it's a rather half-assed attempt. A cold, cruel smile that belies his intent: shut up a while and let me get down to business with our so-called host.

Crouching down into a squat, so as to be more level with the little creature, Guzma narrows his eyes at it and snorts loudly. "Bro, the only question I got for you is this - where the heck are my Pokemon? I know for a dang fact I didn't misplace 'em, two were still right where I left 'em before I showed up here. And if our...'stories' brought us all here, that'd mean the same for Scizor and the rest, yeah?"

He leans forward, voice low and hissed through his teeth. "So, I'll ask you nice - where are they?"

The lemur utters little more than a curt, disapproving tut. Sorry Guzma, but your Pokemon are in another castle - or another landmass, dimension, brane, entirely. The lemur's hind foot taps idly against the flagstoned temple bottom as it cocks its head, looking for all the world, or worlds, like it's just heaved a great, long sigh of exasperation.

"How am I supposed to know?" Indeed, it certainly sounds exasperated. "This is my island, and I can only host so many sentient beasts at once. If everyone and their dog showed up here, I'd be eaten out of house and home in little more than a week! Can you imagine."

The lemur shakes its head. It's awful, Guzma; just awful.

Ruby let out a sigh before she reached over and pushed Guzma over. Sorry, no time for the cryptic stuff right now. Her turn to force answers here.

"Look, it's not our fault we're here... or even our stories fault or whatever, but we need help you being here is our best bet at that!" Ruby said. "So... so, stop being cryptic and condesating and help us! It's these types of problems that wrecked things in my home a few months ago!"

The Battle of Beacon was fresh in her mind still and if Cinder was right, it was all of these secrets and stuff that got them to where Vale was wrecked.

Guzma barely moves when Ruby pushes him, though he does have to adjust his stance for a moment to keep himself in his squat. He grabs her wrist very suddenly, grip a little too tight to be meant as anything pleasant. Sorry, but you're not allowed to do that. Especially now, when this fuzzbucket is getting on his last nerve, and his temper is starting to shift toward the danger zone.

"...Push me again, girly, and you'll be hanging from the ceiling." He twists her wrist painfully to prove a point, then pushes the poor girl back in turn, though his action is a little more forceful than Ruby's earlier shove. Guzma's got a lot more muscle to him, after all, and he's not here to play around and wait his turn.

"So what you're saying is, they ain't here? Whatever it is what brought us all here only brought a number of us?" I mean, it sort of makes sense, but he doesn't like it. It sounds a little too much like the thing didn't want to bring along their pokemon, just to preserve itself and its precious island. Prick. "Then what happened to the rest of my pokemon?! If...if they're not safe, you hairy little...I swear, I'll skin you right here, right now--!"

He's got a knife, he could totally stab this thing in the throat (maybe).

So they're doing this, then, are they? The cursory, desultory witty back-and-forth that precludes the inevitable revelation that, in the end, the real progress was the friends they made along the way? Yes, well; an adjustment period is always requisite. Always.

"That would be terribly ill-advised," says the lemur, practically acidic in its high-nosed disapproval. "And after all this trouble I went to, procuring you these hammocks!"

Are you sure about that, Mr. Lemur? Things might be a lot different here!

"Let go of me!" Ruby yelped, snapping her arm away... and bringing out that humongous red and black mechanical scythe that's... having a hard time unfolding. "...what the...? C'mon..."

She gives it a kick, getting Crescent Rose to finally unfold. "There, now, no one's fighting no one else, got it? Besides, like it or not, we're guests."

From a distance, it's easy to see that things have escalated.

Mainly that giant scythe thing whips out, and a soft yell. It's Guzma-- and of course it is, but...don't judge on appearances. After a quick apology, Luna is out of her small pack and toward the talking lemur crew. There are a lot of things that she knows and doesn't know about these people-- such as she would never have expected Ruby to carry something that big around, but she definitely expects Guzma to lose his cool. Definitely. Absolutely.

"P-please, put that away," she tries toward Ruby, and looks at Guzma warily-- she doesn't know Ruby well enough to understand what kind of temperament she has, but she's got a pretty good idea with Guzma. Pulling her pokemon out at this point probably would only escalate this situation further.

Though, it should be said that she's watching Ruby just a little more-- the weapon is quite distracting, though she doesn't think Ruby would actually hurt someone with it.

She hopes.

"B-But, he was threatening the creature!" Ruby said, eyes wide as Luna approached her and Guzma. Oh, jeez, she never told Luna about what she had, did she? Now, she felt bad about pulling it out in the first place. "I wasn't going to hurt him, just... toss him away. I'm really good with this! Really!"

Either way, she's going to be shamed into putting it away, fighting with it as its mechanisms are jammed again as it folds back.

Oh, good. So now they're all doing weapons, and someone else has to sweep in on their collective behalf! The lemur utters what can best be approximated as a world-weary sigh, sitting back on its haunches as the whole kerfuffle dies down.

"Are you quite done?" it says testily, tipping its head to one side. "I can't very well choose who shows up here, you know. You didn't materialize on the island proper, now, did you?"

No; they materialized on the rafts. A very important distinction, you see.

The lemur adds, eyeing off Guzma with the tonal equivalent of a delicately arched brow, "if I could, I might have picked someone with a more refined temperament."

GUzma eyes the scythe as it springs open belatedly. He does feel a very faint pang of apprehension, but it's quickly smothered by resentment and a growing, acrid taste in his mouth. She really wants to stick him? So be it, Guzma doesn't fear the Reaper, but he's not going out until he gets his question answered, and the hairball here hasn't given him one he likes just yet.

He's about to tell both of them, human and lemur alike, to choke on glass, but his daring little heroine needs to come to the rescue. He growls softly, eyeing her bitterly, who does she think she is, racing here here like he's a princess in need of saving? What a cheeky little tart, always getting up in other peoples' business like she can't not make it her problem. Troublesome little brat--

"How 'bout you use that big mouth of yours to bite me, fuzzy? Ain't no good for nothing else." Guzma sneers, rudely flipping the lemur off at the same time. Avert ye eyes, children.

Luna stares at him-- at the hand he just threw to the talking lemur, and huffs loudly! Audible huffing!

"C'mon, Guzma," Luna takes a breath in. "It'll be okay." It's not okay, and even Luna knows that this whole situation is questionably not okay, but it's still...

...not worth getting worked up over? Somehow, Guzma doesn't strike her as someone who likes to hear that his temper tantrums aren't wanted right now. But that scythe? Also not wanted. No Plumeria to help him keep his cool. No grunts to help him calm down. It's just Luna-- and hopefully this strange little monkey-looking creature would be able to tell them...something.

The lemur flicks its long, striped tail.

"Whyever would I do that?" It sounds, for what it is worth, profoundly disgusted as the notion that it would be sinking its razor-sharp little canines into anything of the flesh-based variety. "Are lemurs strictly carnivorous where you come from, sir? Do they acquire a taste for human flesh?"

The answer, of course, is no. Most lemurs are not, typically, eager to bite anyone unless distinctly threatened.

They are not, at the present moment, threatened.

Long, Long Ago....

TEAM 20 QUESTIONS

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/BATTLEROLLS IN

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