[ti]closed[/ti][S][C/Alicia] Cocytus

Shalin would have been surprised by Tikani's entrance and Alicia's smoking body... if she hadn't raced against the Gardener before. "You're crazy," Shalin remarked as she saw just how fast the Bayleef could run. "Riding that fast would make me sick." Then again, being a passenger on thrumming insect wings would make anyone else sick. The vibrations got so fast that she couldn't even see. Even so, she loved the euphoric sense that came with the alien motion.

It seemed Alicia was well-stocked with drinks. "I'll have to stay away from the carbonated stuff," she smiled, "unless you want to hear the loudest belch ever after one of my Pokémon gets done buzzing me, heh!" She went for a milk carton first, her cold fingers slipping once as she tried to pull its corners open.

Listening to Alicia's self-analysis, she nodded along. "For me, it's answers to flying-types. As one who likes grass and bug Pokémon, I need help in dealing with them. And Michiko will be able to do that once she evolves into a Frosmoth," she referred to her Snom.

Opening her mouth and letting the white, basic liquid touch her tongue, she swallowed some of it before dropping the carton in the snow, spilling it over her boots. "Welp, I'm glad you brought s-s-s-so many..." she shivered as her inner body temperature began to drop.

"...Part of being a Beta Tester, I guess?" Shalin shrugged. The fairy's wings may not have had a big arc, but they more than made up for it with the shrieking frequency they exposed the girl to. Even for someone used to that kind of motion, the vibrations were incomprehensibly fast; even on high-definition sets, she still would have been a mess of color. "Give it a try yourself and find out," she smirked back. "There are other freedoms to being a Beta Tester, too!" She was unsure how well it would go over, but after the joke about the powerful Poison-type attack, she at least had to be in a good mood.

Alicia had hit the nail on the head; she needed something better than Michiko to handle ice-types. "There's a Yamper sitting in my box and I haven't decided what to name it," she admitted, having stared at the nickname screen for the better part of twenty minutes before leaving it unnamed, to be decided when she first brought it out of the Box.

"Well, then, let's get this over with," Shalin sighed, clicking open Michiko's Poké Ball and letting the Snom crawl around, camouflaged in the fluffy stuff. "There's not a ton of snow on the ground, but there's at least a couple inches. That's enough to build a pyramid and go to war, right?" she asked Alicia as she began packing snow.

That was fair; everyone had priorities. With the number of bug-types in her arsenal, Catcher would raise her output quite a bit. For the types of bugs she wanted to catch, though, she would need quite a large net. "I... don't think a Salamence and I would get along," she sheepishly admitted.

With that, the ice-types got to work, building pyramids of snowballs for the two girls to hurl at each other. "A Frigibax... you really are a dragon trainer, aren't you? Once we have the dragon subclass, you might end up having the most powerful build on the server. Got your eyes on any of the superbosses?" Shalin asked, not having any plans to take any of them on herself. Not yet, anyway. By the time she got to be that powerful, she wondered how much of the game's story will have unfolded.

"So how do you want to go about this? Are we going to make a contest out of it? Or did you want to just throw them at one another?"

"Exactly," Shalin smiled, brushing off the remarks about the game's superbosses. Shalin, as well, was of course, ill-prepared to take on foes where going in with completely maxed classes was the expectation. It was fun to think about, though. Perhaps one day, she would pioneer the route for a category that defeats the strongest one. "It's unbelievable that the RPG speedrunning community has defeated Nemesis from a completely fresh file in under 20 hours."

The snowball fight was all in good clean fun, and of course, to gain access to a new element. One she desperately needed to handle pesky flying Pokémon. Once the timer had started, Shalin reached for two snowballs at the top of her pyramid and took careful aim... not at Alicia, but at her Pokémon. For they had agreed that each Pokémon only had one "life", as opposed to their five. It was a risk that opened her up to counterplay, but if she could get an advantage in numbers, she would be able to turn things around in a hurry!

Though she may have reduced Alicia's team down to the Gardener herself, it did not come without consequence; her snowball had been thrown with such force that it knocked the lithe glitch hunter off her feet and on top of the tiny Snom. The ice-type was able to squirm out from beneath her before being encased in a thin flim of ice -- the way the mini-game denoted her as out of the contest. By the time she had gotten up, a second one had grazed her leg just enough to register.

It was three lives and one Pokémon to five lives and none. Kiara rolled a sphere of snow off the pyramid before launching it toward Alicia, Shalin taking one in each hand and hurling them to the left and right of her cub's shot. Thankfully, Litleo were more than capable of turning down their heat if need be. Otherwise, Shalin wouldn't have much of a pyramid of ammunition to work with!

Shalin was too busy loading her hands for another volley to see Alicia's flexing, catching her shot and hurling it back with double the speed and power. "Aieeeee!!" she cried as the high-speed projectile beaned her in the race. The Litleo was distracted enough by her teammate's cry to take the snowball to the cheek, causing her to be encased in ice.

It was a duel now, and Alicia still up by two. She needed to make a move. Awkwardly holding her left arm across her body to balance several snowballs against her chest, she took careful aim at her rival before rapid-firing several throws in her direction. A well-placed dual attack would win her the fight, but could Alicia also evade the flurry?