Finger sandwiches? Abandoned on their tiny plates.
Sweet tea? Spilled on the blue and white picnic blanket.
Scones? Left half-smeared with jam and cream, never to be nibbled.

"There's no scene more devastating that an abandoned picnic," Buzzster said, shaking his head at the tragic loss of lunch. He his behind a massive tree, hoping to avoid detection by the hundred furious Beedrill that had swarmed their delightful picnic. "This is just like Pearl Harbor. Bastards came at us without warning or provocation. What do they even want?"

"Maybe they're hungry," Petal suggested. She had seen Beedrill drawn to fruits and flowers before, and the combination of sweet and fragrant picnic choices may well have been the reason for the insect invasion. She watched as one of the Beedrill stabbed a jammy scone with its drill and fed it carefully to another Beedrill.

Zac shook his head. "Nah, they're after something else. You can't trick a trickster, and this trickster's still got a few tricks up his trousers." Buzzster gave Petal a wink that suggested a far more robust plan than he currently had. "Okay Petal. Just follow my lead, okay?"

"Huh?"

Zac leapt out into the picnic clearing, where the smothering buzz of the Beedrill made the air quiver. "Hey! Look at me ya stupid insects!" Buzzster shouted. A dozen sets of compound eyes turned, boring into the redhead.

With a flick of the wrist Zac pulled a bouquet of fake flowers from his sleeve and tossed them high into the air. The insect eyes follwed the brilliant flowers as they arced high and fell right at Petal's feet. "Buh!?"

"Grab 'em Petal! Run run run! Draw 'em to the lake!"

"What lake!?"

"It doesn't matter, any will do! Just go!"

A chunk of the Beedrill swarm was already in the are, and they surged after Petal as she scurried away at top speed, fake flowers clutched in her sweaty vines.

Zac hated graverobbing. It was always messy, often fruitless, and bone dust had this weird smell that was hard to get out of car seats. Besides, the word 'graverobbing' was so judgy. Who was being robbed, really? The deceased didn't need their items, and anything of value that was intended to remain in the family should have been willed to a loving son or cold-hearted step-daughter.

"Hey! Find anything over there?" Buzzster called over the rounded headstones and blunted crosses. He was deploying the classic 'divide and plunder' strategy, and while he briefly scanned each gravestone for signs of pre-deceasement riches his B-Team of Petal, La Trixxia, and Charlie Sheen scoped out the mausoleum side of the yard.

"Uh, nope! I think all the treasure is back in that sunny grove we passed an hour back," Petal said. Something hooted from the crooked trees nearby and her head whipped around. "Trixx!" she hissed. "Tell me you found something!"

"Noh. Ai've been loo'ing after zis, 'ow you say, 'eg'." The Vulpix has her baking tails coiled around the egg from Zac's latest breakfast hunt. It was a rusty brown, like her own coat, and she was hoping against hope that inside was going to be another Vulpix, or at least someone with more than coins or acorns rattling around in their head.

Zac finished checking a row, and was absentmindedly brushing the leaves off of a marble headstone when a vision stopped him cold. He wasn't touching marble at all. No. Instead he was reaching out to touch thee frozen, snow-crusted wrists of a winter corpse. He jumped back, bumping into another headstone, which set rocking like the long-empty chair of some missing grandparent. "Ah! Bugger off ghosts! I haven't even taken anything yet ya greedy spirits!"

The leaves underfoot coiled around his ankles like deciduous serpents, and he stamped them away, stumbling back down the line of graves. His foot his against something solid, and he spun around to see two corpses lying on the ground. The first was a young girl with crazy green hair and bright purple clothing. She wasn't his type, and was too old to be a potential assistant, so her appearance was more shocking than alluring. But the second corpse was what really caught his eye.

It was a handsome man with bright red hair, a suave suit made for on-the-go chicanery, and a winning smile, even when lying dead in the dirt. "That's...me?" Buzzster said, just a moment before his knees gave out. "Still got it," he mumbled, as he collapsed into darkness.

"Venomous? Nah you're thinking of poisonous!" Zac said, accepting the strong hand of his fishing friend and clambering, sopping wet, back into the boat. "I had a whole plate of 'em when I was in Bali and I swear I mustn't have built up a natural immunity to them as a kid because I had to have my bloody appendix out!"

He caught the massive urchin, only pricking himself a few times on the venomous spikes. "Ouch! This little devil's got a bit of a poke to him though. Huh...Does this look swollen to you?" But Verai was gone! He'd already jumped into the water and surfaced a moment later with his own, snapping, catch! "Whoa! Look at the coloring on that guy!" Buzzster said. Roles reversed, he now helped Verai and his Litten back into the boat.

"I was trying to echolocate," Buzzster explained , once they were all back in the boat. "Bats use it for prey, dolphins use it to find fish. It just makes sense, right? You just do a little of this," he closed his eyes and did the clicking again, as if this were a brief tutorial for animals on YouTube. "And then you just stick your hand in and-" he plunged elbow-deep into the water and pulled out a [Bigness]eB9AxalI1d100 [Description]1d90 [Blarney]1d100. Buzzster blinked, and dropped his catch into the bottom of the boat before looking Verai dead in the face. "Not gonna lie to you here bud, I didn't expect it to be that easy."

Apparently the fishing system for the event was very forgiving.

"Big hairy bugger," Buzzster explained. He wracked his brain for a basic Pokemon analogy. "Imagine if you were about ten times as big, and stood up on your back legs. Just some massive, muscular menace all covered in fur as black as winter darkness. Taller than me and able to rip a man in half!"

Zac had no idea that the Litten would some day fulfil that prophecy, and his mental image was far from accurate.

"It's, uh, a bloody Christmas tree I guess. Looks worse for wear though. Is it made of candy canes?" Zac gave it an experimental lick. It tasted like a farm salt lick.

Corsola screamed and Zac shouted out. He slammed a ball into the Pokemon and it disappeared in a flash of red.

"I can guarantee it's not peppermint," he said gravely.

He was itching for another chance at pulling in a winner, but didn't want to disturb Verai's hunting. "Let's give the Buble a rest for a sec."

Zac was stuck deep in the snowbank. Thankfully, La Trixxia was having no more of his bullshit today, and with a burst of flame she burned a dainty hole and escaped back into the Winter sunlight. "I"m all good!" Buzzster called to Aero through the little hole in the snowbank. "Sorry for the near miss there bud."

He crawled through the hole of molten snow, digging a path to accommodate a man of his size. Buzzster character had set the height and shoulder-width sliders to maximum. Not out of a vain attempt to appear bigger than he was in real life, but because he was just that big. To be honest, his tech skills weren't quite Bill Gates level, and he had accepted the default model created from his mental body image.

This is all to say that Zac was a hell of a lot bigger than his Vulpix, and there was a lot of digging and muffled swearing before he was free of the snow. Once he was free he lay on the snow, catching his simulated breath. He looked up at Aero. "So what brings you out here?" he asked nonchalantly.