Fic: One Ranger, Two Ranger, Red Ranger, Blue Ranger, Pokemon Ranger
Title: One Ranger, Two Ranger, Red Ranger, Blue Ranger
Author: wingsofcharity
Fandom: Pokemon Ranger
Pairing: Solana/Lunick
Rating: PG, for sexual innuendo
Word Count: 2063
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Pokemon Ranger has buttsex with Nintendo. I get it.
done for the prompt "4. coffee/tea" at 20_firstkisses
The Krokka Tunnel collapse in Solana's sixth year of being a Pokemon Ranger made the whole Go Rock Squad thing look like the Saturday morning cartoons.
Naturally, in about five minutes, the entire town was out to have a look.
"This is going to take the rest of our lives," Murph said in a really small voice, and Terrence Hastings goes as white as a sheet; his grandfather was in Fall City and he now had no way to get there, should anything happen to him (and, judging by the professor's annoying disregard for his own safety and his bludgeoning senility, was a likely probability).
Spenser shook his head, his eyes frightened. "Maybe only eighteen months. We can't use machinery, not with a collapse this big; it'll send the whole thing mudsliding into Ringtown! And Fall City will work from the other side." As he said this, he flipped open his Styler to send Joel a text message, only to receive one before he could even send it.
Yeah, yeah, I see it, Joel said with the usual brusqueness. We'll do what we can.
Solana felt the familiar tightening in her shoulders and sinking in her stomach that always came with the prospect of many, many long hours of work with little reward. At her side, Lunick looked despicably thrilled.
The two of them set to the task of calming down the Zubat, who were frightened by the noise and abrupt loss of their home, uncertain in daylight, and a hazard to anybody with brains to scramble, and almost forty-eight hours later, on no sleep, Solana thought rather uncharitably that this was the first time Lunick worked nearly as hard as she did.
...
They make the worktime more bearable by telling each other stories; myths and ghost stories from their own homelands, mostly, but of course there's always the fabricated tale here and there (most of these are from Lunick, detailing his narrow escapes and instances of nauseating valor).
Murph's labeled a liability to the task within the first week, and so remains at Base, brewing cups of coffee and fetching ice packs, and swiftly becomes everybody's favorite man to see.
The Ringtown Base had never needed a break room before this, but in the light of recent events, their obnoxious sense of nobility had become their own worst enemy, and Spenser didn't tend to work his own Rangers to death. Still, most of them had to be told, shortly and with no small amount of exasperation, to go and get some rest before they would even think about stopping. Murph usually got the duty of doing this to Spenser, as he was the only one brave enough to face Spenser when he hasn't slept in days.
Solana develops a taste for caffeine with frightening efficiency.
In the room Rangers come and go, talking of spotting Lucario.
...
It takes them about a month to evacuate all the Pokemon of Krokka Tunnel -- the ones they could rescue, at least -- and get them temporarily set up in Lyra Forest, and to stabilize and rope off the areas that are the most likely threats to Ringtown.
After that, the only task left to them is to begin the impossible and arduous task of rebuilding the tunnel.
They found themselves short a Ranger when Carlos, who had worked at a Pokemon Center in Fuschia and thus was good at tending to the injured and tired Pokemon they sometimes brought back to base (until recently, this was just Fearow), took time off when his boyfriend came home with a bag of groceries and an infant, and never came back to work.
Spenser, however, was most just amused by this, and put out a notice on the Ranger Net. To their surprise, it was promptly answered by Kaylin, the girl from Fall City who had once needed Solana's help catching her Jiggylpuff. Time had been kind to her.
It was fortunate that she's such a quick learner -- Solana and Lunick sat through her practice sessions with Spenser, which couldn't've been comfortable for her but were hysterical for them -- because shortly thereafter she was sent to Summerland to help them deal with a sudden and rather nasty infestation of Venonat, who have a tendency to suck the very life out of the native cucumbers (Solana didn't see how this was more important than Krokka Tunnel, but she was biased.) She came back with a perpetual look of surprise on her face and a Ranger Rank 4.
"Things escalated," she told Solana and Lunick sheepishly, hitting the espresso button. It jams.
Lunick waved this away. "Don't worry about it; you've got nothing to live up to. You just sneeze around here, and they think it's a testament of your prowess as a Ranger and elevate you a Rank." He brightened. "Fighting Poke Assists are fantastic, though."
...
Solana has gotten to know Lunick far better than she has ever wanted to. Due to being on similar levels and fairly good friends already, they were usually given the same jobs, which gave them far too much time together. If Solana had any wish to learn the names of all of Lunick's Pokemon from before, plus what kind of food they ate, and all their digestive problems, she certainly didn't now.
Then he does something wrong, and the section they've just spent four days putting up collapses again, almost right on top of their heads.
Solana screams for her Plusle frantically, and her panic infect the friend Pokemon she has with her, so the keening and wailing is twice the volume and intensity it was otherwise. She looks ready to attack the rockslide bare-handed, when Plusle comes bounding over a large boulder and into Solana's arms, shaking with relief.
Solana crushes her to her, feeling the familiar fingers of static electricity flash across her cheeks, but she is still quivering with her fear and she spins around and lets it loose on Lunick, who's standing behind her, his face pale with the knowledge of what he had almost caused.
He lets her rage at him for a minute or so, before lunging forward to grab her face between his hands and crush his mouth to hers.
It catches her breath all wrong, and she sneezes violently, and they break apart.
To her mortification, her snot is on his cheek, and she reaches out to brush it off, but he recoils from her hand as if afraid of a slap, and with something that sounds, "I'm get going to Machoke," he's gone.
...
She finds him later in the break room, and Murph's there, too, changing a light bulb in their mini-fridge, but she's not paying attention to him. She slides into the seat across from Lunick, and he flashes her an inscrutable look over the rim of his styrafoam coffee cup and when she continues to look at him, he sets it down and squares his shoulders to face her. The snot's gone, she notices.
"You're the only person who's never left me," she informs him, and his eyes shine surprise for a moment, completely not expecting this turn of conversation. "You never once ditched me to risk your life elsewhere, you never once composed a song in my honor," here, Murph gets the hint and quietly and with more grace than she thought possible of him, evacuates the room. "You're loyal, supportive, funny, dedicated, and your confidence in me is overwhelming to the point of sickening."
He blinks at her, obviously not attempting to help make this any easier on her, and Solana sighs, eyes flickering around in a desperate bid for help, and says in a rush, "I love you too."
Then she reaches over for a sip of his coffee, only to discover the cup was empty, as he had never filled it.
...
They fall a little bit behind in their work over the next couple of days, as they take frequent breaks to teach each other several new euphemisms for "capping their Stylers."
This ends with a text message from Spenser, saying, You two are the last people I have to remind just how busy we are, but if we do, so help me, I shall! If I have to, I'll supervise you myself, and I don't know how far we'll fall behind then. There are other ways to hone your body, now is not the time, save it, will you?
"He's obviously not so busy that he can't send us a text message roughly the length of our guidebook," Solana observes dryly, pocketing her Styler, and she feels his throat vibrate against her shoulder with his laughter.
...
The work moves slowly, more slowly than either of them could have imagined, even though they had been there when Spenser had said it would take eighteen months. They just hadn't imagined it would be eighteen months of back-breaking, exhausting work that left them with little energy to even pee.
Apparently, the villagers didn't understand it either, because they were still expecting them to do their regular jobs around Ringtown.
"If I have to fetch Larry's Taillow one more time," says Kaylin, releasing a Chikorita at the door and storming inside, jamming whichever button she sees first with more force than was necessary. "I will roast that thing and pick my teeth with its bones!"
It was a testament to how little morale they had left that neither Solana nor Lunick mentioned to her how that would break the oath she made when becoming a Ranger to honor and serve the environment and all the Pokemon that live in it. In fact, it was sounding like a rather good plan. Lunick's eyes glazed over peacefully. Solana gulps coffee with the consistency and concentration of engine sludge.
...
Around and around they went, until they knew each Machoke and each Hariyama individually, pounding dirt and holding up beams, each Marshstomp to make mud and each Scyther to cut wood, each Dugtrio they need to say "no, it's not ready yet" (Registeel is particularly obnoxious at this point). Around and around go their Stylers, looping Pokemon as tired as they were. Sometimes, Solana thought she had permenantly divided her brain into two parts; the part that needed to be calm, peaceful, persuasive, the part she used to communicate with Pokemon, and the other half, brimming with impatience and frustration and hunger.
It's boiling in Lunick too, she knows, for he doesn't notice when they reach their first anniversary as ... whatever they are, and when she brings it up he kisses her so hard he almost knocks her teeth out.
On the table, Plusle and Minun chase each other around, throwing small electrical charges at each other. They've had nothing to do; they can't afford to shock the Pokemon they need to work so hard.
Lunick strokes a path from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck, and Solana falls asleep on his chest, having forgotten what it's like.
...
The best and worst part comes when Spenser and Joel exchange updates with each other, having been digging towards the center from their respective ends, and discover that they've each overshot the other and they could have been done a week ago.
Three days later, there's a connecting tunnel installed, and the Krokka Tunnel fiasco of Solana's [seventh] year of being a Pokemon Ranger ends in a completely anticlimactic fashion.
...
"So, what are you going to do now?" Spenser asks them, after they all get approximately twelve hours of sleep each.
Before Solana can say anything about Taillows and a new marinade sauce she has, Lunick wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her to his side, "I think my wife and I are going to Summerland, Leader, for a whole week of doing nothing but picking our noses."
Spenser throws his lion's mane head back and roars with laughter at the look on Solana's face. "That sounds excellent! But first, I want your help with something."
"We got married?" Solana wondered of no one in particular. "Where was I when this happened?"
Then the three of them, with Kaylin cheering support and Murph on the ground making sure nobody (especially him) gets hit, throw the coffee machine off the Ranger Base roof, and all live happily ever after.
Author: wingsofcharity
Fandom: Pokemon Ranger
Pairing: Solana/Lunick
Rating: PG, for sexual innuendo
Word Count: 2063
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Pokemon Ranger has buttsex with Nintendo. I get it.
done for the prompt "4. coffee/tea" at 20_firstkisses
The Krokka Tunnel collapse in Solana's sixth year of being a Pokemon Ranger made the whole Go Rock Squad thing look like the Saturday morning cartoons.
Naturally, in about five minutes, the entire town was out to have a look.
"This is going to take the rest of our lives," Murph said in a really small voice, and Terrence Hastings goes as white as a sheet; his grandfather was in Fall City and he now had no way to get there, should anything happen to him (and, judging by the professor's annoying disregard for his own safety and his bludgeoning senility, was a likely probability).
Spenser shook his head, his eyes frightened. "Maybe only eighteen months. We can't use machinery, not with a collapse this big; it'll send the whole thing mudsliding into Ringtown! And Fall City will work from the other side." As he said this, he flipped open his Styler to send Joel a text message, only to receive one before he could even send it.
Yeah, yeah, I see it, Joel said with the usual brusqueness. We'll do what we can.
Solana felt the familiar tightening in her shoulders and sinking in her stomach that always came with the prospect of many, many long hours of work with little reward. At her side, Lunick looked despicably thrilled.
The two of them set to the task of calming down the Zubat, who were frightened by the noise and abrupt loss of their home, uncertain in daylight, and a hazard to anybody with brains to scramble, and almost forty-eight hours later, on no sleep, Solana thought rather uncharitably that this was the first time Lunick worked nearly as hard as she did.
...
They make the worktime more bearable by telling each other stories; myths and ghost stories from their own homelands, mostly, but of course there's always the fabricated tale here and there (most of these are from Lunick, detailing his narrow escapes and instances of nauseating valor).
Murph's labeled a liability to the task within the first week, and so remains at Base, brewing cups of coffee and fetching ice packs, and swiftly becomes everybody's favorite man to see.
The Ringtown Base had never needed a break room before this, but in the light of recent events, their obnoxious sense of nobility had become their own worst enemy, and Spenser didn't tend to work his own Rangers to death. Still, most of them had to be told, shortly and with no small amount of exasperation, to go and get some rest before they would even think about stopping. Murph usually got the duty of doing this to Spenser, as he was the only one brave enough to face Spenser when he hasn't slept in days.
Solana develops a taste for caffeine with frightening efficiency.
In the room Rangers come and go, talking of spotting Lucario.
...
It takes them about a month to evacuate all the Pokemon of Krokka Tunnel -- the ones they could rescue, at least -- and get them temporarily set up in Lyra Forest, and to stabilize and rope off the areas that are the most likely threats to Ringtown.
After that, the only task left to them is to begin the impossible and arduous task of rebuilding the tunnel.
They found themselves short a Ranger when Carlos, who had worked at a Pokemon Center in Fuschia and thus was good at tending to the injured and tired Pokemon they sometimes brought back to base (until recently, this was just Fearow), took time off when his boyfriend came home with a bag of groceries and an infant, and never came back to work.
Spenser, however, was most just amused by this, and put out a notice on the Ranger Net. To their surprise, it was promptly answered by Kaylin, the girl from Fall City who had once needed Solana's help catching her Jiggylpuff. Time had been kind to her.
It was fortunate that she's such a quick learner -- Solana and Lunick sat through her practice sessions with Spenser, which couldn't've been comfortable for her but were hysterical for them -- because shortly thereafter she was sent to Summerland to help them deal with a sudden and rather nasty infestation of Venonat, who have a tendency to suck the very life out of the native cucumbers (Solana didn't see how this was more important than Krokka Tunnel, but she was biased.) She came back with a perpetual look of surprise on her face and a Ranger Rank 4.
"Things escalated," she told Solana and Lunick sheepishly, hitting the espresso button. It jams.
Lunick waved this away. "Don't worry about it; you've got nothing to live up to. You just sneeze around here, and they think it's a testament of your prowess as a Ranger and elevate you a Rank." He brightened. "Fighting Poke Assists are fantastic, though."
...
Solana has gotten to know Lunick far better than she has ever wanted to. Due to being on similar levels and fairly good friends already, they were usually given the same jobs, which gave them far too much time together. If Solana had any wish to learn the names of all of Lunick's Pokemon from before, plus what kind of food they ate, and all their digestive problems, she certainly didn't now.
Then he does something wrong, and the section they've just spent four days putting up collapses again, almost right on top of their heads.
Solana screams for her Plusle frantically, and her panic infect the friend Pokemon she has with her, so the keening and wailing is twice the volume and intensity it was otherwise. She looks ready to attack the rockslide bare-handed, when Plusle comes bounding over a large boulder and into Solana's arms, shaking with relief.
Solana crushes her to her, feeling the familiar fingers of static electricity flash across her cheeks, but she is still quivering with her fear and she spins around and lets it loose on Lunick, who's standing behind her, his face pale with the knowledge of what he had almost caused.
He lets her rage at him for a minute or so, before lunging forward to grab her face between his hands and crush his mouth to hers.
It catches her breath all wrong, and she sneezes violently, and they break apart.
To her mortification, her snot is on his cheek, and she reaches out to brush it off, but he recoils from her hand as if afraid of a slap, and with something that sounds, "I'm get going to Machoke," he's gone.
...
She finds him later in the break room, and Murph's there, too, changing a light bulb in their mini-fridge, but she's not paying attention to him. She slides into the seat across from Lunick, and he flashes her an inscrutable look over the rim of his styrafoam coffee cup and when she continues to look at him, he sets it down and squares his shoulders to face her. The snot's gone, she notices.
"You're the only person who's never left me," she informs him, and his eyes shine surprise for a moment, completely not expecting this turn of conversation. "You never once ditched me to risk your life elsewhere, you never once composed a song in my honor," here, Murph gets the hint and quietly and with more grace than she thought possible of him, evacuates the room. "You're loyal, supportive, funny, dedicated, and your confidence in me is overwhelming to the point of sickening."
He blinks at her, obviously not attempting to help make this any easier on her, and Solana sighs, eyes flickering around in a desperate bid for help, and says in a rush, "I love you too."
Then she reaches over for a sip of his coffee, only to discover the cup was empty, as he had never filled it.
...
They fall a little bit behind in their work over the next couple of days, as they take frequent breaks to teach each other several new euphemisms for "capping their Stylers."
This ends with a text message from Spenser, saying, You two are the last people I have to remind just how busy we are, but if we do, so help me, I shall! If I have to, I'll supervise you myself, and I don't know how far we'll fall behind then. There are other ways to hone your body, now is not the time, save it, will you?
"He's obviously not so busy that he can't send us a text message roughly the length of our guidebook," Solana observes dryly, pocketing her Styler, and she feels his throat vibrate against her shoulder with his laughter.
...
The work moves slowly, more slowly than either of them could have imagined, even though they had been there when Spenser had said it would take eighteen months. They just hadn't imagined it would be eighteen months of back-breaking, exhausting work that left them with little energy to even pee.
Apparently, the villagers didn't understand it either, because they were still expecting them to do their regular jobs around Ringtown.
"If I have to fetch Larry's Taillow one more time," says Kaylin, releasing a Chikorita at the door and storming inside, jamming whichever button she sees first with more force than was necessary. "I will roast that thing and pick my teeth with its bones!"
It was a testament to how little morale they had left that neither Solana nor Lunick mentioned to her how that would break the oath she made when becoming a Ranger to honor and serve the environment and all the Pokemon that live in it. In fact, it was sounding like a rather good plan. Lunick's eyes glazed over peacefully. Solana gulps coffee with the consistency and concentration of engine sludge.
...
Around and around they went, until they knew each Machoke and each Hariyama individually, pounding dirt and holding up beams, each Marshstomp to make mud and each Scyther to cut wood, each Dugtrio they need to say "no, it's not ready yet" (Registeel is particularly obnoxious at this point). Around and around go their Stylers, looping Pokemon as tired as they were. Sometimes, Solana thought she had permenantly divided her brain into two parts; the part that needed to be calm, peaceful, persuasive, the part she used to communicate with Pokemon, and the other half, brimming with impatience and frustration and hunger.
It's boiling in Lunick too, she knows, for he doesn't notice when they reach their first anniversary as ... whatever they are, and when she brings it up he kisses her so hard he almost knocks her teeth out.
On the table, Plusle and Minun chase each other around, throwing small electrical charges at each other. They've had nothing to do; they can't afford to shock the Pokemon they need to work so hard.
Lunick strokes a path from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck, and Solana falls asleep on his chest, having forgotten what it's like.
...
The best and worst part comes when Spenser and Joel exchange updates with each other, having been digging towards the center from their respective ends, and discover that they've each overshot the other and they could have been done a week ago.
Three days later, there's a connecting tunnel installed, and the Krokka Tunnel fiasco of Solana's [seventh] year of being a Pokemon Ranger ends in a completely anticlimactic fashion.
...
"So, what are you going to do now?" Spenser asks them, after they all get approximately twelve hours of sleep each.
Before Solana can say anything about Taillows and a new marinade sauce she has, Lunick wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her to his side, "I think my wife and I are going to Summerland, Leader, for a whole week of doing nothing but picking our noses."
Spenser throws his lion's mane head back and roars with laughter at the look on Solana's face. "That sounds excellent! But first, I want your help with something."
"We got married?" Solana wondered of no one in particular. "Where was I when this happened?"
Then the three of them, with Kaylin cheering support and Murph on the ground making sure nobody (especially him) gets hit, throw the coffee machine off the Ranger Base roof, and all live happily ever after.