[Game Thread] Pokerole: Mount Coronet Mystery

[Dragonstrike]

"Ack!  Hey, what the hell!?  Watch where you're swinging that thing, Kogeki, geez..."

Lucas rubs his slightly bruised jaw, trying to ease the pain as Kogeki apologizes.  "...look, it's fine, just...watch what you're doing in the future, alright?"

He shakes his head in response to the Grassy Terrain request.  "Would if I could, but you know how it is.  Pokemon can't really use their buffing moves to their full effectiveness outside of battle.  The effects just don't linger long enough."  (Every trainer can have 1 HP of healing from the Grassy Terrain used during the D-Steelix battle, though).

"As for where everyone else is, Paula's sitting over by Turk over there.  She's been super antsy since we got away.  Had to tell her to give ya some space."  He points behind him, where Paula is leaning up against Turk's shell, anxiously fidgeting.  The turtle's watching over Heracross and Hazel too, though Hazel is unconscious and Heracross doesn't seem very concerned.  "Sally's resting right now in her pokeball.  I've got a few stern words for her myself, but...honestly, if she hadn't taken that risk, that fight might not have ended that quickly, and I don't want to imagine how much worse that situation might have been if she hadn't ended the battle right then."

"And Steelix, as best as we can tell, is buried underneath tons and tons of heavy rock and burning coal.  Don't think it'll stay there forever, of course, but I think it's safe to say the danger's passed.  We had to flee through several long corridors before finding another room where we could rest that wasn't collapsing in on itself due to the seismic activity.  Still in the mine, though.  Hasn't been that long since the battle.  Maybe an hour or so?  Always hard to tell when you're this deep underground."

Byron winces and readjusts his posture, planting the head of his shovel in the ground for stability, trying to get comfortable.  He then looks Randolph straight in the eye and gets to his own no nonsense questons. "Now then, if you don't mind me asking, aren't you one of the foremen here?  I thought I told you to get the heck out of here when I showed up to deal with that Arceus damned Onix that was causing trouble.  Not that I don't appreciate the help, but why the hell did you stick around, and how the hell did you find help so quickly?  Your friends definitely don't look like miners, after all."

As  Byon's asking these questions, Randolph gets his first real chance to really look at the Gym Leader in detail.  He looks...younger.  Noticeably younger, in fact.  Fewer wrinkles, taller stance...and that posture as well...it reminds Randolph of how Byron looked when he stumbled out of the Oreburgh Mine after the incident all those years ago, hurt, but still able to do his job...