[Event] Through the Sands

Caesar stared up at his trainer, his eyes narrowed ever so lightly. Beside him stood Kaleb and Haruki, both of them more focussed on the second trainer, Pesky. He was currently busy trying to grab onto the long tail, that Kurai kept pulling away just in time. Genuinely, Caesar would probably find this a lot more funny if it weren’t about, probably, life or death. It had been a discussion since a long while now and now that they basically stood at the edge to the desert, Pesky had brought it right back up.

“I refuse to get dragged into the sands with you!”, Pesky now said, the visor on his face showing a rapidly blinking, very bright red X. “Seriously, I do not understand your resentment of the train at all!” Finally he managed to catch a grip on the black scaled tail, a surprised ! showing up almost immediately. Kurai grunted. “I told you. I don’t want to go onto a train filled with angry Cynic grunts.”

Pesky motioned for the Pokemon to follow and while Haruki was quick to oblige, jumping up onto his trainers shoulders, Kaleb only blinked his eyes slowly at the unlikely pair. Caesar grumbled as he slithered closer, watching as Pesky began to pull Kurai along by the tail. “We’re neither aligned with Cynic, nor with Ethos. Besides, you are in agreement with most of Cynics ideals, aren’t you? So clearly we won’t have to face any difficulties.”

Kurai rather quickly raised a hand and wagged his finger, not that Pesky, turned away from him, would see it. But he would certainly feel the sudden drag, as Kurai simply pushed his claws into the ground, making pulling him along far more tedious than it really should be. “I would still rather face the possibility of a sandstorm, than travel in a train filled with potentially violent trainers.”
With an annoyed grunt, Pesky let go of his tail. Kaleb instead was quick to jump at it and cling to it, which Kurai used to pull him up and into his arms. Caesar stopped beside his trainer, looking up at him. He truly found himself agreeing far more with Pesky - a desert was not a place for a pretty bugsnake like him.

Haruki chuckled lightly, as his trainer now turned to face Kurai, pointing at the sands in front of them, that he’d tried to violently pull the permafused trainwreck away from. “And why should we not be able to deal with violent trainers, but with a sandstorm?”

“Listen, I’m truly only thinking of our safety here.” Kurai leaned forward, making Kaleb twitch surprised in his arms, before lightly nipping his arm. Not that Kurai cared. “Imagine yourself. You’re on the train.”
“Where we want to be, yes.”
“Shush, let me finish. There are us, the neutrals. A whole horde of Cynic grunts. And a few boisterous Ethos guys that stir up trouble by choosing the train, whether they intended to cause trouble or not. Pokemon get sent out, fights ensue. Sure, we’d be able to hold our own, I have great trust in our Pokemon after all. But.” Now he leaned a bit closer and Caesar could almost see how hard Kaleb pulled his head back to not accidentally touch snoot with Haruki. Pesky seemed to share Kaleb’s sentiment, carefully leaning a bit back to keep his distance, which had his Pokemon clinging closer to him.

“But?”

Kurai narrowed his eyes. “What about the train? What if, by pure dumb luck, a stray attack misfires? We’re in a narrow train. Underground. With battling Pokémon. That could be a disaster. We could crash and burn. Literally. The sandstorm we can survive, but a train crash? Not as likely.”
Peskys visor blinked two bright, yellow eyes, before they appeared as long thin lines. “I think you’re being a bit too doomsday about this.”

“I believe you’re not enough doomsday.” Kurai straightened himself up again, with Kaleb exhaling a low sigh - before he was suddenly held up higher by his trainer, letting out a surprised yip. “Besides. We got a perfectly good ground type right here. If anything comes up, he can surely help us out”, he added with a grin.

Caesar couldn’t help a soft cackle at the sight of the discomfort his team partner was in at being held up the way he was, but at a quick glare of Kaleb, he shut up again. Pesky eyed Kaleb, before he sighed. “You want to send out a first stage against a sandstorm?”
“Not the sandstorm. Just the sands themselves”, Kurai grinned, lowering Kaleb again to give him a careful head pat on the skull. “I wouldn’t endanger my beautiful little cub.”

Pesky raised a hand, but Haruki gently put a paw on it and slowly forced it back down. For a moment his trainer was silent, simply looking over Kurai and his Pokemon. While Kaleb definitely now enjoyed the attention he got, Caesar still didn’t look all too secure about the plan of his trainer.

Finally, he sighed. “I can’t convince you otherwise anyway, right?”

“Nope.”

Again, Pesky grabbed onto Kurai's tail. “Then let's go before I change my mind yet again.” And with that, he now dragged Kurai by the tail into the desert. With Kaleb and Haruki both being carried, Caesar was the last to follow, quick to slither after them with clear indignancy in his eyes. This would go horribly. He could already smell it. But at least Kurai looked absolutely excited now…