Dungeon Diving

“I’m glad you’re feeling better. ‘Cause we can always delay this another day if you’re still not feeling it.” Mayr mutters, wrapping his arms around from the back of Cassius, resting its chin on his neck piece.
Cassius laughs, it makes Mayr vibrate and he can’t help but respond to it with his own laughter as Cassius’ wings flap brushing against his legs in a manner that almost tickles.
“I am feeling fine, liebling, perfect even.” His grin is all teeth and fangs, it loves when he smiles like that.
He has to let go of him though, there’s no way the two of them could walk to the manor like this, though both would quite like that to be possible, not wanting to let go of the other.

They do manage the entire walk hand in hand, that is until Cassius pulls out of his Mayr’s claws to stare almost in awe up at the massive manor. He’s practically vibrating in excitement, in fact he is vibrating, his wings flapping in small and manic movements, Mayr can’t help but stare, once again another moment of Cassius which he wishes to permanently record to his brain, it’s not often he completely drops the ‘scary vampire’ front. Though this has been happening more and more around his darling Mayr, he can’t help it when he wants to show all the sides of him to his partner.
“Look at this place, Mayr! Oh, what I’d give to live here!”
“The haunted manor?”
Cassius spins around on the balls of his feet to grin back at his partner, arms spreading wide and wings flaring below.
“Yes, the haunted manor!” He chuckles, “I’m a vampire, I’d fit right in.”
Mayr puts on a fake, rather exaggerated pout before crossing his arms,
“But then I wouldn’t be able to join you, and I’d have to spend far too much time away from you, Cassius.” IT lets the words come out as a whine, which truly catches Cassius’ attention.
He sweeps across the grass, arms still out before pulling Mayr into a hug, it lets out a soft noise of panic as its feet are pulled off of the floor, so it tightens its own arms over and around Cassius’ neck, pressing his head into his chest.
“Well then, looks like I’ll have to stay where I am.”
He spins them before putting it back down on the floor, his hooves touch down and Cassius lets go so it carefully releases it’s own grip, only holding on for a few moments longer to pull the vampire into a quick kiss.
“We have a dungeon to explore.” Mayr mutters just above his breath, “This,” he gestures between the two of them, “Should be picked back up later though.”
He tries not to jolt as suddenly Cassius’ hands are either side of his face, just behind the horns and he’s gently tugged forward into a kiss. It’s always a shock to his system, no matter how long ago they last kissed, how warm the fire types lips are against his own, it’s pleasant though.
“Well, let’s get going so later can happen sooner.” Cassius grins, teeth in it’s face, something that Mayr’s pretty sure he should be afraid of and not drawn towards, but of course, he is drawn towards it, that’s his man.

After they lurk outside for what probably is too long, the two of them finally head into the dungeon and the looks from inside the manor are even more stunning than the outside. They can hear Crobat above them, but none of them are visible just yet, which he’s not sure if it’s a good thing or not, the whole not being able to see them yet. The two are hand in hand, they know the biggest problem with this dungeon are the near endless corridors and they don’t want to get separated down them, all the advice they got was if you go in a team, and you should, then you need to stick together. Circe tried to argue with them, that two isn’t a team and isn’t enough pokemon to do this specific dungeon, to which Mayr tried to bring up that he did No Mon’s land alone, which just made Circe laugh. They didn’t leave long after that, Mayr’s pride wounded, he knows she’s right about that, but he’d like to think that he could have done it alone, that he would have been fine even without their help. Cassius didn’t want to get involved, he wasn’t there, but what he is there for is his partner so there was no way he’d end up siding against him.
Another reason the two of them are also both on edge, is the fact that there’s a high record of feral pokemon in here at the moment, learnt the hard way by the last group of adventurers that came in here. Mayr has no doubt they can handle themselves, feral pokemon may be stronger and more reckless, but that can be exploited against them, Cassius is more nervous after the bruises it came home from the last, single feral pokemon he met. Not that he’s going to voice that to Mayr, he’s not that stupid, not stupid enough to actually offend his boyfriend by implying that he can’t handle himself because he can; it was just one slip up that it won’t repeat again.
“This place is pretty spooky inside here,” Cassius states.
“Oh yeah?” Mayr replies, running one of his claws over the back of Cassius’ hands, letting him know it’s a gentle teasing, “Is the big scary vampire, scared?” He laughs gently and looks over at his partners face.
Cassius sticks his tongue out, though the tip of his flames forms a rough heart shape. He’s about to say something else when his teasing’s cut short.
There’s a snarling noise that rumbles out and Mayr yanks them both to the side, narrowly avoiding the incoming Indeedee, it notes the red swirling eyes and tusks of the pokemon. Cassius stumbles, Mayr having pulled him off balance and he has to yank his hand out of it’s to stabilise himself, though he’s grateful for the save, better to nearly fall then receive a feral Indeedee to the face. It growls, seemingly incapable of speaking in its feral state, Mayr doesn’t know enough about the condition to know if this is true to all feral pokemon and now isn’t really the time to ask Cassius about it. The two get into stance, Mayr’s arm blades glowing into existence, he doesn’t want to actually hurt the pokemon, or at least not too badly, it’s literally incapable of thinking clearly right now while attacking them, so while it may really want to hurt them, he’s not thinking about wanting to hurt it back, just keep them both safe.
“They were not kidding about the feral levels here, are they?” He calls across the small gap the two of them have now formed, he’s charging up a flamethrower, keeping it to a low level to scare and push it back rather than hurt it.
“Clearly not.” Mayr returns, before a Crobat then launches into his face, he lets out a noise of distress before batting it off of his horn, it’s eyes the same swirling red as the Indeedee. Glancing up he notices at least three more crobat with the same infliction above them, Mayr growls back at them before quickly forming a quick guard to help both him and Cassius out. He has to wave his arm to bat away another Crobat, managing to clip its wings and make it topple to the side, it hits the floor but it gets back up pretty quickly, trying to nip at the top of his hooves so it gives it a quick kick. Feeling bad as they make contact, but it really can’t be helped, that pokemon was really trying to munch down on his skin around the edges there.
“You know, I know calm mind.” Cassius states, blasting fire towards the Indeedee who’s decided he’s distracted enough to try again, aiming for just below its collar piece. All of it misses, but it leaves a low burning trail on the floor, keeping it back more. “I could try to see how many I could get at once, or just use it on this Indeedee, I recon they’d be our best bet to get out of her intact.” He adds on.
Mayr takes a moment to think about it, he knows they don’t have too many moments as more feral crobat appear from the air around them; it’s also pretty sure he’s spotted a feral Mr Rime coming down the corridor and possibly a couple others. It seems like all of the ghost types of this usually haunted manor have been chased out by the current mostly feral population, and from the scars and fresh cuts littering most of them, it seems that they’re not all comfortable about sharing this area, even if it is seemingly infinite. Another Crobat launches itself at Cassius from behind, but it clearly choses the wrong angle and flies straight into the flames billowing from the back of its helmet. It lets out a rather horrifying noise, and Cassius pales, turning to see the now singed pokemon as guilt wells in his chest, even if he didn’t do it deliberately it still makes him feel bad. The flame thrower dies down in his hands, even though he knows it’s still going to be needed, he can’t help as it becomes distracted by the now fainted crobat on the floor.
It clicks his fingers, Mayr snapping Cassius back to attention,
“Try to calm mind the Indeedee, at the very least it should distract it long enough that we can get out of here. These crobat are ridiculous and have little care for their own safety, I really don’t want to do any damage to them but they’re making it hard.” Mayr calls out, loud enough to truly get it heard by his partner, it doesn’t really matter if the other pokemon hear, even if they understand it doubts, they can formulate it into a plan on their end. 

Cassius nods in response. Side stepping so he’s closer to Mayr so the other man can help protect him while he focuses on drawing in the energy, he needs to be able to use Calm Mind on the Indeedee. He wants to make sure he doesn’t this correctly and well, he and Mayr are both counting on this working to at least some extent. The fire’s done a good job so far holding the Indeedee back but she’s getting closer to the edge of the flames as they cool down and lower more, the crobat don’t seem to care that their targets are together and it has instead made them double down, multiple now flying at them at once.
He ignores them however, Cassius does. Trying to focus on himself and build his psychic energy, it’s never been his strong suit but he has had to use his calm mind move on more then a few of his fellow vampires before they arrived in Coldour; but that is quite a while back now. So much has changed since then, he’s not even really had to fight that much, par his spars with Kozmotis and now his sparing with Mayr, the pokemon that he knows he goes easier on then he should. Mayr watches his eyes flicker close, distracting himself slightly from the feral pokemon around them as his partner focuses on charging the move. It doesn’t comment on the fact that Cassius’s form essentially flickers. His wings fold up tight to the back of his legs before disappearing, the flames shift to be smaller and a lot of the darker colours turn towards the more standard Armarouge colours; turning back into his masked self. It knows not to mention this, it’s not like he hasn’t seen his masked form before, but he knows it much prefers it’s transformed, or true form as he likes to call it. So, it won’t mention it, probably not ever, it doesn’t need to be brought up so he won’t bring it up.
Suddenly, Cassius’ eyes flick back open and he casts a wave of psychic energy towards the Indeedee, there’s flames flicking around, light embers within the wave, though none are burning bright or hard enough to harm anyone. A look of anger flicks across the Indeedee’s face before it stumbles around a little, it blinks heavily and when it’s eyes open for the final time they’re back to normal. It’s colours have also lightened, Mayr couldn’t even tell they were darker then a normal ones before it changed back, maybe it was the light or the fact there was nothing for them both to compare it to.
They look around in panic before focusing on the two adventurers,
“Oh.” It states softly.
“Can you help us out of here?” Cassius says, his hands shaking slightly and Mayr catches him as he tips sideways, looking pale and like he may faint.
The Indeedee looks between them and the feral crobats who now aim towards it, clearly seeing anything not currently feral as the enemy before nodding,
“Stick close, hold onto each other, I know a fast way out of here. There are too many feral pokemon here right now, I recommend your institute or whatever it is stops sending pokemon this way.” It explains fast, before darting off down the hall, surprisingly not the way they came, which is where the Mr Rime now is.
Cassius and Mayr look across at each other, before both shrugging and following the pokemon as fast as they can, Mayr has one hand around onto Cassius’ waist, to hold it close and upright. 

They travel fast and this corridor truly does seem to go for ever, making sure to keep the Indeedee in sight at all times. Cassius stumbles at one point, but Mayr makes sure to keep him upright.
No one comments as Cassius’ wings stretch and grow back out from his lower spine, his teeth slowly elongate as it transforms back into his normal vampire self. They come across another couple of feral pokemon, but their constant movement and pace seems to discourage them from attacking, there’s even a couple of not feral pokemon hiding out in one of the rooms they pass by, they don’t stop though and the pokemon don’t call out knowing it’s safer for all of them not to.
Finally, they reach a door, and the Indeedee swings it open, a look of nervous fear spreads across it’s face which then melts into relief as they all topple back out into the front garden. It makes Mayr’s head spin, they entered in through the front and then continued to travel the same way down the corridor the whole time, sure it seemed to go on for far too long, but they made no turns so it makes no sense that as they turn back, they came out of the same door they entered in from. He wants to voice this question, but from everyone else’s expressions, it decides now’s really not the best time, maybe someone from the institute will be able to satiate his curiosity.
“Thank you,” Cassius manages to pant out, having regained his breath first, “For helping us out of the manor.” He adds on. The Indeedee nods,
“My pleasure, thank you for snapping me back out of my feral form, even just for a little bit, it’s a breath of fresh air. Most adventurers are less kind and gentle.” They explain, before doing a rather sweet little bow to both of them in turn.
“Of course.” Cassius states,
“I want you to know, you’re more then welcome to try and come and find us if you ever want to.” Mayr voices it out. It’s very unlikely, the Indeedee seems to view this place as a home and it doesn’t know where they live anyway, but it’s nice to put it out there, it’s best to put it out there if he’s honest. Cassius giggles slightly at the comment, clearly thinking back to the other four pokemon that Mayr has ended up bringing home from his personal quests, though clearly, this is not a problem when Cassius joins him. The Indeedee nods,
“Thank you for the offer, I am going back home now though.” It turns back towards the house and opens the door, some of its fur already darkening once more, “Get home safely, the both of you.” And then just like that, it’s gone again back into the manor.
Cassius and Mayr don’t move, just turn to face each other and smile.
“Well that was a lot.” Cassius states, wings flexing, “Now, shouldn’t we go home, I’m pretty sure you were starting something earlier.” He waggles his eyebrows and Mayr flushes at the suggestion, even if it’s not wrong with what it had started. It shifts, before fazing the blades on his arms away, shifting about on its hooves, trying to work out how exactly they both want to do this, which makes those fangs appear on Cassius’ face, a grin forming.
“You know what I think… Run!” It grins, and Mayr turns and legs it out of the grounds.
A few moments pass, it gets out the gate before it can hear Cassius set of after it. They are both going to be so out of breath after this, especially as they keep laughing, they don’t even know if they’ll make this the whole way home, let alone if they’ll make it up to bed or simply fall straight asleep onto the first sofa, they both come to. It’s not the longest travel they’ve done, but as he runs, Mayr knows they’ve also already had to leg it through the manor and the sky is starting to dust orange with the evenings approach.
The fear both experienced within the manor is slowly forgotten as they run and laugh.