sunpendant | Four | Video/Action for Goldenrod

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[Originally, Raven planned her trip to Goldenrod to take longer. It started out that way. She wanted to take in the sights, so to speak, now that winter wasn’t trying to kill her and there might be more monsters about. Then that announcement came over the gear and things changed. Anyone along the Sudowoodo Area would have seen her storming toward Goldenrod at a pace that took effort to maintain, feeling under the weather as she is. A worried Swablu chirps atop her head for most of the way.

And now she’s here. The big city. She was supposed to tell Ondorus when she was coming, but she’s too wrapped up in finding…something. Information? The person who would do terrible things like that? Oh, she’d love the second one.

She succeeds in neither, managing only to wind up hopelessly lost on the streets that circle the department store. It’s a tall building and a nice landmark…unless you have no idea where to go from there. He wasn’t kidding when he said it was like nothing he’d ever seen before, was he?]

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How do I get to the “breeding center” from here? [Raven’s face and the top of the tower are in camera view. She looks irritated and pale and tired.]

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[..and there he'd gotten his hopes up.]

I'm not doubting your skill as a trainer or faith in your Pokemon, but please believe me when I say that there is nothing you can accomplish against Team Rocket on your own. [He speaks from experience, but he doesn't want to say so unless there's no other way to convince her.

(Well - oh ooh things are getting tense over there again, better edge away - what do you want to know?)]

[He doesn't know what she can do. And right now she doesn't trust him enough to tell him.]

I'm not on my own.

[How much it will cost and how big it is and whether there are other birds because Raven really likes birds and also they have a Murkrow on the team and maybe it will make her feel better.]

[Ondorus gives a short, sharp sigh - judging by the look on his face afterwards, it wasn't intentional.]

So you think like that as well. [slow breath in...] We've been training, too. For the express purpose of standing against Team Rocket. And in the time I've been here, over the times I've encountered their vile activities, I've realized something about the nature of conflict in this world. That is, that whenever one human decides to act against another, for whatever reason, it is always Pokemon who stand to lose the most.

[Does he have to go farther with this, or is his point already getting across?

(Less than you make working here, pretty big and there's a yard too, and hmm sometimes there are birds around, the other Pokemon spend a lot more time in their balls than Ondorus' friends do. Their group is kind of weird and there are a bunch of boys but they're passable. (tsun.))]

[At first, she bristles. Is he criticizing the feeling she has that these pokémon are finally keeping the loneliness away? It almost stops her from listening to the rest of what he has to say...but the end of that hits home.]

...Not all monsters are good. [They're walking, so she can't shift her feet like she ordinarily might. She looks away instead.] You have them, too. Why are those people so different?

[They should all come out and play as long as they don't make too much of a mess, right, look at these tiny wings, it'd be hard to clean a huge area very fast...]

[Ondorus is very quiet for a moment, closing his eyes and breathing in.]

We're all guilty parties in it. I doubt most people even think of it that way. But even if you do think of it, still this world demands that you accept Pokemon as...commodities. Devices in the lives of humans. That's the price of being part of society here.

[This is the first time he's ever spoken so frankly about it. His voice is conspiratorially low, and his eyes hidden behind his glasses.]

Not that it excuses anything, but I'm no stranger to that kind of dissonance. [How many decades had he spent keeping quiet for Kuruna's peace of mind?] But...in my defense, I have never once acted as a "master" over the Pokemon that this world would say I owned.

We don't own them. [It isn't an intentional answer to her own question, but it might stand as one nonetheless.] As partners I'm responsible for protecting them and they are responsible for protecting me.

[This was a wave of staggering understanding that knocked her over in the middle of a blizzard. It's not what she usually thinks; often, she never knew what to think about the lines between monster and human, just that they were her personal curse. That there was a line between Raven and Others.]

Monsters aren't things. [You know that already.]

[Ondorus nods, several times.]

I know. [Oh, does he ever know. His "team"? They're his cousins, his children, his respected aunt. He's only known them for a year or less, but so what if their relationships have been short? Relationships always are, once you know what "long" really is.] And that's why it's hard to find resolve, because when it's a choice between leaving evil free to harm people wildly or - placing the people you personally know and care for in the line of fire - [he stops talking abruptly for a few seconds here.]

...it's an sick and broken world that gladly hands decisions like that to just anyone. [What happens when you make the wrong choice?]

Most humans don't understand.

[Just a hint of bitterness in that statement. Things have been better lately.]

...Sorry.

[He waves a hand.]

It's all right. I've been thinking these things for a while now.

[Ondorus isn't entirely familiar with dwarf culture - he can safely assume that Zaid is an exception and not the rule, right? - but he realizes that he's glad that it was Raven, and not one of the humans that hold deep biases, who appeared in Johto first.

...what a coward he is.]

[Maybe he would understand. Because he is a monster, after all, and doesn't seem to be the brutish feral beast that Wells rants about in his spare time.

She'll think about it.

Too many words were never her strong suit, though, and she's feeling quite tired by now, so the rest of the walk to the boarding house passes in silence on her end.]

Four | Video/Action for Goldenrod

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