Third.

[azumods]

ENCOUNTER 3. Snowpoint City is small, cold, and definitely not covered in waist-high snowdrifts. The traveling becomes far easier as soon as you enter the city limits, and the bright orange roof of the Pokémon Center is easy to spot among the white blanketing of snow dusting the ground and the local buildings; it's warm in there, and the attendants inside seem used to this sort of thing - people wandering in bedraggled and cold, unprepared for the weather and the routes leading up to this place - and they'll give you warm, fresh blankets and mugs of warm drinks that steam in your hands. The taste is difficult to place - it's definitely made of berries of some sort, though it doesn't seem to be proper tea or coffee; the point, however, is that it's good at warming you from the inside, and while it doesn't have proper medicinal properties, it'll at least perk you up a bit and make it seem like facing the rest of the day might not be so terrible. Which is fortunate, really, given what's to come. Come mid-afternoon, there's a loud, sharp whistle from the doorway of the Center - it's high and shrill, the sort of thing that's designed to get as much attention as possible, in as little time as possible. It'll stop before it goes on too long, but it's definitely enough to be heard, and the source isn't exactly hard to spot. She's another one that isn't dressed like the other members of Team Galactic, her hair and outfit far different from the usual grunt attire; she seems a bit older than Saturn, her expression harder and more experienced. She's smiling a bit now that she's holding the room, but the expression is strange in that it doesn't reach her eyes, even though those are just as bright and alert as her fellow Commander's were. It's cold. Unwelcoming. And deeply, deeply wrong in a way that's both vaguely similar and completely different to the way the emotionless people here tend to present - it's unfeeling, but in a way that's natural rather than enforced. Dangerous. "So you're the group that left us before I could get to know you properly," she says, and her voice is as cold as the rest of her; it's cordial, perhaps overly so, but there's a firmness to it that heavily implies that she's only being nice because she's expected to be nice. Because maybe if she's nice, this will go nice and easy and nothing will happen. "I'm Commander Jupiter, serving Team Galactic under the orders of Master Cyrus. Sorry I couldn't meet you all properly before; things got a bit hectic. But we can change that now." Her tone implies that that isn't a request.

Comments

[omissions]

Thank you.

[Ari bows his head a little at hearing that... so does Glaceon too, for that matter, after a moment.]

[azumods]

So do you consider her your little friend, or what...?

[She's kind of curious.]

[omissions]

I do. [...] I've never had a friend like her before.

[One might even say it's rather charitable to suggest he's ever had friends before. His old traveling group was an eclectic bunch of weirdos that didn't really seem like friends with each other until Marlene's namesake here disappeared and things got more serious.]

[azumods]

I'm not sure if that's cute or disgusting. Probably both. No offense.

[omissions]

[Marlene here ducks its head a little behind Ari, which earns it a sympathetic head pat for a moment.]

What about you and Skuntank?

[azumods]

What about her?

Pokémon aren't our friends or our partners. They're a source of power - we take that power and make it our own. That's what Master Cyrus did.

[omissions]

Do... you think of them as a sla--I mean, tool to use?

[He almost says "slave" because damn, does this conversation not sit right with him anymore, but then--no, it's not fair to make that assumption just yet, it's probably not the same thing as what his own relationship of "servitude" had been with Stan.]

[azumods]

Something like that. It's not like we're friends. I tell her to do something, and she does it.

[semistableman]

They display that kind of sentience and you think they're just here for your amusement, huh?

[azumods]

[...Mm.]

You've seen a lot of conflict, haven't you.

[semistableman]

I've seen enough.

[That's a clear understatement if there ever was one.]

[azumods]

It's obvious to us, you know. Or at least it is to me. You can always tell, the ones that have seen way too much of all of that.

[semistableman]

Then you'll know why I won't stop until whatever you all did is gone.

[azumods]

Oh, I know why. It's the same reason the others keep trying once in a while.

They put up a cute little rebellion, and then they're beaten down. It's how this tends to work.

[semistableman]

[You know he could respond to this with some amount of measure, or]

Your world is naive; the problem is that rebellions tend not to work without weapons.

[...or he could just. Do that.]

[hyruglyphics]

[ . . . I mean you're right and all but if that's anathema to their society before hand would it really bring it back? ]

[azumods]

[You know what? That. That actually pisses her off a little.]

You act as though our world has never seen war. We're familiar with swords and blades, with guns and planes and missiles. With massive weapons powered by a god of death, capable of destroying entire countries at a time.

We're not naive, we're civilized. There's a difference there that your worlds literally haven't achieved yet - I'm not saying that as part of Team Galactic's insistence that our mission is peaceful. Even Master Cyrus and Saturn, who are the most peaceful among us, have used large, powerful bombs to get their way. Not Pokémon, or things powered by them. Bombs.

Because we don't use weapons doesn't mean that we can't - that we're too naive to conceive of them, or that we're too stupid to use them when it would benefit us. It means we choose not to, because we've seen what happens when we do. There's a difference. I'm sorry that your worlds are entirely too stupid to resolve conflicts without leaving it up to a contest involving who can kill the most people.

[semistableman]

Instead you resolved conflict by stripping people and animals alike of their sense of self.

Call me uncivilized if you need to, but at least failed rebels can have dignity in their deaths instead of watching the world slowly die.

[azumods]

What dignity is there in getting cut down because someone else was a faster shot than you? Because someone else built a better bomb, because someone else decided that you needed to be sent off to die for something they wanted?

[redbellion]

[ yo like keith is in 100% agreement with this sentiment here, but he's gonna stay quiet for now and seethe in the background. he'll probably bring all of this up with bucky later. ]

[hyruglyphics]

... To be honest, I find that uniform agreement of your society very enviable.

[ she closes her hands in front of her chest, speaking quietly. Honestly, she can't say she disagrees with Bucky's argument. Both the spirit of it (that conflict would be better than this conclusion) and the substance (that arms would be more efficient) of it, but she knows that's to a large extent because of the nature of her world. ]

In Hyrule, an ancient evil has plagued our lands for unending years, a blight which resurfaces generations and generations apart. Our kingdom has never been given the option to lay down arms... and so I find the fact that even you and your enemies continue to follow the spirit of your engagements an inspiring thing. Truth told, when we met with Cyunthia, one of the first things we were urged was to not try to kill Cyrus or anyone else.

[omissions]

... So it's more like a working relationship than a companionable one?

[that's probably a better way of asking than he should have before, honestly]

[azumods]

Yeah, actually.

[omissions]

... I guess that's fair. I mean... it's better than some relationships I'm familiar with.

[Stan...]

[azumods]

Sounds...difficult, I guess.

[...that's rough, buddy.]