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

[azumods]

All right, Sena Kobayakawa. Here's how this is going to go.

[She sounds firm, but not aggressive.]

When that day comes, and we meet on the battlefield, it's going to be your dreams against mine. And when I beat you down, you're going to look me in the eye, and you're not going to be a little crybaby about it, and you're going to take your defeat like a man. Because you get it.

And if you pull off some sort of miracle, you'd better pull off a miracle and obliterate me, because we don't do miracles halfway around here. And you're not going to feel bad about it, because that's how it's going to be.

You got it?

[swiftasacoursingkawa]

[Surprisingly, Sena listens to all this with an unchanging expression. Nor does he express surprise at...anything she's said.

He's staring her down with a mixture of apprehension and determination, and it doesn't break until she asks him whether he's understood. Because this is something he's done before. He's won against people far more skilled than he, far more stronger, he's made them acknowledge his prowess and crushed their dreams of victory in order to bring it to him, to his team.

So when he answers her, it's with a completely straight face that acknowledges just how daunting the vow he's about to make is...and how despite the fear, he'll still face forward.]

Of course.

[After all...if they're going up against each other with everything we have, then...feeling pity for the loser, or regret at losing...anything like that is...it's absurd, right?]