[Vicious walks up from the Nimbasa platform, huffing a bit as he glances over at the Progressive Line. He returns to the attendant.]
Didn't manage to get anywhere excitin'. Can ya heal my Pokémon again?
[Vicious hands them over. Feel better, snow babies.
While he does that, Vicious will now, three weeks into the palace and after acquiring 2/3 plates, finally look at the subway map. He walks close enough for Litten to help him read the labels.]
"At least it was boring and not..." He trails off, just grateful to see that your Pokemon are normally hurt and not the victims of some incomprehensible horror. He heals them and returns them to you.
Litten meows uncertainly. He only has his intuition as an NPC, and they're very different experiences. Would Vicious be better off with something that is less related to Ingo directly? Or would he feel better getting another chance to confront the Shadow after his abandonment?? Litten can't decide what option would be kinder to his companion...
"Well," says the Depot Agent, shrugging. "Are you more interested in fighting wild Pokemon, or other trainers?" He has less insight into any symbolism, but at least he can ask questions.
"Uh," says the Depot Agent, who has never really had to question the use of the word before. "Well! But that's just because you're not from around here. That doesn't make you not a trainer. As long as you gather and raise Pokemon as your partners, you're a trainer!" He sounds more confident by the end of this on-the-fly explanation.
If you say so. Well, I've fought a bunch of 'wild' ones, but only one actual person with Pokémon so far. That was pretty excitin', so maybe more of that?
"Yeah, and you do already have plenty. From what I've heard, the Regressive Line is running a Battle Subway line. So there'd be plenty of people with Pokemon to battle there."
This is the first time you're boarding a train from the station instead of only doing it in the return trip! Wow!
You step down the stairs, and see a train already pulled up to the platform. Only the first car has doors open for you to enter. There is about the same amount of fog here as there was in the main area.
The train is a standard modern subway car. Above the seats, where advertisements would normally be in a train, there are instead photographs of different scenes. They depict different people—some familiar, some unfamiliar, some Ingo himself. There's an uncomfortable air coming from them, including those which are not overtly negative...
The fog is light enough to see them all with relative ease. These pictures include:
- Emmet looking directly at the viewer, not smiling. - Ingo and Emmet as teenagers, with a sulky Ingo in a vaguely emo-goth aesthetic. - Ingo sobbing on the floor of Da Vinci's workshop as she crouches near him. - Chandelure lighting a darkened room with two beds. - A younger Ingo entering a doorway to see two people intimately entwined (anything explicit obscured by the sheets). - A cellphone with an unread text message notification. - Ingo splayed out on the ice, pained, bleeding profusely from a major chest wound. - A snake-headed man, and a woman with scales down her face, smiling fondly.
[Vicious attempts to not linger on these ones either, but his attempts are foiled when he reaches the sexy one and stares too long trying to figure out what is going on. And then again when he moves on to the cell phone and distractedly tries to figure out why it seems familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time.]
You understand something as you linger over the racy one:
Frankly, you had been putting up with too much from him already. You justified it to yourself in various ways, and he helped you do so; he was quick to dismiss concerns. This "relationship" was a dizzying excess of positive thinking all along, but you outdid yourself in the end. When you discovered that you had been someone else's affair the whole time, you didn't decide on your own that it was over. You had been trying so hard to believe that it was something positive in your life, that you would have reached some kind of compromise even then, to try and "make it work." You're lucky he put you out of your misery and ended it himself. Get a hold of yourself. You're not the only one it hurts when you have so little respect for yourself.
And on the cellphone:
You tried. You tried very hard. You were determined to be the best boyfriend you could for her. You thought nothing of yourself, and even found it an exciting challenge to respond to her ever-heightening demands. Even in that moment, where you hesitated, you let her convince you that she was what you should focus on. And for what? After all that, hesitating was still too much. Her rejection of you didn't come long after that. She saw into your heart and saw that you cared about your brother more than you cared about her, and nothing else mattered after that. You didn't even let yourself perceive that as the reality for a long time. That was the one thing that wasn't going to change, whoever your partner was. If that's the dealbreaker, then what?
[These memories actually hit Vicious less hard, due to how little he can relate to the feelings involved. Relationships? Positive thinking? Lack of self-respect? Thinking nothing of yourself?? They feel so incredibly alien even to his amnesiac mind that it's very clear they're not his.]
...Hmph. Yeah, you really should get ahold of yourself. Who do ya think it's helpin' when you're like that? First thing ya should do is care about what you want. Otherwise you'll get left with nothin' when all that other bullshit goes away.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Didn't manage to get anywhere excitin'. Can ya heal my Pokémon again?
[Vicious hands them over. Feel better, snow babies.
While he does that, Vicious will now, three weeks into the palace and after acquiring 2/3 plates, finally look at the subway map. He walks close enough for Litten to help him read the labels.]
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Litten patiently helps you read off the map.
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[Unfortunately even the names don't help Vicious much since he doesn't know almost all of those words.
He addresses Litten:]
...Whaddaya think? Victory sounds pretty good. Or we could try the other -gressive one, maybe that'll be more interestin'.
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"Well," says the Depot Agent, shrugging. "Are you more interested in fighting wild Pokemon, or other trainers?" He has less insight into any symbolism, but at least he can ask questions.
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[he turns towards the platforms]
...Which one is that?
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Litten huffs at the insensitivity towards your illiteracy, leading the way to the correct platform.
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[Vicious shrugs and follows Litten down the stairs.]
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You step down the stairs, and see a train already pulled up to the platform. Only the first car has doors open for you to enter. There is about the same amount of fog here as there was in the main area.
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He gives a bit of a huff about it, since walking down the tracks was definitely more exciting-feeling, but he enters the first car.]
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The fog is light enough to see them all with relative ease. These pictures include:
- Emmet looking directly at the viewer, not smiling.
- Ingo and Emmet as teenagers, with a sulky Ingo in a vaguely emo-goth aesthetic.
- Ingo sobbing on the floor of Da Vinci's workshop as she crouches near him.
- Chandelure lighting a darkened room with two beds.
- A younger Ingo entering a doorway to see two people intimately entwined (anything explicit obscured by the sheets).
- A cellphone with an unread text message notification.
- Ingo splayed out on the ice, pained, bleeding profusely from a major chest wound.
- A snake-headed man, and a woman with scales down her face, smiling fondly.
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Frankly, you had been putting up with too much from him already. You justified it to yourself in various ways, and he helped you do so; he was quick to dismiss concerns. This "relationship" was a dizzying excess of positive thinking all along, but you outdid yourself in the end. When you discovered that you had been someone else's affair the whole time, you didn't decide on your own that it was over. You had been trying so hard to believe that it was something positive in your life, that you would have reached some kind of compromise even then, to try and "make it work." You're lucky he put you out of your misery and ended it himself. Get a hold of yourself. You're not the only one it hurts when you have so little respect for yourself.
And on the cellphone:
You tried. You tried very hard. You were determined to be the best boyfriend you could for her. You thought nothing of yourself, and even found it an exciting challenge to respond to her ever-heightening demands. Even in that moment, where you hesitated, you let her convince you that she was what you should focus on. And for what? After all that, hesitating was still too much. Her rejection of you didn't come long after that. She saw into your heart and saw that you cared about your brother more than you cared about her, and nothing else mattered after that. You didn't even let yourself perceive that as the reality for a long time. That was the one thing that wasn't going to change, whoever your partner was. If that's the dealbreaker, then what?
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...Hmph. Yeah, you really should get ahold of yourself. Who do ya think it's helpin' when you're like that? First thing ya should do is care about what you want. Otherwise you'll get left with nothin' when all that other bullshit goes away.
[Vicious takes a seat.]
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