Frontier Town Traveller's Haus - Dining Hall

[Chibi Pika]

Jade's ears flicked forward. Pokéballs? But that meant—!

"Wait, so then... you had a trainer!" Jade blurted out, scooting forward in her seat without meaning to. "One of my partners was a Charmander too! Firestorm. He, ah, isn't great at math, but he trains the hardest out of anyone on the team, and he's good at teaching the others new moves, and he's really protective, maybe a little too protective, aha." She paused, tapping her paws together. "I miss him a lot... all of them, really."

Thinking about the idea of being pulled into a new world multiple times made her head hurt. She'd spent all this time looking forward to seeing her friends, her team, again... the idea of being pulled even further away made her heart ache a little.

"So you got taken from your world to Kilo, and then to here, so... it's been a long time since you've seen him, huh. Is there... any way you could ever make it back there? Back to your trainer?"

 

[Namohysip]

It was hard to tell what Owen's expression was like behind all the darkness, but he said, softly, "Well... my trainer came with me to that world. I just didn't know it for a while. It's a long story, but we both sort of forgot about that partnership.

"We became... partners again, but not as trainer and Pokemon. We did two parts of a big job, kind of. He granted wishes, and I curated the ones asking for wishes. But... things went badly in a lot of ways, and eventually... we drifted apart."

Mhynt hummed, nodding to herself. "Owen lost his memory of his trainer, temporarily. But his trainer never did, and it drove him mad. He was trying to claw back times that have long since passed by taking Owen back, not realizing that he's a different person now... and his trainer was stuck in that past.

"Most find it romantic when someone says they'd tear apart the world to get someone back." Mhynt huffed. "But seeing it firsthand, it's a lot less cute in practice."

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade was silent for a long moment, tail quietly swishing. It was hard to really imagine something like that actually happening, but... the important parts came through. Some part of her couldn't help sympathizing with Owen's trainer, losing his first partner like that... even if something about the way Mhynt had put it made her shiver. She could tell there was a lot there that was going unsaid.

"I guess if he's changed that much, then you're probably better off not seeing each other again, even if it's painful," Jade finally said in a low voice. "But, I guess it's good that you can look back on the time that you spent together? At least, I think that's how I'd feel in that spot." Maybe some people would've preferred just staying rid of the painful memories. But something told her that wasn't the case for him.

 

[Namohysip]

"...He's changed, too," Owen said. "I don't know if I'd want to just not see him again ever, though. He's done a lot of good after... you know, sorting all of himself out."

Mhynt glanced away, saying nothing, but it was clear that Owen's tendency for attachment--perhaps innate to his species, when it came to humans--was still clinging to him, at least slightly.

"We're both probably going to be around for a while. It'd be counter-productive if we just avoided each other..."

"Things didn't quite work out for us, either," Mhynt commented to Jade idly. "He and I... were on opposite sides of a divine war, you know. It makes being mates a bit more difficult."

"Ahaha... right..."

 

[Chibi Pika]

...Oh. She'd been vaguely aware that there was an awkward history there, but that was a bit more than she'd figured.

Jade rubbed the back of her head. "Right... I dunno about mates but, uh... I guess I do know what it's like to end up on opposite sides of a war. And I still don’t really know if I picked the right side." She coughed, suddenly aware of how dry her throat was, and downed the rest of her milk.

After a few moments, Jade went on: "Virga and I. We, uh... haven't really talked about it yet? It would get in the way of our mission here, so..." she trailed off, laughing awkwardly.

 

[Namohysip]

"Do you think it could be relevant?" Mhynt pressed. "After all, Giovanni's warning still feels quite important. Our greatest foe is not one of power, but one of politics. Of society's opinions. Fighting on opposite sides of a war, when perhaps once we were allies... That seems important to how society may view us here."

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade blinked at the Sceptile. Politics and society's opinions...

She sighed, running a claw along the wood grain of the table. "Yeah, that kinda screwed us over back home, if I'm being honest. Like, maybe we could've beat the Rockets in a fair fight, but it never was a fair fight to begin with. Half the legends wanted to just fight them out in the open, no more secrets and lies. The other half was trying to keep up appearances so that society wouldn't think we were the bad guys... three guesses how that turned out."

She paused for a moment, tail flicking. Thinking about the conflict back home was getting her agitated.

"I, uh... don't suppose the fight you guys were involved in had so much focus on, er, optics?" Given the fact that Alexander had come from their world, she'd been imagining something more along the lines of a bunch of Legendaries slinging overpowered attacks at each other.

 

[Namohysip]

"It was pretty focused on optics," Owen murmured. "At least, for how it all started..."

Mhynt cleared her throat, arms crossed as if to avoid something. Then, she admitted, "One side wished to destroy the world before something worse plunged it all into a place where death was not an escape from its suffering. The other thought there was still hope to fight and cure the world of that blight.

"...I believed the world had to be destroyed, as did many other Legends. Owen disagreed, with a scant few Legends with him. And in the end... only some of the world was plunged into that darkness. I was among them, trapped for centuries... and that realm is ruled by Alexander. Owen suffered amnesia from several reincarnations and lived ignorantly in the light."

Owen said nothing, sinking a little more into the ground.

"So. Things have been slightly awkward."

 

[Chibi Pika]

Ah... now it was back to the stuff that Jade had no idea how to wrap her head around.

Jade tapped her claws on the table. "Well, uh... I can't really say I know what I would've done in that situation. Destroying the world sounds pretty, uh... bad?" Was that even permanent? She honestly wasn't sure. Nothing about that place followed the normal rules of reality. She was vaguely under the impression that death was fake...

Jade shook her head and did her best to give Owen a reassuring look so he wouldn't vanish completely. "And the... not-destroying-the-world side was the... unpopular one?" she ventured, still unsure if she had that right.

 

[Namohysip]

"It was about even," Mhynt reluctantly admitted. "People are scared of the world being destroyed. But... well. I can tell from your expression that you're already used to how... nonstandard our world had become. It was already a broken one, in my opinion, but most people lived perfectly normal lives and died perfectly normal deaths."

"You're just talking to a... fringe sample size," Owen added. "But for normal people, they were facing an apocalypse that the gods deemed necessary. They were terrified. Even if they promised they'd put everything back together without the flaw, it was scary.

"Would you trust your life, your world, your soul, to some group you only heard about?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade leaned against her paw. "I guess I wouldn't, no." Trying to imagine that same situation unfolding with her own world's legends made the idea of taking it in stride sound all the more laughable.

"Though... I guess if they were just going to put everything back together right away, it almost seems like it'd be better if they'd just... done that? Then no one would have to get freaked out about it." If they were talking about the kind of power that could remake an entire world... did the opinions of regular people even matter at that point? And if it wasn't even going to be permanent... was there anything to lose?

Jade had to laugh a little at the absurdity of imagining it. "Like, if there's nothing I can do about it, I'd rather just have the gods be like 'yeah sorry, world was broke but we fixed it.' Er... assuming they actually were gonna fix it." She was still kind of unclear on that. By all accounts, Mhynt seemed to be on team "destroy" but Owen was the one making it sound more reasonable.

 

[Namohysip]

Mhynt glanced away at that, thoughtful. "A series of compromises were made. The gods of my world were too sentimental to destroy it outright, for various, flawed reasons, and the powers that were above them still needed to rid it of a blight. But..."

"The idea that they'd restore it after was probably not true," Owen said. "Everyone would die, and that would be it. We'd be left to the afterlife, everyone's lives cut short. Our home gone forever. I... somehow, I knew that. Even if it'd be okay, I couldn't... let that happen."

"...But you seem to have a lot of resolve as well," Mhynt said. "The people you're fighting against... Team Rocket, was it? How far have they come along to destroying your home?"

"I know that name," Owen said darkly. "If they're anything like the ones who took my trainer's team away... How could they be popular?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade was… sensing some mixed messages. Gods that were too sentimental to destroy the world, but who weren’t going to restore it... despite needing to fix it. What did some 'flaw' even matter if the world was going to just end? Was it really all just... some kind of mercy killing? No wonder the two of them had such unresolved tension... Jade didn't think she could ever get her head around accepting something like that.

But she was spared from having to say that she vastly preferred Owen's take there by the question of Team Rocket.

""Right, uh, guess I should explain. The Rockets weren't really seen as 'popular' as... kind of a necessary evil? Since people were freaked out about all the legend fights and wanted to someone to put an end to it." She realized belatedly that this didn't explain it very well at all.

"The legendary fights that they started," Jade quickly added. "My team and I had been fighting them for a long time. Way before we ever teamed up with Lugia and the other legends." She could practically hear the counterargument in her head—that the Rockets going after the Legendaries didn't justify what happened in Viridian. Well, whatever, she didn't care if she made the opposing side sound stupid here.

A chill came over her when Owen spoke. "The Rockets... took your trainer's team away?" she asked quietly.

 

[Namohysip]

"So they started a problem silently, and then legitimized themselves by saying they would fix it?" Mhynt asked. "What is this, some kind of protection racket? Sounds like what you'd expect from an organized crime syndicate..."

"...Well... they were, in my world," Owen said, nodding grimly at Jade. "I was the only one they couldn't steal. We lost the rest of them. They were... probably sent to other trainers, no way to know where my trainer was. I... I hope they're all okay. And maybe happy again in their new lives, with whoever they wound up with..."

"Again, disturbing," Mhynt said. "Why can't they just choose to leave?"

Owen didn't seem to know how to answer that at first. He only stared down, trying to put himself in that position again. Then, he asked Jade, "Do you know why?"