Clover
neither simple, nor coherent.
POkéTUS
[Revised!]
So the thing is, I am terrible at writing creatively. (And only slightly better at school stuff.) (Drawing too, but now we're just getting off-topic.) Mostly I review people (in a terribly nitpicky way pointing out every last comma) and read fic I like a lot. Still, sometimes I get ideas to write! (Mostly I get ideas in the form of animated videos, which I know I can't do – see the aforementioned drawing suck – and that makes me sad.) The best way to get better is to practice, I figure, so here is a... thing. A thing I would like comments on! I know myself well enough to not expect to finish it, but I've got a plan and the first half of the next chapter written, so we'll see how it goes.
Inspired by Captain Black Knight's The Born Supremacy, and Farla and ember_reignited on Livejournal.
---
January: An Endless Barrel of Exposition
George Sears was president of the United States. He was still getting used to that.
He was standing in his professional study - he felt that while the Oval Office was nice enough for business meetings and photo ops, and photo ops at business meetings, he got his best work done in this smaller room. It was more homey than the artificial personableness of the elliptical study. George sipped his black coffee and stared out the large bay window at the fresh snow from the unexpected flurry last night. It was expected to rain tomorrow, and the picturesque landscape he saw now would soon turn to slush. The dry brown tree in the lawn held the final remnants of a well-composed spearow nest.
He would have been content to remain in that position until at least draining his cup before beginning the day's business, but the videocom on the corner of his wooden desk had other plans. A high tone beeped, and his ginger buxom beauty of a receptionist appeared on the digital screen. "Mr President, Mr Campbell would like to see you in your office at the next available moment, sir," she said tonelessly, without looking up from her computer monitor. The man in question poked his head in the shot from the side of the screen, and waved awkwardly.
George walked over to the side of his desk and pressed the 'talk' button on the videocom. "Send him in, Hannah," he replied. He shouldn't have to buzz him in, he thought as he took his seat, mildly irritated. After all, George had known Campbell for almost five years now - he had been an invaluable part of his campaign, and remained his most trusted colleague. Still, for some reason, Campbell never let up on the formalities around him; George took it in stride and figured he'd loosen up on his own time.
The door to his study opened a crack, and nervous blue eyes darted behind black plastic frames. The man's mussy light-brown hair clung to his forehead - how could he be sweating in this temperature? - as he stepped forward, fidgeting with a white plastic binder in his hands and fixing his stare at the rug. "G-Good morning, Mr President," he said quietly.
George sighed. "Campbell, you can call me George, remember?"
Campbell nodded without smiling. "Yes sir, of course, sir. Well, um, sir..." He sucked in air through his teeth and seemed particularly interested in the fibers of the rug.
George folded his arms on his desk so as not to rub his temples exasperatingly. Over the last few years, with cameras and reporters hanging on to every last word just waiting for a slip-up, he'd had to learn to keep his usual hot-blooded nature cool. "There was something you urgently needed to tell me?"
"Y-Yessir," Campbell said. "Um... I have some intelligence here that I thought should come to your personal attention, sir." From a mixture of his nervous fidgeting and sweaty palms, he dropped the binder in his hands to the floor. "Ah!" He wiped his hands on his dark green pants and picked it up, clutching it to his chest.
George frowned. Campbell was usually high-strung, but this was more keyed-up than he'd even seen him on election night. "What's the problem, Campbell?" he asked. "Foreign or domestic?"
The brown-haired man gulped, still not making eye contact. "Um, well, a little of both, sir," he said. "You're aware of the Defense of Legendaries Act?"
The president nodded slowly. "Yes... If a trainer catches a legendary pokémon, they're permitted to retain it for one year before releasing it." The act was about as old as he was, and allowed the trainers who were able to perform the impressive feat of capturing one of those scarce, powerful pokémon the chance to show it off and harness its strength with minimal harm to the pokémon's designated area of agency. "Why, is someone not obeying the law? It hardly seems that matter would require my personal attention."
Campbell shook his head. "N-No, um, not quite, sir," he stuttered, opening the binder to its first page. "Ahem... At 13:30 yesterday afternoon, the filters on the official presidential e-mail address detected a potentially threatening message. It was automatically routed to an intern ghostwriting aide, who brought it to the Secret Service chief's attention, who in turn brought it to my attention." His voice had the tone of mentally reviewing his words before speaking. "Together, we concurred that the potential for a genuine threat was quite high."
George tensed. The first thoughts through his mind were, But it's only been two weeks since the inauguration! I haven't done anything yet; who would strike now? "Elaborate, Campbell!" he said gruffly. "What kind of threat are we talking about here? Foreign or domestic? Pokémon or munitions? Who sent the damn thing?"
Campbell looked like he wanted to shrink into the floor. "Y-Yessir! The e-mail came from a Colin Samuel Forth, from the Manhattan borough of New York City. He's a registered trainer, and quite recently captured one of the legendary phoenixes known as ho-oh." He removed a plastic-encased sheet from the metal bindings and placed it on George's desk.
"A trainer, eh?" George mused aloud. He'd have to be a veteran... probably had a slew of top-level pokémon... security detail was primed to withstand three simultaneous attacks by legendary-caliber forces, so if they were considering him a genuine threat, the rest of his team was probably stronger than the entire local Central-East Coast Elite Four! George took a deep breath, then looked at the piece of paper the other man had presented him.
"... Campbell."
"Yes, sir?"
"What is this." It was intoned flatly, as a statement, not a question.
Campbell pushed up his glasses. "Er, that is a scan of Mr Forth's trainer card, along with relevant information on ho-oh, sir."
George blinked at the page, at Campbell, back to the page. "That's what I thought. Tell me, according to these numbers next to the words 'date of birth', how old is our friend Colin?"
The man took a small step towards the desk and looked to where George was pointing. "Um... ten years of age, sir?"
"Campbell?"
"Yessir."
"Why in the hell is everyone getting their panties in a bunch over a damned rookie trainer and his new toy?!"
Campbell squirmed under the president's stern gaze. "W-Well, sir, it's not just him. He's assembled a motley syndicate of trainers from across the globe who similarly own a legendary pokémon, and they have formed an agenda to stage a coup on the White House in a few weeks." He rifled through the binder's pages again and placed another sheet on the desk. "We've been monitoring their communications, and it's the sheer number of legendary-caliber forces we could be facing that has everyone worried, sir."
George scanned the page, running his fingers through salt-and-pepper hair. It was a printout of some thread on a message board titled 'Legendary Pokémon Forums', asking - with the worst spelling and punctuation he had ever seen - if any of the users owned a legendary, and if they wished to visit the White House and "hav em give us liek da prezadensy n we culd ttly rule da world". A few answered in the affirmative.
This situation was running from bad to worse. He pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a migraine coming on. "Why?" he muttered, half to himself.
"Well, sir, one of them summed up their motive as 'for the lulz'," Campbell piped up, oblivious to the rhetoricalness of the question. "'Lulz' is an Internet corruption of 'LO--"
George stood up roughly and knocked the pages off his desk. That-- That's just enough of that. Even the cool restraint he'd forged couldn't temper his anger for long. Campbell yelped and jumped back like a kicked puppy. He quickly bent down to shuffle up the papers.
George let out a long sigh. "Sorry about that. It's just..." He yanked back on his hair that needed a trim. "These are just a bunch of brats! Can't we, I don't know, give them all a shiny female eevee and send them home? I doubt these kids could spell 'coup', much less stage one." He gulped down the last of his coffee and grimaced at the acrid cold.
Campbell wiped his sleeve across his brow; his glasses were nearly fogged up opaque from his embarrassed perspiration. "Normally I would agree with you, sir, but as your chief adviser, and this being your first year in office, I must advise you to keep up your public image. Especially in your first one hundred days, they're absolutely essential. If word got out that the White House was giving out shiny eevee to anyone who asked, there would be a riot on our hands."
He flipped the binder in his hands to the back as he spoke. "It will make a good headline, sir. 'President Creates New Cabinet of Children'. Very human-interest. Backing up the campaign's slogan, 'your future is in our hands', because after all, the children are our future, aren't they, sir." He paused from his rambling and removed a page from the back pocket. "Though I'm not so sure about their chosen title."
George plucked the sheet from his assistant's damp hands. "Give me that..." he grumbled. It looked to be a list of the alliance's demands, though written by a different hand if the marked improvement in mechanics said anything about it.
Dear Mr President,
We, the Undersigned, each own a legendary pokémon, and shall use them with force if necessary, if our demands are not met.
1. Our team name is The Super Supremacy. Remember it.
George smacked his palm to his face, feeling his headache roll on to a full-blown migraine. "Of course it is."
[Revised!]
So the thing is, I am terrible at writing creatively. (And only slightly better at school stuff.) (Drawing too, but now we're just getting off-topic.) Mostly I review people (in a terribly nitpicky way pointing out every last comma) and read fic I like a lot. Still, sometimes I get ideas to write! (Mostly I get ideas in the form of animated videos, which I know I can't do – see the aforementioned drawing suck – and that makes me sad.) The best way to get better is to practice, I figure, so here is a... thing. A thing I would like comments on! I know myself well enough to not expect to finish it, but I've got a plan and the first half of the next chapter written, so we'll see how it goes.
Inspired by Captain Black Knight's The Born Supremacy, and Farla and ember_reignited on Livejournal.
---
January: An Endless Barrel of Exposition
George Sears was president of the United States. He was still getting used to that.
He was standing in his professional study - he felt that while the Oval Office was nice enough for business meetings and photo ops, and photo ops at business meetings, he got his best work done in this smaller room. It was more homey than the artificial personableness of the elliptical study. George sipped his black coffee and stared out the large bay window at the fresh snow from the unexpected flurry last night. It was expected to rain tomorrow, and the picturesque landscape he saw now would soon turn to slush. The dry brown tree in the lawn held the final remnants of a well-composed spearow nest.
He would have been content to remain in that position until at least draining his cup before beginning the day's business, but the videocom on the corner of his wooden desk had other plans. A high tone beeped, and his ginger buxom beauty of a receptionist appeared on the digital screen. "Mr President, Mr Campbell would like to see you in your office at the next available moment, sir," she said tonelessly, without looking up from her computer monitor. The man in question poked his head in the shot from the side of the screen, and waved awkwardly.
George walked over to the side of his desk and pressed the 'talk' button on the videocom. "Send him in, Hannah," he replied. He shouldn't have to buzz him in, he thought as he took his seat, mildly irritated. After all, George had known Campbell for almost five years now - he had been an invaluable part of his campaign, and remained his most trusted colleague. Still, for some reason, Campbell never let up on the formalities around him; George took it in stride and figured he'd loosen up on his own time.
The door to his study opened a crack, and nervous blue eyes darted behind black plastic frames. The man's mussy light-brown hair clung to his forehead - how could he be sweating in this temperature? - as he stepped forward, fidgeting with a white plastic binder in his hands and fixing his stare at the rug. "G-Good morning, Mr President," he said quietly.
George sighed. "Campbell, you can call me George, remember?"
Campbell nodded without smiling. "Yes sir, of course, sir. Well, um, sir..." He sucked in air through his teeth and seemed particularly interested in the fibers of the rug.
George folded his arms on his desk so as not to rub his temples exasperatingly. Over the last few years, with cameras and reporters hanging on to every last word just waiting for a slip-up, he'd had to learn to keep his usual hot-blooded nature cool. "There was something you urgently needed to tell me?"
"Y-Yessir," Campbell said. "Um... I have some intelligence here that I thought should come to your personal attention, sir." From a mixture of his nervous fidgeting and sweaty palms, he dropped the binder in his hands to the floor. "Ah!" He wiped his hands on his dark green pants and picked it up, clutching it to his chest.
George frowned. Campbell was usually high-strung, but this was more keyed-up than he'd even seen him on election night. "What's the problem, Campbell?" he asked. "Foreign or domestic?"
The brown-haired man gulped, still not making eye contact. "Um, well, a little of both, sir," he said. "You're aware of the Defense of Legendaries Act?"
The president nodded slowly. "Yes... If a trainer catches a legendary pokémon, they're permitted to retain it for one year before releasing it." The act was about as old as he was, and allowed the trainers who were able to perform the impressive feat of capturing one of those scarce, powerful pokémon the chance to show it off and harness its strength with minimal harm to the pokémon's designated area of agency. "Why, is someone not obeying the law? It hardly seems that matter would require my personal attention."
Campbell shook his head. "N-No, um, not quite, sir," he stuttered, opening the binder to its first page. "Ahem... At 13:30 yesterday afternoon, the filters on the official presidential e-mail address detected a potentially threatening message. It was automatically routed to an intern ghostwriting aide, who brought it to the Secret Service chief's attention, who in turn brought it to my attention." His voice had the tone of mentally reviewing his words before speaking. "Together, we concurred that the potential for a genuine threat was quite high."
George tensed. The first thoughts through his mind were, But it's only been two weeks since the inauguration! I haven't done anything yet; who would strike now? "Elaborate, Campbell!" he said gruffly. "What kind of threat are we talking about here? Foreign or domestic? Pokémon or munitions? Who sent the damn thing?"
Campbell looked like he wanted to shrink into the floor. "Y-Yessir! The e-mail came from a Colin Samuel Forth, from the Manhattan borough of New York City. He's a registered trainer, and quite recently captured one of the legendary phoenixes known as ho-oh." He removed a plastic-encased sheet from the metal bindings and placed it on George's desk.
"A trainer, eh?" George mused aloud. He'd have to be a veteran... probably had a slew of top-level pokémon... security detail was primed to withstand three simultaneous attacks by legendary-caliber forces, so if they were considering him a genuine threat, the rest of his team was probably stronger than the entire local Central-East Coast Elite Four! George took a deep breath, then looked at the piece of paper the other man had presented him.
"... Campbell."
"Yes, sir?"
"What is this." It was intoned flatly, as a statement, not a question.
Campbell pushed up his glasses. "Er, that is a scan of Mr Forth's trainer card, along with relevant information on ho-oh, sir."
George blinked at the page, at Campbell, back to the page. "That's what I thought. Tell me, according to these numbers next to the words 'date of birth', how old is our friend Colin?"
The man took a small step towards the desk and looked to where George was pointing. "Um... ten years of age, sir?"
"Campbell?"
"Yessir."
"Why in the hell is everyone getting their panties in a bunch over a damned rookie trainer and his new toy?!"
Campbell squirmed under the president's stern gaze. "W-Well, sir, it's not just him. He's assembled a motley syndicate of trainers from across the globe who similarly own a legendary pokémon, and they have formed an agenda to stage a coup on the White House in a few weeks." He rifled through the binder's pages again and placed another sheet on the desk. "We've been monitoring their communications, and it's the sheer number of legendary-caliber forces we could be facing that has everyone worried, sir."
George scanned the page, running his fingers through salt-and-pepper hair. It was a printout of some thread on a message board titled 'Legendary Pokémon Forums', asking - with the worst spelling and punctuation he had ever seen - if any of the users owned a legendary, and if they wished to visit the White House and "hav em give us liek da prezadensy n we culd ttly rule da world". A few answered in the affirmative.
This situation was running from bad to worse. He pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a migraine coming on. "Why?" he muttered, half to himself.
"Well, sir, one of them summed up their motive as 'for the lulz'," Campbell piped up, oblivious to the rhetoricalness of the question. "'Lulz' is an Internet corruption of 'LO--"
George stood up roughly and knocked the pages off his desk. That-- That's just enough of that. Even the cool restraint he'd forged couldn't temper his anger for long. Campbell yelped and jumped back like a kicked puppy. He quickly bent down to shuffle up the papers.
George let out a long sigh. "Sorry about that. It's just..." He yanked back on his hair that needed a trim. "These are just a bunch of brats! Can't we, I don't know, give them all a shiny female eevee and send them home? I doubt these kids could spell 'coup', much less stage one." He gulped down the last of his coffee and grimaced at the acrid cold.
Campbell wiped his sleeve across his brow; his glasses were nearly fogged up opaque from his embarrassed perspiration. "Normally I would agree with you, sir, but as your chief adviser, and this being your first year in office, I must advise you to keep up your public image. Especially in your first one hundred days, they're absolutely essential. If word got out that the White House was giving out shiny eevee to anyone who asked, there would be a riot on our hands."
He flipped the binder in his hands to the back as he spoke. "It will make a good headline, sir. 'President Creates New Cabinet of Children'. Very human-interest. Backing up the campaign's slogan, 'your future is in our hands', because after all, the children are our future, aren't they, sir." He paused from his rambling and removed a page from the back pocket. "Though I'm not so sure about their chosen title."
George plucked the sheet from his assistant's damp hands. "Give me that..." he grumbled. It looked to be a list of the alliance's demands, though written by a different hand if the marked improvement in mechanics said anything about it.
Dear Mr President,
We, the Undersigned, each own a legendary pokémon, and shall use them with force if necessary, if our demands are not met.
1. Our team name is The Super Supremacy. Remember it.
George smacked his palm to his face, feeling his headache roll on to a full-blown migraine. "Of course it is."
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