lieutenantantichrist | [5]Video/Action for Violet City

[The feed comes up on Blake outside the Violet City gym. He's holding the Gear in one hand and tossing something small in the other. Behind him his Snubbull is sitting on his Mareep, both looking proud of themselves. For his part, Blake doesn't look so thrilled.]

Hell of a loaded word, "badge."

[He catches it on the toss and holds it up to the camera.]

Look at that. Does it looks like much use to you?

[He sighs and slips it in his pocket.]

Zap the crap out of a kid's birds and get a medal that lets you fly.

You know what the worst part is? It's not until right now I realized there's anything wrong with that. I'm getting used to it.

[He starts walking aimlessly down the street, Pokemon trotting after him.]

It's baseball season, not that you'd know it here. Can't remember the last time I missed Opening Day. But hell, now it's been more than a month. Just went right by. How's it even May if you're not arresting drunk idiots on Cinco de Mayo? It's not right.

[Blake looks troubled.]

It's too easy to get caught up in this animal fighting crap and forget about the real world.

[His expression shifts toward its more familiar flinty pugnacity.]

Almost everybody here's been here longer than me. Give me some proof you haven't forgotten. Tell me something about home. Anything, I don't know, something you miss.

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The locals would never allow it, but if it meant wild Zubats becoming too afraid to attack me I'd be willing to try.

Such as fast food, bad coffee annd political corruption?

Everybody bitches about the bats, but I've never had a problem. They keep to themselves.

Yeah. [He sighs nostalgically.] All of that.

There's not even politics here. Who're we supposed to blame?

They left you alone? I'm jealous. By the time I was done with Union Cave I was dreaming of machine guns and rocket launchers and bat fragments.

Society, traditionally. Or maybe the job market; I haven't seen a lot work that demands special skills or higher education.

There's your problem: stay the hell out of caves.

Now that I think of it, who's keeping the infrastructure going, handling all the roads and buildings and all that? Maybe that's why there's still a place here that looks like it's from medieval China.

I had to get to Azalea somehow. Crossing Ilex Forest twice wouldn't exactly have been that much better.

Ecruteak? I think that one's deliberate. Between those towers and the theatre, they probably get a lot of tourists.

What for? There's not much difference between any of these cities that I can tell. Different scenery, same weirdos and fish-monsters.

Nah, Violet. Looks like somebody tossed a tower from a samurai movie in the middle of everything.

What kind of tourism can these places get when you have to fight monsters on foot for days to get anywhere?

Dark Hound wanted to roast the Gym's bugs, and my birds were hoping for lunch. I got a Spearow out of the trip, at least.

Trainers who want to fight stronger monsters on foot for days and people who got sick of Cherrygrove after the first week?

[Blake picks out the important part.] You named your dog "Dog."

Yeah, they want to fight. Some people actually act like they enjoy all this shit, even walking out through the middle of nowhere for days on end. Like it's a goddamn camping trip.

I always hated those to begin with.

He's a hound, and he's a Dark-type. The reference was too important to ignore, even if the name isn't particularly creative.

Maybe it's because of the novelty, at least at first. Who even has the time to go on nature treks these days? Shame they only get to try it after being forcibly dragged here, though.

Reference to what?

[sardonically] Yeah, can't be too many national parks left in space.

The novelty wears off fast. I miss being around where the most wildlife you'd run into was a raccoon eating the garbage.

Hell, here it's probably the other way around.

The Dark Hound is my personal aircraft back home. Waking up to find myself saddled with a dog somehow matching that name was more than a little surprising, to say the least.

Hey, Colony Tordia had a whole natural forest, raccoons and penalty for feeding them garbage included. No raccoon-eating garbage though, I'm happy to say.

You named your dog after a spaceship that you named after a dog.

Makes me wonder if there's any logic behind the animal we start out with.

[He gives Steve a look. The permanently frown-faced Snubbull gives him an identical one back.]

[Blake looks back to the phone.]

Nah.

Huh. Space raccoons. Never heard of that in Star Trek.

I like to think that they just happened to have too many puppies around the lab, but they probably have ways to find out about us. They did have to find and drag us here in the first place, after all.

[But it does make him wonder what he would have been given had there been no Houndours available. A part of him doesn't want to know.]

Might be too commonplace and normal for the writers' tastes. The point of sci-fi is seeing a completely different world, right?

Some kinda surveillance? That'd figure, if they have the resources to make all this...

[the thought makes the hair on the back of Blake's neck prickle. How long was he being watched by dimension-bending psychos?]

Shit. Makes you wonder if they're still watching.

Nah, the point of sci-fi is pretending you could go out to space and be a big shot and bang green women.

Probably. It's the only explanation for the Christmas eggs that somehow found people anywhere in the cities or routes.

[Not that he particularly minds this specific result, but it is the best proof he has.]

We definitely have the space and big shots parts down, but we haven't found any green women yet. Sorry.

Shit, that happened? Nice little threat there. "Merry Christmas, here's a bat egg. We're watching."

[Maybe the cameras are attached to the omnipresent music.]

Well work on that. It's the only good part of sci-fi.

Worse. "Here's a sparkly, unnaturally colored/i> bat egg." No one can explain that either, except to say that we're supposed to want them more.

[Though at least that part seems relatively harmless.]

It might take a while. The best we have right now is women with fake tans.

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