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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Sounds like a rough neighborhood. You raised in a survivalist compound or something?

Oh, I get it. Using all parts of the buffalo, all that shit.

[Some kind of Indian-wannabe hippy.]

[Hey, they aren't his friends! They're suspects with schizophrenia that he harangues. Big differences. ~~For one thing, he has a lot more of those than he has friends.~~]

Well, great, as long as the bears you're talking to are being reasonable.

No. Grandpa raised me in the forest on the mountain.

I don't know what a "buffalo" is, but yeah.

Bears do what they do. They're interesting to have as friends. One of the black bears would have eaten me if I'd been any slower. [He's in a surprisingly good mood for talking about nearly dying before killing and eating a friend.]

Okay, lone crazy survivalist.

[Blake can't figure what else somebody would be doing out alone on a mountain.]

It's like a big hairy cow. They're all mostly dead these days. They wouldn't have them around here; they're not bright pink and they don't breathe fire.

Your friends.

[Every time Blake thinks he hit the rock bottom for crazy and stupid, somebody starts a fresh new excavation.]

Wasn't there a guy like that who went around making friends with bears? I remember I heard about it in the news when he got eaten by fucking bears.

Kid, one of life's little rules is, once somebody tries to eat you, they're not your friend anymore.

[My guess is avoiding the Shadow Angels who descend on human cities and abduct everyone to use as fertilizer for the Tree of Life. Of course at his canon point Apollo doesn't know about them, so Blake can just assume things as always.]

A Cow? Like a Miltank? I think I heard someone call them a cow Pokémon.

[It's a journey to the center of the Earth, Blake, and you're Axel Lidenbrock.]

That's not true. All the animals in the forest are my friends, even when they try to eat me or I eat them. They have to eat to survive and I have to eat to survive. I can't blame them for wanting to survive, and they don't blame me for wanting to survive.

[It's a good thing he doesn't say that, because that would be a lot of strong tallies in the Totally Fucking Nuts column.]

No, a cow like a cow- [Blake sighs and gives up] Yeah. Like a Miltank. Except people eat them.

[At this point, if he sees molemen, he's not even going to be fucking surprised.]

Friends don't eat each other. That's a pretty basic point.

I guess it's different for human friends.

[One would hope, Apollo.]

It better fuckin' be!

[disturbed that he is really asking this] Your grandad told you not to eat people, right?

Animals and plants are people too, but if you mean humans, no, he didn't. [Because how many parental figures would think that they'd need to tell a kid that?] I wouldn't want to though. They would taste terrible. I think that if humans were supposed to eat other humans I wouldn't think that, so humans must not be animals who eat their own kind.

[...is that chain of logic reassuring?]

[Blake is offended on behalf of what goddamn words mean.] No they're not. People are people. That's the whole point.

[And that's just the beginning of what's wrong with that. Blake had thought the boy was on the harmless eccentric side, but he's going straight into the dangerous kind of nuts.]

That's some reasoning you got there.

Just to be safe, kid, I'll tell you this straight out: don't fucking eat people.

If something can think and feel and communicate they're people. Animals and plants can, so they're people just like humans.

[Mildly irritated: ] I already said that I wasn't going to eat other humans.

[with strained patience] No, if something's a human it's people. That's how it works. There is a difference between Dave down the street and a cat.

[Sorry kid, if anybody ever gets killed and eaten around here, you are suspect numero uno]

[Cat... cat... Meowth, right? He'll just assume that it's the same thing as with cows and Miltank.]

If Dave's a human [and not an animal that someone's named] then the biggest differences are size and that Dave is bipedal and has hands.

[He's not being intentionally contrary, he's just thinking differently.]

If you call humans people but not animals and plants, then what do you call humans, plants, and animals together?

[He at least recognizes that one of the problems here is that they have different meanings for words.]

No, the difference is the human's the one who'll be pissed at you for saying that.

[Blake can't resist digging at this rabbit hole.] You're saying there's no difference between a per-- a human getting shot and a dog getting hit by a car.

[Blake doesn't even like people and this is bothering him.]

I don't know, organic? You don't call them anything altogether. They're different things.

[Apollo seems to be failing more and more at explaining his viewpoint in a way that doesn't confuse, disturb, or bother people.]

They're both mammals who feel and are dying. It's just as bad if one of them dies as if the other one does.

[Equality!]

[Blake stares for a good long time.]

Hell. Congratulations, kid. You managed to take "hippy" all the way to "serial killer."

I don't know what that means.

It means I wish I had the resources to keep surveillance on you in case one day you murder people for stepping on a cockroach.

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