[17] [Text/Action for Mahogany] - "Whenever You Get Involved, Someone Gets Hurt."

[lieutenantantichrist]

[ACTION]

[In a low-rent corner of Mahogany, there's a real gym. No mazes, no boss trying to fight you in exchange for something they call a badge, no lackeys, just weight machines and a floor covered with rubber mats, the way it should be. Open twenty-four hours, and this late there's no human in this room but Blake. He's in a sweatsuit, gray in contrast to the brown of the Hitmonlee holding pads for him in its upraised paws. The only sound is his harsh breaths and the thump of his fists on the canvas. His shoulders are hunched like a boxer's. His eyes look straight ahead. Judging from the sweat darkening the back of his shirt, he's been here a while.

On the other side of the room, a Snubbull is sitting on the floor, looking at a Gear that's resting on the mats. A Musharna floats beside her. Fifteen minutes of frustration proved that claws are no good for texting with, but she wants to talk to someone. She really wants to.

She snubs softly, so as not to make her trainer angry. The Musharna's eyes show no reaction, but the buttons on the Gear depress. The text that Steve watches appear seems to be accurate, more or less. The transcription might come strange through the dreaming creature. It's close enough for what she needs.]

[TEXT]

Hello lo low hello

Please talk to me.
I want to talk.
I will tell you my favorite story.
He told it to me when I couldn't sleep. His eyes were closed for some of it but I shook his knee and got to hear the end. Without the end it isn't a story.

Once
         upon a time there was a girl. She was poor and alone because her parents were dead, and child services didn't exist then, so she had to go to live with her wicked stepmother and do work for her. Hard work, the kind that nearly killed her, but in time she got used to it.

Then one day she heard the prince was giving a big ball. She asked to go, but her stepmother wouldn't let her. So she tried to run off and get a ride to the castle from a knight, but her wicked stepmother had tailled her, and she found her and dragged her off the horse. While she was going, the wicked stepmother threw the knight a gold coin. He held onto it, and he kept looking at it all the time. He kept thinking about the girl.
He wanted to help her, but he couldn't.

The knight went to the ball, and he was going to kill the prince, but there were too many guards around watching him, so he ran away.

Then the knight went to find the girl and save her. The wicked stepmother grazed him in the neck with an evil spell, but he killed her and all the other guys too, even though he got hurt bad. At first the girl was scared, but then she was free and she was okay. She got to go back home to her real parents. The knight was a hero. All the papers said so.

And everyone lived happily ever after.


..........
..........
..........

Tell me your favorite story.
Voice or video if you can.
The words alone are lonely.

Tell me please.

Comments

video forever;

[angerpoints]

Uh -

[Hi, Steve! Nice job putting him on the spot. Yusuke looks pretty taken aback, not just by the request, but by the sight of Steve and the Musharna on his screen. Then again, perhaps he shouldn't be - all things considered, it makes more sense for it to have been Steve who (sort of) wrote the message than it does for it to have been Blake.

Speaking of the old man, where is he? Yusuke's about to ask, but then he hears the noises off-screen and notices the look on Steve's little pug face. He knits his brow and frowns, suddenly feeling... legitimately concerned. What the hell is going on? He can sort of tell what Blake's doing (he's hit enough punching bags to recognize the sound), but that doesn't answer the question of what's getting Steve so down.

... well, whatever it is, he isn't about to abandon her now. It takes a bit of effort, but he manages to muster up a bit of a sheepish smile for her, reaching back with his free hand to rub the back of his neck.]

I dunno, Steve. I'm not that great at tellin' stories.

[Not the kind she's asking for, anyway. He's pretty good at talking smack about Kuwabara behind his back, but that's different.]

Video/Text

[shest]

Russian is a language in the place where I'm from. It's the language I speak normally.

[He still can if he really concentrates, but he hasn't exactly made a habit out of trying.]

...Magical Animal Jesus?

[You know, Blake might not think that this information is important, but that sounds like something that people should really be paying attention to, if only to understand the world they're stuck in.]

[video]

[islandshore]

[Whew, nice save, Blake. Riku's posture slackens at the sound of his voice, and he heaves a soft sigh. Okay, he can handle this.]

She grabbed your 'gear and started asking for some stories. Something tells me she wasn't happy about mine...

[video]

[lieutenantantichrist]

[Steve scrambles rapidly backwards a few feet as Blake strides forward. He uses his foot to angle the Gear up so that it's possibly to see his face staring coldly down.]

You were talking to my dog behind my back.

[His voice has no inflection.]

Did she tell you the story of why I'm here?

[lieutenantantichrist]

[Soon, the little Snubbull is rapt. Her chin rests on her paws as she leans in, forgetting her troubles in the story.]

That's amazing! Was he living as a bushranger out in the tall grass on the routes?

He must have been very brave.

[Steve rocks back on her heels.] Thank you for telling me. That was a good story. It was a really good story.

But...

[The corners of her lugubrious eyes draw down. She casts a troubled glance over her shoulder, toward the sound of blows that has continued steadily beneath the man's narrative.

Her snubs become small.]

Cops are the good guys.

[video/text]

[lieutenantantichrist]

[Steve's permanently downturned mouth becomes indignant.] He saved the little girl! That's a good ending!

[The Snubbull deflates and wraps her arms around her knees.] I like happy endings. But I want to hear your favorite.

[zero_charisma]

[A good listener makes every tale easier to tell. Sniper even enjoyed himself a little. There's no mistaking the pride in his voice either. Ned Kelly is an Australian legend, after all.]

Yeah, he was. They even nicknamed the place where he came from "Kelly Country", that's how much of an impression he left. It's tough land out there, and not many's fit t'survive in it.

[He nods.] I didn't have anythin' else t'do, but I'm glad y'like it.

[That furtive look directed at someone out of range from the Pokegear has Sniper suspect that perhaps telling the story of Ned Kelly to this particular Snubbull was not such a good idea.]

He a cop?

[And by he, Sniper's referring to the source of those punches.]

[video]

[islandshore]

[He shakes his head.]

Nah. She just told some fairy tale about a girl with an abusive stepmom.

[Though maybe it was some kinda metaphor. Riku can't say for sure. Either way, he's not here to argue, so he won't comment on the whole behind his back thing.]

[solas_ion]

Okay, let's see...

Once upon a time, there was a woman who lived in a distant country, almost unreachable by mortals. She was a legendarily difficult teacher, who burned through students at a ridiculous rate. It was said that being taken as one of her disciples was the same as a death sentence.

One day, a kid came asking to be taught by her--the father of the girl he loved demanded that kid get the woman's training before marrying his daughter. Since he never once turned down a challenge, the kid went straight to the woman's country and was accepted as a student.

It turned out he was one of the most skilled of those she had ever seen; every challenge she gave was something he accomplished no matter how difficult. So at the end of his training, she passed down to him her most valuable and powerful weapon.

But ultimately...he couldn't do the one thing she really desired most of all. It turned out the woman's country was separating from the world itself; as a human that came too close to the power of a god, the woman's divine punishment was for her to linger in the shadows between the living world and the world of the dead. In the end...she wanted that student to kill her before she was exiled to that.

He wished that he could have done what she wanted, and cursed his own weakness in failing to go through with it. But there was really nothing to be done about it; once he left her country, there was no way to find his way back.

Video/Text

[lieutenantantichrist]

[Steve makes an attempt to grasp the concept.] You mean the way Pokemon talk? And you have to have a Psychic type change it to human?

[She is now under the impression that, logically, Ocelot usually communicates by going, "Russian guy Russian guy Russian guy."]

That's what he calls it. You know, the Pokemon who they say created the world.

[Her ears lower, and her eyes draw tight at the corners.]

Do you think someone made this world on purpose?

[video/text]

[foolishwren]

... Yeah, it's me.

Don't worry.

I've dealt with way worse than your grumpy trainer before. _{[And she has a feeling Blake knows that, if his memories from the nightmare castle episode are at all intact.]}

So... this is a story my dad used to tell me a lot when I was little. Where I come from, there aren't any Pokemon, but there's animals that are sort of like Pokemon. This was a story about animals. I'll try to remember how it goes.

_{[She clears her throat a little. It comes easily, because she was told this story more than almost any other as a kid.]}

A long time ago, the great Frith made the world. He made all the stars, and the world lived among the stars. He made all the animals and birds, and made them all the same. One of the animals was El-ahrairah, the prince of rabbits...

Video/Text

[lieutenantantichrist]

Oh...Of course they had to be angry. Did they ever find a cure?

[All effects and sicknesses have some way to fix them. Steve knows that.

She's listening hard for Ash's answer, and doesn't hear that the gym has fallen silent.]

Dang son! *applause*

[lieutenantantichrist]

[As the story goes on, Steve leans closer and closer to the sound coming from the Gear. Even the Musharna settles to the padded floor, though its unblinking eyes give no clue as to whether or not it's listening.

Steve, however, is as expressive an audience as you could ask for. Her eyes widen with worry as the little Poochyena wanders into danger, and she thinks of her friend Vince Lombardi, the one they got from Shaun Mars and raised from an egg.

As the story goes on, she forgets all about the sounds of steady blows behind her.

At the end, she softly claps her paws together. She begins to snub enthusiastically, and the Musharna rouses. The keys on the Gear depress and form words.]

Wow! That's a wonderful story. Thank you for telling me.

I think it's a good ending. A really good ending. The Shroomish hurt somebody, but he didn't mean to, and she was okay. He wasn't poison on purpose. And he made friends, even though he was grumpy.

Just because someone's grumpy doesn't mean they're a bad person, or scary.

[There's a rough grunt and a particularly loud impact from behind her that brings Steve back to reality. She glances over her shoulder, then her head hunches down.]

Most of the time.

[video]

[lieutenantantichrist]

[There's a distance in Blake's eyes. His breath is short from exertion. Sweat is running down his face and neck, darkening the collar of his sweatsuit. He doesn't seem to feel it. The lines of his face are etched deep.

The Musharna has drifted up toward the ceiling, trailing faint mist.Steve is huddled nearby, a pink blob in his peripheral vision. He doesn't look at her.]

A fairy tale. One of those things where the heroes ride off into the sunset, and the bad guy gets what's coming to him.

You believe in that, kid?

[His hands hang loosely at his side, knuckles reddened. Loosening them from fists makes them ache.]

I never used to.

[video/text]

[lieutenantantichrist]

[Yusuke is Yusuke. It makes the little dog feel less lonely, in this strange, quiet night.]

That's okay. It doesn't have to be good. But I bet you have a lot of them. Adventures and things.

[Her lower fangs gnaw at her lip.] He always says he's bad at stories but when I keep at it a while he'll tell me one. But now he won't say anything.

[voice]

[captainash]

They didn't.

[Medicine to hide symptoms would never be as good as a true cure, just a way of pretending things could get better.]

But they did find something else, while exploring space. A database of long lost weapons, all of them powerful enough to defeat any army.

...All of them powerful enough to destroy those who had left them there.

[berkthorn]

[Her enthusiasm gets Hiccup to sit up a little more, not that Steve can actually see that, though his good feelings die a little bit at that last addition.]

...Your trainer being grumpier than normal? Is there something bothering them?

Video/Text

[shest]

[If he knew, he'd find the idea more funny than anything else, thankfully. As it is...]

No, not quite like that. It's... different. People here all speak the same language.

[...now that's an interesting question. Ocelot hasn't ever thought about god much. He's a spy, playing a number of different sides at once. It's an incredibly dangerous game and so easy to get caught up in.

Or found out. He thinks of Tatyana-- though that isn't her real name, and how he'd known from the beginning that she was a Chinese spy. Does she think about there being a divine being, guiding them?

Does Ocelot?]

I believe that even the most random of circumstances probably happen for a reason. Not fate, exactly, because people are in control of their own destinies, but there probably is something out there. Maybe not to guide people, but... there. Watching over.

Like a parent, but one that wants to make sure her children are fine on their own.

[..Which still doesn't entirely answer the question.]

I believe that someone or something could have made this world, yes.

[angerpoints]

Why not? Did something happen?

[People don't just clam up and start shutting other people out for no reason, after all. Yusuke would know. He'd spent several weeks not saying anything to anyone back in his own world, and not just because he hadn't felt like it.]

[video/text]

[lieutenantantichrist]

It's not that he's angry. I know angry.

He always says there's no Pokemon back in the real world.

[Then, she just listens. She crosses her stubby arms and leans in toward the sound of Heather's voice. The word "rabbit" is as strange and exotic as the name.]

[lieutenantantichrist]

[Steve's paws scratch anxiously at her ears. Her snubs grow more rapid.]

I don't know! He just looked at the Gear more and more for a while, and got moody and quiet, and he kept pacing on the Routes without even battling, and now he won't say anything!

[The lip below her fang quivers.]

I didn't do anything wrong.

[lieutenantantichrist]

[Steve's ears pull back tight to her head.]

I don't know. Grumpy is normal. This is... He kept talking to himself. He's always complained that this isn't the real world, and that he's stuck here, but now it's...

He kept saying that what people said about there being a million worlds was bullshit. The same thing can't happen at the same time in different ways.

He kept saying that.

[She's quiet for a while as the steady thumping sound goes on.]

Your story was really good.

I'll remmber it.

[berkthorn]

Well, it sure is the real world to you, isn't it?

[That seems a simple enough problem to tackle -- alternate realities on the other hand? Hiccup makes a low, thoughtful noise.]

...It is a lot to think about. Some people are stubborn, you know? Where I live, there are some of the most stubborn people to ever exist. They just need time. I'm... I'm sure he'll return to be a regular old Shroomish-type in no time, huh?

[After a little bit of hesitation, Hiccup switches his feed over to video to give the Snubbull a warm, if sleepy, smile.]

...Thanks. If I come up with another one sometime, would you like me to send it to you?

[video]

[islandshore]

[Riku takes a moment to look Blake over. His tone, his posture, the sweat, and his expression all reek of exhaustion. Has he been training this whole time?

At the thought of fairy tales, Riku heaves a soft sigh, sweeping his fingers through his hair. It's... a tough call. Fairy tales are nice on paper, but they're just not practical. You want a happy ending? You have to earn it. But...]

I don't know. I've been here so long that I'd believe just about anything.

[But Blake said "used to," which suggests something's changed.]

[video/text]

[the_end]

[Oh... okay that's kind of cute. Anemone's snarky attitude cracks a little.]

You really want to hear my favorite, huh... [She looks up.]

Hmm... I'm... actually not sure if I have one.