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Posted by Slate on Jan 25, 2009 9:56:25 GMT -6
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Jul 27, 2018 20:35:44 GMT -6
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((ooc: Continued from "Overture".))
"Let's fight."
"Excuse me?" Thomas blinked upwards at the light haired teenager standing above him. He set down his pencil for a moment to rub at one heavily shadowed eye. It was well past midnight by the local time, and anyone with any sense was already sleeping unless they had a very good reason to be awake.
In the stone base carved into the hidden crevasses of Mount Everest, there was enough noise to keep anyone awake. It came from all sides: above, below, the room next door and far down the hall. The members of the Tibetan Mutant Resistance were acting like a beehive that had lost its queen. Not that the six Pax Seniors could have slept, in any case. Even the large gray wolfhound in the hallway twitched with unpleasant dreams. This was the buzz of something much worse than mere failure.
"Let's fight," Lucas repeated, nearly shoving his white Game Boy into his human classmate's face.
Thomas was already holding his own game in his left hand; the hand not currently preoccupied with picking back up his pencil. It rested on his knee, its green power light showing the active status of the cartridge within, even if his habitual key strokes were somewhat slower, more disjoint, than usual. The dark haired boy matched his Game Boy: black, muted, and over-prepared to the point of fatigue.
The light haired teenager matched his. White, and moving to his own fight theme song. Lucas' eyes flashed. He was the only one of them that still had energy. The drain of the past few days showed on him as well, though. Unlike usual, his fearsome stance was not spreading to those around them. The energy raiser was running on low, power-wise. Again, like his Game Boy. The green light flickered, threatening to change at any moment to a warning red. Save your game; change your batteries; take a rest.
"Go to sleep, Lucas." Thomas said, turning his gaze back down to his tightly spaced notes.
"I don't take orders from you," Lucas said, in a tone that made Zakiyaa glance briefly over their way, and slide one headphone off of her ear to hear better. The Sudanese teenager did not move, otherwise. There was a Korean American girl on her shoulder who was engrossed in a book. The fifteenth Twilight sequel, or perhaps prequel. Just the sort of fluff a girl needed to take her mind off of things. To fill it with something else, before she tried sleeping again. Anything besides the screams. The dark, then the lights--from every direction, the lights.
"I'll love you forever, Bella. You know that. But I think we need to be apart--to grow as people."
My mouth couldn't move. Inside, I felt like screaming, but no words came out. What was wrong with Edward? Why would he say these things? There was a pit of black despair opening up in my chest where my heart should be--
"Let's fight," Lucas repeated again, putting one hand down on top of Thomas' notes. The dark haired teen looked up again.
"If it will help you," Thomas replied, setting his pencil back down. Judging by the tch that came out of Lucas' mouth, he didn't think that had been the answer his classmate had been going for.
"Six on six," Lucas outlined, sitting on the floor a good distance from Thomas' chair. After a moment, Thomas slumped down to join him, his thing legs crossing. "No switching."
"Switching is a basic--"
"Only cheaters switch." Lucas' eyes flashed across the very small distance between them.
Thomas slumped further, his tired expression complemented by his shrug of indifference. "If that's what you prefer," he agreed. "Anything else?"
"When I beat you," Lucas demanded, "you tell me why you did it."
Thomas looked up at him. Dark brown eyes met light hazel before going back to the small screen in front of him. "You need to get that out of your head," he replied simply. Both of his hands settled onto the sides of the Game Boy. From where River was sitting with her sketchbook doodling a sketchy, surrealistic outline of Felix as the bloodhound mutant glared upwards at something offensive on the ceiling, this seemed odd. It took her a moment to place why. Then it came to her: she had never seen Thomas use two hands to play his game. He always had it with him; he was always playing it. While taking notes in class, while helping in the kitchen, while discussing their plans to move the largest group of Chinese refugees yet along the dangerous trek out of Asia and into Europe. One handed. He always played one handed.
Lucas didn't miss the significance. "I'll still beat you," he said.
"Six on six?" Thomas confirmed, in place of reply.
It began.
It began nearly a month ago. It had been Thomas' plan; his brainchild. He had put it forth. He had won the others over to it.
"You sabotaged it," Lucas growled across the distance between the two teenagers on the floor.
It was a Starwee from Luca's corner. Water/Psychic; the final evolution of Staryu. A classic move, even in the days when Starmie was its highest form. With the moves Thunderwave, Surf, Psychic, and Recover, it had been dubbed the "Deathstar". It could cripple entire teams without ever needing to be switched out. Not that switching was allowed, in this match.
Thomas' first up was a Destroyite. Starting out as a low-stat Crushate, evolving to a Killiyate, it was a Ground/Steel. Immune to the crippling Thunderwave. Its ability was Fracture Faith; it reversed the effect of any attack launched. Thomas used Heal Bell, and Lucas' Starwee was inflicted with Paralysis, Poison, Freezing, and a Burn. It was the only time in the game that such a situation was possible.
"Fracture Faith, huh?" Lucas asked, his voice oddly victorious for someone whose Pokemon was both crippled and immobile. The Destroyite used Moonlight; at this late hour, the strengthened healing effect was reserved, leaving the Starwee unable to survive the combined effects of Poisoning and Burns. It fainted. "Appropriate."
"We've been over this, Lucas." Thomas said, his voice not trying to defend. He was just stating it like it was truth: "It wasn't me."
Someone had told the Chinese authorities about their plans. Not just a tip-off: not just a "there's something going on, guys. Why don't you march your dictatorship over to take a look?" No. Someone had told them the exact details of the plan. Time, place, initial route, contingency route. Strength of numbers, mutant abilities, names.
Zakiyaa struggled to keep from frowning down at the seated battle on the floor. Someone had told the authorities everything, and that someone had been discrete about things. Discrete, or they had waited until the last possible moment. She--the rumor sensor--had caught no hint on the winds from any direction about the coming betrayal. It had been perfectly executed. Perfectly planned. Every strength had met its weakness out in that night.
On her shoulder, Lynn's eyes drifted closed for a second. Then she was awake again, with a whimper. Zakiyaa stroked her straight black hair away from her sweaty forehead, and stole a kiss from the part in her hair. "Read your book, Lynn. The memories will not get smaller; they never get smaller. You will get bigger, and it will not be so bad. Read. Make your new memories; make yourself bigger."
Lynn gave a nod, and sat herself up a little straighter, though she kept her head on Zakiyaa's shoulder. In the book, Bella was sulking; idly, Lynn thumbed through the pages, looking for the next chapter with dialogue.
Thomas' Destroyite hadn't lost a single hit point. With a jab of his thumb, Lucas sent out a Glory. One of the rare dual-mono elementals: it was a Fire/Fire. And it was fast. Lucas risked the inaccuracy of a Fire Blast, and watched as the 120 strength attack hit the Destoyite with a x6 bonus in strength. It was an instant KO.
Thomas, taking one hand off the game to rub at his eyes again, sent out TheAtlanticOcean. His nickname, of course, for his own Starwee. It was holding a Mystic Water. Lucas tched as his token non-fire attack--a Mega Kick--took off only a fifth of the Deathstar's power. TheAtlanticOcean used Surf for a x8 bonus. Lucas' Glory drowned. Or "fainted", to keep with the game's quaint terminology.
Lucas had been on the front lines. Except they weren't supposed to be the front lines. Thomas' plan had been perfect: just as expected from Mr. Swartz favorite student. The most logical of them. Human or not, he was a genius. He'd presented the plan to them fully formed, down to the last detail; they'd had no choice but to accept it. It was just too damn perfect. A way to move more than a hundred mutants out of China right under the noses of both the Chinese and Russian militaries, with no one being the wiser. It had all the hallmarks of a plan they would make in some hypothetical class at Pax: it dodged all conventional thought, it promised causalities minimized beyond all reasonable hope, it required both human and mutants to work together for a common goal, and it placed faith in people of all races and species being good--honestly good--without actually relying on it.
Lucas had been so pumped. He'd spent at least eight days pulverizing Thomas' back with a hearty slap every time he saw him. Everyone around him had caught the energy, and the enthusiasm, and the dead certainty that they would actually pull this off: that was Lucas' power. He spread his own energy and emotions. Like a virus.
"You were counting on that, weren't you," Lucas accused. "You were counting on me to make sure no one had any second thoughts."
Thomas didn't look up from his screen; he did, however, give a persecuted sigh.
"Never mind," Lucas said. "Atlantic? Meet the Pacific."
ThePacificOcean was one of the few Pokémon whose image had been drawn so intentionally large that it did not entirely fit on the battle screen. In fact, all that fit was one colossal tentacle, wrapped loosely around the reclining figure of the Greek God Poseidon, carrying his trident. ThePacificOcean was just one of the hard to obtain evolutions of the apparently useless Unown. Much like a Magikarp, Unown was a bit more than it seemed. This evolution was an Electric/Water type with the ability Gods Walk.
Thomas gave a low whistle of appreciation as his Starmee was utterly and completely annihilated. "Nice, Lucas. When did you get one of--?"
"Shut up," Lucas interrupted. "Just shut up, and fight."
Thomas sent out a DittottiD. Making a Ditto evolve was a trick, but well worth it. The bubblegum blob of a Pokémon had two dumbly smiling heads. Its only move was Splash, the most infamously useless move in the game. Its ability, though, was TransformrofsnarT. As soon as it hit the field, each of its dumbly smiling heads copied ThePacificOcean. Lucas' ThePacificOcean? Meet ThePacificOceanaecOcificaPehT. Gods Walk? Met Gods Walk klaW sdoG.
Lucas was down one extremely rare and powerful Pokémon, and Thomas was up two of them. It was a good strategy. Perfect, you could even say. "You like being perfect, don't you." Lucas asked. "So why did you do it? Why ruin your own plan?"
"I didn't have any reason to," Thomas replied levelly, which was not the same as 'I didn't'.
It wasn't the Chinese military that found them. Oh no. Things would be so much easier if that was the case. There would have been a mass round up; a mass grave; an ending, without possibility for a beginning. Mr. Swartz had told them once, during some cooperative training session or another, after someone or another did something particularly stupid: he'd told them, "You can never unstart something that's been started." He'd said it like he was quoting someone else.
Felix, at least, hadn't understood that line before now. "You can never unstart something that's been started," he whispered to himself, unaware that he was being sketched by River. "Ain't that the truth."
If they'd all been killed, they would have started something, and ended it. In retrospect? An ending would have been fine. He wasn't a fan of being dead. Definitely hadn't been keen on it that night, as they'd all run--as they'd followed Thomas, who seemed to know just what to do and where to go so that all seven of them--the six Pax Seniors, and Mr. Swartz--survived. But looking back? That wouldn't have been so bad. What they had done was a lot worse. They'd started something. And now they couldn't un-start it.
It wasn't the Chinese military that had found them. It was the Russians. They'd been across the boarder, breaking the uneasy truce between the two Super Powers. Whether they'd just been some group of young soldiers goofing off, egging each other on, he didn't know. Whether they'd been something more--some part of a plan much bigger and much more perfect than any of them had bargained for, like Lucas was claiming... He didn't know that, either. He wasn't a super genius. His only power was to smell. To track. What was he supposed to track here, the truth? Yeah. Right. He'd get right on that. Just as soon as he was done glaring at this rock ceiling.
Lucas sent out a Magiless. The baby form of a Magikarp. Its ability was Useless.
"Seriously, Lucas?" Thomas asked.
"You think I didn't know you had that Dittott-whatever? Give me some credit, Thomas. I can handle basic strategy."
"Yeah," Thomas winced. "I can see that."
Useless negated any and all Pokémon abilities on the field. Gods Walk and Transform were both rendered moot. The DittottiD returned to its natural stupidly grinning form. A war of Splashes ensued.
Magiless used SPLASH!
But nothing happened.
DittottiD used SPLASH!
But nothing happened.
Magiless used SPLASH!
Splash has 40 PP. 40 turns later, they were both out of said PP. A Pokemon without PP uses Struggle.
...It was a Struggle, all right.
When all was said and done, DittottiD fainted first. Lucky critical hit. It was the kind of battle that makes any serious-minded trainer want to scream.
Lucas glared across the floor at Thomas' thoroughly mortified face. Maybe now he'd feel just a sliver of what everyone else felt. It wasn't like he cared for anything besides his game. "Those were real people," Lucas growled.
"Who?" Thomas glanced up, with the distracted blink of a boy coming out of a long and repetitive nightmare.
"The people you got killed," Lucas drilled home. "They were real. This isn't a game, Thomas."
With a half-shoulder shrug, Thomas looked back down at his screen. He was down to three Pokémon; Lucas, to four. That Magiless hardly counted, though. With a disgusted flick of his thumb, he sent a Decadence out onto the field. It was one of the few Pokémon with a four step evolution; Dying, Death, Decay, and finally Decadence. A Dark/Poison type, with the ability of Soul Rot. The Magiless died from the Rot before Thomas even had to waste PP on it. Good. That was the way a Magiless should die.
A few feet away, Lucas shifted his legs to a more comfortable position with a short laugh. "You can stop sending out ironic choices any time now, Thomas."
"I'll keep that in mind," the dark-haired boy evenly replied.
Lucas sent out a Puren. Its White Veil ability canceled out the Soul Rot. They were left to have an honest fight, Dark/Poison to Normal/Flying. Puren was faster and had more strength, but Decadence had defense and HP in spades, backing up a cutting special attack. Puren fainted. Thomas had always smirked at that--"fainted". How childish.
He looked up, and caught Lucas glaring at him again. He looked back down at the game, in time to lose his smirk. He'd known it was coming, but that didn't mean he would have liked for his Decadence to face it. Magic, Lucas' prized AveMachina. The final evolution along the path from Deus through Exdomine. Steel/Psychic. The only Pokemon in the game with the From Above ability. Decadence died a swift death, though not before Soul Rot had eaten away a third of precious little Magic's Hit Points. His Miraichu hit the field next; the final evolution of Pikachu's line, it was a pure bundle of Electricity and speed. It left Magic paralyzed and down below the half way mark before it succumbed.
Things were one on one, now. A flick of a pale thumb sent Thomas' Necreon to the field. The Ghost evolution of the expansive Eevee family tree. Its ability? Things That Crawl. From Above met its match. Steel/Psychic met pure Ghost. And Thomas watched Magic "faint". "Fainting"--really, what a joke. Lucas thought so, too. It took all of his force of will to not hurl the game across the room as Thomas stood, stretching legs that had gone to sleep somewhere between "But Nothing Happened" and "Magiless used SPLASH!"
"Good match, Lucas," he said without a trace of condescension. That's what really got Lucas: the dark haired teenager sounded like he meant it. Like he meant every word. "You've come a long way."
"Still not up to your level, though, am I?" Lucas asked, staring upwards from the ground. Thomas was looking down at him, and Lucas knew that he was the only one in the sleepless room that could see the smug glitter in their classmate's eyes.
He wasn't quite sure when his fist collided with Thomas' face. He remembered the blur of motion as he brought his legs into position, and launched himself upwards off the stone floor; he remembered the satisfying crack. He didn't really remember deciding to do it, though.
He did decide not to regret it. As Felix and Zakiyaa pulled him away from the downed teenager, and River and Lynn rushed to help the ever-innocent, ever-perfect Thomas up, he decided: he wouldn't regret it.
He wouldn't regret it because he'd fallen for that perfect plan that had really been planning something they couldn't even imagine.
He wouldn't regret it because good people--mutants and humans he'd been working side-by-side with the past few months on this mountain--had died. Not "fainted"; died.
He wouldn't regret it because what they started out there, they couldn't un-start.
He wouldn't regret it because he was the only one who really believed that Thomas was responsible, and that kind of perfection--the perfection to get away with it--deserved a black eye.
The Russians had been over the Chinese boarder when they'd discovered the refugees. They'd tried to entice and plead the Chinese mutants over to Russia, but Mr. Swartz and his students had brought with them some of the rumors that were coming out of Russia. The Russians had tried to threaten and shout. And finally, the Russians had decided to make a few examples. That had been terrifying. But it had only been one layer of the plan.
The Chinese military had found them. "Found them", like they'd ever been lost--there had been no surprise in the eyes of their commander as he smiled down at the group. Just like there had been no surprise in the Russian commander's eyes as he'd first spotted them. It was layers and layers of perfection: the perfect escape plan for the refugees. The perfect recruitment plan for the Russians. The perfect capture plan for the Chinese. The perfect proof that Russia was stealing Chinese civilians, and the perfect proof that China was unwilling to submit to diplomacy.
It was all over the news. Zakiyaa had been wearing her headphones even when she slept, to block out the whispers as they grew louder and louder. The captured Russian soldiers were a media spectacle the world over. And they were exactly the excuse that two governments had been waiting for. Two armies were on the move now, and soon to be more.
"Why did you do it?" Lucas shouted across the room, as Felix and Zakiyaa dragged him back. "Why?"
In Pokémon White and Black, the player can choose to go good or evil. Thomas had chosen to go evil. Why? Because it was more fun, that was why. More of a challenge. There was no better reason in this world. That was just a game, of course. In the real world, he would never do anything of the sort. Clearly, Lucas was mistaken.
Only a true sociopath would want to start World War III.
((ooc: Continued in [FP] Finale.))
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Jun 8, 2009 2:28:32 GMT -6
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