(no subject)
UXIE I DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE THE BEING OF AWESOME KNOWLEDGE OVER STUPID WILLPOWER AND EMOTION, YOU ARE NO LONGER MY FAVORITE AND YOU SUCK.
So, after losing my first League Challenge (brought on mostly by the fact that I didn't know what the league members used, ended up bringing a bad combination of pokemon, and finally losing to Lucian when he had one pokemon left), I decided to go out and finish viewing the pokemon that my dex didn't have yet. "Why not start with the legendary trio?" I asked myself. "Pretty easy to view them - you just have to go up to them and press 'A', just like you did for Mesprit."
Except that Uxie (and possibly Azelf - I don't know yet) is not as easy as Mesprit to view. In fact, when you go up to it, it initiates a battle.
'Kay, Suicune finally came to one place to battle you in Crystal, but the other two ran around and gave you complete grief trying to find it. Why does Uxie (and Azelf?) not?
"Okay, still no biggie," I tell myself. "Don't think I saved, but I'll just catch it now and save myself the trouble of having to hunt it down." So, I expend all of my ultra balls, great balls, a few of my dusk balls and almost all of my poke balls trying to catch it when it struggles and kills itself.
Point 1 - WHY DOES IT NOT HAVE SOME 40 PP MOVE TO WASTE WHILE I TRY TO USE TIMER BALLS?
Point 2 - WHY DO TIMER BALLS GET LESS EFFECTIVE AS THE BATTLE GOES ON?
Point 3 - WHY DOES THE RNG HATE ME SO VERY MUCH? FIRST THE 'EVERYONE CRITICALS BUT YOU', AND NOW THIS. It must be punishment for abusing it to get my (almost) female-only team and by chance, catching Giratina after only four or five Ultra balls.
Of course, there was always the master ball, but given the level 70 Palkia and Dialga coming up, I'm not going to waste it on a level 50 pokemon that stays pretty much out of the way. Fortunately, it turns out that I saved right after I lost to the elite 4, so I don't end up losing the hard-earned experience I gained while struggling against pokemon 5-7 levels higher than my own. Hey, it worked for the gyms...
And to top it all off, I come upstairs and find one of those motivational 'joke' emails sent from one of my friends waiting for me. Smack dab in the middle of it is the saying 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results'.
To think, before I started trying to catch pokemon seriously again, I laughed at that saying.
/rant
So, this piece was based on a prompt from a kink!meme, but the request is over a year old and my reply doesn't fit the parameters - since 'kink!meme' usually requires 'kink', and no matter how hard I tried my mind kept on saying "no, it is better without this kink, and better without porn, and hell, it's better without this ship in general - why don't you try?" - so it's going here. And the way my works seem to be going, I can add 'MasterShipping' to my list of 'things to distract me while I'm trying to write PMS'. Even though this fails at MasterShipping.
***
He frowns, hidden in the shadows, as Crystal surfs towards the island. He does not regret giving up his position to this girl, this bright-eyed, smiling girl whose few worries are mostly taking care of her pokémon and completing the pokédex for Oak. It is the other occupant of the island that worries Lance - the scowling redhead who deliberately turns his back on the approaching figure.
“I can’t battle you - I’m busy training,” he says as soon as she lands, even though Lance knows that the boy had been doing nothing more than skipping rocks onto the lake’s surface before Crystal had come into view. Crystal can see through the lie, too, but her eyes are hurt as she lays down a parcel to the side. “You can take a break every once in a while, can’t you?” she asks, even as she turns - she hasn’t bothered to recall her pokémon; she knows how this will play out.
True to form, Silver turns his back on her. “I don’t need your pity, miss Champion,” he hisses. Crystal doesn’t even as much as flinch anymore - the barb has been used too many times to continue to stick. “Just learn to stay out of my way.”
Lance wants to take the boy, to shake some sense into him, in remembrance of another red-haired youth who refused to care for his pokémon, another boy who had run away from the strict confines of his home. You only get one shot, he wants to scream at him. One shot, no more - then they find you, they take you back home. You’ll never get the chance to smile again, to laugh, to tell her that you love her - and you even have the damn luck for your woman to be looking for you. Take the chance you’ve been given, and live!
“I don’t know if I can be here on Thursday,” Crystal says as she climbs back onto her feraligatr, squirming to seat herself properly. “There’s this new up-and-coming trainer - Clair told me about it when I came in here, and he’s going to make a league challenge soon, so I might have to stay at Indigo Plateau for a while.”
“I don’t care,” the boy says, still not facing her, and Crystal’s eyes are slightly red but she refuses to cry. If she did, Lance doesn’t know what he would do - probably follow through on the murderous thoughts he harbors when Silver is feeling particularly viscous towards Crystal. “I don’t even know why I bother anymore,” she mutters, before feraligatr pushes off from the shore.
As soon as she is out of eyeshot, the boy drops all pretense and kneels by the parcel, unwrapping it. A small lunch is packed inside, and he wastes no time before starting to eat.
Lance remembers well the last time Crystal had cooked in the league’s kitchen - a plate of brownies, passed out with worried eyes as she nervously awaited everyone’s opinion. Only Karen had gotten away unscathed, claiming she had to watch her figure - and afterwards, out of hearing, Koga had joked about taking her on as an apprentice next to his daughter. Nevertheless, Silver is digging into the box as if it was made by a gourmet chef.
He takes the note out of the bottom of the box, and pulls out pen and paper, painstakingly copying the message before tossing the paper box right by the posts to the fence. It will, Lance knows, be the first thing Crystal will see - her lunchbox discarded, the food seemingly eaten by wild dratini, the message unread. She will mutter something about ‘at least the dratini getting a meal’ the next time she comes back to Indigo, and everyone will pretend not to hear her.
Tell her how you feel, Lance mentally screams at the boy. Let her know how much she means to you. You’ve already gotten this far away from home - what’s one step further in breaking its rules? But Lance, despite having spoken to the boy only a few times, knows him well - well enough to know that by the time he can speak freely of emotions, there will be nobody left to speak of them with him. Seasons of coldness, an escape to Kanto, being dragged back to Johto and being plunged into more training, more seasoning - he has gone through it all, and looking at the boy is like looking in a mirror, one that he wants to break with all his might.
Lance turns and leaves - there is a challenger to prepare for, another trainer from New Bark, a boy this time, with the last of Elm’s specimens. He had observed the battle with Clair, and the boy is a strong trainer, easily able to make his way through Will, through Koga, and perhaps just as easily through Karen (Bruno has finally left to find Lorelei - Lance uncharitably wishes him the worst of luck). He will have to brush up on his skills to prevent the challenger from winning his way to Crystal, from reinforcing the mirror with shining steel.
As he leaves through the rear exit that only members of his clan know about, Lance wonders if he will be standing here again in another generation, watching another red-haired boy squander away his chances with a beautiful, bright-spirited girl, with Silver watching at his side.
So, after losing my first League Challenge (brought on mostly by the fact that I didn't know what the league members used, ended up bringing a bad combination of pokemon, and finally losing to Lucian when he had one pokemon left), I decided to go out and finish viewing the pokemon that my dex didn't have yet. "Why not start with the legendary trio?" I asked myself. "Pretty easy to view them - you just have to go up to them and press 'A', just like you did for Mesprit."
Except that Uxie (and possibly Azelf - I don't know yet) is not as easy as Mesprit to view. In fact, when you go up to it, it initiates a battle.
'Kay, Suicune finally came to one place to battle you in Crystal, but the other two ran around and gave you complete grief trying to find it. Why does Uxie (and Azelf?) not?
"Okay, still no biggie," I tell myself. "Don't think I saved, but I'll just catch it now and save myself the trouble of having to hunt it down." So, I expend all of my ultra balls, great balls, a few of my dusk balls and almost all of my poke balls trying to catch it when it struggles and kills itself.
Point 1 - WHY DOES IT NOT HAVE SOME 40 PP MOVE TO WASTE WHILE I TRY TO USE TIMER BALLS?
Point 2 - WHY DO TIMER BALLS GET LESS EFFECTIVE AS THE BATTLE GOES ON?
Point 3 - WHY DOES THE RNG HATE ME SO VERY MUCH? FIRST THE 'EVERYONE CRITICALS BUT YOU', AND NOW THIS. It must be punishment for abusing it to get my (almost) female-only team and by chance, catching Giratina after only four or five Ultra balls.
Of course, there was always the master ball, but given the level 70 Palkia and Dialga coming up, I'm not going to waste it on a level 50 pokemon that stays pretty much out of the way. Fortunately, it turns out that I saved right after I lost to the elite 4, so I don't end up losing the hard-earned experience I gained while struggling against pokemon 5-7 levels higher than my own. Hey, it worked for the gyms...
And to top it all off, I come upstairs and find one of those motivational 'joke' emails sent from one of my friends waiting for me. Smack dab in the middle of it is the saying 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results'.
To think, before I started trying to catch pokemon seriously again, I laughed at that saying.
/rant
So, this piece was based on a prompt from a kink!meme, but the request is over a year old and my reply doesn't fit the parameters - since 'kink!meme' usually requires 'kink', and no matter how hard I tried my mind kept on saying "no, it is better without this kink, and better without porn, and hell, it's better without this ship in general - why don't you try?" - so it's going here. And the way my works seem to be going, I can add 'MasterShipping' to my list of 'things to distract me while I'm trying to write PMS'. Even though this fails at MasterShipping.
***
He frowns, hidden in the shadows, as Crystal surfs towards the island. He does not regret giving up his position to this girl, this bright-eyed, smiling girl whose few worries are mostly taking care of her pokémon and completing the pokédex for Oak. It is the other occupant of the island that worries Lance - the scowling redhead who deliberately turns his back on the approaching figure.
“I can’t battle you - I’m busy training,” he says as soon as she lands, even though Lance knows that the boy had been doing nothing more than skipping rocks onto the lake’s surface before Crystal had come into view. Crystal can see through the lie, too, but her eyes are hurt as she lays down a parcel to the side. “You can take a break every once in a while, can’t you?” she asks, even as she turns - she hasn’t bothered to recall her pokémon; she knows how this will play out.
True to form, Silver turns his back on her. “I don’t need your pity, miss Champion,” he hisses. Crystal doesn’t even as much as flinch anymore - the barb has been used too many times to continue to stick. “Just learn to stay out of my way.”
Lance wants to take the boy, to shake some sense into him, in remembrance of another red-haired youth who refused to care for his pokémon, another boy who had run away from the strict confines of his home. You only get one shot, he wants to scream at him. One shot, no more - then they find you, they take you back home. You’ll never get the chance to smile again, to laugh, to tell her that you love her - and you even have the damn luck for your woman to be looking for you. Take the chance you’ve been given, and live!
“I don’t know if I can be here on Thursday,” Crystal says as she climbs back onto her feraligatr, squirming to seat herself properly. “There’s this new up-and-coming trainer - Clair told me about it when I came in here, and he’s going to make a league challenge soon, so I might have to stay at Indigo Plateau for a while.”
“I don’t care,” the boy says, still not facing her, and Crystal’s eyes are slightly red but she refuses to cry. If she did, Lance doesn’t know what he would do - probably follow through on the murderous thoughts he harbors when Silver is feeling particularly viscous towards Crystal. “I don’t even know why I bother anymore,” she mutters, before feraligatr pushes off from the shore.
As soon as she is out of eyeshot, the boy drops all pretense and kneels by the parcel, unwrapping it. A small lunch is packed inside, and he wastes no time before starting to eat.
Lance remembers well the last time Crystal had cooked in the league’s kitchen - a plate of brownies, passed out with worried eyes as she nervously awaited everyone’s opinion. Only Karen had gotten away unscathed, claiming she had to watch her figure - and afterwards, out of hearing, Koga had joked about taking her on as an apprentice next to his daughter. Nevertheless, Silver is digging into the box as if it was made by a gourmet chef.
He takes the note out of the bottom of the box, and pulls out pen and paper, painstakingly copying the message before tossing the paper box right by the posts to the fence. It will, Lance knows, be the first thing Crystal will see - her lunchbox discarded, the food seemingly eaten by wild dratini, the message unread. She will mutter something about ‘at least the dratini getting a meal’ the next time she comes back to Indigo, and everyone will pretend not to hear her.
Tell her how you feel, Lance mentally screams at the boy. Let her know how much she means to you. You’ve already gotten this far away from home - what’s one step further in breaking its rules? But Lance, despite having spoken to the boy only a few times, knows him well - well enough to know that by the time he can speak freely of emotions, there will be nobody left to speak of them with him. Seasons of coldness, an escape to Kanto, being dragged back to Johto and being plunged into more training, more seasoning - he has gone through it all, and looking at the boy is like looking in a mirror, one that he wants to break with all his might.
Lance turns and leaves - there is a challenger to prepare for, another trainer from New Bark, a boy this time, with the last of Elm’s specimens. He had observed the battle with Clair, and the boy is a strong trainer, easily able to make his way through Will, through Koga, and perhaps just as easily through Karen (Bruno has finally left to find Lorelei - Lance uncharitably wishes him the worst of luck). He will have to brush up on his skills to prevent the challenger from winning his way to Crystal, from reinforcing the mirror with shining steel.
As he leaves through the rear exit that only members of his clan know about, Lance wonders if he will be standing here again in another generation, watching another red-haired boy squander away his chances with a beautiful, bright-spirited girl, with Silver watching at his side.