99th moon [Another Brick in the 4th Wall]

[paladinlost]

[Every day, many wasteful acts are committed across the world: nearly empty shampoo bottles are thrown away, ice cream bowls are not carefully scraped clean with a spoon, quality cold cuts are not placed between slices of freshly-baked bread, regained magic is not cast...

Cecil Harvey is not a wasteful person.

In fact, he's such an unwasteful person that he spends a large part of the weekend teleporting up to random confused souls, offering them ice cream and sandwiches aplenty, and teleporting away.

All of that with hair that looks like it came out of a shampoo commercial, of course.]

Comments

[paladinlost]

The local threats tend to be either extremely powerful or relatively malevolent, but not both at once.

[dragoon_pride]

Not both? [He raises an eyebrow at that.] So no one has tried destroying or conquering this place… or… anything else that evil forces tend to do?

[paladinlost]

As far as we can tell, every instance of near destruction was not deliberate. The main form of evil in this world is theft of sentient beings.

[dragoon_pride]

You mean… people attempting to steal those creatures of yours? Does this happen often?

[paladinlost]

Not to me, but many have not been nearly so lucky.

[dragoon_pride]

I hope they all put up a good fight, at the very least...

[paladinlost]

They try, but many of the children are unused to battle and war.

[dragoon_pride]

They all have to get used to it someday. Better to begin their battles early...

[paladinlost]

They should not have to. Do you think you would have improved so much as a warrior, if a group of adults regularly challenged you as a child and stole each of your spears after winning? Failure against Team Rocket means losing both their greatest weapons and their beloved companions.

[dragoon_pride]

Well, they can do without the stealing… but the challenges are still completely necessary. [He frowns a little. It’s really strange behavior, taking away people’s weapons like that.] What sort of opponents are these anyway, that have some need to steal away people’s weapons?

[paladinlost]

Petty criminals that enjoy explosions and cowardly attacks, and who intend to control the region with their stolen Pokémon. Unpleasant people, at best.

[dragoon_pride]

They sound like more of a nuisance than anything. I trust you’ve been able to put them in their place so far?

[paladinlost]

Whenever I've had the opportunity, which is not nearly as often as I wish.

[dragoon_pride]

Well, that’s surely better than nothing.

[paladinlost]

It's also a sign of luck, in a way. I rarely have the chance to fight them because their attacks are usually too far from my home for me to intervene in time.

[dragoon_pride]

I don’t know how lucky I would call that. Better that a skilled warrior such as yourself is the one intervening, after all.

[paladinlost]

Skill as a warrior matters less here than well-trained Pokémon teams, and those are plenty. Thankfully for the civilians.

[dragoon_pride]

Hmmph, right, how could I have forgotten... Still, I'm sure the background in combat would have served you well.

[paladinlost]

It kept me from panicking, which is an advantage not everyone had.

[dragoon_pride]

Which is a truly helpful advantage in such a situation.

[paladinlost]

Indeed. Otherwise, more than one snowflake would have managed to explode in my yard last winter, and that would have not been pretty.

[dragoon_pride]

Exploding snowflakes? Do I want to know?

[paladinlost]

There is a snowflake Pokémon species. They can learn the move Explosion. It's even more dangerous than it sounds.

[dragoon_pride]

Sounds potentially worse than Bombs.

[paladinlost]

That 'potentially' is completely unnecessary.