thedifferencebetween

[Too late, too excited to stop]

You've used them before? Like laser tag, or arcade games? I heard Goldenrod has a game place! The stupid place has everything! We can play there!! I'm good at the cranes!!

No, like my usual weapon was a pair of wrist mounted laser guns. My company specializes in laser weaponry. And e-tech. Top of the line stuff.

That's nice. I'm good at shooting things.

[E-tech, laser what? She supposes a small one mounted on your wrist is good for like... playing around with cats, though. His Meowth might appreciate tech like that! But Mafuyu comes from the age of flip phones, her laser guns remain laser tag guns.]

We can play shooting games too! I can shoot the ones in the festivals, where you knock down cans! And I can throw ninja stars!!

[Impressive, right?! Say you're impressed!!]

That's cute. I can shoot giant monsters that eat hyperactive teenagers. But since apparently real guns don't exist on this planet...

[Which is just frustrating. How's he supposed to properly threaten his enemies if he doesn't even have a real gun? He's gonna have to start getting creative with his threats.]

Ninja stars, huh?

[She laughs. Funny guy, Jack, what a joke.]

You'd be able to take down the Donphan blocking the path if that were true! Stuff like ninja stars don't help much though. [She mimes throwing one. Which, because she isn't actually holding a star, just looks like she's just swinging her arm back and forth in midair.] Ninja taught me how to use 'em. Things like walking on water and smoke signals too.

Of course I could.

Oh yeah? Anything else?

[Jack feigns casual disinterest, but that...that's worth knowing. Kid's got some potential.]

Nn... Those blanket things that let you camo with a wall? Traps and disguises, how to erase your presence. He could fly too, but I don't think his method...

[That potential he thinks she has? She's not going to tarnish it bringing up Ninja's methods.]

I don't really want to talk about it.

Really?

[So she's had some training. She can be taught. Good to know.]

Babe, don't worry about it. I'm a multi-trillionaire CEO, you think I'm bothered by shady methods?

[No, Mr. Handsome 'I Only Shot That One Little Kid' Jack has nothing against dirty dealings. Which he assumes she's skirting around.]

It's not shady as much as...

[No. Don't mention any more, pretend this conversation never happened. It's too embarrassing.]

But anyways, it doesn't help here! Ninja's better at gathering info and stuff, but for me, it's easier to charge in and beat up things directly than surprise them. You gotta challenge someone in a fair fight!

As really stupid? Gotcha.

Beating the shit out of someone to get what you need is a perfectly valid way of gathering information. Or whatever else you need.

[Mafuyu covers her face. So she's either shady or stupid, and she can't really deny either... But he doesn't seem like someone who'd be scared of her, and his opinion of her can't possibly get any worse, so she drops her hands, regarding him closely.]

Most people don't think so. But you don't seem bothered by fighting. You're also like that? Gang wars at school? I mean, you're an old guy now, but.

Wow. Wow, did you just call me old? I'm in the prime of my life, cupcake! Old enough to have experience and wisdom, young enough that I'm fit and gorgeous. The perfect combo.

No, the cutthroat world of company politics. And the savage barbaric wasteland of Pandora. You don't exactly wipe out cannibal bandit clans by asking them nicely to go away.

Then you're... twenty-something? I can't tell.

[Anybody past twnety is old. She only knows one guy over twenty before they fall dangerously close to adult territory with their rules and morals and laws. Even if they both fight, politics and cannibals seem worlds apart from how she lives. She can't know him better like this.]

Is this that story you promised me? I need smaller words. I don't completely understand what you're saying.

.....You don't spend much time around grown ups, do you?

[Jack regards her for a minute then nods. He stretches out in the lounge chair he's been sitting in and pulls out a thin cigar.]

Alright. Story time.

Once upon a time, there was a lawless and terrible planet called Pandora. The people that lived on Pandora were horrible barbarians. Just the worst, really. No morals. No culture. They ate their own children and rolled in their own waste like pigs. But this planet had something way more. It had an awesome power buried underneath its surface.

You with me so far? Words small enough for you? I wanna make sure you get all this.

[She's a former high school delinquent; her time was spent avoiding grown ups.]

Yeah. Pandora sounds terrible. Also, smoking turns your lungs black.

It is terrible. But I'm gonna make it better. And my lungs are my business.

So anyway, on Pandora, there was a thing called a vault. And inside was a giant, horrible, alien monster. Just...teeth and tentacles and death. But I fought it and I killed it and I realized that this shit-hole of a frontier planet could actually be something. So I took it under my protection. Started to wipe out the bandits, mine the eridium - that's a very, very precious mineral that made me a trillionaire - and build real cities. Pristine, gorgeous glass cities, safe from bandits and monsters and famine and poverty. I'm talking paradises. And I was gonna do so much more. I had a plan.

But some assholes decided I was a tyrant and that they wanted to live in miserable squalor instead of the benevolent rule of Hyperion.

They wanted to stop me.

They're stupid and ungrateful and I hope you beat them. And your lungs are going to shrivel up.

They're worse than that. They're lying, child-murdering scum who killed an innocent little girl when they couldn't get to me. And I will beat them. I was just about to, when I ended up here.

But I'm gonna get back to Helios, take care of Hyperion, and then I am gonna slowly kill each and every one of them. And videotape it, so I can relive that moment again and again and again.

[There's some serious anger issues at work here.]

My lungs are fine, Mafuyu!

And they deserve it, if they did all that! Hurting innocent people and refusing to make things better for themselves!

[She pounds her fist on her knee; she's not going to be out-shouted by what's really important here. His planet's important, it's commendable what he's trying to do, but first! More importantly!]

But you can't win if you can't breathe! You can't kill them if you're dead! I'm not going to lose my only friend here, so throw that thing away!

They made me watch, Mafuyu. They're monsters. She wasn't much older than you. How old are you?

[He sighs. It's....kind of sweet. Annoying, but sweet.]

Cupcake, I'm pumped full of the finest preservatives Hyperion has to offer. A little smoke's not gonna hurt me.

Me? I'm sixteen! And if you smoke, you're not going to see half that many more years, preserves or not!

[If she were there in person, she'd snatch that thing out of his hands and stomp it flat on the ground. Things to do when she gets to Goldenrod: dinner with Jack, arcade with Jack, destroy his supply of cigars. She can't do anything standing in a broken field, so she compensates by slamming her fist into the trunk of the tree she's standing under, the bark splintering under her fist.]

I wanna kill something. I wanna kill them.

Sixteen. Yeah. She was eighteen. The sweetest, purest freaking thing in the universe. She had...god, she had such a future ahead of her. And they stole it.

[He chuckles darkly at her reaction. And snuffs out his cigar, he can just finish it later. Another thing he knows about teenage girls: sometimes you just have to indulge them.]

Good. If you're lucky, maybe I'll let you help me.

[Ohh, that makes her seethe. An innocent person is one thing. But a girl? Sweet pure girls, with which not a hair on their head should ever be harmed?]

No girls are going to get hurt on my watch! I'm going to protect them all! I can fight, with or without my Pokemon! So tell me what to do; you'd better let me help!

[She shakes the Pokegear... like that'd be as convincing as physically taking him by his shoulders and giving him a good shake. Goldenrod. She needs to get to Goldenrod.]

Deep breaths, kiddo, deep breaths. Angry's good, you should be angry, but it's useless. Those bastards are gazillions of light years away right now. We gotta focus on climbing the ladder here.

Channel all that pissed off energy into catching Pokemon and training them to evolve. That's where we start.

[The deep breaths fuel her deep throated growling, but hearing again that they aren't in the right place to strike back keeps her from lashing out. So she clenches her fists, lets the anger and frustration compress in her knuckles until they turn white and shake.]

...Okay.

[She releases the tension in her hands, imagining it falling to the ground and lighting the area around her feet in flames. When she's done with them, it's going to be a scorched earth, there's going to be nothing left.]

We'll do it for her. What's her name.

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