2024-04-19: Deserving
- Log: Deserving
- Cast: Ruth Pauling, Anne Aomori
- Where: Southvoid Hills, Energy Nede
- Date: April 19, 2024
- Summary: Ruth Pauling has found a niche near the portal of Energy Nede. Anne Aomori is watching. She decides to do more than watch, and she and Ruth have a tense conversation.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
With the two unstable space rifts siphoning Ley energy from Filgaia and Lunar to Energy Nede, the ecosystems have a connection into a land once walled away from the rest of the universe. It has thrown no small number of things out of whack - not only are some Pokemon escaping out these rifts to explore worlds not tailored to them (with varying degrees of success, weighted towards 'success' for reasons unclear), occasionally flora and fauna from beyond make their way inside.
The discovery of the bizarre Pokemon 'Horse' is one of the most exciting distractions from the doom and gloom of the Ten Wise Men, for one.
Pokemon Rangers and the Kanto Police Department are doing their level best to secure these rifts from the worst and most obvious problematic elements, but there's only so many hands to go around, and let's face it - they're not used to having to be firmly oppositional to others at this scale. There's a good reason Team Rocket has gained so much traction and momentum, culturally speaking!
Among the arid regions of Kanto, they now have an unlikely new bit of help following the brief rampage of a strangely violent, seemingly implacable beast.
Ruth Pauling, of Filgaia, possessing a spiritual curse unable to be seen by the people of Nede normally - whose introduction to Energy Nede along the Visitors was in confusion of 'one of their own, question mark' having brought along a distinctive but profoundly primitive firearm on their person. After some conversations were had by multiple parties involved...
Ruth is, on occasion, sitting down by her lonesome in Southvoid. She does not require shelter or even much in the way of comfort, sitting about the sands for such periods of time the Rangers are more than a little unnerved - but she rests there, head bowed, watching the coming and going of those who do slip past.
The Nanza Heartland, being located in Meribus, is one of the less unfortunate places a rift could've opened. Althena's Boundary has mitigated (if not eliminated) the concentration of Malevolence, and thus the number of dangerous Hellions that might linger to and fro are fewer.
But never zero.
A handful of trainers cower as an enormous, muscle-bound bipedal tiger Hellion - just some large, brutish man whom seems bereft of any sort of social grace or awareness to their eyes - watches as that strange over-dressed not-Nedian woman handily wrestles him back out of there with relentless physical force no less monstrous.
"...You're scared," she offers to them, back turned, as she kneels back down on the sand as that Hellion flees for their life. The fight wasn't even much of one - she's still within the shell of who she once was, and flip-flops right back into quiet, gentle voice like she were a completely different person in the span of five seconds.
"You're safe," she offers, to some stammering thank yous and then murmurings and other things in her presence, before they leave in search of whatever Pokemon they were looking for in these parts.
Her watch continues, until ARMS calls her away.
<Pose Tracker> Anne Aomori has posed.
Maybe Anne has seen a 'horse' by now. Maybe not. But she's seen something interesting, all the same. She was traveling the Southvoid Hills for her own reasons, after a recent trip to Lunar; she's on her own now, though intending to return to Armlock soon enough. Not just yet, though. Not when she sees, on the horizon--
Trouble.
It would have been kind, for her to run up and intervene when she crested the top of the hill and saw the bipedal tiger Hellion risin before the Trainers. But she saw Ruth, and remembered her... and opted to let her handle the matter. It was a risk to these innocent Nedians, in theory--but a risk through inaction. And as it turns out, they're just fine.
Is it fine?
The Trainers start to leave, and Anne walks down the hill, into sight, and comes to a stop not so far after. "...That was noble of you," she says. "Protecting the innocent, is it?"
"Not something you'd expect of a Hellion, from what I'm told."
Anne is in ordinary clothes; she carries no obvious weapons. And yet she stands confident, all the same.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Whatever sort of assurances or handshakes have been made between the movers and shakers of Energy Nede and beyond, this seems as fine as it's going to be - even when there's a firearm out in the open, right there. Is anything about the joining of the worlds fine, with the Ten Wise Men on the loose?
...
Ruth looks up with a start as she picks up Anne's voice. She didn't sense her approach in the least. Tension runs through her fingers, because it takes her some time to attribute the voice to anyone familiar. A recollection from an encounter when she first came to Nede, in the span of time between then and finding out they had a way home to the world (and one of its satellites) they knew.
A smile grows on her face at Anne's surprise of expectations. ('I don't like it when she smiles' is the fourth-most common remark by the Pokemon Rangers of the area regarding her.)
"We can only be who we are," she says, bringing up her right hand over her heart, before letting it settle down lower. "Did you come in from the rift, then? From Lunar."
Does she really need to ask? Yes, she does, Anne feels like she just popped up right there.
"You wouldn't be wrong," a concession, at least.
<Pose Tracker> Anne Aomori has posed.
Anne notices the smile. She doesn't like it either, but for different reasons than the Rangers, probably, because it doesn't unsettle her in the way that it would most.
But she oesn't like it, all the same.
"Oh, I don't think that's true. How else do we become who we're going to be?"
She shakes her head. "No. Though I have been through it recently; if you can sense Malevolence, that's where it came from." None has seeped into her, even if the residue might travel. She is too self-assured for it to take hold.
"You make me angry," she reflects. "Irrationally, maybe, or maybe entirely rationally. I sense a threat from you, and I don't like that. ...However, I'm told that the fact that you can hide your Malevolence means that you have control of yourself. And your chosen actions appear to be prosocial enough."
"What I want to know is why."
"Are you willing to tell me that?"
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
There is a power differential at play from where Anne stands and Ruth kneels, out here in the arid Southvoid. The anger of the local researcher seems to culminate in the length of which the shadow reaches towards Ruth by the present daylight (as filtered by the Symbological barrier between what's left of Nede and the endless void of space).
The strange Visitor, afflicted with Malevolence, stays motionless while Anne speaks of her findings, feelings... and specific desires as to just why.
Why, does someone so steeped in Malevolence still cling onto some sort of hope - or fantasy - of being anything different from the roving bands of violent creatures who either cannot resist (or have otherwise willingly given in) those destructive impulses. Destructive impulses unlike nearly anything Energy Nede of the modern day could think of.
The smile softens, as silence falls for poignant seconds.
"Every Hellion's willing to tell," she says, lifting up her right hand, and looking at the (completely ordinary) extremity with veiled revulsion. She curls her fingers, feels the material of the glove... and lowers the hood of her shawl. She looks a lot like a Nedian, though she is not. A coincidence?
"But the words most have are just... screams, tears, and bloodshed." Sometimes it feels like the spoken word she's used for decades is little more than an uncomfortable secondary language. "You've heard of contradictions. For some... it's torment. Feelings they can't make peace with. Things that can't be true, put together." She takes in a breath.
She's had to go to great lengths to be able to speak about herself, and not have to lean on Ida, Dean, Layna, or others to talk about her on her behalf (barring the times she is simply living the moment). It's always meant having to touch at nerves that are never not stinging.
"...The life I had before," she continues. 'I,' the ownership, the first person talking. The revulsion she has to choke down. "You'd call the life I'd lived as that of a heartless monster. I killed. I hurt. I scared. I scarred." She slows down by necessity. "...Someone saw something more in that person, and I..."
These are words that are easier to speak in screams, tears, and bloodshed. It is a conscious effort to keep it to coherent spoken words. "I can't ask him what it was." There's a missing context. That context might be too much, in the moment.
"He saw something good in that... person." A struggle, to keep herself from disassociating, as she stands up. A wince, as her left shoulder twinges out in pain as she rears back... and stops.
"For a lot of Hellions... for people like me," people, not monsters, "it's too much to live with. Most are too tormented to endure. For some... it's a reason to be."
she makes another attempt, a pained hiss as she draws that rifle and plants it bayonet-blade first into the ground. Both hands grip at it as a sense of comfort, or compulsion, head bowed.
"Murdering. Frightening. Monstrous. And yet... this life's given me a chance to find out what anyone could have seen in someone like this. With a weapon, like this." Malevolence doesn't leave her, though she can feel it wanting to take its leave.
There's that smile again. It's more sad, measured, rather than the more unsettling near-grin.
"I deserve their fear. So... I'll have it."
<Pose Tracker> Anne Aomori has posed.
It's a fair enough question, Anne thinks. It's necessary--knowing why someone acts is key to predicting their actions, and she must be able to predict Ruth's actions if she's to be here. She has no particular authority to execute on behalf of the world's government...
But Anne doesn't put much stock in such things anyway.
Revulsion for her own hand. Is this the 'contradiction' of which the Seer and Oracle spoke? Anne watches, lifting an eyebrow at that answer. The 'words'...
Anne listens. She considers. "Hm..." Things that can't be true, put together. Yes, that's a contradiction. Yes, perhaps it would torment them.
"...So you were a monster, and someone saw something else in you," she says. "...Love, maybe? Even monsters love."
"...That would explain, though, why most have no control. If this 'torment' drives them mad."
"People," she repeats. "Yes, I suppose so." It's perhaps the nicest thing she's going to say to Ruth right now. To acknowledge her personhood, as she plants the rifle in the ground.
"You believe in your work, then. In your 'life'."
"...You feed on that fear, don't you?" Anne reflects. "And I don't make much of a meal. I'm trained in concealing my heart. In concealing my feelings, so that I can operate in stealth even under a target's nose."
"Those people I saw were certainly afraid. Of the monster, even if they didn't see why they should be afraid of you, too."
"It's taking what you 'deserve'..."
She shakes her head. "I can't stand that kind of fatalism."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
'...You feed on that fear, don't you?'
Ruth gets half a nod in before Anne speaks about how she doesn't make much of a meal, about how she's trained to conceal her heart. It would go far into explaining how she didn't even sense Anne's arrival. Her left hand's grip tightens, as if the urge to take up the unspoken invitation to correct that - but it is suppressed.
Anne speaks of those who she saw were certainly afraid. Ruth would know it to be true. It is a sense brighter than any light, louder than any sound, to the Malevolence that empowers her. Even if they can't see why they should be afraid of her, too, if she is anything like the beast that Anne and Damian had to outrun by urgent suggestion from someone 'in the know.'
...And the rejection, of the fatalism.
Tension passes for several seconds. There is no noticeable change in lighting or the dancing of shadows, as the sun simply doesn't move that fast. (There is a rolling Bramblin trio that seem to pass by, dramatically, lacking in any self-drive to move on - and so the breeze determines for them within their dead, dried grass cages that house their souls.)
"This is how I live." Tonally lacking in apology or hesitation, before disapproval. Hellions are creatures of conflict, and their desires - often dangerous to those around them - ever threaten to breed more of it.
This is but another example.
Slowly, her head cranes up, never quite meeting Anne's head-on, but to Anne's keen eyes she can see just a vacant, dead look - of someone who might have seen too much to find that spark of life outside of the fatalism. The smile cannot reach those eyes.
She remembers the words of the Trial Knight that made it clear how her kind would be seen, ever and always. It keeps the rest of her steady enough, under the surface. The surface is always but a shell merely concealing, in service of those desires that goad her onwards.
Looking at Anne, she reminds her of a younger woman she's seen before, but can't quite put her finger on.
...
"Is that something you can't conceal in your own heart, then?" Her feelings about that fatalism.
<Pose Tracker> Anne Aomori has posed.
Anne has no more sense for emotions than others can sense her own; she can only read body language, infer from tone, the usual ways of understanding someone. But those, she is good at. She notices the tightened grip, and internally she wonders if she'll have the chance to test her skills again.
Not yet, if it's going to happen.
She stands in the tension that she created. She waits through it. Her long, gray hair blows softly in the wind, her bangs brushing the tops of her large, round glasses. Those lenses glint for a moment in the light as Ruth and Anne look at one another.
'This is how I live'.
No, that smile doesn't reach Ruth's eyes. But what she says causes a reaction in Anne. For the first time, Ruth might catch the faintest glimmer of surprise.
Then, Anne looks at her a moment longer--and laughs. The emotion doesn't resound around her, her walls still thoroughly intact, but she laughs all the same.
"Maybe," she says. "Maybe so. I've been fighting against that fatalism for over a decade now. Maybe longer. And it's something I hate, passionately. Maybe part of me even believes in it. Then I'd hate it more, wouldn't I?"
"...All right then," Anne says. "Live how you live. But I suggest you stick to the wilderness here. ...Most of Energy Nede can't sense the danger you bring. They will be afraid of you. Until they do understand something is wrong."
"And then this ancient civilization may act. ...Keep guarding the portal if you're going to be here, is my advice."
She starts to turn. "Take it or leave it."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Through Anne's expert eyes, even underneath all the layers of clothing - how Ruth isn't passing out from dehydration or heat exhaustion should be a mystery but maybe that's just a hidden health benefit of being a Hellion - she can see the weakness in her left arm. That rifle is too heavy for her to wield now.
That must not always have been the case, but even the most powerful warriors out there can't count on being able to wield weapons of that size and weight at peak strength forever, even if there's no immediate indication of the scale of time involved. It might be easy to confuse Ruth's age for being greater than it is, if the signs of aging are compared to a Nedian's with all of their medical technology available to them.
Then... the laugh. Anne's returning laugh. Ruth wonders, for a moment, if that's what it's like when they hear her bitter laugh - oftentimes the metaphorical dam holding back the tears that'd bring the rest of herself out with them.
Ruth's head turns to the side a bit, watching a few other Pokemon shuffle about here and there in ignorance of the greater conflict at play between a native of Nede and a Visitor who has brought a unique form of baggage they're not prepared for, nor capable of dealing with.
The kindest thing a Hellion can do, sometimes, is just encourage someone to feel themselves out. She doesn't speak over that spoken hatred, though the walls prevent her from feeling it. The breeze that goes through the Southvoid nearly drowns out what she can hear - such is how tight Anne's control of her heart is.
An offer is made to that suggestion she stay to the wilderness. Take it or leave it.
"This world," she starts, as a Kricketot - that Kricketot - hops out from one of the nearby dunes, having found an edible berry for himself to enjoy. "I don't deserve its... warmth."
She hesitates for how to describe it, when physical warmth by and large isn't a thing for her any more. How hard it is, sometimes, to keep herself focused and alert when lacking in the emotional stimuli around her that she is keenly attuned to. Even now, just by sheer inertia, so much of Energy Nede continues with everyday life because it was all it's known for 40,000 years. Even when Michael made a personal appearance at Pewter City to wake up the remainder of the shattered planet with at least three Spicules.
Laughter, smiles, companionship and self-discovery alongside the beloved Pokemon of this world, as the Kricketot that wants to be Ruth's dear friend hops in front of her and tilts their upper body to xylophone noises.
She looks down to him, if never quite head-on, because the guilt within is too strong for her to really take in the love in that Kricketot's eyes directly.
"But I don't hate that it exists." A peaceful world not meant for her. Paradoxically, in contradiction, it's the closest she's felt like to having a place here.
Anne may also spot that some of the bindings around Ruth's sleeves are very much of Nedian make - as are the gloves, on closer look. It's clear that she's found more to her liking here than just the sensation of being a place for those scared and hurt to feel like there's something even scarier they can hide behind.
(She is not free of simpler desires! Rare is it for a functional Hellion to not find some other relatable wants and desires.)
<Pose Tracker> Anne Aomori has posed.
They must be benefits of Hellionization, just like the skeletons that didn't require flesh to move. But not all the same benefits, it would seem--because Anne does see that weakness.
This 'monster' was not born yesterday, clearly.
Anne's laugh is indeed a bitter one. Perhaps not so bitter as a Hellion of Filgaia, but still suffused with emotion that does not shine through in her aura or presence. The Pokemon can shuffle as they will. Anne will be concerned only if they change their motions. Not if they continue.
Kricketot is the one to surprise her, this time. Anne watches the small Pokemon curiously, and looks back to Ruth, as she speaks of deserving once again. The Kricketot has such love for her...
"Hmmm," Anne reflects. She looks over those bindings, over the gloves. She has been to civilization.
"So you'll protect what you can," Anne surmises. "Hmph. ...Very well. You know..."
She keeps turning, "I don't put much stock in 'deserve'. We get what we have, and we have what we get. Any more, you have to reach for. Here on Nede, we have plenty. We have everything."
"...But do we 'deserve' it? No, I don't think so. We just have it."
"Do as you will. I won't stop you for now. But remember my warning. If you decide you can give in to those impulses..."
"I'll handle it."
Anne starts to walk away, her gray hair blowing in the wind.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
<poem> Where Anne turns and speaks of the world of Nede and her thoughts on 'deserve,' how Nede has plenty... and has everything. Do they 'deserve' it?
Years and years ago, a much younger Ruth snapped out of anger, guilt, and desperation to throw in her lot with the Aquvy Union. She took up arms, and somehow, the young woman who was born as a blessing to that family made herself into a curse - hundreds dead by her hands alone. The Aquvy Union, who led a bloody civil war against the Congressional Knights whom maintained that oligarchy and lives of excess. Six months after the Congressional Knights finally emerged triumphant... it all collapsed, and no one had anything but death, destruction, and the newly-scorched dunes.
To look upon Nede is to look upon what a world of those shared resources might have begun to look like, to feed into the festering guilt and shame of her part in all of it, and something about Anne's idea that they don't 'deserve,' but merely 'have...'
...
Anne makes her terms clear. If Ruth so much as decides she can give in and be the same terror that she and Damian had to flee from, the same spreading terror that turned a swamp into a warped, hellish landscape of spiritual poison...
Ruth's Kricketot follower makes more xylophone noises again, as if inquisitive.
She says nothing, allowing Anne to leave in peace. Ruth's presence is a danger not just here, but anywhere. Anne's feelings may well echo that of those few Rangers that might be inspired to greater action against the opinions of their superiors.
She may be, at best, a necessary evil - but one born of difficult, contradictory feelings that can no longer be denied.