Destiny Colosseum ~ Training Rooms

[Chibi Pika]

Starr nodded grimly. "Yeah, I know. Thoughts like that are always there. I'd be a fucking hypocrite if I told you to just get over it." Would be so, so nice to forget, though. (She could feel the glare on her back from the shadow, and she ignored it.)

Aaaand mentioning the chosen had had exactly the effect she'd expected. She had to smirk a little at that. Even if she still couldn't see for the life of her what was so great about legends.

"Yeah, they sure are. My friend Ajia's been partnered with Mew for a while--at least a year. They're both sickeningly optimistic and always trying to help people, so y'know, they're perfect for each other." She made an exaggerated and not-too-serious disgusted face. "And Jade..." Her voice trailed off for a moment, throat clenching. "She'd actually just partnered with Lugia before I left. She's about your age, too."

Jade had wanted to stay out of the war. Starr trusted that much. So why the hell did Lugia have to pick her?

 

[Flyg0n]

Mew and Lugia? His heart beat a little faster. What would it feel like to ride on Lugia's back? Or to be partnered with Mew? He couldn't even begin to imagine being partnered with such powerful legends. "That's crazy," he said, the slightest hint of jealousy in his tone. Though by the sounds of it, it didn't happen under such great circumstances. "Kinda cool though. A shame I guess it didn't happen for fun though, did it?" he mused. He didn't know the exact cirumstances of what was happening on her worlds but it didn't sound great.

He paused letting the silence rest for a moment. "Do you ever think those thoughts will stop? That one day it'll just get easier to be better and it won't feel so... hard?"

It had to, right? It was supposed to. It was supposed to get easier, and he was doing it wrong because it still felt so hard.

 

[Chibi Pika]

"Yeah, it's a pretty shit deal from what I can tell. I think Ajia likes it though--the girl's insane," Starr replied with a scoff.

As she'd thought, the kid was totally the sort to be psyched by something like that. If he'd been in her world, he totally would have been the sort to join the rebel team and get picked up by the legends. If he'd survived.

And then he asked the question. The one she'd been asking herself for the longest time. Would things get better?

Things had been better for a while, right? She'd gotten to travel around Johto with Jade. Make up for lost time. It'd been nice. And yet... the past always, always came back. The pain she'd caused would never heal. And no matter what she did, she kept causing more.

Starr put on a reassuring grin. She was good at those.

"Yeah. It will," she lied.

 

[Flyg0n]

Koa nodded in response, though he couldn't muster much conviction behind it. Maybe she believed it but... what if she was wrong? "I hope you're right," he said quietly.

She's lying. You'll never get better.

"I mean... I guess the only thing we can do is try. That's what Brisa always says," he added with a chuckle. "Just gotta keep trying," he said, the last words almost a whisper to himself.

He had to believe that. And maybe if he kept trying... it would make it true.

 

[Chibi Pika]

"Yeah. Occasionally Brisa's right about things," Starr replied with a low chuckle. "Just goes to show I need to listen to her."

Starr stretched her arms over her head and hauled herself up from the bench. Now the soreness from the training was starting to catch up with her. Not to mention she felt drained.

"I'm starved. Wanna go grab some food? Something tells me you didn't come here to train, anyway." From the look on his face, she was right.

Starr grabbed her bag and the two of them made their way out. At some point the shadow had vanished from sight. She could still feel it staring at her though. Starr glanced over her shoulder just to make sure it was gone for real and raised a middle finger to the empty room before shutting off the lights.

<><><>​

 

[Negrek]

Rocky let Nate sleep, albeit not for nearly as long as he wanted to. It wasn't even noon the next day before he was knocking on Nate's cardboard box and reminding him (like he'd forgotten) that they were supposed to train with Mia and he couldn't lie around all day. Which only made Nate more inclined to do so, just to spite him, but after an hour or so he had to admit he wasn't getting any rest like this anyhow. And he couldn't help but be curious about what the familiars were capable of now, too.

"You better not start in on some shit about me being nice to that dumbfuck mightyena," Nate said as they made their way through the halls under the colosseum. "I'm through with that anyhow. Ain't like I want to be friends or nothing like that."

"Okay," Rocky said. "I don't think Mia would care anyway."

Yeah. That she wouldn't.

Rocky bounded ahead and into an open training room. Maybe he was hoping to try some basic attacks out on a substitute or something, get that few minutes' advantage over Mia. Nate snorted, but he was smiling as he followed the familiar on through.

 

[Dragonfree]

Mia arrived not long afterwards, following the sound of Rocky's battle cries to the correct room.

"Hi," she said. "Do you want to get hotdogs? I want to taste them properly but Dave is busy."

Dave probably didn't want her to tell them what he was busy with. He was still upset and acting weird about Soda. Maybe he could finally do the therapy before they went to the moon. She didn't know if it would work but maybe even if it didn't fix his brain it might reduce his stress levels. She had found a book about it, and a lot of what it said sounded weird and stupid, but it also said the environment was meant to be calming, and that made sense.

 

[Negrek]

Rocky's ears perked up as Mia tromped into the room. He looked up from savaging one of the substitutes with weak bursts of fire. "Hi, Mia!" he said. "Umm..."

"I mean, sure, there's plenty of places to get hot dogs around here," Nate said. "Pasta Plaza's bound to have some good ones."

"Don't you want to battle first, though?" Rocky burst out.

 

[Dragonfree]

"We can battle first. The order doesn't matter," Mia said. "I don't think we need to eat food. Being able to taste it but not need it is good."

There was a lot about being properly hatched that was good. Would battles feel like more now? She still didn't think she could feel pain. "I wanted to be an Eternatus, but this is good too. I look almost the same but I'm stronger."

 

[Negrek]

"Okay, great!" Rocky said. He bounced over into the arena, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. "I think you're right that we don't need to eat. I still haven't felt hungry yet! I don't think! I don't know what it would feel like if it did. I want to try a lot of foods now that I can taste them, though. Hot dogs will be good. I've never had those before!"

"You're been able to taste shit for like barely a day. Pace yourself," Nate said. "You're lucky we still got the God Squad bankrolling us." He didn't even want to think of what kind of bill a bunch of familiars testing out their new senses were going to run up.

"It is dumb that we didn't get to turn into eternatus," Rocky said. "Good thing I can still do... this." His arm slowly morphed into one of an eternatus' snakelike heads. It nipped at the air near Mia. Apparently he was impatient to start the battle.

 

[Dragonfree]

It was lucky the God Squad paid for everything. Where did they get all the money, to be able to keep up all of Team Spectrum for all this time?

Mia’s eyes narrowed in an instant as Rocky’s arm extended toward her. She lashed out with her scythe in a powerful downward slash. Maybe it’d cut the head off his arm.

 

[Negrek]

As Mia had hoped, her strike sliced the eterna-head off what had once been his arm. It dissolved away in dark wisps of ectoplasm while Rocky's arm shrank back to its usual size and shape. The familiar didn't flinch, standing with head tipped to one side, concentrating. "I felt that," he said after a second. "I don't think it hurt, though. Hurting is supposed to feel bad, right? That didn't feel bad. It didn't feel like very much. It felt like..." Rocky waved his hands hopelessly, blowing his cheeks out in exasperation. "It was weird," he said finally. "I don't really understand what things are supposed to feel like. Maybe I'll figure it out if I keep feeling them."

"Okay, well, don't get all excited about people cutting bits off you," Nate said. "It's fucking weird." He settled down on the sidelines, leaning against one of the substitutes Rocky had been savaging earlier. It had a pleasant smoky scent now. God, he could doze off right here, even right at the edge of a fight. Rocky really must have some kind of infinite power source, if he was this fucking energetic after yesterday.

"Do you want to try getting hurt?" Rocky said, grinning while his gauntlets glowed bright. He had to be doing that on purpose, right? He had to know he was being a fucking weirdo. Nate watched lazily while Rocky sent some bursts of his new, more-powerful fire at Mia.

 

[Dragonfree]

Mia watched the Eternatus head dissolve, satisfied. She might have liked it more if it stayed tangible, bleeding, but when she played with Lucy she couldn't cut anything off at all, so this was still better.

She didn't really want to get hurt. But it would be interesting to try. She stood still, tilting her head, as Rocky's flames enveloped her, her ectoplasm bubbling and fizzing at the heat in a way that was... irritating, a bit, but not painful. She could only remember pain very indirectly, output from Dave's mirror neurons watching the other Mia scrape her knee or hit her head, but it was not that.

Her shape solidified again as the flames died down. "That's interesting. We should feel more things. Or taste them." She lifted a scythe, looked between it and Rocky, and then licked the arm and the blade. The black ectoplasm didn't taste like much, vaguely artificial, a little burnt. The glowing blade, though, had a fizzy, almost electrical taste. Interesting. "What do you taste like?"

She was pretty sure that was the kind of thing Dave would tell her she should not ask people, but she didn't think Rocky would mind.

 

[Negrek]

Dear God. This wasn't exactly the kind of training session Nate had been expecting. He watched Rocky enthusiastically licking himself and seriously wished he were back in bed.

"I don't really taste like anything," Rocky reported after a moment, sounding deeply disappointed. "That's boring. I wonder if there's some way to change that? Do the glowy parts taste different?" Further investigation determined that no, not really, they were just kind of warm.

"That's fun, though!" Rocky said. "Temperature is fun. Ooh, I like weather. Rain is fun. Now I can feel the rain! And go swimming. I know the other Rocky likes to swim, and I want to see what it's like!"

"You're a fucking infernape," Nate pointed out.

"No, I'm not."

Okay, so he kind of had a point there.

"Is there anything you want to try?" Rocky asked Mia. "Hot dogs--and anything else?"

 

[Dragonfree]

"The other me liked meat," Mia said. "I could probably eat raw meat now. It's not safe for humans unless it's been cooked to sixty-five degrees but I probably can't get sick in this body." That was intriguing. "There is a lot of food made with a lot of salt and fat to taste good, like hotdogs. We can probably get a lot of different food in Pasta Plaza. It has many places like that."

Swimming... Mia frowned. "I'm not sure I can swim like this." She experimentally focused on her scythe and watched it transform into something like a human arm, then into a flipper instead. "Being able to change form is good. I like being a Scyther but sometimes it's better to be something else. Could the other you always do that?"

 

[Negrek]

"Yeah! There's a lot of good places in Pasta Plaza," Rocky said. "I guess we could go there, if you don't really want to fight." Nate couldn't tell whether Rocky was disappointed by that or not. He was sure the guy wanted to fight, but running around trying loads of foods sounded right up his alley, too.

"The other me could change, too, but I'm better at it. A lot better!" Nate was expecting Rocky to demonstrate, but it looked like he'd gotten distracted by another thought. "The other me used to eat raw meat, too. They liked hunting! I guess we can't really do that here, though. There aren't any normal birds or fish or anything."

 

[Dragonfree]

"I would like to hunt but I can only pretend to with my sister. Do people let the other you hunt?" Dave had always been very insistent that she could not. He didn't mind if she killed flies, but that was not very satisfying.

 

[Negrek]

"Yes, of course!" Rocky said. "Their mom is an absol, and she hunts, too. That's normal for pokémon where they're from, so even if the other me isn't a pokémon, they probably learned because Absol would think it was important. I don't know for sure." Rocky gave Nate a reproachful look, like he was at fault for not knowing every goddamn personal detail about that asshole.

"The 'other him' is a fucking weirdo," Nate offered. "I ain't surprised Dave don't want the, the 'other you' snacking on, like, sparrows and shit."

"I wish we could find some way for you to try while he were here," Rocky said contemplatively. "Maybe if you hunted a substitute or something? Like one of the ones that moves around but doesn't really have a personality or anything. I don't know..."

"Right, life just ain't complete until you've done at least one murder."

"Nobody asked you," Rocky said mildly. He turned back to Mia. "Well... do you want to go get food? Or do you want to try some of your attacks?"

 

[Dragonfree]

Substitutes? "That could work." Soda was good at making Substitutes. Maybe if they got the parasite out of him like Dave wanted, he could make some that would be interesting to hunt. That would be nice.

She thought over what she wanted. "I think we should fight and then get food. We're already here."

She took off the ground, wings buzzing. Was her Air Slash any better now? She slashed in Rocky's direction, producing a blade of wind. It looked stronger than before.

 

[Negrek]

"Wow!" Rocky dodged out of the way of the air cutter. "That is better! I bet it's real sharp." He paused, then said idly, "I wonder if there's different kinds of pain? Like does it feel different if you get cut or burned or electrocuted?"

Nate sighed. "Rocky..."

Rocky ignored him. "That air slash looked real sharp. I bet it's a lot stronger! My fire's stronger, too. And I bet--I bet I punch harder, too!" He pounced on Mia, fists swinging.