Destiny Village ~ X-Eye Cauldron

[Chibi Pika]

Starr gave a small snort. Wow, what century was Dave from, huh. And then there was Brisa's world over here, giving people crap for, what, living in the woods? She idly found herself wondering what kind of random stuff from her world would come off as totally nuts to anyone here.

"It's not like that shit you went through doesn't matter here, it's just... not the kind of thing anyone here's gonna judge you for."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa frowned, sipped at her drink. She was smart enough to know what Starr meant by that.

"Anyone judgin' you fer yours? They oughtn’t to. I might not know exactly what yer history is, but I do know that even though it's dark, it ain't simple neither."

 

[Chibi Pika]

Starr gave an impassive shrug. "Not like they know enough to judge. And I'm not planning on changing that anytime soon." Especially not considering the new development of possible Team Rocket spies in their midst. Fuck that.

Starr guzzled down some scalding coffee. Every so often her thoughts drifted back to that cave and she had to remind herself that it was real--she seriously told Brisa what she'd done. Sure, they'd been trapped with no hope of escape. Saving face hardly mattered when you half-expected you were gonna die. But still.

And Brisa wasn't disgusted with her. She didn't even know why that kind of screwed-up situation had even happened. She didn't know any of the reasons, even if they all were hollow and worthless. She'd just... accepted it.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa nodded, and flicked her tail in thought. "That's more'n fair. I can't say as most folks, even in this world, wouldn't blink twice at the like of what you told me."

'Most folks'. Not Brisa.

...But, if the two of them hadn't been stuck together in that pit, if Brisa hadn't been tearing herself apart over her own actions, if they hadn't been cold and hungry and afraid to die... would she have reacted the way she did? She hoped so, but she didn't know. Nearly three months since they'd escaped, and though she still didn't totally understand Starr, the torracat was now undoubtedly her friend. What if they'd never been trapped like that? Might they have missed out on this entirely?

"It must be hard," she said. "Not bein' able to talk to anyone about it."

 

[Chibi Pika]

Starr scratched behind an ear, letting her gaze slide back to the wall. She hadn't had to deal with keeping it all inside back home. Not when everyone around her already knew. Her team. Her friends. And now...

"It's getting harder. What with all that shit following me here now."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

"I thought it weren't the same shit, exactly? Not the same as from yer own world, I mean. That sonofabitch didn't seem to recognise you, right?"

Brisa shook her mane to clear her head. This wasn't the heart of the issue, now, was it?

"Even so, if it's weighin' on ya... You have a friendly ear any time y'need it, Starr."

She just hoped her friend would believe her.

 

[Chibi Pika]

Starr's claws dug into the table. "I know he didn't recognize me," she muttered through clenched teeth. "That doesn't make it any easier that it's my father causing all this shit. Or another version of him, whatever you want to call it."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Holy shit.

Brisa grimaced. "Wait, you're tellin' me that motherfucker is yer own goddamn pa? No kiddin'. Ah, fuckin' salt and sand and spit, I can't even begin to imagine how I'd feel in yer position... Gods, what with him havin' that kinda power 'n' all."

Wind and weather. She imagined Jesse at his peak of power, but without any of the good intentions, only that cold avarice she'd seen on Giovanni's face. The fella was downright evil, this she knew. What she wouldn't give to land one, good, jaw-shattering hit on that mewtwo.

"But hey," she added, with a dry smile. "My offer still stands to do somethin' awful to him for ya."

It was a joke, but... she meant it.

 

[Chibi Pika]

Starr let out an unexpected gut laugh. God, yeah, Brisa had offered to do that, hadn't she? It felt like forever ago. "I fucking hope you get the chance to. Hope we both do. Who knows. Maybe these screwed-up auras will be good for that someday. Can only hope."

She leaned her back against the booth, tail swishing idly. "You might've figured this already, but... that stuff I told you back in the cave. That all happened because he..." She paused, shaking her head. "I did that because I was loyal to the team above all else."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa gave a little chuckle of her own. "Yeah, imagine it. You 'n' me, dustin' that smug bastard together." It sounded like a real thrill. There was almost nothing she wanted more, in fact.

She held Starr's gaze evenly. Her friend was putting a kind of trust in her she only hoped she deserved. No matter what Starr told her, she would hold her judgment.

"With him as yer pa, no wonder. It don't take a genius to understand what kinda predicament that'd put you in. Somethin' must've changed, though. I figure y'don't mean to say you were still with Team Rocket when you were chosen fer this mission by Diyem."

 

[Chibi Pika]

"Of course not," Starr snapped automatically, only to wince immediately afterward. "I mean... no. I left over a year ago. I hate that life. I hate the things I did for them."

And yet... if Ajia hadn't gone through with her insane plan, would Starr have ever left? Would she have betrayed Team Rocket, or just... kept falling in line, forever? The thought burned.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa weathered the sharp response. She couldn't exactly blame Starr for being terse; her memories must be truly painful.

"There's no way that prick let you walk out on him just like that," she replied, after a moment's consideration. "Not with the way he treats other livin' beings as his property."

There was a turmoil behind Starr's eyes Brisa could only begin to guess at. She... really didn't know all that much about Starr's life, even now.

"What happened a year ago, Starr? And... since then?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

Starr let out a hollow chuckle. "Yeah, that's not the sort of thing you can just up and walk away from. My friends exposed the fact that I'd tried to keep them alive. They got the rest of the team to turn against me, including the boss, so... not much of a choice but to run for it. We've been on the move ever since."

Brisa had accepted it way the hell too easily. But that was only because she didn't know the reality of it.

"You already know the kinds of things I did for the team," Starr went on, bitterly. "I probably wouldn't have left if it weren't for what happened that day."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa remembered. It was hard to forget.

"I did that. To my best friend. Tortured the shit out of her. Deliberately."

"I was afraid that... They would've killed her if I hadn't..."

But Brisa knew Starr wasn't a monster, no matter how much the torracat seemed to believe it.

"Sounds like you chose to protect yer friends even though you'd be cast out fer it if you were found out," said Brisa, carefully. "And they believed in you enough to stick with ya even with a heartless sack of shit like that out for yer guts. That... That takes courage. From you and yer friends both."

She leaned forward a little. "If yer boss was also yer pa, don't that mean you were near enough born into it? It's hard fer anyone to turn their back on family, let alone if their pa is some ruthless powermonger who'll have them fuckin' hunted down fer it."

 

[Chibi Pika]

Again with the positive spin. As if there was anything at all brave about torturing a friend because she was too much of a coward to defy Team Rocket until there was literally no choice left.

"Doesn't change that I chose to do that shit. Nothing changes that." Her mouth had gone dry. She took another drink of her coffee and half-wished it could burn. "That's all done with though. They'd already made themselves enemies of Team Rocket, screwing up jobs and such. It was safest for us to stick together."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa tapped a claw thoughtfully on the table as she took another sip. She knew by now that even when everything Starr said sounded wrong, there was sense there somehow. Starr didn't make decisions in the interest of self preservation. So when she said 'it was safest'...

"You're still protectin' 'em, aren't ya?" she said. "That's why you're with yer friends. Not to keep yerself safe, but to keep 'em outta harm's way."

She gave Starr a harder look, one of her ranger stares she learned from Sierra.

"You aren't here 'cause you wanna go on makin' wretched choices. You're here 'cause you're makin' up for yer mistakes. And now y'got an opportunity not just to do right by folks, but to fight the very bastard who put you in that darkness to begin with. It ain't mine to tell ya when you've paid for yer mistakes, but surely this is part of it?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

Starr clenched her mug tighter. "Only because they're too stupid not to get themselves into trouble."

With a defeated sigh, she went on, "You know, when I first got here, I wondered why Diyem didn't grab Ajia or Jade. They're the hero sort, not me." Everything of her conversation with Diyem before she showed up in Veritas was a blur. Was there... a reason he'd grabbed her over them?

"Well, it'd be nice if I was brought here just to fight that bastard. Would make it feel less like some kind of screwed-up joke."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

"I reckon I follow yer meanin'." Brisa hid her dry smirk of disagreement behind her drink.

This wasn't the first time Starr had insisted she was no hero, and doubtless it wouldn't be the last, but Brisa had seen the way Starr looked out for her teammates, the way she burned herself up with the effort she put in, the way she blazed like a goddamn meteor in battle like nothing Brisa had ever seen. And for all her obstinance, anger, and insistence that she was tainted by her actions... there was a rough kindness in Starr, a kind of caring that she didn't even want recognised.

But Brisa recognised it. That was why she'd let Starr pull her away from frantically trying to help organise search parties and investigate fallen meteors. She'd learned to trust Starr's judgment and work out why she was right as she was lead along by the bandana. There was no point arguing the point head on. That wasn't the way, with Starr.

"I bet you'd rather it was you goin' through this shit than them, though, am I right?" asked Brisa. "Even with that heartless bastard in play, I know you want to get one over on him and be the one t'do it. So what's got you off yer game besides the rage in yer gorge whenever you lay eyes on the sonofabitch?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

For all the times she'd wondered why Diyem didn't grab Ajia or Jade, Starr suddenly felt an uncomfortable lurch at the idea of them facing Giovanni or Mewtwo, let alone both combined into one.

"Yeah. Better me than them." Even if Ajia would've been the sort to keep the team unified and Jade would've cared enough to reach out to Darkwhite, and... And now Starr was failing at holding her shit together in the fights that mattered most.

"Then again, seems like I've sucked ass at every fight since he showed up, so... so much for that." It was such a shallow, stupid reason to be angry, but it was something concrete at least.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa knocked back the rest of her drink and signalled the bartender for the same again.

Now... What was this really about?

"Okay. So, what, you're frustrated 'cause you've wanted to dust that bastard since before he even turned up, but you ain't been pullin' the weight y'think you oughta be?"

Brisa scratched her cheek fur thoughtfully. That wasn't right. She thought back to what Starr had told her in the pit... the fear just visible in her eyes as she insisted she didn't want to talk about him. The hatred in her stare as she recognised him in his mewtwo guise.

"When you first saw him and recognised him, you charged straight for him and I joined you without a second thought. We couldn't touch him. And I figure you never coulda laid a paw on him in yer own world. You... you don't think you can hurt him. Is that it? You can't see a victory with this motherfucker in the picture."