[PRP] Similar Experiences

[Gwennythe]

Gummy continued to stare straight ahead even though Rem moved, rolled, to the side. It didn't look like his gaze had tracked her at all, though, after a moment, her did have a slightly out of sync slow blink.

"Something instead of gyms..?" She wasn't sure how Luke would know such a thing, and she wasn't completely sure she understood the kind of thing he meant, either... Johto had the Pokéathlon... Did he mean something like that? She shook her head slightly and pulled a face.

"But... if they don't wanna be there and there's a lots of them who got forced to join then how come they can't just all fight back and stop being Rockets?" Henrietta's head was now filled with imagery of people 'forced' to do bad and be part of Team Rocket, and in her slightly simplistic, so far, world view, that left room for them to 'revolt' against the team and help the trainers beat them...  

[Suudonym]

Rem's ears snapped sharply forward at the… well, it wasn't quite a reaction. She was beginning to suspect that this was actually some kind of mechanical doll.

"I'm not sure," he shrugged. "I talked to Alder about it, something to keep strong trainers interested in staying in Kodo. I don't know if anything will happen, though." Though he certainly hoped it would. The last thing Kodo needed was its most talented defenders jumping ship out of boredom.

"I don't know how many there are that don't want to be Rockets anymore," he confessed, "or how many would even be willing to fight back. That organization is pretty scary, and fear is an effective way to control people. There could be hundreds of Rockets just like the ones that attacked us in Kanto, fully prepared to put down anyone who they think is a traitor. Maybe they think just getting by in Team Rocket is better than risking being killed for freedom." Who knew what kinds of things they did when they weren't out thieving pokemon or ruining League functions. For all any of the trainers knew, there was plenty of perfectly safe and peaceful work that could be done within the walls of the organization - wherever those walls might be.  

[Gwennythe]

Gummy was, once more, just sitting completely still. Apparently he didn't blink often either.

"Oh man, you got to talk to Alder about stuff like that?!" Henrietta looked a little bit stunned. "Oh... Oh man I hope something does!" She imagined contests, or pokéathlon-style events.

Luke /was/ making sense but it was very hard to accept.
Every time some event- that she'd been looking forward to a lot- was ruined, it had been due to Team Rocket.
"Would... they really think that?" Henrietta, who had barely thought about anything she did, and usually saw things quick black and white- bad people doing bad things and such- now found herself faced with a new view of things...
People doing things /despite/ disagreeing with it.
She wasn't sure how to respond.  

[Suudonym]

The attentive ears fell backwards in a pout. Very rapidly, Rem bored of the interaction. Her next effort to get a reaction would have to be an attack, but she wasn't supposed to attack friends' pokemon outside of battle. What a conundrum.

Luke knew little about contests and had never heard of the Pokeathlon attraction, but he certainly agreed with the sentiment. Kodo needed something - and quickly - to qualify it as a genuine League region.

"I'm not sure," he said, a subtle regret in his tone that he couldn't offer better answers, "but I know that survival is probably the strongest instinct anything that's alive has. Most people wouldn't put themselves at risk of death if there was any other option available." It was indeed a dismal prospect, the idea of who knew how many Rockets forced to labor for a cause they didn't necessarily support simply because of a bad decision - or even a decision they weren't able to make for themselves.  

[Gwennythe]

Gummy slowly closed his mouth, then opened it again.

Henrietta looked down then kicked at the ground a little.
It kept being 'difficult' to deal with death and injury and to think about those things; sure she'd quite likely not think ahead to proactively deal with risk, but Team Rocket had a habit of hurting her friends, which made her have to think, and now, also, she learned that some of the people in that evil organization didn't even want to hurt people like her friends...
A whole other layer to deal with.

"So... We gotta go and only get rid of the people in charge of it all, right?! We gotta go and help the league to get them and then all the other people won't have to do it anymore?" That seemed like it might make sense...  

[Suudonym]

Rem pushed to her feet and slowly moved to take a seat at the Aggron's feet, wide eyes not leaving the Totodile in case it decided to do… anything. If this was a test, she kind of felt like she might have failed.

Luke waited as she moved through her thoughts on the matter, taking the brief silence to make his own considerations. It was really something tragic that someone as young as Henrietta had to think about things like death and morality. He didn't know much about the standard pokemon journey, but he was sure they were meant to be much more fun.

"Honestly," he said, "I have no idea if it's that simple, but for now I think it's probably okay to think of it like that. They said at the conference that Team Rocket has been driven out before by teamwork between trainers and the League, so… Working together with each other and with pokemon, there has to be something we can do."  

[Gwennythe]

Water trickled out of the Totodile's mouth; almost as though he'd used Water Gun for about a millisecond and then forgot what he was doing. It seemed to 'wake' the pokémon up for a moment though, because he snapped his jaws twice and turned his head to look just to the right of Rem's face.

Luke's words reached her but didn't discourage her, instead they continued to bolster the idea and relieve her of the complicated, and confusing, politics that might be involved in dealing with Team Rocket.
The new plan was simple, sure, but Henrietta liked that about it. The fact that he now seemed to tell her that similar ideas had worked before (and maybe some vague memory of Goldenrod's history) fired her up enough that she looked like she wanted to go and carry out that plan right that moment. Her eyes were brightly determined and her fists were clenched.

"Awesome! We can do it then! We'll find them and then we'll kick the butt of who ever is in charge and we'll win and then they'll be gone! Gummy and Winglet 'll totally get in there and we'll all kick 'em out and help everyone!"  

[Suudonym]

Rem started at the unexpected indication of sentience, scampering around behind the Aggron to appear at his other side and fix the Totodile with an unnerved stare. Tartarus snorted in mild amusement at the Jolteon's behavior. She had the type advantage, after all. What was she so skittish about?

Henrietta's eager enthusiasm was a little worrying, but he didn't want to outright tell her to be less optimistic. She at least seemed invested in the idea of working in a group, so it didn't seem that she had any plans to try and hunt down the organization herself. He gave a nod, "For now I guess we just have to have patience and hope the League can get some useful information out of the Rockets they arrested… And until then, we can keep working hard to become stronger trainers so we're ready for when the battle starts." He still faintly hoped that they wouldn't have to be involved in more fighting, but that seemed little more than a pipe dream at this point.  

[Gwennythe]

The Totodile was, once again, unmoving. Just staring at the new spot, just to the right of where the Jolteon had been before.

Patience wasn't something that Henrietta did /too/ well really, and there was some part of her that just refused to understand why the information hadn't already been gotten; why the captured Rockets, if not Rockets by choice, hadn't just trusted the League to help them; the league was awesome and powerful after all...

Striving to be a stronger trainer was something that Henrietta could absolutely do and believe in though; she did that on autopilot by now!
"Yeah! We'll totally be ready for that! I'm gonna train /so/ hard! They'll be really sorry for hurting everyone!" For hurting her friends; Rosie, Dove... Sera, though she didn't really know her... and they'd knocked out Dith and Yuri and nearly gotten Luke himself in trouble because of how he looked like his brother... The young trainer seemed quite determined.  

[Suudonym]

Rem lifted a paw as if in preparation to move again at a moment's notice. When that notice didn't come, she turned her head up to Tartarus and complained loudly at the Aggron. She wasn't doing anything wrong, right? Or was she? She sure didn't think she was.

Luke allowed a smile, fully supportive of such enthusiasm in its present application. "Right," he replied, nodding. "If we have to wait, we might as well fill that time doing something productive." Though if he had to guess, Henrietta certainly didn't seem the type to train just because it was killing time that would be wasted otherwise.  

[Gwennythe]

Gummy seemed to be, once again, frozen in place. Until he blinked that odd, slow, blink of his anyway.

"Waitin's boring anyway! Training's fun though and it's awesome 'cuz pokémon get stronger and they know it!" She peered, then, suddenly, curious about the big Aggron again, now that she was feeling better about the more serious subject.
"I bet he's super tough, right?!"  

[Suudonym]

The Aggron grumbled to Rem to let the subject go. The little electric-type was far too high-strung for her own good.

Luke followed Henrietta's attention to Tartarus, smiling at her appraisal. "I don't know about super tough, but he's definitely the strongest fighter on my team. We've been working together for a long time." He turned to regard Gummy with a gesture, "He's a Totodile, right? He was with you at the convention, too; he your strongest partner?"  

[Gwennythe]

"Uh-huh! He's my first pokémon! My starter!" Henrietta piped up, happy to talk about pokémon; and especially about Gummy. "He's really super tough; we won our first battle here cuz of him!" She tilted her head to look at Tartarus again. "If you've been together a long time, was he your starter? Ooh! Can Steel types be a starting pokémon where you're from? That would be awesome!"  

[Suudonym]

Luke leaned down to crouch in front of Gummy; the water-type's mannerisms were a bit unsettling, but given that Henrietta didn't seem worried about it, he chose to let it go without comment. "That's pretty good," he said, thinking to his first battle in the region. He couldn't remember it on command, but he was confident that it couldn't have gone well. He shook his head lightly, drawing a luxury ball from his side and releasing a teal and white Flareon, "This is Mieu, my first pokemon." The fire-type blinked up at the other human and gave a sound in greeting. "He was more like a pet for a long time before he was a partner, though. Pokemon training doesn't really exist where I'm from, so we don't have any starters."  

[Gwennythe]

The Totodile blinked, first, his left eye and then his right eye, as Luke crouched in front of him... Then seemed to resume doing nothing at all.

"That's weird!" Henrietta decided to tell Luke, bluntly, as he revealed that pokémon training wasn't much of a thing where he was from, and that Grand Ile didn't really have starters.
"Oh! Awesome! Hi Mieu! Man, a Flareon! They're so cool! Was he an Eevee when you first had him?!"