Pokémon: Forever Wounded

No Angels in Wyndon

"When did you get so cold, Rosie?" Nessa asked as soon as they were sat down. She did not drink the tea offered to her. Fair enough. Nine times out of ten there would have been poison powder in there. Poison powder, a substance produced by bug, grass, and poison type pokemon. Whittles down at you slowly. High enough dosages of it will kill you. The pokémon league authorised a pretty measured dosage of it. It chipped away at your stregnth. She wished the things she had spent years reading about had actually mattered, but instead all of the fun facts about pokémon moves like poisonpowder just ended up mattering when discussing the dosage needed to kill someone who might or might not have been one step out of line. She'd spent years poring over books and reading up to become a professor, and it was all but guaranteed. All but.

Then her dad got too big for his boots.

Got too big for his boots, and tried to take over the whole region. War of five years, then he got shot by the Iron Cult the other year. Rosie then just had to take over the family powers, the estate, the chairmanship, all of it, and had to put on hold her goals. She was feared, she was powerful, and she wanted precisely none of this. It was a cruel twist of fate. She had spent her whole time training to become a professor, distancing herself from her father, and now that her father was finally out of her life, dead and buried? Well, she had to take his role. She had to become him. Her heart had hardened. 

She turned her head away from Nessa, and glanced at herself in the mirror. Herself, but ten years apart, stared back in her mind. A look of disappointment and horror. The woman, hands full of blood. But she had to. If she wasn't grey, then someone else would bring darker days. There are no angels left in Galar, and she wasn't about to take the advice of dead people. She thought about the man still in the alleyway. He pleaded, alright. She had kicked his throat, let him croak out his pleas, it didn't change her mind. She had spoke levelly to him, 'Cruel world, huh?  Nothing personal. I'm just the one who dismisses you.'  She usually didn't speak to them at all. There was nothing emotional to her about murder. She usually took no pleasure in it, she usually felt no sympathy, either. She saw it as a legitimate tool to make sure that what happened happened, and make sure that her and the people she cared about were safe. It had been routine for her, she did it almost unconsciously. Silencer on the gun, pressing it against his heart, unlit cigarette in the mouth, half-hoping lung cancer would come any day now, pull the trigger, light the cigarette, and walk away. Yet something felt different this time, and she didn't like things going differently. Things not going how they should have is what ended her up in this mess. She could at the very least keep things in order. 

Something about that man had sent her the wrong way though. Maybe it was what Nessa had said. She then remembered Nessa was waiting for an answer. Right. That. 

"Wyndon doesn't tolerate warmth, Nessa." 

Nessa couldn't for the life of her, figure out Rosie. She didn't take any pleasure in killing, she didn't really feel the disgust from it either. She would kill a man or a woman that had done something that they shouldn't, but oddly drew the line in the sand for children. She ruthlessly ran Wyndon, but she didn't even want the power that was given to her. She felt much more at home in the small amount of free time she even had these days, she spent poring over books and letting her lifelong dream be relegated into a hobby she was finding less and less time for by the day. 

Nessa scoffed, "Is that what you tell yourself every night before you go to bed, huh?"

Rosie bristled, hand instinctively lowering to the holster. If it was anyone but Nessa, they'd be long, long, long dead. She took a deep breath, she didn't even need nicotine this time. She closed her eyes, and took her hand off the holster, "You just watch your tongue, watergirl."