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YOU'RE ALL THAT I SEE

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[attr="class","freiwantmid"]CHARACTER FACTION team rocket

[attr="class","freiwantmid"]CHARACTER RANK grunt

[attr="class","freiwantmid"]FLCL haruko haruhara

[attr="class","freiwanttop"]ABOUT THE CHARACTER

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What does it mean to live in the footsteps of others that came before you? To dawn upon the earth with a destiny predetermined; an absence of free will. [break][break]

The cult of Joy. [break][break]

How she hated it, how she hated them. Mother and auntie and cousin and sister. Whatever, they weren’t actually related. The elder nurses just perused orphanages on the off chance that a pink-haired baby girl would be an occupant there. Like an Easter egg hunt, her “mother” told her. Then they’d settle those infants into the pouches of their Chanseys and shelter them from the world as it was known to the others.[break][break]

Her world as it formed was a uniform, cheery advertisement for pokehealthcare. The only reliable change in this repetitive nightmare was the distance between her chin and the counter where mother worked. Beyond that, it was the same dialogue. The same hello, thank you, farewell. The same horrid song reverberating through the same lifeless walls of their PokeCenter. Was her mother’s face paralyzed into a permasmile? Yeah, yeah it probably was. [break][break]

On her fourteenth birthday she was given an egg. Take care of it, said mom and auntie and sister and every other pink-haired nurse freak chained to the system. Joy couldn’t understand why she felt so, so alienated from them (this being before she uncovered the truth of their shared origins). She tried to like it, truly. She forced herself to smile at every trainer that came in to see her, swiveled daintily to inject that trainer’s Pokémon into their weird microwave that magically healed them all. Was it not cancerous? No, don’t think about it. Just, don’t.[break][break]

The egg hatched into Happiny. She convinced herself they could talk to one another telepathically by the time her sixteenth rolled around. The circumstances which had been wrought upon her were absurd enough that the idea of communication with this pink baby via mind messages wasn’t so hard to believe. She convinced herself Happiny hated this place as much as she did even though all the little thing did was sing and bounce around and smile all the goddamn time. It’s a ploy, Joy thought. Of course it is. Never let them on to you, right? Oh, what a smart little baby! Together they smiled at the trainers. Together they swiveled daintily and irradiated their injured Pokémon. Those smiles were simply cover-ups of course. Clearly the two were suffering. Mother never suspected though. That bitch. [break][break]

One day, just shy of eighteen, she found a pack of cigarettes in the trash can outside the Center. She fished them out. The brand was called “GET OUT”. A sign? She fished a cigarette out of the box. One remained, limp and watery. She placed it to her lips and sucked in, letting the taste tickle her throat. This became her next active protest. When Mother was away, she would greet trainers with the thing hanging sadly from her mouth. She found that it deterred some trainers. She found it allured others. Cue the great escape.[break][break]

”So are all you guys related? And how comes I never see y’all outside of these weird little hospital things?” She had been a rough and tumble looking gal who took a light to the cigarette that dangled from Joy’s lips. The livened cig made her lungs rebel against her. Had her coughing like she’d never coughed before. Joy looked up through watery eyes at the lass who was now grinning wide, chuckling.[break][break]

It was standard practice to withdraw all of your Pokémon before entering a center but she had sauntered in with her Drapion out for all to gawk at. Mother nor auntie nor sister nor cousin were there. Joy was alone. And she answered simply. She didn’t know and she wouldn’t. Not until she plain asked mother. Why had she never asked before? Oh, right, because her vocabulary had been robbed from her. To create inquiries beyond the “Do you need to rest your Pokémon?” Seemed absurd. Shocking.[break][break]

Like how do you formulate the words? Joy zapped the chick’s Pokémon and asked her name. Holy shit, a bonus question?! [break][break]

”Bugger.” She had said. Joy thought it was a beautiful name. Bugger… fast forward to that evening. She mustered up the bravado to ask mother what the deal was. The real deal. Lo and behold she got her answers. Stunned into silence, everything about her self-loathing and disgust finally made sense. [break][break]

I’m leaving, then! She cried. And so she did. And so she did…