"I can't anymore." Was an answer, quick, even if chryssa glasgow had already made up her mind. She was right anyway. Chu-e was kind of struggling too. He felt sick from overworking his body. Sick from all the stress of whatever was happening with the crystals. Of the hunt for Xernas. Of when he looked out over the water, all he could remember was seeing the city of Slateport burning; a memory from the last time he had been out to this lighthouse in particular, seen this same view.

He plopped down next to Chryssa, letting the Rilou in his own stroller continue it's nap undisturbed, groaning slightly as he did. His joints would be yelling at him later.

"Huh?" In his daze, Chu-e almost missed the question. In his daze and downward slope, the intrusive thought of another memory, over thirteen years old at this point slid into his mind - fingers dug into his face and a mouth was on his but he was frozen and - he shut that down, quick, just like his therapist had taught him. "Oh, uuuuuuh....." A cheeky smile on his face, a little worn at the edges but still a decent attempt, lit up his face. "I don't remember. I was kind of a tart when I was younger." Even discounting... the flashback, well, it was true. Who was his first kiss? Someone no-name in the back streets of Hearthome.

Better thoughts, better thoughts. Chu-e had come here because he wanted to spend time with Chryssa. He had missed her while she had been in the hospital. He wondered if she ever got those twelve dozen bouquets of flowers he had delivered. Just a fuck load of red Lycrosis flowers. He looked up online they meant 'Death' and figured she would appreciate them. Like, in a fun way. (They also meant 'Reincarnation, but that was less cool. Death was cooler.)

"Do I get to ask a question now?" He paused and thought of one, a frown pinching at the corners of his lips. "... actually, you go again. I can't think of one that wouldn't get me put on a watch-list right now."

“Ah, but nobody is watching,” Chryssa said innocently, then snapped around to look at the babies in their strollers. “Except... no... a spy, sent by the League to ferret out scandalous secrets!” She plucked the Smoochum from its crib and pretended to hold a finger-gun to its temple. Her tone rose like an actress on stage, high and arrogant. “Forget what you heard, harlot!”

The little blonde Pokemon just snuggled into her arms and the girl made a face, reluctantly cradling it in the crook of an elbow. “I suppose they’re used to a lot of noise at the Pokemon Center,” she dismissed, dissatisfied. She rocked the psychic-type without thinking, lulling it gently to sleep. “Anyway, I can definitely ask again. I have lots of questions. Like, where do you...” she paused to let the suspense build up, eyes narrowing, “...buy your clothes? Or have you ever...” She narrowed her eyes, cunning, “...been in a stage production?”

Chryssa plucked a dandelion from the grass— the first one she’d seen of the season. She twirled it between her fingers like a tiny Skiploom, sap oozing from its stem. It was a far cry from the haunting, spidery red blossoms she’d received after her accident. “Or maybe...”

Unexpectedly, her tone quieted.

“Have you ever lost someone?”

Chu-e Choi

A soft laugh, more genuine, the knots loosening from his shoulders slightly as Chu-e watched chryssa glasgow with the Smoochum. The Rilou scrunched up his face in his sleep, huffed through his nose, then just shifted before he was back to snoring. Used to loud places, indeed. At the end of it, Chu-e was more focused on the girl than the pokemon, though, happy to see her up and about.

"Online, from this place in Kalos. I liked it when I lived there." He answered, plucking his own grass from the ground, stacking the blades on his knee. The quiet 'snap snap snap' paused at the last question, the middle forgotten. Then the plucking picked up again as he thought over his answer.

".... Yeah." It seemed like that might be all, the more somber mood enveloping him again. Then a soft sigh, him tilting his head back to gaze up at the clouds that passed by listlessly. "I used to be married. My husband was... a wonderful person. Too good for me. I loved him so much, more than I've ever even loved myself." Absently, he reached up, brushed over a half hidden piercing in his inner ear. "I miss him every day."

Another bought of quiet, before he glanced back at Chryssa. It hurt to think of Arthur. Not as much as it used to, when even seeing a pokemon that reminded him of the man broke his heart. More a dull ache, one he had learned to accept.

"You know," His own tone quieter now. It was gentle, more like what one might use on a frightened deer than a person. "If you have stuff you wanna ask, I'll tell you. Won't even get mad if you ask me something weird."

“Oho, so you lived in Kalos,” Chryssa leaned forward, intrigued by the answer to her seemingly simple question. “I should have known you’d only settle for the peak of world fashion, Ji-Hoon Ki. I expected nothing less.” Her eyes shone— while she’d chosen to come to Hoenn to be more in-line with her supposed “coordinator” dreams, she’d always wanted to visit Kalos. The faraway region had so much majesty and panache— at least in her imagination. “Did you see any mansions, or castles? Someday I want to—”

She trailed off, catching herself. Something strange settled in her expression, like a bright spark fading back to gray. She didn’t have time to be thinking about someday. Somedays were for people with a future.

Chryssa didn’t have that time.

She was quieter hearing Chu-e’s answer about his husband. She hadn’t ever thought of him as a widower— he was still so young, even compared to her. But people don’t make such grand gestures at a hospital without... certain regrets, she thought, then more darkly, or personal experience. Still, the outpouring of support— not only from the man next to her, but all of those who’d shown up to bring gifts or simple company— had been... touching.

And sobering.

She hadn’t known so many people cared about her. In such a short time, with such short acquaintances. She’d come out here to make something matter, to make herself into someone people would remember. She’d wanted someone to care. She’d wanted someone to cry for her. She’d wanted to give herself away to as many people as would take her, then have that all snatched away by a whim of God. Have them feel the betrayal. Have them feel the rage. She’d come to make herself into a weapon, and put herself into the right hands to make it count.

But now, after the accident, things were... complicated.

Maybe, just maybe, she didn’t want to hurt those people after all.

“I... do have something I want to ask,” Chryssa admitted after a moment. She didn’t meet his eyes— her own were fixed somewhere faraway, unfocused and strange. She didn’t think of Arceus. She didn’t think of revenge, or grief, or bitterness. “I was wondering if you’d get upset, but you didn’t, so... I actually think you might understand.”

She took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts. “I don’t have long to live.” A pang, saying the words out loud, but Chryssa pushed on. “Not necessarily because of the accident at the church— it’s something they’ve been telling me my whole life. Arceus was supposed to cure me, but he was... selective.”

Her fingers tightened in Smoochum’s hair almost cruelly for a moment, then she forced them to relax.

“I thought I was ready, but I’m... not. I don’t want to go.” Her tone grew shaky, but her eyes were hard as steel. “Everyone’s on a timer. I just know when mine will end. And I won’t let it happen. I’m going to do whatever it takes.”

She was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice carried the ring of prophecy.

“Arceus will fall, and I’ll bring Death itself down with him.”

Sitting in the grass, littered with dandelions and a baby Pokemon snoozing in her lap, Chryssa extended a hand to Chu-e Choi . Her eyes swam with tears, but she somehow kept her voice even as she finally asked the question she’d been waiting to.

“Will you help me?”

Chu-e Choi

There wasn't any hesitation.

Chu-e gently slid his hand into hers, giving it what he hoped a comforting squeeze.

"Of course I'll help you."

It spilled from his lips easily and he found he meant every word. Chu-e's heart ached for her. Too young to have to face something like death or an end; chryssa glasgow should have been a normal girl worrying about normal things. Not killing Gods or worrying about a frail body or illness or whatever was happening with her. She hid it well.

Keeping his hold on her, gentle so she could pull away if wanted, Chu-e looked back to the clouds. To give her a moment to collect herself if she wanted. The first time they had met, he had mused that he thought if he had a child they would be like her. It was just a shame they were more alike than either of them had known before.

"I never got to see too much of Kalos." Finally breaking the silence, voice quiet again as he spoke. "I was bed-bound in a hospital in Lumiose. My view every day was just this one strip of the courtyard. Every day I would stare out and watch people. Usually people coming to visit their families... and I would wish so hard one of them was for me, even if I knew none of them were."

A deep breath, as if to steel himself.

"I only have about... a year and a half left. Maybe a little less. It's scary to have to wake up every day and know you're marching one step closer to your end." Looking back at her, there was something steely and hard in his eyes, determination. "You don't deserve to know what that feelings like, Chryssa."

And honestly, really, Chu-e didn't know that finding Arceus, that killing it, would even help. But he also knew that if one didn't have something to life for when your time was so short, it would be spent wasting away. A death before the body stopped. Chu-e would die before he took that away from her.

She didn’t know if she could stop it. Death. Calling it that, like the name of a long-forgotten deity, made it seem so much more tangible— and so terribly vast. Everyone around her had given up looking for a cure long before she’d ever thought to try; pronounced terminal before she’d even entered junior high school. They— the people who controlled her life— had turned to miracles instead, to prayer, to long-forgotten rituals meant to gain God’s favor.

Was it such a surprise that Chryssa too turned to Arceus when she stood at the brink of losing everything, but with a promise instead of a plea, an ultimatum?

“The world is cruel, isn’t it?” she asked, quietly but clearly when some time had passed. Her hand still lay in Ji-Hoon’s like a bird in its nest, small and sedate. The sun had half-dipped below the horizon, the wind stirring her hair. “The two of us here, both slated to meet our ends. It seems contrived, somehow.” Her eyes glinted darkly, and she lowered her gaze for a moment, brooding on the possibility. Could this be Arceus’s work? Since she’d declared her intentions, there had been little interference from the other side. Life had gone on—mundane, normal, and dangerously quiet.

She had a feeling that a storm was gathering somewhere far away, and they were standing at its forefront.

Rather than withdrawing her hand, however, her grip strengthened. “Do you still have that knife in your pocket?” she asked, producing yet another one of the strange, uncomfortable questions she’d promised. Her gaze drifted and then returned, suddenly bright again. “I’ve always wanted to make a blood oath! I think this is fate, Ji-Hoon Ki, but I want to make sure I’ve sealed it with my own hands as well. Not just the will of an invisible God.”

Chryssa stood, returning Smoochum to her baby stroller before she marred the baby Pokemon with human blood. She’d hung her cane on the side of the stroller and removed it now, sliding an inch of metal from the sheath with which to break the skin. The cut on her hand from the stone altar where she’d first met Ji-Hoon had long-since healed, but she felt it was time to open it again. “Ji-Hoon, by the way—”

Her knuckles grew white and she formed a trembling fist, flecks of blood beading between the cracks in her fingers.

“I’ll be there for you in the hospital. Or anywhere else. When it’s time.”

Chu-e Choi

One knife? Chu-e carried no less than five on him, hidden in every crevice he could stick in an outfit. His favorite one was pulled from his pocket, a pink one with painted butterfly wings on the handles, flicking it open. There was no hesitation again, to press the blade to his palm and slice it just enough so the blood welled up in the cut.

A twisted feeling settled in his gut, much like how it had from lying to Zac Ramsay for so long about who he really was. He stared at the blood, starting to pool in his palm, before he squeezed it into a tight fist. To think that chryssa glasgow, who was facing her own death, so much younger, would promise him she would...

"I... I can't do this unless.... Chryssa. I'll do this with you, but only if you know the truth about me. And then, you can make that choice again, okay? With what I tell you, I'll... understand if you change your mind." He sighed, looking tired, lifted his eyes to look over the waters again. The overlap of the burning city was reflected in his memories.

"My name isn't Ji-Hoon Ki. My name is Chu-e Choi." He wondered if she would know the name. Two years of his absence from the public eye had made many think he was dead, after all. A man famous for being a top player in the toppling of Kanto.

“Chu-e Choi?”

Chryssa tipped her head to the side. Why did that sound... familiar?

She thought at first she was just remembering the time she and Zac Ramsay had come over to Ji-Hoon’s house to review his dating profile pictures. After Ki had run out of the house to pursue a cryptic vision, the technology-inept redhead had gone on trying to update Ji-Hoon’s personal information and they’d stumbled across it. Maybe Zac hadn’t thought anything of it at the time— everyone had their online persona and taglines, after all— but the second name returned to Chryssa now like another vision from Absol, a warning of impending doom.

“I think I knew that, actually. I saw it somewhere when I was at your house.” Chryssa sounded thoughtful. “Is that why your Pokemon kicked us out? I suppose we shouldn’t have been snooping when you weren’t there.” It was as close as he’d get to an apology under the circumstances. Besides, something else was still bothering her. 

Chu-e Choi.

I do know that name...

Chryssa’s parents hadn’t believed in television, claiming it showed false images and wasted time better spent in devotion to The One. But she’d seen her fair share in doctor’s waiting rooms, wall-mounted monitors where reruns of classic children’s cartoon programs had been interrupted by breaking Sinnoh news briefings. Headlines. Footage of places far away, burning in the night, and artist’s renditions of the instigators sighted at the scenes. Criminals. Terrorists.

Chu-e Choi.

“Do you mean to tell me you’re actually Chu-e Choi, from the news? From the attacks in Kanto?” It tumbled out incredulously, the girl’s eyes widening as she tried to put the pieces together. “Is that why you were in the hospital in Lumiose— did you go there after what happened?” At the time, it had seemed like a faraway problem, a vague, passing story to bring her the briefest entertainment in her moments between treatments. Kanto hadn’t had the resources by the end of the attacks to support an international man hunt, and by the end, most of the people involved in the assault had remained at large.

And now here she was, standing right next to one of them.

Strangely, she didn’t withdraw her hand.

“So Rocket is back. I saw the press conference from the hospital.”

Chryssa didn’t flinch— small, young, and steely as ever, she looked her friend in the eye.

”Are you their leader?”

Chu-e Choi

Ah, so chryssa glasgow did know who he was. For Chu-e's part, he was a little cowed at the revelation and questions. Zac Ramsay hadn't been able to put the pieces together right away with just his name alone. While he wasn't exactly the same man he had been during that time it didn't erase the blood from his hands. Everything he had done in the name of Rocket. The pain. The towns razed. If he could go back and do it over, he wouldn't, but...

"Yeah. That very same Chu-e Choi." Avoiding her eyes, he lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. "No, I was in Lumiose for something else. It's... complicated." How did one explain that you tried to leave Rocket, got tortured, and then willingly went back after.... yeah, he was a messy bitch. It wasn't worth explaining right now. They would get too lost in the sauce of details.

"No, I'm not the leader. I'm... well, I'm the second in command." Which was still pretty high up there. He wouldn't say more than that, that was part of a pair, because he wasn't willing to even chance outing Cillian Quinn. Yet also, if he was being honest, he would give her a few more of the details since she had asked.

Team Rocket's second-in-command. A bold claim, and one Chryssa had no reason to disbelieve. Implicitly, she trusted Ji-Hoon. 

And she didn't blame him. 

Not for Kanto, not for lying about his identity, not for hesitating to make promises when so much was still hidden. 

"Perhaps this is a strange reaction," the girl said after a moment. Her words came slowly. "But I don't think your past matters to me. That's not to say the past is behind us, necessarily." Her eyes glittered. "But for people like us, whose future is... short, and getting shorter... well, I say we don't have the luxury of getting lost in it."

She snapped her fingers. Her cut palm was starting to sting. "The present is what matters. And if your present is the second-in-command of Team Rocket..."

Her voice lowered, becoming soft. "I say, congratulations."

She wondered how much more he had done than just what the news reported to obtain that title. How many years of his dwindling life had been spent in pursuit of it. She wondered if it was worth it. She wondered if he was happy.

Then again, perhaps happiness was best found in making the difficult choices. In doing things without fear of consequence. In taking risks for your own sake, not by the hand of some monstrous fate. 

"So what do you plan to do with that power, Chu-e Choi? Will you help me find immortality? Will you help me slay God in his sleep? Will you still shake on our blood oath, or should I go find a band-aid?"

She smiled, exuberant. For her, there was no choice to make.

"Because I'm still waiting."

Chu-e Choi

The revelation, the question of his power, that is something that Chu-e could answer with confidence. His voice wouldn't waver. His eyes would bleed flames and steel and vindication when he met hers.

"I plan on making this world a better place." In his own way. By cutting the rot out of the League by force if needed. Some forests only grew after being burned out. The League, in his opinion, was overdue for one of those fires.

The knife in his hand, previously limp, sliced his palm just as quick. Taking chryssa glasgow's hand, something would settle between them.

"To our enemies! Because, by hell, they'll need it." And he would squeeze her hand, just a little, before pulling away. Each other's blood thick and seeping.

".... okay, now I think we need band-aids."