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Julia's smile took on a rare sardonic edge. "Nah, it totally was. I wasn't thinking. But it's okay. I've gotta get better about that."

[break][break]Isaac went quiet when Julia asked where he'd been that day. Her fingers ran through her Pokémon's fur as she waited for an answer, and her mouth fell into neutral. The silence was just getting uncomfortable when Isaac finally answered. So he'd been on Mt. Pyre because he hadn't wanted to be where people were. Julia nodded, mouth twitching into a momentary frown.

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[break]"Yeah. Me, too." She remembered meeting Shalin Nariya on the battlefield and hearing that she, a civilian, had been conscripted into this war because of her adventuring experience. Shalin was strong and capable, no doubt about it. But she shouldn't have been forced to get involved with this. Nobody should have.

[break][break]"But I volunteered. I wanted to protect people, even if it meant having to fight Rocket head-on." She sucked in an unsteady breath, and Momo nestled into her, trying to comfort her. "Someone threw a Molotov at a house. A house, Isaac! If the citizens hadn't been evacuated, someone could have gotten hurt! All because of some energy source beneath the town? Was that worth endangering innocent lives to Rocket? And what was up with trying to stop the Primal Points from firing? The whole region was gonna be destroyed! Even Rocket had to know that meant them, too, right? So why? What was the point?"

[break][break]Momo chittered softly in Julia's lap, and Snuffles looked up with a concerned snort. Julia looked startled, then shook her head, as if trying to dislodge the anger and frustration stuck inside. She went back to petting her Pokémon, letting that calm her.

[break][break]"Sorry," she said with a feeble smile. "I guess I've been holding that one in for a while."

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Who were the soldiers of the Hoenn region? Sure, Hoenn had a proper army, but so many of the people that Julia knew at Littleroot hadn't been part of it. Nearly the whole Fortree Ranger family had been there, as had a bunch of other Rangers from other cities. Not to mention civilians like Shalin and who knew who else. Why? Julia had a bad feeling about following that train of thought.

[break][break]She focused instead on the positive part of Isaac's words. "I just wanted to help," she said with a soft smile. "I'd want others to do the same for me if Fortree got attacked or something." She didn't usually get humble like this, but what else was she supposed to say, especially when she still had such strong, mixed feelings about the whole thing?

[break][break]There was nothing positive about what Isaac said next, though. Her smile fell. It was like the reverse of what they had discussed back when he and Blackjack were still different people to her: Yeah, Rocket took advantage of people down on their luck and made them do terrible things, but some people in the organization were genuinely awful. Isaac thought they deserved whatever happened to them. Julia found it hard to disagree.

[break][break]"It's hard to tell which is which sometimes, though," Julia said. "'Cause now I'm thinking, did that person throw the Molotov because they wanted to or because they had to? It's not like I could just ask them."

[break][break]Isaac's pleas clutched Julia's heart. She looked down to Momo in her lap, who stared back up at her worriedly. Again, Julia focused on her Pokémon's fur as she tried to soothe over the hurt inside her. She forced out a chuckle. "I guess I didn't think that one through, either. We're still technically enemies, kind of. It's not like we can just share things like that."

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The word "war" had been floating in the air for a long time now when it came to the conflict between the League and Rocket, something just out of reach that Julia hadn't tried to grasp at because war was a scary concept. She'd just let it be, assuming that its harsh reality would never become her own. But now it had crashed down on her like a lead weight, and she'd just stood there because it seemed like the right thing to do.

[break][break]All things considered, Julia had been lucky. The only Rocket she'd had a one-on-one confrontation with had deliberately held back to scare off and then given her a first-aid pouch. Even the Primal Point's explosion had left her with nothing more than cuts, bruises, and the need for a replacement prosthesis. How she had escaped a head injury, she may never know. But would she be so lucky next time?

[break][break]She really hoped there wasn't a next time. She didn't trust herself to not want to help if there was.

[break][break]"Yeah, that's a good point," Julia said about the bomb-in-the-hand thing. "I know I said I should work on thinking before I do something, but I guess sometimes, not thinking actually works out better." She sounded a bit too happy about that revelation. Snuffles oinked what sounded like agreement.

[break][break]That levity only lasted for a moment, though. She nodded seriously as Isaac finished. "Yeah." There wasn't much else she could add to that. An open heart, a sharp mind, and a safe body were all really important, especially when things got stressful. Julia knew she was good with at least one of those. She'd gotten better with the last one over the years since her accident, but the second? She wasn't so sure. That usually didn't bother her. Julia Davis pushed through life with determination and hope, and it had worked out so far. It had to keep working out. It was the only way she knew how to live.

[break][break]Despite her facetious chuckle, that gut punch looked like it pained Julia, too. Still, she managed a smile at Isaac's compliment. "Me, neither."

[break][break]Julia's eyes flickered wider open for a moment at Isaac's request. She didn't answer for just a second too long. "What position?" She had a feeling she knew, but she didn't want it to be true.

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"Good thing I'm good at winging it." It was still hard thinking of this in terms of battles and war, but Julia could at least take pride in her capabilities. Always better to focus on the positives than the negatives, if you asked her.

[break][break]But the painful reality that Isaac couldn't keep operating as a vigilante within Rocket forever made that difficult. Julia wanted to tell him to quit and just do his own thing, but she stopped herself. She'd tried that once before. It hadn't worked out too well. Besides, now she understood that he had people he wanted to protect in there. She wanted them to all leave, to fill Rocket with nothing but monsters so she wouldn't have to worry about taking them down, but it wasn't that simple, was it? None of this was, and that frustrated her.

[break][break]She turned away and went uncharacteristically silent. Her hands stilled on her Pokémon; she couldn't even look at them. In Mauville, she'd said that she and Blackjack would never stop fighting. But when faced with the reality of war, of what it meant to truly fight a friend, she hesitated. She'd seen the injuries that people had come away with. She didn't want herself or Isaac to end up like that. She didn't think she could hurt him like that.

[break][break]So Julia did what she did best with hard thoughts like these: She redirected.

[break][break]"You know, the weirdest thing happened at Littleroot." She still couldn't look at Isaac, but a small smile played on her face, and her fingers began combing through her partners' coats again. "I went to stop a Rocket—a blond guy wearing a half-mask, which honestly wasn't a very good disguise—" She giggled a bit at that. She figured she'd recognize Cade Atreides if she ever saw him again. "—and he told me to get lost. Said the battlefield wasn't a place for someone like me or something. I didn't exactly listen."

[break][break]She finally half-turned to look at Isaac. "He could have really hurt me. He even sent an Avalanche down at me." Something painful flickered in her eyes, but it was gone in an instant. "But he was just trying to scare me off. He could have hurt me, but instead, he just ran me off. I'm kinda embarrassed about it, actually." She laughed self-derisively.

[break][break]"That wasn't the weirdest part, though." She finally sat up to fully face Isaac again, her serious expression tinged with lingering confusion. "When we ran into each other again, I'd been knocked to the ground. It could have been a lot worse, but I was still hurt. He could have just ignored me or, heck, even tried to hurt me more. But instead, he gave me a first-aid pouch so I could patch myself up. He said he didn't wanna see me die.

[break][break]"Do you know him? Do you know if he got in trouble for that?" It was one part genuine question, one part hoping for a chance to make a point.

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Julia was a bit disappointed that Isaac had never met that other Rocket before, but what he added to that had her confused. "What do you mean?"

[break][break]She waited for him to elaborate on the "jam" he'd been in—or multiple jams, really—but he fell silent. His eyes looked far away, like he was recalling something painful. Maybe it was a lot of somethings. For a moment, she wished she could read his mind. Watching him like this made her feel like she was still wet behind the ears. Before Isaac, Julia's encounters with Rocket had been black-and-white ordeals, the good guys stopping the bad guys. But now that she knew Isaac's true identity and had been saved by another Rocket, things were different. And she had a feeling they'd keep being different from here on out.

[break][break]"So what happened?" she asked when she couldn't stand the silence anymore.

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The agony in Isaac's sigh drove into Julia's heart like a stake. She wanted to tell him that it was okay, that he didn't have to tell her if he didn't want to, but she hadn't even gotten a breath out before Isaac said, matter-of-factly, that one of his Pokémon had died protecting him. Julia's mouth hung open limply. What was she supposed to say after that? She didn't say anything. She just listened.

[break][break]Sure enough, the name of the former Head Ranger was one that Julia knew well. She'd only met the woman once, but that one meeting had left a good impression on her. What Isaac was saying about her strengthened that. And what he was saying about his own actions further proved that he was a good person who didn't deserve to be stuck with Rocket.

[break][break]Her still-open mouth sucked in a gasp when Isaac revealed how he'd lost his eye. At first, she didn't understand what Isaac meant when he said "It wasn't him that did it," but then she remembered the riot in Mauville and the enraged, reckless Josh Devlin who'd pushed her away and could have hurt people if Isaac hadn't intervened. Julia wished she'd been strong enough to stop him instead of just stomping away like an angry child. Isaac had been that strong for his friend, and he'd paid for it.

[break][break]Tears were leaking from Isaac's eyes. Julia couldn't fix things. She couldn't go back in time and stop all this from happening. But there was something she could do.

[break][break]She coaxed Momo off her lap, stood, and walked to Isaac with purpose. Then, without warning, she hugged him.

[break][break]"I'm sorry."

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