The malaise pressing down your shoulders breaks, like a tide returning out to sea.

You can't help it. You can't help but hunch over and grasp your stomach. Fight the urge, cover your mouth as you struggle against what rushes up your throat. You can feel it in your guts, pushing up, over and over.

You really can't help it at all, but it comes all that same.

"KYA-HA-HA-HAAH!! That's so disgusting! That's so sick! What a fucking joke!!"

You drop to your knees, pressing your forehead into the dirt as you double over, letting it all out.

A protracted laughing fit, as you try to process his amazing comedic genius.

You let it spill everywhere. Bleed yourself, letting all the venom run from your veins. All the poison in your system is regurgitated all over the cave floor. You laugh until it hurts, and then you laugh some more, savoring this moment, savoring the pain.

This is the first moment you've laughed this hard in years, laughing til it disappears completely. Laughing until you can catch your breath again.

It takes minutes.

Only then, laying on your back splayed out, do you look back up at him, huge grin with tears streaking your vision. It's hard to manage, but somehow, you speak again, panting for breath.

"You're... SORRY?!? You think a Rocket gives a shit about the things they've done? You can't even do something wrong without apologizing to me for seeing it, and you think you're worse than them!? You're pushing forty or something and you're still a chuunibyou! That's so funny, that's so so so funny! Man... man..."

You've seen the worst this world has to offer.

Corruption that runs from the lowest criminal to the highest rungs of society, trafficked drugs, pokemon, people, and the way they coerce you to stay quiet by inflicting violence and torture on anyone who dissents. It's starve or worse if you have any arguments at all. You've seen them murder people right in front of you for the sake of illustrating a point. You've lost your dearest, closest friend to that madness.

And you've had to pretend through it all that you were fine with everything. Because you saw what they did to their own who showed any weakness, you managed to hold it all back. You've seen what it's like in the city under the city, that underground crawling with the worst filth you can imagine, the ugliest parts of Kanto.

This just doesn't hit quite the same.

This man imagines himself worse than them, and maybe that's true in some sense. Those wild pokemon didn't need to die. But through it all, everything you've ever seen, you've never seen a single one of them stop and sheepishly apologize after the fact.

That alone, that moment of weakness and vulnerability, is more human than the most cowardly Rockets.

He's no monster at all, he's just a broken man who's searching for control. This is the only way to get it, to kill those who are powerless. He probably gets off on the thrill.

You understand now. Utterly and completely, through and through, this man is nothing like you.

Nothing worth hating. Certainly not harmless, but not a threat.

"You know there's people who will never get better, no matter what you do, right? What'll you do when you meet them? Will you kill them too?"

You pick yourself up off the floor. Wipe away the dirt and the grime.

You've gotta ask.
After all, he killed those wild pokemon for no reason at all.

So what happens when there's something on the line, something worth fighting for?

That's when you show your true colors.

Til then, no matter what he does, no matter who he kills, it all doesn't matter. If it's not for any reason at all, it's all just painted on, something that runs when it rains.

---

CARGO
+80 MR