“Difference is, I don’t wanna be an avatar or fall on my knees before them.” He shrugs, trying not to think about Josh in too negative a light. There’s a lesson in what happened to him, for a man with the eyes to see it. [break][break]
“You were a beat cop way before you were a Champ. You ever help out Vice? Arceus, man, the look in a horse head’s eyes. That’s what Thomas, Illeana, and all the other ex-avis I’ve met have. He wants to find something as strong as Yveltel, she wants to find Palkia. I dig the ambition but…” His voice has an uncomfortable cadence to it. “I don’t want that. I’d rather be strong enough be a champ without a god in my corner.”[break][break]
What a beautiful sky. He never saw a sky like this in Slateport, so full of stars, so full of light. Full of splendor. He wants to reach out and grab them.[break][break]
“Funny like a joke…the more I think about it, the more I realize…what I wanna say to ‘em’s not too different from what I wanna say to you when I reach the mountaintop.”

[break][break]

+ kyle lopez

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

“If I were in your shoes, I’d have done the same thing. Hell, practically everyone would. Big Bird and his kennel are way nicer than most things that go bump in the night.” He considers the ones he previously mentioned. Yveltel, the Tapus, and Palkia all sound like rotten deals in different ways.[break][break]
“But to answer your question…if someone tossed me a heroin needle and told me to shoot up, I’d say ‘no thanks’.” He keeps a straight face until the sentence is out. “None of the greats had gods in the corner – the champs. You can look up all their footage. They’re all great in their own ways, and they don’t need anything ‘cept skill.”[break][break]
“But…I think you turning it down like you did shows a lot of character. Consider that no one else we know about has told a god no. I dunno what I’d do if I was in front of one, Lopez. When you sit down and talk about maybe, everyone likes to think they’d stick to their guns. But…”[break][break]
He looks up at his friend, smiles, and bumps his chest.[break][break]
“…I wanna think I’d do what you did. That’s what made you champ material.”

[break][break]

+ kyle lopez

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

“Ain’t about archetypes or any of that. I’m just a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve.” He makes another smore of his own. After a meteor almost destroyed them all, he nearly let himself go. Gained twenty pounds. It was only a surprise call in the night that put him back on the right track. Chewing over the smore, he resolves to never get to that point again…[break][break]
…but damn if this thing isn’t tasty. Why crave things like esoteric power, authority, or even drugs when the world has pleasures like this?[break][break]
“You know, I always wonder about that. If Gabe really understood what he’d be getting himself into if he did manage to take your spot.” He goes from friend to concerned parent so quick, fretting for someone long in their grave. “Being one of the big players here means…well, it means a lot of things. Gods pay attention to you. You end up a poster child for the League. I don’t like doing those TV interviews they like doing with gym leaders. Arceus knows how you feel, since you’re a household name.”[break][break]

[break][break]

+ kyle lopez

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

“You read too much.” Navy says with a smile and cheeks hot from the fire. “If I paid to see a movie and the main guy was like me, I’d want a refund.” It’s not self-deprecation. Not wholly. “There’s loads of people in the League who seem like they’d be the main character, if this all guy made into a movie after the fact. Any one of your Elite 4. One of the kids like Eris or Hideo. List goes on.” Navy goes out on a limb at this point, assuming Kyle knows everyone in Hoenn.[break][break]
“Or that girl that rolled up to my gym the first week it was open. Vanilla Kingsley. She’d make a good main character.” He’s dodging the point. He knows he is. There’s something to be said in there, about how he babied Gabe.[break][break]
“…Turning down interviews is hard, man. Media’s really insistent.” He says, a greenhorn celebrity through and through.

[break][break]

+ kyle lopez

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

“Careful, Lopez. Careful now.” Leaning forward, arms crossed, Navy looks at his friend with a smug, self-satisfied smile. “You might just be pegging yourself as a main character if you put it that way.” Raising his fingers one by one, he starts naming points.[break][break]
“A humble cop. A chill guy. Someone who wants nothin’ more than to finish work so he can go home to his loving husband. Someone who favors Hoenn’s local dog breed over somethin’ over the top like a Garchomp or Urshifu. The kind of guy you could have a beer with while shootin’ the shit over the future. We watch different stuff, but the overlap’s there on one point: the line between best friend and main character is thin. Maybe which way that coin lands is totally random. Maybe it’s the whims of the writer or Arceus himself.”[break][break]
He leans back again, sipping his beer. Navy tries not to crack a grin as he says what comes to mind.[break][break]
“All I’m sayin is…they better get Clint Westwood to play me in the Kyle Lopez biopic.”


[break][break]

+ kyle lopez

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

“Nah, nah, nah. See, that’s the best part.” Navy’s smile is the grinning smile of a shark. It’s reminiscent of Vortigern’s smile when the black dragon is in one of his playful moods.[break][break]
“You already had your big death scene. Like Ho-Oh himself, you rose from the ash! Hoenn’s champion! In perpetuity!” [break][break]
A raised finger. A satisfied smile. The finger wags.[break][break]
“Unless you help me talk Goode into letting you out of your contract after I’ve settled into my spot as Champion next year. A regular ole Champion, not top champ. Not that it much matters.” And, once more, he’s pensive. Leaning against his log. Serious as the heart attack waiting for him at the end of all those sodas, burgers, and s’mores.[break][break]
“Whether you wanna be or not, you’re a legend yourself. If we survive long enough for the next generation to pop up, they’re gonna look at you guys like people back in the day looked at the heroes of the past. The ones that inspired all the video games, books, everything.”

[break][break]

+ kyle lopez

[attr="class","pokeclass"]

“What d’you want me to do that I’m not doin’ already?” Were this anyone else, he might sound angry. Why Kyle, he’s amused as he asks the question. “I’m takin’ challengers left n’ right, diving into the Ultra Sea, fighting Rocket. Seems to me I’m doing everything I can do without an army. Which…” He contemplates his next words. He’s a war chief at best. No fit councilor. His star is rising one way, and one way only.[break][break]
“…I mean, you get Goode to give me an army, I’m happy to march on Sootopolis.” It’s an idle fantasy. A daydream. One great conflict to end everything. Life doesn’t work that way, as much as he wishes it did. [break][break]
“Is it easier for you to see people like they’re characters in a game, man? You miss all the little cracks that make ‘em so pretty if you see ‘em that way. …except the cowboy. The day we meet a silent, badass cowboy trainer, we both know we’ve met the real champ.”

[break][break]

+ kyle lopez

[attr="class","pokeclass"]