[attr="class","Navypog4-title"]
MORE HUMAN[break]THAN HUMAN

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@

[attr="class","Navypog4-subtitle"]
THERE IS A FIRE IN ME[BREAK]
A FIRE THAT BURNS

[attr="class","Navypog4-pkmn"]

[attr="class","Navypog4-post"]




Two hundred faces look at him when he takes the stage. They look like they’ve seen a ghost. Civilians see the League’s most wanted man, a traitor to the cause, a known terrorist. Rockets see someone who has managed to make himself universally reviled by all of their bosses.[break][break]
Reaching for the mic, he slumps against it. Sunglasses hide the eyes beneath, and the story they would tell. The band that was playing, once his band, back away. They wonder what he will say.[break][break]
“This is…probably the last time I’m ever gonna get to play.” He admits.[break][break]
“Rocket wants me dead ‘cause I’m the only one that cares.” A lie he’s willing to tell himself.[break][break]
“League wants me gone ‘cause they’re scared of the world I wanna create.” Through a clouded world, he grasps that perception of events.[break][break]
‘And you know what I say? Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em both.” His admission is a hateful thing. He has always felt alone, no matter his side. To be at the top of the mountain is a sad affair. It is to be alone, it is to look down on all below you with contempt.[break][break]
“I remember, when I first started playing, I’d read all these reviews. Bout my music. Remember how they’d say my music didn’t say anything. It didn’t have anything to say. Empty noise. Well…they were right. Just wanted to make noise for the sake of it. So before I go, just wanna sing one song for you. Let you know who I really am.”[break][break]
Beneath the sunglasses is contempt. Few will understand. Fewer will let the kindling he places spark into a fire.[break][break]
He turns back, takes a guitar from the person standing there. He does not resist. Each of his old bandmates look at each other, but ultimately decide to see where this is going.[break][break]
He shows them his soul. He shows them aimless, blind hatred. Fists swing at the world with wild abandon. Who they hit, who they trample, doesn’t matter. All he wants is for the fire to start. He wants to tear. Destroy. Climb.[break][break]
He wants to look at remains and play in the warm ashes of better men’s dream. He wants to collect those ashes, hoard them like trophies. He wants to march, to be important. To be somebody. With that guitar in his hand, bathing in the energy of two hundred souls, all there for him, he feels alive.[break][break]
His words are admission and confession. There is no promise of a better tomorrow, only an assurance that, inevitably, it will crumble once more.[break][break]
When it is done, he smashes the guitar, shatters it against a wall in one blow. It drops to the floor. He wears a hateful face, he speaks to a crowd that would kill for him.[break][break]
“We have a city to burn.”

[attr="class","Navypog4-bot-1"]

notes about this post

[attr="class","Navypog3-title"]
MORE HUMAN[break]THAN HUMAN

[attr="class","Navypog3-tagged"]
@tag

[attr="class","Navypog3-subtitle"]
THE DESIRE TO DESTROY[BREAK]
TO DISRUPT, TO LOSE CONTROL[BREAK]
TO REBUILD, AND THEN[BREAK]
TO TEAR IT DOWN AGAIN.

[attr="class","Navypog3-pkmn"]

[attr="class","Navypog3-post"]





He is coming. Navy feels it through the link. A swarm comes for the League. Standing outside of League HQ, he realizes that he alone will be here to defend it. Already, Ever Grande burns. The riot has started. A foolish man wearing a hateful face has made matters spiral out of control.[break][break]
He marches up the hill, blood on his hands. Space-Time has not dug its claws into Beast Navidson the way it has Sheriff Navy. He still looks young. He wears the face of his father, and wears it with unmistakable pride.[break][break]
“How’d I know I’d find you here?” The younger man asks, cracking his knuckles. All around him are his Pokemon, monsters that have honed themselves in endless war. These are the younger man’s Einherjar, his warriors to fight at the end of the world.[break][break]
“Never got the chance to thank you, guy. You beat the shit out of my dad. Realized then, all I’ve gotta do’s fight. Be strong. Everything will work itself out.”[break][break]
“Is that really what you think?” An older man with the weight of near fifty years on his soul asks. “That all there is to life’s being strong?”[break][break]
“Sure as shit beats being weak. Look at you. I see those Ultra Balls on your belt. Feel that sygna. You’re strong, too. You’re…” Navy feels the beast aggressively press the link. Blinking, the young man steps forward.[break][break]
“Not even an Elite 4? A gym leader? Man. Got no ambition, huh? Happy licking FERNANDO SILPH and the rest of the council’s feet?”[break][break]
“Happy to help people.” He defends himself from himself. “Dewford’s a nice town. People always overlook places like that. Happy to be there, keeping them safe.” Pacing, he knows what inevitably follows the talking. When he’s talking to himself, there’s only one way that this can go. “From people like you.”[break][break]
“Man…and you tell yourself you wanna be champ.”[break][break]
He throws a punch. Navy raises his left hand on instinct. It catches the fist, but he can’t control his scream. It is a newborn nebula of pain.[break][break]
“Maaan, you really let Gav and Zev do a number on you, huh?” Laughing, he throws another punch. This one catches Navy on the cheek, sending him back onto the ground. He tries to catch his breath, but the younger man is already on him. He’s hit again and again. The Pokemon circle around behind him.[break][break]
Navy crawls away, stands back up, laughs.[break][break]
“Man,” he says, laughing with blood in his mouth, “Baki was right.” That gives the other pause. “I really do look like Dad when I fight.”[break][break]
“Don’t ever say that shit again.” Another punch. Navy dances back from this hateful thing. “Nothing like him.”[break][break]
“Yeah? Then why the hell are you doing this? You don’t care any more than I did, during the Three Days War, or that expedition that almost got people killed by Regirock, or Sootopolis. You only care who you can fight.”[break][break]
“I’m fighting the forces of Arceus damn entropy. The League consuming itself.” Another punch. It takes Navy in the chest. Anticipating the hit, he clenched up. It hurts far less than it would have.[break][break]
“Yeah? What ‘bout the Dark Triad?” He croaks. “Or Eternatus?”[break][break]
“You sound like that bleeding heart.” He dismisses Naomi Sato and her quest to save the multiverse. “The fuck does saving every world matter if this one’s gone to shit?”[break][break]
Another punch. Navy sprawls on the ground. Instead of getting up, he laughs. He laughs like they’re just two kids having a playground fight.[break][break]
“Funny…I said pretty much the same thing to Silph.” Yet they both know the words bring them to different conclusions.[break][break]
“Why aren’t you fighting?” The beast roars, kicking him again. “Fight back!”[break][break]
“No.” Navy curls up, taking it. He’s taken worse. “Not after what I’ve turned you into. Someone who’d kill his own brother.”[break][break]
“Wow.” His younger self mocks him. “Gabe’s another bootlicker. You two’d get along well.” Another kick. “Shame it’s just not meant to be. Shame yours died at Sootopolis.” Another kick. “Shame you were too much of a bitch to be there for him, if you care so god damn much.”[break][break]
“Yeah…” He’s hurting so bad. He hurts just like he did when his father came home drunk. He took all that hatred into himself, bottled it up. He watches it explode in the harsh, aimlessly evil eyes of a younger man.[break][break]
“I can’t…change the past. Shouldn’t. Wouldn’t…” Coughing, Navy stumbles up again. Something is broken inside him. He bleeds. “…wish I could. Damn, I wish Gabe could be alive. Wish I could’ve been there with Melody and Kyle sooner. But…if this is the only way Gabe and me’d both be kicking it…”[break][break]
Reservation.[break][break]
“Guess it’s okay things turned out the way they did, or if it’s me who bites the bullet instead of him.”[break][break]
“Fight. BACK.” The archangel punches. The sheriff takes it on the chin. His younger self is getting worn out, his fists are too tired to swing. He remembers being this young, being a young buck spending himself against Kouji Matsubara in Dewford, a lifetime ago.[break][break]
“I fight what needs to be fought, son.” He spits out blood. “You’re just a kid having a tantrum who’s got lots of people killed. Not gonna dignify you with a punch.” He’s seen what happens down that road. He’s seen what attacking his father gets him. Not again.[break][break]
He feels an albatross slip free from his neck. It sinks down like lead into the sea of his soul.[break][break]
Entei tackles the younger Navidson from behind. Gabriel is right there. He looks from the tackled beast to the weakened, bearded man.[break][break]
“Gabe.” Navy croaks, crossing the distance on hobbled feet.[break][break]
“Who-”[break][break]
“Gabe.” He hugs his brother. He cries at the sight of him. “I’m so proud of how you turned out, kid. Even with a shitty brother holding you back.”[break][break]
“Navy?” His brother reluctantly hugs him back.[break][break]
“Don’t…don’t know…what your future’s gonna hold, but you’re strong, kid. Strong enough to get through anything. Don’t know if your world’s gonna just go away…but I want you to know, somewhere out there, there’s a Navy who’s rooting for you. You’re a good man.”[break][break]
A rift opens behind him. An Unown pulls him back through. It’s time to go.

[attr="class","Navypog3-title"]
MORE HUMAN[break]THAN HUMAN

[attr="class","Navypog3-tagged"]
@tag

[attr="class","Navypog3-subtitle"]
THE DESIRE TO DESTROY[BREAK]
TO DISRUPT, TO LOSE CONTROL[BREAK]
TO REBUILD, AND THEN[BREAK]
TO TEAR IT DOWN AGAIN.

[attr="class","Navypog3-pkmn"]

[attr="class","Navypog3-post"]





He’s back in his home. Outside, snow falls. Back home, alone. Father Winter sits in Navy’s armchair, playing with a coin.[break][break]
“I can see it in your eyes. You want answers.” He cuts Navy off before he can ask the questions any intelligent man knows is coming. “Instead, I’ll give you a freebie.” The Unown nudges one of Navy’s own pokeballs forward. Out comes a Togetic, who sees his trainer’s sorry state. A wish heals Navy back into shape.[break][break]
“A little tip. You both wore sync stones. You have the same soul, you and yourself. If you want to do something only that other you could do, tonight’s the only night you can do it.” The man stands up to leave.[break][break]
“Merry Christmas.” And with that, he is gone.[break][break]
Navy thinks about whatever the mysterious stranger could mean by those words. He stands up, stumbles into his den. There sits a guitar and amp, gifted by kyle lopez. Testing his left arm, it feels as if all the nerve damage is gone, for now.[break][break]
He sits, and he plays the guitar. Never in his life will he play this good again, but for tonight he plays like he was made for this task. A warrior plays at being a bad. A man who can only destroy endeavors to create. When he is done, he knows he has somewhere else to be.

[attr="class","Navypog3-bot-1"]

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