"Beckett," was her curt, nonchalant reply.[break][break]

She fell into step behind him, walking in the length of his shadow as she studied him from the back. The Kanto veteran had a stoic presence about him, she'd always thought -- a misleading calmness of demeanor that shrouded the sheer depths of his cruelty from view.[break][break]

Even his voice, so even and level, hid the depravity behind the genteel mask.[break][break]

"I wanted to inquire after Admin Cross," she opened, glancing up at him with such intensity he could likely feel her stare boring through the back of his skull. "I encountered him in the medical bay recently. The results were... harrowing, to put it mildly."[break][break]

Her own voice remained level, too. Calm, as he ever was. There was nothing to betray the intensity of emotion that day had awakened in her, save for the way her heartbeat had begun to speed up as she prepared to speak again.[break][break]

"I wondered if you were better informed of the situation than I."

[attr="class","ooc"]THEO BECKETT[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Explain it to me, then."[break][break]

Her reply plunged into an icy, accusatory tenor.[break][break]

'Relax,' he'd said. As if she wasn't already the picture of restraint, fantasizing about acting on the violent impulses this discovery had awakened in her.[break][break]

Fire kindled the worst of fears in her, and jayden cross possessed the same liabilities that she did.[break][break]

To torment that Ruinous Avatar was a promise that, one day, THEO BECKETT would torment her, too.[break][break]

"What was expected of him?"

[attr="class","ooc"]THEO BECKETT[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Which instructions? Do you mean the recent event in the Silent Icelands?"[break][break]

Hazily, she recalled the way the Admin had acted on the battlefield, but so much had occurred she hadn't paid his rogue behavior much mind.[break][break]

Clearly THEO BECKETT had been paying their latest Avatar close attention.[break][break]

She entered his office and took a seat without asking, presuming this familiarity between them when they truthfully shared none. Her eyes scanned the room before settling on his tall figure, considering him.[break][break]

"Did you believe your techniques to be effective?" she asked drily. "Or will they be made to continue until they are?"

[attr="class","ooc"]THEO BECKETT[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

She received the cigarette between two fingers, letting him light it if he so preferred. Otherwise, her hand would extend awaiting a match.[break][break]

Nicotine did nothing for her anymore, but sometimes the memory of it was enough to slake addiction.[break][break]

"You could have killed him," she remarked idly, watching as the tiny flame flickered to light the cigarette. "Fires have a way of getting out of hand, in my experience."[break][break]

She blew out a ring of smoke towards him, watching it ripple out in the confines of his small office.[break][break]

"If we lost such a precious asset, what do you think the consequences would be, hm?"

[attr="class","ooc"]THEO BECKETT[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Everyone is disposable," she continued, her emerald eyes sharpening into focus, "but not everyone is replaceable in the same way, no. Those are two different concepts, Beckett."[break][break]

The wisps of smoke gathered around her in warning, but she ignored it. Her experience had not been forged in Rocket, as his had, but it was nonetheless experienced forged in the art of survival.[break][break]

There were always hierarchies of power: those who could abuse power successfully, and those who could not.[break][break]

She'd been the latter long enough to know the difference.[break][break]

"Chien-Pao is like Wo-Chien. They are hungry, gluttonous creatures in active pursuit of Avatars. Should Cross and I die, they will simply find another suitable vessel for their ends. Chi-Yu and PENELOPE LIVY have proven they choose for individual reasons, not for ideals."[break][break]

She dangled the cigarette between her fingers, cocking her head at him.[break][break]

"If you killed Cross, Chien-Pao would go hunting for another being capable of giving it what it wanted. You could kill an ally to gain an enemy. I'd call that a consequence."

[attr="class","ooc"]THEO BECKETT[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Why do you think I tried to kill him at the Cave of Origin?" she asked him pointedly. "I understood the pact he was being dragged into."[break][break]

Death was more merciful, in some ways, than a life tied to another being's will.[break][break]

She took another drag, letting her thoughts marinate in the silence. Another cloud of grey exhaled from her lips, settling in the room between them.[break][break]

"Once the pact has been made, though, you make due. Yes. I have been working with him, to the best of my ability."[break][break]

The memory of bloodstains on pure white snowbanks briefly filled her mind, an unnerving contrast to jayden cross's numb response to his own injury. He didn't understand the cost of his power in his raging battle against PENELOPE LIVY, but she did.[break][break]

It took a toll. Her battle against freya morningstar and FERNANDO SILPH certainly had.[break][break]

Her lips curved into a semblance of a smile, one far too sharp to convey warmth.[break][break]

"My late husband's family used to breed Tepigs into Emboars. Did you know that? They're an aggressive species. You have to mind how you handle them when they're young, and still forming their understanding of the world."[break][break]

She clicked her tongue, burying the conclusion of that observation with another.[break][break]

"Cross is still in the infancy of his Avatarship. What we teach him now will hold weight later."

[attr="class","ooc"]THEO BECKETT[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"You don't really believe that, do you, Beckett?" She tilted back her head and laughed, a sardonic tinge to her amusement. "Do I seem such a meek and obedient creature as that to you? Come now."[break][break]

He couldn't pretend to think her blindly acting on Walsh's orders, not when he'd revealed his true thoughts of her loyalty during their last discussion.[break][break]

She wasn't possessed of such a short and fickle memory. Grudges were lasting things.[break][break]

"Humor my analogy a moment." The cigarette rested on the opposite side of a tray on his desk, sprinkling ashen dust as she tapped it once, then twice, before allowing it to settle there. "If you only punish a Tepig in its infancy, then it will learn to fear and to resent you. It will flinch and it will recoil at your approach, but for a time, it shall be obedient."[break][break]

As she spoke, her green eyes flitted to meet his, holding his stare with silent severity.[break][break]

"Yet once it comes into its power, that Emboar shall turn on you. Violence begets violence." She rested her chin on her hand, examining him. "You must ensure that the hand that strikes, is also the hand that the creature eats from. That your words soothe as much as they torment. That is how such a creature bonds to you -- through being rewarded for their suffering."[break][break]

A sharp and terrible clarity had dawned on her when she'd first discovered this horrific truth: that she had been conditioned in this exact same manner by the man she'd pledged herself to. Only unmasking that truth's ugliness had broken its power over her.[break][break]

"Human beings are creatures like any other. We can be trained in such a way that we ache to please those who make us suffer most."

[attr="class","ooc"]THEO BECKETT[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]