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[attr="class","hawkins-title"]i spoke to the devil, he said everything would be fine

[attr="class","hawkins-text"]He sits on an outcropping of concrete, smoking his distinct green-colored cigarette. The komala sleeps soundly in his lap.[break][break]

“No. Everyone’s gone.”[break][break]

The intersection was quiet—the only thing that seemed to move was the roiling smoke in the sky. But no one had left the premises. All the evacuees and emergency personnel lay amongst the rubble like spokes on a wheel, still and in their place.[break][break]

Hawkins exhales a plume of smoke. “...And you’ve come back alone.”[break][break]

The statement sounds pitying. It clearly doesn’t refer to the old lady and her delcatty.[break][break]

And with a final, weary YAWN from the komala, soon they too would fall asleep.[break][break]

In some futile mercy, the indeedee catches them as they fall. Hawkins doesn’t move. He mulls it over for half a minute and whatever he wants to do, he decides against it. He leaves before Petra can return, footsteps long gone and the komala having curled up into true unconsciousness, drained from afflicting scores of people.[break][break]

Scout, the woman, and her pokemon are simply asleep. Many hours later the official death counts would be released for Petalburg; they would reveal, amongst the general carnage and war crimes, a most mystifying event: that everyone else in that intersection had died that day, all eighteen passing away peacefully and with warm expressions on their faces.

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PETRA MONROE SCOUT WILDER [break]
tl;dr puts scout and co to sleep. leaves instead of killing them before petra gets back. komala is too tired to participate in the event ('KO').[break]

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[attr="class","hawkins-title"]these walls don't run from anything

[attr="class","hawkins-text"]Through multiple fascinating, albeit unethical and un-rigorous experiments, it has become clear that a garganacl's salt reserves can have purifying effects on wounds, not so dissimilar to the age-old practice of pouring copious amounts of high-proof grain alcohol on an open injury.[break][break]

This needs further feasibility testing, which means more source material, which is thus why Hawkins is here today, strolling casually about with his trusty indeedee among the salty giants. For Science.[break][break]

hhD_wYNy

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n/a

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[attr="class","hawkins-title"]these walls don't run from anything

[attr="class","hawkins-text"]They step out onto the highest sandbank. Before them are the glittering ranks of two armies, arranged in rectangular maniples that stretch across the horizon. Even so many years into a sullen future, the tactics of the past refuse to die.[break][break]

Hawkins glances at the scientist he'd engaged the program with and wordlessly begins to 'smoke'. He is a patient and deliberate man; it is obvious what option he would gravitate towards here.[break][break]

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ameena abadi if there is no disagreement

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[attr="class","hawkins-title"]you would take a life, just because it's there

[attr="class","hawkins-text"]“Ground extract from the meganium line.”[break][break]

The genus of flowers that adorned their necks had similar, but slightly different properties depending on their stage of evolution. When mixed in controlled amounts, rolled like a joint, and smoked, they provided a wide variety of beneficial effects.[break][break]

“Good for wounds. Focus. Shaky hands.” He falls silent at the last one; a surgeon with unsteady digits had no future. It, among many other reasons, was why he started distilling them in the first place.[break][break]

And best of all, not addictive—not technically. Though the dealers that kept coming back for more tried hard to contradict that point.
[break][break]

But still an industry in its infancy. They were some... eerie side effects.[break][break]

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Zev Harcourt

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[attr="class","hawkins-title"]i spoke to the devil, he said everything would be fine

[attr="class","hawkins-text"]When Scout glances back at the indeedee, it blinks, as if being told an order.[break][break]

And so it walks over to the woman clutching her delkatty, offering the soft, fluffy fur of its shoulder to keep her steady as it helps to direct them towards Oreburg Parkway, opposite from the distant flames and the rubble-rousing Petra.[break][break]

It’s an injustice.[break][break]

Dark thoughts harden and sink down in Petra’s mind. There is a blackened scar across her record, and try as she might to scrub it clean, it was shaped like Ulysses Monroe and that was what any high official would think as soon as they saw her name.[break][break]

The amnesty program? What good is it, if all her efforts still lead to caution and scorn, to be sidelined as her city falls, to be stuck doing menial tasks with someone who didn’t even seem comfortable in her presence? To help old ladies and their cats while the world burns?[break][break]

Frustration turns sanguine, the color of rage. It calcifies as the edges, the sharp cut of envy. It boils itself, turning to paranoia. The pain of sifting that rock with her own fingers feels real and straining to hear for further news feels like punishment.[break][break]

Scout, the indeedee, the civilians—they were all useless. Isn't it likely that... some of them were in on it? Rocket had so many plants, so many spies, you hate that you know this…[break][break]

Yes. These thoughts start so naturally at first, it may not even register that they were nudged around by the power of PSYCHIC.

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PETRA MONROE SCOUT WILDER [break]
tl;dr indeedee helps the old lady and cat with scout, secretly prods at petra's mental to whatever end[break]

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[attr="class","hawkins-title"]you would take a life, just because it's there

[attr="class","hawkins-text"]He pauses, staring at Zev straight in the eyes. He weighs what truth seems more likely: that Rocket legitimately assigns people to their preferences, or that Zev is just pretending to take his opinion into account.[break][break]

“Yes. Mossdeep or Petalburg would be best.”[break][break]

His specialty is trauma. His pokemon are trained to offset any lack of equipment. And the value of his efforts increase proportionally to places with less organizational infrastructure.[break][break]

Hawkins begins to slowly, deliberately take out a cigarette from his pocket. But it smells medicinal, or even herbal, and when he lights it, the smoke it trails is green and pleasant.[break][break]

He offers another to Zev.

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Zev Harcourt

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[attr="class","hawkins-title"]PICKING THE SCAB AND WATCHING IT BLEED

[attr="class","hawkins-text"]Flinching isn’t a weakness. It means that his body has yet to become desensitized to the punishment he drags it through, day after day. If he follows this path to its end, he will stumble upon his own event horizon. There, his characteristic scruffy humor and black determination will fall away into nothing, leaving behind someone else entirely.[break][break]

“...You’re supposed to use pain killers.”[break][break]

There was no point to a stitch job if it was done poorly.[break][break]

Hawkins’ indeedee waddles over to Hitoshi, touching the man’s shoulder and muddling his reception of pain. It was the poor man’s anesthetic, but it worked immediately. The real fast-acting anesthetic, those vials in his pockets distilled with a komala’s saliva, were too valuable for a test run.[break][break]

The doctor himself leans upon a nearby stone ledge, folding his arms.[break][break]

“Practice now. But don’t bother in the field—just wrap it up.”

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Hitoshi Inoue

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[attr="class","hawkins-title"]i spoke to the devil, he said everything would be fine

[attr="class","hawkins-text"]The indeedee trails behind them as a silent observer, moving the smaller debris with telekinetic motions, and briefly escorting the survivors back to the intersection before returning. But it was always SYNCHRONIZED to its master, their senses and thoughts flowing like tides across the others' coasts.[break][break]

Watching everything with two pairs of eyes, hearing everything with two pairs of ears.[break][break]

It would be a simple enough effort to repeat the feat from earlier and calm the woman’s fears. But the pokemon instead does nothing; perhaps inclined to stall for time, perhaps to feign ignorance without orders, or perhaps because it had an interest in seeing others to come into their own, and on their own terms.

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PETRA MONROE SCOUT WILDER [break]