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[vrdantwind]

"Hey, this is Claude! Pretty sure I'm doing this correctly. You can leave me a message here, and I'll get to it as soon as I can. Talk to you soon~."

Comments

[fingersandteeth]

It's in Goldenrod. A slightly shady dive bar celebrating the noble Fighting-Type.

There's also an underground fighting ring underneath it. Human vs human, no pokemon allowed. Spectators welcome.

Whenever you reach Goldenrod, bring your friend there.

[vrdantwind]

Huh. I'll have to think about whether or not that would be good for him...because he doesn't exactly think a lot about what would be good for him himself, so he needs to outsource that kind of thing.

What kind of fighting are we talking about, exactly? And how regulated? And why does a guy who throws overhand ratballs qualify in the first place? That's a pretty liberal definition of 'fighting', if that's the criteria you're scouting him on.

[fingersandteeth]

Hand to hand, no pokemon. There's certain ground rules all the matches have to follow and if you break them you forfeit the match.

... and honestly, he qualifies because having seen as much as I did in his cave video, I want the chance to look at him for a prolonged period of time with his shirt off and inviting him to a shirt-optional fighting club seemed a less sleazy way to cash in my favor for it than anything else.

[vrdantwind]

Yes, you specified those parts already. But there have to be other guidelines, right? No killing someone, for example? How far fights are permitted to go? How opponents get paired up? Weight classes and the like? Dimitri's had some bad experiences in the past, and some issues controlling his temper, so for me to judge whether he could or should compete in this club, I need to know more about the experience of fighting there and what he'd be signing up for.

Hah! I appreciate that level of honesty. And, of course, it'd be hard to deny the appeal of that unless you're a person of no taste. I won't deny I like the idea of that myself...but his well-being is a little more important than the eye candy to me, so I still need to decide whether it's a good idea before I even present the possibility to him.

[fingersandteeth]

Right, sorry.

No killing, no. Not that you *can* kill people here--what happens instead is that right before you die, you instead poof away to a pokecenter where you wake up fully healed (and fully sober) with half your money gone. (I've known two people it happened to.) But suffice to say, if someone *does* get 'sent to a pokecenter', it counts as an automatic forfeit of the surviving combatant and possible grounds for a banning, depending if it was on purpose or accidental.

Fights are 'til knock out (rarely) or (more often) until one of the combatants cries uncle. Maiming is frowned upon and grounds for a suspension or banning. Combatants either register for a fight together or they put their name on the list of fighters without opponents and then they're matched up going down the list. There's no division by weight class, but there is by age, to keep grown adults from fighting fifteen-year-olds.

[vrdantwind]

Ah - hold on, I might need to put the fight club talk on hold for just a second, but did you just say people can't die here?

[fingersandteeth]

*We* can't, anyway. I'm not sure if it applies to the native people of this world and I'm not going to murder one to find out.

[vrdantwind]

I mean, that's good to hear. But would you even need to in order to test that hypothesis? I mean, people must die of old age around here.

Although I guess that wouldn't answer whether all deaths are prevented, or only people getting killed as opposed to dying of natural causes...

[fingersandteeth]

Exactly. I'm assuming it's death by murder or misadventure that are prevented, not natural causes.

[vrdantwind]

Well, I can see it being extremely rare and unusual for the people of this world to experience violence...but death by misadventure can't be unheard of, can it? A few of the descriptions of pokémon I've read in the Pokédex - especially the ghosts - are kind of dark. And you do have people running all over the wilderness, including kids. Accidents must happen, right?

I mean, I guess it's kind of a ghoulish thing to ask about, but it doesn't seem like something that should be too hard to confirm.

[fingersandteeth]

No, you're right. I probably should go research that. And maybe even if there's any record of attempted murders among the native people of this world. Even if most ways of death are prohibited, there's always being pushed from somewhere high.

[vrdantwind]

And it's definitely not like they don't have crime here. Team Rocket alone makes that obvious. I had at least one violent encounter while I was trying to help out at the shopping center, and another one that threatened to get violent before a friend intervened...and one death threat! So while I don't know if they'd have gone as far as trying to kill me - especially if it's known that murder doesn't really work around here - I do wonder at the idea of some kind of organized crime syndicate not having tried to, I don't know, 'disappear' people.

I mean, if I were a criminal with no concern for other people's well-being, especially one who wanted to intimidate people and pose a real threat, I'd absolutely explore just what kind of threats I could make and back up. So if anyone's already looked into those questions, it might be them. I'd love to get at any research they might've done...

[fingersandteeth]

Seriously? An actual death threat?

[vrdantwind]

Oh, yeah, definitely unambiguous. Some gestures are universal, I guess!

I wonder if that means they're not a native here? I mean, natives would know that kind of threat is pointless. That, or they were just counting on me not knowing...which, to be fair, I didn't at the time! But I've received so many death threats and actual murder attempts by now that I don't think it left the impression they probably hoped. Just another Tuesday for me! I guess that doesn't narrow things down any after all, though.

Of course, the final possibility is that Team Rocket absolutely has figured out how to get around the restrictions on murdering people...though I'd have to consider that an unlikely scenario. If they knew how to kill people, I think their impact on the world would be felt a lot more, and their operations would be a lot more sinister than just harassing people while ripping off a shopping center. I wouldn't expect them to just disappear so few unremarkable people here and there that no one actually caught on that Team Rocket was somehow behind it.

I'd still like to get at their research, though. Even if they've come to the conclusion that they can't kill people, despite their best efforts, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they've tried! And I want to know what they tried, and how, and what happened. The ways this place works are so mysterious; I don't know if any amount of information will help me understand it, but I at least like knowing what there is to know! And like you said, it's not exactly the kind of experimentation I'd ever be willing to do myself. But if someone already has, whether or not I approve of it...there's no point in ignoring what was already learned.

[fingersandteeth]

[Oh. Right. His little slit throat gesture. He'd hardly meant it. If he'd really meant to kill Claude, if he'd meant to do anything but taunt him, he'd have had Acatl teleport with him to about a hundred feat up and then let go.

(He remembers forcing a Loyalist off a roof his first Hunt of the Leaves. He hadn't really gotten a chance to look at the body, what with all the cops getting in the way, but at least he'd gotten in and out of the man's location without being noticed.)

This Claude has an interesting mind. Such a pity he wasn't a real Rocket]

I'd like to see that research too.

[He wonders if Beta rank is enough to access it.]

[vrdantwind]

A decent reason to investigate Team Rocket, then! Among all the other ones. It's probably dangerous to go poking around, but what are they going to do, kill me? We've established they probably can't!

Seriously, though, I'm curious about all kinds of things relating to Team Rocket. Someone at the shopping center mentioned they press-gang new people into their service, whether they like it or not - and I'm genuinely amazed that with that kind of practice, no one's simply crumbled the whole infrastructure from the inside yet. How on earth have their unwilling operatives not sold all their secrets out? How does Team Rocket know they won't?

[fingersandteeth]

[What.

Steven reads over Claude's reply once more, but it doesn't change.

What the fucking fuck?

Who the fuck is just... telling people that? Seriously? Seriously?

He's scowling as he types his own reply.]

I'd suspect they'd use both the carrot and the stick, whatever that may mean here.

[vrdantwind]

Oh, I'm sure. All I'm saying is, the carrot must be massive. And with death for disobedience off the table, I really wonder how creative they've gotten with the stick, too...

That said, though, even with all the incentives and disincentives they can muster, I still don't know how Team Rocket can trust so readily that no one's going to betray them. I mean, when you're running any kind of organization where information warfare can be impactful, isn't it important to have unbreakable trust in higher command and careful security measures among the ground troops? And that's with groups where everyone joins by choice. Forcing people into your service who may not feel any good will towards your group or cause, and who especially may not feel those things when you're not giving them any choice in being in your service or being privy to some of your secrets...well, let's just say it doesn't exactly seem like best practices for a shadowy crime syndicate. In fact, it seems just a touch nuts?

Maybe we should find that relieving, though. If no one from within Team Rocket's felt compelled to come forward to stop them, then maybe no one they've recruited has found the moral conflict so polarizing that they felt like they had to take action. Certainly Team Rocket seems like more of a high-key nuisance than the kind of threat I've had to deal with back in my own world - the kind of threat people would put their lives on the line to stop. Even the good people shanghaied into Rocket service must never have felt their moral codes pushed that far, or it would've happened by now.

[fingersandteeth]

I mean, there's a hell of a lot of people in my world willing to do practically anything for a job with health insurance or a pension plan or any of that. Throw in vision or dental and that's a pretty big carrot in itself.

[Steven would say that even if he hadn't spent the last two months before Arceus snatched him up doing day labor, for lack of a legal identity.]

But honestly, I think you're right that it really might be that most of what Team Rocket does... isn't that awful, at least compared to the way that organized crime works back in most of our worlds. I think the worst thing they've done since I came to this world was try to steal Lapras from the wildlife sanctuary--and even then, they did it so incompetently that Armin was able to assemble a team to rescue them within *days*--and this with a concussion!

[vrdantwind]

I'm honestly not following any of that first paragraph! I think whatever those things are that you're talking about, my world doesn't have them at all. (Well, I mean, I know what vision and dental mean, but it sounds like you're using them in a different way than I understand those words to work.)

You know, "Team Rocket hasn't been stopped or undermined because they're generally not that dangerous or competent" wasn't the conclusion I was expecting to come to from this conversation, but it's oddly reassuring. Not because I was worried about them for my own sake - I've dealt with actually dangerous assassins who could kill me - but more because I was worried about the people they've recruited, and kind of upset about them ruining the holiday market like that. Also, I hate to think of them stealing pokémon from people when trainers get so attached to theirs here. But it sounds like none of that needs to be stressed about too much.

[fingersandteeth]

Don't worry about it. Just know they'd be sufficient bribes for someone from my world.

Team Rocket *does* take Pokemon directly from people, either through pick-pocketing or by making the claiming of the loser's pokeballs part of a battle's terms. That really can't be denied. But otherwise...

Well. Just a list of things I remember Team Rocket doing since I got here, just by going with what got on the news or I heard about later (or in one case I was actually *there* for):

February - Stealing from the Pewter Museum Vaults
March - Stealing the Goldenrod Granbulls' Mascot 'Zeus'/Destroying Baseball
May - Stealing Lapras from the Wildlife Preserve
June - Terrorizing Kurt the Ball-maker and Stranding Him In The Slowpoke Well
July??? - (nothing on the news Sento Kiryuu starts claiming there's been a series of single night crime sprees in various cities, like some sort of muggle speedrun)
August (Pre-Sinnoh Trip) - Stealing Shinies From A Dog Show (in which I was in the audience)
August (During Sinnoh Trip) - The Tricky Bandits Steal From Wealthy People And Set Traps In Their Homes
August (End of Month) - Evolutionary Stone Heist at the Blackthorn Mine
September (Mid) - Raid on the Fuschia Gym Ends With Them Blowing A Hole In It To Escape The Jennies

And nothing since then, apart from the Christmas market, though I suppose there's been plenty of small scale single individual crime that just doesn't make the news. I mean, don't get me wrong, Team Rocket is a pain and a half, but they're not nearly as terrifying as they by all rights should be.

[vrdantwind]

For a whole laundry list of crimes, that's admittedly not too sinister of one. Although boy, they were certainly busy in August, huh? Maybe that's why there was such a large gap between September and December.

What's a muggle, by the way?

[fingersandteeth]

[Steven blinks twice, than rereads what he just typed.]

... a typo for 'mugging.' My God, I need a nap.

But yeah, August was pretty nuts as far as Rocket activity went. But I know most of us people from other worlds were gone for the middle of it, so that might have had something to do with it? Since, uh, it looks like otherworlders are better at fighting Team Rocket than the Jennies.

That's the 'Sinnoh Trip' that I mentioned. You know how we're only allowed to be in Kanto and Johto, right? Well, Sinnoh was another region that let us visit for two weeks in August, albeit only in a small handful of places. It was nice, actually, and it threw a lot of us together who otherwise might not have met. I actually met my current boyfiend on it.

[vrdantwind]

Hah! I thought it was just some weird word I didn't know yet.

[Wait until you talk to Neville, Claude.]

That sounds fascinating, getting to visit some whole other place that's normally off-limits...and congrats, by the way.

[fingersandteeth]

I mean, it might mean something in slang, but it was definitely a typo. Possibly because my employee, Scorpia, was talking about the Huggles in the background. (Mr and Ms Huggles are two of her Bewears. She's got four so far. They make good bouncers.)

The Sinnoh Trip was fascinating. I did a few radio segments about it, if you'd like to listen to them. Let me know if you want the MP3s.

And, well, thank you. I never expected to be with him--I was already dating someone when we met, but that... didn't work out in the end. And he helped a lot with me getting over my broken heart.