From: Roberto Perez-Vila <RobfromVoid@prodigy.net> Subject: [PW!] Reflecting a Loss Date: Wednesday, July 21, 1999 12:43 AM Minax is sitting in an empty grass field... Empty like the Pokeball she's holding in her hands. The one she's been staring at for a while now. The one that belonged to her Poliwhirl before David Bradley's Rhydon decided to eliminate him. After about five minutes, Minax speaks, "I could've saved him if I had pulled him into this Pokeball. But then again, that Rhydon might've made me its next target if I did that..." Minax closes her eyes and thinks about the time she caught him... The Pokemon had shot himself, and yet struggled to stay alive... He had cheated death once, but in the second confrontation, he wasn't as lucky. "The bastard wanted to see me dead. He wanted to kill me himself. He wanted revenge for what I did to him... But that's what made me like him. So much that I'd bother wasting time thinking about his death... and how it could have been prevented." In the moment of silence that follows, Minax closes her eyes, and remembers something from her childhood... * Flashback * A twelve year old brown haired girl has her head in her mother's loving hands. The thin woman known as the girl's mother has kinky purple hair, worn out eyes, and wears skimpy clothing that insinuate her profession. She has a thick comb and is running it down her daughter's hair clumsily, "Why are ya so quiet, Marcie, sweetie?" "Daddy..." Marcie trembles out the name she uses to refer to her father, "He did it again... He hurt me again..." "Oh." The pale woman coughs and continues brushing Marcie's tangled hair, which causes her daughter to flinch every once in a while, "Don't worry 'bout him, sweetie, he hurts me too. You learn to get used to it." Marcie shakes her head, and her eyes water, "Why do you stay with daddy, mommy? He doesn't love you and he doesn't love me... He doesn't love anyone. Why do you stay with him, mommy?" The purple-haired woman laughs and coughs intensely in the process, "Oh, Marcie, you're just a baby girl. You can't start to understand what the world is like. But I'll try to explain it anyway. What mommy does for a living isn't exactly what too many men look for in a wife. Your daddy doesn't care about what I do for money, so when business is slow, he keeps food on the table for you and me. He ain't no knight in shining armor, but he's all a woman like me can get." "But... But..." Marcie starts, but has to pause to let out a whispered shriek at her mother's grooming of her hair, "Mommy, could you stop combing me? It hurts." Her mother just continues to comb, not giving her daughter any indication that she heard what was said. Marcie tries to finish the thought she began earlier, "But don't you love me?" "Of course mommy loves ya, sweetie!" Marcie's mother kisses her daughter on the top of her head, then has to hack up some hair that was sucked up in the process. During the coughing fit, she manages to ask, "Why do ya ask?" "Well... cuz... cuz..." Marcie stutters, something she usually does when she gets emotional, "Cuz if you really really loved me, then you'd leave daddy cuz you want me to be happy! I saw it on TV!" Marcie's mother chuckles and puts her brush down. She puts her finger on Marcie's chin and raises her daughter's eyes to her own similar dark brown eyes, "Marcie, I have a life lesson to tell ya right here and right now. The only person ya gotta look out for in life is you. Then worry about others. But always look out for number one first, ya hear?" Marcie takes a moment to process this information in her young impressionable mind, "So... So...Let's say I was on a cliff and you were there too. Would you try to save me if there's a chance you might fall?" Marcie's mother grins cynically at her child, "Of course not." "Oh." Marcie looks saddened by her mother's response, and she begins to quietly sob. It only takes a moment for the girl's mother to realize the child's crying. She just laughs while coughing and goes back to combing Marcie's hair. * End of Flashback * Minax opens her eyes and frowns at the sight of the empty Pokeball in her hand. "The only thing I regret..." She dumps the Pokeball into her sack, and places her new stolen Arbok's Pokeball on her belt, where Poliwhirl's Pokeball once rested, "...is that I didn't kill him myself." Minax sniffs out a laugh and walks away from her place of contemplation. -Minax