Hot Girl, Hot Springs, Hot Day! [Izumi]

[Josh Dragomir]

He smiled a bit at her first bit about the old guy. “You know about what I shared with you earlier? The guy I told you about who I brought back to the town in a casket? He… well, if you could put it this way, the way that you and I are interacting right now, him and I used to be the same way,” she had admitted with an embarrassed chuckle escaping her lips. He couldn't help but chuckle and nod. "He meant a lot to you, then?" he asked, biting his lip. "I'm sorry. I used to travel with someone myself, actually. Her name was Maxine. She was a greenhorn Trainer when I met her out in the wilderness back in Kotaku. Ran into a spot of trouble, and the poor girl was so inexperienced that I had to go and save her skin with Lightning and Vulcan. After that, we traveled together awhile, with me sort of showing her the ropes and helping her to become a great Pokemon Trainer. She was hoping to get great experience as a Trainer so one day she could use that experience to transition into becoming a big time Pokemon Professor, like her mom. Ran away from home, kinda like I did, because she was denied her dreams because of the Scourge, just like me. We found a common ground, and we got along great. Sometimes, I felt like we got together a little more then great. But... Well, eventually her family wanted her home to move to Unova. Kinda like how mine wanted me home to move to Hoenn later on. She got guilt tripped, so she left. The next day I found out that the route she was taking home had been infested with those... Things, and some travelers were killed. Two boys and a girl, over the course of that day, the news had said. I never heard from her again. She never found me, never got in touch with me... So... Yeah. I think we both know what happened" he said, scratching his head and frowning. "The poor girl... So full of potential, so full of life. But she was so shy, and so inexperienced. She had a hard time with new people, I remember. But she loved Pokemon. It broke her heart as much as mine to see those wild pokemon, and even trainer Pokemon turned into such monsters with no souls, no hearts... With no way out but death" he said quietly, closing his eyes.

“After that happened… you know that feeling of just wanting to be alone and isolate yourself from everyone else? I… I never got the chance to do that. I had to keep going, I had to look for the person who’d killed him—in the end, I joined this organization back then, it was called Steinhart; in order to at least be able to travel the other regions and look for clues. Eventually though, the team disbanded; and I had nothing to show for trying to look for information…” she trailed off afterword, before continuing. “Well… I was a Trainer to begin with, so I decided to go back to the roots and just go with the flow of things again. I’m still trying to get stronger. Not just for him, but for myself as well…” she trailed off once again, sinking down low into the water until her nose was barely skimming the surface, before submerging herself completely for a few seconds and then popping up and out of the surface. Josh sighed and nodded, remaining silent until she told her story. "I see...." he said quietly. "And what exactly was Steinhart?" he asked, tilting his head. "If you weren't a Trainer then... What WERE you?" he asked.

[Izumi Yamamura]

“You never know,” Izumi began as she tried to untangle her hair; and saw that the water was starting to turn just a bit cloudy. “Oops, that was the ash stuck up here…” she said with an embarrassed chuckle as she then heard him talking about something that was… quite similar yet not so at the same time; apparently the heavy feeling she’d been experiencing—the weight of loss—had also taken him too. “Damn… that’s tough. I just hope that she made it out of there… is it really that hard to bail out of your home region? Don’t lose hope. Sometimes, the information you get may be wrong; and she might have made it out of there… you should’ve at least asked for her mobile number or something,” she added, giving him another supportive pat across the shoulder. As for the Steinhart question… she decided to backpedal, at least to a point where it made more sense. While she was trying to untangle her hair, she began, “Let me put it this way. Bunji, the red-head I told you about—the dead guy—was an ex-member of Team Rocket. He left, because apparently he wanted to bring them down “from the inside”, but seeing as he needed information, I decided to do the information-gathering for him since he was on the run and everything. While looking for records of Rocket activity back out in Kanto, I stumbled across the organization that was called “Steinhart”, and their goal, at least back then, was to enforce peace and order. Kind of like Interpol over in the Orre region, only thing is Stein focused more on the known regions—Kanto, Johto, with their main base being located in Unova. I traveled around a lot of regions, chasing down leads and everything that would lead me to find out more about Rocket… and then, it happened. We had met up and just exchanged some scraps of information about his ex-Team when… I saw him die. It was kind of odd, really. They had a battle, everything was evenly matched—he even told me not to interfere, but of course I wouldn’t just sit idly by—when the other guy whipped out his weapon, and in less than ten seconds, he crumpled.” She then wrung her hands out of desperation; as if it was happening all over again—“I didn’t see the other guy move; so of course, I felt this sense of duty to protect him; but apparently I was too late—he was sniped at; and I wasn’t able to do anything… me, a member of the “peace-keeping corps”, unable to chase down someone who liked hunting vigilante ex-Team members for fun! I felt really helpless that moment. I sucked at battling—I could’ve sent my Braviary after the guy who killed him if I had to—but I was just… in shock,” she ended, breathing out a long sigh, and she never thought she’d have to talk about it again. “I started out as a Trainer. So I really did ‘go back to my roots’, in a manner of speaking. Now it leads to me wanting to get stronger, so that if something like this ever happens again… at least I won’t be powerless to stop it.” | | | | | WORDS 547 TAGS Josh NOTES the truth revealed

MADE BY ★MEULK OF GS & THQ

[Josh Dragomir]

He nodded a bit and sighed, noticing the cloudy water, but not commenting on it. "I hope she did too" he said quietly, closing his eyes, his fists white as he thought about it... There goes getting to relax, huh? "And I DID ask for a phone number. She didn't bring a phone so her family couldn't get to her. She had a... Difficult relationship with them, and she snuck out too, like I did. My parents knew they weren't going to change my mind, so they stopped trying after a few phone calls. Maxine... Hers were assholes, so she didn't... Yeah. But she planned to get a phone, and I gave her my number too. That's what worries me" he explained.

"Yeah... It's kinda difficult to bail out of there" he said. "It was hell getting home. We didn't camp out at all, and I was lucky that I was nearby home when I got the call. We ran through the whole night to get there. Didn't stop, just kept running to get to safety. We were attacked by hordes and hordes of them. I refused to let Lightning out of his Pokeball since he wasn't vaccinated either. Just me and Vulcan tearing through them desperately, employing every inch of survival skill I had learned in order to do one thing, and that was to get home alive. And my parents were right, it was getting too bad. As prideful as I was, I wouldn't have lived much longer if I didn't go home. Most of the cities weren't even safe anymore. One of the reasons we couldn't stop at a Pokemon Center was because it'd been overrun, as was the only two or three towns we stopped in. It was a ghost town. All of them. Those... Things... Were roaming everywhere. We spent the entire trip home on the run. It was the biggest test of endurance I've ever seen and we cut it really close. My hometown was actually attacked the day after we left. We just cut it that close" he revealed.

He nodded and listened intently to her story. And my, did this girl have a story! "I see..." he said after she finished. "I know how you feel. Since I left, all I've wanted to do was get stronger, and make sure nothing happens like that again... I failed before. I can't fail again...."

[Izumi Yamamura]

She’d gone and done it again—revealing the real reason why she’d joined up and everything. Now that she was potentially going to embarrass herself in front of him again, she just looked away for a few moments... before getting back to untangling her hair. While she was doing so, she listened to the next part of his story, and she didn’t realize that she was holding her breath until after he’d finished! “You… you were cutting it way too close. No, really, you were. It’s a good thing you got out of there while you could… and… and that’s when it happened, right? Your dad’s Raichu staying back to hold off the horde in order for you to get out of there…” she trailed off. At that point she didn’t even know what to say—she could feel the thoughts becoming more cohesive this time; it was a sign that she—and as she suspected, him as well—were becoming sober again after that brief crazy period of drinking and going crazy earlier. Now that most of her hair was untangled, she then dipped her head back under for a few seconds and then resurfaced, finally mopping it back down. “Now, how about that trip back to the room and me having some food sent over?” she asked, so that they could get into more of the “getting to know you” phase… minus all of the heavy back stories they were sharing with each other right now! “See you back in the hallway,” she added with a grin, hopping out of the hot springs and then headed over to the female shower so that she could rinse down and get dressed for the trip back to the little inn where he’d decided to hole up, at least temporarily. | | | | | WORDS 299 TAGS Josh NOTES Exit stage right? (new thread?)

MADE BY ★MEULK OF GS & THQ

[Josh Dragomir]

He shook his head. "No" he said with a sigh. "Raichu was long dead and gone before that, Izumi" he said, closing his eyes and staring down at the water. "That was my last home stretch in terms of this ordeal. Raichu's death was what spurred me to run away from home and go on that journey to begin with" he explained.

After a silence, he nodded a bit at her offer. The joyful rabid binge drinking had ended, things had gotten somber now. A change of pace would be nice. "Let's do it" he said with a small smile. And with that, he watched as Izumi got up and left. "See you in the hallway" he said, cracking his neck as he got up. It struck him, why the fuck was this hot spring linked to the Pokemon Center anyway? Why couldn't they have it's own building for the town's main attraction? Did it cost so much to put volcano water in a tub that they didn't have enough for a building?

He shrugged and got out, grabbing a towel and heading into the men's "hallway".

[End Thread]