[video] DRAMABALLS AWAY

[stay_classy_cat]

[RIIIIING. RIIIIIING. RIIIIIIIIIIIING.

What little asshole pulled the fire alarm? Who knows, but after about 30 minutes of being herded to and milling around on the grass, it's announced that this was likely a prank since there's no discernible fire anyone can identify. It's safe to return back to your dorm rooms, and REMINDER; DON'T PULL THE FIRE ALARM AS A PRANK OR YOU WILL GET DETENTION!!! Seems like another ordinary day at Smash Academy, right?

No, there's something a little more ominous in the air...]



Attention, Smash Academy. This is Mayor Tabuu speaking.

[Whoa, something must be really important for him to address Smash Academy's network specifically.]

Eggman is a filthy liar. He's betrayed all of you! The insipid, fat, lumbering oaf is abusing his power and must be stopped.

[Wait... didn't... Tabuu authorize Eggman into Martial Law? Since when has Tabbuu used such flowery insults? SOMETHING WEIRD IS GOING ON.]

He's turned against you, and is robotisizing your own kind! Eirika's been missing from our--your fair academy and this is why! She's been kidnapped by him and was robotisized! If he's not stopped--

[BZZZTTTT--KSSSSHHHHH--! Suddenly, static! WE ARE INTERRUPTING THIS FEED FOR A VERY IMPORTANT HIJACK...]



ATTENTION, SMASH ACADEMY! Listen close and listen well! I am Dr. Ivo Robotnik, the world's greatest genius, and YOUR SAVIOR! I come to you with DIRE NEWS... Your beloved Mayor Tabuu is a FRAUD! An IMPOSTER, created to impersonate him and deliver this city into the hands of your REAL nemesis! Not I, my subjects, someone FAR worse than me!

I speak, of course, of one SETH RICHARDSON! Yes, your friend Seth has been a VERY busy boy this past year! the DRUGGED LOLLIPOPS he's been feeding into the city have caused no end of trouble for everyone! But that's not the LEAST of his crimes... No, with the money he's made from the drugs he's sold, he's created POKEBALLS capable of capturing ANYONE, even HUMANS! And replacing them with PERFECT DUPLICATES, completely subservient to his will!!

I have done my utmost to PROTECT you, to keep you SAFE from the madness Seth's machinations have wrought! And now it's time to STAND UP and TAKE YOUR LIVES BACK!!



Me? That's laughable, truly laughable! How desperate must you be to point fingers at someone such as me, you insipid, fat, lu--bloated worm! Who's honestly going to believe you with your track history? Who could've forgotten your ridiculous and stupid Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park? Or that time you tried to eat everyone's history? Face it, you've had your fun and your time is up. Tabuu wants you out and so does everyone else. If anything we should be standing up and rising against YOU!

Besides, where did you even get all this nonsense about me? I'd like to see some evidence, if your tiny, feeble, cotton-filled brain can comprehend that.

Oh, you're going to EAT those words, you smug, freckle-faced punk! You see, I got all this information from a rather reliable source. Our mutual friend Ulki, who happened to overhear your discussion with your SUPPLIERS, filled me in on ALL the juicy details he overheard. He even brought a little surprise. But don't take MY word for it...

[The camera pans to the side. Ulki is there, flanked by two Badniks. In his hand is the stolen Catball.]

See for YOURSELF.

[Seth stares blankly at the screen, even paling a little bit. Mary... He'll kill her! He'll kill her a million times over. Seth manages a twisted smile but resolve is cracking. He's sure Eggman isn't trustworthy and he could convince everyone else of that, but the bird...]

Ha... ha ha ha! So what? That could be a rock with a pawprint on it for all any of the lot of you know!

[Ulki looks hardly so convinced. ]

Shall we open it then? Besides, [He spins the ball around in his hand, showing the pawprint that was previously obscured.] How could you have known that?

[Seth is brilliantly caught in his own lie, worse yet, he still jumps too eagerly at the chance to cover it up.]

No! Don't! [His lips twitch and his smile is a bitter one, forced and seething.]--You don't know what that would do... do you? You might push a wrong button and hurt whoever's inside. I wouldn't put it past either of you, given your penchant for blatant idiocy anyway.

[Camera pans back to Eggman.] HURT whoever's inside? Now there's an interesting thought... Since when has letting a Pokemon out of their ball HURT them? Now I'm DOUBLY curious to see what's inside! Or would you rather just CONFESS?

Why don't you confess to being unwanted? You're an utter failure at everything you do! None of your plans has ever worked and for good reason: they're dumb. Your fiancé could have picked so much better.

[WISE AND MATURE WORDS FROM SETH RICHARDSON.]

YOU'RE GOING TO REGRET BRINGING HER INTO THIS, YOU PONCE!!

Now hear this, everyone! I am calling for the ARREST of Seth Richardson! Soon my robots will arrive at the academy gates to assume control of the school until he is IN CUSTODY. Submit, and you will be spared. Resist, or otherwise interfere with my efforts, and you will be ARRESTED and ROBOTISIZED INTO MY ARMY!! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING!!

[Seth makes a grande display of open arms, smugly psychotic grin plastered on his face as if to say, "Dare ye cometh at me, sir?" The fact Eggman just declared robot season open is just as bad as the next line out of him:]

You have no control over me. I'd sooner die then let my plans be interfered by a corpulent, tactless, wretched ignoramus such as yourself! I'll take what's rightfully mine from you whether you and your bushy, unkempt mustache like it or not. [He makes a fist at the screen.] Considering you an equal gentleman would be an insult, so instead of proposing a fair and just duel, I'll promise you this: If you so much as show your face around here or FDC and get in my way, I'll fucking rip you apart!

[WAIT HE'S NOT DONE YET--Seth ducks out of the screen just a moment an returns with something around his neck. Yes it's Flurrie's big balls necklace he's fingering coyly.]

Oh, and tell Flurrie if she wants these back she can come and get them. They're not quite my size.

[Eggman's hands clench into fists of rage.]

YOU... WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU, YOU'LL SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE SCRUBBING FLOORS AS A CLEANING BOT!!

I quiver with fear!

YOU WILL BE!!

Comments

Re: ACTION: REACTION

[paletteknife]

Wouldn't you know it, Mary had finally stopped her crying and sniffling when the broadcasting began. The second his voice crackled over the TV she wailed anew, grabbing the nearest object - a near-empty glass of water by her bedside - and throwing across the room. She didn't have the strength to get it much further than a few metres beyond the foot of the bed, though...

Why was Seth on TV all of the sudden?! She didn't pay attention to a word that was being said, only that he was there and that he'd hurt her. She wanted him to hurt, too. Even worse than what happened to her.

Re: ACTION: REACTION

[sicklypriest]

The poor girl was a mess... Knowing Seth's insidious character, he didn't have to take a broad leap of the imagination to picture what kind of treatment he must have given her. Watching her like this and knowing the person responsible, a rare flare of resentment licked at his heart. The rest of him was teeming with sympathy that felt like one great big squeeze.

He came close to her and knelt down to her level, the aching compassion emanating from the eyes he gave her. He touched her shoulder, gentle as can be. "He can't hurt you anymore."

[paletteknife]

"How come he's being so mean!? He was always-- always so nice to me!" The thought of what was gone now just brought forth a new wave of tears and she grabbed Rhys' hand, squeezing a little too tight. The sorrow on her face quickly hardened into something more like hatred, however.

"Is that fat guy gonna hurt him?"

[sicklypriest]

The healer winced faintly at her grip, but tried to ignore it for her sake. It was difficult to find a way to communicate what she needed to know, but do it without being too harsh. "He might." Before she could say anything more, he added, "I think that... Seth might have been mean all along."

[paletteknife]

In her vulnerable state, it was easier to believe that. Seth had always been a bad guy and wasn't just nice until she did something wrong and he got tired of her. She wasn't the wrong one, he was. He was!

"He tricked me the whole time, right? I didn't... I didn't make him mad, he was always going to do it, right?!"

It was easier to hate him if he'd always hated her first.

[sicklypriest]

It wasn't like Rhys to be so disenchanted about a person's innate goodness, but in this case, some aspect or another of Seth's life had lead him astray into a depravity abysmally far from redemption. He used people like fruit- ate away all the good parts and threw away the pit or the peel or whatever was left of them. Anyone who had it in them to hurt children... Rhys accepted that he could never hope to understand the inner workings of a mind belonging to such a person. What Seth could have done to manipulate and harm Mary he'd rather not ponder, except to level with her experiences, understand her suffering so she could heal. Those scratches ran deeper than just her skin, and if only, he wished, his staff could penetrate emotional wounds as well as those of the body.

"Seth has done quite a few bad things to hurt other people," he told her. "You're not alone... He's a master at playing pretend to get what he wants, if that makes sense. That's why it's so hard to know any better. Any time he was playing nice, he was only thinking about himself. He... hurt me, as well."

[paletteknife]

Unfortunately, it made a lot of sense. Mary wouldn't admit it, but she understood how someone could play pretend to get what they wanted. She just never expected herself to become a victim of someone else's plans.

She and Seth weren't very different at all, were they? ...Did that mean she was bad, too?

Rhys was being nice to her now, probably because he didn't know her history. She wasn't about to delve into it for him now, even if she desperately wanted someone to tell her that in her case it was different and that she was in her full right to have tricked and manipulated people to save herself from her life of solitude. Unlike Seth, she had a perfectly good reason for everything she did.

Her mind flashed forward to more recent events that had taken place in the school itself.

"A lot of people got hurt because of him, right...? He told me to hurt people, too. He did! It's not my fault!"

[gentlesaint]

He was familiar with at least one of the bad things Seth coerced her into doing, despite not being completely... "present" for it. Thanks a lot, Seth. That didn't change the fact that his heart went out to Ai and Vianca upon learning of the damage. Likewise, he did not feel any animosity toward the committer of the deed- Mary. Perhaps disappointment and confusion. But she was young and children could do nasty things without really thinking about how they were hurting someone, and it made sense that Seth would tell an impressionable young girl to do such an atrocious thing. He probably found some way to make it seem like it was perfectly fine, even the right thing to do.

"I don't think you can be blamed too much," Rhys confirmed, running a thumb over her small fingers. "You trusted him then. When you trust people, it's easy to do what they tell you to do without much question. But hurting people... It should never be okay."

[paletteknife]

"It's not." Her ears burned in embarrassment at the thought that she'd ever thought otherwise, when so many people of all ages kept telling her the truth. It took getting hurt to change her mind. She hanged her head, golden locks obscuring her eyes.

"Everybody's going to be mad at me. Vianca was." And still was, though Mary seemed clueless to that fact.

[gentlesaint]

"I wouldn't count on everybody," he reassured her, taking her hand with both of his now. "But as for the people you hurt, that sounds normal. When people get hurt, or have the ones they love get hurt, oftentimes, they will get mad at the person who did it. Like what happened when Seth hurt you- it made you very angry with him, didn't it?"

[paletteknife]

"Uh-huh..."

Ah, she got it now. Why people got upset with her for what she did in the first place. How they might have felt. Mary had never given much consideration to the feelings of others as long as whatever they were feeling ended with them contributing to her own happiness.

All of these sudden realizations and changes in perspective were a lot for her to take in. She stared at Rhys' hands around her own, then brought them closer to her face and pressed her forehead against them.

"...I'm really sorry."

[gentlesaint]

He raised his eyebrows in mild surprise, and his lips formed a heartfelt smile. "But it doesn't mean they will stay mad forever. Just now, I could feel through your apology that you truly felt bad about what you did. If you came up to the people you hurt and told them you were sorry... I think they will be able to find forgiveness."

[paletteknife]

"Okay," was all she managed to say, though it didn't feel like enough. If Rhys could be nice to her like this, then maybe everyone she'd hurt would be fine, too. He was right, all she had to do was apologize. But it had to be a really good one. It would take time to think about...

"Thank you."

Besides, judging from what was going on on the television, everyone would be a little too preoccupied for her to apologize right that moment anyway.

[gentlesaint]

Which was exactly what they needed to shift their focus on. Rhys maintained his smile and nodded in response before dropping their conversation to a more serious level.

"We may need to evacuate the infirmary. I have a feeling other people are going to get hurt out there, so I'm going to go fetch some supplies from the closet and bathroom and such so I can help. Wait right here. I will be back shortly." He squeezed her hands and then let go and stood to leave.