Team Snagem HQ (Mt. Silver)

[Requiem of Whyspers]

Odd laughed at Ulla's reaction but before he had the chance to clarify, she was gone with Wren vanishing along with her presence a moment later, Claydol appearing and carrying him away without him even getting the chance to react.  

[Atlantis_Darts]

Darts walks down the stairs, a thoughtful look on his face hidden by his gilt crest. The war raging on had put a lot of things into new perspective for him... there was a lot more on the line for Snagem this time than just defeating the new evil team on the scene. People were fighting and dying defending their way of life... and the Giratina hybrid was getting antsy not being able to help them, the numbers game being what it was. He was strong, but not fight a whole army or even half of one on his own strong.  

[Atlantis_Darts]

Blizzard120

The boy kept to himself for a good while; not bringing it up to his adoptive parents, fearing that he'd get what he already knew about in the first place. It was one thing being taught, the boy figured. It was a whole other thing to experience it first hand, to know what it was like. When he thought Zera was gone, despite how vile that woman was, he didn't feel all that grand about it. In fact, he felt terrible to the point he pitied her for that short amount of time. Justifiably, he was irritated over the whole notion now, how his feelings were stomped upon just like that, by both ally and enemy alike those subsequent moments. To this very moment, it soured his mood considerably...

Darts notices Tristan slouching through HQ, a forlorn look etched into the boy's face. Looked like he wasn't the only one doing some heavy thinking. "What's up little man?" He asks the boy, falling into step behind him. He wasn't going to press the kid for answers considering what Tristen had just had to experience. War was never an easy thing to see first-hand.... least of all for a 12-year-old.  

[Atlantis_Darts]

Blizzard120

At this point, it couldn't hurt. It wasn't doing any good looming on it. "Darts? Uh...can...I talk to you...somewhere?" Anywhere but in the middle of a hallway was better than this, the boy thought.

Hm. Darts frowned at the request for a moment, then nodded. "I've got a spot just for talks like the one I think we're going to have. C'mon." The gambler leads the way over to a not oft-used staircase behind an emergency door with the alarm attached to it had long since been discontinued. He wrenches the emergency latch with a twist of his wrist and a muttered apology as he breaks it easily and forces the portcullis open with a shove of his shoulder. Assuming the boy still was following the pair would make their way up a dusty ladder and out of a emergency hatch at the top of it.

As Darts forced open the hinged lid at the top, the sounds of the hustle and bustle of HQ's day to day routine would fade down below them as the two of them emerge out onto the flat surface of the HQ's roof. Far above them stalactites stretched as far as the eye could see until it hit the walls of the cave in Mount Silver. It was peaceful here, and a spot Darts had always been drawn to for some reason... though it had been a while since he'd had cause... or the time to visit.  

[Atlantis_Darts]

Blizzard120

Tristen followed Darts through the halls, through the emergency door, wincing from the dust that got kicked up from the ladder being traversed and being forced to let out a sneeze or two, but fresh air would grace the kid's nose once they made their way out to the top of the roof. The damp, fresh spring of water that ran through the mountain was a bit relaxing to the kid; a slight reprieve to how he was feeling just a few minutes ago, but only slight. The boy sat down on the edge of the roof, wondering how to start this conversation of the topic that bothered him so. Well, ready or not...

"Have...you uh..." A thought then came across the boy. He couldn't come out and straight up ask such a question, but then...there really was no easy way to ask, was there? The boy sighed, tried again. "...Have you ever...um...you know...uh...killed...some...bod...y?" Tristen said. That just really didn't roll off the tongue good at all, grimacing towards Darts, as if to scream he was sorry for even daring to ask that.

Huh. Darts has a sudden flashback to being cold, being hungry. Scratching and clawing to the top of the pile for the chance to get a couple scraps of moldy bread. Shivering in the rain in a gutter wrapped in a ratty black jacket. Being willing to do anything to go to bed with a warm meal in his gut and not having to worry about street thugs disfiguring him for another day. Fighting for territory, fighting for spoils, fighting for a place in a gang. When you're so desperate that something like taking another person's life seems non-consequential in the big picture. As if he'd had any idea what that even meant.

The hybrid settles his legs over the ledge as he sits down next to Tristen, not taking offense at the kid's question at all. He thinks of the Druddigon hybrid Zax and fighting back the urge to kill the man in one on one combat because of what he had done to Clair. The restraint it took that, at one time, he probably wouldn't have had. After a couple seconds of loaded silence, he answers, gazing off into the darkness surrounding their HQ. "...I have, yes."  

[Atlantis_Darts]

Blizzard120

The answer itself wasn't to any surprise to the boy. He kind of figured as such; some had a history like that around here. Even Freth, as far as he knew. Even his adoptive father even confessed he even attempted it before himself; albeit botched. That said, the question that was going to break this whole conversation wide open was "...why?"

What can you say to answer a question like that? "...I want to say I didn't know better at the time." Darts confesses, his gilt hands wringing themselves against each other with only the lightest of clacking in his lap as he thinks. "That I was young and I was stupid and I didn't know what I was doing. But I think answers like that are cop-outs. People like to give answers like that to make themselves feel better after the fact. 'Yeah I really didn't know what I was doing, that's right.' But in the moment, you do know you're crossing a line and you make the deliberate choice to cross it. It doesn't make you a bad person necessarily, nor does it really make you a better one." He sighs, letting his jacket sway a little as he moves to untuck the living garment from beneath him on the ledge.

"If I had to answer I suppose I would say I did it because it felt like I had to. But that's too much like justification. I did it because I thought it would make my life better, and I didn't give a thought to what it was going to do to those people or the people around them and me." Probably not what the kid wanted to hear, but honesty in a time like this is most likely the best policy. "I was doing it for myself."  

[Atlantis_Darts]

Blizzard120

The Electrike boy didn't expect an answer like that and it made him feel in more of an awkward position than what he was in originally. "I..." The kid didn't know what to say. "Zera, she..." The kid fumbled his words real hard, but then stopped, trying to think what to say to explain his case. "Oooh, I don't know..." The kid moaned. "Zera was gonna try to kill me, and she wanted to shadowfy all the team's Pokemon and Unova's, and and and I...I tried to stop her! I tried to kill her! I tried really hard! Even did it with Magmar's help! And...Leslie was yelling at me for being a baby for doing it and I dunno and Zera lived and-" The boy cut himself off, burying his face in his hands just then.

Darts sits there in silence, letting the kid have it out for the moment without interrupting the outpouring of emotions. Something sounded off about the story but he wasn't getting ready to probe just yet. After a couple moments, Darts continues forging down the path they were already traveling. "So why did you do it?" He asks calmly, gently trying to get the kid to unpackage the thorny bush of emotions he was dealing with.  

[Atlantis_Darts]

Blizzard120

"Because...she wasn't gonna stop shadowfying the Pokemon even if I hadn't tried it and...and...she was gonna kill me if I didn't do something. She was still mad over me taking Magmar and...probably didn't help that I kinda had Magmar attack her from behind the other night with his Fire Blast attack...and it was the first thing that I thought about because she was so much stronger than me in a regular fight...I don't even think my Thunderbolt attack alone would have stopped her for long, and I was practicing it too...I needed something...something that really would have stopped her...even if it meant...well..." It was pretty much clear at this point this kid was pretty distraught over this.

"So it sounds to me like you had a clear reason you were doing it." Darts says, trying to interrupt Tristen's pity party for the moment. "You were doing it to protect someone or in this case something. You've seen what that Shadow Virus can do, firsthand if I'm not mistaken..."