POKEMON: The Life of PI

The sunset was gorgeous, as always, soft, pink fingers caressing a sparkling, blue sky, the kind of romanticized image Carp would have rattled on about. I sit on the boulder overlooking the world as far as the eye can see and gently sprinkle sand between my fingers. As I stare at the world beyond I hear the heavy footsteps of my ever present escort approaching. Carp would have had a lot to say about Hextor. I smile, realizing none of it would have been flattering. I sigh as my fingers meet.

I don't tempt the omen, I rise to my feet with the poised grace Don had instilled in me. The kind of thing he called beautiful. Not that much he considered of any real beauty but he always seemed to see something in everything, no matter the insignificance. But even Don hadn't seen the truth right before his eyes.

I had and I had paid dearly for it. They had seen to it.

Hextor strips off his shirt, exposing scars that ripple over taunt and wiry muscle the kind of body a Greek sculptor would have died for and Romans lusted after. His eyes like shards of cobalt, dead and emotionless stare at me as he sits in the sand, his knife sonya sparkling in his hand. He smiles, baring his sharpened teeth, a mouth of razors. Bleached white to cover the nicotine stains left over from chronic smoking, a habit I had come to loath because it made him smell like death.

It was a smell that suited him. It made him more of what he is. He smiles but the expression is a false pantomime. The smile of a wolf stalking its favorite prey. I feel the shard of sea glass poke into my thigh as I smile back at him and quietly whisper my hatred. Time would come.

I thought then about Carp... what he would have said to all of this. To the madness and chaos my life had become.

And I made my decision.

TEN DAYS LATER

Don Rico smiles patiently at his Ratatts antics. It chattered angrily as it tore into the bits of flesh tossed to him by the Don's Capos. They looked nervous this evening. the pink tongues of the setting sun accentuating their tanned leathered skin. Products of hard lives and harder lessons. Some missed fingers. The price paid by past failures, others wore dog tags mementos of militant activities in service to the Dons enterprise. The don bites into the luscious meat of a sparrow. the Pokemon's feathers neatly plucked and put aside for his ratatts inspection. It was a rare gesture of love a love as false as his ever present smile and warm hospitality beneath the eternal; calm was a chilling rage the likes