A/N: This is a disjointed series of character sketches that is a companion to my multific Wicked Games. Please check it out! Though, it isn't mandatory for you to peek at it, since you could theoretically say this can be a standalone, but...
phosphenes :: executive petrel :: turning on the light
Petrel is about ten years old when he decides he's going to be a Pokemon trainer.
In Kanto, it's standard procedure for a boy or girl to receive a starter pokemon from Professor Oak — he knows this because his mother lets him watch the television when his father isn't around, and since the war has been called to a draw, Kanto news leaks in through the Johto region sometimes. But here, the minimum age is eleven, which Petrel decides is stupid because there's not much of a difference between the ages of ten and eleven in terms of both maturity and physical capability.
So the purple-haired boy grabs one of his sister's pet Pokemon (a weak little Hoothoot) to go out to catch himself something useful to train before he can get himself one of the starters. He quite likes the fire one, Cyndaquil, so he decides he'll catch a non-fire-type to compliment his future team.
In the dead of night, he manages to sneak past the guards that are on curfew watch, and he slips away from the gates of Olivine City and into the grassy realm of Route 39. The boy hears the cries of battle far off, and he can see the lights of the old Moo Moo Farm flicker on and off; it's pretty late, but no one would care at home. Braving one last glance at Olivine, he throws himself into the grass, waiting for a pokemon to attack him so he can catch it.
He grips the pokeball in hand when a tauros comes out to accept his challenge. He forgets that Hoothoot has never fought a battle in its life before, and is only a hanger for the clothes that his stupid sister buys overseas in hopes of entering the bird in contests one day. When the tired little thing wastes out and dies on him mid-fight, he wonders not how he would tell his sister how it happened, but how he could capture that tauros without a pokemon to fight with.
x
It is when he lays the body of the lifeless owl back into its cage after dragging himself back home that he realizes there is a world of difference between ten and eleven.
x
He ignores his sister's wails of despair as best as he can the next morning. He does not tell anybody that it was him who killed the worthless Hoothoot, and for as long as he may live, he probably never will.
x
Petrel tries very hard to convince his parents to let him embark on his own journey.
Though his mother quietly supports his decision, his father won't have any of it. The man spins luxury balls on his finger for a living — a collector, they call him, a loan shark, others say — and bathes in riches day to day; he wants his children to live the same way, surrounded by money and glamour, and so his son must be a doctor and his daughter must be lawyer. Just as it should be, just as he tells his friends and their wives at the country club every Saturday.
"There's no money in training pokemon, son," his father tells him at the dinner table the day after Petrel's twelfth birthday. "Besides, you need to stay in school if you want to be a doctor. Don't lose sight of your goal, Petrel, or else you might deviate away from your path."
"But I don't want to be a doctor," Petrel says when he picks up his fork and plops a piece of tofu into his mouth. Calm, cool, and collected, he dares to lift his eyes from his plate and meet his father's. His mother and sister have stopped their amicable chatter and fell silent to the growing tension between father and son.
"You're just going through a phase, Petrel, you've been wanting this since you were but a child," his father corrects him, his tone gentle yet aggravated, telling the boy that it would do him good to drop the issue while it is still fresh. The boy lowers his eyes back to the plate before him and clenches his jaw tightly. He has to physically refrain himself from flipping over the table when his father ventures to ask, "Would you please pass the salad, Petrel?"
That night, Petrel packs his things and stuff all the money he's been saving up and taking from his parents. He steals away into the moonlit darkness and boards a train to Cherrygrove, where opportunities will surely bloom for him.
x
Cherrygrove is a town wanting to be a city, and when he rents out a room in a motel, he figures that since he's on his own from here on out, he might as well get that starter Pokemon he's been waiting for. He hassles a couple bucks from pedaling the streets for quick cash and makes his way to New Bark with his head in the clouds. The air is easier to breathe, now, and he relishes the taste of freedom.
And like promised, the Professor hands a good-natured Cyndaquil over to the boy, along with a Trainer Card and a badge case to collect his conquests. The aide gives him a starter kit of items that are to help him along his way, but he's far too invested in his brand new Pokemon to care about what she's saying.
x
His pokemon team is coming underway when he comes across a missing poster that tags his face, his name, and a small amount of money for his rescue that he thinks is quite unfair; criminals are apprehended under the promise of millions, while he seems to be only worth a couple hundred. Do his parents find thieves and murderers worth more than their only son? Do they even care?
No.
A wave of anger washes over the boy and he orders his quilava to burn the paper and the damn tree down with it.
He'll show them. He'll prove to them how great he can be. They'll only wish that they were supportive of him in the very beginning.
(He remembers his mother, then, with pink hair that flowed down her back in braids and wisps that crowned her head. She'd have been proud, if not being so subordinate under her husband's thumb; for that, he thinks, he cannot forgive her for, and he shoves her into the category of those who never really cared.)
x
Somewhere down the line, he loses the part of him that remains anchored to Johto.
By the time he's fourteen and the missing posters have stopped circulating around the region, he has placed fifth the Pokemon League and the Elite sends him letters and checks every month to keep track of him. There's not much left to conquer here, he decides when he battles Morty for the third time and wins, and with that he packs up his things and leaves. There had been no strings to cut or goodbyes to be said; all he had to do was buy a one-way ticket to Kanto and never look back. That's his grand farewell to the region that never really felt like home, and he likes it that way.
x
Vermillion is cold when he arrives, and when he books a room at the Pokemon Center, he adamantly claims this place as where he truly belongs.
x
The leader of the Viridian Gym has tired eyes and forgotten laugh lines that streak his pallid face. He doesn't offer a name in exchange for Petrel's, and when he sends out Kangaskhan in the middle of the teen's introduction, he knows that this gym isn't for conformity. Smirking, the purple-haired boy calls for Heracross to fight the towering marsupial, and when Petrel wins, he swears he sees the man smile for a second.
The glint of the badge could've blinded the boy, but the leader covers it with his hand and pulls it away before Petrel can take it. "Come with me," the man says vaguely. "I think you'd like this better than a gym badge."
Petrel relents and follows the man into a darkened room, of course, because a person with eyes too wise and words too heavy with lurid promise cannot be lying about a matter like this.
x
And very soon.
Very quickly.
Like a blink.
The badges pinned to his chest fall away to make room for a black uniform with a red R spilled on the front, crimson like blood and anger and all the grudges he holds against his parents.
The man's name is said to be Giovanni, and he introduces him to the better side of life.
x
Petrel makes thievery look like an art form.
He swears to the oath of loyalty vehemently, relentlessly, recklessly as he becomes enamored with the side of life that basks in pretense. His pokemon changes with him and lose their innocence, the part of them that mistakes battling for gameplay. They have become fearsome weapons of his own, their teeth sharpened by bloodlust and their claws grown to kill. No longer are they cloyed by the idea that battling is a recreation.
They learn, just like he does, that it is a game of survival.
And for the glory of Team Rocket, too.
Gradually, he begins to climb up the ladder, and with every new batch of Pokemon he steals, he steps closer to being second in power. He becomes all these wild things that he almost wishes that they put his face on the Most Wanted list; maybe then, speaks the part of him that he has long buried with the emotions like burden and regret, his parents would think him worth it.
x
He steals a Noctowl, just for fun, just for the kick of the memory.
x
Giovanni crowns him Executive on his seventeenth birthday.
The cake is stale and the candles aren't even lit. Giovanni and Madam Boss and Ariana surround the boy as they wish him a cold happy birthday. It is not as garish or extravagant as his past celebrations have been, namely when he was a young child — weakling, rather, he corrects himself. But he doesn't care. He likes it better this way, like he's important to them.
Giovanni grips his shoulder and offers an empty smile. "Congratulations, you're now an Executive, Petrel," he says.
The teen beams. It is his happiest moment, yet.
x
His parents could have been prouder when he was younger, but if they saw him now, they'd be terrified.
And fear, he's learned, is only a distorted form of respect, and that's a much better gift than pride will ever be to him.
x
Petrel is the executive known for jokes and disguises, who soon becomes the dignified joker with a knack for making people laugh before they die. It's his signature, macabre way of doing away with enemies and the meek that get in his way. It should be noted that this is why the grunts are terrified of him.
As for the others of his kind, Ariana doesn't appreciate his cracks of being an orphan, a lost child, abandoned by parents who never gave a shit (and he thinks it might be because her son had left her years ago); Archer waves off his antics and doesn't join in, constantly waiting for the next mission assigned by the Boss like some glorified lapdog; Proton, on the other hand, adds in his own taste of dry humor and is often lumped together with the man when spoken of.
x
He's about twenty-one when he becomes bored with his life.
And he supposes that it's all a big waiting game, this mafia business. It's always the same people to rob, the same people to kill, the same things to steal. When they're not out on missions that, when laid out in their bare bones, are all just repetitions of last week's assignment, they're waiting for the next move. They're waiting for their turn to checkmate. He'd find himself another profession, one that's more honest and more reasonable, if not for the fact that he's anchored to this job and leaving means certain death.
The allegiance is to Team Rocket, when all things are said and done.
x
The funny part is, Giovanni tells him that he would've made a good doctor in another life.
A/N: I'll be doing these character sketches of the executives every week or so, but it won't be regularly updated - this is just something I do when I'm bored. And the writing style and format is completely experimental on my part, by the way. Also, please leave a review! Granted, I did do this at 3 AM and didn't do nearly enough editing as I would have liked to, but, yknow, whatever. I'll get around to fixing this up if needed...