"Do you ever wonder if pokémon actually want to be captured?"
Alder froze up for a second, not expecting his young friend to ask such a difficult question seemingly at random. It was almost intimidating when Ghetsis got into moods like these…
"I…I can't say I have," Alder said tentatively, looking over at the small boy. Ghetsis had opted to sit underneath a tree with his Deino - anything to avoid the sunlight, even as Alder basked in it.
"Hm. I don't think many people have, for some reason." Ghetsis' face gave nothing away, thoughtful red eyes trained on the dragon playfully nibbling his hand. "Do you think the technology for capturing these creatures was just developed and implemented without any thought given about whether they want to live with us?"
Alder swallowed thickly, made deeply uncomfortable by questions like these, questions that he could neither shrug off nor answer properly. "Um, again, I'm not quite sure…I haven't, eh, thought about it too much, myself."
Ghetsis hummed thoughtfully and trained his scarlet gaze on Alder, "how come?"
"Well…" the question had seemed innocent enough, but Alder wasn't certain how to explain himself, or even if his lack of a standpoint on such an issue even warranted explaining. He settled on turning the boy's question against him, "why have you been thinking about it?"
"I don't know. I tend to whenever I'm reminded of pokémon abusers," the boy murmured, looking back down at his beloved dragon. "Pokémon have so much capacity for destruction, and yet…the people who hurt them the most are rarely hurt by their pokémon in kind. It's baffling. Why don't they just kill their trainers and run away?"
Alder remained silent, completely out of his depth here. He had never even considered any of the ethical implications of pokémon capturing, raising or battling before he'd met this child, and with the growing frequencies of dark little questions like this, part of Alder couldn't help but worry that the twelve-year-old might be tainting his rosy view on such matters. It was especially jarring when the redhead considered how sweetly Ghetsis behaved most of the time…
"Are you quite all right?"
The definitely innocent question shook Alder from his ponderings, and he realised just how long he'd been quiet for, with the same troubled expression on his face. The redhead immediately felt embarrassed, "ah, yes, I am. Sorry. You just, erm. Gave me a lot to think about."
"Oh. I'm sorry, this is making you uncomfortable, isn't it? Sorry, I don't mean to cause anyone discomfort, I just…" Ghetsis mumbled, the deeply contemplative look in his eyes gone as suddenly as it had appeared. "Just forget I said anything."
"All right," Alder responded, quick to jump on that option, not even feigning any reluctance to stop even bloody considering the possibility that pokémon didn't love people as much as people assumed. "You don't have to worry about upsetting me, though. Thinking out loud about these issues isn't going to hurt little Alder's delicate feelings," the much older boy joked, hoping to eliminate as much of the lingering air of awkwardness that hung between them whenever Ghetsis brought up something so outlandish.
"Duly noted," Ghetsis responded, smiling sweetly. He rose to his full, as-yet unimpressive height and stretched, "are you quite done basking? I didn't intend on spending the whole day watching you play dead. Just so you know."
Alder mock-groaned as he too stood, grinning down at his smaller friend even as he tried his best to appear inconvenienced. "Fine, I'll find something interesting for your highness to partake in," the redhead joked, and just like that, things between them had outwardly gone right back to normal.
Outwardly, for Alder knew he'd be trying his best for the following days not to think too hard on his relationship with all the pokémon he'd battled and caught, not to mention all the dubious trainers he'd seen, frightened he'd conclude – as Ghetsis had seemed to – that something was not quite right about society.