No matter your background, be it a simple postman, a powerful fighter, or a quiet assassin, there is one thing that everyone strives to be in life:
To be the very best, like no one ever was.
When the time comes that you find someone whose skill surpasses your own, you may feel the urge to rise up and become better yourself so you may show that person you aren't a pushover.
That there is the real test, and to overcome it is your cause.
Some may even travel the land, searching far and wide to discover the way they can develop their skills to their highest potential, to understand the power that's inside…
But not Neo.
No, for this silent young lady it meant spending all of her free time grinding, battling, and breeding to create the perfect Chinpocketmon possible. Even among the many sidetracks thrown her way by her housemates, not even the stinging of insects or some professional wrestling could prevent her from this quest many would find trivial.
For five whole days Neo had been piecing together a nigh-perfect team of Chinpocketmon to best her recent tag team partner Yang. The blonde had bested her at this game, and only this game: to Neo, that meant she couldn't claim her title of 'The Queen of Games' until she could prove to her rival that she was the better Chinpocketmon trainer.
Though it had been less than a week spent with them, Neo had become quite fond of her small party of 6 monsters. Having memorized Yang's own team, she had made sure to obtain monsters that could fight on the same level as Xiao Long's. Among all the powerful beasts, however, sat one that didn't quite fit in with the rest.
Its name was Uhcakip, a small, red mouse looking creature with bright yellow cheeks. By the standards of most players, it was considered garbage and not worth using on any serious team. It had a second stage, one that was quite powerful and capable of taking out more than a few of Yang's own monsters. But when the time came to evolve the adorable little monster, Neo just couldn't bring herself to do it. It may just be a small cluster of 3D pixels, but the way that little Uhcakip smiled at Neo every time she went it into battle warmed her usually cold heart. The little guy had pulled her through some tough battles in that game, and to force it to change into something just for the sake of beating Yang felt wrong.
It wasn't the strongest Chinpocketmon, but it was Neo's favorite. And she was going to use this seemingly weak mouse to take down her rival's powerful beasts.
With her GameGirl system in hand, Neo hopped out of her bed to hunt Yang down and challenge her to a rematch. Roman felt her jump up off the mattress, and lifted his hat from over his eyes to see where she was headed off to.
"Where you going, Buttercup? You can't be hungry already. Dinner was just an hour ago."
Neo flashed her GameGirl at him, jerking a thumb towards the hall.
"Oh, you're finally going to challenge her huh? Hopefully all that time you spent playing that game won't come back to bite ya. Blondie beat you pretty bad last time."
Puffing out her cheeks, Neo flipped him the bird.
"Now that's just rude."
Leaving her partner to nap, Neo closed the door on him and made a beeline to Xiao Long's room. The blonde's door was open, so she invited herself in. Her opponent was there, as was Blake and Weiss.
"What's up Neo?" Yang greeted, looking away from her teammates, "We were just planning a few things for Ruby's birthday. You need something?"
"We could ask her opinion about the cake," Weiss said, "I am fairly certain Ruby would prefer vanilla frosting over chocolate."
"She eats cookies all the time," Blake groaned, "I'm telling you we should go with chocolate."
"This would just be easier if Yang would pay attention to what her sister likes to eat."
"I'm her sister, not her parent. I'll just call my dad and ask him then."
Neo cleared her throat to bring attention back to her. She waved her game system at Yang, pointing at the cartridge.
"Chinpocketmon? Oh! You want a rematch, I'm guessing." After a nod of confirmation, Yang reached over to her bed and grabbed her own GameGirl. "Then you're on!"
Weiss didn't seem too pleased with Yang getting distracted. "Can't this wait, Yang? We are in the middle of something?"
"Not like we're getting anywhere with it," Blake retorted.
"Singles or doubles, Neo?" Yang asked her opponent as they booted up their games. Neo held up one finger to signify the first option. "Classic style. I like that. Let's see if your team can take the heat this time around. Your Ice types surely didn't appreciate it that much."
Not intimidated by Yang's taunting, Neo initiated the battle. The moment the battle music hit, she went into full focus mode as she sent out her first combatant. Her purple land shark roared as Yang's first monster landed on the field across from it.
"A Chompgar, huh?" Yang nodded, impressed at her powerful Chinpocketmon, "Not bad, not bad. But can it survive one of these?"
To Neo's surprise, Yang's monster attacked first! But how? Chompgar was naturally faster than Yang's Mamothpig! As her first beast fell after one super effective attack, Neo looked at Yang for some sort of explanation.
"Just so you know," Yang said, "Every competitive player like me is prepared for a Chompgar. It a pretty deadly Chinpocketmon, so I always make sure I give my Mammothpig a speed boosting item just to out-speed it and take it down!"
Gritting her teeth, Neo hastily sent out her next beast, not realizing it was also weak to Yang's Mammothpig. Just like her Chompgar, it too fell quickly.
"Bad move," Yang sighed, "Don't get yourself worked up so much. It won't help you any."
Oh, now that was it. If there was one thing Neo didn't appreciate it was her opponent talking down to her. It was time to get serious. She sent out Luckchance, her most defensive monster. Just the sight of it made Yang bite her lip.
"Oh, not this thing," Yang mumbled, knowing all too well what it was capable of, "I'm not in the mood for you to stall my monsters to death with poison."
Yang switched out her Mammothpig for her Champma, a wrestler type monster capable of utterly wrecking Neo's Luckchance. Once it hit the field, Neo's beast used Virus to poison it. Unfortunately, the status condition wasn't going to work in her favor.
"Thanks for the boost!" Yang laughed as Neo switched out her Chinpocketmon for another that could take one of Champma's attacks. But it was to no avail: her incoming monster was knocked out in one hit by Yang's powered up one. "Being poisoned doubles Champma's attack, just so you know. And I doubt you have anything that can take a hit from him now!"
Neo bit her lip at the severity of the situation. Had she just sealed her own fate?
She sent out her Luckchance again, hoping it could survive on a sliver of health.
It went down like house of cards on a windy day.
Her next beast was Pigeondot, a bird type. It was definitely faster than Yang's Champma, and managed to get off a powerful hit on it. But it wasn't enough: Champma lived on just enough health to retaliate with a super effective attack.
"Ain't looking good for you, Neo," Yang said as Neo sent out her next to last monster, which was her trump card: a Kadabrakazam. The powerful psychic type was brittle but fast, and could punch holes in teams with its high special attack power. Neo selected its most powerful move, and waited with glee for the Champma to fall…
Her spirits fell straight down when her attack missed.
"Oh man," Yang winced as she took the Kadabrakazam down, "Gotta hate those 90 percent accuracy moves. Sorry that happened. You could've turned the game around with that one."
That last comment only made defeat sting even more. Neo stared blankly at her screen as her Uhcakip hopped happily onto the field, unaware that it was about to be slaughtered. The little mouse turned its head and smiled as it always had, like when she had beaten final gym, when she had beaten the Chinpocketmon League, when she had first used it in battle…
She couldn't bear to watch it fall.
"An Uhcakip?" Yang raised an eyebrow at Neo, "You realize that one isn't very good, right? I mean, you should have evolved it at least…"
And that was the last straw.
Snapping her system shut and ending the battle, Neo dashed out of the room, too embarrassed to even look Yang and the others in the face. It was too humiliating to stay and be swept 6-0 with the team she had trained so hard with for this battle, not to mention her favorite team member getting ridiculed just before it was about to fall. So much time spent with these monsters she had grown to care for, only to choke at the most important moment…
"Neo!" Xiao Long called after her, sighing as she turned back to her teammates, "You think I went a little hard on her?"
"She seemed pretty upset," Blake answered, "But it's probably best to let Roman deal with it. I'm going to guess she doesn't like to talk about things at all."
"At least now we can get back to business," Weiss handed Yang her scroll, "Now call your dad so we can settle this icing problem."
"Okay, okay," Yang said, taking the scroll, "But I'm going to warn you: This call might take a while."
"Why?"
"I may have forgotten to call him for an entire week…"
"Back already?"
Feeling Neo land on her end of the bed, Roman opened his eyes to see she had indeed returned. To his surprise, she was turned away from him with her face buried into her pillow.
"Guessing it didn't go well," Roman said, to which he received his second middle finger of the day. "Well, at least that's over with. Why don't you move down this way, eh? Maybe a little Just Desserts will make you feel better?"
No response, not even an inch of movement.
"Aw, come on Buttercup. It was just a game. Nothing to worry about-
"…Shut up…"
She spoke.
It was just a whisper, but it was enough for Roman to realize that this seemingly meaningless loss meant a lot to her.
Roman reached into his pocket, pulling out a cigar and lighting it. Inhaling the smoke and letting it out in one long breath, he stood and walked over to his desk to get something out of one of the drawers. Closing the door on them, he joined Neo on her end of the bed, scooting close to her and putting his hand on her back.
Neo looked up from the pillow when she heard the sound of her GameGirl turning on. But to her surprise, hers was still closed in front of her.
"I don't like to admit it," Roman said, looking down at his GameGirl as he started playing Chinpocketmon, "But there are only three things I actually care about in this world. This game is one of them. Weird, ain't it? A big time crime boss like me, spending his time playing around with digital animals. What a joke that sounds like. Not a rumor I want getting spread around, you know?"
He puffed on his cigar again, before flicking it across the room into Emerald's garbage can. "So I have to say I hate these kind of things just to keep that cunning, manipulative image of mine up. Yeah, it's pretty shallow. But in our line of work I can't afford to become a laughing stock."
Neo lifted herself up, her hair swept messily over her eyes as she leaned up against Roman's comforting shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her waist as he continued to play.
"But then there's you. You can get away with playing these games in front of others because you don't care what they think. You're tough like that. You know your image can't be tarnished by a few nasty words, and that they can't stop you from liking the things you do. You're so confident in yourself that you don't even need to speak to show you mean business. You'll sit in a bar surrounded by the toughest of criminals and order a milkshake while playing Super Lario Brothers. There are times that I wish I could be in your shoes, to know what it feels like to be as amazing as you are."
Blushing, Neo put one of her hands on Roman's, pulling it away from the GameGirl and to her chest. Roman dropped his game into his lap, reaching up to move the hair from his partner's eyes.
"You're exactly what I'd been striving to be for so long, and that's why I had to make sure you were mine when I met you. Because if anyone else was sitting here with you and saying that they loved you like I am right now, then that would just feel very, very wrong."
Leaning slowly into him, Neo could taste the familiar scent of smoke on her tongue as she brought her lips to his. The sharp but soothing burn of his taste in her throat reminded her of the first day she had spoken to him, when she had kissed him and uttered the three little words she had never imagined saying to anyone else during her entire existence. The two of them were spawned from the filthiest depths of society, but they knew that one of them being without the other would truly be the definition of wrong.
Pulling back from her kiss, Roman picked up her game system and put it in her hands. "Don't let something like this bring you down. You're tough, Buttercup. And I'm going to help that Uhcakip of yours become just as tough as you are."
Neo gasped, unaware that he actually had been paying attention to her while she was playing.
"I know what it's like to use ones that people think suck. There's a reason I was known as the 'Terror of the Gameshop' when I was a little one. So why don't we have ourselves a practice bout? I'll do my damn best to make you ready to beat that blonde bimbo into the ground."
The two sat back to back, hiding their screens from one another as they started their battle. Feeling Neo snuggle up closer into him, Roman slid down so his head was resting on the back of hers.
"…Thank you…"
"Don't mention it, Buttercup."