A beautiful, slightly eerie, and somewhat whimsical melody permeated the air, and his human waved her hands like a conductor in charge of a grand orchestra, each movement a command to be understood and executed. Her suit looked almost immaculate, unless you noticed the slight angle of her bowtie, and a wrinkle on the hastily pressed pants.
Unsightly.
He and the Flareon were swirling in a whirling dance of ice and fire, creating complex patterns weaving through the air. Except, his brother's timing and control were slightly off, so he had to adjust his own control, making the scene as close to perfect as possible without looking off-balance.
Drab.
Heat and cold were opposites, yet similar in more ways than one. His human made sure he understood the basics, that these were not just innate elemental forces, but states of existence. If something emanated energy through the air or contact, it was hot. If something absorbed energy through these same ways, it was cold. His brother did not comprehend these concepts as well as he needed to, so his control over fire was insubstantial. Barebones. Surface level.
Useless.
His human gave a final nonverbal command, slightly off-rhythm. The Flareon, lacking a good enough sense of timing, followed it, forcing him to adjust to this farce as well. The finisher that should've reached its peak at the final notes of the melody, went off just some fractions of a second earlier.
Laughable.
His human looked at the judges, awaiting the results.
"This was an impressive number! Truly, mesmerising!" one of the judges smiled, showing off an ignorant and undeserving '10'.
"There were some hiccups here and there," the other judge stated, giving them a '9', "But this was truly impressive nonetheless. Your Pokemon are very well-trained."
"This is really similar to what you've already shown us five months ago," the third judge looked at his human plainly, with a '7' at the board, "And you didn't even polish it enough to perfection. I expected better"
His human gave a curt bow, and left the stage, walking towards the dressing rooms. He and Flareon followed.
8,67 points… Fourth place… True, their performance did not deserve even that. Not with all those little imperfections. But losing hurt. Especially when he gave it his all, only for the others to mess at such small things.
Especially considering what was to follow.
They entered the dressing room, and his human closed the door, locking it. It only took her a few seconds to lose her composure.
"What the hell! What do you MEAN 'too similar to five months ago'?!" his human barked, grabbing a crop, and slamming it against a wall, "It was an entirely new number, I designed all the freaking choreographies from scratch! I've spent MONTHS making sure the visuals were just right!"
Another hit, this time against a mirror. The glass shattered.
"Do you have ANY idea how difficult it is to teach a Pokemon required physics, on TOP of timing and dance routines?! What do you mean I didn't polish it to perfection, you shit wig?!"
He could only hope she wore herself out before proceeded to the next stage of coping. For that, he did not move, as to not remind the human of the world outside her own head.
"Some hiccups… Here and there…" the human muttered, before setting her eyes on him, "It was you, wasn't it?"
It wasn't. His timing was perfect, his looks were finely groomed even beyond what his human did, and he went out of his way to adjust to everyone's mistakes. But he was not Flareon. His brother always was a favourite, even if he was far less skilful, far less clever, and far less graceful.
He knew the reasons why they failed. He could point out each and every single one of them, but he could not communicate with her. Not just in 'he could not speak human' way. There was no reasoning with her.
"It was you! You screwed the entire routine, just to mess with me again! You ungrateful piece of shit!" she roared, raising the crop to hit him.
Ugly.
Painful.
Sigh… Bothersome thoughts lead to bothersome dreams.
Okehazama looked around without much interest. He was sleeping in his own tent of pure, beautifully carved ice, a bit away from the cloth tent 'not-human' slept in. The Vespiquen was sleeping a bit further into the woods, surrounded by hordes of Combees, the paranoid thing. The mangy mutt… Ah, right. She was given a dozen of Potions, and put back into her Pokeball, to rest and recover.
Looking up, the night sky was clear, but its stars were dull, drab and dim. Like they knew the exact look they wished for, yet didn't have the necessary glamour to pull it off. A cheap, laughable knockoff.
Well, it's not like those stars could compare to his own looks even at their brightest. Mere backdrops at the best of nights, and this night seemed to be far from the best. Which meant that if he left the comfortable cold of his temporary dwelling, he would've shined brilliantly if viewed from any possible angle. That soothed his ego somewhat.
Still, Okehazama could not help but feel that faint twinge of irritation, prodding and poking at him, as he did his best to clear his head of the remnants of that dream he had.
Few things bothered him. Not because he was some sort of an enlightened simpleton, of course not. There could always be something bothersome. Things like imperfections in his own appearance. Warm food. Lack of control. Humans and Pokemon without aesthetic taste. Things and creatures more beautiful than him.
There were many potential things which could possibly bother him. And if he was bothered, he had bothersome dreams that made him loose his beauty sleep. And once again, looking less than perfect was one of his pet peeves. Which was why he always made sure to get rid of anything that bothered him in the first place.
He spent hours each day making sure his appearance was perfect - not just as close as perfect as possible, but literally perfect. Practiced his movements so they were of utmost elegance and grace. Froze his food, so it did not offend his palate. Rid the world of the wretches who could not appreciate true beauty. Eliminated any and all of those who could compete with him for the title of the most beautiful being in the world. Made sure he was always the one in control.
Okehazama got rid of anything that had the potential to bother him. And because of that, he always slept like a kit. Always looked immaculately perfect.
Except…
He felt the control he liked so much slipping somewhat in the past few days.
Absol prophecies were a dreadful thing to ignore. They usually pertained to natural disasters, and had perfect accuracy, so ignoring them was something only done by utter fools. Except, this time, the prophecy was about the end of the world, and Okehazama had to be there for a chance to prevent it.
Now, there WAS a chance that this filthy mutt of an Absol was mistaken, at least on some level. It could be that the world was not going to end, or the one responsible was not strong enough to pose any threat to their group, or any other number of things. Except, at this point, he could not test the validity of this prophecy without risking his own existence. And he liked his own existence, thank you very much.
So far, Honnoji's knowledge of the situation had been surprisingly on point. She knew where to find him, as well as the lopsided Vespiquen. Those were points to her prophecy being true. Maybe he was going to get a chance to test it at a later date, but right now? Right now was not the best time to do so.
No, Okehazama had to play along, at least for a while.
He had to follow that unsightly Absol's plans, and play nice with her, the 'not-human', the one-armed insect, and whoever else they planned to bring on board. And sure, he could do what was necessary for now. He was perfect like this.
Except, it bothered him.
Not Nagashino. She was reasonable enough, she did not push his buttons, though he did notice that insect had no eye for aesthetics. If anything, she was a low priority,
Not the 'not-human', as Honnoji called her, either. Sure, she did a mediocre job at grooming his fur and mane, so he had to finish the process himself afterwards. But at least, she seemed to have at least some appreciation for aesthetics, as surface-level as it was. He was not planning to go out of his way to kill her. Unless it was convenient?..
Honnoji though… Ugh. Ugly, unkempt, afraid of her own shadow. No spine to speak of, no smarts either. Always looking like she was about to collapse on herself. Decent as an entertainment, at least, though honestly? Everything about her got on his nerves. He really wished the prophecy went belly-up, so he could actually rid the world of this bothersome wretch.
Except, now that he thought about it, there was one more thing.
Okehazama did not see her fight against Metagross, but something was… Strange about it. Sure, he kind of expected to see her beaten up by the end, judging by how fascinatingly, yet irritatingly meek the mutt was. He was pretty damn sure that she was afraid of fighting, so leaving her in an enclosed space with half a ton of walking metal could end up pretty entertainingly. And yes, that Metagross had a few barely effectual scratches on its body, far away from any vitals.
He also had a massive hole in the middle of his body.
Now, Okehazama's knowledge of physics was mostly limited to thermodynamics, but he was fairly certain that it took a lot of strength or energy or strength to make a hole through that amount of steel. And he was fairly certain Nagashino was not capable of doing something like that, even with her ridiculous exploding Combees.
Which meant, Honnoji somehow did that herself.
Was it a one-time thing? Or was she always able to do that? And if she did - why did she show none of that strength when Okehazama was chasing her around with barrages of his immaculately made ice needles?
Was she looking down on him?
…
This bothered him.
