[open] I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions

[silky_bearing]

Who: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester.... and anyone willing to deal with him
Where: Mostly Vermillion and... Around?
When: Jan+
Summary: Catchall for arrival and sorting out what the heck is going on here
Rating: R - likely talk of violence, war, possibly blood experiments, genocide, etc. Fun Femblem themes
Log:


Around Town

Lorenz can be found exploring the city in... well just about everywhere, really. There is so much here that is new and novel for him. Electricity, indoor plumbing, never mind the pokémon aspect of it. The technology is so advanced and Lorenz is precisely the type of stuffy no-nonsense person to legitimately sit down and read through instruction manuals.

Whether it's staring at the drink menu of a café in wonder or sitting down somewhere to read through the Breeder's Guide that was in his bag (sometimes even the Gear manual) every other thing seems to have him stopping to watch how things unfold. He tries his best to be polite, to not stare outright, but even at his best there is only so much he can do. when dealing with so many new things. So it's hardly surprising when he eventually catches your eye, looking absolutely flabbergasted.

"Is this.... ah- common here?"

Toge what now?

The arrival of the togepi swarm is his first encounter with wild pokémon intruding on urban spaces and at first he is a bit terrified to move lest he ens up tripping over the little things that seem to be everywhere. "Certainly a new meaning to the phrase walking on eggshells." murmured to himself with a faint smirk of amusement.

But then the skitty he got from the nice lady in New Bark Town is pouncing out from under his chair and onto the nearest little yellow orb and Lorenz is suddenly scrambling after him with a shout of protest.

"Mister Whiskers!!" Oh no. He doesn't want to let this little pink furball hurt the poor thing.

Someone... might want to help him out with this whole "battle" thing.

Femblemtroika House

There's so much to take in that he's reeling with the volume of information very quickly. So many people that he knows but in no meaningful way and the one he does has been here so long and there has been such distance between them that he feels as though he needs to learn him all over again.

It doesn't help him feel any less unmoored than he already does.

He finds himself returning to a seat near a window that overlooks the yard, a cup of tea cradled in his hands, Mister Whiskers slinking up onto the arm or back of the couch, moving with the sun. If left to his own devices Lorenz will spend much of the first few days nursing too much tea, staring into the middle distance, caught up in whatever strange turns his mind is taking. Sometimes a small leatherbound journal will appear from a pocket as well as a delicate glass dip pen. Though his mind seems to wander away from him and there are bold ink spots on both the page and his fingers before long.

Inevitably, when someone passes through the room, he looks up, seeming startled to find someone else nearby every time and though he is always polite, offering a greeting and asking after their wellbeing, there's something distinctly off putting about his response. A tension whenever he sees someone, something almost skittish in the way he holds himself, the way his grip tightens on his pen or his cup trembles ever so slightly.

He can hardly recall the last time he saw so many different people so often and so many of the faces here were far from welcoming when last he saw them.

Comments

[silky_bearing]

The shouting was uncalled for, clearly, because it disturbed Felix.

But this is the first time anyone has explained battling to him as a way for the animals to learn and grow rather than just... a weird thing people here do. Always with the insistence that it's friendly, though he has trouble believing that.

Still, watching Felix's little puffball of a bird send the togepi tumbling backwards is a little too familiar for him to be comfortable with, something that makes his expression darken and jaw tighten but he looks away, either not foolish enough or not brave enough to call Felix on it.

"I don't understand why people are so preoccupied with defeating others... Or what the purpose of hurting others is." He flinches, letting out a breath through clenched teeth when Mister Whiskers headbutts his shoulder, clearly eager to get down to try to pounce on the togepi once more.

"For everyone trying to insist that everything is so peaceful here, I mean." Though his experience is rather skewed. Training animals to hurt other animals so you can enslave them until you have something powerful enough to hurt people seems...... no better than the bandits they'd deal with back home. And it is very clear when he says hurting others that he means man and 'mon both.

[bestswordmaster]

"It is peaceful. There are no wars, or even real weapons. The people don't fight - only the Pokemon. Legally, at least, and there's not much crime to speak of." Felix shakes his head. "It's the Pokemon themselves who want to defeat each other. It's a natural instinct for them. If they're not with a trainer, they do it on their own in the wild, and less effectively. Weaker creatures have little chance to get stronger and defend themselves or evolve without a trainer to guide them and a team to work with. You're looking at it backwards."

And as Felix himself is a creature who naturally gravitates toward battle as a means to learn and grow as a person, it all comes very easily to him.

[silky_bearing]

"What do you mean, the people don't fight? That's..." Not how things have gone for him by a long shot.

"Isn't that rather the point of this whole League business?" Because you go to gyms to fight the gym leaders.... right? He's been stubborn about not learning much about the whole business because he's both been upset and potentially misunderstood from the start. That other people have reinforced that misunderstanding is... certainly not helping.

[bestswordmaster]

Felix rolls his eyes. "I mean what I said. The League is for battling with teams of Pokemon. Didn't you read any of the manuals that creepy woman put in your bag?"

He glances over to where the Togepi is trying to recover. "If you want to catch that Togepi, you should hurry up and do it before it runs away."

[silky_bearing]

"I did but..." He frowns, fingers tugging self consciously at his sleeve, the one that covers the heavy bandaging that he's needed to change out quite regularly considering how much of his forearm got scraped off on the asphalt. Bandages that creep up past his wrist to cover the outside edge of his hand, if Felix pays any attention.

"o-oh? Um..." hold on he's fumbling for a Pokéball.

[bestswordmaster]

Felix doesn't often pay that much attention to the details of what people are wearing or doing, but when it comes to injuries, he's well-attuned. He glances at those visible bandages.

"What happened to your hand?"

[silky_bearing]

Lorenz pauses, gestures vaguely to Felix's rufflet, and explains while he finally digs a pokéball out of the bag beside the chair he'd been sitting in. Which, unfortunately, means that Mister Whiskers has wriggled free and tackles the poor togepi before it can try to make a break for it.

"Something rather like your bird just did, only... on a much larger scale."

A huff, a scowl at Mister Whiskers, and he sort of... sidesteps around the skitty to offer the pokéball to the togepi as a means of escaping the little beast.

"I'm sorry, little one. Come here...."

[bestswordmaster]

"A larger scale? What did you do, antagonize a wild Fearow or something?"

Felix watches Lorenz try to coax the Togepi into the Pokeball without actually throwing it and shakes his head, but it's no business of his if the man wants to waste time doing things the hard way.

[silky_bearing]

What part of throwing things at wild animals sounds like a good idea? Especially when he's already been attacked.

"I didn't antagonize anyone." It's not the same old haughtiness but something that teeters very close to pleading. Once the poor little togepi is in the pokeball though he does pull out his gear to try to scroll through and figure out what it was that attacked him.

"It was this." Surely there isn't any identifying information about Azazel the staraptor in there. Just what species he is, right?

[bestswordmaster]

Felix isn't sure he believes that Lorenz didn't antagonize anyone, but he takes the Gear and scrolls through the entry to find the data about where and when Lorenz first encountered it. He frowns.

"Another trainer's Staraptor attacked you? You, not your cat?"

[silky_bearing]

Lorenz freezes, halfway standing, his pretty new togepi's pokéball in hand.

"What?!" Strained and astoundingly guilty sounding but he clears his throat and turns back to face Felix, cheeks already coloring with shame despite himself.

"Of course not. I simply... must have been-" A vague wave of his hand, sleeve slipping down to hint at just how much of his arm is bandaged, trying to be dismissive and failing miserably. He's not as bad at lying as, say, Ferdinand but he's by no means convincing either. He's far more equipped to redirect conversations before they even reach a point where he'd have to lie but everything here is such an unknown he's done nothing but staggering into traps. "... in it's way."

"Mister Whiskers hasn't left the house. He's made quite fast friends with Tiramisu, you know. Must be where he gets all this troublesome behavior from." Hahahaaaaaaa have an inane distraction, Felix.

[bestswordmaster]

Felix squints at Lorenz, trying to figure out why he's suddenly being so weird about this. "I told you, it's not troublesome behavior. It's normal. And you said what happened was like what Griffin just did but on a larger scale, which makes it an attack. You're obviously lying, but I don't understand why."

[silky_bearing]

Well... okay just... call him out why don't you Felix.

Lorenz visibly deflates at that, shaking his head a little. "You all have done so much, it was a simple misunderstanding and the last thing I want to do is trouble you further. Byleth treated the worst of it when it happened. There's nothing more to be done."

He doesn't want to cause trouble or have the others worrying about him. He's already enough of a mess from his recent death never mind them thinking he's incapable of going out into the city without being somehow victimized.

Maybe that's what it comes down to. He just doesn't want to be treated like some fragile thing that might shatter with too much pressure.

"If it's all the same to you... I'd much prefer you explain this supposedly normal behavior. It seems I have had a distinct misunderstanding."

[bestswordmaster]

Felix rolls his eyes into the heavens. "I'm not asking because I plan to do anything. I'm asking because the only people I've ever known to attack other people with their Pokemon were members of a bandit group called Team Rocket. So whoever attacked you might be one of them."

It's not that Felix doesn't care, or that if Lorenz did want protection he would dismiss it out of hand, but he knows what it's like to be treated like a fragile thing that might shatter, and he despises it. So he sure as hell isn't about to treat anyone else that way.

"Anyway, like I said, it's instinct for most Pokemon to battle each other because it's the only way they can progress through their natural life cycle. They become stronger, learn new techniques, and many of them evolve into new forms. None of that can happen if they don't fight. Some of them choose to stay as they are for themselves - one of my cats has done so - but most of them want to reach their full potential. And most want trainers to help them do it; a trained Pokemon grows much more effectively than a wild one, and they enjoy partnering with humans."

[silky_bearing]

"Then I will be more cautious of such individuals in future. And not go anywhere unaccompanied again." Something said with a guilty look at Mister Whiskers who takes the obvious offer of attention as an excuse to reach up, putting his paws against Lorenz' leg and then streeeeeetching- "Ow. Stop that you're going to tear my trousers."

That's the point Lorenz. Don't take his toy.

"Natural life cycle? Really?" He... hadn't really read far enough to get to the whole evolution thing? It had seemed harmful, given what he knows from Fodlan, and he'd wanted nothing to do with it. "I was under the impression it was..... similar to raising dogs for sport."

The kind you train and condition and starve to make them cruel and a better fighter. But this really sounds a lot more like training horses. Teaching the animal how to use their natural gifts to excel and, while he's certainly seen horses used for racing that were abused, he has not personally met a single horse that was not happier for the work it was capable of. But still those were both domesticated animals, creatures humanity had bred into those roles. That these wild creatures would be so naturally inclined to teamwork...

"To find wild creatures so capable of teamwork with human beings is... strange, you understand. But fascinating." Another look down at Mister Whiskers. "Is that why you keep getting into trouble? Are you... well... are you bored?"

Hey look he's starting to get it. And Mister Whiskers is clearly going to help by papping at the pokeball in his hand that still has that togepi in it. Gib Toy.