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HERO OF ORRE

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HE / HIM

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TWENTY-FOUR

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NOVEMBER 21

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PYRITE TOWN

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PARALLAX

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FENCE

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HETEROSEXUAL

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ODD-JOBER

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Your motorcycle breaks down somewhere between Phenac and Pyrite, and had you not the firsthand experience of this very thing happening time and time again when you were younger and the vehicle younger, still, you'd be as good as a dead man beneath the blazing heat of the Orrean Sun.[break][break]

It's been some time since you've had to do this, so long that you can't even vividly recall the last particular instance. Trial and error was what had the hovering bike in such pristine shape (or, you should say, as prestine as something caked in dirt and built entirely from scrap metal can be), error being situations just like this with less experience and impulse control under your belt and a farther distance still to the nearest sign of any kind of civilization, abandoned or invested with thugs. No one had helped you then, whether you had to pushed the malfunctioning machine through sand and borderline heat exhaustion. By now, you don't even think to ask for it; aren't even certain that you'd accept any aid that would be, impossibly, offered to you, anyway. If you couldn't even handle getting stranded in the desert – a desert, mind, that spans the entirety of the only region you've ever known – then you shouldn't have been able to make it out alive of the things that you have: your days in Snagem, your betrayal of them, the threat of Cipher. The memories flood through you, and suddenly this all feels like child's play, ignoring, even, the way your body moves through the motions by muscle memory alone.[break][break]

Orpheus jumps down from the passenger's side almost as soon as you've taken your first step off the offending vehicle, claiming his spot in the shade cast by it in expectancy for a long wait. His brother, on the other hand, seems all too fine with continuing to sunbathe where he remains, assuming Thanatos bothered to wake up at the sudden sputtering and jerking of his over-sized metal-made bed. You hope a long wait isn't what you're going to be giving them, though. If it isn't just the heat getting to your head, the rock formation to the west looks all too familiar, an atmospheric tick on the clock that says your still hours away from your destination. An hour extra wouldn't hurt in any other landscape, but being born buried in sand doesn't make you loathe it any less, and you're antsier than the rest to finish your journey. You, after all, can't recede into the air conditioned luxury of a PokeBall. At least – not to your knowledge. Assuming memory serves, you can vaguely recall the last fix (or one of, at least) boiling down to little more than hitting your wrench against the engine until it sputtered to life again. A sigh tears itself from your lips when your fortune doesn't seem to be nearly so fine this time around.[break][break]

Long wait it is.[break][break]

The silence of the vast desert around you would be suffocating for anyone who was not so used to it. You've always been a man of few words, perhaps credit to the sound of nothing but wind in your ear or the distant cawing of a Skarmory soaring too far overhead to catch. Rather than stifling, you take it as a moment to reflect. Anything, really, to keep your mind occupied as your rungs hands themselves through the motion of maintenance after so long without having a need to. There's... a lot to reflect on, you realize tiredly. You can't remember a year in your life quite as hectic as the one that has recently drawn to a close, and that takes into consideration your former lifestyle of thieving from any and all, outrunning the law, and trying to keep yourself alive in a band of thugs barely qualifying as a criminal syndicate. You've been caught up in so much of it until now – even with the active threat gone, it was drive here, aid there, false alarm on another Shadow Pokemon let loose even further still – that you'd never even gotten the chance to sit back and think of it all before. Even now, Rui's chatter would typically be filling the air. Although, while you don't miss the knives that had pressed to your skin and the especially violent encounters with the Pokemon you'd tasked yourself with rehabilitating, that is definitely something you find yourself aching for now.[break][break]

Your initial meeting with her had been entirely chance. Honesty would dictate that a great many of the things that have happened to you in recent memory were entirely in the hands of fortune, the sort that was gracious enough to land in your favor more often than it didn't, but none of them were quite like the first. An encounter with her kidnappers at the first location you stopped at after blowing the Snagem base sky high in Eclo? Unlikely. Rescuing her in the nick of time in the very city she'd been headed to? Scripted, practically. You hadn't meant to stick around long after battling her captors into submission (if you're being truthful, you hadn't even intended to battle them at all; someone else's problem, right up until the citizens of Phenac all turns their expectant eyes on you and suddenly made it yours), but you were quick to learn how difficult it was to say “no” to any request she made of you. How easily you brushed it off at first, too: “I've got nothing better to do” or “Playing body guard might help hide my identity” or “This girl definitely knows something, and I want in”. Excuses, really. She pulled you around on a leash from the get go. And you? You were surprised to find that you didn't really mind.[break][break]

Pokemon with artificially closed hearts. That's always how they'd put it, like hearts were a thing that could be “closed” to begin with. Maybe they all skirted around the real reason; you had your guesses that the results stemmed just as much from how the experimentation was carried out as the experimentation itself. Distortion World, maybe there was no “experimentation” at all: just poor, innocent Pokemon, beaten and broken until everything they laid eyes on became a target. A funny little theory you could play with had you been the sort to toy with such things at all; never mind the gaping holes in it.[break][break]

It wasn't Rui's smile, irresistible from the first time you laid eyes on it that made you agree to her outrageous plan to systematically steal broken Pokemon from trainers undeserving of them. Even then, when it had seemed like there would only be a handful scattered throughout the Orrean sands and the arduous task would be done within a matter of days rather than weeks, that alone wouldn't have been enough to persuade you. You wore, wear the Snag Machine on your arm because it is safest there, fastened to your body, impossible to steal. Back then, you'd sworn to never use it again. (But that was why you agreed. Atonement. Redemption. Dramatic words for such a simple concept. You recognized some of those Pokemon, bleeding black that only your partner could see, eyes wild and fangs bared in a way that no Pokemon's should ever be. You recognized them because you'd stolen them once before. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. It was, not entirely, but definitely in part your fault that things had ended up this way, played like a pawn before you'd ever even heard the name “Cipher”. By that logic, you had to play a part in undoing it to make amends.)[break][break]

Was that it, though?[break][break]

(No.[break][break]

(You'd been certain, in that moment when Wakin told her a secret you hadn't even really had the chance to keep, that she would abandon you. It would have only been a minor loss. Your opinion of her was indifferent by every definition of the word, after all. At worst, she'd flee and tell the whole city of your presence and your “position” – or lack thereof, if accuracy mattered at all – although you couldn't imagine it'd be that much of a challenge to get her to shut up before it became a problem. But the shock that had colored her face had only been temporary, melting away into what you'd come to learn was her default expression, and she'd only go on to cheer you on as you put your cocky ex-co-worker in his place outside the colosseum's doors.[break][break]

(Maybe it's here that you first think that you could do better. It could be blind optimism tinting her gaze rose – but even then, you've only met the cynical and the snide, with yourself right there among them. You could do, perhaps with a dose of a new drug for a change.)[break][break]

“Fuck,” you curse when your hand gets caught between metal, arm yanking itself in a sudden flighty reaction. Ho-oh, you really are out of practice with this, aren't you?[break][break]

Not that you would have had time to worry about bike maintenance once your goal in life switched very quickly from “lose yourself in the crowds” to “rescue corrupted Pokemon from villainous trainers”. Distortion World, you spent more time trying to coerce your Orpheus and Thanatos into relinquishing their claim on the passenger side of your motorcycle – because again, PokeBalls were a luxury exclusive to them, not you and your newly acquired red-haired companion. From Phenac, it was off to Pyrite (your birthplace, but not your 'home'), and from Pyrite, Agate, and from Agate, Mt. Battle – onward and onward and onward until Realgem Tower was dusting the sky and the humble little mayor who had sworn to help you on that very first day was revealing himself to the region entire that he was the madman behind it all.[break][break]

It had been hard fought the whole way up that blasted building. The fact that he almost made his grand escape, intervened only by divine retribution from the rainbow bird almost mad you more mad than the Shadow Pokemon themselves. Had he, you imagine, you could have looked forward to even more Pokemon that needed rehabilitation, never mind the fifty some you'd took it upon yourself to raise near single-handedly. Miror B., Dakim, Venus, Ein, Nascour, Evice – each and every one of them down for the count, but only the last two behind bars to show for it. You had figured, going in, that the end would come with the downfall of their leader. Reports of remaining Shadow Pokemon – why, even a doppelganger of yourself going around committing crime in your name – kept flooding in, though, long after Realgem closed its doors to the public for what you hoped for good. The numbers have thinned by now, fortunately, enough that wariness wasn't quick on your heels when you dropped your partner-in-crime off at Agate to recuperate with her family. Idly, however, you can't wonder if they'll ever really stop.[break][break]

“You're a hero,” they'd said, eyes full of hope that you'd long believed to have left Orre entirely. Everywhere you went, it felt, people stopped you in your path to praise, to attack, to challenge, because it's not every day in ones life that they get to speak face-to-face with the Hero of Orre.[break][break]

What a load of Tauros shit. Right place, right time, right machine. All up to chance. You don't need their praise. You don't want it.[break][break]

“I'm getting real sick of this desert.”[break][break]

You wipe sweat from your brow as you stand, gaze locked with the Umbreon that's turned his head to look up at you from the shade. Eyes as old as yours, ones you've known for longer than you remember. Sometimes, you think you hate this region you've been heralded the hero of – but you don't have your partners. You don't think you ever could. “One of these days, we're going to hitch a ride on one of those boats at Gateon and get out of this hellhole. What do you say, Or?” He tilts his head at you – then rests it back down on his front paws, eyes closed, ears shut out to the rest of the world. This is the most you've talked all day, you realize, and that, you know you can blame on the heat.[break][break]

Your motorcycle can't be repaired with what meager tools you have in your toolbox, it turns out. The trip by foot to Pyrite, then, becomes a group effort of muscles and psychics, each heaving the useless hunk of metal across burning desert sand. (All the while, you think of Gateon and its shining pearl harbor, of the boats that dock there, and of the regions beyond: brighter and greener than the sea of white that stretches out before you – infinitely.[break][break]

(Infinitely.)

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>>> TL;DR

The Hero of Orre, although its a title he loathes to hear. Wes embodies perhaps the worst, as well as the best of the region he hails from, a walking bundled up backwater region put on display where he, frankly, doesn't want anyone to see. He's consorted with the worst, preyed off the innocence and weakness of others, has the desert sands wear away the access until all his empathy has given away to reveal the raw need for survival hidden beneath. But then – the stories of old always talked of heroes rising up from the sun-baked earth, conquering plagues, bringing new life to a place that so desperately needed it. When Cipher's designs threatened the lives of all in Orre, he took them on very nearly single-handedly. (Perhaps there's empathy left yet.) Back home, the people regard him as some kind of savior, a man who saved what could and ended what couldn't, but from his perspective, he's only ever been just another case of “right place, right time, dumb luck”. The praise is suffocating, worse than the sands, and it drove him from home to a place where no one would know his name.



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>>> FRIENDSHIP

Good luck? That's all I can say. Well, I guess if Willie can earn a spot here, I can't entirely close it off. Wes carries himself as the standard “tall, dark, and handsome” - which is to say, not exactly the most approachable person in the world – but to make matters worse, he's not very good at casual conversation, preferring, instead, to keep to himself and speak only when it feels necessary. He's closer friends with his Pokemon than anyone else, has a tenancy to tune out the words of those who talk about nothing important for too long, makes no initiative to talk to those who don't suck up all the oxygen in the room. More than anything, though, he lacks battling – casual, things that don't hang on the safety of Pokemon and friends and the whole region – so perhaps the easiest way to earn your place on his good side is to just challenge him to a friendly match every once in a while. Or, heck, invite him to do something dumb and crazy and full of stunts. He'll probably like you a whole lot more then. Otherwise, he has an appreciation for innocence and kindness, seen in a soft spot for children and a softer tongue around the gentle and well-intentioned people he so rarely comes in contact with. He'll never go out of his way to make comrades with a person, but he's seen the goodness in people snuffed out by the harsh realities of the world too many times to not enjoy it while it lasts in those around him, and if he can somehow keep it from being snuffed out of them altogether? Well, why would he refuse?[break][break]

>>> HATESHIP

He doesn't hold lasting grudges, because what, in the end, do they really earn him? Unfortunately, he's also a man who settles on distrust as a first reaction to just about anyone under the sun. While his chances of being mugged blind are much lower here in Lyeant than they were back in Orre, old habits die hard, and with the remnants of Imum still out there, it always pays to be on the alert. To make a true enemy out of him, then, you have to simply be a person of opposition to whatever immediate task he's set out to complete – if you impede him, he'll beat you down until you don't, then forget about you entirely until you come back to try to repeat the cycle – and, nowadays, anyone who would go out of their way to do more harm than necessary. What a protagonist, am I right? In truth, the heroics, despite their lack of flashiness, just come second nature to him, now. A younger Wes would have overlooked cruelty in the world if only because it was natural to him. Parading around a crime-ridden region with Rui at his hip, however, has gotten him in the habit of halting crime before or while it happens, rather than only punishing “evil-doers” while their “evil-doing” drags him into the fray. Still, even those people never make a lasting impression on him. It's not so much that he believes in humanity's ability to reform (at least, not enough to actively think on it), but simply that immediate threats are the only ones worth dedicating his thoughts to – and anyone who's not an active threat or an ally of some sort isn't worth thinking on at all.[break][break]

>>> LOVESHIP

He knows what it means to hold feelings for a person, and he has in the past – his traveling companion in Orre, Rui, to be specific – but he's also painfully aware of his inability to function as an “ideal romantic partner”, and he never pursued any sort of relationship with the girl he held interest in because he thought himself, in his own words, a “hazard to her health”. It's safe to say that he's not holding out for her by any means, leaving him pretty much open entirely in this category (for Rui or anyone else who'd be interested), but landing yourself here is quite the chore just the same. Flings aren't entirely out of the question (canon dictates he's pretty handsome for Pokemon standards, after all), although he's not the sort to bother initiating, but anything more permanent than that's going to be a challenge. He finds himself attracted to those who function as his near opposite: bright where he is dark, gentle where he is brutish, open where he is guarded. And at the same time, he understands that he's no good for someone who meets that criteria – truly a hazard to their health – so he makes no moves and he expects no return of emotion for those he shouldn't be feeling himself in the first place. A lonely practice, perhaps, but love is the dream of youth who still have the capacity for dreams left in them. That's something Wes hasn't had for a very long time.[break][break]

>>> WANTED

More Orre people, please and thank you? Please and thank you. This doesn't even have to be canon characters from there (although I would probably sacrifice goats for a Michael or, even better, a Rui), just anyone who was born in the mainland's backwater cousin of a region. When, exactly, Cipher did their thing isn't made entirely clear, but Wes was in Lyeant during the events of XD as far as TBE's timeline is concerned, and Cipher's original downfall prooooooooobably happened within the last six years? People who lived in Orre around that time would undoubtedly recognize him for that reason, then – he's kind of a living legend over there – although he'd probably personally appreciate people who lived in Orre and don't know of him for whatever reason that much more. Otherwise, he's one of my characters whose especially fond of Pokemon (you kinda have to be in order to rehabilitate fifty plus of them, all while beating down a criminal organization bent on taking your life), so other Big Pogeyman Fans are always good company – as are fellow adrenaline junkies! Come do cool stunts with him, please and thank you. That's all, folks. ;o