Where there's life..., ...there's hope. (Da Best)

You scoured through the area for the third time. Despite the strong evidence that the gem too might be here because of the presence of both the book and the coins, you no longer found anything under the pile of debris.

It seemed like there was nothing in this place anymore. It had been quite too depressing to be around here so you decided to finally leave afterward.

Later, you were again walking about, continuing in your noble search for Pepper to turn things back to normal (as normal as it can get anyway). You saw in the distance a Skarmory clawing at the ground. It was probably the same Skarmory you've seen that refused your help. It looked like it had done some damage on the ground but was having difficulty plucking its prey from the hole it had been breaking.

Would you like to approach the Skarmory or move on?

Again, Roberto scoured the pile of debris, neither noticing nor caring how dirty it was getting the sleeves of his bodyguard jacket – for he had more important things to worry about right now. He had to see if the gem was here too, if his guess that it might still logically be here after presumably having been ‘dropped’ and scattered to the earth like the book and coins had been even had the smallest flicker of a chance of being true: for if the gem was here and could help him to fix all that had happened, it would be worth taking his time to stop, think and search vigorously for, most certainly. Yes, such a hope was childish, such optimistic was unwarranted when such a small object as the size of that gem he ‘saw’ could easily be long gone from the site of the once majestic library by now. It’s shiny surface meant that a Pokemon like Meowth or Murkrow could easily have snatched it away and hidden it someplace far from here, too. He knew it was not logical sense to hold strongly to such a small fragment of hope; but if a hint of that said hope existed, he would hold onto it and believe with all his heart that it had a high chance of being reality. Perhaps he saw the world too much through ‘rose-tinted’ glasses, as the saying went…but there had been enough pain and suffering and general bad stuff in his life. Maybe he held so stubbornly to small bits of hope because of the fact that there was great bad things everywhere in the world – but he preferred to see the bright side of things and try his best to have fun with life and spread that joy and happiness to others; not focus on the negatives and get all depressed about them. Getting stuck in guilt, pain and suffering only brought you down, and it brought others down so easily too; perhaps he held strongly to such small grains of hope because he wanted, in some small child-like way, for everything to turn out alright so he could turn to someone else and say, “See? If my horrid situation went awesome, yours sure can!”


The welfare of others…it had been and would always be important to him, and if the gem could possibly be found here and help him to bring the welfare of others back up, to be able to help and protect them from the bad ‘cruse’ he had haphazardly caused…he’d take that ‘grain of possibility’ that the gem could be here and look for said gem, no matter how small the grain of possibility actually was. However, though he held strong to his believes admirably, and he was determined in his search; his third ‘investigation’ of the pile of rubble resulted in him gaining nothing but further dirt and dust all over his hands and the sleeves of his jacket. Roberto sighed, dusting his hands off on his jeans as he slowly stood back up…he’d done a pretty thorough search of the area. Despite his hopes, there was nothing more to be found here. So, the only option was to take his search elsewhere and keep looking; because he wasn’t going to stop until he fixed this. Failure was not an option here…he had to find Pepper and do his best to make things right again, and that was that. However, before he went off, Roberto turned to the spot where he had buried that skull, giving the burial mound a silent, respectful salute of both respect and expressing just how sorry he was for causing all this mess.


That single, almost solider-like motion made to the buried skull, he turned and started walking yet again. His gaze stayed with the ruins of the library for quite a while as he walked, he watching as they got further and further away from him…the place where it had all started reduced to a mere shadow of it’s previous regal appearance. It was kind of sad, really…and it only made his mind more set on finding Pepper and fixing all of this. Eventually, he turned his head away, focusing on the surroundings ahead of him and a familiar figure coming into view several minutes later – that of a silvery, shining armored bird. It had it’s beak half-buried in the ground, trying to pull something out of a hole in the hard earth…so, this probably was the same Skarmory he’d seen before pecking at the ground who had refused his help. The ground was pretty hard, and thinking about it, it would probably take even a part Steel-type this long to make a decent hole...that aside, the bird was clawing at the earth, apparently having a bit of trouble with whatever it was trying to get out of the hole it had made.


Despite hating those that were ‘judgmental’, as the bird had been: Roberto couldn’t ignore folks in need of help. However, since the bird had been nasty to him last time he offered help, he wasn’t exactly going to be as nice as he had been before…but he would still help the bird out. As a famous saying went – ‘Help those you despise. Nothing humiliates them more.’ If it taught a judgmental person a lesson about being such a stuck-up bastard, he’d help them – just not as willingly as he would other folks in trouble. After all, why SHOULD he help such judgmental people who had already made their minds up about him so hastily and callously, without a care for his opinions or feelings? He had no obligation to help such shallow-minded people and Pokemon, yet he would extend a hand out anyway. To keep to his job in which he had to help ‘EVERYONE’ who needed it, no matter how much he hated them; a bodyguard did not choose who they wanted to protect in his section of the job, after all. If they didn’t like their ‘protection target’, they couldn’t NOT help them. That would be unfair and against the rules; and Roberto was going to keep strong to the job he loved so much, even if he had to help the judgmental, stuck-up jerks that he hated so much because of that.


Thus, he approached the Skarmory, saying, “Ya seem ta be havin’ a bit of strife there. Tha job’ll be easier with two folks at it rather than jus’ one…if you’ll set aside ya stupid judgments about me, I can help ya out. But if ya wanna keep being a stubborn bastard and ignorin’ those who just wanna help…fine by me.” If the Skarmory showed that it was willing to have him help, he would reach into the hole with his hands and try to help pull out…whatever it was that bird was trying to get at. If it was nasty to him again, fine. He’d just go off and walk away from the bird, and say snarkily, “Good luck getting’ it out by yaself, mate.” He was opening the offer to help out again; but if the bird rejected it once more, that suited him fine. He’d open the hand out of assistance to anyone, even ‘jerks who did not deserve help’ ; but if they didn’t want to take it, fine. He wouldn’t help them. It was that simple. It was black and white, and it they were going to be so stupid as to keep refusing help; he wasn't going to force them to take said help, even if that help was for their own good. If they wanted to reject good intentions, they could go stuff themselves and their big balloon-sized egos.

Hello! Please be informed of the feed me back "rule!"

If you had read it, then you know what to do with this!

Alternatively, you could just say "No comment" if you wish. Thanks :D

---

But the Skarmory doesn't first realize your presence. Its hungry persistence kept it busy attempting aggressive, harsh assaults with its sharp beak. Frustration was boiling in the Pokemon who had taken such time to make the hole only to find out the prey in sight was unreachable.

You took this at least as a non-hostile sign and offered your help. The Skarmory turned from the hole with an upset face and squawked fiercely at you. Without warning, it spread its metal wings with the hiss of unsheathing swords and attacked!

[OOC]It's the epic battle between man and Pokemon![/OOC]

(Out of character note: If you want me to be brutally honest...then okay, sure.)

Though Roberto extended his kindly offer yet again to the bird, though he had no obligation to considering it had gotten nasty the last time that he tried to be nice and help it – the avian did not seem to notice how close the human was to it, continuing to jab it’s sharp beak towards the hole again and again, those thrusting movements seeming faster and more angry each time the steel creature dove it’s head; no matter how hard or how much the bird tried, the object was unreachable for it alone, and the fact of the matter was as simple as that. Just as Roberto himself felt he could not help this place and undo the curse he had put onto it without Pepper by his side helping him, considering the fact that wild Pokemon might attack and without a Pokemon, he couldn’t really do much against creatures which held powers of the elements. The best he could do was either fling punches or kicks at them, which would basically do nothing against most Pokemon, especially those with tough skin or armored plating or throw his gun, which had done nothing the last time he tried throwing it at a Pokemon; and he didn’t need to be the smartest person in the world to know full well getting into a fight without Pepper was not something he wanted. Heck, he didn’t like having to fight at all unless he had no choice to, and the fact that his life could easily be put in peril again if he foolishly chose to fight a creature he stood no logical chance against weighed heavily. He…he couldn’t let himself get killed. He had to still find Pepper, he had to try and fix the mess that he’d made; how was he going to do that if he passed on? Thus, the smartest thing to do would be to run from any Pokemon that attacked for his own sake – so that he could continue living and keep trying to find Pepper, keep striving to try and fix all this. That aside, the similarity between the situation of both the Skarmory and himself was kind of weird: Roberto needed Pepper’s help in his situation, and it was clear that the Skarmory needed some sort of help in it’s situation, too.


The avian seemed to be becoming more and more angry at it’s constant failed attempts to get the prey inside the hole, eyes narrowing in frustration before Roberto spoke to it, offering a helping hand once again – the bird whirled around to face the human then, screeching in irate fury at him and seemingly refusing to believe that it needed help with the situation – as if stubbornly determined to achieve it’s goals all by itself and pushing away anyone who wanted to help it and taking it’s anger out on someone who was just trying to help –or at least it seemed that way, for after that screeching cry, the avian spread those metal wings with a ominous screech of metal and dove it’s dagger-like beak right at Roberto. Roberto groaned at this – why was he NOT surprised that the egotistic prick was attacking him like this when he was only trying to help? Gee, at least HE didn’t push his friends away like a douche when he was in a bad situation and couldn’t achieve things alone – the only time he asked his friends not to help him, not to intervene, was when a very dangerous situation happened and he got stuck in it. He asked them not to intervene in such cases because that would be placing THEM in the dangerous situation as well, placing them at risk…and too many of those close to him had gotten hurt because of going into dangerous situations, trying to help. Man, it really pissed Roberto off, though…you go in a situation trying to help and with nothing but respect for the person (or Pokemon, in this case) needing assistance, and then they proceeded to act like a douche and ruin your respect for them, and stubbornly smack away those kindly-meant attempts.


However, Roberto knew he had no time to worry about such thoughts now, reacting subconsciously to the attack thrown his way and practically jumping back, the sharp gleaming beak narrowly missing jabbing right into the bodyguard’s left arm – it seemed all those years of bodyguard training had paid off for once, despite Roberto at the time pondering why everyone in the bodyguard training place had to spend so many hours of the day being physically attacked by the BOSS HIMSELF to learn how to react, dodge and block violent attacks. The sharp movement of his body put quite a bit of strain on him, though, and Roberto was taking in deep breaths now to try and take his mind off the slight throbbing pain he felt from the dodge – so he hadn’t gotten off from that scot free. Regardless, he spoke again to the bird, saying angrily, “Oy…what the fuck was that for, huh? I ain’t tryin’ ta take your meal from ya, and all I want ta do is help ya out – just like the last time. Ya can’t get that meal out yaself, it’s as simple as that! If ya don’t wanna accept that and attack me again…so be it, Skarmory. I don’t wanna have ta fight any Pokemon, ‘cause I respect ya’s all…but if you’re gonna keep tryin’ ta take it out on me, I’ll have no choice but to defend myself!” This frank, honest statement made, he tensed, hoping that the bird would listen to reason this time, stop, LISTEN and stop being such a jerk-ass…he didn’t want to fight, as he’d said – but if the avian attacked him again, then he’d have no choice but to retaliate in order to defend himself. Even if he knew he didn’t stand a chance in hell against any Pokemon by himself right now – if the bird assaulted him, he couldn’t just stand there and do nothing.


A prolonged fight against the bird wasn’t the smartest idea, either…a good idea would be to throw some sort of assault to the bird that made it fly away or stop it’s attack suddenly, or at least gave him some time to say ‘screw you’ to the bird and get away. As his body prepared itself for if the bird attacked again, he couldn’t help saying aloud, “Pepper…where are ya? I could really use ya help right now, mate…” He wished he did know, but he didn’t. He just hoped this jerk-ass here hadn’t decided to attack HER like it was attacking him now…