MoonRazor | Trainer: Odin | Pokenoids: Osias”Well. I guess it can’t hurt, right?” Odin was staring at the VR headset sitting mint and unopened in its sleek packaging on his coffee table. He sat down heavily on his couch – when you were 6’7”, everything you did was kind of heavy – and lifted the box in his hands, turning it over to read the underside.
It had been a long time since he’d played videos games. Odin could almost remember the exact date that he’d stopped, not really through an active choice, but merely through the changes in his life. He’d hit middle school and all his friends had tried out for the soccer team, so Odin started playing soccer. And after that, rugby, then football. Suddenly, the hours of unstructured free time he’d had as a child evaporated, replaced by endless days of practice and matches that tugged him relentlessly away from the PS1 and the GameCube that sat in his mother’s basement.
A flood of memories came back, him and his sister fighting over controls to see who would play as Mario. Him getting his butt kicked at DDR because he couldn’t follow the arrows on the screen quickly enough. Hours melting by in the blink of an eye, all because they’d become too engrossed in the game playing before them on the television screen. It brought a smile to his face.
His therapist had suggested this, after learning that he’d played plenty as a child and had never once chucked the controller through the TV. Maybe he’d just never gotten angry. Whatever the case, she’d thought that it could be an experiment for him, an active way to encounter frustrating situations and deescalate them if he got too angry. Odin was all for trying something new.
”We’ve got the thing, we’re signed up for a trial of Pokemon Online, and then… the VR…dex?” Odin removed the plastic wrapping from the box without much ceremony, pulling the visor and VRdex console out of the case and flipping them around for closer inspection. ”For offline play,” he read aloud. ”’Download your pokenoid to your VRdex and enjoy the real world with their holographic at your side.’ Cool!”
Odin leaned back and put the visor on, booting up the game.
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Osias hadn’t realized that avatars could feel big, but something about Odin’s felt large – almost imposing. Although the avatar itself didn’t look terribly different from any other trainer’s, there was something about the way Odin presented himself. He was gregarious almost to a fault, utterly unafraid to laugh and make himself heard.
The Taillow found himself quite drawn to that energy. There seemed to be an endless trove of it somewhere within Odin that felt like fuel to Osias’ restlessness. He felt at the same time calmer and more eager to go in the trainer’s presence, in a way that was horribly enticing. The Pokenoid found himself drifting closer, trying to listen in on Odin’s conversations with the Professor.
“Hey, you there, young Taillow!”
Osias leaped back a step in surprise ”Me?” he asked, a hot flush of embarrassment coloring his face as he realized he’d been caught eavesdropping on a private conversation.
“Yes, you,” the Professor said with a kindly chuckle, waving him closer. “Come meet Odin. You two should have a chat. I suspect you might get along quite well.”
”The Professor tells me I might be just what you need,” the trainer directed a megawatt smile at Osias, and there was a conspiratorial glint in his eye, as if he was sharing a secret of some sort with the Taillow. There was something undeniably intriguing about him, so Osias stepped closer and perched himself on the edge of a high-top stool. He leaned forward so he could see eye to eye with trainer.
”Why’d he say that?” he asked, eye slightly narrowed. He was testing the waters, neither sure nor unsure at the moment.
”He says you want to do great things, and no one can keep up with you,” Odin replied quite matter-of-factly, no beating around the bush. It was common knowledge that Osias was a bit of a handful. Left to his own devices, he would find his own ways to make challenges, which was often met with dismay when it happened inside a lab. There were a lot of breakable things there. ”Which is funny, because I’ve heard quite a lot of that myself.”
”Oh yea?” The Taillow cocked his head with interest.
Odin could see the Pokenoid was really listening now. A conspiratorial smirk lit his face as he nodded. ”I know what you want. You want to see what’s out there. You’re ready for big things, you just need someone who also wants it to. And let me tell ya… I’ve never gone a day in my life where I’ve settled for second best. If you’re gonna do something, you gotta do it right.” He paused, then shrugged. ”I know a thing or two about that.”
Odin sat back and waited, watching the Taillow. It wasn’t necessarily the most high-stakes decision. If the two of them didn’t match, they’d both have plenty of chances to find others. But sometimes, it just felt right, and watching the defiant way Osias sat – as if he was determined to prove something – made Odin suspect that the two of them would have a grand old time.
Finally, after a long moment of quiet, Osias centered his gaze onto Odin’s and nodded. His mind was made. ”Okay,” he said. There was a light in his eyes, a certain hunger that said he was ready to go after the adventure of a lifetime, and he’d do anything to help his partner along the way. ”Let’s do it. Let’s go out there and explore it all together.”
Odin’s smirk brightened into a full-on. He reached out a loosely clenched fist and bumped it against Osias’ with an energy that matched the fire in the Taillow’s words. ”That’s what I like to hear!” he said with a laugh. ”Listen, bud. We’re going to have a blast. I just know it.
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