Listening to Rui’s gripes, he can’t help but snort. Of course she’d do that. It just seems so in character of her to purposely mispronounce someone’s name just to piss them off. She was the total opposite of Wes – at least, the one he knows of now. Apparently he was a different person back then. The calm to her chaos, he could definitely see how they became close friends. It’s often the friends that gives you headaches that remains as the most steadfast.
Rui had to snort.
“Me? A princess? Only if I could be a warrior princess, you know? Like the ones who wear super kick ass armor and defend their kingdoms against viking. That would be so cool,” Rui smirked. Sal slid her drink across the bar before actually handing Harley his. The bar had returned back to normal now, the small swarm of people had dispersed and left the duo to themselves. She smiled affectionately at the crowd, turning back to Harley.
“So this is Sal’s! A few years back, I took a little Piplup back from some smugglers. They started chasing me down the alley and I ran into the first door I saw, which was this place,” she gestured vaguely to the dive bar. “They thought I was some helpless little girl and helped me chase of the assholes, Sal even said he’d call my parents and tell them I was safe. I thanked everyone, told him I was a grown ass woman and. ordered a few drinks. The rest is history!” She remembered the day fondly. Sal had always kept good on his promise to kick out anybody too shady. Despite the look of the place, Rui had come to treat it like her second home. She knew every person who came through, and had even filled in a shift behind the bar when Sal was running desperately short. It was nice to share it with someone, especially someone who’d appreciate it. Sipping her gin and tonic, she let herself relax into her chair.
“When was the last time you were in Orre? I still can’t believe Wes brought you here but didn’t introduce us, AND he didn’t take you to the fun places!” She knew Harley was dependable, and was sure that he saw Wes through the hard times she was absent for, but she refused to believe he didn’t come by more often. “I mean, you hadn’t even seen town square before! And that’s the boring part! All the excitement happens down here, in the alleys and darkness. It looks rough, but there are some real gems here. I mean, there are a few that I will never set foot in ever again, but they’re mostly good! Hopefully we won’t get into any fights tonight and I can just introduce you to all my friends,”
Maybe she could help Orre feel like home to Harley too. Good friends were in short supply, and she’d do anything to have the ones she actually liked visit more often. Slurping down her drink, she motioned for Sal to make her another and scanned the room.
“You know, I actually kind of hope something crazy happens tonight. Then you’d get a taste of real Orre night life,”
Now, Harley has been to Orre a couple of times. There was the time where he adopted Blossom, and then there was that awful time where a visit to Wes ended up with him finding his friend stabbed and bleeding out from a poisoned cut in an alleyway. Though Wes got better, Harley privately admits that the incident made him a bit hesitant to visit the region anytime soon. But then he met Rui, and now he finds himself in Orre once more.
Rui couldn’t help but roll her eyes at that one.
“You think our names are bad? Wes and I met this guy named Cail on our adventures. He’s an asshole and he spells his name C-A-I-L. Everytime I see him I make sure to call him Lettuce just to see his face go red. Or else if he comes into the Colosseum, I spell his name incorrectly on the paperwork.” Last time she did that, Wes told her to quit it. She did, but only because he asked her too. She also neglected to tell him about the tens, if not hundreds, of times she’d misspelled his name before and she had no intention to. She casually strolled up to the shady looking door and threw it open.
“I’m home!”
All eyes turned to her. Suddenly, silence engulfed the room, but it didn’t last long.
“RUI MY GAL! How’ve ya been? Ya haven’t been around in aaaages,” Laughter erupted around the tiny dive bar. Some newbies looked around, confused by the warm reception to the seemingly random tiny woman who just walked in, but as she walked in all her old friends came around and pat her on the back,
“I saw you kick that guy’s ass at the Colosseum the other day! He left town cryin’,”
“Heard a rumor ya found Wes... Glad to hear he’s back,”
“Regular for ya tonight?”
She couldn’t help but smile. Leave it to Sal to make sure she had a drink in her hand before she really had to socialize. She motioned for Harley to follow her and saved a seat for him smack dab in the middle of the bar. She threw a few loose Poke on the counter,
“Just a Gin and Tonic, Sal. Can’t get too crazy, I have a guest today,” She jabbed Harley with her elbow, grinning.
“Get whatever you want and put it on my tab, my treat! You have to have a couple in you before you deal with some of the characters around here,”
He had gotten her back. He had gotten her back, by some miracle, past his own cowardice, past his own selfish ignorance that this was for the better; somehow, some way, she had found him again. After seven years — seven long years of disappearing without a trace, leaving nothing but a brief note bearing his apologies and his Houndoom as farewell; after two years of returning to Orre and doing all he could to avoid her out of shame and what he excused was ‘necessity;’ after seven years of separation, of heartbreak, regret, disaster — she had… found him again.
Rui would’ve never called herself emotional. Highly volatile? Yes. Easily agitated? Yes. Quick to anger? Definitely yes, but all those other emotions didn’t seem to affect her nearly as much. She wasn’t one to get sad and cry, or to get happy and scream. Everything except for anger seemed to only come in gentle waves.
She kissed that goodbye when she figured out Wes was back in Orre.
Of course, the first thing she felt was anger. She was royally pissed. She tried so. damn. hard. to understand why he left. In the past few years, she felt like she had finally come to terms with it. He had bigger and better things to do. She could respect that. She had shit to do too.
But it fucking hurt when she knew he was back. She wasn’t even worth a hello? Nothing? Even after everything they’d been through, she wasn’t even worth acknowledging.
You can bet your ass Rui was pissed.
Who wouldn’t be?
Somehow, she’d managed to get his new address. She didn’t care that it was late evening and she had shit to do the next morning. She needed answers. She needed reasoning. She needed anything to gain closure.
When he opened the door, Rui couldn’t take it anymore.
Suddenly, years and years of repressed feelings came pouring out. Anger and pain and sadness and loneliness, words starting falling from her mouth and out into the open.
Why did you leave?
Did you have to leave?
I’m sorry I made you leave.
I fucking hate you for leaving.
She hated it. She hated everything. She hated her stupid goddamned emotions and how badly they hurt. She hated how needy she felt in storming her way over to Wes’s house when it seemed like he wanted nothing to do with her. She hated how much this really affected her. She hated how she had to fucking feel everything all at once. She was so pissed, but she was sad and happy and excited and scared too. In the span of five minutes, she’d manage to spit out everything she’d felt for seven years.
She’d forgotten Wes was even there, but then she felt it. His sorrow, his pain, his regret, his aura screamed at her. It was dark, too dark. Suddenly, everything she felt didn’t matter anymore. Wes was there. He was there in flesh, and that was all she’d asked for in the past seven years. He was crying, and she was crying.
Before she knew it, it was as if they’d never been apart. They sat on the couch and cried their eyes out, but then she was telling him all about the League project and her self-defense group and her barhopping adventures. They laughed and joked and smiled. He was still Wes. At his core, he was the same person he was all those years ago: dependable, caring and determined. She didn’t know what to feel. It felt too much like a dream.
The only reason she knew it wasn’t a dream was because she nearly fell asleep while talking to him. She sort of just invited herself to sleep over, pertly because she was too tired to go back to her house and partly because she needed to make sure everything that had just happened was real. Her plan was to take Wes out for breakfast the next morning, but instead she woke up to the smell of bacon and hash browns.
Seven years and he still couldn’t let her treat him every once in a while.
She tiptoed her way into the kitchen.
“Damnit Wes, you couldn’t even let me treat you to breakfast this morning?”
Rui was willing to call herself a lot of things. She was brash. She was bold. She was aggressive. She was witty.
She was not, however, girly, or elegant, or refined.
Unfortunately for her, that’s exactly what her current situation called for.
She was always happy to get our of Orre, that wasn’t the problem. While Rui loved her home, the beating desert sun was taxing to live under day in and day out. The problem was that she was expected to go to this fancy fundraising ball in order to get more sponsors for the Orre league. And what came with going to fancy balls? The dresses and the shoes and the makeup and the pretense, all of which Rui had no interest in partaking in. She had Wes give her a basic make up tutorial before she left. She also called him once she reached Sinnoh so he could help her pick out a dress. That didn’t make the process any better. Nonetheless, she had to put on her big girl pants and suck it up. Orre needed this and she was the only person willing to do it.
The grand hall of the hotel was way too hot. Rui was already here in some poofy ass gown, roasting alive, and they had to turn up the heat? All the make up she caked on her face seemed to be melting her skin, and she was proud of how it turned out too. Now it just gooped onto her cheeks as she tried her best to keep a smile on her face.
It did make her feel better that everyone else was pretending too. She felt maybe one of two genuine auras there, but the rest were just like her. They were networking. For the most part, Rui had done a good job. She’d secured two new sponsors to bring back to Orre, but the night was still young. She was expected to stay for at least a few more hours and her aching feet screamed in protest.
She carefully made her way over to the bar. Pulling herself up onto a stool, she let her feet have a moment of reprieve.
“Gin and Tonic, please”
She needed a drink to get through the night. Nothing too heavy though, for once in her life she didn’t want to cause a scene.
She tried to relax as the bartender mixed her up the simple cocktail. She needed every ounce of patience to get through the night, but something started to feel... off.
There was a sort of... surge of energy.
Rui didn’t like it.
She’d never felt anything like that before. Usually, aura’s were dim. They were just present enough to clue her in. This aura was bold, bright, and oddly gentle. It had every capacity to cause serious damage, but it didn’t. It had no desire to.
And it was heading right towards her.
She whipped around on her barstool. Oddly enough, the person it came from sat down right next to her. A model, or at least he could be. Besides being pretty, everything else about him was unassuming. He was just another patron of the gala.
And he wanted to leave just as badly as she did.
Rui smirked, bringing her small glass up to her lips. Maybe she didn’t have anything to worry about after all.
“This party is fantastic, isn’t it?”
It takes everything within her to not say that sarcastically. Hopefully, her night would get a little more interesting.
Excited wasn’t even the right word for what she felt at the moment. She was ecstatic, elated, pumped, hyped? She was reinvigorated.
She had someone new to show around Orre!
By someone new, she meant someone she actually cared to show around as opposed to some rich dude who she was trying to convince to invest in the League Project. She was showing Harley around because she wanted to, and she liked him, not because he had millions of dollars to give to her cause. It was refreshing. Finally, all of her old haunts were new and shiny again.
Well, as new and shiny as Pyrite Town could be.
In the past 2 years or so, Rui had worked hard to help clean up Orre. She’d beaten up thugs, established support groups, trained children, and started up the Orre League Project. She’d tried her best to help give the region a new start free from crime and corruption. There’d been ups and downs, but she was proud of how far they’d come. In a few short years, Orre had looked better than it had in decades.
Pyrite Town, however, would always be a little decrepit.
The rusty mining equipment had become a central part of the towns layout it seemed. When she’d first proposed removing the old equipment, she’d almost sent the town into a riot. Ever since then she had just let the infrastructure of the town be. However, it didn’t stop her from kicking out a few stray low life criminals. No had seemed to mind that.
The duo stood right in the middle of town square, more affectionately known as ‘Duel Square’. The was low in the sky, casting ominous shadows around the whole town, only to be contrasted by Rui’s bright grin. It was almost comical, the over excited woman who could be narrowly mistaken as a teenager pointing out every little detail to the lanky, nonchalant looking man next to her. Rui’s gazed bounced from building to building, babbling at a mile a minute.
“Okay so we’re standing in the middle of Duel Square. If you come here during the week, don’t even step in here unless you’re prepared to battle 20 different people. Then over there is Fanteen’s Fortune Telling. I don’t usually believe in that stuff but everything she’s said has come true so I wouldn’t doubt her. Oh! And over there is the ONBS building! It’s a news station run by a bunch of kids who help fight corruption and any lurking members of Cipher. Oh yeah and there’s the Colosseum! That’s the highlight of Orre right there. I take on a challenge there once every week or two to keep my team in shape,”
As the sun set behind them, Rui’s eyes lit up. Even rusty old Pyrite City was glowing. The little town bustled with excitement. It was as if everyone knew Rui had company, and decided to be as excited as she was about it. She nudged Harley and pointed to an odd entrance in the middle of an alleyway,
“But that’s not where we’re going right now. We’re going to Sal’s, my favorite bar on the planet. You can meet some of my other friends there!”
I’m not going to delete this because it has all my tags and I’ll lose them if I don’t save this until they’re filled and dang it I worked hard to come up with these
