#alder

What he was less content with was Ghetsis' ranting and raving. He alternated between cursing out his own foster son, Alder and the legendary Dragons themselves, and it had grown tedious before it even begun.

"If you're going to fight me the entire way, could you at least be quiet about it?" Alder grouses, overtaxed by the frankly absurd events of the day.

"You want me to submit to arrest peacefully, after decades of meticulous planning have been undone by two worthless children?" Ghetsis shrieks at truly remarkable volume, doing his best to wrench his left arm from Alder's iron grip.

"How worthless can they be if the dragons chose them?" Alder shoots back, knowing his aim was true when the man in his custody snarls.

"You'd reserve judgement on the whims of a pokémon? How slow-witted can a person be?"

"I'm reserving judgement on the basis that they're exceptional trainers in their own right who you've put through the ringer because you're crazy enough to think you should rule the world."

"Crazy? It is my birthright. I am Harmonia, and they are peasants," Ghetsis snorts, leering down at Alder like he, too, is less than dirt.

"What happened to you?" Alder tightens his hold on the Sage's grip in his frustration, darkly satisfied when Ghetsis fails to suppress a wince. "Do you honestly, genuinely believe you can just treat people however you like, because of your name?"

"What on earth," Ghetsis begins, stilling his struggles long enough to level Alder with a piercing glare, "Does it matter?"

"Forgive me; I'm trying to make sense of how the trainer I knew for years could have turned into this the moment I looked away," Alder snaps, halting their progress to glare right back. Slowly, understanding dawns on the taller's face.

"Oh, I see," Ghetsis says quietly, voice abruptly softening, akin to the sycophantic affectation he'd put on until mere hours ago. "You want an exorcism. You want me to absolve you of ever having known me, and failed to stop me. You want me to validate decades old feelings of affection, to show you that you were more than a blind old fool, even back then. You want all this and more, don't you, each desire more trite than the last. Is this why you sent the boy away? So that you might have a quick little confessional with me? Truly, Alder, your idiocy sickens me, necessitates I spell it out.

"If I had a second chance, I'd do it all again with the benefit of hindsight. I would manufact a less worthless king, quell uprisings and discontent faster, with permanence. I would bring both beasts of legend to heel, I would take my rightful place above you all until the day I died, and I would not have any short-sighted oafs mewling morality to me, for I would be its arbiter," Ghetsis proclaims, bloody gaze boring into him, a fathomless hatred within.

For a good few moments, Alder can only stare pityingly upon his former friend, without the words to even begin addressing his level of delusion.

"You're sick," Alder says simply, shaking his head. He has no clue why he thought talking to this man would do anything other than amplify his confusion, anger and disgust. All that remains is to hand him off to the authorities, leave him to rot in prison for the rest of his natural life.

Ghetsis laughs softly, a cruel smirk upon his lips. "Am I? Well, I suppose you'd know—"

Between one heartbeat and the next, Alder's open palm has struck Ghetsis' left cheek, hard enough to send the man stumbling, dislodged monocle shattering upon marble tile. Silence descends as the criminal rights himself, left hand tenderly feeling out the bruise blossoming upon his cheek. Two red eyes flutter towards Alder's, alight with pleasure, of all things, a wide smile spreading across his face like a fracture along glass.

"Ah. Perhaps I've touched a nerve," he wonders aloud, offering his left arm to Alder with theatric flair, "Please, do take me away. Consider me beaten into submission, Champion."

Alder takes the prooffered wrist wordlessly, much as he would rather not touch this man ever again, and tugs him along hard enough to disrupt his balance.