“So, how did you end up here?”

The young man with the cross threw the question at Sabrina only moments after throwing himself to the ground, barely avoiding an Ice Beam from her Starmie that would’ve frozen him solid, and only moments before ordering a counter-attack of his own, which his Scyther executed swiftly.

“Here?” Sabrina repeated, eyes struggling to follow the two Pokemon’s dizzying battle.

“Here, yes. Yours isn’t a particularly common… nor a healthy profession.” He pushed himself up, following the battle just as intently. “Not to mention illegal.”

Sabrina scoffed. “I could ask you the same. Why do you waste your time coming here every single day?” She paused for a moment to bellow an order, then sighed. “Don’t you have a hobby or something?”

“I asked first,” the man replied with an annoyingly childish tone of voice.

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Their Pokemon exchanged blows for a few unbearable long seconds; Scyther had split himself into countless mirages of himself, and Starmie-

“Psych Up!”

-alternated between short electric bursts to keep its foe at bay and beams of pressurized cold to catch him in between dodges. Neither of the trainers spoke for a few breaths.

“It’s good money,” Sabrina finally said. “I’ve got some debts, my mom… she’s got medical issues that aren’t cheap to deal with. Not the kind of money I could earn doing a normal-”

She choked on her words suddenly, at the realization that her opponent was looking at her with tears slowly forming in his eyes, lower lip trembling.

“Wh-Wait. Stop. Why are you-?”

“I KNEW IT!” The man bellowed, seemingly forgetting about the battle, his voice fraught with emotion. “The devoted daughter who sells her soul to the devil in order to save her mother… What a beautiful tale! See? Do you see now that God’s love still lives inside y-!”

BANG!

A bolt of lightning the width of a person fell upon the man with ruthless speed, and he would have certainly been carbonized were it not for his Scyther jumping at the last moment to take the hit for him. He hit the ground with a deaf thump an instant later, smoking from head to toe, completely out of it.

“Tsk. I missed.”