So it came down to this. How many years had it been? How many years of unhappiness, of ridicule, of desperation? How many horrible, horrible memories, buried carefully in the deep dark recesses of the mind, in the hopes that they would never resurface to plague them again? Once was enough, but their failure lived on with them every day. It was reborn, fresh, anew, the unbelievable sense of uselessness that they couldn't run away from, that they couldn't just forget about, because it was reborn, every single time they lost at a battle. Which was every day. Because they lost every battle they participated in. They had started the job with a simple purpose. A go-fer kind of mission. Go get me this, the boss had said. No sweat, they had said. And now where were they? They weren't even on speaking terms with the boss anymore, they had ridiculed themselves so much. They'd given up everything for this one moment in time. They'd finally gotten it. They'd given up everything. Everything that was worth living for. So now it came down to one last decision. Should they go running back to the boss, finally victorious? It didn't matter that they had completed their mission. The respect that people had once held for them was completely wiped away. The competent villains that they had once been viewed as had been reduced to bungling simpletons. This wasn't going to change that. Nothing could ever change that. They had lost everything in this endless pursuit, except for the pursuit itself. They had lost everything, except for their objective: to capture the damn thing. But they had reached the end of the pursuit, after all this time, and, instead of the one single purpose their once-proud lives had suddenly become entangled with, they found themselves considering two. They could give it to the boss. They could finish the job that had ruined their lives. Or they could exercise the one last feasible option their tortured minds could come up with. One thing. It was so simple. It would be so wonderful. The decision was a hard one to make, but for the three lost souls, there was always only the one solution. Pain craves pain. Revenge is sweet.
He found it that morning in a neat little box, tied up carefully with string and accompanied by a small white note. The package was surprisingly light. The note read, simply and in messy block letters, "Life is hell, but the end was fun." Inside the box was the ravaged body of a Pikachu. Giovanni had both nerves of steel and an iron stomach, but he still had to take a couple Tums that morning before breakfast.
