[Meta thread] Iron's PokeRole Adventure: The Skull Ruins

[Lord Windos]

Oh dear, Nathan is worrying about Ventus' behavior, and Ventus is concerned about his. This sounds like a positive feedback loop of stress going on, and I want it to be broken before the two have an heart attack!

Wish granted, then!

In the worst manner possible, mate! Remember, Ventus has severe abandonment issues from his family leaving him in the various awful ways that they did, so Nathan running away from him hit that particular button HARD. Now we have an empath that is simultaneous beyond pissed AND extremely depressed, with enough control over his emotional state to function right now.

I wanted an end to the feedback loop of stress, but I would rather go back to it compared to this outcome!

Don't forget Nathan's under a lot of emotional stress right now too.  He attempts to keep a cool head as best as he can, but his emotions often get the better of him when he's not battling or enjoying his favorite pastimes.

His life and his pokemons' lives had been threatened that day.  His friends have run afoul of the law.  He's likely made an enemy of that Pinsir trainer, and maybe even of whatever organization these Scimitars are a part of.  He's seen a lot of serious wounds he wasn't expecting to run in to this early on in the journey.  Members of the party have just up and disappeared on us (though Larry showed up again at some point and gave him a Potion, so...).  He keeps seeing glimpses of what he thinks is an absol that seems to have been tailing him for at least a year.  This trip has been wearing him down a lot, and it's all been building up way faster than the positives.  

He's trying to defuse the situation before it gets way too bad for him.  If he breaks down, it's not going to be pretty.  We've seen one extreme of that already with the conversation about how he met Ralts and his dad's disappearance.

Ventus's rather...strong reactions are really unnerving Nathan since that phone call.  He didn't think anyone of somewhat reputable standing would be capable of even implying such things, and yet here we are.  He's removing himself from the situation before he does something he'll most certainly regret later.

I know that Nathan is in under a lot of pressure, but so was Ventus at the moment, and he was beginning to get his anger under wraps and extingish it, before Nathan ran off in fear/overstress. He should know that, while Ventus has a tendency to get emotional, he would NEVER hurt the boy without a pretty damn good reason. No matter how deranged he may act, he will ALWAYS have his friends back, protecting and caring for them no matter what.

Problem is, due to the sheer amount of abuse that life has subjected him to, and his sketchy past, the way he expresses that concern and worry when someone presses his Buttons in serious and stressful situation is...troubling, to see the least. To him, casually threatening to torture and/or kill someone is an entirely feasible thing to do, depending on the justification. Likewise, letting Apsis go ham on wild Pokémon and evil doers alike doesn't faze him at all, due to his survivalist and 'Be all or end all' mentality he has in highly threatening battles. While he is not completely amoral in all his actions and dealings with people, he operates on perspective and morally system that is not of the norm, and Nathan should understand this by now, especially since Shiva seemed to cotton on real quickly.

Thing is, despite having mental issues up the bum and an out of whack morality system (which he is aware of, but doesn't care about), he ultimately accepts the problems he had, has, and will face, and solders on. Even during his emotional outburst and in his 'Unfettered State', he still fully in control and cognizant of his actions. His emotion inform him of his choices, and definitely has a hand to as to how he reacts, but in the end he can still think and act rationally under that sort of pressure, and not forgot whatever objectives/purpose he has. Its why he more or less calmed right down after Shiva had her freakout, as while still unfettered at the time, he could see that he needed to be a comforting presence, rather than a force of nature to fear. Whether the fact that even when hopped up on an emotional high he could still be thinking and planning his actions without trouble is even more worrisome than not is up to the group, really.

The second problem is that mainly the fact that Ventus has seriously misjudged Nathan's mental fortitude. After hearing his story about his disappeared dad and what happened to Ralts, he more or less subconsciously thought that, since the boy went through awful shit like he did, he must have harden up against stress and drama, and built up safety measure to control himself. He assume that, while Nathan has a very delicate balance between acting normally in bad situation and not, the boy is the one that set up that balancing act as a copping measure, instead of it being the literal threshold that keeps him from going off the deep end. Ventus quite literally think that Nathan is inured to trauma just like he is, when the exact opposite is true. Its like a War Veteran being paired with an Eagle Scout on an rescue mission in the woods: They think and act similarly, but one will clearly start freaking out if the other starts laying suppressive fire on random bears!

Unless Ventus figures out that the boy is not all that tough as he first thought, this is just going to keep happening and happening....