Love Lost, Chapter 21a: Absences.
#41 of Love Lost
Love Lost, Chapter 21a: Absences.
The cookies did not hurt.
"I'm an inspector, not a lawyer. I can't tell you if your plan would fly, but I can tell you that that place needs a lot of work to be declared habitable again. And, even if you can fix it up, it's not like the owner skipped town, changed name, and fell over the edge of the ocean. The bank is just across town. Squatter's rights and adverse possession only go so far."
The cookies did not help.
"I'm not advising this course of action, but speaking as a friendly potential neighbor, I think you should save up some capital for future improvements and when you're ready, make a shrewd offer to the bank to get it up to code and out of their portfolio, and just let them be surprised by how it somehow got a head start at being cleaned up. The way you're going, you're eventually arguing to the court that an emancipated pokemon ought to be handed real property because she broke in, replaced the carpet, and kept her ears down for a few years."
Alice's ears folded down and flat as she glanced away from Quentin.
"Having a human speak to the bank for you when the time comes wouldn't hurt, either."
Alice pulled her legs up into the chair within which she sat and wrapped them with her arms.
"Why do you care about that place, now? You said you needed shelter when you were a riolu; fair enough. But now you've evolved and you've scored a boyfriend whose trainer lets you bake cookies in his oven; what do you want with that dump?"
Alice shifted and returned to a more civil seated posture. "I--. I wanted to show Daddy that, that--he; when he did what he did, it was to protect me. When he gave himself up, it was to protect me. I wanted to be sure that someday I could prove to him that I didn't need to be protected anymore. I wanted to prove that I learned all the things he taught me and put it all to use. I wanted... I wanted to be there when that prison gate finally opens, to take him home, and give him back what he gave me and gave up for me."
Quentin bit a cookie. "So, if you're with the blaziken's team," he floated.
"All I did was get somebody else to protect me."
Quentin leaned in his chair and considered the matter. "Don't take this personally, but I gotta say it: all those things he taught you; some of them might've been wrong, you know? Is he the kind of guy who would be mad at you because of your new family?"
Alice's ears pointed straight-up. "No! He knows about them. He's happy for me."
"Then forget that dump. Your new team might not want to welcome an ex-con into their home; that's for you and them to work out. But if you're worried about getting him a place when he's released, just save your money--don't throw it into that bottomless pit across the street--and rent something then until he gets on his feet."
Alice wavered. "You might be right. I'll have to think about it. I have to go. I have some things to take care of."
"I'm sure you do."
Alice stepped out of Mister Parente's home and glanced at the decrepit mansion crosswise. She could imagine how it would look after she was done with it. She took a deep breath and exhaled sharply as she walked away, careless of her path. Yet, something about it nagged at her. Unless a bulldozer or lightning strike beat her to it, she knew that her work would continue, someday.
James' pool float was as comfortable as ever, but recently, markedly much more noisy.
"...so it took time to figure out how to do it--the hover thing--and it doesn't go very high but it's enough to keep my scales off of the ground. You don't know what it's like, slithering around on your body like I have to. It makes you sore and then you don't want to move and you don't want to lie because both hurt so you roll on your back and make everything upside-down--" The technical explanation was that Fiona's gills were submerged but her mouth was not, so she never had to stop talking to breathe. "--but we're upside-down right now. I'm upside-down. You're sideways, right? I haven't used that word before. Sideways! Does it matter which side? Or which ways? I don't think it does. I'm thinking of your sides other ways and when I say to me what I would say to you to say what you were if you were that way it's the same way. You can't slither at all because you have limbs. Limps. Limbs. Wait, that's weird. I said 'limps' because it sounds like 'limbs' because 'limbs' is hard for me to say right and I said it a little wrong and I wanted to hear the other one to hear if the first sounded too much like the second, but when I heard me say 'limps' I didn't hear me say four limps like four limbs because it sounded like staggering when walking--"
She paused. James took a deep breath and foolishly felt a sense of relief.
"--but I just said 'four limps' and that sounded like what I thought I said and why do I have an idea of what staggering when walking is like when I can't walk?" Fiona bent her neck into nearly a loop, holding her head above James' and staring down at his closed eyes. "Four limps. Four limbs. Forelimbs? I don't have those. Are your forelimbs also part of four limbs?"
James did not respond.
Burner emerged from his home. "Joe and I are going to practice at the park for an hour. Do you want to come?"
Fiona ignored Burner for a moment, awaiting James' answer to her questions. "I don't want to come but I will because Master is nicer when I do what he wants and he wants me to keep fighting at the park." She uncoiled her body carefully such that James would not be simply dumped into the water unexpectedly.
He resurfaced as Fiona pulled clear of the pool and inquired, "Wait, what was that you asked me?"
Fiona glanced back at him sideways. "Never mind. I forgot that... I'm sorry." She slithered away, around the southern side of the house.
James did a few laps, but soon felt too lonely to care to remain in the pool. He had an appointment to prepare for, anyway. Toweling himself off lightly, he re-entered his home as Alice did, too, through the opposing door. "How did your meeting go?"
Alice approached him and delivered a brief hug. "I'm not getting into trouble, but I'm no further from homeless than I started."
"I'm going to get into dry clothes. Grab a drink and take a load off."
Alice nodded and obeyed his command.
James repaired to his room. Clicking locked his door behind himself, he began changing. When he opened his closet, a sudden impact threw him inside it. The door shut behind him and too clicked locked. "Ghost, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
A faint red glow passed through the door, giving him a little more light to see by than the trickle passing through the door's gap. "I think the kids call it: 'Seven Minutes In Heaven.' Pucker up, Lover-boy."
"Ghost."
"Say my name and say it right if you want me to listen to you."
"Marianne."
"Ooookay. We'll have to grunt some clumsy make-out sounds to fool the other boys and girls at this sleep-over, though."
"What are you talking--never mind, what do you want?"
"I wanted to set the mood and tell you a little story about how much fun I used to have. You see, Harvey got involved in a game of spin-the-bottle. The lucky fuck got paired with the number-one, drop-dead most gorgeous-est girl in school. So, I had a little fun with him in that sorta way."
James remembered that leaving pokemon hanging during a long pause was not a good idea, but what she stopped upon was not a question awaiting an answer. "Can I go now?"
"Don't you want to know what I did?"
"Can I go now?"
"Soon." Marianne huffed a tiny cloud of purple haze. "In the end: he thought that he did, I knew that he didn't, she never let herself be locked in a closet ever again, and when you recognize that I wanted to tell you this for a reason, you'll be sorry that you wasted the opportunity of a lifetime. Alone, in the dark, with me, no limits. Be glad you won't live with this regret forever. Oh, on that note, you're switching to the last-chance meds tonight."
Marianne opened the door and flew through James, hiding among the garments. James gathered proper attire and dressed before a mirror.
As he finished, Marianne within a sweater--that she filled-out with her essence and gave undue prominence to her simulated chest--hovered behind him, pressed against him, and flopped its sleeves around him as though she could hug. "Of course, there's a different kind of treatment that's supposed to cure whatever ails ya. Sure, in clinical tests it's less effective than placebo, but a lot more fun than swallowing a sugar pill for you, and for me, well, let's just say..."
"Do you think that's what they're giving me?"
Marianne re-positioned herself and her tendrils to make the sweater stand akimbo in the reflection he viewed. "You're paying attention to the wrong half of my innuendo. How long has it been, and how much more time do you have?"
James turned about. "How old are you?"
Marianne undulated and snubbed him with a rapidly fluttering blink of her eyes that rolled before she answered. "Twenty-nine."
James squinted slightly when she glanced back.
"...in ghost years. What's your point?"
"Usually pokemon seem to mature quickly. Burner is nearly literally a spring chicken and he's more mature than you are. What, do you think that playing dress-up like this--" James swatted away the sweater with the back of his right hand "--is going to make me look at you and see some sort of nubile seductress? You're a ghost, Ghost, and even if you weren't, you'd still be a pokemon. I'm not into that, and I'm never going to be. I know you loved Harvey, and in a tiny way I feel bad that he died and made you lonely and annoying. If I didn't know you so well, if I didn't know you at all, I'd probably say you didn't deserve it. But that doesn't mean you can spend the rest of your afterlife trying to find ways to flirt with me. You're here because you're being slightly more useful than you are being annoying. Don't push it. Do you understand me, Marianne?"
Marianne stared at him for a moment, then without breaking that stare, picked up the sweater, returned it to the closet, and returned herself to the place she hovered before before him.
"Do you understand me?" James re-questioned.
She began quietly. "I understand you. I understand you completely. And, because I know you so well, I say right now: you didn't deserve this hand you were dealt. But that doesn't mean you can spend the rest of your life trying to find ways to protect yourself. It's too late for that." She chuckled faintly and hauntingly. "It's funny since, 'almost too late at first, simply too late at last,' is the executive summary of my time with Harvey. Look, J.R., I didn't play dress-up to manipulate you; I did it because I hoped it might make you laugh, or remember a time in the past when you did. That woman knew how to fill a sweater, didn't she?"
James' expression--
"There!" Marianne shouted with a whisper as her jewels flickered once, "That's the reaction I was looking for. Nothing more, nothing less. That isn't to say that, if somehow my cold currents could warm your heart, I would mind. But I've snacked on your dreams, including that one in particular, you know the one--" she winked at him when he suppressed a reaction "--so I know just what a bad situation and what a volume of wine would be needed to convince you to indulge your baser instincts."
"That was just a dreamt memory of a drunken nightmare. I have no baser instinct to indulge, Ghost."
"Ooookay. You sure?" Marianne twisted her form into a cliched coquettish pose. "If the lights are off and I warm up first by simmering in the coffee pot for a little while, I bet you couldn't tell the difference."
"Thanks to Simon Well chasing a ralts into my son's lap, I have enough human-pokemon moral dilemma to deal with already. I'm not going to let you try to drag me backward into another one that never happened and never will."
Marianne drifted against his upper body and ensnared James with all of her tendrils before rubbing her brim and cheek against his the latter. "Ooh, James. You're so lucky I'm not a human woman, because if I were, I would make your life miserably delightful. And, I would screw you raw every night. I loved Harvey, but he never could take a stand on uncertain footing like you can. I always wished that he could, though, so I would be able to MAKE him submit. Now, I wish that I could be sure we would have more time together."
"It's placebo," James despaired.
Marianne squinted with frustration as he continued to neglect her innuendo. "The air in the bottle tasted sweet enough, but I don't think so, because the air in the bag tasted beachy."
"Beachy?" James tried to separate from Marianne, but she held him fast.
"Beachy. Sometimes Harvey would go on trips overseas. When he returned, he tasted beachy."
"So, he got to take vacations away from you. Lucky stiff."
"I--I don't want to talk about that. Just, trust me--"
James scoffed sharply and loudly.
Marianne grunted and continued. "I know it's not placebo. I felt inside the pills, too, and it's something different."
James again tried and failed to free himself. "Can I go now?"
Marianne reluctantly dispelled her tendrils. "I'll leave you alone for a while. But, tonight I want to talk to you some more; about the second condition."
Dipping the tip of a needle against a bead of noxious fluid exuded from one of her defensive pores, an umbreon prepared her stylus to apply the final master stroke. After a moment to dry, she slipped a modified identification tag into the windowed pocket of a vest that was perfectly her size. Once she managed to don it, she bravely took to the streets of Rennin. She toured the highlights, sized-up the low-lives, and took mental notes regarding exploitable opportunities: old-model soda machines, convenience stores with inadequate cameras, and alleyways with useful amounts of clutter. Thanks to the college, she found plenty of student housing that screamed, "Take me!" Just out of curiosity, she dashed up to one exiting student and yelped, and without a second thought he held the door open for her. What a gentleman. Inside, she snatched two key cards and mooched a meal from some girls who ordered too many burgers and fries to go with their nutrition studies.
Alas, the whole day spent casing, Idis found no evidence of her quarry. Come nightfall, she turned to the residential area for refuge. Cool winds and obscured skies suggested rain, and suggested that she find proper shelter. An abandoned house would be nice, but abandoned houses are sometimes occupied. So, when she stumbled upon a facade featuring a broken top-storey window and a broken front door window--both shoddily repaired with plywood tacked over the absent glasses' gaps--she carefully inspected the grounds and sought a vantage for penetration.
The balcony doors opened easily and wide. Beyond them lay a rather cozy space. The carpet still had a little of its factory smell left. Letting her rings glow, Idis made a quick tour before heading down the stairs. Strange, how the top floor was an island of civilization. Only by stumbling upon a long out of date phone book did Idis find anything of interest on the ground floor; literally, as it had apparently been tossed aside and left to accumulate dust. She flipped through its white pages with impatient strokes of her left paw until she revealed a street map of Rennin. She immediately knew what she would be studying overnight. On the top floor again, she noticed that the rain was beginning to fall. Unwilling to suffer a water-heavy vest, she ditched her garb in an inconspicuous spot, returned to the balcony, and daringly found her way down. She ran to the nearest corner's stop sign for orientation, so she could find herself on the map.
A bicycle whose rider hoped to get home before the storm arrived came to a halt nearby. "Alright, I promised her I'd try it; get it over with," said the voice of that rider.
Idis glanced over her shoulder and came to a standing stance.
"Go pokeball!" shouted the nearby teenager.
Idis's eyes opened wide and her rings glowed intensely. Realizing that the data department might have processed her request, Idis prepared to swat the ball away, but its owner threw short and wide and with some accidental english, letting it bounce crooked, activate with atypical timing, and catch Idis broadsided.
The umbreon struggled for a few seconds, but soon felt the ball's energy overcoming her. Refusing to be tamed by simply choosing to stop resisting, Idis relaxed. Shelter from the storm, three hot and a cot, and a base of operations for her continued search were all gainful consequences. She just hoped this trainer would not get too attached to her.
It was a dark and stormy night. In a sleepy little town known only for cheap kegs, cheaper wings, and overpriced public parking, a young man did his homework in a hurry, racing against lights-out to complete a neglected essay. The pressure mounted and his pressure-reliever was unavailable. He needed an elaborate term to satisfy a quota but the chaos in his mind would not settle and permit him recall back to the vocabulary words studied in his literature class. He needed some sort of word-associating device with intelligence--
"Old and wrinkled and like a raisin and--"
"Wizened?" proposed Burner. Joe recognized it as an option and scribbled it on his slate. "Is a wizard wizened? Is that what it comes from?"
Joe grunted his lack of knowledge about those terms' etymologies.
"Fiona asked a lot of questions about words today; I never thought about what words the speech T.M. makes me think of before. Percival seemed relieved after Frankie knocked her out." Since Joe did not respond, Burner discontinued his effort toward making conversation and re-focused his attentions on his game. Having been gifted a save slot, he had surpassed Joe's adventure, which increased the difficulty slightly since his source of hints and tips was no longer useful. As for that save slot, he regretted not refreshing it sooner, as a nearby lightning strike discontinued electrical power to a number of city blocks, including their own.
Joe's efforts were undisturbed. Burner stood, ignited a wrist for coordination, and exited. James, on his love-seat, also paid the blackout no mind, since his beer did not need to be plugged in. Extinguishing himself, Burner sat beside his family's patriarch.
"It's been a few days, now," Burner reminded James in a muted tone.
James sipped from his can of beer. "Yep."
"It's starting to get to him."
James sipped from his can of beer. "Yep."
"It's something we should do something about."
James sipped from his can of beer. "Maybe."
"Maybe?"
James sipped from his can of beer. "I never understood women very well. But, I knew when to pay one a compliment and when to leave one alone. Besides, you're better off not getting involved in it. I mean, if he wanted you to go with him after her, do; but..."
"The things she said to him, it was like she was somebody else for a while. It was like she was mad at him for something but neither of them knew what it was."
James sipped from his can of beer. "Yep."
"Do you think she is?"
James sipped from his can of beer. "Maybe. That girl knows what she wants, but she doesn't understand how to be patient, only how to try to. I don't know, but it's like she spent her whole life waiting to be assigned her mate and now that it's maybe happened she's frustrated because he still has a few years to go before he'll be ready to make that sort of decision, up or down. I had a female pokemon once, and--let's just say they seem to lose their heads when they get frisky."
Burner cawed gently with an inquisitive tone.
"For example: 'Ivana.' "
Burner cawed gently with a knowing tone.
"I think he's trained her well enough that she can defend herself, and she knows enough about humans to get along until she gets lonely or makes a big decision. I think she'll come back. She probably wouldn't have taken her purse and half of Joe's cash if she intended to disappear into the Allylidenes forever."
"Will you tell me about your pokemon?"
"I don't have any pokemon." All was silent but the falling rain. "Why do you care?"
Burner second-guessed his question, but third-guessed it and pressed onward. "Because, Master James, I am wondering if when he is your age he will still have pokemon."
James finished his beer. "Like father, like son?"
"Like, I have no other way of guessing any better."
James glanced backward toward his son's room. The coast was clear, but James spoke particularly quietly nonetheless. "I had a few pokemon, but we never got along well. I'd catch something, train it a little, trade it for another or release it. The only one who meant anything to me was Nelson. I caught him as a buizel, and I guess you could say he became my partner pokemon, although we weren't the kind of close that that term means today. Anyway, he and I spent as much time in the water as we could, and the first thing I did the summer I got my driver's license was head out to Palmitoy Creek, which is really a lot of freshwater creeks and small lakes all within walking distance of the shore. Good sands, great swimming, greater swimsuits. It's a damned paradise. I came back from that trip with a floatzel, a phone number, and a lot of memories that suggested I not lose those digits. Beverly and I met up again the next summer, and we decided we ought to be a thing. The problem was, after our graduations, she was going for a bachelor's degree in Rennin, and I was going to join the navy. I let my other pokemon go, Beverly and I kept in touch, and I learned the tricks of working underwater. When I got out, Nelson had--" James paused; the rain continued to fall, "Nelson had figured out what he wanted to do with his life and I had a different floatzel. Beverly wanted to stay in Rennin, so we bought this house, and got in the family way quick enough. The problem was that Nel--I'd named the new floatzel that hoping that Beverly wouldn't notice the change, and apparently she didn't, which was good because I didn't really want to talk about it--anyway, she didn't get along with Beverly like Nelson did, so I didn't get along with Nel because it just wasn't the same, and after some things happened, I decided that I didn't need to have pokemon in my life."
Burner reflected for a while.
"But, the problem wasn't Nel, and it wasn't pokemon. It might've been Beverly; it might've been me; it probably was both. Whatever." James crumpled his beer can in his grasp.
" 'It wasn't pokemon'--is that why you are okay with us now?"
"I was never not okay with you. With her, ugh. One of the pokemon I had for a while was a ralts. We didn't get along at all, and I didn't want Joe going through any of the things that little monster put me through. This one has caused him even more, bigger problems; but they're different enough that they aren't as bad. I hope. Last week to now makes me wonder."
"Joe's never said anything about your floatzel."
"She doted over him like her own kit, but I took care of Nel before he was old enough to remember her. Keep it that way."
" 'Took care of her'?"
"Not really. I did probably the worst thing I could have done to her. It seemed right at the time, though. Mistakes always do."
The room filled with artificial light, revealing a purple cloud hovering before James and Burner.
Marianne opened her eyes and loosened her tendrils that had obscured her jewels in the extinct darkness. "Don't think that that satisfies Condition Four; you go through with it." She floated to the kitchen.
"Not tonight," James called out to her.
She returned with a can of beer and a can of lemonade, which she gave to James and Burner respectively. "Of course not. The time isn't right."
"What time is it?" James asked nobody as he sought a clock. "It's past your bed-time, Joe!"
"Five minutes!" he contested.
Three minutes later, Alice entered, her fur heavily weighted by rain. Burner rose to welcome her, but she passed him by, walking directly to the bathroom.
Soon, Joe had turned off his light and shut his door, and James likewise. Burner stood where Alice passed him by, and he listened to a hair dryer filling the silence above the rain's noise floor. Although the darkness was nearly complete, punctured only by light-emitting diodes indicating electronic devices in stand-by mode and an occasional flicker of lightning outside, she felt his aura and walked directly into his arms. Burner lifted her off of her feet and together they passed through a curtain of beads and fell gently onto a make-shift futon.
Scarlet breached high-school table selection protocol and sat with the trainers-in-training. Matthew, being one grade behind--although two years younger--left a void in the traditional array that Scarlet easily filled. The imposition drew attention as her motivations were unknown.
"What?" Joe asked, "Did Mr. Plovo come up with another project and I forgot about it?" He spoke sarcastically, but that was to cover honesty, as his recent distraction created discontinuities in his attention to schoolwork.
Scarlet's face turned almost as red as her hair. "I got a pokemon. What do I do with it?"
Solymar did not care for Miss Foley's intrusion. "What do you think? Feed it, groom it, have it beat somebody else's pokemon to a bloody pulp for fun."
Terrance responded in a more constructive fashion. "What kind is it and what do you want to do with it?"
"I don't know what kind it is. It's black with yellow circle spots, and has four feet. It's not a Psychic-type, is it? I don't want one of those."
"You've got an umbreon. They're straight-Dark, which is as far from Psychic as it can be. How'd you get it?"
"I caught it on the streets just before the storm got here."
Percival glanced across the table. "That's uncommon for a wild catch. A runaway, maybe?"
Scarlet considered that she may have made a mistake. "You can't catch a pokemon that somebody else owns, right?"
Percival replied, "A pokemon that's been in a ball gets an encrypted tagging pattern added to its image. If it's activated, you can't trap them, and until the pokemon is verified on the network to be sure it's available, a ball holding a pokemon with a deactivated tag pattern won't let you lock or leash them. There are black-market balls that ignore the tag and can trap an owned pokemon, like the balls the police have, but only people who already have arrest warrants would use one."
"Leash them?" Joe asked.
"Yeah, you know." Lunch continued to be eaten. Percival shook his head. "Okay, there are a couple little pins inside the ball just under the button. You can set those to make the ball keep your pokemon from running away if you catch a wild one that disobeys and might bolt. Basically it will keep scanning on radio all the time and if it gets farther away than you allow it--you can set the range with your T.D.--or tries to get behind something that would block the beam, it will immediately recall them. The problem is doing that drains the battery like crazy, especially if the ball is for a Psychic-type since it has to be monitoring for teleport so it can catch them before they're gone."
"I kinda wish I'd known that," Joe muttered.
"You should've known that. It's pokemon 101."
Scarlet leaned forward a little and addressed her lab partner. "Why?"
Joe refused to answer and occupied his mouth with his meal.
With a sound not unlike the pop of a cork, Idis released herself from the low-strength and technically defective re-chip ball's confines. She shook herself alert and glanced around Scarlet's room. It was that of a soul in transition. Overlooking a row of fluffy stuffed animals with light-toned faux-fur and bright pastel accents loomed four men--or perhaps three and a humanoid pokemon, it was difficult to tell--half-dressed in leather and half-dressed in oily smudges applied by the metal band's photo-shoot director. A row of small books showed a similar shift in taste as Idis studied their titles from left to right and developed a basic profile of her for-the-time-being mistress. "If she has a diary, where would it be?" Idis asked herself while walking a few circles: first, nothing in the open; second, nothing in the drawers of her desk or dresser; third, if she has one, it might be a new habit, like the headbanging music and werewolf tracts--where else do teenagers hide the porn? Idis forced up Scarlet's mattress from the corner that was not properly tucked. Jackpot. Idis pulled from a deliberately and strategically calloused length of flesh on her right front limb a needle with a bent eye, greased it with just a little bit of toxin as a lubricant, and defeated the diary's not-merely-symbolic lock in seven seconds.
Scarlet's diary was maintained once many years ago, then there was a break before it resumed again. The handwriting and tone were both different enough that were they separate books, Idis would have thought them penned by different authors until their content proved internally consistent between the two chapters. Ploughing through it to memorize the highlights, expecting to come back for the details later, Idis bailed out just when things were getting good, as heavy footsteps in the hallway bade her to make things look natural again. She re-locked and re-placed the diary, gave a look to ensure that she left no evidence, and pounced upon her ball, rolling it and activating it so that it would come to rest out of sight of the doorway.
There was no investigation, so she assumed her strategy to be a success.
Scarlet exited Marignac High School and glanced around. Joe, Percival, Burner, and Alice were standing about in discussion. She approached them reluctantly. "Hey... guys." She accepted Percival's eye-contact when he turned toward her and dodged Burner's. Alice glared without turning her head. Joe looked slightly less her way. "You fight your pokemon after school, right?"
Percival accepted her query. "Sometimes. Usually on Friday we meet up at the game house an hour or so after classes and then move to the park. Otherwise, we play phone tag and see if we can get three or four together."
"Now that I have a pokemon, I guess I need to train it."
Percival looked at the other three about him. "Yeah. Plus, it might help to clear the air."
Burner spoke up. "Did the powder help?"
Scarlet blushed. "Yes. Actually, uh, do you mind?"
Burner nodded faintly and pressed his chest forward slightly. Scarlet approached, sniffed, and came nearer. Repeating that, she came into gentle contact with his feathers, causing him to recall an uncomfortable memory. "Wow. It's--really the same, but it's nice."
Alice chimed in. "He's mine. Back off."
Burner said something in his native tongue, Alice replied likewise. After another exchange, he placed a claw on her shoulder and drew her against him for a moment before separating enough that he could bend down and give her a gentle peck between her ears.
Her facial expression was calmed, but still frustrated. "I've gotten a little protective recently. Forgive me; but understand that I have good reasons."
Percival changed the topic. "Now that that's out of the way, are we going to make it a park day or what?" His question pointed at Joe, who remained distant.
"If A and B want to play, they know they can. I've got homework." Joe departed.
Percival turned back to Scarlet. "Tell you what, even if we don't get anybody else, you can bring your umbreon out against my pokemon. You two," he turned to Burner and Alice, "should take care of Joe."
Alice disagreed. "Actually, I would like to talk with him, alone, B. Go to the park, be a show off, and get swarmed by all the girls for me."
Scarlet arched an eyebrow. "Protective?"
Alice cast her a smirk. "That way, when he comes home he can tell me how many of them were disappointed when he told them he was taken." The lucario left with a skip in her step intending to catch up with Joe.
Percival released his bicycle. "Alright, I'm going to get my team and do some shopping. Meet at the park in an hour and a half?" Receiving a nod, he rode away.
Scarlet and Burner stood in silence for a moment. The latter broke it. "Shall I escort you?"
Two blocks passed behind them before Scarlet spoke. "Joe's mad at me. It's because I tricked his gar--uh, Grace, isn't it."
"She left."
Scarlet paused for two steps, then caught them up. "Wait, what? She teleported away that day, but she was back the next day. We did... something together. I thought we were cool."
"She came back, but she was different after that. She seemed confused at first, then she said that she had a strange vision. Grace and Master Joe started arguing about something, then they stopped talking altogether. She slept beside Alice and myself for a couple of nights. Then she was gone. She took a few things with her. We asked the ghost about it but she wouldn't tell us anything. She didn't insult anybody when we asked, either. That part makes me worry."
"I wasn't trying to--look," Scarlet took up Burner's left claw, "I've been mad at pokemon, mad at trainers, just, mad, for a long time. But, I don't like hurting people. I treated you and Grace as 'just pokemon' because that made it easier to be mad at all of you; I wouldn't have to make exceptions. And, I knew if I started making exceptions, the only exception would be the few that weren't exceptions."
Burner cocked his head a little.
"Marianne did something with me: she helped me have a dream about what happened and made me mad, and helped me through some things about it. Not all of them, but some. Grace helped me through some more and I thought we were okay after that. If something else happened, I'm sorry; if there's something I can do, tell me."
Burner began walking again. "Give me time to think of the good words."
Together they arrived at the Foley residence. Entering, Scarlet called out, "Dad, I'm home!"
Martin spoke before emerging from his home-office. "Happy to hear it, Mouse! Did you make any new--" His words died when he saw what his daughter brought home with her.
"Master Foley," Burner spoke with a nod and slight bow.
Scarlet spoke from around a hallway corner, "I'm going back out for a few hours, okay?"
"Yeah, but," Martin redirected his attention to the blaziken.
"I belong to Master Joe Rainier, your daughter's partner in classwork."
Martin smirked a little and stepped forward. "A fine specimen, if I do say so myself. I'm no expert, but I've done work for a few. Tell me, do you know anything about your bloodline?"
Scarlet searched around for the pokeball she had bought and used a day before. She was certain of where she had left it, and it was not there now, so unless somebody moved it... how did it get there? Scarlet caught a glimpse of it half hidden by shadow near a leg of her bed. "Thought you could get away from me?" she joked to herself. Within, a bundle of energy managed a chuckle.
When Scarlet returned to her home's entryway, she found her father and their guest in the midst of conversation. "...soon it got so bad for attendance and bookies that the League banned all of her fully-evolved descendants for a season. That killed the fad, but if your trainer gets enough badges, you're going to start meeting a few sorta-half-siblings for sure." Martin turned around as his daughter approached. "You know you've got a member of the royal family standing here, right?"
"Yes," Scarlet grunted and rolled her eyes, "I'm going, now." She left her home.
Martin sighed. "That girl was really into pokemon when she was a squirt; made pets of a dozen wild ones in the backyard where we used to live. But, shit happens. I've gotta teleconference before my absence rattles the investors. Pleasure to meet you; hey, one last thing. Your trainer, is he a good kid?"
"The best," Burner confirmed with a sharpened cluck.
"Clearly biased, but without hesitation. That's good enough for me. Get out there and blaze-kick something."
Burner exited and Martin returned to his terminal, where, through a video feed, a board of directors waited anxiously.