Love Lost, Chapter 8b: Confrontations, concluded.
#16 of Love Lost
Love Lost, Chapter 8b: Confrontations, concluded.
"At least it's a beautiful view," Carlos remarked on the panorama from the top of an unnamed peak north of Allylidene Forest. The spring weather had thinned the snow, although it was still ankle-deep on average. Ruby and Rosa stood close beside him as they watched Hunter Hague trudge to the peak next, carrying a large metal briefcase looking identical to the one Carlos too brought.
"Whatever," Hunter complained, "This is probably all your fault. You were supposed to meet me and you didn't."
"I tried. I went up to that middle of nowhere bar in the dead of winter and she said she threw your ass out for being a drunken lout. Hey, you're the hunter, why couldn't you find me?"
"Shut up."
A murkrow that monitored Hague's ascent pecked his ear.
Carlos sat on the case he brought. "Okay, we're here. Now what?"
"I thought you had the even-numbered instructions."
"I did, reaching the summit was even-numbered. All eyes are on you, man."
"Tandem bullshit. I'll make it up then. We sit here and freeze to death after nightfall. Sound good?"
"Not really, but it's better than getting eaten by sneasels."
"I'll give your dogs that one. They certainly kept them at a distance."
Ruby and Rosa were visibly pleased to receive Hague's compliment.
Carlos and Hunter exchanged small talk for a short time, before being interrupted by an old man and an articuno arriving by air.
Mr. Well dismounted, ignoring the men's immediate complaints, and unlocked the cases. Inside one was a collection of small panels and rods. Carlos was instructed to assemble them, and discovered it to create a small table. Simon indicated precisely where to place it, near a singular stone that jutted from the peak's otherwise quite flat and weather-worn surface. Hunter's case contained four cone-shaped hats, an equal number of bowls, spoons, a large metal scoop, and a number of packets containing colored flavored juices. It also contained a small electronic music player. Mister Well set it upon the assembled table and activated it. It began with the first movement of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.
"Wear the hats, this is a birthday party." Mister Well took two for himself and his pokemon and passed the other two around.
Carlos and Hunter glanced at each other awkwardly as Simon took the bowls and the scoop, gathering snow from its deeper collections on the peak and then drizzling the desserts with the packets' contents.
"Ivana doesn't care for cake. Besides, can you imagine bringing a cake up a mountain?"
Ivana grumbled something in Simon's ear.
"Oh, yes. I have become careless in my years. Share in the bounty, little ones!" Simon took another packet and used it to flavor a patch of snow near Ruby and Rosa. A murkrow stole from Simon's bowl while his back was turned, an act completely anticipated.
Simon returned to his stone seat beside Ivana and continued, offering seconds, which all but Hunter accepted. After their treat, Mr. Well ordered the men to restore the supplies to their cases. As they worked, Simon moved the player to the stone, increased its volume, and rested himself against the stone's slanted side, donning a pair of sunglasses and watching Ivana fly about care-free overhead.
"Ivana's birthday is the only day of the year that I do no work at all, you know. Three-sixty-four a year on-duty; I do at least a quarter day's work on weekends and holidays. I'm not complaining, but it does mean that I have a certain expectation, you see, that people who only work 250 days--or fewer like you two--be able to get a few things done and done right. Anyway, since you each have failed me in your own special ways, I intend to put you in service elsewhere. And, since the tasks I plan for you will be less involved than climbing this mountain, your presence here today guarantees that you have no excuse to fail me again."
Ivana had disappeared from sight, but Simon watched still. "Apparently you, Hunter, have succeeded in destroying the last relationship you have with this region, so I'm sure of your compliance. Take your case and go, now. You'll receive your instructions and passport when you need them."
Hunter cared not to argue, took up his case, and began down the peak's shallow slope, cursing beneath his breath whenever the murkrow pecked at him to hurry him along.
The trapper uncomfortably tried to instigate conversation with an occasional hum, cough, or shifting of position, but Simon was willing to speak only on his own time table.
"Do you enjoy the view, Carlos?"
He took another look around. "Yeah, it's wonderful, Sir."
"I suppose I do owe you an apology. I underestimated the gardevoir that I sent you and your deceased fellow mercenary after. Among its options of attacking with psychic trauma, teleporting a threat away, inducing burns, paralysis, and sickness, and even distorting space-time itself, it is quite a rare gardevoir that would choose to outright murder a human, no matter the provocation, unless it was trained to hate and destroy. Had I expected such a threat, I would have supplied appropriate equipment. In my oversight, I deprived that man of ever enjoying this view. So, I thought it only right to ensure that you got the opportunity. I'm offering you another opportunity, if you will, to sight-see so to speak, in exchange for fulfilling a few small errands on my behalf. But, here or there, you would tell no one of your mission, your arrivals and departures, and you would be going alone. Your pokemon cannot travel beside you." Ivana landed and walked near Simon. Her feathers sparkled iridescently with a coating of fine ice crystals. "Think it over, we will speak again when the stars are right. Take your case and go. The rest of Ivana's birthday belongs to her and I, alone."
With Ruby and Rosa leading the way, Carlos took his case and followed them back down the mountain, expecting to catch up with Hague or find him in tatters beneath a swarm of sneasels. Looking across the landscape, an expanse of evergreens extended like a flocked green carpet before him. At its end, Nybomy Fields lay many miles away.
Simon removed his sunglasses as Ivana settled down beside him. He petted her gently with his right hand as she cooed. With his left, he sifted beneath the snow, digging through an out-of-place patch of gravel, and withdrew a pokeball. It was plain and its button had been removed and replaced with a filler cap long ago. Simon's eyes watered slightly.
Indan Falls Pokecenter was quite underwhelming; truly it was a re-purposed third of the town's library. It had barely enough space for a service counter, one medical room, and an office for the employees. On the up-side, other services such as network access and reference resources were available by passing through the double doors leading into the library proper. Percival was left to find his way to a market on his own, as Bartholomew had abandoned him while checking-in to have his pokemon restored and his League account re-activated. His funds well depleted, when he reached the town Pokemart, he sold back a few supplies to purchase a rod.
South of, but in sight of, the namesake falls, Percival selected a spot along a weathered dock. Another man was fishing there, and the park adjacent to the creek was packed with trainers of varied ages and their wide variety of pokemon, playing field games together. Percival settled in, releasing Frankie, who flopped down on the dock and relaxed, maintaining a low charge. For the first forty minutes, Percival became well practiced in the art of baiting his hook with a bit of berry, responding to a tug, and then throwing back a magikarp. Sometimes he got a typical fish, which his neighbor was happy to take off of Percival's hands.
"Thank you kindly. So, since you're not here for the magikarp or the common fins, what are you hopin' for?"
"Feebas. My T.D. said they can be caught here."
The fisherman chuckled. "Not the way you're tryin' to."
"Why not?"
"You gotta have the right lure. Something pretty that sparkles."
Percival did not care to lose more time or money shopping. Another half-hour passed, Percival still forwarding his frequent non-pokemon catches to his neighbor.
"Seems like everything's biting for you that you don't want, while I'll be lucky to drag up a boot before sundown. That's ten, right?"
Percival shrugged. "I'm not counting."
"I think that's worth one of these in trade." The fisherman handed Percival an ostentatiously elaborate lure.
"Now, for the best part," James slapped his hands together, "let it filter for a while, check the pH, shock it when it's ready, and just about the time you're going to bed with school in the morning, it'll be okay to swim in."
Joe's jaw fell slack as he looked at his father. "You're kidding, right? All this work--"
"I'm tired. I'm going to have a sit-down. Take your gardevoir with you to the rental kiosk. We'll have an extra movie night this weekend, and I'm pretty sure it's her turn to pick."
Joe collected Grace and left for a nearby fuel station that offered media kiosks. Waiting in line, Grace became bored standing behind and beside her master and let her left arm slowly begin to embrace him. She sensed his thoughts shifting, becoming more comforted and fluid, as they felt when she projected herself touching him the same way in their dreams. The moment lasted a few wondrous seconds before Grace felt a sharp emotional spike.
It was a judgment, a criticism, a denouncement. It was the woman standing behind them. Grace's reflexes wanted to spin about and confront her, as the thought struck Grace's senses like it was a kick to the shin, but she remembered that that would only make the situation worse. Grace wondered why she remembered something like that, when she had no actual memory of an incident like this, and pondered till she felt Joe step forward with the line as it filled a gap. She let her arms fall to her side as he moved.
With the woman only inches away and mentally focused on her accusation, Grace could not suppress her ability if she wanted to: "That boy's what, maybe in high school? If that thing is a female, she's probably already rewired his brain to make him a deviant. At least it's mutant-colored so he can be the envy of his fellow pokephiles." Hearing the woman's thoughts only made Grace's memory feel stronger, yet it still could not be placed. She became nervous, like she was losing something, or had lost something.
The woman was not alone. Others in the station were thinking similar things. They were too numerous to isolate passively, but the psychic atmosphere itself seemed to shift. She heard an intercom announcing departures and arrivals. Who were they to judge? It was none of their business. They should be so lucky to feel the love that she felt, even if it was fated to be lost the day after it finally bloomed. Jealous is that emotion, not disdainful! They can't be right, no, no matter how many of them chastise me in their minds, no matter that not a single one sees two hearts behind his human body and my pokemon form, they can't be right. I was wrong before, I was not wrong now, what we did was right, I know--
"What do you want?"
Grace leapt forward and captured Joe with her arms, shouting something incomprehensible to humans.
Joe almost lost his balance and stumbled into the kiosk. He glanced about with embarrassment as he saw the whole store staring at his pokemon's outburst.
"Grace. Let's pick a movie and go."
Her name brought her to her senses. She straightened her hair a bit--an excuse to ever so briefly hide the blush in her gills with her hands--and drifted to the touchscreen, flicking through new releases. She really did not care what she got, she just needed to get away from these people. She selected a generic romantic comedy, Joe paid, and as soon as the film was downloaded to a chip, they were on their way.
Joe took her aside as they passed the residential reserve. "Grace, what was that about?"
"I don't know. I mean, I know but not completely. It was all those people. When I got close to you, they started thinking I was hurting you. It made me feel terrible and then I--I don't know. It's like I faded away. Then, I was holding you again and we were at the head of the line."
Joe placed his hands on her temples, gently touching her gills with his fingertips. He gave her a brief kiss. Her blush returned, and she silenced him when he opened his mouth in an attempt to vocally express something he could not put into words. He did not need to, she knew exactly what was on his mind. She drifted along behind him, loosely linking their minds with a day-dreamy connection as they continued home.
A natu perched on a bench near some boys and girls playing soccer waved her left wing and deflected a kick out of bounds. Frankie discharged futile static when the foul ball bounced off of his back and into the slowly flowing creek. He tried to stand but was hardly off the planks when an eevee leapt on his back, then his head, and then into the river in pursuit of the ball. A boy ran to shore near the dock as the swimming eevee nudged the ball back to shore and emerged behind it, not bothering to shake off the water.
The fisherman called out to the boy. "Hey, your eevee seems to like swimming!"
The boy kicked his soccer ball toward a different ampharos who was serving as his team's goalie. The eevee continued pursuing the ball. "He does. A good thing, too, since I want to make him a vaporeon as soon as I can get the stone for it."
"I think I can help you out with that."
Percival shouted with joy. "Finally!"
Frankie jolted the feebas that dangled from a borrowed lure. It flopped weakly on the dock a couple times before Percival activated a ball and trapped it. His T.D. analyzed the ball's data and provided a basic stat report. "I hate naming; anyone want to suggest something?"
The boy shook the fisherman's hand and thanked him for a water stone. "What, like, first thing that comes to mind?"
Percival tapped on his T.D.'s screen. "Girl's name."
He shrugged, "Fiona?"
Percival hummed twice in a dismissive tone as he confirmed the entry.
The boy headed off to honor his half of the bargain and fetch the fisherman something from a nearby hamburger stand. That was going to make the stone more expensive than the fisherman intended, since it would put the boy's dragonair in mind of food, a state he often seemed to get stuck in.
Percival returned the borrowed lure and took off for the pokecenter. He had a fish to evolve, and needed to arrange a mutually beneficial trade and trade-back to make it happen.
"He's not going to watch it because he's got his own romantic comedy going on. He's the star." Marianne's comment making Burner's feathers rise somewhat, she immediately began fluffing them chaotically with her tendrils until he swatted through her and excused himself to walk across town.
Joe sat on the love-seat beside his father, who really had not moved much since sitting that afternoon. "Are you okay, Dad? You seem kinda wore-out."
Marianne swooped in. "I've been gnawing on him at night. You know, James, maybe you should go to bed. This movie isn't going to do much for me, and if you get a few extra hours, it will make up for the dream I'm going to suck out of you."
James did not have the energy to argue and let Marianne lead him away.
Grace teleported into the seat's vacancy, grabbing Joe with her right arm while snapping up the entertainment center's remote to her left, pressing its play button. "Guess it's just you and me, tonight."
James slid into bed, not bothering to change clothes beyond discarding his pants.
"James?"
He opened his eyes and grunted.
"I want to make a deal."
He grunted again.
"Let me lie in your bed, hold me in your arms, and don't mind if I whisper another man's name."
James leaned up. "What?"
"Just for the first few hours. In return, I promise I won't feed off of you in the night."
He stared at her for a moment, taken slightly aback by her genuinely serious face. "God, fine. Whatever."
The experience was disturbing, but not entirely unwelcome once James got used to the coldness. She adjusted her density to be firm yet yielding, like something between a pillow and an inflatable pool toy. He had almost fallen asleep when he heard Marianne sobbing.
"Ghost?"
"I'm sorry, thank you, goodnight." Marianne was gone with a blink, leaving James with nothing to support his now impractical pose.
Burner ignited a wrist for light. A tiny note taped over an un-powered doorbell button directed him to find a cellar hatch behind the house. He wove through the cellar, lined with empty wooden shelves and a thick layer of dust and debris. Entering the home proper, nothing but bare surfaces, peeling wallpaper, and a few spider webs greeted him. His fire was the only light save a slight trickle from street lamps finding gaps in the boarded windows. He investigated the second floor and found it too in disrepair. The third floor provided a destination: a room with light on and a faint radio's voice leaking into the hall. He ducked his head into the door frame and knocked on the opened door.
"Come on in!"
Burner entered a room completely unlike the rest of the house. It honestly reeked, although of fresh paint and new carpet whose style left something to be desired. He looked about; the room contained an old sleeping bag, a wind-up radio, a battery-powered emergency lamp, a small box of non-perishable foods, a foam cooler, and a large bucket of paint.
Alice sat on a carpet scrap, painting the last needy wall in a shade that the paint's first customer rejected. She dropped her brush into a paint roller pan and stretched a nearby length of cling film over it to keep it from drying while unattended. Standing up and walking toward Burner, she extended her arms and yawned, ensnaring him as she came against his body.
"Unnn, I've been painting since I got off work. Everything hurts. It's your turn to rub me and make me feel better."
"I'll try, but I don't know anything about massage."
"You've got all night to learn. Just listen to what I tell you and by sunrise, you're going to know exactly where I like to be touched." Alice handed him a can of lemonade and began re-arranging her bedding. "I'm sorry it's not really cold, the ice didn't last very long." She folded her sleeping bag into a thick pad, turned her pillow lengthwise near it, and inflated a ring cushion, placing it between the bag and pillow. She lay face-down on the construct, with her chest spike settling in the cushion's hole. "Come on down."
Burner knelt beside her and gently placed his palms on her back.
"Don't be chicken. I'll tell you if you're off track."
He began emulating the motions she performed on him earlier in the day in a clumsy but determined manner.
Alice moaned into the pillow. "Yeeeaaaah, until further notice, whatever happens, don't stop rubbing me."
Burner continued for about five minutes, growing uncomfortable. The sounds she was making was reminding her of his dream that morning. "Alice, am I really doing this right?"
"Honest--unnngh--ly, not really, but I don't care. It's working okay. Keep doing whatever your instincts are telling you to do."
Burner swallowed hard. His instincts told him to take her advice and let them lead him. He changed the pattern of pressure he applied to her as he re-positioned himself, raising his left leg and planting it on her other side, straddling her lower body. He leaned down over Alice and increased the pressure he applied to her spine, eliciting deeper, more primal sounds. His breathing became heavy.
Moments later, Alice felt like she could melt. Weakness to Fire gained a new meaning. Her senses seemed to shut down and focus only on experiencing the moment. All but her sixth, which remained ever vigilant.
"Burner."
He was not so much rubbing her with his claws as he was now gripping her. He lowered his body and began gently pressing against her.
"Burner, stop."
Like the first five of hers, his senses felt completely driven by instinct and were loath to respond with anything more than a bestial growl against her right ear.
She felt him re-positioning his body again, and planning to re-position hers; her aura sense warned that she must not allow this to continue. She swung her right arm out and then back, jamming a dorsal spike into Burner's hip, driving him off and rolling him onto his side and back. That got his attention. He rubbed the wound and looked at the blood now on his palm as Alice hugged him. "I'm sorry, Burner. I love you, and I really want to, but we can't do that. Not right now. My home doesn't even have a single finished room; now is not the time for me to make an egg."
Burner sat stunned, both from the pain and from how close he had come to breaking his promise.
Alice handed him a napkin so he could blot his wound. "Now, it's my turn to take care of you, and I know a safe way to do it." She admired the evidence of his desire for her as she knelt beside him. With the first stroke of her tongue, Burner no longer felt the pain of his injury as he clenched the napkin against his hip and gasped uncontrollably.
Percival noticed the graffiti that was written all over a plain-looking machine embedded inside an alcove wall's face at Indan Falls' pokecenter. Button number two was adorned with a stick figure trainer being carried aloft by six little birds gripping his sleeves, the figure demanding, "Flap harder!" Four and Five depicted two pokemon before judges in a competition, seen from behind: a muscular gallade's pose receiving poor scores, a gothitelle's exposure of her chest receiving high marks. Button seven taught waterfall: apparently tired of their trainer's attitude, the six birds seem to have flown their trainer to a waterfall, and released him into the river a few meters ahead of the drop.
After three seconds of bone-rattling squeals passed through the headphones, Fiona had been injected with the ability to cross water gracefully and to force atmospheric humidity to suddenly condense into a crashing wave. Percival's account was charged for his use of the H.M. programming device and for a couple headache tablets to give to his surf-enabled milotic.
The unconscious sea serpent's head slipped from the speaker pads and slapped against the pokecenter/library's floor.
Sam was incensed by what he was seeing. "Master, is that not enough? She has been hooked, paralyzed, trapped, forced to evolve, and had four, five? T.M.'s applied in a row! I know you're in a hurry, but--" Sam reached out to Percival; his hand was slapped away.
"Shut up. You aren't pulling your weight, so it's falling on her."
Percival recalled Fiona and took her to the counter for rejuvenation service. "Are you getting thirsty, hungry?"
Sam admitted, "A little."
"You stay with the fishie, I'll get us some snacks and we'll find a place to camp."
Percival exited the center and walked across the street to a pharmacy. He approached the counter and placed a rare candy upon it. "This will work if it's powdered and put into a drink, right?"
The pharmacist frowned with experience. "It will take longer to have an effect, but yes, if your pokemon consumes the entire drink. A half-dose would be wasted, or could cause a problem."
"I'll risk it." He went to the small market section of the pharmacy to find something Sam liked and to pick out some decent road food.
Back at the pokecenter, Percival collected his pokemon and rented a tent to set up camp near the creek. Frankie provided some light while eating bologna. Sam noticed that his bottle of ginger ale tasted a little funny, but assumed that it was because the brand was one he had never tried before. As soon as he finished the drink, Percival declared it to be bed time, recalling Frankie and ordering Sam to sleep outside of his ball, and outside of the tent, supposedly as a guard. Sam assumed it was a sly punishment of some sort, but he felt kind of funny, and quickly fell into a deep sleep.
Alice winced as she ran her tongue across her lips and moved up to snuggle her lover. "God, you really do have a lot of salt in your diet."
Burner was too relaxed to answer, and responded by hugging Alice tightly with one arm.
"Hmmm, that feels good. But, we can cuddle a little later. It's your turn again. Just do to me what I did to you; and be careful with the edges of that beak."
Burner looked slightly confused as Alice began re-arranging her bedding. He snapped out of confusion when she laid down on her back and revealed his objective, re-winding her radio while he crawled toward her.
The room became dim as the lamp's batteries started to fade, but the flame that burned inside the room would glow everlasting.
Public address speakers spoke in stereophonic sound, as they surrounded her at various distances. "Now boarding at Platform C, red line to Hexyloxy Harbor. Platform A, evening commuter loop arriving on-time in thirteen minutes." She worked slowly through a moderately-dense crowd, slowly because she did not know where she was headed, and slowly because few would yield to her passage.
"Get back in your ball!" an anonymous voice chided as someone with plenty of space to pass by bumped into her anyway. Someone else nearby wondered why the laws against stray animals were not being enforced. She wove her way to a vending machine in an alcove, away from most of the traffic. She did not know how it worked, but she could force it to operate telekinetically. It had to look legitimate, though. She did not have any of the things that would make it go, but she brought her hand to one of the slots a few times as if she were putting in the little round shiny things while she sensed its mechanisms. It was a challenge compared to the machines she defeated near her home when she was desperate for safe fluids to drink. She tapped the button featuring an orange can, keeping up appearances. The machine resisted her--its parts were plated with silver, including the bin that held its coins, but she could still teleport them within the mechanism. One of the larger coins she teleported to the top of the coin shaft and let to fall; a few times, fooling the device into believing that it had been compensated.
A man in a uniform approached her as the machine rumbled. She felt his presence and his intention. The soda fell just in time. She withdrew it and turned around. "Saa!" she shouted, pretending to be startled by the officer. Holding the can in front of her face and lowering her eyes, she struggled to speak their language. "Foh--mai--maas--tugh."
The officer squinted a little. "Then get it to him and stay close. No unaccompanied pokemon in the terminal. Do you understand me?"
She immediately nodded and cast herself adrift in the crowd until she found an exit. She felt out her surroundings; a panel truck passing by had some empty space in it. She teleported inside, sat against a stack of boxes, and opened the can. Lemon-lime was not her favorite flavor, but it was refreshing and the can did match her colored skin, which she found amusing in a faint, ironic way. When she finished sipping away, she let herself slip away into a nap undisturbed until she felt a presence nearby. The doors to the truck opened. She opened her eyes and saw Joe standing there, only he was an adult man.
"Grace?"
She leapt to her feet. "Joe! Why are you--I'm not, wait. I'm dreaming; and so are you."
"I was dreaming about something else, then I felt you in my head and now I'm here. Wait, are you green right now because this is a dream?"
The gardevoir looked at her skin with confusion. "I don't--"
A loud voice outside of the truck caught both of their attentions. Instantly, the dream collapsed.
Sunrise was still a couple of hours away. Burner tried to enter his home without being noticed.
"Burner and Alice sitting in a tree!"
He shushed Marianne, once politely.
"K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"
Then, again, but rudely.
"First comes lust, then comes coit--"
A springy door stopper twanged as James' door banged against it. "What the hell's going on--"
Marianne flew to his side, her face expressing ecstatic joy. "Lookie! Burner made it home alive. Isn't that great?" She clasped his shoulders and bobbed up and down as though she were hopping.
Joe and Grace staggered into the living room, too.
"We were all very worried about you, Burner; weren't we?" Marianne twisted back and over herself, staring at Grace and drifting into her personal space. "Weren't we?"
"Joe; put your pokemon to bed." James left, slamming his bedroom door behind himself.
"You heard Dad. Everyone, sleep." Joe paced away, as did Burner, but Grace remained behind, not wanting to lose a staring match with Marianne.
The ghost's crooked smile became as wide and sharp as it could. "Weren't we?"
"I don't have to worry about him," Grace nodded toward Burner's bedroom. "He can take care of himself." Grace turned to leave, but Marianne deftly came before her by flying through her and turning about.
"He is strong, but he is family. You didn't even notice that he didn't come back tonight--I guess you were distracted, right?"
Grace pushed by. Marianne stopped her again. That grin was gone.
"Pay more attention, Grace. You're a psychic and you behave like you've got blinders on." Marianne dissipated into the home's darkness.
Grace dragged herself into Joe's room and slipped into bed with him.
He stirred. "Grace, will you tell me what that dream was about?"
"I--I don't know. It was the one I had before, when I fell out of this bed. A different part of it, though. I think."
He reached around beneath the covers and grasped her hand. "Forget about that weird dream, then. Come play in one of mine."
Grace smiled in the room's darkness and held him close. "Gladly."