Love Lost, Chapter 8a: Confrontations.
#15 of Love Lost
Love Lost, Chapter 8a: Confrontations.
Joe awoke to a purple sunrise. Most of the vernal equinox sunlight filtered through Marianne as she occluded much of his east-facing window. Grace stirred beside him, and gave him a gentle kiss as they rose.
Marianne stared forward. "I'm going to miss the snow."
Grace stretched with faint groans as Joe turned off his alarm and stumbled toward the bath. He rubbed his head forcefully. Grace scowled. "You took a bite out of him last night, didn't you?"
Marianne drifted back from the window. "Just a sip. I don't plan to waste away again. Could you stay out of his head any longer?"
Grace's lack of a response was reply enough.
"I didn't think so." Marianne returned to the window after watching Grace leave--still wearing her scowl--and gazed across the backyard.
In the kitchen, James cooked up a hearty breakfast. Holidays extended this weekend into a half-week, and he wanted it to start off memorably. Grace drifted in and lent her hands. They typically exchanged no words when they prepared a breakfast together, but it was not an uncomfortable silence. They simply had nothing to communicate other than the specifics of their culinary objective. James noticed that Burner was sleeping in again, and instructed Grace to drag him away from his futon once she finished setting their places.
The gardevoir easily sensed that he was experiencing an intense dream. They were coming to him frequently these days, Grace noted as she approached his door, but this one felt different than his usual fare. She could even hear his faint, throaty mumbles; usually that meant his dream saw him engaged in physical combat with a powerful foe. It would probably be a shame to spoil it, but it would too be a shame to spoil James' breakfast by letting it turn cold in his absence. She gently turned his door's knob and leaned through its widening opening.
"Burner, you need to get up for breakf--" Her eyes grew wide at what she saw and she immediately drifted backwards, pulling the door shut before her. She hovered with flushed gills for a moment, monitoring Burner's mind has he suddenly snapped to awareness, realized what had happened to awaken him, and then, what had just happened. Grace floated back to the kitchen with a hand to her mouth, ignoring the sound of Burner's shameful caw fading behind her.
Joe finished dressing and entered the kitchen shortly after Grace returned and took her seat. "Wow, are you planning something, Dad? And, where's the big guy?"
Grace touched Joe on the arm as he sat beside her. "Burner needs a moment. He had a--strange--dream."
Joe looked concerned. "Should I--"
"No! Uh, nah," she flashed a disingenuous and sarcastic grin, "he just wanted to reflect on it for a little bit."
The three began eating and ignored the typical stunt of Marianne drifting across and through the breakfast table, picking up a little bit of everything as she passed by. However, instead of levitating to the attic, she phased through the west wall.
She found Burner seated on the floor, turned to face away from the door that Marianne did not care to use. "Hey, Chicken. I brought you a bit of breakfast."
Burner glanced her way, and rotated to face away from her, too.
"Alright, what's the deal?" She quickly drifted around to his front and invaded his personal space, draping her form across as she pressured him to lean back somewhat. She let his knees pass through her lower region. She felt her essence wrapping fluidly around something else, too.
"Oh? Oh..." Marianne looked beneath herself. "Oh! Wow, Chicken. That's one hell of a--you were having impure thoughts, weren't you?"
Burner glanced to his left. "Yes. I didn't--"
"I knew I felt something cool going on over here; if it weren't more fun to annoy the psychic I should've fed on your dream. Your beefy, pulsating dream." She shifted forward again, extending a tendril to his chin and pulling his gaze into her own. "I bet it would be a flavor to savor."
Burner shifted and chirped with a spasm as he felt something touch his something.
Marianne looked beneath herself again. "Well, that sausage is yours, now. Go ahead, reach in and grab it. Before it gets cold--I don't leave things temperate for long."
Burner slowly reached into Marianne's fog and fished out the sausage he had touched. She played up the event with a grotesquely melodramatic expression: mouth dropping open and eyes rolling up and back to accompany a soothing exhalation. She floated away from his body and drifted to a position at his right. A fried egg within her floated toward the bulge between her head and body and it faded into oblivion when she headbutted him gently. "Yummy. So, who is that thing thinking about? Grace?"
The blaziken quickly shook his head in denial.
"It's not for me is it?"
He denied again, less emphatically.
"Really? I don't see why not, I am the most attractive female in town, pokemon or hu--ohhhhhh. It's for that black and blue bitch, Alice!"
Burner immediately stood erect and stepped forward one pace to escape her side, arms folded defiantly with nowhere to go.
"There really is no accounting for taste." Marianne drifted beside him again, elevating a tendril supporting a few more pieces of sausage, easily visible as shadows before the daylight in the window behind it. "Take another." The tone of her voice became unusually serious. "You wanted me to talk out my problem with you in this room; I declined, and I was wrong." She drifted toward the door. "Won't you take your own advice?"
In the living room, James' telephone rang. As Joe crossed the room to answer it, he noticed that Burner's door lock clicked faintly.
"Yeah, I do. Dad said it's time to open the pool, so we're going to be spending the whole day on it."
Percival liked the idea of a nearby open body of water. "Do you guys have the supplies yet?"
"No, we're going shopping in a little bit. There's a pool supply place in Zein that's having a sale."
"Hey, can I tag along? I was planning on getting a jump on my journey by going to Indan Falls to try to catch a decent water type. That would save me about half of the ride getting there."
"Probably, I'll ask, hold on."
Sam offered his master a glass of orange juice with a straw. "Are you planning on hitch-hiking throughout our journey this summer?"
"If we're lucky. Probably going to be surfing the first half of it, though. Between you and Frankie, there's nothing in the water that can slow us down." Percival's attention returned to his telephone. "Yes? Great! Yeah, we'll be ready by nine. Thanks!" Percival hung up the telephone and returned to Sam. "Okay, our journey begins in a couple hours. I'll ride down to the Pokemart and get some stuff; I guess you need to water your tree one more time or whatever, right?"
Sam nodded as Percival bid his mother adieu and grabbed his bicycle's ball.
Frankie, eating from a bag of pepperoni slices, approached Sam and bleated low.
"I hope so. The prism scale ate most of his road money."
Joe invited Burner to come along, too, but he declined with a polite though firm, "No, thank you," and continued straight to the shower. "Hey," Joe continued, "don't use any of my new shampoo, I still haven't bought anything okay for feathers, yet."
Burner already turned the corner, but the bass in his voice penetrated the walls well. "Cold water is all I need right now."
Marianne drifted up against Joe, folding her tendrils over his shoulders. "You'll be in there with him soon enough. Well, maybe not in there with him--that's a lifestyle decision for you two to work out--but at least time-sharing it."
"What? Why?"
"That's why. I've heard it before; your voice is changing, young man." Marianne turned to face an always-grumpy-in-Marianne's-presence gardevoir who was leaving the kitchen and approaching on a vector that would separate the boy from the ghost, "Grace evolved just in time, didn't she?"
Grace slipped her right arm around Joe's shoulder to guide him away, while watching the giggling spectre float up into the ceiling. "Enough of her nonsense. Come, finish your breakfast so we can get ready to go."
As James turned south onto Route R-Z, Grace reached across Joe's seat-back to brush his temple and telepathically whisper to him, "I'm happy to be what I am now, but I did enjoy being able to ride along in your lap." He recalled the event for a moment before clearing his mind and re-focusing on a little homework he brought with him to pass the ride time productively.
Between Grace's gesture and the incessant chirping of Percival's T.D., James became irritated. "Can't you silence that toy, kid?" The chirps continued. "Hey, mute that crap or I'll pull over and you can start walking from here."
That got Percival's attention. A few more chirps would be the device's last for the moment as he disabled its sound.
Grace could not help but monitor the T.D.'s screen as Percival flipped through its pages. It was much like Joe's, but Percival actually used its features. Its pokemon combat game included profiles of League trainers and their teams, allowing one to test strategies against the best of the best. Or as Percival had it configured, the typical route travelers and what gym leaders would send against the endless stream of sixth-tiers (admittedly, he would begin as one) that showed up as soon as school let out for the summer. Percival's virtual team included Sam and Frankie, but also some pokemon he must be planning to catch.
While James seemed to want silence, a minute of road din compelled him to turn on his radio.
Grace leaned over a bit. "Burner must have impressed you if you're thinking of getting one of your own." She felt his mood shift as he slightly melodramatically focused his attention on his device, flipping through manual pages. "What are those numbers?" she then asked.
Percival was trapped between not wanting to say too much, and his inclination to explain things in excessive detail. "Stats. They've tested tons of pokemon, figured out a way to score their abilities, strengths, even rate of development, and turn it all into mathematical equations."
"Are those thirty-ones good?"
"As good as they get. Just a guess but pokemon coming from where he comes from always have a few."
"When do we get to meet him? I'd like to see Burner's face facing some competition for attention as the local firebrand."
Percival cleared his throat and flipped to another page.
"Ohh, that one's pretty."
"That's the one I'm going for today."
"I've never seen anything like that. Are they rare?"
"Their first form isn't too rare, but they're difficult to evolve. I've got a short-cut."
Grace nudged Percival with her elbow. "Short-cut like bumming this ride to get out there, or another kind, too?"
Percival started a new game, thinking about what should fill his team's remaining slots.
Burner heard Roscoe's yield echo in his mind, followed by a criticism. "You manage, but you are distracted."
Burner released his holds: one arm pinning Roscoe to the ground by his neck, one foot's claws securely gripping the alakazam's belly. "Are you reading my mind?" Burner reached down and lent Roscoe a hand in rising.
Roscoe's mental voice echoed again. "You didn't notice that I was decorating you instead of defending myself." He raised his hands, causing his spoons, that had been dangling from Burner's horns, to leap back into his hands before stowing them in the gaps between his forearms and the natural bracers that grew around them.
Burner and Roscoe returned to the bench while Komo entered the ring and awaited a challenger.
The blaziken whispered to his sparring partner, "I don't want to talk about it aloud. Read me."
Roscoe stood upon the bench seat to compensate for their height difference. After a couple seconds, he asked Burner to exhale slowly. When he did, Roscoe re-positioned his hands and sharply jerked Burner's head. The blaziken's caw was much louder than the cracking of his upper spine. Roscoe spoke aloud out of respect for the trainers now staring at him; he without benefit of technical machine, a situation that lent a very rough and hoarse quality to his words although he was remarkably intelligible. "That bone was out of place. It will be sore today. Go here and be soothed." Roscoe palmed Burner's face again and forced into his mind something of a map.
James dropped Percival off at Zein Pokecenter and continued on his way with haste, disappointing Grace who intended to try while the car was stopped to seduce Joe to join her in the backseat so she could be properly beside him.
There, Percival checked-in at the center and released Sam. "Listen, green bean. We've got two goals this weekend. I've got mine, and you've got yours. I don't want to come home and show Ma you're not a meter taller. Got it?"
Sam nodded affirmatively, but solemnly, and followed his master as they embarked on his journey.
Zein Pokecenter's automatic doors glided open with a hiss. Something about the cool spring breeze felt colder than the winter's chill that gripped Sam months before.
They walked un-accosted until reaching the I-Z bridge.
Burner wandered the streets, guided by a forged memory till he reached his destination. He could not read the sign's language and entered suspiciously, ringing the bell above the door twice: once by opening the door, and again by his head brushing against the bell itself. The lobby was a small room containing nothing but a few chairs and a service window. He saw little more than the top of an old woman's hair lean into the window and then vanish, as it chattered something indistinct into the room behind.
The rough accent came through the window again after a moment. "Left side, Room 2, she pay your fee. You go in now."
Burner followed instruction and found Room 2 to be heavily decorated in Oriental trappings surrounding a massage table. He stood beside it and glanced around the room. It was so heavily decorated that he did not immediately notice Alice standing beside a door on the other side, camouflaged by a cheongsam she wore.
"I miss one day at the park and you search me out?" She guided him onto the table. "I don't know if I should take that as sweet or creepy." She began massaging his back.
"I was concerned. But, coming here was Roscoe's idea."
"Ahhh, makes sense. He 'accidentally' noticed that I was trying to think of a place that would hire a freed pokemon, and 'accidentally' noticed I had been dabbling in massage again, and 'happened' to know of a place that might have a position available."
Burner groaned as she started working on his neck. "The woman up front, she said that you'd pay--"
Alice rolled his head to the side a bit, and it popped gently. "Time in here isn't free."
"I have money; on Joe's account. I can--"
Burner felt Alice's chest spike press into his back as she leaned over him and pressed her head beside his own. "It'll only be about a day's pay. The tips are where my food money comes from, anyhow. Now, relax and think about tonight."
"What's happening tonight?"
"You are coming over to my place, and you're going to reciprocate."
Sam regained consciousness beneath a noon-time sky. "Did... ungh... did we win?"
Percival did not look away from his hot dog. "We? Not completely. You don't get much experience out of a battle when you've fainted and can't remember it even happened."
Sam grumbled. "Then box me."
This was not something a pokemon typically asked for. "I'm not going to get you into your third form if you're P.C. static."
"I'm not going to get into my third form if you keep putting me up against pidgeots and fearows. Yes, Frankie can shoot them down, but if I'm pecked to pieces and the other guy has a ground type, what is Frankie going to do? Signal-beam it to death? Then, you're riding back to Zein for a team restoration and medical sign-off."
"Good thinking. I need to look into T.M.'s and tutoring for him." Percival asked Frankie to not let him forget about that and tossed Sam a sitrus berry. "We're going to Indan Falls. If we get wiped out, then to hell with the League credit. You'll just spar when you're able to stand through the weekend and we'll get re-certified on the way home."
Percival stood up, mounted his bicycle, grabbed his balls, and recalled his pokemon. As he began pedaling away, he heard a voice ordering him to stop in the name of Pokemon League. Percival halted and turned to see a trainer many years his senior approaching him with a challenge. That was suspicious, since seeing an adult on the trail pre-season means he's either a crummy trainer or gets off on beating up younger kids' pokemon.
"Another one?" Percival exhaled, "This makes seven today."
The challenger grinned. "It won't take long; I saw your team as I was walking over."
Percival did not like his tone. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"That I'll play you, one of mine versus your two, and I suggest you don't bid more than the minimum wager."
Unable to afford bidding more without risking bankruptcy on the first day of his journey, Percival resisted an urge to call his insulting bluff. Percival parked his bicycle and released Sam. "Yeah, minimum is fine, I'm sure you've got this in the bag."
The challenger opened one of the balls on his belt, releasing a gliscor.
Sam realized that his foe was too strong and fast to give him time to charge a solar-beam, and resorted to an energy-ball instead. He got the attack off, but only after the gliscor had already flipped in the air and descended upon him with an acrobatic body-slam. Ludmilla was knocked back and laid out flat, but shook off the impact and took flight again. Sam, however, was out cold. Percival grunted and switched him out for Frankie. The ampharos hardly realized that he was out again when a high-pitched shriek above him cause him to look up and see a frightful bat coming down at him. He hopped away to dodge, but Ludmilla was not aiming for him. She struck the ground with great force producing an omnidirectional shock front that kicked up a cloud of dust, knocked Frankie down, and toppled Percival's bicycle for good measure.
Alice patted Burner on his right ass cheek. "Alright, time for you to go. I don't want to treat you to two days' pay."
Burner was reluctant to rise as while most of his body had become fully relaxed, one part gathered all of the lost stiffness. However, he could not resist her as she pulled him from the table.
"Seriously, big boy, the old bat will charge me--this wasn't supposed to be that kind of massage. Those cost a lot more, first of all."
He quickly snatched a nearby towel to cover his shame. "No! Alice, I didn't think that. It's just that I've been thinking about you a lot more, and that started happening to me. I've tried to stop it but--please, don't think that I wanted to be your friend because I--"
Alice pulled him downward and engaged Burner in a passionate kiss. He wrapped his arms around her body and together they held a pose that lasted until a timed warning chime played through an inconspicuous speaker that typically emitted relaxing music at low volume. Alice's demeanor shifted professional. "Unless you want to pay me back for a second hour, it's time for you to put that silly thing away and let me get ready for my next client." She returned to the obfuscated door through which she entered. "Remember, tonight. Any time after nineteen should be fine. I expect you to treat me to a massage that's even more stimulating than the one I just gave you."
A couple trainers of differing experience levels passed the signpost marking Zein's southern border as they exited town.
"Bah! It's no problem. I'm paying back a karma debt." Ludmilla dozed draped over Bartholomew's shoulders; were it not for her tail and stinger it would look like he wore a cape. "Plus, I was headed to Zein anyway."
Percival adjusted his baseball cap. "You just left it and now you're going back to Indan Falls. What's the point of that?"
"We got here faster by traveling together because no one was looking for doubles matches."
"It was slower for me because we both walked when I could'a rode."
"But together we'll get to Indan Falls faster."
Percival feared this argument was becoming circular, again. "And then you'll be walking alone to Zein again."
"And since my last center visit is here at Zein, if we get washed out, I don't have to back-track."
"You're back-tracking right now!"
"Millie, I think I'm fighting an up-hill battle." His gliscor whistled a pitch too high for a human to hear as anything but a click and snuggled against him. "Listen, Parker--"
"Percival."
"Potpourri, Paprika, it doesn't matter. That's the point that you're missing. Just because I was in Zein today doesn't mean that I have completed my objective of going to Zein today. As it turns out, I've got to get to Indan Falls first."
"No, you don't. We're fine on our own. Turn around and go back."
Ludmilla sneered at Percival.
Bartholomew scratched her behind her ear. "Don't mind her. She doesn't like stupid people, is the thing."
Percival released his bicycle. "Man, just stay away from me. I don't need your attitude or your philosophy."
Bartholomew and Ludmilla watched him ride into the distance. The trainer spoke to his lead pokemon, "At least he's got determination, so I'll say he'll get as far as I-Z Bridge."
Ludmilla chuckled in agreement.
When they approached that bridge themselves, they passed a trainer with a monferno whose fur stood on end. When they passed over the bridge's crest, they saw Percival at the bottom, dousing Sam with a burn spray while Frankie tended to his own injuries. Soon, they met with the novice once more. "You're right. Your attitude and philosophy is looking a lot better than mine, Packard. I guess I'll continue on my way to Zein via Indan Falls. If that fancy bike of yours brings you by in one piece, feel free to stop and chat a while. Maybe we can catch a doubles match."
Percival watched Bartholomew walk away, bouncing slightly to help Ludmilla get a better grip on his shoulders, having slipped slightly after looking back and blowing a raspberry at the novice trainer and his wounded warriors.
For the sake of convenience, Grace teleported from the backseat to the outside of James' car once they arrived home. The accessories they bought for the pool not only crowded her in the rear seat, but shifted during transport and entangled her. James entered his home to tend to telephone messages and mail while Joe and Grace hauled their haul to the home's backyard.
Joe acquired two brooms and began raking debris from the pool cover's edges with one, while Grace, benefiting from neigh-weightlessness, used the other to conduct matter from the center and into his reach. "It's gonna be great once this thing is ready for its first swim."
Grace shook her head. "Marianne and I already had the first swim."
"Yeah; I'm sorry about that. I hope your next will be a bit more enjoyable."
"It will be if you're with me in there instead of her."
Marianne appeared beside Grace and yelled, "I said I was sorry!"
Grace swatted her away. "No, you didn't."
Marianne hovered in thought for a moment. "Okay. I told Burner to say it for me. Don't blame me for his failure. Besides, I just said it now; loud and clear for the world to hear. That counts, you picky little snot."
"Ladies!" Joe did not want the pool water to be stained with crimson blood or--purple essence?--that would further delay the opening process. "I thought we were over this. Marianne, be useful or be gone. That's what we agreed to about you, isn't it?"
The ghost thought for a moment again, and started giggling to herself.
"What now?" Grace asked, stirring her tendrils with the broom she held.
Marianne drifted backwards toward the house. "Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing that you can see from the inside. Now, you two have fun with your backyard puddle project."
Inside, she sneaked through James' door and floated over his shoulder as he read a letter at his desk. "I'd ask if it's good news or bad news, but anything on that letter-head isn't good news."
"It's not good news, but this other letter might be." James reached for an opened letter at his side while Marianne began to envelop his left shoulder and showed it to her.
"I guess in your position, 'experimental' is worth a shot."
"I'm tempted. But it will put me in hock with two creatures I don't want to answer to."
"The creepy old man?"
"That's one. He's the only guy with a reason and a means to get my name on a list to test a drug that would have to be imported."
"What's the other?"
"You. Grace won't read me, you can hide the pills where they won't be stumbled on between doses, and if I have some sort of weird reaction to this stuff, I'll need a scapegoat who everyone would believe might do something horrible to me."
"You got it, on a few conditions." She extended her tendrils around his shoulders, and drew him against her substance. "One, if you have a reaction, I get to make it worse; there's no point in getting blamed for fun I didn't have. Two, something we'll discuss later. Three, I add conditions at my leisure should I find them necessary or convenient or amusing."
James began to pen an accepting response to the experimental drug's offer. "At least Mr. Well makes it clear what he's after."
"What? You can't see through me? I'm naturally translucent." She pulled away and exited through the wall. "It's gotta be in the Y-chromosome."