Love Lost, Chapter 9a: Dispositions.
#17 of Love Lost
Love Lost, Chapter 9a: Dispositions.
Emerging from his tent, Percival wondered if sleeping on the ground might prove to be the death of him before his first summer as a trainer concluded. He rubbed his eyes and turned slowly, responding to a faint sound of footsteps on grass nearby. As he lowered his hands from his face, he briefly saw a green blur before darkness. His starting pokemon cold-cocked him; an alternative to saying, "Top of the morning to you."
Emerging from his stupor, Percival wandered the park field for a moment, looking for Sam and finding him seated on one of the docks. Approaching cautiously, he considered the viability of ordering Fiona to ice-beam some water so he could chill his forming bruise, or perhaps to ice-beam Sam as a precautionary measure. "Put some of that warrior spirit into your fists when you hit pokemon instead of people, and maybe we'll get a win once in a while."
Sam looked behind himself and sneered.
"Hey! You have no right to behave like this. I'm not stupid; I figured out you were ready to evolve and were suppressing it with that zen garden crap you're into. And, even if I were stupid, my T.D.'s hints would have tipped me off by now. You've been screwing with me for at least weeks, if not months. Why? What is your problem?"
"I liked the body I had. I wanted to keep it, at least for a little while longer if not permanently."
"Do you even realize how much stronger and faster you are now? I sure as hell do, I hardly saw that hit coming."
"Stronger and faster. That may be important in the circle, but it means nothing outside of it. I don't need to be stronger and faster to read or to garden; to do the things I do when I'm not working toward your ends."
"You'll manage. Get off your butt and come along. If you want to vent, you can do it on whatever pokemon the trainers we meet have on them."
Awakening somewhat late in the morning, almost eleven, Joe investigated a lack of activity in the house while Grace took first turn at the bathroom. In strong contrast to the day before, the kitchen was cold. No one had even popped in for coffee or toast. A faint metallic clattering noise behind Burner's door lead him to knock.
"Good morning!" Burner responded, and invited entry.
Joe stepped inside and saw Burner lying on a somewhat inadequate weight bench that had been collecting dust in the corner for some time. He was using most of its weights on the bar. "Is arm wrestling with Komo not enough of a challenge anymore?"
Burner chuckled. "He's still going easy on me. Joe, is everyone still asleep?"
"Grace is in the shower. Dad's door is closed. Marianne hasn't done anything to us, yet."
Burner rested the weighted bar on its cradle and stat up on the bench, inviting Joe to sit beside him. Joe closed the door and accepted his invitation.
"Master, I need to ask you about something. I know that trainers will sometimes share pokemon and order them to make eggs, and that some pokemon just like making eggs whenever they're able because it feels good. Where I came from, my parents' job was the first kind of thing, and I saw some of the other, too. Mast--Joe," Burner grasped Joe's hand and leaned in close, "I wasn't sure what kind of life I would have. I met pokemon whose trainers saw them as family, and those whose trainers saw them as little more than animals, or just toys to play Pokemon Battle with. I know that I am very lucky to be here, to have you be my master. I know that you don't plan to join League. But, I also understand that things change sometimes. I want to ask you to promise me that, whatever happens, you won't trade me away, and you won't make me breed with someone else's pokemon."
"Burner, I promise. That's silly. What makes you think I would do any of that?"
"I was thinking about something else, and that came up while I was doing that. It's something else I need to ask you. You, Master James, Grace--I love the members of my family. But I'm also feeling that way about somebody else."
Joe was surprised, but only slightly and momentarily. "Wait, are you asking me if you can ask Alice to be your girlfriend?" A faint impish grin began to form on his face.
Burner was shy to admit that that line had already been somewhat crossed. "Master Joe, I know I'm young and I've seen enough movies showing foolish infatuations to know to be careful. But, I want to give this a chance. We all know her, no one seems not to like her. Except Marianne, but I don't know if she counts. Uh, I think she would be a good addition to my family, and I think her and I are at a point where I need to know that you are okay with her becoming more to all of us than just someone we know."
Joe's grin vaporized during Burner's elaboration. "And that got you thinking about--all that other stuff."
"Someday, if it isn't just a foolish infatuation."
"It isn't only because she's a good cook, is it?"
Burner chirped, straightened up slightly, then relaxed. "That doesn't hurt."
Joe thought about it for a moment, just long enough to make Burner less relaxed. "You are right, Burner; Alice and Grace get along okay, and Dad warmed up to her fast like he did to you, so I don't see why we shouldn't keep getting to know her better."
Burner's beak serrations became exposed as he grinned and gave Joe a sideways hug, resting his head over his friend's. "Thank you, Master Joe."
"But, you have to promise me something, big guy."
"Anything!"
"If you're going to be out late on a date, let us know; I'll have Grace K.O. Marianne so she won't raise Hell when you sneak back in."
Burner released Joe. "If it's all the same to you, I might like to stay over there sometimes."
Joe looked up at his blaziken with a smirk. "You really are very lucky."
"We. I'm not the only one here with a good female in his life."
Joe's smirk vanished as he glanced away and muttered something low and incomplete as he thought about the weight of Burner's statement.
Outside the door, Grace looked like a discolored meloetta with her thick, heavy hair wrapped in a towel. Joe's mind became suddenly obscured and confused with a mixture of logic and emotion. She struggled to sort it out for a moment but teleported back to Joe's bedroom when she realized that Burner was approaching the door while suggesting that they make something for breakfast.
Joe and his blaziken entered the kitchen and scrounged around. A disembodied voice took issue with the taller one's selection.
"Cereal? Burner, you're made of fire, can't you make anything decent?" Marianne sank through the kitchen ceiling, her complaint being her regular morning salutation. Both boys ignored her. "Well, at least make something for James. He's not feeling well."
Grace drifted by the bar stools. "No thanks to you, I'm sure, disturbing everyone just to make a scene in the middle of the night, and I could sense you in his room screwing with his head while I was in the bathroom a few minutes ago."
Both the scarlet and yellow coloring of Marianne's eyes seemed to redden and glow with fury. "I was helping him! You don't want to know what he would've been dreaming about if I wasn't there to protect him."
The gardevoir's eyes glowed in a subtle but similar fashion. "The only thing anyone in this house needs protection from is you! You've evolved like you wanted to; why are you still here?"
"Because--because I w--I ne--Iiiieeeyyyaaaaahhhh!" Marianne quickly formed a shadow-ball, but Grace was anticipating Marianne's typical response to losing an argument and quickly swiped her with a thunder-wave charged palm, preventing its complete development. What little had formed, however, spun away, deflected toward Joe.
Burner stepped into its path, absorbing a blow that knocked him back into his master and them together against the kitchen counter. He regained his footing and stepped toward the girls, each preparing another strike, and grappled Grace with his left arm while swatting at Marianne in the same way Grace had, but with a crude will-o'-wisp flaring from his wrist instead of an electrical charge, since a non-elemental strike would not affect her. "Ladies, not inside the house."
The ghost appended with a mocking voice, "You heard him, Grace. Not inside the house. Always trying to start something. Trouble maker." Marianne floated toward and through a kitchen window, seeking the pool to cool a singed tendril.
"Aagh!" Rising from a squatted pose near the floor, Joe staggered a bit and rubbed his back. "That counter really hurts when someone uses a rooster to hit you with it." Burner and Grace both attended to him promptly.
Burner lifted his master's shirt and examined the wound. "You've got a bruise coming up. Grace, let's put some ice on this."
She nodded and floated around to the refrigerator to get a few ice cubes and wrap them in a dish towel.
"Lucky for you," Burner continued, "I know someone who knows about helping back pain."
Joe huffed, then tensed as Grace applied the ice. "I don't think a massage is going to make it hurt less, Burner."
"Maybe not, but I think they do acupuncture at her job, too. That might do something."
"Acupuncture from a pokemon that has three large spikes on her body. I think I'll just try not to get sandwiched between you and the counter-top for a while."
The rage seemed to be infectious. Although it could be said for all of the pokemon she was facing in the gym, Fiona had never seen a zebstrika before. Its early flame-charging hardly hurt and at first she thought she might succeed at whatever it was the young man now her master wanted her to do. A minute later she was paralyzed and seeing nothing but a blur of hooves stomping on her body. Then, slamming into the horse, a green blur that left behind a trailing shower of shattering leaf-blades. As her ball activated and everything turned red, a few officials and their pokemon joined the fray to separate Sam from a pokemon now as much red as it was white and black.
Inside the gym leader's office, Percival set beside a young man named Taylor, who had half a mind to resume the brawl that Pinstripe began and that Sam escalated.
"Mister Briggs. I don't know how the gyms run where you come from, but in Indan Falls we do not tolerate fighting after a referee declares a pokemon to be incapacitated. Now, I do know your zebstrika is a male and their wild-charges get a little wilder during the spring and early summer. That is why it is your responsibility as a trainer to train your pokemon to behave appropriately."
"Ma'am, not everyone can afford the spee--"
The well-dressed woman pounded her desk with her right fist as a form of punctuation, making a bobble-head wobbuffet beside her pencil cup jiggle dramatically. "No! I'm not going to accept any excuse about a mute being harder to train than a talker. Boys and girls younger than you had no trouble raising and training notoriously difficult species for untold decades, centuries! before the speech T.M. made getting in-touch with a pokemon no more difficult than ordering fast food." She punched a notch into Taylor's I.D. card and flicked it across her desk. "I'm suspending you for the rest of the preseason, and I'm flagging Pinstripe's record until you show this league that you've taught him some manners."
"Yes ma'am!" Taylor spat with sarcastic inflection as he snapped up his card and left the office.
"Mister Finnegan. I'm willing to overlook your sceptile becoming involved, since he was defending his teammate. But, exactly when did you tell him that going for the throat with x-scissor against a pokemon that he has knocked to the ground is acceptable?"
"I've never encouraged anything like that."
"Then do you have any explanation? He's not a mute, so you can't try to play Mr. Briggs' excuse of not being able to communicate two-ways with him." Percival had nothing to say. "Should I ask him myself?" That forced him to respond.
"He's angry at me. Sam has always been obedient, but we've been disagreeing lately and he's been on-edge, especially this morning." Percival pointed out the bruise on his cheek, which aside from the swelling did not stand out too strongly against his flesh tone.
"No kidding. Sort him out. You're suspended for the preseason, too. I'm not going to put a warning on Sam's record because his conduct was justified at first, but I am going to put a watch on it. If I get an e-mail because he got into trouble again, I'm going to get in touch with the official that had to deal with your mess and make sure the punishment is doubled." Mrs. Towers chipped a chunk out of Percival's I.D. as she had Taylor Briggs'. "Now, go. I've got provisional trainers who actually train their pokemon waiting to participate in this league with professionalism."
Frankie met Percival in the lobby and handed him Sam and Fiona's balls. Percival examined their rejuvenation report cards. Sam was fine, but Fiona's internal injuries would be best let to recover for a few days. "Frankie, this is not going the way it was supposed to."
Frankie opened Percival's backpack and fished out a stick of jerky. He bit off the end at an angle, leaving it with a meaty point, as he walked to a large map on the wall near the gym entrance.
Percival followed and looked at a spot that Frankie indicated by using the jerky's bitten tip as a pointer.
"Yeah. Might as well go home. I'm not going to get my first badge this weekend." He exited the gym feeling like his backpack had grown heavier. "In fact, screw it. Let's ditch this tent, get the deposit back, and take a bus home. I need a break from this trainer shit."
James seemed very groggy at the breakfast table.
"Dad," Joe asked, "is something wrong? You haven't been looking very good lately."
"Thanks for the compliment."
Joe re-positioned. "No, I mean, are you sick or something?"
"I think I got too much exposure to the pool chemicals. I'll leave it to you guys to keep testing the water and get it opened up right."
Joe was not really believing his father's excuse, but had no position to counter it, and watched James eat in silence. Afterward, James excused himself and went back to bed.
"Well, asking him isn't going to go anywhere. Grace, are you feeling anything I'm not?"
Seated beside Joe, she wrapped an arm across his shoulder. "You know I promised not to probe him. Something is going on, though. Right now, I can't sense his mind in there, just his body. That means she's with him."
"I think it's time we did something about--" Joe began to rise but Grace forced him back down into his seat.
"No. No, I believe her. It seemed like she was making all of us ill when we sleep, but I'm thinking that might be different. I think she's helping him. She said something last night, after you went back to bed."
Joe waited for her to continue, in vain. "What did she say?"
Grace stood and collected James' plate and silverware. "That I wasn't paying enough attention. I'm going to start."
Percival accepted a window seat and gazed outward, waiting for the bus to move. He did not notice who took the aisle seat beside him until the man spoke.
"Taking the easy way out? If you were planning to travel by bus, you should've told me. I would not have been taken out of my way and now need to ride the bus to get back on schedule."
Percival faced Bartholomew with wide eyes. "Are you stalking me or something?"
"You over-estimate your attractiveness, Bud." He drew out his T.D. and activated it. A faint glow surrounded the device. "Jotham, see if you can figure out what's gotten this guy all grouchy." Angling his T.D. toward Percival, the device expressed a rotom's face as the ghost leapt from Bartholomew's T.D. to the one in Percival's pocket, then back again.
"What the... hell are you doing?"
"Jotham just checked out your T.D. to get your registration numbers, and now he's going to hack around the network and dig up some dirt on you. That way, we'll have something to talk about during the ride."
"I don't want to talk."
"Too bad."
Percival waited with dull anticipation as Bartholomew did various things with his T.D., including taking a call which seemed to indicate that someone was upset that he was behind schedule, and gave Jotham a reward snack for his efforts, but Bartholomew did not say another word to his neighbor, even when stepping into the aisle to let Percival out to leave when the bus arrived in Rennin and dropped him off.
Walking home from across town, Percival stopped at Rennin Pokemart, wherein he grabbed a soda and snooped around for anything that might seem inspirational or useful. A soothe bell caught his eye; anything to improve Sam's demeanor would be worth a handful of pocket change to buy it, which was about all he had left. Percival removed it from its peg hook and considered whether or not he should present it to Sam as a peace offering, or to sneak it onto him while in his ball via P.C. transfer until a familiar jangling sound made him turn about.
Solymar's bracelets chaotically collided with each other as she repeatedly twitched her index finger at him. "You aren't supposed to be here. Something's wrong."
"What do you mean? I went south, got my milotic, and came back."
"Hmmm, and you would be at the park right now having Sam chase it around with solar-beams to get some experience going. Soothe bell? Either you can't tell the difference between milotic and gyarados, or something went wrong."
"Nothing is wrong. Don't you have shopping of your own to worry about?"
"Komo has the list."
Percival walked away to pay for his goods. Solymar followed behind at half his pace, then stopped.
"It's funny, you have a more dignified stride when you have your tail tucked between your legs."
Percival turned to retort but saw only the bracelets as the arm they surrounded slipped behind the near end of an aisle shelf. The far end was witnessing a machoke try to balance too many items in one arm while opening a refrigerated display door. For a fleeting moment, Komo wished that he had a couple extra arms.
Grace flipped through the channels. When she was with her mother, late afternoons were often a time of peaceful relaxation. They would find a calm spot, she would lay upon her mother's breast, one arm around her ventral spike, and with their eyes closed, listen to the faint noises of the forest and soak up the faint vibrations of the whole of life's emotions, thoughts, auras, being--whatever it should be called. Grace stopped flipping through the channels for a moment as she realized that she never needed a word for that--something--all her life, but now that the speech T.M. filled her brain with words for almost everything, its having a gap for a concept so familiar felt very distracting and a little disturbing. Flip: a commercial for fast food. Flip: cowboys. Flip: an angry man with a mohawk expressing his condolences for someone else's fatuity. Flip: "Call now for a consultation from a real psychic." Mentally tuning out the television, she tried to do what she and her mother did. Unconsciously reversing roles, she leaned back in the love-seat and took up a throw pillow to cradle against her chest.
What she sensed from her mother she felt for herself now that her powers and physical form were developed. Letting her radius of focus expand about her, she first sensed herself, then the humming of electronics inside the television, and indeed the wiring of the house. A large blackness enveloped James' bedroom. Burner and Joe were at the pool checking the water; Joe was happy, perhaps they would get to use it before the extended weekend was over after all. Nachos. Mister Pearson next door was preparing to watch another ball game. Little white shadows, lots of them. That one cluster must be Delilah's jewelry box, she only wore silver decorations, being allergic to the cheap stuff and not caring for gold. More silver much farther out. Targeting posts for teleporting Psychic-types like herself. The pokecenter has a set, the hospital, police headquarters, too. Another one, almost invisible, on the out-skirts of town maybe. Can't focus on it, it seems to be everywhere, nowhere, moving, rippling, camouflaged by something else, some sort of... wave? More posts, other towns, that's all there is: a sea of living energy, specks of silver and a few other fine metals everywhere like all the stars in the sky, some static, some swarming, and targeting posts throughout the region. Other regions? It was too much to comprehend. Letting it fade into the background noise, there was something out there. It was a bright point of light behind a devouring spot of ink. Reaching out to it brought on a piercing pain that somehow demanded harder reaching. The spot was almost like a face. So was the light. Both were the same. They were one. It looked at her. Into her. It shouted through her with a voice louder than a lighting strike at her feet. "TOO FAR!"
Grace bellowed not a scream nor a yell but a noise that can only be described as something like one's body trying to vomit up its own soul in disgust as she kicked herself up and over the arm rest of the love-seat, flailed in the air during a brief moment of levitation, and crashed back down to Earth, breaking the small end table beside the couch in the process.
Trembling from her very core, Grace had difficulty seeing what was happening around her at first. "What was that noise?" Joe shouted from afar, seeing that someone was helping her up, that had to be James. She was in the love-seat again. Faces crowded around her; even Marianne looked concerned. Grace closed her eyes and covered her face. The television was not on; that registered as critical in her mind.
"Did anyone turn the T.V. off just now?" Grace asked.
Everyone looked at each other with confusion. Joe sat beside her. "I don't think it's been on all day."
With her eyes still shut, Grace leaned over and hugged Joe. "Then it was only a nightmare."
James spoke low. "You think you can handle this yourself, Joe?"
Burner turned to James and emphasized his sentence's first word. "We can handle this, if not."
James nodded knowingly and left, taking his keys from a hook near the door.
Joe brushed Grace's hair from her face. "Do you want to show me what your nightmare was?"
Her eyes opened slightly, completely blood-shot. "No! No. It--you're sure the T.V. wasn't on earlier?" She glanced at it accusingly.
"As far as I know." Joe spoke with an incredulous tone, uncertain why the television seemed so important to her.
Her senses and sense now recovered, Grace felt a little uncomfortable as the center of attention. "So, how's that pool?"
"I think we're going to have to get in it tomorrow, even if the chlorine or pH is still a little off."
Grace adjusted her seated pose to be something a little more self-reliant and looked up at Burner and Marianne. "Okay, show's over. I took a nap and had a nightmare. Thank you for your concern, or sorry for bothering you." They were unmoved. "I'm okay."
Burner returned to his room with a "Didn't look or sound okay" falling toward the liqueur cabinet as he passed through his doorway. Marianne drifted upward but never broke eye contact with Grace until the ceiling passed through her eyes.
Joe watched her watching Marianne depart. "Are you, really?"
Grace laughed half-heartedly and shoved him gently. "Yes. I don't even remember what the nightmare was. Maybe it was what will happen to us if you flunk out of school. Quit playing with the pool and go finish that homework you've been putting off." As he departed to carry out her orders, Grace glanced at the television again before drawing the remote to her hand from beneath the broken table. She pressed its power button and felt the electronics within the television build their charges acutely for a split-second before she became numb to them. Her gills twitched. "Stupid dream."
A nature program. She spent most of her life among nature, and was familiar with both its good and bad sides. Flip: a commercial for fast food. Flip: cowboys. Flip: an angry man... with a mohawk expressing his condolences for someone else's fatuity. She almost lost her nerve to press the channel-up button again. Flip: "Call now for a consultation from a real psychic."
It almost seemed like a good idea; if legitimate, maybe the person on the other end could explain--this? Grace giggled at the commercial's claims. Usually they promised fortune, love, and career advancement. This one sounded more like a notice of a class-action lawsuit. "If you or someone you know is in a situation of uncertainty, call this number at the turning point and for the low price of--" Grace changed the channel again, the next station was showing only a test pattern. "This isn't too bad." She leaned back and kept talking to herself. "If they're so good, then instead of me calling them, they could c--"
The house telephone rang. Grace fumbled the television's remote. By the third ring, she telekinetically brought the handset to herself, and almost convinced herself not to press the talk button. "Uh, Rainier residence, Grace speaking."
"Hey girl, it's Poke-Master P. Is Joe free? I feel like beating his ass at Destiny Fighters before dinner."
"Mister Rainier left a little while ago. I don't know for how long, but you could probably get away with coming over. I won't tell if he doesn't ask."
Call completed, Grace set the phone aside, fished for the remote, and flipped it back one. The program was an obviously cheesy chick flick that had something to do with butter. Good enough. Percival arrived a few minutes later and passed through. When the next ad break came, the psychic commercial aired again. Encouraged by its promise that the first consultation was free, curiosity overcame her and she picked up the phone to dial.
"We're sorry. The number you have reached is not in service at this time."
"EH! What you think you doing, blue dog!"
Alice leaned out of the changing room. "My shift is over, isn't it?"
"Isn't. We get a call, cripple old fart wants massage, plus, he pay good. Pay me good, you get normal rate. You put dress back on, go take care of him. Take the good oils with you."
The lucario started to don again her cheongsam uniform, not thinking highly of being sent out on the streets in such attire. Not that it didn't look good on her; that was part of what made her nervous. A bad memory worked its way to the surface, and she did not say anything to Mrs. Song when she took from her a sticky note with the address of her client.
North-westward she traveled, to the wealthier side of town where every driveway had a gate, if only for show. She heard an occasional whistle or other primitive sound, often from domestic pokemon but from a couple of humans, too, although the latter seemed safely sarcastic in their tone. The sun was starting to sink low when she reached the address. As she approached the gate she noticed a security camera above it, and as soon as she looked into it, the gate began to open.
About to knock on the front door, she sensed a presence on the other side and hesitated. It opened away from her elevated paw.
"Oh, you must be the new one."
Alice immediately sensed a flash of contempt from the woman leaving.
"Yeah," the woman sniffed the air, which in her presence was thick with the scents of medicinal creams and astringents, "you smell like the Chief's type." She pushed past Alice and walked with a hasty gait to her car at the end of the drive.
Shutting the front door behind her, Alice searched around. The home was filled with memorabilia of what seemed to be a distinguished career in the police force. Her attention was so distracted by the gallery of photographs on the walls that she forgot that she was supposed to be on the clock until she heard a humming noise echoing through the house. She returned to the foyer and saw a silver-haired, although mostly bald, man coasting down upon a stair lift. He gazed at her the whole way down and wetted his lips when it stopped at the bottom.
"I'm the Chief. That's what you call me, capisci?"
The lucario nodded and stood straight, gaining a few inches as doing so let her legs and feet become almost like stilts. "Yes, Chief. I am Alice of Mrs. Song's Oriental Parlor, here to perform your massage." She brandished her bag of essential oils, sponges, and other related supplies.
"You're the kind who always comes prepared, I can tell. Good. Follow me up; unless you plan to do me on the pool table, of course."
Alice walked up the stairs slowly, as the stair lift was not particularly swift.