Love Lost, Chapter 18a: Dismissals.
#35 of Love Lost
Love Lost, Chapter 18a: Dismissals.
"Alright, you got him off-balance; now, give him your aqua-tail!"
Rapidly, a thick layer of water coated Fiona's vibrant patterns as she coiled her body like a spring and maneuvered to attack Komo. Komo was halfway kneeling and breathing heavily, but he was not afraid of being washed away. When the fish swung down upon him, he clasped the root of her fan, adjusted his grip, and brought her around. Centrifugal forces straightened her body over two rotations before he released her as though he were competing in a hammer throw event.
Percival called out to her when she stopped rolling, but if she heard him she ignored him as her response was to slither away toward the park's pond. Roscoe tossed Komo a towel with which to dry off as he returned to Solymar's side.
"No, you're next," said Roscoe aloud, interrupting Grace's internal deliberation of whether or not she should follow Fiona. It had been a long time since she sparred with Roscoe, and she wondered if his intention was to give her a lesson or a lesion.
Grace's fabric dress flapped in the wind as a spontaneous gust served as a go-signal. She felt Roscoe teasing her mental defenses with gentle probing. Oddly, he soon seemed distracted. When he stopped paying attention to her strategy, Grace seized the moment and led with a shadow-sneak at his side. Crossing the same bridge, she sensed his intended reaction and electrically charged her arm, swiping the air between them as he brought his own arm forward. The tip of her arm's middle digit stroking a spoon's bowl, air crackled as her thunder-wave arced across.
Roscoe's head was obviously not in the game, but he was not communicating with her either. He backed away and cast calm-mind upon himself. Grace maintained her assault with a marginally-effective psychic and considered her options. More specifically, her opportunity. Nothing was riding on this match and as he cast another calm-mind, he was giving her a perfect chance to test out a strange strategy that a green bird once suggested. Another psychic attack she launched; another calm-mind he cast. Grace waved her hands in the air in a way that Joe had never seen before, and briefly a glowing aura formed around both herself and Roscoe. His soon faded, but levitating clear of the grass, hers began brightening. He seemed ignorant of the effect at first, but when she quickly glided toward him he winced and crossed his face with both of his arms. Grace stopped just short of his position, freezing in the air. The aura continued forth and struck Roscoe with enough force to cast his spoons from the circle.
It was a powerful blow and seeing Roscoe relieved of his aides, Grace felt like defeating him with an encore. The glow built again while he got up and she approached a second time once he was standing again. This time, the glow was what stopped in-place while her body continued; Roscoe cast torment upon her and nullified her intended plan of attack. Without time to realize that, she yelped a grunt as he clotheslined her with his right bracer just above her ventral node and struck her with a shadow-ball point-blank as she rotated about her still-gliding center of mass.
Grace came to rest near one of Roscoe's spoons. The alakazam recovered them via telekinesis.
Joe recalled Grace into her dive ball and walked toward his bicycle until Solymar, seated on the bench, taunted him.
"Hey," she chided, "we don't make a trip to the center for one fainted pokemon. Snap a revive or wait till it's break time."
Joe gave her an indignant glance. "Third rule of Pokemon League journeying: I'm out of usable pokemon, I have to go back to the last center I visited."
Solymar appreciated his retort. "Making it official then; you are a journeying trainer, now."
"Whatever. I'm taking Grace in."
"You're such a weenie. Can't bear seeing your girlfriend with a bruise. I hope Nurse Joy has a line; you can hold hands and cry about losing while you wait." Solymar did not appreciate how he ignored her parting shot. She turned about with a huff and caught a face full of fluff. "Dios mi--get away from me, you furry freak!" She shoved a linoone away but its spine contorted accommodatingly and its smile drew wide and toothy.
Terrance pinched his pokemon on the tip of its tail. "Petunia, what did I tell you about earrings?"
His linoone's ears fell flat and it growled.
"I'm locking your treasure chest for the night."
Petunia snarled.
"Do you want it locked for three nights, instead?"
Petunia whimpered.
"I didn't think so. Come over here." Terrance reached across Petunia's body and pulled it up beside himself.
With an exasperated "Why," Solymar asked, "did you get one of those? They're poor fighters and most of the things they bring home are pieces of garbage."
Petunia whimpered again, ears still flat.
"Because the police department started a new program for pokemon trained by crooks to do their dirty work. Petunia here's stolen enough jewelry in the last three years to open a shop in Tartaroyal, but she didn't know any better. Instead of leaving badly trained pokemon in stasis while their owners do time, which means they'll go right back to it when they're out, or turning them loose in the wild where they don't get along well, they're offering them to trainers who are willing to help straighten them out. They cut a deal with the League, so I'm getting credit and credits for my trouble, and maybe what will prove to be a nice companion," he lifted Petunia's chin, "if this thieving little monster stops fixating on anything that shines in the sunlight."
Solymar prepared a slight but was startled by Percival shouting ahead.
"Break it up! You know you'd get carded for that, Komo."
Komo released Sam from an ineffective choke-hold. Komo had never thought such a tactic would be necessary against Sam, and failed to consider that a creature having leaves with which to breathe might not black out within times specified by applicable League regulations. Their fight resumed and Solymar scoffed as Komo fell to a combination of solar-beam and acrobatics. Sam offered a hand to pull Komo up, but it was swatted away by Solymar as she sat on Komo's chest.
"Komo, Komo, Komo," she freshened her lipstick, "you probably didn't overhear, but Terrance said the cops are paying trainers to take-in the big tough pokemon they confiscate from criminals. If you aren't willing to make an effort to keep up with a Grass-type, I might have to get one of those. I know! You can be his valet." She turned around and turned Komo's head to one side, kissed him on his cheek, and left an impression.
As Joe walked into Rennin Pokecenter, familiar feathers emerged from the medical wing. "Hey, big guy, I wondered where you were."
"Alice came by early. She wanted us to have breakfast."
"By 'us' you mean 'you,' since Grace and I finished a box of stale cereal for breakfast."
Burner's voice fell to half volume. "She wanted us to talk about some things."
"Things your master doesn't get to know about?" Joe poked Burner's belly.
The chicken looked almost ashamed. "We wanted to make a decision first."
"Well, let me know when you figure it out. I'm going to get Grace taken care of." Joe approached the counter and Burner followed him.
"I got my medical clearance renewed today."
Joe watched Grace's ball settle into a hopper before Joy pushed a button. "Oh, yeah. I saw the reminder but forgot."
"The project?"
"The project. Scarlet's coming over tomorrow so we can finish it up. I wanted my half to be better than hers, but everything I put together comes out cruddy."
"I thought what you had two nights ago looked good."
"And it fell apart when I touched it the next day. It's like the glue ate the foam. Toothpicks aren't working, either. Scarlet's going to laugh at me and blame me for anything short of an A+." Joe received Grace's ball. He looked for an empty place to release her, but felt Burner's warm hand grip his wrist.
"Before you let Grace out, please, come with me to Alice's house. You're right; we should have been... forthcoming."
"Okay, but why do you want me to keep Grace in her ball?"
"After synchronizing with you, she'll know what we talk about, but if she's there during it, it will make Alice uncomfortable because she can't protect all of her thoughts from Grace."
Joe walked with Burner out of the pokecenter. "That's strange. They seemed to get along just fine together."
"Alice is good at making things seem okay, but she's always hiding something. Anything that might be painful, she hides; hides it from us, hides it from herself. But, that doesn't hide her or us from it."
"That's--a good way to put it. I should've had you help me when I had that poetry paper to write."
Burner had no trouble keeping up with Joe on his bicycle. "I had a lot of time this morning to think about how to say that the right way."
"Deal cards for it?" Terrance suggested as he scratched behind Petunia's ear.
"I'm calling it a day," advised Solymar. "It's getting hot and I've got plans in a few hours, anyway."
Percival overheard despite being busy scolding Frankie for eating all of the jerky without asking. "I'd like to train more, but if nobody's staying I guess we're done too."
Sam broke from a conversation with Roscoe and addressed Percival. "I will meet you at home, Master. There is something bothering me that I'm going to look into."
After a brief and impotent complaint about Sam's self-direction, Percival shouted Fiona's name and and order for her to return. As she slithered into view, Percival remarked again to Sam. "Okay, you can go run around town. I'm allowing this as a favor to you."
Fiona vanished into her ball, then Frankie into his own.
Sam placed his scaled claws on Percival's shoulders. "Tell me, when did you stop trusting me?"
"About four seconds after I got off the ground and realized that if you'd hit me any harder, you could've broken my jaw."
Sam tightened his grip very slightly. "You hurt me first, Master. Deeply. But, although I gave you a taste of my frustration, you have never lost my trust: I know that what you do is what you think is for the best. I am sorry yours in me was so fragile."
Percival glanced around to ensure no one was within earshot. "You think I should trust you after you all but guillotined me in my own bed?"
"Yes."
Nonplussed, Percival's face formed a mixed expression before asking, "Are you crazy?"
Sam grinned with a faint hiss. "I must be: I choose you to be my best friend. I will be home for supper."
Percival maintained his position on the concrete bench till Sam was out of sight. That was not very long, as Sam's speed was quite striking.
Joe was impressed by Alice's industry, although for want of chairs they settled into discussion seated on the floor inside one of the empty but renovated top storey rooms.
Alice took a slow sip of her sun tea. "We wanted to be sure that this is a step we're ready to take before we involved you in it."
Joe kept a cool demeanor, although he was a little embarrassed. "Well, it really doesn't have anything to do with me, what you do together on your own."
"It does," Alice asserted somewhat uncharacteristically, "because no matter our precautions, there is always a chance, and since you are B's owner and master, the legal responsibility falls to you."
"Mine alone? Burner is mine but you aren't."
"I don't know much about the details other than that the laws were written for breeders' benefit, but Daddy can't acquire pokemon while incarcerated, so if an egg happened, it would legally be your property; to keep, trade, or..."
Burner added, "Master James... cautioned me about this, and I don't disrespect him. I'm not looking for an excuse. But we are confident in ourselves and our future together, and we want to know we have plans for... contingencies we may be responsible for, if something accidental happens."
Joe nodded. "You, worrying about accidents before they happen? She's rubbing off on you, Burner."
Alice choked on her tea and muttered, "Other way around," before saying more clearly, "Oh, nothing," when Joe asked for clarification of what she said.
Sam lied through his teeth. "He didn't give me his I.D.; he needs it for himself."
Mona realized that that made sense. "I can't let anybody check out media without a valid University I.D. card. And, also, you're a pokemon." She inflected that sentence with the stereotypical flair of a ditz believing herself to be ahead of her company.
If Sam were insulted by her brilliant deduction, he did not let it show in the slightest. "May I just look around? The information my master needs I can remember. I don't need to take anything out." Sam gave her the sad eyes. He feared it would not work given his finalized phenotype. He was almost justified, but a faint whimper made up the difference.
"Okay, five minutes, and no Grass-type tricks like leaving stun-spores in the book bindings."
Ten minutes later, the palm of an administrator landed on Sam's shoulder. Well, when his shoulder stopped moving. Sam was flipping pages of atlases and corners of maps as though frenzied. "I don't think you belong here, Son."
"I don't understand these maps."
"I'm sure your trainer can teach you how to read a map if that's important to you. Have you asked how?"
Sam glanced at the administrator. "I can read. I hatched positive. I'm more literate than he is."
A forced cough served as an interjection. "Many pokemon are happy enough serving their trainers' needs, without care for surpassing their abilities in matters of human concern."
Sam strafed to his left and opened another atlas to a page that he previously marked with a half of a leaf. "I was happy to do both."
"What matters right now is that he is not here with you. This is against policy. It is time for you to leave."
Sam's stance slackened. "Then I must find a better library."
The administrator took that comment personally. "You won't have any luck. Despite Scoparin's admission fees, Rennin has the greatest library in the region."
Sam pointed at the marked atlas. "Then why do your maps disagree with each other?"
The administrator ran a couple fingers through his beard. "Pray tell."
"I have a book. Its title page ends with: 'New York 1961.' I found 'New York,' a medium metropolitan on the other side of the planet. All these maps have it the same way, except these three." Sam flipped open a couple atlases, and slid over the one marked with a leaf. "This one is the same as the others, but much older. The city isn't as large, that makes sense, but a few things are named differently, especially things involving the water. This one: all of the names are like the new maps, yet where the names are wrong on that one the land shapes are a little different here. Then, this one's the oldest. It has today's names, but it's only an approximate match. If I put them in order of age," Sam arranged the maps, "it's like the middle one transformed into the later ones to be more like this oldest one."
The administrator stood dumbfounded until Sam looked up at him, at which he began speaking as though anxious and fully prepared. "Names change, these old maps have lots of errors, and they aren't supposed to be out here on the shelves because they could mislead students. We only store them as relics. They must have escaped the archives by accident. I'll take care of them, and trust that you can see yourself out." He began gathering the material somewhat carefully, plucking away Sam's broken leaf as though it were a slimy worm.
"Yes. I will find my answers elsewhere."
Joe released Grace onto his bed. She landed in much the same pose as she had on the park grass, and faintly waived him over with a loose waggle of her right arm after raising it over her head. Once he neared, she rolled a little, letting her ventral horn compress a bed spring. Raising her left arm to match her right she captured his head above her own and synchronized for a moment. When she released him, her palms fell flat across her shoulders.
"It's not fair," she grumbled into Joe's pillow.
"I'm sure you can visit any time you like, and she did send a bottle of tea with me just for you. I'll go get it." Joe left for his bag, which he had hurriedly cast off onto the love-seat when he got home.
With a levitation assist, Grace flipped over and slid up the bed a little way. "That's not what I meant," she muttered to herself.
"Garde' girl's getting horny again, isn't she?" Marianne asked as she descended upside down, trailing one tendril as though she were a spider dangling from a thread. "It's been quite a while since you last had him molest your ear-rogenous zones. Should I applaud your chastity?"
"What are you implying, Ghost?"
Joe re-entered carrying a plastic bottle re-filled. "Here, it's good stuff."
Marianne continued. "That today your eyes are green for poetic reasons."
After handing over the bottle, Joe turned to his right. "Marianne, we haven't felt your presence in a little while. Is that ghost bed thing working out?"
Marianne turned aside and coiled her tendrils. "It's okay. Not as good as sharing a dream with somebody you care about, tearing that dream to pieces, and sucking the vital energies out of their heads through the fissures, but it's okay." She drifted sideways eastward as she spoke. "I guess only blue pokemon get bed-sharing privileges around here. Purple gets a wad of silver-plated steel wool and insulation tumble-weeds." She swiped a tendril through the plastic bottle and evaluated the flavor of its contents. "Too much sun, not enough tea. I'm going to Baldy's; centre bounce in twenty minutes."
As Marianne's haze faded against the wall she left through, Joe took another look at his part of the project. An entire orbital fell off again.
In Grace's opinion, Alice's tea was properly sunny. "If I came to school with you, I could hold that thing together during the judging. And make the little balls spin around without any of those wires."
Joe tried sticking the orbital on again. Gravity pulled it away again. "Your project has to be about both pokemon ability and one of the approved science topics to get permission to have an unlocked pokeball at school."
"So, if you'd picked, say, how those magnet levitation trains worked, you could've compared it to how gardevoir levitation gardevoirs worked, and I could've been your project partner instead of Scarlet?"
The orbital fell and took an electron with it. "Maybe we can do that next year, but I don't think Mr. Plovo would have made it that easy to disrupt his assigned groups if we had tried."
Grace finished her drink. "It would've been worth a shot." Noticing a shadow in the window, Grace opened it telekinetically. "Hey, Fiona. How's the water?"
The milotic peeked inside. "Wonderful. Much cleaner than the park pond."
Joe commented while cursing his styrene foam nodule, "Enjoy it while it lasts. When the weather starts to turn, we'll have to close the pool for winter."
"Your speech has improved," complimented Grace.
Fiona slid further in. "Frankie said after I had it done to me I should get used to doing it. Then Sam made me read things. Talking like this is not comfortable."
"It takes getting used to, but I know it made living with humans easier for me," Grace projected, "even if their language is less precise than ours."
Fiona slithered in further more, entertaining a curiosity in Joe's project display. "I did not talk much before. My river was not... social."
"Do you miss it?" Grace asked her, "It must've been a simple life."
Fiona grasped a runaway ball with a fin and gave it to Joe. "I did before I could think about it. Now, if I went back, I would miss pancakes."
"I've got more than pancakes keeping me here," Grace admitted with a giggle. "I hope you can find more, too."
Fiona withdrew. "His mother makes waffles."
Insulted by his project one time more than his patience could abide, Joe slandered his display board, punched his mattress, and turned on his video game system.
Grace ignored her sore spot as she contorted to reverse her alignment on the bed, draping her arms over Joe's shoulders and pressing one of her gills against his temple. Her conscious mind wanted to talk with him about his getting mad at a prop, but her instincts knew better. It was her power to soothe his frustrations wordlessly, silently, directly. As his closest friend, it was her opportunity. As his loyal pokemon, it was her duty. As his faithful lover should be, it was her raison d'etre. Hours passed and day became night while she watched him play with her eyes closed and mind open; a co-operative player that could assist him without interfering, advise him without distracting, and augment the game's highs and lows to maximize his enjoyment of the experience. James checked in on them a couple times, but did not interrupt. Grace smiled faintly the second time he peeked inside the room, for she sensed in him not irritation that Joe was playing games instead of working on his project, but rather that he assumed rightfully that she was effecting the recreation and emotional support he needed at that time.
"Is it drugged?" Carlos seemed a little out of sorts already.
"Of course, mon! Less work for the ushers once you're through." By-The-Sea's bartender advanced a shot glass.
Carlos downed it. "I hope I'm through. I just want to go home, spring my dogs, and not have to do this courier shit ever again."
"Take it easy, mon. You got a soft gig. You go where they say, you do not open the briefcases, and you have another drink."
Carlos received a second shot.
"And next thing you remember..."
Carlos passed out.
"...it's like you were never ever here."
A well-dressed man approached from out-of-sight nearby and grappled Carlos.
The bartender turned off the lights, although a little ambient light reflected off of his jewelry. "When I got a call from the buoy I knew something was up. What's it take to get Mista' Syfax to come and visit the proximate islands?"
Maximilian balanced Carlos over his right shoulder, somewhat precariously since their statures were not well-matched. "A combination of Simian's desires, a sturdy vessel, and the ability to treat the Keymaster to a vacation that includes being pampered like despotic royalty."
"I wouldn't mind something like that for myself."
"You have to go back a long way with Well to get into that position, and have the sort of power that he wants to borrow."
Maximilian followed a prepared trail of shadows to the docks, where The Sphinx, fueled up and ready to launch, awaited.