Love Lost, Chapter 18b: Dismissals, concluded.
#36 of Love Lost
Love Lost, Chapter 18b: Dismissals, concluded.
"You'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar, Sugar." Delilah leaned back in her chair and glanced into the living room. Li'l Sis was changing channels to stations inappropriate for her age, and Frankie was changing them back with a flicker of his beacon. "I know your kind can get awful protective, but from what you've told me he doesn't even like this girl. She'll be a memory in three years, so why are you frettin'?"
"Because I know she won't be a memory. She'll be his fiancee." Grace's face expressed no emotion, but Delilah felt a sensation wash over her.
"What's got you thinking that?"
"You know how some gardevoir can see the future?"
"I know one of my girlfriends had a kirlia that saved her life two times and there was no way knowin' the trouble was coming without knowin', you know." Both drank from their respective mugs in unison. "I oughta' get in touch with her again. It's been a few years since she moved to the big city. I don't even know if she got him done up as a gardevoir or a gallade. Which do you like better for your boys?"
Grace blushed faintly. "I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. I haven't spent any time with my own kind except my mother and moments in passing at the gym."
"Don't tell my hubby this, but that new fashion trend where the gallades get their kilts tattooed up all fancy, they're calling it 'The Highlander Look,' oh, there's something about it. If I wasn't married I don't know if I could help crossing the line for a try at that."
Grace's gills twitched. "The line?"
"Yeah, the one between humans and pokemon." Delilah studied Grace's body language very carefully. "Did you bond with that young man because you love him, or do you love him because you bonded with him?"
Grace needed a re-fill. "I bonded with him because my mother told me I should if I felt inside him that I could trust him and if I felt inside me that I could trust him."
"And?"
The gardevoir closed her eyes for a little while. "I love him because when we came together, he gave me what I needed to survive, and I gave him the responsibility he needed to see himself as somebody who matters to somebody else."
Delilah's expression soured. "The way you put that says something about his relationship with his father."
"What? No, but, yeah. Joe felt like he wasn't living up to Dad's expectations and didn't have any way to; Dad felt the same but that Joe wasn't trying to." Grace almost laughed. "When my mother put me in Joe's bedroom, it forced them to start working that out."
"I guess that's a good thing. Are you still in Joe's bedroom?"
Grace's gills flushed fully. "Dad made me sleep on the other side of the house for a while, but after I mastered teleport, there wasn't much he could do about it."
"Speaking as a parent, I want you to understand that he's surely got good reasons for his rules. You being a Psychic-type means you can get around them in creative ways, but that don't make it right."
Swirling the fluid in her mug, Grace watched reflections of light dance about. "I follow the rules, even when I know I should break them. Like, to find out why..." Grace slumped slightly in her seat. "But that I was teleporting at night was a secret anyway. I think; I never tried to check if he knew or not at that time, but when I evolved he suggested I sleep beside him."
Delilah's eyes went wide as a Jynx's. "Really!"
"I evolved after Marianne and I had a fight. You remember; it was winter. She made the pool our arena, so I got very cold."
"Very cold? Dearie, getting wet in that weather, you could've died. Your species doesn't have a lot of insulation."
Grace nodded. "It was strange, though; I never worried about that. Anyway, about the bed thing, he said it was to treat hypothermia, but he never said anything about me sleeping beside him again, so maybe he knew I was teleporting in and out of there anyway and it was a way let the whole thing go without admitting defeat."
"James can sure be both proud and stubborn, but if you're askin' me, I think he wanted you in there."
"Why?" Grace asked with her head tilted at an angle.
"Now I'm just speculatin', but I think he wanted to give Joe the choice. Puttin' you across the house made sure Joe knew what it was like to keep you sleepin' separate, and then when you evolved James let him learn what it'd be like to let you sleep together, torso horns and all. After that, he just stayed out of it."
A wail came through from the living room and Delilah left to investigate. Sam passed through too, knowing his role. Grace washed out her emptied mug while the Finnegans dealt with their situation. Apparently Li'l Sis was upset because Frankie took the remote away and started giving her little static shocks when she tried stealing it back. That was his typical method of disciplining her, but Li'l Sis was in that testy phase of development that pushes matters as far as possible and then bawls about not getting its way in an attempt to get its way. Grace let her perceptions expand and they focused on something speeding by on a bicycle. Quickly up-turning the mug and placing it on a drying rack, Grace scribbled "Thank you! -- G" on a sticky note, affixed it beside Delilah's mug, and teleported to her own front door so she could open it wide just before it was knocked on by--
"Scarlet! How nice it is to see you again!"
Grace's sarcasm was so powerfully implied that it knocked Marianne out of bed.
Miss Foley recoiled with surprise, almost dropping a small box she carried, but quickly put on her game face. "Take me to your leader, you gray-skinned, big-headed, bug-eyed alien."
"Right this way." Grace led Scarlet forth, levitating the whole way to Joe's door. "If you need me for any reason at all, just close your eyes and think of me." Grace leaned in close as Scarlet passed into the room--causing her to lean to her side and bump against the door frame--and whispered into her ear, "I won't probe you, but I will be listening very closely."
Scarlet slipped through. "Joe, please recall your pokemon."
Joe did not look up to her. "No."
Scarlet glanced around his room. "Is that supposed to be an atom?"
"It was, but it keeps becoming an ion." He still looked only at his model.
Miss Foley noticed his ball clip. "The ions are my part of the project, and they look gorgeous if I do say so myself." She sat her box before him. "Take a look at how a woman creates the fundamental building blocks of matter, just like in the very beginning." Seeing Joe distracted, Scarlet removed from the clip the ball it held, depressed its button, and tossed it sideways through the doorway; a terrible throw that went where she intended more by chance than by technique. A red flash of its scanning beam reflected off of the interior walls, making Scarlet smile.
Joe could not deny that her craftsmanship was exemplary, and admitted such as she sat on the floor to his left and reached across him, pointing at the right side of their display. "I think it should go right there, don't you?"
"Uh, yeah. That's kinda where we decided it would go."
"Alright, let's put our parts together and see what happens."
Joe pursed his lips for a moment. "Okay."
As they assembled the rest of their display, Joe noticed a marked change in Scarlet's behavior. It was like her first day in class again. Her voice was more gentle, almost musical. Gone was the combativeness, and no doubt partly due to her proximity, being near her felt warmer. It seemed almost a shame when the display was completed, the model part anyway, since it brought end to a moment that felt like it should continue. A slight extension was granted as she repaired his atom's orbital. It stuck in place as though it actually belonged, and did not even droop when she took her hand away from it.
"There. I think maybe we make a grade-A team together, after all; you and I." She smiled at him coyly and took his hand.
He stared a little--she had a cute nose.
Soon after thinking about that, he heard a single hollow and plasticky clink sound. The silence before continued for a fifth of a second, just enough time to wonder what that noise was.
"Ow!" Scarlet shouted too near to Joe's ear for comfort as she half-fell against him. A pokeball bounced dully on the carpet and rolled to rest nearby.
"That was Burner's ball, you idiot." Grace hovered in the doorway, her partially-regrown skirt splayed in the air, letting her cloth garment hang like curtains from its fringe. Everything green about her seemed to be a bit brighter than the ambient lighting alone could allow. Never before had Joe seen her holding her arms out at diagonal angles inside the house; only in a combat circle.
"What the hell? Grace!" Joe stood quickly but carefully as Scarlet shifted onto her own sense of balance again.
"We need to talk, Joe."
Joe noticed something seemed different about Grace's voice, but assumed it was an affect of some sort. "Grace, what is wrong with you? Apologize to Scarlet."
"She seems to think she's a big girl. She can handle her own consequences."
"Please, Grace; apologize." The pokemon's eyes narrowed; Scarlet felt transfixed, gazing into them through a fearful expression. "Grace! I... I... I'm your master and I order you: Apologize to Scarlet!"
Something happened. Grace's face shifted twice in a single moment, first to a contortion suggesting utter horror as her feet fell to the floor, then a serene and neutral calm as she lifted away again. Then, the hovering gardevoir broke a faint smile. Looking about the room with a curious glance that ended by staring into Joe's eyes with a dreadful intensity, it warned him, "You just broke her heart," and without any interest in what his reaction to those words might be, teleported away.
After the flash of her teleport faded, Scarlet's and Joe's visions returned to normal, and set before a backdrop of a shadowy hallway floated Marianne. Her necklace was so dark that its jewels looked more like lumps of dried blood than glittering corundum. She slowly drifted inside Joe's room. Once she drew near, with the same slowness she lowered herself, draping her tendrils upon Scarlet's shoulder, whipping one across to her right side, preventing the girl from leaning away.
Marianne spoke with a voice so calm, paced, and steady that it seemed almost otherworldly, even by standards to which a ghost could be held. Except for timbre, it sounded like anyone but herself. "Scarlet, you did a very mean thing by trying to recall Grace into a pokeball."
Scarlet stuttered slightly, but whether or not that was because she feared having a Ghost-type on her shoulder or because of the bone-chilling cold it made her feel was unclear. "T-that's where pokemon b-belong."
"Sometimes, for some pokemon. Always, for others. Rarely, when ever, for a few very nice pokemon; the really good ones."
Scarlet struggled to face away from both Marianne and Joe, but without spinning her head around completely, there was little angle for escape.
"I haven't been in my ball since--well, other than a jolt at the pokecenter after Grace and I had it out--since my Harvey was on the League's active list. I guess that puts me in the good pokemon column."
Nobody responded to her baited statement.
"Okay, I'll let Santa Claus be the judge of that. But, sometimes a fat man in crimson velour isn't around to help you judge character. Scarlet Foley, we talked once before so we're not complete strangers. Do you trust me?"
Scarlet turned her head and asked, "What?" into the tendrils that then rested across her lips. Her breath puffed from them a short-lived cloud of haze.
"I asked you: do you trust me?"
Scarlet turned to face forward, and then to face Joe. Joe looked into her eyes for a moment, then he lifted his chin and looked into Marianne's. Their ætherial red and amber glow seemed soft and gentle, a stark contrast to the first time he gazed into them just before hearing her shriek, "Ghost eyes are beautiful, asshole!" and abduct Grace.
Marianne blinked slowly while he gazed.
Joe looked back to Scarlet. "I trust her, and I think you should, too."
Scarlet shivered and cringed a little. "I... trust you."
Marianne elevated. "Joe, now that everything is glued together, you can handle the labels and finishing touches yourself, right?"
"Yeah," Joe confirmed.
"Very well, then. Scarlet needs to go home, finish any homework still to-do, and go to bed early. You're old enough that your parents don't check on you before they go to bed, right?"
Scarlet spoke in a normal tone. "No, of course not. Whose parents do that after you're like, seven?"
"And there are no pokemon at your house at all?"
"No."
Marianne cleared the pathway to the door. "Gooooooood." Her mouth contorted into a cliche-for-her-species angular ripple while Scarlet stood and exited. When the front door opened and closed, Marianne turned to face a still-seated Joe. Her voice reverted somewhat. "The ones who feel like they need to watch-over just a little bit extra, by the way. You're taking that from a ghost, mind you; we're professional watcher-overers." She passed into the attic but returned when she heard him speak her name and let him respond.
"Grace has showed me the time you told her your story, before you had that fight and Grace evolved. You said you hadn't been in your ball for years before Harvey died, and since then, only after you came here. If he let you always be out, and you're a professional watcher-overer, doesn't that mean--"
Marianne's crystals mustered a faint glow. Her voice compensated with extra volume. "That instead of haunting him like a good ghost is supposed to, I was at home sulking like a spoiled baby, making sure that when I told him I didn't want to see him again until he came back with my dusk stone I wasn't immediately proven a liar. Yes, that's what that means. That means when he was fifteen minutes late, I was annoyed. When he was an hour late, I was pissed. When he was three hours late, I was ready to wring his neck for getting a motel room or bribing a nurse to let him camp in a destitute trainer hostel just to win our argument. When he was five hours late, I left to find him and I was ready to pull his fucking bones out of his body. I went to the center first, of course, and he hadn't been there. Nobody had placed a vault claim in two days since it was the off-season. Then I heard some girls come in all drunk flush in their stupid faces, talking about how lucky it was they both turned down some prick who was hitting on them and trying to get them to go for a ride since soon after that he took himself out when he ploughed his sporty number into a lamp-post and mowed down some old guy along the way. That's exactly what it means. I busted my ass for a month's nights to save his life. I haunted his ass for decades to protect it. The one time I convinced myself that I truly did not want to be near him... just a few seconds, too. Two seconds warning and I could've yanked him out of the way, or phased him out, or shadow-balled the car, or thund... or... or God dammit. Fucking dammit I could've done something. Anything. I'd do anything."
Born behind a brim, two small, round, purple spots now permanently stained Joe's blanket.
"But I can't do anything. Not about that." With a whipping motion, the hat flipped back and revealed a face behind and beneath. "And you can't do anything either, about what Grace heard you say. You're just going to have to figure out what you need to do next. Maybe she'll forgive you. I hope she does. You don't deserve to know this kind of cold. Funny, how it grew with the rest of me when I evolved."
Again through the ceiling she disappeared, leaving Joe to sit alone and stare at his atom model's orbital, sticking out proud and strong.
Grace wept openly in rapidly changing tides. Joe's words echoed in her mind relentlessly, spurring a stronger flow, then letting it ebb until the exact moment she thought she may stop crying. Then she heard it again.
"I'm your master." There was something in the word, the tone; the spelling was the same and the meaning, too, but this once it meant something completely different.
Ultimately her eyes cleared and her attention turned outward. She did not recognize where she was, or at least seemed to be. If she did, she would notice it to seem familiar. The tree she knelt before still had a hole in its fibrous trunk caused by her spine's horn and a lot of Psychic-type energy. Beside her stood a different gardevoir, green of flesh and long of patience. She waited until Grace stopped crying to speak. She waited until nearly nightfall, before collecting some fallen foliage and creating a small fire with will-o'-wisp, and waited still more for that opportunity.
"He really is his father's son, and you really are your mother's daughter."
Grace removed her hands from her face and looked toward the voice she heard, and saw the green gardevoir, half-leaning against and half-sitting upon something. Grace glanced at her other surroundings. "Where... where am I?"
The other gardevoir stood away from the something allowing the fire's light to illuminate markings on its surface.
"Route 1. Marker 1. All roads lead to HOME." The green gardevoir sat down again. "It's a very special place for pokemon like us, if you believe in the legend."
"The legend?" Grace asked.
The other gardevoir laid herself down beside Grace and stared upward into the sky as it slowly darkened, reluctantly revealing the brightest stars one by one.
"For a long time, there was a story that our less-bestial species would pass around. Ask any wild chatot and it can tell you, because they feel like they own the story. They carried it to the mainland and shared it with other thoughtful birds like natu, or any pokemon that would listen, especially when the mainland did not know it was true, yet. The short version goes like this: One day a chatot flew high to hear the song of the sky, for the sky had changed its tune as it is wont to do, and he looked across the seas and saw a black star. He flew down toward it and discovered it was something afloat. It was trees, but stripped of their branches and brought together as one, like diglett sometimes become, but like a large husk. The chatot also saw a species of pokemon living inside it. They were strange, for they spoke differently than all other pokemon. The chatot was met with celebration and adoration by the strange pokemon, and he chose to remain near them for some time to learn their dialect. He then went home to tell his flock of his discovery. He rested from his long flight, took comfort with his mate, and soon returned to the floating star. The creatures quarreled. As chatot do, he tried to share each of their conversations with the rest of their flock, but instead of bringing them to conversation again, they ignored each other and took to fatal battle. He noticed that they used no elements and no magic; these were not pokemon but animals that somehow evolved to become like pokemon. Their language was mockery. Ultimately, only one of the creatures remained; one that resisted blood-lust and secreted itself away in peace. As it broke away from the black star a small piece to float upon by itself, the chatot decided to guide him to land so that he may survive. There, the survivor showed that its species used ingenuity rather than ability to survive. One of the pokemon on the island, a combusken, took interest in the survivor. She at first thought it was a blaziken who had lost its feathers, but soon became just as interested in him because it was not. The birds kept watch and discussed what they saw as the combusken quickly proved that she wanted to band with him as her first. The chatot all encouraged her, the altaria all denounced her. All lived as they would until the sky sang strangely again and another black star appeared and landed ashore. The chatot gathered in the canopy, knowing the creature and the combusken, then blaziken, were returning to their nesting site after an exploration, where that hen's second, also a blaziken, kept roost. The new creatures battled, injured, and drove off the cock. That, and seeing the hen and her first avoid the new creatures, assured the chatot that the one they knew was unique, and all others were a threat. Yet, the new creatures did not often quarrel among themselves. Unlike the first great band that destroyed itself, the second thrived. Over time, these creatures we know as human spread over our land, first the island, and later the region, from distant origin as well as nearby, and we came to know them as we do today--a strange sort of animal, one that may treat pokemon with the utmost love, consideration, and compassion, or the most despicable contempt, loathing, and violent hatred. A strange sort of animal that carries a terrible risk to befriend, but those that do reap incommunicable rewards. This marker, placed by that peaceful human, indicates approximately where the first partnership between pokemon and human formed in what they now call Ocimene."
"That story is... kinda weird."
The green gardevoir chuckled. "A little. But for a long time it was the only comfort a pokemon whose heart beat solely for its trainer had, and, until proof was discovered that the story was true, a book written by that human who accepted and returned a combusken's love, it was just a legend."
"I guess if there's proof, I should believe in the legend."
"You should, because you're lucky. Your human partner is young enough that he did not become filled with prejudice before you met, and he sees you as nothing less than you are."
Grace stood, kicking some sand around. "He ordered me, as my master, to--"
Instantly, the other gardevoir teleported into a standing, and hovering, position directly before her. "He gave an order to a disobedient pokemon. That pokemon wasn't you, being you, the you he knows. It was selfish and bitter. That could have been your insidious ghost, that could have been me, but that was not his Grace."
Grace's facial expression softened. "You're right, but you told me to do something about it."
"I told you not to repeat her mistake."
"Okay, but whose? Who is 'her?' "
"Sunny."
"I don't know anyone named Sunny."
"Of course you do."
"You?"
"I'm surprised she withheld that. Unless... no, not me."
Grace expressed an old frustration re-surfacing. "Fine, I give up. Who are you, then?"
The other gardevoir considered Grace's question for what felt like some time before touching ground to match Grace's stance and responding in a low volume, sing-song pattern of tones after gently touching her left temple and bringing her node's tip to meet Grace's. "Inte a-vis tehisgo ies."
Grace scoffed and her attention drifted. "Guided me? Some guidance; I've been sitting in damp sand for an hour and Joe talks to me like I'm an animal."
With a little force, the green one helped the blue one to face her squarely. The two gardevoir looked like a single reflected form, save for their coloring. "Every mistake you haven't made, thank me for. Every time you felt both like you wanted more but already had plenty, thank me for. Every shred of intuition you've enjoyed, thank me for. Every time I've resisted temptation and the few times I haven't... thank me."
Grace quickly shoved her reflection away. "No! Whoever or whatever you are, go away. Leave me alone. If you want me to thank you for anything, I'll thank you for that." She turned and walked southward along the coastline until the other gardevoir disappeared behind her, and with that, the fire disappeared too. Grace gazed upward and recognized many constellations that also flew the night she last evolved. A few seemed out of sorts, and one prominent star was absent. "Perhaps some stars are wanderers?" she considered for a moment before turning away and exploring this strange place around her.
Hey, gang! It's time for a brain teaser and I've got the question for you right here: "Just how much does it cost to heat a swimming pool?" A big one; not the Rainiers' backyard tom-foolery, but something for professional competitions. Well, that means we're talking over a megaliter of water per meter of depth. I see it has a diving board so it's much deeper than three meters at one end at least, but we'll just round up along the way. A liter of water has a mass of one kilogram, and a calorie raises one gram of water by one centigrade degree. That's easy enough to work with: 3.75 billion calories per pool degree, or 15.7 gigajoules of energy. Of course, electrical power is priced by the kilowatt-hour, so we convert again to about 4,360 kilowatt-hours. Assuming that Simon gets industrial rates, which he does because he is a very influential man, and that the pool's heater is perfectly efficient, which is surely could not be, it's going to cost him something over a hundred quid for every degree such a pool is heated. I suppose that's not too bad after considering how much he spends treating Benny Barlow to fine dinners, but please, Mrs. Keymaster, refrain from competing with Ivana over tub temperature. You know that she'll win, and even if you would survive to match her limits, what shall we do with three megaliters of boiling water? Fill a caravan of dump trucks with lobster and pour it all in?
"That sounds delicious!" the Keymaster projected forcefully enough for a particular narrator to hear and become thus scolded by being reminded indirectly about his duty of maintaining a focused, objective, third-person point of view when establishing setting for a new scene in a story. "I haven't been stuffed with decapoda in so many years."
"Seventy-five," Ivana asserted from a small hot tub adjacent to the larger pool.
The Keymaster knew it was not a question but interpreted it as though it were. "At least, but surely longer." The lugia extended her wing- and fin-like arms; or should that be, fin- and arm-like wings? Either way, she stretched out and floated lazily, despite her lowest points being just barely above the pool's bottom.
"Do you think you can handle it?" Ivana asked through her newly-replaced translator, so its synthetic tone would color her statement.
"Of course." As the Keymaster demanded more of the pool's heater--and of Simon's executive comp budget, about another thousand pounds--she sighed and giggled. After all, if Ivana was relying on her indomitable Ice-type nature to keep her bodily tissues intact, it too must be fair for her to use her Psychic powers to create a raft of tiny bubbles and insulate herself from her pool's heat while still enjoying a sauna-like sensation. "Let me know when you're done fooling around."
The articuno squawked, "Cocky bitch! You cried uncle at seventy-three last time."
"Something is on your mind."
Ivana stared at the bubbling jets for a moment, snapping out of her trance when the surface of her hot tub partially froze over and quickly shattered. "Fooling around, you say. I guess I'm done with fooling around. I've tried every eligible bachelor who would have me, and a few who wouldn't without some convincing. Finally I found one stud who really turned me on, and he resisted in every way he could. And then I had a talk with Gramps."
"How is he doing? Crying-Tree gets in the way whenever I try to check on him myself."
Tracing the tips of feathers across the water, Ivana made little frozen shapes while she replied. "He's fine for a human his age. He's going to keep working for a few years before finally re-retiring, for good, and this time he means it, seriously, except maybe once in a while he'll do some special event, for the good of Pokemon League Ocimene, of course."
The Keymaster closed her eyes and submerged her head. Even insulated, the heat was intense and made her see spots both in her vision and in her mind. She quickly re-exposed it to open air. "For him alone, I wish humans had longer life spans. Would that I could, I would ask him to train Junior for a time. The ocean bores him in his youth, and I want him to learn all that he hungers to know through experience. But since Grandfather's time is spent, whom could I trust him to?"
"Master!" Ivana chirped, excitedly, before feeling a strange sensation as the Keymaster reacted so strongly that she let her powers leak a little.
"You jest, Chickie. His youthfulness is mostly spent, too, and Junior would not enjoy time with him." The lugia sighed. " 'D.W.,' maybe, but that chapter is closed."
A row of little ice statues partially surrounded the hot tub, melting away shortly after being formed and placed by Ivana. "You haven't called me 'Chickie' since then. Since..." Uncharacteristically, she froze.
Letting her body sink to the bottom and turning in place, the Keymaster leaned over and reached across to cloak Chickie with her left wing. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to remind you."
Ivana made a funny sound before demanding, "Get back in your pool, Joan." The articuno splashed at her companion; the splash shattered when it fell against the floor between their two basins. "I don't want to win the bet because you got out just to be all motherly. And make it eighty."
The Keymaster submitted.
Ivana cooed and relaxed with a sigh as her water's temperature elevated again. This was more like it. "Even if Gramps would take care of Junior for whatever time he has left, wouldn't Crying-Tree make that kinda awkward?"
"He would manage."
Ivana leaned up in her tub. "What was it between you and him, anyway? I never understood how two psychics seemed unable to communicate."
"We communicated. He turned me down. I got pushy with him, and he pushed back."
"Turned you down? You mean, you wanted him to..." Ivana felt another impulse as the Keymaster arched her neck.
"You aren't the only legendary girl who has wanted an egg and had trouble finding a suitor!"
"But, wouldn't that be kinda difficult? I mean, most xatu are around a meter and a half tall, and you're huge even for a lugia."
"His stature only warranted accommodation. The difficult part was that neither of us could accommodate our--he told me that he saw; well, this, but I wanted us to do something about it and he refused. It was like he wanted it to be this way. I wanted to tell him how that made me feel, but he already knew. He knew and he made that choice for both of us anyway." The Keymaster's psychic voice was beginning to waver. "That's when I realized that he didn't care that I wanted him to help me see things his way. That, that he wasn't willing to try. That--"
Ivana's translator carried her voice's concerned tone. "Are you getting too hot over there?"
In more ways than one. "Yes; you win." Joan cut power to the heaters. All of them.
Ivana's water began freezing within seconds. "Hey! That's not fair!" she shouted as she broke free of the solidification and crawled out.
"My water's too hot. Come in and bring it down a notch."
"I'll bring you down a notch," Ivana playfully threatened as she dove into the larger pool. It was not long, however, before their horseplay ended, and Joan telekinetically flicked the master switch to turn off the lighting, as Chickie had snuggled into the crook of her wing and fallen asleep.
Just like old times.
"Don't you need a permit for that?"
The shouting man startled Burner and he almost lost his footing, standing on shingles too weathered to stay attached to the roof as it was. Quentin's flashlight was rather powerful and made Burner's pupils constrict when he looked down.
"Why don't you invite me in?"
Mister Parente did not expect the blaziken to leap from the roof, land with perfect form, open the cellar hatch, and wave him inside with a wrist-aflame flourish. He trod slowly and deliberately, painting every surface with his torch. Burner's glow aided both somewhat. "What I'm seeing here isn't exactly suitable, for human or pokemon habitation." Burner suggested he ascend the stairs, and what he found there was somewhat more acceptable. When the man told him that they needed to talk, Burner indicated the unfurnished room, and bade him to sit.
"Is your friend here? Do you know who I am?"
Burner shook his head to both questions.
"Quentin Parente. I live across the street at the other end of the block, and I work for the city as a building inspector. I've done a little homework about this property, and I'm confident you don't have a permit to be mounting solar panels on the roof of this structure. In fact, this structure is standing only because it's not worth bulldozing. What's the deal? Are you two abandoned?"
"No. I have a home."
"And the lucario?"
"She is welcome there."
"So why is she here, with you, doing all this? This floor looks like a labor of love, but everything below it is trick-or-treat."
"Alice wants to make this place her home, so her master can move here when he can."
Quentin ran his fingers through his hair. "Look, I've met Alice. It looks like her trainer did a good job with her, and she's obviously well-intentioned. But, that also means she knows you can't just come onto private property and make it your own."
Burner cocked his head to a slight angle. "Alice said she could. She said that she and her daddy had a plan. That's why she was working hard to make it nice inside."
"Daddy?"
"She calls her trainer that."
Mister Parente shifted a little, finding kneeling on the floor to be quite uncomfortable. "Okay, those solar panels. What's the story?"
"Someone with a lot of money wanted to apologize to us and gave her them because that's what Alice said she wanted if she could have an expensive gift."
Quentin asked a few more questions, but they did not change things much. "Look, first of all, that roof might not be able to support the weight of a solar array. It would need to be inspected to get permits to put those panels up. Second, if somebody like me finds out about solar panels being installed without a permit, they're going to be ordered removed, and anyone involved is going to have a really shitty time--understand?"
Burner shook his head.
"Whatever you've put on the roof, take them down and stack them all somewhere out of sight. A pallet with a tarp over it in the backyard won't do. Get all the stuff out of that bedroom that you two need and if there's any food, put it in a box and take it to your home. It is in town, right?"
Burner nodded affirmatively.
"Good. Shut and lock any windows and exterior doors like the balcony, and that cellar door behind you when you go. Find your friend, and take her to your home. When the sun rises, this property is off-limits, understand?"
Burner made a sad bird sound.
"Blaziken, I'm on you two's side here. Tell her to visit me at my house in a couple of weeks. Okay?"
Burner stood and looked downward, both because of his emotion and because Quentin was significantly shorter than Burner was.
"Okay. Clear out."
Without touching the metal door, a slowking leaned near it and grunted something about a noctowl.
"He's cool, he's with me," spoke a dark form in darkness, except for round amber traces glowing faintly. Idis was keeping as low a profile as she could. Admitted passage, she trotted down a corridor running beneath Jolly Roger's and greeted a few familiar faces that she had not seen in quite some time. She passed through a large room with silver pillars and a stained floor, instructed the noctowl to follow another pokemon standing nearby, and bumped a push-button that opened a doorway for her. Within she met another umbreon, with whom she had a history. "Hey, Sidney."
He greeted her with a reserved, but still affectionate, manner. "You've come back to us after all."
"Not exactly. I'm... I've been thinking about getting sponsored."
Sidney reared up on his haunches. "How bad did it get for you out there?"
Idis rubbed up against him. "Always a pessimist. I've been doing fine. You know there isn't a pokemon on four feet who can fake an identity card better than I can."
"Yeah, I know. Your skills have been sorely missed since you quit. Who are you now?"
"Some persian named Isis lost a fight and lost her vest. I changed an 's' to a 'd', found a trainer account with high credit and low activity, and voila, I'm a lent pokemon named Idis with unlimited access to some schmuck's funds. Or at least I was until I spent a little too much too often and tripped an audit, so I had to run really fast for a while until I got back in touch with that nimrod owl."
"Alright, that's typical for you. Getting sponsored, though?"
"Yeah. See, I met a blaziken at a mall; real choice, of course he's taken. But, it got me to thinking, and then I caught up with him and his trainer by chance a while later. I got to spend some more time with the fireball, and... I don't know. I'm being stupid, thinking that maybe I could get on with them, live the dream of actually being friends with your trainer and his other pokemon, maybe spend more time out of the ball than in, lie comfortably on soft cushions at nap time, have fun battling but not get beaten to a pulp over and over so some other pokemon can feel the rush a few more times before a big gym match that you aren't a part of. I mean, blaziken, and a big one like that. You only see two types, usually. Kid got a torchic starter, raised it all wrong, but dammit he'll try his best for him; or a well-oiled ass-kicking machine on a team that uses a blaziken-friendly strat. This one was in the middle. Well over two meters, looked like he could kick a tauros and collapse both of its lungs. Guaranteed a top-quality breeder specimen. Was he kept in his ball? Was he being instructed for his next battle? No, his evening was he got to take a nice bath as long as he wanted, and then he was in bed beside his trainer, both of them talking about maybe going out to journey for the fun of it. Not glory, not fame, not money; but whimsy! Honestly, I wished I was in that room."
"It's a big risk, babe. Are you sure you want to be in a position where you could wind up stalling or jobbing for some kid you don't really know? Sure, first summer he might journey for fun; second might have him ordering that blaziken to brick-break your spine for 'practice.' Is that what you want?"
The female umbreon stood and prepared to walk away. "I said I'm being stupid, and you know I'm too slippery to need to worry about escape plans. Just get with an ally in data and have them remove the bogus ball entry assigned to my image. Bill's changed the maintenance log-in a month ago so I can't do it myself until I get new credentials or crack a termi'." Idis left with a broad swing of her tail at maximum glow.
Sidney bowed his head and grumbled to himself, "Why didn't you ask if I've found a sponsor?"