Chapter Text
Love Lost, Chapter 1: Concessions.
Two humans and three Dark-types, approaching from the east.
A gardevoir used her psychic powers to awaken the ralts that slept in her arms and against her breast with a message: “It's time to run again.” She teleported herself alone to a high tree branch and looked across the canopy. Lake Muramis would make a natural barrier since she could glide above the water's surface, but if they carried surfing pokemon, that would not matter. She needed something that could discourage them, like human eyes that would summon authorities. The city lights of Linalool were too far away; these trappers would cut them off. She teleported down and took up her daughter again. East to Rennin felt like her best option.
Underbrush slowed her progress. She relied on telekinesis to help push it out of the way since her arms were occupied. A faint flash made her check behind herself. Another flash, from a burst of flame. Fire from a Dark-type, most likely houndooms literally blazing a trail.
She covered a mile before losing enough ground that one of the men ordered his favorite dog to rush ahead and attack. It seized her by her skirt and tried to pull her down by clawing his way up, digging his claws through the membrane and biting her just beneath her dorsal sensory horn while exhaling flame. Shifting her daughter to her right arm, with a vocal outburst she swung her left palm back behind herself. Crackling with electricity to paralyze the houndoom, she stunned it long enough to let her telekinetically sever a small branch from the nearest tree and bring it down upon the dog's curled horns.
The gardevoir and her daughter continued fleeing as the dog's owner flicked the locking tab off of a healing spray. The other man and his bitch took lead of their chase.
Peering over her mother's shoulder, the ralts focused on the man pursuing her. She saw him raising something in his hand. Connected with her daughter's mind, the gardevoir recognized it as a weapon and turned to face him, sacrificing precious distance by stopping. She raised her palm when she felt his mind become satisfied with his aim. With a slight push to one side, his tranquilizer dart harmlessly whizzed by both pokemon's heads. Both the shooter's bitch and the other man's second dog surged forward on command. The gardevoir spun about and gazed forward, hoping to isolate a teleportation target. She caught a hint of a roof through the trees a hundred meters away. It would have to do.
She stumbled when they re-materialized and almost slipped off of the roof's age-loosened shingles. Panting heavily, she sat and struggled to recover her composure. The leap depleted what remained of her stamina. Rennin was still miles away; reaching out with her mind, she could feel its pokecenter's teleportation reception room's silver markers. Maybe she should have used them. She hugged her daughter tightly as she started moving again, gliding from the top of the abandoned cabin but being pulled by a stronger gravity than she would have liked; she was too weak now to fully resist its pull. No, if she went there, they would both be taken into custody. Were they of undesirably common species they would surely be released, but not her kind and especially not her daughter's kind—she would get ‘placed.’
Carlos exchanged his dart gun for his telephone. “We got a problem, Mr. Max. She popped somewhere out of sight and we've lost the trail.”
“Good. A long teleport is an act of desperation. Onyx will fly over the area. You keep moving and when Onyx reports, I'll adjust your trajectory.”
The gardevoir re-connected with her daughter's mind and tried to comfort her as she was becoming anxious. They had never before needed to run this far for this long. She really wanted to calm her with a promise that everything would be alright, but that was impossible. She knew that everything would not be alright, and the ralts knew her mother's mind too well not to recognize a fabricated emotion.
By the time the gardevoir came within sight of Rennin's city limits, she was so focused on keeping her daughter calm that she did not even notice the shadow of a murkrow passing overhead. She racked her brain to remember how humans laid out their communities with the goal of plotting a path that would maximize distance, minimize travel time, and keep her and her daughter from being noticed while forcing the poachers to reveal themselves. It would not be easy.
A nondescript truck outfitted for off-road travel was waiting for the men when they emerged from the forest where it was divided by Route R–L's automotive path. The hunting party leapt into the back and the vehicle tore away, headed westward. Its driver, Maximilian, shouted through the cab's opened rear window. “Onyx spotted her going to Rennin. I'm dropping you off at the welcome sign. Lose those weapons; if you meet up with Johnny Law, you're just trainers looking for nocturnal species as long as you've only got pokeballs and flashlights on you. Mister Well isn't going to be contributing anything more than what will cover a trespassing charge to your legal defense fund if you screw up.”
Acting as though he were actually tired, Joe bade his father goodnight.
James replied, “See you in the morning,” and selected a film to view during the period between now and the nightly news, although he never tuned in for that. He saw no sense in hearing news at a time of night when your only response will be to go to sleep nonetheless.
Joe lay in his bed silently and watched the glowing gap between the bottom of his bedroom door and the top of his bedroom carpet till light no longer reached through it. His father turned off the living room lights whenever he put a film on, granting Joe an opportunity to play a video game, sans sound, safely for about an hour. When the film ended, Joe's room would receive a final inspection as his father retired to his own bed. That timing was about right, as the boy tried staying up later in the past and paid for it when morning came; not only by suffering exhaustion, but by bringing his nocturnal antics to his father's attention.
Any sound that was not a faint click coming from his controller's contacts was a potential alarm that would require Joe to assume an appropriately restful appearance in as few as five seconds, unlikely as it was that his father would check on him before the film concluded. It was faint and distant, but Joe's state of heightened awareness detected a noise. His reflex to turn off the screen and leap into bed failed to trigger, though, because this disturbance was happening behind his home.
Joe approached his eastern window and saw nothing noteworthy beyond its glass; just a waning gibbous moon hanging above a number of stakes strung with faint pink polyethylene ribbon that indicated where a swimming pool was to someday be constructed once the necessary funds could be secured. The ribbon was once a bold red, before a combination of direct sunlight and indirect procrastination left the tape to fade beneath a couple summers' suns. Joe intended to resume his game, but the noise returned and on second glance he noticed a shaking within his home's southern hedge row.
Opening his window, and then leaning out through it, Joe looked to his right and witnessed a gardevoir's milky-white face emerging slowly through the bushes. He noticed three unusual things about this pokemon. First, that it was looking behind itself, apparently concerned that it was being followed. Second, that it was seriously injured, with blood splattered across its limbs and body and running in thin streaks down the dress-like portion of its flesh. Third, that it was cradling in its arms a ralts of quite uncommon appearance. Even beneath pale moonlight, Joe could tell that its hair was a cerulean blue, and that its sensory horns were a turquoise green.
The gardevoir crossed Joe's backyard with gentle steps, attempting to make no unnecessary sounds as it walked, apparently unable to levitate as its kind often could. It was not paying much attention to the house, but sensed Joe's presence after he reacted with startled concern when the gardevoir, looking back once again, tripped and fell over one of the destined pool's survey lines. Lying almost flat on the ground, elbows dug slightly into the soil where its arms protected the ralts from most of their fall's force, the pokemon quickly turned to face in Joe's direction and noticed a little light that emanated from his video game's screen.
As the ralts gathered itself up after its tumble, Joe sought to hide. However, his effort proved futile as a Psychic-type did not need to see him to force a telepathic link into his mind; it already knew exactly where he was. He felt the gardevoir's presence strengthen until it became dizzying and confusing, seeming to spread throughout his entire brain. Once it intensified enough to rival the worst headache that Joe had ever endured, the sensation stopped and in his mind he heard only silence for a moment before the pokemon transmitted a message to him. It did not speak so much as force Joe to think of, and hear, the words that it selected.
“Forgive me for doing that to you. You are too young, but I see no other way to protect her. Take care of her for me, do your best; I can promise she will always be there for you.”
The gardevoir placed its hands over the ralts' horns for a moment. The ralts seemed to struggle and panic briefly before calming and looking down at the grass. With tears welling in its eyes, the gardevoir concentrated and teleported the ralts onto Joe's bed before limping away.
As Joe turned away from his window and looked at the ralts that now sat upon the foot of his bed, timidly drawing her limbs against her body, he felt the gardevoir enter his mind one last time.
“Shut your window, hide her from view, and pretend to be asleep. They will follow my trail and pass her by.”
The gardevoir seemed to gather a second wind and finished crossing Joe's backyard, mantling the barrier that stood between his father's property and his northern neighbor's. As it fled, it no longer bothered to look behind itself.
Joe shut his window, turned off his game, and beckoned a very reluctant ralts to join him near the head of his bed. Her reluctance evaporated when they both heard the sharp bark of a houndoom informing its master that it had re-discovered its quarry's trail. Joe held her like a doll and drew his covers over their bodies. Together, they endured two minutes of nervous suspense before noises from the bushes announced the arrival of a pair of poachers and a trio of houndooms.
Both male houndooms were eager to follow a trail of blood leading across Joe's backyard, but the female stopped near a survey stake and sniffed the air. She looked at Joe's window and growled lightly, hoping to get her master's attention. Carlos approached Joe's window and shined a light inside, but there was nothing alive within but some sleeping kid. He hastened to rejoin his partner, and the female houndoom slowly followed behind him.
The houndoom understood. She knew in her heart that if she had a pup to protect and was being pursued, she too would make the hard decision to draw the danger away at a cost of abandoning her offspring and gambling her own life against highly unfavorable odds. The blood on the grass was warm, fresh, and strong; the other houndooms were too enthralled by their chase and a dream of bringing down the green gardevoir to notice as she had that their true target, the blue ralts, could be smelled faintly in the bushes, and strongly where the grass was crushed and more-heavily stained, but could not be detected at all beyond that point. Feeling a tiny sensation of sympathy, she decided against making any further effort to communicate her deduction to her master.
Creeping relief was the only sensation that Joe and the ralts in his bed felt as they lay still and listened to the commotion outside fading northward. One distant voice, probably belonging to Mr. Finnegan, hollered out, asking, “What's going on out there?” and warning, “You best be getting off of my land!” Even after the commotion was gone, the pair still lay still, too nervous to move, until Joe heard his father carefully open the bedroom door.
“Dad, I have a question,” Joe asked.
James exhaled softly. “You're supposed to be asleep.”
“I got woken up. Some guys were in the backyard with dogs.”
“I heard them, too. They've moved on. Go back to sleep.”
“Dad, I have a question.”
James exhaled sharply. “Make it fast.”
“If I wanted to get a pokemon, would that be okay?”
“Most of those things are pretty dangerous, and you know how I feel about kids making them fight. If you're going to get one, you're going to wait until you're old enough to take care of it right.”
“I don't want her to fight. I just want to take care of her.”
James held his breath for a second. “Take care of her? Okay, what are you trying to question me into?” He turned on Joe's bedroom light and saw a ralts in his son's bed, covering its face to guard against sudden illumination. It was dingy to say the least, and had small red smears on its body, although it did not appear to be injured. “What the hell are you doing with that in your room?” James paused. “And, how did you find one of those?” He inflected his sentence's final word with a strange tone, one flavored with incredulous disbelief.
“Those guys were chasing her mother—I think it was her mother—through our backyard. I looked outside and she saw me and told me in my head I had to take care of her.”
James thought over his son's story. “I guess that would explain why those guys were trespassing all the way down the block. Okay, but just for now. We'll find out who it belongs to and get it where it needs to go. And, don't keep it in your bed. I'll make up something to put it in for tonight. The last thing I need is my kid getting mixed up with pokemon.” James completed his sentence after he left his son's room. “Especially that kind.” When James returned a few minutes later, he had with him a shallow plastic crate designed to carry bottles of soda, an old pillow, and a towel to cover the lot. “There, it can sleep on that. Now, you get to sleep. It's way past your bedtime.”
Joe carried the ralts across his room and placed her upon her new bed. She climbed off and started wandering around the room the second that Joe turned away to switch off his light. He replaced her and tried to instruct her to sleep there, but she seemed to either ignore his words or not understand them, instead taking interest in anything but her bed. Giving up, Joe crawled back into his own bed and brushed away some of the dirt that she brought into it. There were now a few stains caused by gardevoir blood that had transferred to Joe's sheets via an innocent ralts. Joe fell asleep wondering if that gardevoir got away safely, and if so, if she would come back for her daughter.
When he awoke the next morning, Joe felt numb. He thought that perhaps he rolled over funny and cut off circulation to an arm or a leg, but that thought vanished when he realized that he could hardly move his body at all. His eyes twitched upward. He saw a blue semi-circle slowly lean into his field of vision from above his head, and noticed that the only things that he could feel were two tiny, warm palms on his temples. His thoughts shifted to the many warnings of the perils of pokemon ownership that he had heard since he was just old enough to learn what a pokemon was, as he was now being attacked—or at least subdued in a strange way—by one. None of those warnings covered this specific behavior. He then realized that his alarm clock had not yet sounded; without any ability to do much else, Joe wondered what time it was.
The blue semi-circle continued to lean forward slowly until the ralts' body arched over his forehead. As gravity pulled her light blue hair away from her face, Joe saw for the first time her emerald eyes in their entirety. His worrying mind cleared for a moment, thinking only of how beautiful her eyes were, despite her seemingly concerned facial expression. With his thoughts shifted away from his paralysis and potential to be late for school, and toward a candid and flattering opinion of her appearance, the ralts suddenly smiled, giggled, and took her palms away from his temples. Instantly, Joe was able to move normally again. He sat up and turned back to address a monster still kneeling on his pillow.
“What did you do to me while I was sleeping?”
The ralts grinned and gestured by waving her hands from her horns toward his temples and back again.
Joe felt as though he did not sleep at all that night. According to his alarm clock, he was about twenty minutes ahead of schedule. While he was up early, it was not by enough to lend a clue to why he felt so tired. He accepted the time as a boon, planning to invest it in a quick shower for himself and then a bath for his guest.
When James arose, he was somewhat surprised to find that his son had beaten him to their bathroom. “You're up a little early, aren't you?”
“She woke me up. She was—,” Joe caught himself before admitting that his mind had been probed by two different pokemon between last night's dinner and today's yet-to-be-prepared breakfast, “—wanting to play, I guess.”
James looked to his left, toward Joe's room. The ralts was batting the door back and forth between her palms. “Uh-huh. Hurry it up, I've got places to be today, too.”
After his shower, Joe yielded the facilities to his father and poured himself a bowl of cereal. Not wanting to risk a mess, he added no milk to the cereal that he provided for the ralts. She did not seem to think much of her breakfast's flavor, but she ate it all and got Joe's attention to gesture a request for more.
Still fifteen minutes ahead of the game, Joe carried the ralts to the bathroom so that she too would begin this day cleansed. Dirt washed away easily, but the blood stains were stubborn. Red rings marked the edges of otherwise-lifted splotches, as scrubbing forcefully enough to remove their borders made the ralts cry out in pain and pull away from him. Joe realized that despite its clothing-like form, she clearly felt with her gown as much as any other part of her body. He apologized as he reached out and placed two fingertips on her right temple to bid her to face him.
The ralts placed her palms on his forearm and hummed a gentle sound before offering her skirt to him again for further cleaning, but Joe felt that she had endured enough.
Joe checked a clock as he exited the bathroom. He was now a little behind schedule after having been well ahead. James entered Joe's bedroom, following a ralts that was dragging a soggy towel across his carpet. “I see you got it presentable. Now, what are you going to do with it?”
“You said I couldn't keep her—”
“Today. While you're at school. You can't leave it wandering around the house all day while we're gone; that would be begging for any of all kinds of disaster. You can't take it to school with you, either. I guess you'll just have to turn it loose in the backyard where you found it.” James turned to leave. “Goin' to work. Don't forget to lock up.”
Joe looked at the ralts, looking at him, looking concerned. He took up his backpack and sat on his bed to think. First to mind came places to try to hide her from his father, but that would be a future problem. He had about six minutes to leave before risking a tardy slip. There was a daycare not too far away, but he could not get her there and himself to school in time, today, and the thought of her being thrown in among a group of unfamiliar pokemon brought him to shudder. Those that naturally pick fights were usually kept separated, but things happened to pokemon in daycare sometimes, and there really was nothing to do about it.
Joe needed a friend, a pokemon person—“Percival!” He ran to the telephone and called a home three mailboxes north of his own.
Mrs. Finnegan answered on the third ring. “No, he left for school a few minutes ago. Why aren't you on your way? Yes, I heard the noises last night. Hubby went out the back to yell at them. You've got to be kidding—certainly, bring her over; and hurry up, school ain't waiting for you, boy.”
Joe rushed out through his front door with a heavy backpack bouncing behind him and a lighter ralts bouncing before him in his arms. He knocked on the Finnegan's front door and was met by both Mrs. Finnegan and Sam, Percival's recently-evolved grovyle.
The ralts was not at all happy to be handed over to a stranger yet again. She tried to climb free of Mrs. Finnegan's grasp, and shrieked as Joe exited for school. He turned back around and performed her hands-between-temples gesture while promising to be back that afternoon. She only calmed down after he leaned close enough that she could place her palms on his head while he repeated himself.
Mrs. Finnegan entered her home with a distressed ralts while Sam shut the door. “Percy's not going to believe it when he finds out that Joe caught a wild shiny.” Inside her living room, she set the ralts down beside Frankie, a mareep, who was intently watching television and did not notice the guest until a commercial came on and he turned to a nearby plate holding a few leaves of lettuce. He stared at her for a moment before consuming another portion of his snack.
Focusing to get a read on the lamb, the ralts learned that he did not think much of her, in any context.
The day-to-day of classes was unchanging. The only variety in the day appeared during the students' allotted half-hour of lunch time. Joe breached middle-school table selection protocol and sat with the trainers-in-training. Finding a break in their conversation about the cost–benefit ratios of various sources of vitamins in a pokemon's diet, Joe captured Percival's attention and told him the story of how he came to have a ralts for a roommate.
Seated across from his neighbor, Percival expressed his doubts, which doubled when Joe mentioned off-hand that she did not wear her species' usual coloring. “I don't believe any of that,” he scoffed.
“It's true,” Joe re-affirmed, “she's blue.”
“I don't believe it. Someone probably just dyed her hair and turned her loose to make a fool of a sucker.”
“Can their spiky things be dyed, too?”
“What? No.”
“Well, hers are green, so they must have used too much dye.”
Terrance, seated beside Joe, interjected. “Yeah, maybe someone put a bunch of food coloring in her water dish. Anyway, if you don't want a silly-looking one, I'll trade you for it.”
Percival hung his head. “Joe, if you aren't just screwing with us, you don't want to trade her for anything.”
Joe drank his orange juice. “Well, you can see for yourself after school. I left her with your mom so she wouldn't be alone all day. Dad was trying to convince me to release her in the backyard.”
Taken aback, Percival considered the consequences of such an act. “That would suck. Ralts and a few other Psychic-types are lucky to survive on their own when they're young or untrained because they have few or no offensive skills. They can run away, maybe teleport once or twice, and use a few mind tricks, but if those aren't enough and they can't find a place to hide, they're in deep trouble.”
Joe finished his lunch and rose to discard his tray. “She's not totally helpless. I woke up paralyzed this morning.”
The table discussed that comment in his absence. When Joe returned, Percival sought specifics. “Was it an electrical sort of thing?”
“No, she was holding onto my head.”
Percival and the rest of his table spoke in unison. “Syn-chro.”
Joe asked what their joke was about. Percival hoped to down-play it. “Oh, nothing. It's just that tracers are much better for fighting.”
Terrance interjected again, continuing Percival's statement. “And, synchronizers are much better for between fights.”
Percival bit his tongue, finished his carton of milk, and left to clear his own tray.
Terrance leaned against Joe with a grin. “If you're into that sort of thing.”
Joe did not catch his insinuation.
“And, even if you're not, she might change your mind for you.”
He and the rest of his table once again spoke in unison. “Syn-chro.”
The table's conversation drifted freely thereafter, spoken in the tongue of pokemon owners and battlers and thus leaving Joe behind, until a bell sounded to signal the lunch period's end.
Percival met with Joe again as they left school. Normally, Percival traveled with his clique of trainers intending to challenge Pokemon League in a year or two when they became old enough for open sign-up, but today he was far more interested in returning home and seeing Joe's claim in the flesh than he was in loitering at a local game room to bide time till Rennin Gym opened its floor to under-aged and provisional trainers for a few hours between matches arranged by appointment and the evening's official competitions.
As they walked home together, Joe picked Percival's brain, hoping to get a better idea of what it was like to own a pokemon. The quality of Percival's responses increased when he realized that Joe really did not know anything about pokemon in general other than that they all were alive to at least some degree, many were or could become quite intelligent, and that they possessed strange and diverse abilities.
Three blocks from their home street, the two students noticed a few men, some in uniform and others in suits, standing about within an undeveloped area that was now cordoned off with cautionary tape. Joe approached to investigate despite Percival's protest. Before they could see anything interesting, one of the men approached them.
“My name is Detective Palmer. Do you boys live around here?”
In unison, Joe and Percival answered, “Yes.”
“We received numerous reports about a group of trespassers crossing private properties in this corner of town. Do you have any information that could help us piece this together?”
Percival admitted that his father had yelled at the men. The detective turned to Joe.
“Yeah, I heard some noise and I looked out my window. I didn't see any men but I did see a gardevoir. She did some telepathy thing and asked me,” Joe caught himself before admitting that he was entrusted with the creature's offspring, “to help her, and she said I was too young. I was in bed when I heard more noise. It sounded like guys with dogs.”
The detective then asked for their home addresses and connected some lines on a map attached to his clipboard. “Alright, thank you, boys. What you've said at least corroborates the information we've received so far. If you or your family remember anything else, give the P.D. a call.” Detective Palmer walked away, returning to his wooded crime scene.
Joe called out to him as he left. “What happened in there?”
Palmer paused to select appropriate wording for his response, but immediately he realized that the most appropriate response was silence.
Neither Joe nor Percival felt much like talking until they arrived on the Finnegan's doorstep. Percival announced their arrival. “I'm home, Ma. Joe's here, too; says he left his ralts here because he forgot that trainers are supposed to always keep a spare ball around.”
Delilah's voice came from her living room's rear. “A ball would have been nice. Could'a saved everyone a lot of trouble.”
Percival and Joe entered the living room to see Delilah peering beneath the reclining portion of a combination couch with a damaged mechanism that no longer let its extensible foot-rest return flush with the front of its seat. Nearby, Percival's little sister combed a mareep's wool, giggling as static electricity frazzled her own hair while Frankie's fluff became tamed and orderly.
“I'm sorry, Joe. She and Frankie seemed to be getting along fine, but I left the room to answer the phone and when I came back, he was chasing her around. I got Frankie's ball, but by then, she had lifted up that flap and crawled inside. I got a flashlight and saw her in there all huddled up tight. She didn't look hurt, but I haven't been able to coax her out.”
Taking Mrs. Finnegan's flashlight in-hand, Joe lifted the foot-rest and peered into the recess below. “Hey, there. It's me. Would you like to go home?”
The ralts tightened her grip on her knees, hinting to Joe that he had misspoken.
“Oops. Uh, I mean, would you like to go back to my room?”
She loosened her grip on her knees, hinting to Joe that he had her attention.
“Come on, you'll be okay. I'm not going to let Frankie chase you anymore.”
The ralts slowly crawled forward beneath the couch's mat of springs and wove through the reclining mechanism. Joe withdrew his head to permit her passage, but she stopped in response. Realizing that her withdrawal was delayed, he peeked beneath the foot-rest again and saw the ralts reaching out to him with both hands. With the left half of his mouth grimacing slightly at the awkward posture required, he allowed her to read his mind again, and was thankful that the process did not involve a loss of sensation this time. Seconds later, her question of whether or not Joe truly thought of his home as hers too was answered, and together their heads emerged from beneath the foot-rest.
Seeing that this ralts was exactly as Joe had described it at lunch, Percival remained in disbelief and avoided the topic of her distinctive features. “Was she that dirty when you dropped her off?”
Holding her in his arms, Joe noticed that she now wore many streaks of gooey lubricant from the chair's mechanisms. “No, I gave her a bath this morning. I guess she needs another, now.” He looked downward and to his left when he felt a gentle bump nudge his knee.
Frankie bleated softly. His noise was meaningless to Joe, but the ralts replied with a strange sound that may have been in the same family as a raspberry.
When James returned home, he heard noises coming from his son's room and water running in the bathroom. He checked the bedroom first to find Percival playing a video game. “I see the rule, ‘No friends over before I come home,’ is in full effect.”
“Sorry, Mr. Rainier. Joe doesn't know very much about pokemon, so I offered to help him out.”
“Help shouldn't be needed. I'm driving him across town to the Pokecenter so he can drop it off. I'm sure they'll find it an owner.”
“Not a good one. When something as valuable as a shiny comes into the adopt-or-release pool, there's usually someone on the inside ready to sneak it out the back door and into the hands of a hoarder for fast cash. And, when that happens, being in ball stasis forever is kinda the best they can hope for. My uncle says a lot of them are weird people.”
A slow exhalation preceded James' response. “I know. That's not my problem. See yourself out, Percy.”
Percival turned off the game and departed as instructed.
James walked to the bathroom door. “Son, are you in there with it again?”
Joe's reply was muffled and distorted by both a shut door and a running shower. “Yeah, I'm cleaning off grease. She got messy again.”
“Well, hurry up. We're driving across town in a minute.”
Drying the ralts' hair took a little longer than it should have because she kept holding a worn bar of soap against the top of her head, making it look like she had three green horns instead of two, mostly to amuse a ralts performing the same antic in the bathroom's mirror.
Joe had nothing to say to his father between being informed that he was to dispose of the ralts and his walking inside Rennin Pokecenter.
James addressed a woman behind a counter. “Ma'am, we're here because this pokemon showed up at my home and we want it gone.”
The young lady behind the counter seemed shocked. “You don't want to keep that pokemon? I haven't worked here for very long, but I've never seen someone wanting to release a shiny. What's wrong with it?” Clara reached toward a rack of informational hand-outs and withdrew one to offer to James. “If it's a disciplinary problem, we can sign you up for some classes that teach both pokemon and their owners to—”
James was not distracted. “We want it gone.”
Clara looked at their three faces and realized that she was hearing a royal We. Her voice faded. “Okay, we'll take it off of your hands.” Clara pressed a call button, summoning a staff member to come and carry the ralts to the center's rear chambers.
James expressed some irritation when Joe raised the ralts up so she could place her hands on his temples and read his mind. She began to fuss as she had when her parent abandoned her, and continued to fuss, as there was no calming promise of someone to care for her this time. Despite her panicked grasping at his shirt, Joe reluctantly relinquished her to the attendant—Chad, according to his name-tag—who accepted her with a crooked smile.
Joe's mood shifted from disappointment to frustration. “Why couldn't I keep her, dad?”
“Because you're not ready for that responsibility.”
“You keep saying that to me about things. When will I be? Lots of kids younger than I am have pokemon. Percival got Sam from his uncle when he was like, six.”
“I don't want one in my house.”
“I think you're punishing me, and her, because you're scared of—”
“You watch your mouth, young man!”
James' outburst drew attention from the center's patrons, attention that Joe knew he could use to his advantage. “Young man, but, not man-enough to take care of a pokemon. Because Mom left us, you said I was going to have to take on some adult responsibilities early and you've criticized me every time you've thought I've been too much of a kid, but now that I actually want to take on more responsibility, you shoot me down.”
James was thoroughly flushed, but could not think of any good response than admitting that he did not want his son to become a trainer; an argument that would most likely draw their now-growing audience into supporting Joe's side of the matter if either.
Chad set the ralts on an exam table and called an associate on his cellular telephone while an intern began performing a basic physical. “Yeah, it's me. You won't believe what some idiot just dropped off. Female ralts, shiny, unregistered. No shit—probably. Hey, is she ‘intact?’ ”
The intern shoved the sitting ralts over onto her back and peeked beneath her skin, lifting the skirt out of his way with a tongue depressor. He spoke with clinical distance. “Yep, mint condition.”
Chad's smirk grew a little bit sharper. “Get on the horn with your preferred buyers and set them up for an auction. We're going to pay all our bills for the month with this one.”
The intern stepped away for a moment to prepare a few injections. The ralts gracefully stood on the examination table and leapt to the backrest of the chair that Chad sat in, while he entered false information to ensure that there was no record of a shiny ralts being dropped off today; instead, some common species that would be released into the wild without administration first considering placement for. She landed without applying any pressure on the chair, despite not knowing how to do that or even that she could, and gently placed her palms on his temples.
Chad did not notice her while she passively monitored his thoughts, but after she probed him for more information about what he intended to do to her, he became alert to what she was doing to him and he swatted her away with a spastic swing of his right arm. She shook off the impact of landing on the floor, darted between Chad's legs as he attempted to grab her, and bolted through the doorway.
James pointed toward the automatic doors, as if Joe needed to be reminded of where the exit was. “I'm not going to argue with you about this. Get in the car!”
Four steps along the way, a loud crash emanating from the rear hallway drew everyone's attention. A blue-haired ralts, panting and babbling as it ran, burst into the lobby and pounced on Joe, clambering up his clothing.
“What's wrong?” Joe asked, as he tried to position his arms to support the pokemon that was apparently about to climb onto his face. As soon as he got a hold on her, she slapped her palms to his temples and showed him what was wrong.
James called out, “Hey, someone help me get this thing off of him!” as he tried unsuccessfully to pull the ralts' arms away, assuming that the ralts was attacking his son. Clara cheerfully assured James that the ralts' behavior was much more likely a form of communication than a form of assault. “You pokemon people are all mad!” He grabbed his son by his shoulder, planning to tear the pokemon away from him. Joe responded by thrusting the ralts into his father's face, allowing her to share with him, too, what she heard Chad say, and through his memories, saw what Chad, his associates, and their clientele do with, and to, pokemon like herself. She also imparted a copy of Joe's memory of the night when a gardevoir entrusted her to him, and how important this duty had become in his mind.
After the ralts released James, he needed a moment to clear his head. Seeing Chad standing at the hallway's entrance picking up items scattered by an escaping ralts drew from James an exclamation of, “If what she showed me is real, you're a sick, sick person!” before turning to Joe. “Alright, young man. Don't you dare disappoint me. You two, wait in the car.”
Joe and the ralts exited and waited patiently for some time, while James demanded that Clara and the sick, sick person accompany him to the center manager's office. When James returned to his vehicle many minutes later, he carried a small electronic device. As he backed his car out of its parking space, Chad exited the center and flipped off the Rainiers before stomping away and venting his rage on the inanimate objects that he passed by.
James gestured at the device. “The manager said that that thing comes with some credit on it and that you need to buy Grace a ball.”
“Grace?”
“That's what you named her, right? When I came home, you said that you were cleaning up Grace.”
Joe was about to issue a correction to his father's interpretation when Grace tugged at his shirt and looked up at him—gravity pulling her cyan hair away from her eyes—and smiled with a gentle nod.
“Sure.”
James drove around for a bit, not knowing off-hand where Rennin's Pokemart was located, but he found it eventually. While Grace, Joe, and his trainer's device went inside, James slipped a hidden cigarette and match-book out of the frame that supported his car's driver's seat and puffed away slowly. He “quit” soon after he started many years ago, but would always light one up in times of crisis.
Joe approached the Pokemart's counter. “Hi. Can you help me? I need to get her a ball and I don't know what to do.”
“Keep your voice down, for starters,” grumbled the attendant. “If there was a team-member in here and heard you shout that, he would've already trapped your pokemon out of your arms.”
Joe did not understand what that meant, exactly, and continued. “I was told this had some credit on it. Is it enough to get one?”
Ned activated Joe's device and examined its information. Issued a half-hour ago, signed off by the local center's manager himself, and with a pretty decent initial balance. Clearly, someone turned in an abuser today. “You can afford any kind you like. Since your pokemon obviously wants to be with you, the ball type doesn't matter much since it won't be trying to bust and run. The plain ones are cheapest, but you can shop for fashion if you like.”
The varied offerings bore signs explaining their special purposes. Grace got Joe's attention when she saw one that she felt looked pretty. It was white, cyan, and blue, with a rippling effect, resting amid many others of varied appearance inside a transparent plastic cylinder labeled “re-chips.” Joe asked what they were.
Ned was watching someone near the rear of the store talking on a cellular telephone, and did not reply until Joe asked a second time. “Oh, those balls were used but either missed their target or were busted open during a capture but weren't physically destroyed. We take them back in exchange for a small credit, pop in a generic third-party replacement control chip, and sell them cheap. They don't still have any special features they might have had before, but they work as well as a plain ball. Dex collectors love 'em, since they look pretty and don't cost more than the standard ones.”
Joe asked Grace if that was the ball she wanted, and she hummed twice with approval.
Ned was now looking out through the front window, and noticed a man wearing a fedora standing beside the door. He dug deep to the bottom of the clear plastic bin that contained the re-chips to reach Grace's chosen dive ball, performed a few actions on Joe's trainer device, and handed both it and the ball over. “Alright, I charged the ball to your account, and I registered the ball for you. Just capture your pokemon with this ball, give it a name when your T.D. asks for one, and you're all set.” Ned leaned forward and spoke low. “I suggest you do it right now.”
Joe placed Grace on the counter and activated her dive ball. She vanished as a crimson blur. The ball felt no heavier, but it did jiggle around in his hands for a moment before coming to rest. Five seconds later, the ball's button popped back into its normal position.
“Can I let her out, now?”
“Yeah, you're okay. Want anything else while you're here? We've got some ball clips designed for non-competitive owners. It's a lot more convenient than trying to carry balls in your pockets.”
Joe recognized the up-sell, and did not think that he would be carrying her in her ball very often, but agreed, knowing that it would be better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. He also felt a strange sense of having been done a favor. Joe selected a two-ball clip, since no single-ball clips were in-stock, and left carrying Grace in his arms.
James had been watching the man wearing a fedora through the corner of his eye for much of his cigarette. As Joe emerged, the man slipped a red and white pokeball out of his coat's pocket and activated it. Its scanning beam flashed over Grace rapidly for a second before his ball emitted a buzzing sound and ejected its button cap, revealing a red button stem beneath it. The man wearing a fedora cursed beneath his breath and turned to enter the Pokemart, but was halted by James, who took him by the shoulder.
“Hey, what the fuck were you trying to do?”
“Nothing illegal. I know, because it's my business to know the law. Now, if you keep touching my person, we'll see how long it takes for you understand the laws that cover misdemeanor assault.” He shrugged free of James' grip. “Have a nice day, and don't smoke. It's bad for your health.”
James cast the butt of his cigarette into a receptacle while the man wearing a fedora continued inside and sold back his dud ball, not that he needed the deposit money.
Inside James' car, Joe asked what happened.
“I think he wanted to steal your pokemon. See, this is part of the reason I didn't want you getting one. It gets you involved with all kinds of bad people. Not just trainers who treat their pokemon like, like what she showed us that that-Chad-guy is involved in, but with criminals and thieves and thugs. You were right, I haven't been treating you like the young man I've taught you to be, but I have to be your mother sometimes, too.”
After dinner, Joe went straight to his homework while Grace busied herself by wandering around the house and learning its floor plan. She found James sitting in a love-seat, watching a program about oceanic wreck exploration. Grace crawled up beside him and got his attention by waving her hands back and forth between her horns and the direction of his head.
“No! I don't want you to ever do that to me again, or you will be out of here, no questions asked.”
Grace let her arms drop to her sides before reaching to his right arm, picking it up by his wrist and the side of his hand, and shaking it up and down while nodding. He said nothing as she hopped off of his sofa and continued her explorations.
Joe's assignment was elaborate and he completed it without any time left for video games. He put Grace to bed and retired himself minutes later. He was almost asleep when he heard a dull hissing sound and looked around his room to investigate. He found Grace dragging a plastic crate with a pillow and towel on it across his carpet. She positioned it near the head of his bed, crawled upon it, looked up toward his inquisitive face, brushed her hair aside, and smiled at him before giggling, lying down, and going to sleep.
In bed that night, James Rainier lay on his back with his arms folded beneath his head and pillow, muttering to himself. “Have a nice day, and don't smoke. It's bad for your health. Have a nice day, and don't smoke. It's bad for your health. I know I know that man.”