Love Lost, Chapter 10b: Remissions, concluded.
#20 of Love Lost
Love Lost, Chapter 10b: Remissions, completed.
James drove north and west, to a rather busy street filled with lots of small entertainment venues serving Rennin's up-scale residents.
Marianne gestured with her tendrils before James' face, keeping them translucent enough that they would not block his view of the road. "Two more blocks, then a right, and pull in on the dark side of Jolly Roger's parking lot."
Jolly Roger's was a theme restaurant. It was the kind of place where you could schedule a birthday party and all of the kids would come home with an eye-patch, a hat with a jolly roger in the center, and in the birthday boy or girl's case, a prop bird made of polystyrene and glued feathers attached with an alligator clip, establishing rank as the pirate captain for a day. At night, however, the clientele changed: the music that patrons sang in broken chorus turned bawdy, and the tattoos displayed were no longer temporary.
Marianne was literally in James' face as soon as he parked the truck. "Okay, give me your money, J.R.; hey, J.R., Jolly Roger's, it must be destiny."
"It must be thinking of a good explanation for what we're doing here."
Marianne drifted back against the windscreen, her hat through it. "I promised Pearson a pack of ale to borrow his truck; I can order the good stuff here. You wanted the door fixed, right? It wouldn't fit in your sedan."
"And since you brought up taking a door you already had when I mentioned money today, I assume you expect me to pay for this?"
The ghost managed some sort of doe-eyed look and twiddled a few tendrils together. "If you don't mind."
James' face suggested he had just choked down a bitter pill. "Burner, are you fit for guard duty?"
Burner suppressed a groan as he turned to face James. "Always, Master James."
Marianne followed James out as he exited the vehicle. "They might not let you in, but you've swabbed a few decks, so maybe they'll give you a pass." She lassoed him as he headed the wrong way. "Side entrance."
"What? Down that alley with no lights?"
"I know my way around. You'll just have to trust me."
"Trust you? I think I'm going to be sick," James mumbled.
Marianne bit her tongue and led him through the darkness to a hinged, large metal grate that concealed stairs with a door at the bottom. She slid a garbage can away and lifted the grate. Its motion was absolutely silent, for the grate's hinges were well-oiled. After descending, James knocked on the metal door. A plodding sound approached from the other side. A noise of servos controlling an infra-red camera above panned across them, revealing James and not Marianne. The ghost spoke something shrill and indecipherable. Another noise came through the other side. They conducted a few variations on that exchange. James leaned forward to hear better, but her tendrils pushed him back, way back and up a couple of the steps, before receding. She mumbled something and the door pushed forward a millimeter as the being on the other side pressed against it.
Arcs flickered along Marianne's tendrils. "YEEAAAAHHHH!" A blinding flash dazed James as she jolted the door with a thunderbolt. A thud and a clank on the other side followed her scream. She pushed through the door. "Maybe he'll listen to me now."
James rubbed his eyes, uncertain if his vision had returned since there were no lights by which to verify. His hands were soon pulled away and before he could say anything he felt an icy sensation passing through his body like a column of frozen lake water. As it passed, he could see faint lights ahead, purple-tinted by Marianne's form. "What? Did you drag me thr--"
"Shush. Rules are: no questions ever, no talking, and you were never here. You went to Jolly Roger's, had a scurvy burger, walked the plank, and went home with a door prize that happened to be a case of ale, got it?"
James' vision was now clear enough that, despite the meager lighting at corridor's end, he could see a large pokemon with a long snout and scaled flesh escorting them a few steps away. "Got it."
They were let through another metal door, into a large round room with electrified pillars along the walls and three silver posts somewhat inset. The center showed a number of stains, some surely from blood. Another metal door among a few others led them into a small room with a counter and a bench behind it. A strip door parted to permit passage of a slowking that was moving slower than usual. It barked at Marianne with great hostility, and she shrieked back.
Aside, to James, she commented, "He's pissed because I fried his ass for being rude to me."
The slowking presented a small clipboard with a ticket on it. His writing was a mess except for the price.
James started cursing her. "You've got to be shitting me. That's almost what getting my door fixed would've cost anyway."
Marianne gagged him with a tendril. "No talking. They don't like to hear The Master's Voice around here. Pay the pig, cash only."
James brushed away her essence from his face, looked at the slowking scowling at him, leaned in beneath Marianne's hat, and whispered with his hand near his mouth, "I don't have that much cash on me."
"Sure you do. I moved some money from your secret hiding spot that nobody knows about to your wallet."
James turned, intending to march out. A narrow, netted window in the door showed their red and black escort standing just outside.
Marianne whispered in his ear. "The money is already theirs; right now you're deciding in how many pieces you leave this place."
Grace nodded off. Despite the noisy bar across the lot, she felt strangely relaxed. Or at least, felt something. She let her mind wander and her senses explore. Something very nearby, familiar. A pattern. Silver posts, heavily disguised by some sort of interference, but the cloak was not very effective at this range. She remembered that she had sensed them from home a few months prior, but, if she sensed them then, then what kind of a dream was that?
She sensed something else, two somethings approaching. Opening her eyes, she saw Marianne and James returning with a small wooden crate. James opened the door and presented the crate like it were royalty. "Here, Grace. If we have a head-on collision, teleport the beer to safety, it's the most valuable passenger."
She took the crate, after what he said comforted only by the sarcasm oozing from his attitude, and shifted in her seat while Marianne settled in and substantiated somewhat so the truck would not drive off without her. "Okay. May I ask why it's so valuable?"
Marianne tapped the top of the crate. "It's the good stuff."
James started the truck and pulled forward. "Apparently, Grace, Mr. Pearson wanted imported beer for borrowing his truck. The little purple nightmare decided we needed to get black market back-alley mystery booze instead of just going to the liquor store where I get my bourbon."
The ghost scoffed. "That stuff's a joke. They put a few drops of drain cleaner in the vat to give it an edge and use imported labels. Now, we've got four bottles for Pear-shape-son, one for you because you need to know what the good stuff tastes like, and one for me, because it's been a very long time since I had an--" her eyes shifted back and forth between James and Grace mischievously a couple times before she continued, "ale--and I need one for, well, let's call it, closure."
The replacement door was somewhat antiqued compared to its predecessor, but it was at least secure. In his wake, Frankie left behind two soda cans, zero hot dogs, and a number of little red bologna casing bands in a tidy heap.
Grace watched over Joe as he slept, again, although to her it seemed to be the first time that evening. After pigging out at the Finnegans', he had wanted nothing but to go to bed early. Grace was primarily concerned that he may have gone too far as to suffer indigestion, but according to his brain waves, he had stopped just in time. She did not want to risk waking him, since the next morning would be his first day in high school, but she did not want to sleep in the Pokemon Room, either. Annoyed by the decision before her, she exited to the bathroom to urinate. She heard James and Marianne talking faintly in the kitchen, and left the bathroom door open to eavesdrop. Grace did not feel it was exactly a moral thing to do, but Marianne had no qualms about spying on the affairs of others, and she did personally instruct her to pay more attention, once.
The ghost sounded three sheets in the wind. "Harvey knew a guy who knew a guy who--I think that guy fucked some other guy, you know sailors, you were sailors, a sail, awwwww, this shit's so good."
"You were right about that. This is good stuff, but damn, too strong and too expensive."
"You spend a lot but you enjoy it. Need to enjoy that pool, maybe you'll go swimming? We could, right now. I'll go naked if you will."
"Marianne," James said with a scolding tone.
"Ah, you wanna make it kinky? Okay, I'll go clothed if you will."
"That pool was a gift and a promise. I didn't promise anyone the most expensive beer in the world. What was that place, anyw--"
"Ehhhh! No questions, ever! That place was Jolly Roger's. Scurvy burger, plank, door prize, excuse me; I'm such a light-weight." Marianne sank through the table for a moment, emitted a fizzing sound, and returned.
"Was that a--"
Marianne no longer sounded slurred from being pissed, having returned to her usual pissy. "You wish. It's a Ghost thing. We should get some more of this stuff, get some in Grace. We could see if one will get her done, and if she makes that sound to sober up, too."
"If it's a ghost thing then--"
"She's got Ghost in her. That's why she and I get along so damn well. That's good. You want that in her. She makes for a pretty good Ghost, despite that Psychic handicap."
"Maybe it's this stuff," James tapped his bottle, "but I'm not following you."
"We've got a thing about us, we never give up. We can't, really. I ran out of energy to hold my form when the renters that the bank stuck in our house ran off with everything that wasn't nailed down and didn't smell like their own sweaty asses. But, that doesn't mean I died; I was in limbo, I think. It's weird, when time stands still and runs faster than you can understand at the same time, whatever I mean by that. I guess it's like being asleep. Harvey tried forever to explain what it was like for him, to sleep peacefully without nightmares, because he wanted me to know what he was thankful to me for, but I never understood it enough that I felt like I could compare it exactly to anything I know." She lowered her face into her still-sealed bottle and took a long sip. Withdrawing, she glanced at her reflection in the dark kitchen window. "I guess there is no rest for the wicked." She shook herself up. "That's not my point. My point is, I think Grace has a Ghost's spirit, and that it's a good one. She'll haunt him, for his benefit--as she understands it--no matter what. And if she died, well, I don't know how it works with a cross breed, but if she goes into ghost limbo, she'll still be following him, and finding little ways to help him along, even without a body, as long as he keeps her in his mind, making his energy available to her."
"I don't think energy is all he's been making available to her."
Marianne slid her bottle aside and drifted forward near the table's center and stared at James until he noticed. "Speaking as a pokemon who fell in love with a human, back in the old times when that really meant something, Joe's not the one who could get hurt here. I don't mean getting accused of abusing her, or breaking your human taboos about drawing lines between You and Us; I mean hurt. Pokemon are different from humans because our natural impulse is to serve another. A pokemon could have enough power to raze a city and kill thousands in an afternoon and be found playing hopscotch on a playground with its preschooler trainer. Think about it like this: when humans break up, who gets hurt? If both feel like a Master, they feel that they each dismissed the other one. If both feel like servants, they say it was mutual and move on. When one is the Master and the other the subservient, the latter is the one that gets a broken heart. Even if that's the one that caused the break-up, and the only one who saw their relationship that way. Excuse me."
Marianne finished her bottle and gargled its fluid before speaking again.
"As long as he accepts her as she accepts him, they'll both be fine. It won't matter if someday they're doing the wild thing morning, noon, and night; or if he gets married to a nice little human lady and Grace's role is--let's say--supportive. But, if someone like you forces him into the role of a Master, she'll be positioned to get hurt, and he won't really be any better off."
The mismagius turned to face away from James, raising her voice significantly. "And that's why Grace needs to quit squatting on the bucket and get busy joining her trainer inside a good dream before any bitchy spectres show up and eat it." A faint flash belied Grace's teleport. "I hope it was yellow since she left it to mellow."
James smirked and finished his own bottle. "How long?"
She would have coughed, could she. "I'm too drunk to choose a retort for that."
"Grace is confused, about her role, and she's guessing. And, making bad assumptions. I still feel it's wrong."
Marianne collected their bottles and adjusted the subject of conversation. "That the one who gives is the one who suffers? That's simply how it goes." James sat in thought for a moment. Marianne drifted up against his shoulder and spoke low, to be certain that no one would overhear. "That woman hurt you, and you became a solitary Master to escape the pain. Only, that strategy doesn't work, does it?"
"She was hurting both him and me."
"First she hurt," Marianne glanced upward and to the south side of the kitchen, " 'that.' Then, after you removed that problem, after a while she started hurting both of you."
" 'That' was out getting out of hand, but it was only making the problem a bigger issue. After that though, it was like she had to hurt somebody else, instead."
"Some of Us get bound to trainers like her, and when we do, sometimes we can't get out of it so easily. Please, consider that when you see a pokemon trying to grab the brass ring when one comes around, and if those taboos come to mind, just think about what the trainer is doing for his pokemon before thinking about what he is doing to his pokemon. There are a lot of times when it's wrong. A lot. But not always. Once in a while, We look beyond the almost complete lack of strength and ability, and the funny smell your kind leaves on everything you touch, and choose to rub up against a human whose soul is worth getting intimate with."
"I think I've heard enough. Goodnight. Don't follow me." James retired to his bedroom.
Marianne floated into the laundry room, rested her necklace on a wooden clothes hanger, and relaxed, dangling freely as her cohesion balanced the weak gravitational force that pulled her essence downward against a turbulent sea of air. She let the alcohol she had accumulated disperse within her and prepared to pass out after a few seconds. Aside from being fainted or narcotized in combat, it was the closest she could come to sleep. Although it was not a true sleep, her intoxicated mind suffered delusions like a dream, and those dreams of hers were always pleasant.
Shortly after awakening the next morning, Burner stood tall, his feathers slightly fluffed-up with excitement.
Grace's pose was more relaxed. She leaned over Joe's shoulder as he poked at the touch screen of his trainer's device, letting his cereal get mushy while it waited for him to come back to it. "You don't have to do it for me, too, Joe. I don't need--"
"It's the right thing to do. I told Burner the prizes he earns are his; you've won a few at the gym, too, so that money is yours."
After some further fumbling in options menus, Joe got his T.D. to a screen where Burner and Grace could input pass-codes to access their sub-accounts. In the living room, the commercial that had alerted Burner to such an opportunity aired again. Of course, it wanted trainers to assign all of their post-season League account funds to their pokemon so they could benefit from the most savings through maximum expenditure. Burner ran over to see it again, and realized that a critical component of his plan was his getting to Linalool Mall. While Joe finished his breakfast and prepared to leave for school, Burner and Grace teamed up against the T.D. to figure out how to access local bus schedules.
Still on his normal timetable, James awoke just as Joe was about to leave, with Burner coming along to be sure that Joe made a strong debut at high school. He bid them farewell and passed up the bathroom to hit the kitchen first instead. He smelled coffee.
"Brewing up a pot for me? I told you not to read my mind, Grace."
"Ja--Master James, I didn't, I sw--"
"I'm kidding; but fix a mug of that and send it my way." He slipped back into the same chair he sat in the night before. She put extra cream in his and set it before him while she took a seat for herself. "Extra cream wasn't a guess. I told you not--"
"That's not fair!" She swirled her mug gently and gazed into it. "You made me feel you wanted extra cream, so--"
James smirked and leaned back a bit.
Grace turned her head a little sideways.
James took a drink. "This is a little funny; I can see now why Marianne likes messing with us so much."
Grace sipped gently. "You're not taking lessons from her, are you?"
"No. She isn't a very good teacher, if I were."
"Then, what are you taking from her? Last night; that isn't something you do with someone who you don't get along with, like she's been making it look like for Joe, Burner, and me. And the thing about the door; what she told you isn't exactly the whole truth."
James raised his hand to guard against her perhaps elaborating. "Of course it's not. There's always more to it when it involves one of you girls. Including Alice, I learned last night. I'm getting used to it, though."
"Well, whatever is going on, I don't know if you can imagine how it feels for a psychic to be kept in the dark about people they know and care about."
"You use the word when you address me, but I'm not your master. You don't need to care about me."
"Yes, I do, and you're avoiding my question." She took another sip from her mug.
James breathed deeply. "Do you want to be in your ball until Joe lets you out?"
Grace cringed with a start, and reached for a napkin to wipe her cheek and chin as some of the coffee in her mouth escaped. She felt a thousand things she wanted to say, but the only acceptable option was: "No."
They drank in silence until each was half-finished. James prodded. "Why not? You want to push this matter, so push it. So what if I put you in your ball? Have you got big plans between now and when my son gets home?"
"Yes, Master James. I am going to flip his mattress, launder his sheets, and prepare a light meal for when he returns so he can eat and tell me about his big first day."
James squinted one eye. "Tell you? You wouldn't rather read it off of him?"
Grace blushed. "Yes, but, it's better to let him decide what he wants me to hear about and how he wants me to hear it; that's a little bit of advice my mother gave me during our last, uh, connection. Besides, I can always fish for details when he lets me hold him later on."
James shifted uncomfortably. "Did she give you a lot of advice?"
"I don't know. It only seems to come up when I need it."
"Hmm." James drank some more. "Anyway, you'd rather do housework than bully me into talking about something I don't want to talk about?"
"I'd rather do both, but you made me decide." Grace rose and washed out her mug, setting it aside to air dry.
James called out to her as she floated away. "Did you think I'd really do it?"
Grace's momentum turned into a turn about, and she transfixed him with a slight glare in her stare. "Lock me in my ball for trying to find out why you trust that two-faced 'shrieking hell-beast'--your words--more than me, someone who has wanted nothing but the best for the members of the family that saved her from a fate that was bad enough that my mother sacrificed her life?" Grace's expression shifted in a fluid way, as though she asked herself that question and was not sure how she knew the answer. Her voice broke up slightly. "Yes. You would. In a heartbeat. I can see it in you."
"I told you not to read my mind, Grace."
"I--I don't have to. You project it, without trying to." She coasted away to tend to Joe's linens.
Marianne drifted into the kitchen with an unsteady trajectory. The ghost emitted a faint wail as it passed over and somewhat into the coffee pot.
James followed, wrestled the pot away from the fog, and refilled his mug. "I think you were right about her."
Marianne reclaimed the pot. "Good. Now, cut her some fucking slack. I'm going to finish this off, make another fizzing sound, and meet you when it's time to go for your appointment."
"Don't follow me."
"Ooookay." Marianne and the coffee pot faded invisible, although her wide smile seemed to linger a little.
James waited and gently felt the air around him with his free hand. After a few swipes he felt a cool patch of turbulence. "Ghost."
"Consider yourself haunted. Now, go cut her some slack like I told you to."
James stood in Joe's bedroom doorway and watched Grace deliberately ignore his presence while guiding Joe's mattress back onto its box-springs. As it rested, she twitched with a start as she felt his intention to approach and seize her. She turned half his way when his palms landed on her shoulders.
"I'm--I regret threatening you. That was wrong." He pulled her close, into a hug, and whispered against her gills. "I thank you for your concern. For Joe, and for myself. But, I've decided how I want to handle my prob--situation, and I'm not talking about it because I don't want anyone in this house doing the things they would do if I talked about it. If you want to help me, Grace, help me with that."
Drawn so near, Grace was challenged not with resisting a temptation to probe him for answers, but to actively reject his thought patterns as they bombarded her emerald-green nodes. She did the best that she could, but his mental state could not be ignored. She felt that his somewhat-an-apology and his request were both more than sincere, and that he truly wanted her on his side.
As intentional as unintentional, Grace's arms moved to return his hug. "Okay, Dad, I'll help you." Grace's slip of formality startled her, and her leap into a capitalized pronoun doubled that shock. It distracted her enough that her focus blurred and for a moment she saw what was in his mind's eye. A complicated mess, but it featured visions of Joe as his son, and herself, not labeled as one of the family pokemon, but something akin to a daughter-in-law. That association was polluted somewhat, yet deep down he was accepting it favorably. His whole imagination was unstable; there was something logically inconsistent about the notion, that it was only fantasy. She wanted to know why but knew that she had to get a grip before he realized that she was in his head, so she focused on only his acceptance of her until she mounted her resistance again.
He released her and stepped back slightly. "You got warm."
She blushed, in her cheeks and her gills. "Uh, yeah. That happens when we're happy."
"Are you happy when you are with him?"
"Always, Master James. Whe--"
James put his index finger over her mouth. "It's okay. You can say 'Dad.' "
James left. As he passed into the living room, he suddenly felt a sensation like he had coughed and sent a droplet of cold coffee up the back of his nose.
Burner slipped inside Rennin's Pokemart and rather nervously approached the counter when no customers stood in the way. "Excuse me. I wanted to take a bus, but they said I had to buy a pass here."
Ned checked to both sides of the blaziken, somewhat crouched before him as his face would be hidden behind the cigarette dispenser awning above the counter otherwise. "No trainer?"
"Yes, but he's in school. I have money in this." Burner placed Joe's T.D. on the counter.
Ned took it, flipped it open, and poked at the screen a few times. "Shiny gardevoir. I remember him. Two fully-evolved pokemon in his first year; he didn't waste much time. Okay, he cleared you for discretionary purchases but not travel, so technically your trainer has to be here to authorize giving you a card acceptable for public transportation. But I heard about that sale at the mall." He scanned the T.D. and a generic money card before handing both back. "I only put enough on there to get you to Linalool and back and you can't re-load this card, so keep your beak shut and neither of us will get into any trouble."
Coach declared that having physical education at the start of the day was a fortunate turn; get that blood pumping for the rest of the classes. He was alone in his opinion. Despite the first half of the period being consumed by clerical tasks, such as passing out a one-sheet syllabus and being assigned lockers, Coach was sure to pack in as much running around the basketball court as possible during his remaining minutes. In the locker room, one of the students noticed and asked about a broad, deep bruise around Joe's navel as he switched back into his school uniform shirt.
"What? Oh, yeah. I got hurt by one of my pokemon yesterday."
Another student leaned across a bank of lockers from the other side. "That blaziken I saw you with this morning? If you were sparring for fun, accidents happen, but if he's getting rough with you, you need to discipline him fast." He returned to his side and continued. "If your pokemon loses respect for you, you're done."
Joe finished restoring his uniform's configuration. "No, no, he's fine. He wasn't the one that hurt me."
Terrance happened to be in the same class, and gestured at Joe a warning to shut up.
The bank of lockers spoke again. "Oh, what kind was it then?"
Joe did not heed the warning. "Gardevoir."
A few mutterings echoed off of the tiles.
"What, was he pissed off you let him evolve without a dawn stone and sucker punched you?"
"No, something startled her and she accidentally--"
"Hey! Rainer's got a gardevoir girlfriend!"
Hoots, whistles, and laughter echoed off of the tiles for a moment, renewed when one of the chubbier kids, who by all stereotype should have been busy being the one made fun of in a locker room, held an arm out and sang with the bellowing fortitude of an opera tenor, "Syn-chro!"
Coach stepped in and warned everyone that they had thirty seconds to get back to the bleachers for another hand-out and to await dismissal. On their way out, Terrance advised Joe that he should have told them that the blaziken did it.
"THIS IS NOT YOUR POOL!"
Fiona was not sure which was more painful: Marianne screaming against her skull or that the ghost was pulling her head up and out of the water by her antennae. The serpent thrashed about wildly for a quarter minute before finally shaking free of the mismagius. After a brief and futile combat, Fiona slithered away through the fence holes toward her owner's property, escorted by the Rainier's security guard. Once there, she rested her head and a length of her neck in a shallow plastic basin with a few centimeters of water in it beneath some shade and coiled her body tightly behind it.
Sam was tending to Mrs. Finnegan's garden, which he never really stopped improving after the day he and Burner ravaged it, and gave Fiona a blast from a hose, which she appeared to appreciate.
Marianne complained. "Did your home-boy put any forethought into this before getting her, much less letting her squirm around the neighborhood while he's at school?"
Kinking the hose to halt its flow for a moment, Sam reattached it to a small sprinkler near the little pool for Fiona's benefit. "I don't think so. Letting her roam, though, was not his action; I released her."
"Aren't you a revolutionary?" She molested the yellow bulbs on his upper back. "How about you keep a closer eye on her, then?"
"Was she causing trouble?" Sam asked.
"Not yet, but if she was caught in the wild, then she hasn't been trained not to shit in my pool water, and if I have to scoop a dookie I'm going to bring it over here and smear it somewhere impo--"
She was cut off by a thunderclap that knocked her out of the air.
Frankie advanced with deliberate pace, still carrying a massive charge.
Marianne's necklace rose from the grass as her essence returned to its normal configuration. "See, Sam? People don't take kindly to trespassers." She quickly escaped the Finnegan's back yard, taking one more hit from a shock-wave on the way out.
Recovering from the collateral damage he received, Sam hung his head and returned to his efforts while Frankie discharged his excess energies through the sprinkler head and into the damp soil around it before attending to the now-frightened and somewhat-polarized milotic, whose face was hidden by the colorful fin of her tail. She looked at him with begging eyes and--for the first time--spoke in their inhuman language: "I want to go home."