Eternally Vernal, Chapter 1: Accept Superior Substitutes.
Anthony Gates flexed his finger idly as he stared across his rifle's sights. His quarry stood frozen within foliage, idly flexing nothing. Although nature camouflaged the monster well, whenever a wisp of wind passed by, a couple of twigs and the faux pink flowers decorating them failed to sway with their cover. Anthony flexed his finger; straight and then slightly curled again. Every other joint in his body had stiffened from his holding still for so long. No matter: only that finger needed to move. Minutes passed as slowly as hours, his quarry standing motionless. A bug of some unseen sort gnawed into Anthony's flesh, just above his right sock's elastic. His mind drifted to thoughts of buying new socks and those thoughts were not eager ones. Prompted by nothing, the two twigs rose up with the sawsbuck to which they were attached. When they moved forward one meter, Gates' finger flexed again, curling additionally this time. The sawsbuck collapsed and an announcement of his death rang throughout Allylidene Forest. The nearest ranger's station was never as far away as it should be in an ideal world, but even Anthony's nemesis could legally do little more than interrupt during the undertaking. Gates swung his gear over his back and began trudging through the forest's foliage. His first steps came awkwardly and extracted from him a groan. Arriving upon his kill and examining the sight, Gates smirked with self-satisfaction. His shot landed perfectly; clean and instantly lethal. He took a photograph to admire later and got straight to work: hungry predators other than himself lurked throughout this part of the forest.
He was better than halfway through the dressing process when his nemesis arrived. "You're in my sights, so don't try to run this time!" Francois warned, neglecting to specify if his weapon was loaded with ten milliliters or ten millimeters.
Gates worked on, merely commenting, "I hate to disappoint you, but I've got a permit this time. Check my pocket if you want to see it. My hands are busy."
Francois approached, holstering his pistol to examine Gates' paperwork. With a shake of his head and a huff, he began again, "You know they're worth more alive than dead. People paid good money to import them in the first place."
"Tell it to my taste buds, Franny."
"I'd like to tell it to your jaw with my fists."
Gates scoffed as he propped open the buck's body cavity. "What an attitude. Did the little ice princess give you a hard time this morning, or do you need to take a pill to have a hard time these days?" Francois balled a fist and cocked his head, mumbling indistinctly something understood nonetheless. Gates asked, "What was that?" with a contentious inflection. Turning to face Francois, he threw his knife aside—lodging it into the bark of a nearby tree—and took up a boxer's stance. "Come on, say it like you mean it; off the record."
What an invitation this was. Francois took a deep, frustrated breath. "My supervisor's supposed to visit for regular inspection soon."
Keeping his pose, Gates taunted the ranger. "Ohhh, you would like to be a man but you don't want to show him a bruised-up gourd and not have a good excuse for it? Tell him you wrestled with a bear."
"I have regulations and responsibilities to consider!—things a wash-out like you couldn't begin to understand. Now, do you want to swing first and give me my good excuse?"
Gates jerked his head up sharply to indicate a direction in the distance. "Not now that we've got a witness." A glaceon perched upon a felled tree's fragmented stump positioned herself centrally and sat upon it. She wore an ornate vest and a concerned expression.
Francois glanced to his left side briefly. "Then I guess we're done here, for now. Next time, though…" He shook an extended finger in a disciplinarian fashion.
Gates recovered his knife. "Next time, do a better job of distracting your superior so we can have it out proper. I'm tired of not hitting you when you have it coming."
With a flippant gesture, the ranger indicated to his superior that this incident was authorized. With a rude gesture, the ranger bid goodbye to his nemesis.
Anthony did not notice. He was already adjusting his trainer's device's radio to find something that fit his mood while he prepared to haul his kill. Over the hiss of static interference he heard a twig snap, and then another noise in response to the sound that the twig snapper unexpectingly made. Glimpsing what looked like a fluffy flower skimming the edge of visibility behind a bush, "It was a male," Gates whined, "you've gotta be kidding me." A deerling emerged and investigated the buck's corpse as it dangled, making a few inquisitive sounds. Then, more, asking why its questions went unanswered. It reared up and head-butted two suspended rear hooves, anticipating some sort of a kick in response. Along with the rest of their body, those hooves simply turned away a little. Gates weighed his options against his honor and released the one of his houndooms that he carried along this day. The dog appeared with a flash that startled the deerling, which hopped and dashed behind the dead sawsbuck as though it still offered protection. Anthony gave his dog the order that it awaited: "Seth, gently let it know that it needs to fend for itself now."
Seth slowly padded up to the deerling, nudging hanging hooves aside. The deerling stepped back as the dog imposed its presence. When the gap between them closed, the houndoom pushed the deerling away using a thrust of his muzzle. The deerling tumbled but immediately recovered its stance, grunted happily, and leapt against the side of Seth's face to return his shove. Although Seth's balance endured, he hopped backward and looked to Anthony with a perplexed whine.
"Alright, it needs to get the message. Seth, use fire… no, use f-uuuu-raugh. Forget it. That'd probably just make it die." Gates stomped over to stand beside his pokemon, reached down, and picked up the deerling. It did not seem to mind being handled. "Your pappy's dead. Got that?" The deerling made a sound and stared into Anthony's eyes till it could no longer, that moment being when the man carelessly wedged it beneath his left arm, freeing his right to help press obstructions away. Together they traveled northward. Stepping across stones and splashing through some less accommodating spans, Anthony placed the deerling on the far side of a creek. "Now, shoo!" The deerling bleated back. Anthony swung his arms outward toward the deerling in a threatening manner. The deerling reared up and kicked at the air between them. Gates turned around and worked his way back across the creek. The deerling watched intently where he stepped to rejoin his waiting houndoom and to disappear into the woods.
"Don't look at me like that." Francois noticed Freja, as a reflection in a glass trophy of recognition on his table, staring at him. "You know he deserves to be locked up." That reflection's eyes narrowed. "Why don't you go join him or something? I'm sure his houndooms would make you feel right at home."
Her reflection turned away from him. Francois returned to his paperwork. Carefully rotating the task chair upon which she sat to face her own terminal, Freja pawed at a touch screen and examined a weather update, a security camera feed at a nearby public recreation site, and some electronic mail. She glanced at Francois again and wished that she could put him on a different career path.
Gates dragged his quarry back to his vehicle by its antlers and secured it. His mouth watered a little in pavlovian fashion as he thought of what he could make of the meat. He hopped into the driver's seat and expected to turn his key three times before this old heap would turn over. After his second attempt, a clattering noise bade him to turn. A deerling stood upon a wrapped kill, sniffing at it with great interest. Anthony got out and walked to the rear of his vehicle. Picking up the deerling again, he turned it around and as it rotated it exploited an opportunity to lick the man's face. He sputtered and, addressing a deity, cursed loudly. "You know I could twist your neck and throw you in the same hole where I buried your pappy's entrails and nobody'd be the wiser, right?" The creature's attention piqued two-thirds through his sentence; Gates realized that it just figured out the meaning of "pappy," as it responded to the word by looking at the body, then back at Gates. Then, it tried to lick him again and grunted almost a giggle when Anthony barely dodged its tongue.
Again he carried it off into the woods. This time he sought distraction rather than obstruction. Noticing two small berry patches, he approached the first and encouraged the deerling to eat of the three ripened berries that it offered, giving one to the pokemon and taking one for himself. When it finished, he snapped away the third, tantalizingly waved it, and threw it in the direction of the more-distant berry bush. "There, go gorge yourself." The deerling dashed after the thrown berry and the poacher made his retreat, quietly but hastily.
After seven turns of his ignition key, Gates felt as though he were trapped in a monster movie. He glanced into a mirror every time his vehicle sputtered and quit. Always, he saw nothing in the glass but trees and the navigable trail. With the eighth try, it at least ran for a moment, but died before rolling more than a few meters. He glanced again. A terror appeared in the glass, and it had surely heard the engine. With nine turns, his machine roared to life and rolled away, but deerlings in mirrors are closer than they appear. It, and the berry bush branch that it carried in its mouth, vanished beyond the mirror's inside edge. Anthony twisted to look behind himself; surely, it couldn't outrun a—
Gates faced forward when he felt the bump, but the road's course had already escaped his vehicle's trajectory. Away from the trail and into the woods it bounded. Bushes gave way till a mighty tree, unshaken for nearly a century, experienced a strange momentary vibration. One branch, weakened by decay that followed an insect infestation, dropped from its trunk and ensured that the windscreen did not escape intact. Today was now in the running for the most exciting day of that tree's life.
When Gates regained consciousness, it was to a smelling salt improvised from a wild berry: bitten in half, smashed, and now being pressed against and somewhat into his mouth. And also, somewhat up his nose. The berry paste was bitter and unpleasant. So was Gates once he gathered his thoughts. With a busted radiator, his ride was not fit for far. Anthony shoved a deerling beneath his left arm; took up his rifle, an equipment bag, and one cooler with his right; and began walking a trail that led to humility.
Francois had fallen asleep in his—the bottom—bunk. Cued by his first snore, Freja borrowed his identification card so her terminal would permit access to different kinds of information. She nearly leapt out of her skin when a heavy fist banged on the door of her ranger outpost office. Dashing to the back room, she coughed a ball of frost at Francois as much to buy her a moment to cover her tracks as to awaken him for the sake of their needy public.
After planting the seed of a future argument with Freja, Francois opened the door for a disheveled mess that resembled Anthony. "What are you—you look like hell."
"Take this." Gates let his cooler drop to the floor. Both hands now free, he gripped the deerling and shoved it in Francois's face. It licked him, but immediately sputtered and fussed.
"We work to manage the wildlife, but we do not tend to it. If you caught this pokemon, it's your responsibility. You of all people should—"
"Shut up, you skinny prick, and take it. I didn't catch it; it just won't leave me alone!"
Freja interceded and spoke with the deerling for a short time. After a few exchanges, she mounted her chair, activated her own terminal, typed out a message using translatable ideographs, and leaned aside to reveal her display. Francois read the symbols aloud, "Speak Grass-pokemon: battle, exchange, Man—uh, that one's 'teacher' but with something added to it—both are repeated. That might be emphasis, but, I'm not good with symbols."
"Battle and exchange?" Gates tucked the deerling beneath his left arm again so he could emphatically point at it with his right. "You mean this pest thinks I shot that buck so I could be its new pappy?" By raising her right paw and shaking it upward and downward while bobbing her head gently, Freja affirmed. Gates grunted and placed the deerling on the floor. It immediately dashed about the room, disappeared around a corner into another room, and wrecked something. "My head hurts from the crash," Anthony continued to Freja, neglecting Francois's complaints about whatever broke, "Wanna be my ice pack?" With her assent, he adjusted the lower bunk's pillow and crawled upon the cot, and she joined him at the head of the bed, resting her chin upon Gates' well-formed bruises.
Desperate to find foundation for his argument, Francois reminded his superior officer of policy matters regarding security of the non-public side of the building. Freja snarled at him sharply and indicated toward a poster on their wall. It bore the logo of the rangers' service, a stock photograph of smiling agents and their pokemon, and a legend: "In the safety and pleasure of our parks' explorers and denizens, we find our first duty." Accepting his defeat, Francois left to survey the damage as a deerling with a garbage can stuck over its head trotted back into the back room after colliding with the door frame and before colliding with a table.
At sunrise, Anthony let Francois throw him out so his nemesis would have a good moment with which to begin the day. The deerling followed along as Gates returned to the site of his unscheduled detour. Nothing remained of the buck and only fragments of the abandoned coolers could be found. Judging by the claw marks and tracks, he figured that an ursaring got to it; perhaps two. If only he had the appropriate paperwork. He rescued a few surviving non-essentials and documentation from the glove compartment, and attached a transponder so the wreck could be easily located and hauled away in the near future. Signing it over to the park to be sold as scrap would help cover a little of the towing cost, at least; the old heap was worth more dead than alive. Looking about himself, for a moment he thought that the deerling had gone home, but as he left the crash site it leapt from the denser bushes with a berry-laden branch in its mouth. That was just as well. Francois had won his argument against turning their office into the second half of a bed and breakfast, and these berries were not quite as noxious as other varieties in this part of the forest. Holding the branch carelessly so that it hanged to his side and a little behind himself, the deerling stayed near and nipped off a bite every ten meters or so.
When Gates passed by the ranger station again, Madame Wintergreen proved absent, surely on her morning constitutional. Thus, Monsieur Lacroix had free reign over the facility and free rein over the paperwork. "And you failed to recover all remnants of the coolers?"
Gates huffed, not needing to watch the tip of Francois's stylus to know where it was going. "I told you, it looked like 'rings got into it. The missing bits won't be seen again until your next scat survey." If you are going to pay, get your money's worth, right?
"Littering: Mechanisms requiring recovery, one, large, salvageable. Garbage: Non-biodegradable, 'many.' Miscellaneous ranger services provided:" Francois gave Anthony a smirking glance, "Many, in excess of policy; demanding unique accommodation and disrupting work-flow. Alright, put that drawing of a hairy shower drain clog you call your signature at the bottom and remove yourself from my forest." Francois presented the form slate and stylus just barely within reach. The poacher adjusted his underarm deerling a little for balance while reaching across to sign. The ranger flipped the slate again and sent its form to headquarters. A small receipt card emerged from a nearby printer for the sake of Gates' records, which Francois offered with a barb, "Not as hairy as it used to be. Then again, neither is your scalp." Francois lifted his cap and ran his fingers through his own hair as a thrust.
Gates parried. "None of my pokemon have had to learn to use tweezers to pick an embedded tick off of my head." In a way, it was also a question. Gates always wondered if, and then, how, Freja got it off of him.
Francois was already halfway to the washroom to inspect his coiffure. "Clearly it is logistically impossible to fully control, but you know that it's a misdemeanor to take pokemon from the regulated zone of Allylidene without capturing them into registered balls. What do you intend to do with that deerling that you seem to enjoy carrying about as though your woman ordered you to hold her bag while she shops?"
"I don't in-tend a damn thing. I'm going to put it down and walk to town and if it follows me then it came on its own and you can't do a damn thing about that."
Francois returned. "Alas, I would revel in an opportunity to press a charge against you." He leaned over the counter and got a deerling's attention by scratching it beneath its jaw with an extended digit. "Remember, little buck, we rangers take care of your home, and this man shot your sire. You know whose side to be on, no?"
The deerling grunted and sneezed at Francois's face.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
It was not a clock, for it never went tock; once missing a beat, as to side-step a rock.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Counting far too fast, nearly four a second; to his new timer, soon Anthony beckoned.
Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick.
Its rhythm of steps became syncopated. Joyous expressions were not understated.
Pip-pop. Clip-clop. Pip-pop. Clip-clop.
Trying its damnedest to gain greater vantage, it kicked Gates' knee cap and did minor damage.
"Ow!" Tony shouted; then he sat on the ground, questioning motives of this deerling he found.
Cradling his knee by the side of the road, Gates envied drivers for their wheel-enhanced mode.
The man showed his thumb, to implore for a ride. A motorist slowed with a comment quite snide.
"Expert deer hunter limping home with no rack? Hunger's impatient, but that's hardly a snack!"
Removing his boots as to bring in no muck, Gates then clambered up in Velasquez's truck.
Despite one last try to convince it to shoo, the deerling jumped in as to ride along, too.
Settled in the seat, the wild deerling played tame; some ten miles passed; Carlos asked for its name.
"He stays right by me, like the guards in a jail: I'll call him 'Warden,' at least till I make bail."
Nybomy Pokecenter's automatic doors glided open with a hiss. Gates crossed its narrow entryway in only a few paces. He heard another hiss, but the doors were already shut behind him. The lobby proved to be empty and there seemed to be nobody attending the counter. He picked up Warden and perched him upon it. Scanning around, he saw no obvious cause for the sound, yet it persisted. Setting aside his curiosity he called out into the void, "If I leave this here, you guys'll take it away where it'll never find me again, right?"
An arbok wearing a taped-on pokecenter attendant's hat rose from beneath the counter. The hiss came with it for a moment. "If you leave that here…" She flicked her tongue around wildly to sample the deerling's flavor.
"You'll be in your cage again," said a nurse without a name tag as she emerged from the medical wing's hallway. "Never mind Arbok. She's forever in training." Said snake slithered aside and back beneath the counter. "You were saying you want to dump that pokemon here?" asked the nurse.
Gates raised his voice. "I want it to leave me alone."
"So, you caught it because it was pestering you?"
"I didn't catch it. I was in the forest, and," Gates' tone lowered to inflect a combination of anger and despair, "it follows me." The venom building in Anthony's voice got the arbok's attention.
"Well, then buy and register a ball, capture it properly, and take it home. You can't trap Allylidene Forest pokemon just to release them again here at the southern border of the woods. If we—"
Warden went for a walk along the counter.
"Yes, yes, I know the policy and the rules and one of the rangers far too well. Look, I don't want to take care of a game animal and it's not like it'll learn how to be a proper sawsbuck being raised by somebody who tags 'em and bags 'em."
The arbok's tongue flicked into view, preceding its rising head. "Please? I want to be a good girl and help a human."
Alice pinched the tongue when it flicked out again. "No. You're still under restrictions for last week's incident. You've got two more days of dry kibble. Then we can talk about meat."
Arbok slithered into the break room, grumbling, "I'd rather talk to Flareon about meat."
Returning to Anthony, the nurse continued. "Take it back into the forest proper and chase it off if you want it gone. If you put it in a ball, it's yours. You'll be liable for improper release if you trap it and then disobey the Allylidene wildlife protocol."
"I'll be liable to put my boot up a certain ranger's ass is what." Gates left. Warden pursued him.
Seth decided to do it the gentle way. He bit into the fur on the back of Warden's neck and dragged him and his vocal protests off into the woods until Master was out of sight. Then, he coughed up some flames as a warning and told the deerling to leave. It stepped away slowly, made an unfamiliar gesture, and stepped away quickly. Seth hummed with self-amusement; that was easy enough. He expected it would at least try to get past him, since it seemed so doggedly stubborn about—
Jump-kicking Seth in the right side of his muzzle before he noticed any motion nearby, Warden dodged the dog's reflexive flare-up and came around behind him, delivering a pair of strikes just behind his rib cage. "I challenge!" Warden announced with as deep a voice as his tiny frame could muster.
Seth did not acknowledge because who would be Gates' lead was Gates' decision, not either of theirs. However, he did not appreciate this fawn's bravado, and came upon him as though it were a battle for respect. Hearing their commotion behind a row of bushes, Gates sighed and unwrapped a cheese stick taken from his pocket. He knew when he left home that he should have brought Cyrus along for this trip.
A musical chime awakened the hound guarding Gates' flat. Cyrus stood and stretched with a yawn, calmly and leisurely trotting into the kitchen where an automated machine with a musical penchant unsealed and upended a tin of gourmet meat factory seconds. It landed in a plastic bowl with a dull slap and retained half of its cylindrical shape until Cyrus devoured it. Licking his chops, he nudged a button that dispensed water to sate his thirst and his desire to obliterate a gourmet aftertaste. Then, having wiped dry his muzzle against a hand towel wrapped around a soft sponge, he began his patrol. An envelope had been slipped beneath the door. Cyrus picked it up carefully and gently with his mouth to lay it upon a small table nearby. He did not pay any mind to a paper crane also on the floor except to recognize upon it a trace of cologne—nasty, expensive stuff it was. Checking the windows, none showed signs of being forced, and he detected no stray scents of any invaders, anyway. Mostly it was a chance to see what was happening across the street. He saw what he sought, and wished that he were happening across the street, too. Finally, he hopped onto the couch, turned on the television, and slung himself against a pillow. Guard duty sucked; at least television didn't.
"Back so soon?" Arbok wiggled her ribs to make her warning pattern ripple attractively. Gates shook his head and placed a pokeball on the counter. Arbok picked it up in her mouth and asked, "Gi' iou ge' ge giyyaa?" She dropped the first ball into a hopper and flicked a touchscreen button with her tongue. "I've been daydreaming about that deerling thrashing about—right here," she indicated a spot with the tip of her tail, "ever since you left."
"No. Sadly, I couldn't leave it like it was." Gates placed a shiny new ball on the counter.
Arbok folded her ribs downward a bit. "My dreams never come true." After a moment, she exchanged the balls, and a minute later, returned both. "Nybomy Fields Pokemon Center thanks you for your patronage."
"You gotta say it like you mean it."
"I gotta get a better job."
"I've never heard a pokemon complain about Pokecenter work."
"You've never worked for her," Arbok whispered while rolling her eyes and gesturing toward the break room.
"I could make you an offer, but I don't train talkers."
With a hasty, "Never a single word, I'll promise," Arbok slithered away to surrender the primary terminal to Nurse Alice, just now having emerged from the break room. Arbok muttered something to herself in her own forked tongue as Anthony walked away from the counter and into a trap.
Entering the pokecenter's teleportation room, he swiped his trainer's card through a slot, pressed a button, and took a seat. Before he had time to sift through a pile of old magazines for anything distracting, a flash within three silver pillars snatched up his attention. With a grumble, he stood and tried to leave before—
Another flash put before him a kadabra, and the kadabra put before the doorway a barrier made of psychic energy. "Slow down, Friend!" he heard in his mind, "Let me show you my vision. It changed and I think it's important."
"I'm not interested in your perverse fantasies, Kit." He stepped around her but struggled ineffectually to pass through the barrier.
"It's not a perverse fantasy," she asserted, "and trust me, I had to get used to the idea, myself. You don't even have whiskers. But, I know what I saw, and—" she took his hand.
He took it right back. "Then find a xatu, smoke 'em peace pipe, and trip your way to a different vision. I'm not training a Psychic-type, and I'm not doing whatever other verbs you've got involved with me in your head. And, drop this barrier."
"I wish you wouldn't be like this. Every time, the next vision I get is a little darker than what little I remember of the last one. I want to help both of us. I don't think it's too—"
"Kit!"
"At least let me take you where you need to go. I'm sorry that my visions make it hard to be professional, but you paid to be teleported."
"Keep the fare. I'm not giving you a second chance to feel me up. Drop the barrier; I'll catch a wagon."
Kit exhaled deeply. "Thank you for choosing TeleTaxi for your transportation needs, proudly serving Ocimene for over forty years." She waved her left hand and as the barrier flickered away, Gates exited, halting only to turn for a moment and order, "And, stop having visions of my future."
Hearing the sliding doors' hiss, she collapsed into the chair in which he had sat, and complained aloud, "I wish that I could, you grouchy…" Distracted by a vision, one of the better ones, fading into darkness, Kit forgot what she was going to call Gates as she squeezed her eyelids shut—to no avail. It was gone; completely. Kit stood and rubbed her forehead with a spoon. It was weird, feeling like you had just awakened after thinking about literally nothing, somehow. She soon realized what had happened to her and wondered which possible future just died as she left the teleportation alcove and sought a vending machine, hoping that if it had anything to do with that human, Anthony, whom she kept seeing in her visions, it was a bad possible future that was now averted. Kit's curse was an imagination unwaveringly wishful.
Outside, the sun set over Anthony Gates and Nybomy Fields as the former searched the latter for a bus stop. Finding one, he bought a ride to Guaiacol.
Warden stared down Warden.
Warden stared right back.
The bus driver picked up his public address microphone and announced, "Will the passenger who owns this deerling kindly recall it; again."
Having backed up eight rows, Warden cast an effect upon himself and charged down the aisle. The other Warden hunkered down a bit, tensed his body, and when Warden came within one pace of the yellow warning line, sprang forward, colliding head-to-head with the unruly creature. Warden's body collapsed like a rag doll, nearly crossing but still behind the line. The other Warden carried most of Warden's momentum and splattered against the bus's broad front glass.
Gates awoke from his exhausted slumber with two taps on his shoulder to see the bus driver stomping down the aisle. "Hey, Mistah!" spoke a voice just behind himself, "You're gonna get in trouble, now."
"Sir, you seem to have forgotten to lock your pokemon's ball," admonished the driver, through his teeth.
Leaning over to glance down the aisle between the driver and the seating, "Is it dead?" Gates asked.
"No, but if it doesn't stop treating my bus like an Isshu subway car," the driver leaned in close, "or if I ever run into you in a dark alley, your deerling might ask that about you." He stood up straight and continued, "Recall your pokemon and lock its ball, or you will limp on foot to your destination."
Anthony rose from his seat and felt an urge to give the driver an invitation to join him on the nearby trainer's route, but then he noticed the bottom edge of a tattoo that the driver's uniform otherwise covered. He recalled Warden, and satisfied the driver by making a small presentation of his locking the deerling's ball. With both the driver and the passenger returned to his respective seat and the bus having returned to motion, the next-seat-back spoke again.
"You got lucky, Mistah. When he throws somebody off the bus, he actually throws 'em." Gates' audience ignored his intentional ignorance. "Hey, I'm not sayin' nothin', but you don't seem like the pink flower antler type. You came up here to catch a deerling, or is there somethin' else goin' on?"
Gates grunted. "I came up here to bag a sawsbuck. This deerling's a temporary inconvenience."
"Ah, so you're one of those guys who gotta kill to feel like ya' earned yer trophy."
"I eat what I kill. Any trophy value is secondary."
The bus hit a bump. "Hmmm, so you're gonna farm up the little one and save it for a special occasion?"
"I paid for a ride, Stranger, not for an interrogation."
The audience leaned back with a smirk. "Sorry, Mistah. I didn't mean nothin' by it. Gotta keep the skills sharp, ya' know." The bus hit another bump that somehow jarred loose the stranger's artificial accent, and possibly let another settle in its place. "Do you care to trade it? I'll let you pick any ball from my belt." Anthony leaned up and turned in the seat, and looked his audience in the eyes for a long moment. A complaint bounced off of Anthony's back as he relocated to near the front of the bus: "You're going to resist an offer this sweet? What a drag." The ditto on the dashboard gurgitated to investigate a sharp chirp well above the range of human hearing that sounded from the rear of the vehicle, but it saw only a familiar fellow saying something to the seat behind himself.
Approaching home with his master, Seth sounded a particularly sharp bark. Cyrus hid the evidence, got into the foyer, planted his ass on the floor, and fired off a welcoming bark just as the door opened wide. Cyrus's effort seemed almost a waste, as his master paced by as though in a daze—noticing nothing were there anything to notice and barely crossing his dog's scalp with his fingers—and headed straight to his bedroom. His equipment—what remained of it—landed in a heap halfway down the hallway.
Seth pushed shut the door, reared up, and clawed into its locked position the deadbolt. "O, Cyrus, venerable guardian of the realm! What merciless news weighs heavily upon my heart."
Cyrus gave Seth a quick nuzzle and once-over. "Speak freely, my brother."
"Our master has let himself be impressed, and now our number is three." Seth followed Cyrus around a bar and into the kitchenette, where the latter activated an override so the can opener would provide the dinner that a so soon snoring human would not. "But, that our order expands is not the dreadful factor; it is that this addition is—" Food slipped from a can. Seth's mouth became full, plugging his purple prose pipe.
Cyrus triggered the water dispenser and watched a basin fill slowly. "Please, Brother, leave me in suspense."
Seth partially choked while swallowing the second third of his dinner. "It is prey. Youthful prey." Cyrus canted his head. "If you think me mad, examine our lordship's balls and discover the truth for yourself." Seth returned to the remainder of his meal.
"Adopting prey? If that's a fact, it is not you, Brother, who I will fear is mad." Cyrus trotted to the hallway and inspected his master's equipment, finding little left but the rifle, one cooler—its contents now gone somewhat warm and likely to ruin—and a few small necessities. This filled Cyrus with a sense of disappointment and understanding of his master's tacit retreat into his bed. Cyrus dragged the gear bag away from future under-foot as he backed into the living space. "Am I right to assume that the capture of a new pokemon is not the only newsworthy event you know about?" he asked once he let the bag's strap fall from his mouth.
Seth finished wiping his face, although the wrapped sponge was running out of surface area clean enough to clean with. "There are minor details. Our lordship failed to convince the prey to seek other stewardship at one time and at another he ordered me to defeat it; which I did but only after suffering injuries. In that I may be responsible for its imposition; perhaps, if I were soundly victorious, our lordship would not have accepted its prowess. Also, the automobile was killed."
Cyrus mantled the couch. "Killed?"
"I was within my capsule, but I heard a great noise, and since then I have learned that our lordship traveled from the forest on foot with no equipment but that," Seth gestured to what Cyrus removed from the hallway, "which he could bear upon himself. The prey contributed no aid at all; naturally."
Seth joined Cyrus on the couch after the latter had activated the television's remote control and asked, "What kind of pokemon did he trap?"
"Deerling, a male of spry body, forceful manner, and impertinent attitude. Be aware of his hooves, for they are swift and deliver mighty blows despite his stature. Although my fire brought him to collapse when he challenged me, I underestimated him and almost suffered a careless defeat." Seth glanced away with great embarrassment, the spade at the tip of his tail whipping about nervously.
Cyrus recalled some bad beats that he suffered when he was youthful and foolish enough to underestimate a sawsbuck, and drew a conclusion. "Jump-kick is an effective solution to a houndoom problem. You know now to keep just out of range and let your fire overwhelm their kind?"
"Yes, my brother. I applied my field training at once and protected our honor!"
Cyrus shushed Seth, warning him to settle down. "Our honor does not rest on your record in battles that you enter unprepared or under orders to use restraint. Now, it rests on how we welcome and properly position our new comrade."
Seth watched an infomercial demonstrate the amazing, instantaneously destructive power of a premium blender. "Might our lordship seriously consider bringing prey into our fold? Can we benefit from its addition? Would it aid our hunt? Might it partake of the bounty and consume the flesh of its own kind?"
Cyrus pressed his head into a couch pillow and fondly remembered the silence of solitude that he enjoyed minutes ago. "Maybe. If master takes a job that carries us into watery territory, a proficient Grass-type might be our salvation." Seth did not like any part of that idea, so he put it out of his mind and stared at the television screen till his eyelids shut out its glow.
At daybreak, the dogs went to the eastern window after drawing open the shades with a customized pull rope, and worshiped the rising sun in their own strange way. Some time after daybreak, the dogs went to their master's room and worshiped their earthly lord by laying themselves beside his body and becoming uncomfortably warm. Gates shooed them away and wandered into his bathroom. At that point Cyrus returned to the window and gazed across the street while Seth turned on the television and salivated at commercials promoting greasy breakfast foods.
Warden's ball remained clipped and locked.
Cyrus, disappointed in not having seen what he sought, turned away from the glass and behind the couch he soon passed. "I wish he would hurry up. I haven't smelled fresh air in a week."
"O, Cyrus my brother I am fearful to report that there is nothing welcoming about fresh air." Seth buried his snout beneath a pillow near the couch's arm rest. "The scents of home," he continued slightly muffled, "are the ones for which to long."
Gates stumbled down the hallway, tripped not on the pile of gear that found its way away in the meantime but rather on his own still-aching feet, and mindlessly prepared a bachelor's breakfast: store-brand cereal. The milk in the refrigerator—um, don't ask. After a few bites, he resigned himself to a conclusion that it would taste better soggy and tended to his hounds' breakfasts in the interim. Cyrus took mental note of this variation in protocol while Seth rushed into the kitchen as though his bowl were about to receive a gift of manna. With all residents inside the kitchen paying fullest attentions to emptying bowls, the television's news bulletin was heard by none.
Rinsing out his own bowl, Gates yawned while he spoke. "Seth; Warden—the deerling—you're able to talk with him a little at whatever level wild pokemon can handle."
Seth barked an affirmation.
"Good. He'll be your detail, at least for today. Stick to him like glue and get him domesticated a-sap. I'm still feeling knackered so I'm tucking back in for a few." He unlocked Warden's ball and pitched it to Seth. It jostled and opened itself a second after Seth let it fall from his maw. Gates found some grapes in his refrigerator's crisper. He tried one; they had gone a little sour but beggars can't be choosers. He stripped them free and into his breakfast bowl, which, placed upon the floor, ensured that Warden had something to eat. Yawning again, Gates returned to his bedroom and shut its door before the deerling—it being completely mesmerized by a new environment—thought to follow along. Facing what felt at the time like the most important decision of his day, Gates set his alarm for ten-something; as if: it would not be but about an hour before a shattering cascade did the honors of welcoming Anthony back to the waking world.
The first step in training a persian is to train it to accept being trained. Positive reinforcement helps, but often a reward or incentive is required. This one stalled. Her trainer complained, but she had trained him to wait at least a little while before picking up another match, even though any medications thus far applied would have finished their work. "Finally," she purred to herself; the one she awaited arrived.
"Where's your vest?" Cyrus asked. He had never seen her on the town without it and liked the change. Ultramarine simply was not her color.
"I felt restless and went for a walk on my own, and, yeah; got ambushed. Master won't let me do that again for a while."
Cyrus stepped closer to her. "That's why you haven't been out, recently?"
Isis scoffed, "You'd better not be accusing me of cowardice," and pounced against Cyrus, knocking him off-balance as she landed with a twisted half-flip, "because once I get my numb-skull to understand that I need to learn u-turn, I'll hunt that urchin down and even the score. It's too bad, the move won't be any extra help against you."
Isis's owner whistled as one of the park circles became vacant. Isis and Cyrus took positions and brawled until they grew weary, while Gates trained Seth's agility with a flying disc for a while. After watching a few throws, Warden cast agility proper upon himself and began outperforming Seth, despite his smaller mouth. After returning the disc to Gates, Warden would dash away a few meters and turn, facing Gates with a strange stance; somewhat like that of a playful dog, but with a violent glare in his eyes and a welling tension. Noticing this, Anthony cast away the disc, studying Warden as he sprang forward for a pace before turning to follow the toy. A flashback stunned Gates' mind, recalling a moment when a sawsbuck burst from a hide and charged him. The memory was enough to make a few once-broken ribs ache again. Clearing his thoughts and observing Warden approaching him with a prancing gait, Anthony beckoned the deerling to come close as he knelt, and when he reached for the disc, Warden dropped it aside and ducked beneath his arm to twist around and lick his new mentor's chin before the man would have a chance to react. Gates looked into the pink-furred thing's deep umber eyes. The glare was still there, but now it hid behind a shining joyfulness. Feeling strangely comforted yet nervous, Gates asked his deerling to show him how fast he could move and suggested that he face downfield. Warden trotted away, shaking his body as though it were wet while a sparkling gleam spilled over it, accumulating at his hooves for a moment before his assuming a ready stance. Gates threw the disc with as much speed as he could muster. It was no match for his hasty deerling.
After exercising his pokemon at the park, Anthony realized that he needed to know what human-grade foods his new shadow should and should not eat. Like hell he would eat kibble to convince Warden to try it. Seating himself at a pokecenter terminal, he learned that the pokedex service focused on the diet of wild deerling, in particular ways to bait one with treats hoping for a peaceful capture. Warden whined and, relatively speaking, gently, double-kicked Gates' right thigh to lodge his complaint about their loitering near a glowing rectangle. Anthony dismissed him with a limp scolding. Warden whined again, but at the rectangle to complain now about its entrancing his master: Guaiacol's center had a small restaurant, Warden smelled something good, and Anthony was ignoring both.
Giving up on wading through documentation and logging into League communications, Gates immediately received a query from Velasquez. "Yeah, I got one, too," Anthony replied, before placing his trainer's device on a cradle and syncing for updates. Distracted while receiving another message, he shushed Warden for whining again, much more loudly on both parties' parts. "I don't know," he added to his next message to Carlos, "every job I've taken from him went south. I wouldn't mind a heavier right rear pocket, though. There's always an extra zero on the check, pass or fail."
Warden's patience with staying beside his master because he was supposed to shrank before the annoyance of being ignored and not being accompanied to where the food smell was coming from. Sipping a deep breath, he suddenly bellowed and knocked Anthony out of his seat while rattling the partition surrounding the kiosk. A nurse leaned across the front counter and admonished the poacher, "Sir, please instruct your pokemon to refrain from using combat techniques inside the facility. This is Guaiacol Pokecenter, not Olivine Pokecenter."
Gates logged off of the terminal, crossed the facility, and ordered two B.L.T.'s, intending to give Warden the L's. Sneaking a cast of agility, Warden claimed the yet-complete B.L.T. as his own while his master's hands were busy peeling apart the other sandwich's layers. But for the sour scolding he received, he would've dared steal a bite from the second one, if only for the B.
"Loving its trainer is not considered a disease in pokemon."
Warden leapt off of an examination table and landed awkwardly in Gates' lap, twisting his head around to lick the man's face.
"Although," the staff doctor continued, "after he evolves, that sort of expression may result in you needing medical attention." She slipped a card into Gates' T.D. and returned it to him. "They get too big for the jumping-on-people kinds of play."
"I've dealt with plenty of his kind. I know what they can do." Anthony pushed Warden's tongue away and looked into the deerling's sparkling eyes. He realized that his method of dealing with Warden's kind normally involves things like a scope or a rifled slug.
"Pure-blooded ones?" She asked with an implying tone.
"Whatever ones are runnin' around the Allylidenes. His pappy seemed pretty typical for a sawsbuck."
"Mister Gates, according to the blood-work, your deerling was probably sired by a rapidash. It could be a paternal grandfather, but either way, those horses are hard to handle. Don't be so sure you know what he can or will do until his post-evolution personality shows through."
"A dash of 'dash, eh? That'd explain his Fire-type courageous streak. The flash of a pokeball opening spooked him a bit, once, but this little bastard isn't afraid to stare down my houndooms. Should I put some time into testing what he might've inherited?" Gates gripped Warden and lifted him up while turning him mostly upside-down, somewhat cradling him with his legs and hooves clustered upward and then slipping a hand beneath to tickle his belly. Warden bleated in a chuckling tone.
"Of course, but I strongly recommend that you train him in a manner that favors teaching him return over frustration."
Warden's ears perked up at a distant sound. He kicked about, and as soon as Gates released hold of him he descended and ran out into the hallway. "Advice taken," Gates replied as he left the room with a hurried step, hoping to avoid trouble. When he reached the mouth of the medical wing's hall, he found Warden standing with his legs splayed and locked, his head low to the ground and making a rumbling groan.
"He wants to fight me; let him fight me," said an exotic bird to its master on the other side of the large pokeball pattern emblazoned on the lobby floor.
A woman pounded the counter-top she stood behind with her open palms. "No fighting in the pokecenter! We're not Olivine; take it outside." The head nurse on duty was sick of reminding people of this, today.
The bird's master, a latter-aged teenager, led the way out onto the lawn. "It's good that the pokecenter is right here; you know that fletchinder is a Fire/Flying-type, right? Grass can't touch it." The trainer continued to restrain his bird which no longer struggled to face off in the lobby, but did stare at the deerling with daggers in his eyes.
"I can guess by its color," Gates admitted with a resigned tone. "Go ahead and put my deerling in its place; it needs to learn what a Fire can do to it when it wants to." Warden dug his hooves into the lawn near the sidewalk leading to the pokecenter. He glanced back at his mentor. Gates sensed a particular meaning in that look. "Standard wager?" he asked of the bird keeper.
"You want me to put your deerling in its place, but you want to put it on the record?"
Anthony had not yet looked away from his deerling. "Warden, did your pappy teach you how to hunt hawks?" Warden glanced back at Gates again, chuckled, faced his foe, and stroked the grass with a hoof. "He's holding no item, so let's double it."
The other trainer agreed and released his bird. Wasting no time, it flew upward in two broad circles before diving down upon the deerling and casting an ember against it. Warden was scorched but leapt aside and briefly shined as he elevated his potential for speed. The bird circled again and cast another ember. Warden stumbled a bit and glowed again. The fletchinder darted upward, surrounded itself in a veil of fire, and looped over itself, swooping downward. On its way it focused its vision on the deerling below. He watched carefully looking for a clue—his own strategy was simple enough, burn the Grass-type, but the deerling issued this challenge—why? The ground approached and the fletchinder banked. Having done nothing but cast agility upon himself, the deerling could only hope to try at dodging this flame charge that should surely knock him senseless. Warden's legs buckled, but he did not turn. He wasn't dodging left or right. He was dodging—forward? This deerling was mad! Time seemed to slow down for the fletchinder as Warden leapt upward and forward. A jagged glow, a nearly-blue white, now surrounded the tuft upon Warden's head. The bird could only brace for impact.
Although Jim knew that his pokemon retained the advantage, this duel was not worth taking further undue risk. He recalled Matchbox and thus forfeited before a Warden with fur more lamp black than sienna brown staggeringly rushed headlong toward where his bird came to rest after the combatants' collision. Warden continued through that place, through a shrub, and into the pokecenter's exterior wall. The wall was not weak to electric and seemed to increase the ensuing recoil damage. Jim scoffed at that display and started walking toward the pokecenter's entryway, commenting, "Breeding in wild-charge isn't an excuse to be an asshole."
"Excuse you," replied Anthony.
Jim paused. "Your pet deerling's just barely fast and strong enough to maybe put a real trainer's pokemon on the mend and hold a team back a week. Is that what you do for fun, old man: try to screw up a seniors' summer journeying by putting a Grass-type with a tricky inherited move or two against a pokemon with a total advantage in every other way? I'm not rescheduling my badge appointment for your amusement."
"Listen up you little brat, none of this was my doing. I took mine in for a medical clearance. He ran off down the hall and when I caught up your bird was squawking about having a fight. Is that what you do for fun: pick fights when your pokemon has a total advantage and then make excuses when you take a bigger hit than you expected?"
"Whatever, old man. Why don't you worry about what's left of your deerling? He's still got his ass in the air and his head in a bush, you know." Jim entered the center.
Gates extracted Warden, shoved him beneath his left arm, and carried him inside. As he stood behind Jim, gently stroking an unconscious Warden's charcoal-coated coat with his fingertips while both waited for recovery service, Anthony reflected on Jim's words. "Old man," specifically. Had it been that long?
Yes, it had.