Pokémon Azure
Chapter 2: What Do You Do
(Jason Fremont)
"I said get back!" Jason barked, his already short temper burned down to the wick. "What don't you understand?" Even Golduck, who should have been leery of the type disadvantage, only managed to pull a withering look of frustration before he widened his stance and hunkered down, ready to deliver Jason's next command.
The smudge-nosed Voltorb was back. Jason couldn't understand it. He'd known Pokémon could be territorial, but this was ridiculous. For a second he'd toyed with the idea that there was an Aggro Device hidden somewhere around the Power Plant that made the young Electric-type so aggressive, but he quickly dismissed that idea. The other wilds had long since learned to give their group a wide berth. It was only this one that kept coming back for more.
The Voltorb dropped low again, as it usually did, and swayed back and forth like an Arbok getting ready to strike. Jason let out an aggrieved, loud sigh and ended it with an order of "Tail Whip!" to Golduck. He couldn't bring himself to unleash something even middle-of-the-road powerful like Confusion at the poor thing. It clearly had delusions of grandeur, and while he wanted it to bug off, he didn't want his attacks to stray into the territory of overkill.
Golduck shot forward into a tight somersault spin, his long blue tail lashing across the front of the Voltorb's body/face. It gave a surprised, jolting zap sound and backed off several feet, but it wasn't quite done yet.
In a way Jason was, perversely, a little happy for the distraction, as infuriating as this random wild was. It gave him something else to think about; anything else was better than dwelling on last night.
"Left!" he called to Golduck, just in time. The Voltorb released a fairly impressive Thundershock for a low-levelled creature, and Golduck was able to avoid the attack only by a hair.
Jason had eventually been able to fight off the automatic grimace that crossed his face every time he was able to predict, with eerie accuracy, the onset of an Electric-type move, but it was a close thing. He didn't think he'd ever get used to it, but at least he could use it to his advantage.
Golduck continued to trade blows with the Voltorb, and even though it was the last thing Jason wanted, his thoughts automatically started to shift. Any time he had a spare moment that wasn't filled with movement or action, Gina's face blossomed in his mind. The first few times this had happened he'd physically turned his head to the left or right, as if doing so would allow him to look away from an image inside his mind. Only after the first several hours of mortification following their strange near-miss was he able to deal with his feelings head-on.
What had he meant to do? Even he didn't know. Not for the first time and not for the last, Jason cursed his own unpredictable spontaneity. In the moment it had made so much sense. Now that the moment was gone he couldn't think where his head had been. Thank God Gina had bailed, though a large part of him was sorely disappointed that she had. What had he expected? For her to fall into his arms because he'd thrown a poisoned barb into a group discussion yet again and had gone off to sulk over his ex-fiancée's personal belongings? He was a mess more often than he wasn't a mess, and he thought longingly back to the days before the Pallet siege. While he had been getting Aerodactyl to warm up to him, recovering from his injury and watching the research staff work he had started to feel almost normal.
Golduck finally succeeded in chasing the Voltorb away, though he had to actually run after it to do so. Jason's Pokémon vanished momentarily down a corridor that branched off to the right. There were a few lingering, jittery electric sounds, silence, and then Golduck came sprinting back.
"You didn't pack its shoes with cement and drop it into a lake, did you?" Jason joked in a deadpan voice as Golduck drew near. Golduck paused and gave him a very concerned look, and Jason rolled his eyes. "I'm joking. I know Voltorb doesn't have shoes. Or feet. And there's no lake. Seriously…"
That was one of the cooler things about Alana's bi-monthly visits to detox their teams. Jason got a regular reel of insight into his team's personalities, speech styles and opinions, short though those windows were. Golduck was serious and literal, and sarcasm and turns of phrase often went right over his head. In the days before the GIZMO Jason had often though the blank stare his Water-type would give him was the result of a lingering headache, but now he knew better.
Jason gave his duck a small smile, then pulled his Dex out of his pocket to check the time. It was off, but it was a habit he hadn't been able to kick yet. Jason huffed out a soft laugh, staring down at his own reflection in the black screen. Alana had smuggled them a portable generator, an ironic need for a group of renegades who lived in a power plant, but the fact remained that none of them were confident enough to rewire the hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity in the walls to make it safe to charge their devices. They took it in turns to juice up their phones, Dexes, PDAs and other assorted pieces of tech, and Jason's was only at 30%. Even when it was nearing full power he kept it off for the sheer fact that there was no reason to keep it on. Everyone he wanted to contact was under this roof with him, and if Alana needed them she would send out a group text to everyone's phone using Alan Zachariah's secure line. They took it in shifts to keep at least one phone on so her messages could reach them.
Jason watched as the smile slipped off his face to be replaced with a haggard, worn expression he still couldn't reconcile as being his own. For a second he was perfectly torn between two modes of action, but in the end he tipped himself over one way and powered on his device. While it took the groaning half a minute to wake up and figure out what was going on, Jason realized he had to amend his previous statement.
Everybody he needed to talk to was under this roof with him, or accessible via Alan Zachariah's secure phone line—but there was one person he wanted to talk to that he couldn't. They'd blocked their parents' assorted numbers long ago, but it hadn't taken long for family members to reach out to their children from other phones. Calls flooded in from neighbors' landlines and payphones in Centers. Now, more often than not, everyone kept their phones on silent or off. Jason's Dex finished its long boot-up process and he scrolled through his now-short list of saved files. He'd offloaded almost everything onto Gav's terabyte drive, hoping that the lack of clutter would make his Dex run faster. No such luck.
The video file he wanted was the third item on his list, and since he had saved it directly from the link he'd covertly sent himself from Gav's PDA, the file name was a jumbled mass of alphanumeric nonsense. It was probably better that way. Jason didn't know what he would have named the file otherwise. "Shit that breaks my heart that I should delete?"
Jason clicked "play."
Two austere but slightly aging news anchors sat side-by-side for that faltering, awkward second of silence before they got the "OK" sign to start talking. Then their blank faces morphed into expressions of grim determination. The story they were about to report on would not be a fluffy human interest piece.
"KITV-7 comes to you with breaking news on the attack on Pallet," the anchorwoman on the left said, her face stern and the faint wrinkles around her eyes standing out in harsh contrast. Jason always figured they'd replace her soon with a fresher, younger face. "Linda Fremont, ex-wife of Vermillion Gym Leader Nathan Fremont and mother of two of the Pallet renegades, Jason and Orion Fremont, has finally given a statement to KITV-7 reporters. Let's take a look."
Jason thought "given a statement" was a liberal term for the clip that came next. A respectable gaggle of pushy reporters had his harried mother cornered outside the steel and glass office building where she worked and were shoving microphones and recording devices in her face. Even pale, exhausted, thinner than he remembered, and surrounded by a swarm of nosy paparazzi, Jason's mother was fierce and terrifying. Her hair was disheveled and she wasn't wearing makeup, but her blue eyes blazed as she fixed a random camera in the bunch with a cold, hard stare.
"Alright, you," a shrill bleep blotted out her word, but Jason could read her lips, "buzzards, you want a statement? You want me to say something for you?" Her voice was so snide on the last part, and Jason had never heard her slip up and swear like that in public. "If anyone goes near my children they'll be tied up in legal repercussions so long and protracted they'll never see another minute's peace. I don't care if they're of age, no one has any proof they were anything but heroes to Pallet." Jason could hear snips of follow-up questions, words like, fleeing the scene and key witnesses. His mother ignored them all and snapped her eyes back to the camera. To Jason, it looked as if she was seeing straight across the hundreds of miles between Saffron and here, looking straight at him. "Jason, Orion. You come and find me. You hear me? You come and find me and we'll get through this." Her voice cracked and broke on the last part, and she turned and vanished through the double doors. A stressed-out security guard Jason didn't recognize moved to barricade the doors and keep the press out. He wondered vaguely what happened to Wally, the rotund and aging guard he remembered from his youth.
Jason shut off his Dex.
Golduck was watching him with some measure of wariness, his crimson eyes sizing Jason up far better than he wanted. "What?" he asked his Pokémon, with no real feeling behind it.
"Your team always knows when something's wrong."
Jason didn't jump, and was proud of himself for not doing so. Still, a curl of brilliant frustration scored through his stomach as he recognized the voice. Already not disposed to take kindly to people who snuck up on him, Jason was even less forgiving when the person in question was Nathan Fremont.
Not feeling like speaking, Jason remained quiet, assuming his father had some kind of monologue prepared. When Fremont didn't say anything Jason finally turned to face him. "Yes?" he asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice and failing miserably.
Fremont didn't pursue his earlier topic, opting instead to change the subject. "Little risky, training your Water-type in a place like this, isn't it?"
Jason huffed out a humorless laugh. "Golduck can handle anything this place has to throw at us, and then some," he said, feeling like he had to defend the strength of his team, and also feeling ashamed for that knee-jerk reaction. He didn't have anything to prove to his father.
Fremont was quiet for a bit. "I don't doubt that," he finally said, "but even if your Golduck was under-leveled, I'd still approve of pitting him against a building rife with nothing but type disadvantage. Then he knows what the very worst can be."
Jason was tempted, for a second, to tell his father about how he had defeated Avery in Cinnabar with Ivysaur and Ivysaur alone, in a gritty, high-paced, six-on-one battle, but didn't say anything. Again, he had to tell himself he had nothing to prove to his father. There was no reason to long for his approval or the knowledge that he'd made him proud.
Jason had been silent while he was grappling with himself internally, and Fremont sighed. "Okay," he said, with the tone of someone cutting through the bullshit, "I get that you and I aren't going to be building a bridge into our future together, but do you want a training partner for tonight?"
Jason stared at his father, trying to break him down into lines of data he could analyze, but he'd never been good at that. For the third time he had to tell himself that he shouldn't want anything from this man who had abandoned him and his mother, but he couldn't deny that the idea of having a training partner who wouldn't shoot him miserable, worried looks every five seconds was tempting.
Fremont was quiet and let his son vacillate. When Jason finally tossed up half a testy shrug, Fremont just nodded and backed the few steps away to give their arena some space. Jason was suddenly facing a battle where he'd have to back up his boast about Golduck, or else return his Water-type and swap him with something that could handle his father's roster better. Stubbornness flared in his chest and he nodded to Golduck, who, for his part, didn't appear nervous. Jason wasn't sure if it was because he looked forward to the challenge, or because he trusted his trainer.
The image of Venusaur's multicolor, blotchy flower, half magenta, half deepest crimson, curled to life in Jason's mind. He shook it off.
His father's choice was Electabuzz. He certainly wasn't pulling any punches, Jason noted, and nodded to his Water-type. "I'm not gonna shout a bunch of orders at you, buddy," Jason said to his duck. "You know what to do. Just listen for when I tell you to dodge, okay?" Golduck nodded to show he'd understood, while Fremont hadn't given a single directive to his Pokémon.
Neither trainer gave a command. The creatures before them inherently knew that it was time to start and leapt into action immediately. Golduck kept his distance, emitting the invisible yet warbling rapid pulses of Confusion. Electabuzz crossed his beefy forearms over his face and crouched down to endure it. Jason waited for a twinge of premonition that would precede a powerful electric strike, but didn't feel anything. He turned out to be correct, for a second later Electabuzz shot forward for a Quick Attack that Golduck had to slide aside to avoid. Golduck turned the motion into a Tail Whip, which caused Electabuzz to rear back to avoid it. In that moment of unsure footing, Golduck hit it across the belly with Scratch.
Then Jason felt it. "Right!" he called.
Golduck didn't hesitate before rolling to the right. A second later a bolt of energy charred the ground where he had stood.
Jason couldn't help it. His first reaction was to glance up at his father to see if he had noticed. Fremont, for his part, wasn't looking at Jason, instead watching the battle. Jason tried to clamp down on the disappointment before it bloomed inside him, but it was no good.
Golduck issued forth Water Gun, which wasn't a powerful move against an Electric-type, but still had its uses. Electabuzz skidded on slightly murky water that had picked up years of dust, and instead reared back his right fist. His whole arm was crackling with audible, snapping energy.
Thunder Punch, Jason realized, but he didn't have to shout a warning to Golduck for this. It was obvious where the strike would come from.
Golduck, so nimble on his feet, somersaulted back, kept his footing on the landing even though their arena was mostly one giant puddle now, and opened his bill to blast Electabuzz with another, more concentrated blast of Confusion. Electabuzz fell flat to avoid it, the rush of psychic energy grazing his yellow belly, but not doing much damage.
Fremont and Jason had begun to subconsciously roam around the battlefield, both of them moving steadily to the right so they were circling their Pokémon like sharks. The battle had not stayed perfectly in the center of the area they'd set up for it, as battles seldom did, and the trainers found themselves having to adjust accordingly. A part of Jason hated himself for doing it, but he kept casting involuntary little glances at his father, trying to read anything off his face—some kind of strategy, pleasure or displeasure at how the battle was going, anything. He got nothing except that fact that his father was looking gaunt again. He was in need of Factor A.
Electabuzz wound up for another Thunder Punch, using his left arm this time, and Jason only had time to inwardly remark that his father's Pokémon was ambidextrous when a surge of alarm caused him to shout, "Left!"
It made no sense, as he hadn't felt the need to warn Golduck about the last Thunder Punch, but then a second bolt of lightning scored down from the ceiling, larger and more devastating than the first. It was probably Thunder as opposed to Thundershock, Jason thought, heart hammering. Golduck barely dodged in time.
This time when he glanced at his father, Fremont was staring back at him. His eyes were cold and calculating, though Jason wasn't sure what he'd expected. His father didn't do smiles, so it would have been naive to expect one. Their Pokémon squared off again, crouched and ready, but waiting for orders this time. They both seemed to sense there was a pause in the battle.
"Hold off," Fremont said to Electabuzz, and Jason slapped his thigh for Golduck to come back to his side.
Fremont stared at his son for a long, unbroken moment—so long, in fact, that Jason was on the verge of demanding he take a picture so it would last longer. Then he finally said, "How long have you been able to do that?"
Jason could have played dumb, but he knew it was no good. He gave his second, testy shrug of the day and averted his eyes. "Didn't really, uh, make it a practice to fight Electric trainers," he admitted. "Only really noticed it when I was challenging Terry."
If Fremont put the pieces together about why Jason spent most of his life avoiding Electric trainers, he didn't say anything. "It's funny," Fremont said, and Jason could tell that whatever he was going to say next wouldn't be funny at all. "I always tested Orion to see if he had that instinct. Tested him when we lived together in Vermillion, tested him again when all this shit went down and we were on the run. He just doesn't have the knack for it."
"Yeah, well," Jason said, feeling a confusing blend of protective defensiveness for his brother and a selfish, misplaced pride. "Orion's a Normal-type trainer. That's what he wants. You're gonna have to get used to it."
Fremont laughed mirthlessly. "Who says I'm not used to it? Just stating facts. You've got the knack and he doesn't. Shame you won't even add that Voltorb to your roster."
Jason stared at his father. "That Voltorb hates me," he said bluntly. "If you hadn't noticed."
Jason had to take it back. His father did smile on occasion, but it never reached his eyes. "It likes you. Or at least finds you interesting. Otherwise it wouldn't keep coming back."
Jason thought, privately, that this was just about the stupidest thing he'd ever heard, but kept his opinion to himself. He tried to imagine other trainers trying to take his father's backwards advice, and pictured a slew of Initiates with missing limbs and charred faces lining up at the hospital because they had tried to cuddle up to savage wilds.
"Doesn't matter," Jason said. "We're not using Silph balls anymore, so I can't catch it even if I wanted to."
His father shrugged one shoulder. "No one says you've got to use a Silph ball. The researcher girl gave you those new ones, didn't she? You realize people trained Pokémon before Silph existed."
"I know that," Jason shot back, trying not to sound as snappish as he felt. "Lance caught his dragons without Pokéballs, but I'm not Lance."
"No, you're not," his father said, and Jason felt a stab of annoyance. He knew he would never be in the same league as the Dragonmaster, but that didn't mean he wanted his father of all people agreeing with that assessment.
"Doesn't mean you can't do it the old-fashioned way," Fremont continued. "I could give you some pointers, but I get the feeling you'd want to do it on your own."
"Who says I even want to do it in the first place?" Jason said on a haggard sigh.
Fremont put his hands up in the classic "don't shoot" gesture. "Just a suggestion."
Maybe I don't want your suggestions, Jason thought acidly. Maybe I want you to just fuck off and leave me alone like you've done my whole life.
"I got my Electabuzz that way," Fremont said, almost as an afterthought.
Jason didn't mean to, but he did a double-take. "What?"
"I mean, obviously, once I'd established that he wanted to come with me, he had to be transferred into a Pokéball, but I didn't catch him the normal way."
At Jason's blank look, Fremont elaborated. "The normal way—battle, weaken, status effect. Chuck a ball, cross your fingers and hope it stays in." Jason wasn't sure if he continued talking just because he wanted to share, or if, somehow, the man who had let him grow up without a father could still tell his son was interested. "It was slow-going," he explained. "Honestly don't know what made me want to try it Lance's way instead of the easy way." He smirked. "Maybe I thought it would get me in good with the Four. I was still trying to make a name for myself at that point." Fremont dismissed that thread of the conversation and went on. "It was a lot of what I see between you and that Voltorb, now. It's a game of chess. Electabuzz actually found the spars against my team fun. I never used the full power of my roster against him, because I didn't want to damage him or scare him off for good." The unspoken message there was, like you're doing with that Voltorb. "After a time, I'd pull back from the fight, wait just a bit to make sure he wasn't gonna rush in again, then make like I was gonna walk away. I'd check over my shoulder, and sure enough, he'd be there watching us go, looking kind of glum every time. After enough of this I started making a gesture like I was offering for him to follow. Didn't do it right away, but in time, he did. Past that point it was 'storming and norming.'" Fremont snorted at that term, and Jason thought he knew why. He'd heard his mother use it on multiple occasions when her work team gained a new face. It was a little surprising that his father still used this turn of phrase after all these years. "If you get to that point, where it's following you, and you don't mind that it's following you, I can tell you what I did next."
Jason hadn't said a word during his father's explanation and now felt it would be appropriate to speak up, but he was beginning to understand that he was struck mute around Fremont more often than not.
"What's your training regime usually like with your team?" Fremont asked, jarring Jason with another subject change.
Jason glanced at him as if looking for a carefully concealed trap door and weighed his words before answering. "Some of what you just saw," he started, slowly. "I'll let out two or more of my team, have them spar. I don't really get the point of shouting orders at them anymore. That kind of stuff is useful for Gym battles and official trainer fights, but what we're training for isn't going to look like that."
"I agree," his father said.
"Beyond that," Jason continued, tossing up a shrug and looking away, "I do a lot of physical training with them too. Orion and Tim have been at it for longer than me, but I've still got a pretty good regime worked out. Even though Alana's new Pokéballs are supposed to be immune to the Returner device, I don't want to be defenseless if my team's separated from me some other way."
"I agree again," Fremont said. Jason waited for that traitorous pang of pleasure at having his father approve of his methods, but it did not come. "So," Fremont said, and something about the way he inflected that first word made Jason look over to him. Sure enough, Fremont was shrugging out of his heavy black rain coat and let it crumple to the ground. "Show me what you got."
Jason stared at him, blank-faced. "You've got to be kidding me."
Fremont arched an eyebrow. "Do I look like I'm kidding?"
"You're all…" Jason said, gesturing to him. A part of him didn't want to offend, but there wasn't really a nice way to say rail thin, shaky, strung-out and fragile.
Fremont snorted and rolled his eyes. "Yes, I've lost muscle mass," he said, the words dripping with sarcasm. "That doesn't mean I'm going to shatter into a million pieces if you hit me wrong. Weren't you just saying we have to be capable of fighting without our Pokémon?" Jason's hesitation must have still shown, because Fremont sighed heavily. "No one's gonna force you," he said. "But I thought you'd appreciate the chance to spar with someone who won't be pulling punches or acting weird."
Jason thought he understood what he meant by that. Orion was, for the most part, his spar partner, but Orion had been turning him down lately. Kaylee and Tim were options, but he didn't know Tim well, and Kaylee, like many of the others, was still treating him differently. His father was not an ideal partner in any way, but at least he was willing.
Feeling that he would come to regret this decision, Jason tossed up his third messy shrug worthy of a sullen child and moved to square off against his father. An air of unreality washed over him, and Jason felt for a moment as if he was watching himself from a great distance. He sure hadn't ever pictured himself doing something like this.
Fremont moved closer until they were only about a foot and a half apart. "So," he said. "If I come at you like this, what do you do?" He extended his arm in a slow-motion, straightforward jab. Jason blocked it with a swipe of his forearm. Fremont nodded.
"Good, pretty basic stuff. What about this?" he said, going for a lower punch to the gut. Jason pivoted his body to the side and swiped out with his arm again. Fremont nodded once more.
His father's face took on a sullen expression, however. Jason didn't know why until he spoke. "And how does that move change when your opponent has a knife?" Fremont asked, striving for indifference and not quite managing it.
Unbidden, the image of Orion's scattered scars flashed across Jason's mind. "It doesn't change," he answered. "In a perfect world, I guess, there'd be a magical block I could use that would stop me from getting cut at all, but…" He trailed off.
"But?" Fremont prompted.
Jason had somehow expected him to finish his sentence for him. "But, first rule of knife fights is 'be prepared to get cut,'" Jason finished, a little lamely, not feeling anywhere near qualified to speak on this subject. He'd never been in a knife fight.
Fremont just nodded. That air of prickly discomfort dissipated a little, and they went back to trading blows. For a time it was the same style: "What do you do if I do this?" with Jason mutely showing him the counterstrike. After a time, they got quicker and quicker, Fremont returning to some of the strikes he'd tried on Jason earlier, seemingly not to trip him up, but to allow more practice time for each move. Their movements sped until there weren't any pauses between the strikes anymore. Fremont stopped introducing new moves to block, and instead they flew through the ones they had already covered. Jason ducked a wide haymaker, Fremont x-blocked Jason's returning straight punch to his stomach.
"Move your feet!" Fremont barked, tossing a right hook at Jason that he almost didn't block in time. Thrown off by the words, Jason shuffled backward, but Fremont shook his head minutely. "Each punch—you toss—" he said, punctuating his words around each jab, "should come—with—" He stepped back, giving the fight just a little breathing room, and Jason knew it was to allow him to look at his feet. "A step…" Fremont said, stepping forward just a little with a punch Jason knew wasn't meant to land. "Or a pivot." He demonstrated with a twist of his heel and a low left hook that also didn't connect. "Try it," he said, and Jason flew back into the fight.
It was uncomfortable and awkward. Jason wanted to be stable on his feet, an immovable object, but he understood now that his father's advice had merit. He needed to be more mobile, able to quickly dip and dodge, move from side to side. What was more, the tiny step or pivot, a twist of his hips here, a swivel of his shoulders there, offered more power to his hits. Soon Fremont was on the defensive.
His father cracked a smile, just once, when Jason's hook came too quick and he wasn't able to shoulder off the blow. It was the first time one of their hits had landed instead of being blocked, and Jason faltered.
"Keep going!" Fremont shouted, and Jason was snapped back into action. He hadn't realized it, but Golduck and Electabuzz had begun fighting alongside them as well. The only reason he noticed was due to a flash of gold and blue in his peripheral vision. Their Pokémon were going through hand-to-hand combat training as well, though their fight was a lot quicker and no one was pulling punches.
When Fremont took a sharp three steps back from the fight, Jason thought for a wild second that he was hurt. He dropped his guard, but at the sharp look his father gave him, brought it back up. "And what do you do," Fremont asked, breathing hard, "if I tackle you around the legs?"
Jason paused. His spar sessions with the few others that were willing had never covered something like this. They only really fought with both parties upright, a foot apart, and the fanciest it got was a tossed knee here or there. When Jason didn't answer, Fremont lowered his chin, and Jason took that as his split second of warning. Then his father charged.
They were close enough that Jason only had time to try to land an elbow strike to the top of his father's bowed head, but they collided before he could. Jason's entire body stiffened and he automatically grabbed onto his father's back as his center of gravity shifted violently. Jason expected to topple straight back and feel his head collide with the cement floor, but Fremont didn't let him fall.
"From here," he said, releasing Jason's legs. "I'd get you down, you'd have the wind knocked out of you, and this would turn into a ground fight with me on top."
Adrenaline was screaming through Jason's veins, making it hard to think, pissing him off in a purely chemical way. He knew this was just training, but a combination of the physical exertion and the sheer weirdness of doing this with his father was starting to get to him. "That's fine and dandy," Jason snapped, "but what am I supposed to do with that?"
Fremont's cold blue eyes narrowed, and Jason waited for him to react the way he'd seen him do with Orion. Orion and their father went toe-to-toe often, pushing each other's boundaries, needing to establish over and over who was in charge of the conversation. So Jason, naturally assuming this would be the same, braced himself for a don't get smart with me, or some kind of snide comment.
His father said nothing, and Jason had no idea why this was disappointing. Fremont might say he wasn't pulling punches with Jason, but that clearly wasn't the case.
"It's easy to pick you up and throw you when you go all rigid like that," Fremont explained. "Just like a big old stiff board. I know it goes against everything your body is screaming at you to do…" He paused to wipe his brow. "But you gotta go dead weight on me."
That sounded insane to Jason, and he opened his mouth to retort, but Fremont continued. "Do it to me and I'll show you."
Jason had not been told to go slow, so he didn't. He charged his father, wrapping his arms around his legs as they collided, and expected his strength and follow-through to defeat whatever technique his father was trying to use. What happened instead was the twin pain of knees in his chest, and a second later Jason was flat on his face on the floor. It took him a second to realize he'd been rolled and vaulted straight over his father's legs.
"Get up," Fremont said, and Jason bristled.
"What do you think I'm doing?" he snarled, scrambling to his feet and turning to face him.
There was a definite awareness in his father's eyes now, an understanding that this fight and this anger weren't just a simple matter of training. Jason waited for him to address it head-on, the way he had seen him deal with almost every other confrontation, and once again, he didn't. "When I hit you," he explained, "go limp. Roll onto your back and move with me. Keep my momentum going forward. That's the most I can explain it. We're just gonna have to practice for you to get it."
Jason fought back a growl and didn't quite manage it. His father charged, and Jason tried the move, but he was thinking too hard about the placement of his hands, how he was going to land, what he could do about his father's arms wrapped around his legs, and the end result was Jason flat on his back, his father poised over him, his fist raised. Jason's hands flew to block his face.
"What do you do," Fremont yelled, "when I've got you like this!?" Jason struggled and struck out, but Fremont shouted, "No! Pop up your hips!" Jason didn't understand. Fremont rained strikes down upon his folded arms, light ones, but jarring nonetheless. It made it hard to think, hard to hear what he was saying. "Pop up your hips," Fremont shouted again, and Jason did what he was told out of sheer frustration.
Fremont off-balanced, and Jason didn't need his other shouted directions. As soon as Fremont's hands hit the ground on either side of Jason's head, he scissor-kicked his way out from under his legs and flipped his father over onto his back. The tables were turned, and through the elated realization that he had bested the man, Jason caught himself grinning.
Fremont just stared up at him, not smiling back, but not offering criticism either. For a second they stayed that way. Then Jason scrambled off, feeling vulnerable and exposed.
"We're gonna try both of these again," he said, and suddenly Jason didn't want to.
"I'm done for the day," he said, dully. He could practically feel that bristle of disappointed affront in the air. Surely his father wanted to say something like, we've barely been going at it for ten minutes, you really want to stop learning how to save your own damned life just because you feel weird? When his father didn't reply, Jason turned his way, and with a sinking sensation in his gut, realized he was going to walk away.
It wasn't even like his father was storming off. He was just leaving, just turning around and walking across the room, quietly and simply bailing the way he'd done to Jason and his mother when Jason was barely five. A part of him wanted to follow his father, to clock him good in the back of the head and start their fight over again. Instead he watched him leave.
For a long, timeless moment, Jason just stood. His heavy breathing evened out and the sweat that had begun to prickle at his forehead cooled and dried, leaving him feeling filthy.
He sensed a dull prickle in the air and knew what had caused it before he turned around. The Voltorb had returned, hanging back a respectable distance, but still watching Jason. It had a remarkably expressive face for something made of metal with only two eyes. It looked dubious and wary, but—Jason's stomach twisted—interested. He refused to let the thought that his father was right even begin to take seed.
"Get out of here," he said, but his words sounded flat even to him.
It didn't go, but it didn't attack either, and Jason stared it down. He knew, somehow, that the decision he made here tonight would be the first large step down one of two paths.