15.
Dryer Sheets
I wanna live my life like thunder!
Don't wanna live my life like numbers!
"Dryer sheets," Jessie insisted. "They'll get rid of the static cling. Or will you die without all your static?"
"If your fingers need a break, I can hairspray myself in the mornings," Marcell told her.
Evidently it wasn't the right response. Jessie clamped down on a fistful of dryer sheets and scattered them on top of the dampened uniform in the machine's third round chamber, (the first two being a washer and a rice cooker.) BO lingered despite the heaviest cycle. Or maybe that was the man in the kitchenette with her, whose face was a nasty raw rose color and whose ears were already swollen and tender from too much exposure. His thin limbs were a lighter shade of pink, and his hands had oblong blotches running from knuckles to wrists.
"So beachy boys don't always get a perfect tan," Jessie mused.
Marcell peeled up one of his t-shirt sleeves, noting the stark contrast between the warm pink and the pale, cool peach.
"Guess I haven't been out much this summer."
"Indoor projects?"
"The mechanisms got so big they turned into a ceiling."
She set the dryer to medium heat and then dribbled a little soy sauce into the rice. Rice and cheap charcuterie and tap water and fruit gummies. Alarming how little their subsidies left for decent meals when the rest went right into mech parts and disguises. (Yes, the dirndls were necessary, they told Marcell.)
"Were you at the beach?" Jessie asked.
"I thought about it. Too crowded, though. Were you guys?"
"We ended up there."
"Ah…"
"What about you."
"After the robbery I went and sketched plans in the park."
"No renovations?"
"Not yet. Only plans for now. I don't wanna make the same mistakes as last time."
She rolled her eyes. "Are you even capable of making mistakes?"
"Not on the mechanical side of things."
"I didn't think so."
"It's the designs I'm having trouble with. I look at that intersection outside the PokéCenter, and I think 'Simple, Streamlined, and Smart.' That's what I used to do. That's what everything in my old life's city is. They wanted it to be silvery and futuristic, with all the right sensors and cells. It's not a bad design. I can't say it is when the guy I used to be approved it and built it. The silver-white streetlights are sleek and sustainable and attract plenty of tourists. But it only takes a little more thought for me to realize they're just not original. They're not nice to look at. And I have these other ideas that aren't as boring and involve a whole lot of tesselating vinyl and rotating gears and LED rope. Then I'm wondering if all that's actually sustainable. Well, I can make it sustainable if I get a big enough solar array, but then I'm thinking about where to put that and if it'll encroach on the airport overlay, 'cause even I'm not such a renegade that I'd build in the overlays… and I don't have Electivire's super strength to bend the bike racks… "
Jessie groaned. Planning, ad nauseam. At this point the Leader gimmick novelty had worn off and Marcell was like James and his bottle caps, or Meowth and his boss fantasies, or herself and her… acting career, most likely, though as a famous actress she could make that sound intriguing if she wanted to.
But at least he sounded happy, she thought to herself. Things had been tense in the little underground apartment. After the fallout over the motto, they suggested Marcell might do better flying solo. Snidely, of course. Until Marcell said that sounded just fine and turned into Vermilion City's Supervillain Number 1, robots included. His promise to aid with the main directive remained, now that his little project was devouring half their cash in batteries. But no one dared bring it up, lest they start arguing over the motto again. The Pikachu problems coinciding with his success only caused an itch beneath the skin that not even Meowth wanted to claw open.
So tonight they ate again in silence — Jessie and James and Meowth and Wobbuffet and the "Plasmadonna" looking like an overripe persim berry while he filled his end of the table with the remains of a metal Dedenne and fiddled until they were whole again.
"He's too good," Meowth snarled as he took his turn in the men's bed later, slipping under the covers after James was forced out.
"I'm sure the boss will promote him soon," said James. "Then he's out of our hair and our lair, and things shall surely return to normal."
"Dat's da thing, though. If da Plasmadonna gets promoted for paralyzin' da police, he'll have used us to get his dang Rotom and we still won't have Pikachu under our belts. I feel used just watchin' dat guy wash his hands after a piss."
"True," James replied. "He is stealing our thunder, so to speak. And it's not farfetched to think he might take credit for Pikachu too if we let him win it for us now. We wouldn't be promoted anyway in that case."
"Geh. Not to mention his mind games. Do we even want promotion! Guy talks like a few failures frame a lifetime in Pikachu purgatory. I t'ought he'd enjoy da challenge of it. But it ain't good enough. No, he wants Gym Leader Pokémon. He wants Elite status. He wants to make fun of our minikant mechs and ride around town on a solar-powered cyber cat callin' himself da Master of Blackouts."
"I think he prefers variety in his life. We're too used to routine."
"Well treatin' Team Rocket like a new toolbox ain't a fair change-up."
"True," James replied. He tried to get comfortable on the carpet down below, letting the popcorn ceiling haze his vision into a fuzzy violet blob.
"Ya know… we still got his name. We got his true identity."
"But are we so cruel as to expose him?"
"I don't mean expose him. Den we'd lose his brain. I mean just say his name. Just remind him dat we're natural-born villains and he won't never be. Say da name he t'inks is dead, Jim. Say da Sunyshore Gym Leader's name."
"His name is Volkner," James whispered.
It tasted like ozone.
Rotom lived in an empty plastic orange juice bottle under a cinderblock on the desk in the warehouse. Not by Marcell's own choice, but he agreed his time was better spent planning antics than pilfering lightbulbs out of corner store bathrooms every time the thing escaped its Poké Ball and blew out the apartment for fun.
He also agreed, after shrugging off the grins of his teammates, that as cartoonish as the uniform looked, when it was clean it was cozy as heck. Warm during late-night tinkering, cool during daily chases, and really only a nuisance when his "beachy boy" body demanded fewer layers as the sun beat down on crumbling blacktop.
Blacktop. Albedo. He creased the newest page of his notebook against the spiral binding and wrote IMPERVIOUS SURFACE COVERAGE, REFERENCE ZONING CODE ON LIMITS.
And then he scrolled through the ordinance pulled up on the monitor — all thousand-some pages of it — and tracked down surface coverage limits in the B2 general commercial zone (specifically within the airport overlay) and corroborated them with some long-ago image in his brain of a similar blacktop issue in another airport overlay in another city whose albedo was higher and temperature cooler now. Silver and white. Sanitary. It gets dirty so easily, though. Where was that tacky mural again? The one that got struck by lightning?
Rotom had finished reducing another nine-volt battery to a tawny stain of acid sublimating up the bottleneck. It jiggled up and down and watched with huge blue eyes as the spiky-haired man stared into a list of aeronautics statutes and then opened a new canvas on the art tablet and doodled another man in sunglasses surfing on the back of a large spiky bird. He looked at its spear of a beak, then traced the smooth form of a streetlight penciled in a corner of plotter paper. His lips curled up in a sigh.
"Smart and streamlined or sparking and spectacular. I always gotta be between two worlds, don't I. What's your take on it, Rotom?"
Rotom wanted another battery. Rotom wanted to touch the monitor screen. Rotom wanted to make a nest in that spiky poof of hair on top of the man's head. Rotom wanted to make it fizzle and shoot up in every direction. Rotom was bored. Rotom was very bored.
Marcell smiled. He removed the cinderblock and felt Rotom's body go plink-plink-plink as it bounced off the sides of the bottle. A literal ball of energy with a constant wordless grin.
"You remind me of Emmet," he realized. "He was an old friend of mine. Well, we weren't too close, but we hung out sometimes when I was in the area."
The plinking intensified, and Rotom's fizzly grin flickered as it fought to break free. Marcell got up and stretched, then picked up the bottle and tried to track that grin with his gaze.
"Emmet was a Subway Boss. He always had so much energy pent up inside he could only say a few words at a time. So instead of talking, he preferred to smile and absolutely wipe the floor with challengers on the Battle Subway. The guy had a spark that just wouldn't go out, and he loved Electric-Types. I told him he should broaden his horizons and become a Gym Leader, but he'd always shake his head and say he loved riding the trains with his brother too much. He had an identical twin brother named Ingo. Er… I guess he used to have Ingo. Ingo passed away a few years ago. Emmet was there when it happened, but he doesn't wanna give a straight answer as to exactly what happened. Whatever it was, it kinna cracked him. Not too fun to hang out with after that. He was still a genius in battle, but otherwise he got ornery and talked to himself a lot, like your average Electric-Type. Like you right now."
The whole bottle had gone cold beneath his gloves. The orange orb of Rotom was nowhere to be seen within the cloud of blue-white plasma. Only a vibration could tell him where it continued to bounce off the walls of its little prison.
"You wanna come out? I'm still working on building the device to contain you. Between robberies and renovations I got a little sidetracked. Maybe I can finish it tonight. That'd be exciting."
Marcell unscrewed the cap and watched as the bluish haze condensed in the bottleneck before shooting straight at his face. Plink! Plink! Plink! Something small and buzzing bounced off his skull. He caught flashes of blue and orange zipping by and swatted when they came too close to his burnt ears.
"Rotom. Chill."
The flashes circled his frame. Cold static kissed his neck and arms and back and chest. A light, hot zap to the gut made him double over in surprise. His stomach churned, and he felt his fingers and toes tingling weakly.
"You know Thunder Wave. I can work with that," he said, shivering as the would-be seizure of his muscles liquified and escaped his body through a sharp, practiced exhale. A few more deep breaths, and his heartbeat was steady again.
Rotom zipped up between his eyes, a tiny frown forming on its fizzly face.
"Oh. I'm an Electric specialist. I've trained my body to handle moves like that. Here. Try a little shock. You can't hurt me."
He tugged off his right glove and offered the hand to Rotom. The flashing slowed as the tiny orange orb floated near. Its flickering tendrils reached out and softly tapped Marcell's palm, making the muscles tense and the fingers twitch. Very gently, he cupped the hand and wiggled his fingers through Rotom's emission. Tingly enough to make the hair on his knuckles raise, but ghostly cool. Nothing like the thrilling jolt of Electivire's punch or Raichu's tackle.
And yet thrilling nonetheless when the tiny orange orb floated low enough to kiss the lines in his palm, and then sank down into the skin.
Marcell choked. His whole hand seized and trembled beyond his control. And it glowed. From every little wrinkle came an eerie blue-white light that deepened quickly to bright cerulean, then shadowy midnight azure. Pins and needles shot up his arm and raced across his chest — tingling, popping, stabbing, expanding and exploring the fibers of his muscles and bones. It was like he was filling with millions of miniscule bubbles, crashing against the walls of his veins and sparking along with the quickening beat of his heart. A freezing rush of pleasure zipped up from the base of his spine through his back and neck to the top of his spiky poof of blond.
The sound of something buzzing filled his ears. Or clanging. Back to buzzing. His vision went blue, then far away, tunneled. His breath stalled in his lungs.
[Breath. The sensation of it. Like a bellows. Breathe in, the pulse gets quicker. The heart becomes more electric. More alive. Breathe out, it relaxes. Static slows.]
He strained to steady himself, but his body wouldn't move. There could be no quick exhale to jump his heart when even his lungs were disobeying him. He only watched in hidden horror, (or was it fascination,) as long, ghostly purple claws extended from his fingertips, struggling to curl and controlled by the fiendish, almost childlike zapping and contracting of the muscles in his hands. His legs buckled beneath him, locked knees finally succumbing to gravity.
[What was gravity? Disregard gravity.]
Do nOT DISREGARD GRAVITY. I AM NOT AN APPLIANCE, he screamed inside. But his head lolled forward, and though he couldn't feel, he watched the concrete floor slowly growing smaller, tight yet muted pains cropping up like knots in his limbs where the sentient light tugged him upwards. His brain rushed again, and his eyelids drooped.
[Floating. Like he was paralyzed within a dream. Like his body didn't matter. Like he was a spirit, but too weighty, but adapting, but… geh, this was too difficult. Too many components.]
So gravity returned, and he dropped down into something squishy — the office chair at the desk with the monitor. His vision brightened and blurred before clearing up. His hands still shook. His legs kicked on impulse. He slid down onto the floor, heaving as his blood warmed and his brainstem reasserted dominance.
Unceremoniously, Marcell dragged himself to the end of the concrete pad and emptied his guts into the bushes outside. Then he sat up on his knees and looked back into the empty warehouse. Lights still buzzing, computer monitor still displaying aeronautics statutes, a distinct dot of orange hovering in the center and staring at him, grinning at him.
He wiped a glob of spittle from his lips and grinned back.
"Rotom. Chill."
"Sir, I really don't think I'm overstepping anything when I tell you this is a lot more difficult than anticipated."
Giovanni pinched the bridge of his nose. Dinner had been too extravagant again, and he didn't need Matori's sneasely alto adding discomfort to indigestion. He straightened his posture the best he could and analyzed the screen of his laptop. Deep shadows pooled under Matori's eyes. Her dress uniform jacket was draped over the back of her chair, leaving her in moistened bibbers. Her purple hair was washed, but certainly not conditioned nor blowdried — he could tell where it creased from side-sleeping.
"I doubt HR will give you the time of day, Matori."
"I'm not complaining about my placement, Giovanni. I'm only requesting we recalculate. Containing the hazard—"
"Is the hazard still contained as we speak?"
She grabbed the edge of her desk and rolled her chair to the right, revealing the scene behind her. A steadily pulsing spiderweb crack radiating from the center of a window, a mini fridge overturned, papers scattered and torn and shredded, (and singed?) and a pilled brown ottoman where over slumped a sandalless, sleeping Elite. Somehow both arms had come out of their straps, and his beige tank top now hung loose around his stomach like an oversized tube sock.
"You couldn't find better accommodations? His impoverished background implies he'd be open to anything, but at least let him sleep in a bed."
Matori's lips squeezed tight. Just the kind of rude midnight groveling Giovanni both hated and enjoyed, if only to toy with the lower agents like a fat, hungry Persian.
"I say we reclassify him from a 'hazard' to an 'imminent disaster.' He's smarter than I thought—"
"You weren't prepared for this assignment."
"It's no simple task to contain one of the Elite Four! Flint is not just some gimmicky, costumed Gym Leader, sir, and that's despite his unconventional appointment. He's extremely powerful. I believe he willed himself impervious to our sedatives. Only Zoroark's illusions keep him calm now, and those only last a few hours at a time before they're both exhausted and snap back to reality. Then he touches things, and they start on fire."
"More sedatives wouldn't do the trick?"
"More would be too much for a human body."
"Then kill him, Matori. Kill Flint Perilla and fly a Team Rocket banner atop the tallest spire of the Sinnoh League cathedral."
The woman was speechless. The shadows shifted on her prisoner's muscles, and Giovanni watched her throat move in a silent gulp.
"I jest, of course. When Team Rocket starts murdering public figures, the first salvo shall be a greater statement than some reformed rapscallion with bow legs and a monkey. And it wouldn't be your glove on the dagger. Unless we framed you."
"Flattered, sir."
"Though wouldn't it be amusing if we put Marcell's clever hand on that dagger instead… I'm sure you've kept up on the news surrounding our renegade."
"To be honest, I'm more occupied with throwing the Sinnoh League off Flint's scent. Someone saw Zoroark take him, and now Aaron's hunting him like a Houndoom. Bertha's pretending to be sick. Lucian's feeding off the drama like a psychic parasite. Cynthia's visiting all the Gym Leaders. There was a blow-up between her and Roark yesterday. He said if he's ever coaxed into a "cautionary day off," he wants Gordie from the Galar League to drown him in a slurry, then burn his body for fuel and mail his helmet to some banquet hall in Sunyshore. That's what I got from message boards trying to decipher the censored audio."
Giovanni smirked. "What a coward. Marcell, on the other hand, is troublingly audacious. You at least heard about the Vermilion Gym."
"He defied his directive. Beta agents don't engage in terror attacks."
"It wasn't a terror attack, though. It was personal. He knew he'd betrayed the League, and sabotaging a young Electric specialist was his final act. It was proving his devotion, you see. Requesting our faith in him."
"If he's devoted, then why does he use an alias?"
"Why does anyone? To separate personal life from business. Evil doesn't taste good to him yet. But he's catching on. Too much publicity is never bad, and he's not really in Beta Class. I'd argue his audacity has already outranked your muck-ups in Alola, Matori."
Silence filled the air, save for Flint's troubled dreams making him slump and clench his fists. Zoroark, with ragged fur, raked its claws through his curls, and the space shimmered around them into a misty island morning, smelling of seasalt and pinap juice.
"If you're wrong, then we're playing outside in a lightning storm."
"Don't be jealous now."
"Sir, I'm serious. There's a stretch of beach in Sunyshore… blackened. I don't want to be on the wrong side of that power."
"Would you like to meet that power for yourself? I'll elevate Marcell to Elite Class, and then you'll answer to your lightning storm. Pursue him, even."
Matori slapped her laptop shut, silencing the Rocket Boss's disturbing laughter on the other end. Then she took off her glasses and buried her head in her arms, a frustrated squeal building in the back of her throat at her own audacity. She wished her chest could go cold with fright and her skin could break out in goosebumps. But her whole body was still slick with sweat from the heat pouring off her "imminent disaster."
"It's gonna be all right," Flint told her from within the mist. The cracked window pulsed again, illuminating gray eyes too lucid and kind for her liking.
"You shut up. You don't even know where you are, let alone how I'm feeling."
"I'm… somewhere I shouldn't be."
Matori snorted, dabbing her cheeks with a singed beret.
"You got that right."
[Tell me more about the human Emmet, Marcell. Why does he not have eyebrows? Why did he smile at his brother's funeral? Funerals in Unova are verrrry sad and humans should not smile at them. Does this mean he was happy or sad? He is smiling in many photos, so he is happy, but you tell me he is sad. Why do I remind you of a sad human? I am not a sad Rotom. I am a fun Rotom. And I am a verrrry bored Rotom. I am bored like… like…]
The clock in the bottom right corner of the monitor's display flickered again. It was now 4:00 a.m. beneath a desktop crowded with images and videos of the Battle Subway's remaining master. Marcell didn't care to look at this point. He did more calculations in his head about RAM and storage and lithium quantities, and then a fiery explosion of sparks behind him killed another recently-possessed Luxrobot, and he wondered if Rotom even understood mechanical components or if it lived to exploit whatever it could sink its tendrils into.
"Candice's Rotom sounded like an actual person," he muttered toward the clunky mess of computer parts sifting through his fingers.
[Who is Candice?]
"Someone with a better-behaved Rotom than you."
[What am I doing wrong, Marcell? You said I am like Emmet the Subway Boss. I am doing everything I can to emulate Emmet. I am even sampling his voice from battle videos and synthesizing it to speak with you.]
"And you're doing a really crappy impression that isn't weirding me out at all."
[That is very excellent and delightful, Marcell. Bravo! All aboard! All abooooooard! What is the significance of saying all aboard even when not on a train, Marcell? Emmet likes doing this all the time, and I like it because Emmet likes it. Emmet also says he likes winning more than anything. Do you like winning more than anything, Marcell?]
"Only if the wins come with a thrill."
[Oooh, a thrill… a thrill… like when your heart is pumping faster and you are sweating and verrrry excited?]
"Yeah. Like when my spark comes alive inside me, and everything suddenly becomes electric. That's a thrill."
[You were feeling a thrill when I took over your body.]
"I was startled because I didn't know you could do that."
[I can do it again. I want to do it again. I want to control your body and then I will be able to eat hotdogs and scream all aboard. I want to be Man Rotom.]
"No, you're gonna chill and stay in the computer while I work, or it's back in the bottle."
Two fizzly blue eyes lit up on a candid pic of Emmet walking home from the station, shoulders slumped and lips in a rare loose frown.
[I do not want to go in the bottle, Marcell. I am not a bad Rotom. I am a bored Rotom. And also I am Emmet.]
"Nah, you're not Emmet. You're… Emitter. I'll call you Emitter."
[Why do you call me that?]
"It's a nickname. A lot of people give their Pokémon nicknames."
[It is just not original.]
The Rocket engineer leaned back in the chair, clasping his hands behind his head and letting out a long yawn.
"Not original, huh? So you are on the side of originality. I think I agree with you."
[You changed the subject, Marcell.]
"I'm a bored Rotom, too, Emitter."
The monitor screen flashed, colors distorting, and Emitter the Rotom phased out from Emmet in a sticky cloud of sparks. It floated near, reaching out to tickle the tinkerer's overripe nose.
"You wanna quell that boredom by causing a little chaos together? No, nO DON'T YOU DARE—"
Purple plasma surged out from his fingertips. His spine bent, and the safety glasses fell off his nose, revealing eyes the color of thunderbolts.
It was an electric thrill like nothing he'd ever felt before.
~N~
I keep forgetting Rotom is a foot tall and describe it like it's a teeny little thing.
Emmet and Volkner would make an interesting ear-wing duo. The man who loves winning "more than anything," and the man who only likes winning if it gives him a thrill. I imagine them chilling with some New York slices, Volkner asking life philosophy questions that make Emmet's head spin, and Emmet deflecting with "Would you like to see a subway train car under maintenance?" and not knowing the horrors he's brought upon himself by introducing Volk to locomotives.
In my next fic they're gonna try to rescue Ingo from the past together. ^^
Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net Norwegian Constitution Day 2022. Reposts unoriginal. Reviews are thrilling!