Hi there, I thought I would take a minute just to clear something up. Nobody's asked about it so maybe it's not an issue, but I thought I would clarify anyway that I've made Johto into a rather urban setting. The games are vague enough that you can pretty much do whatever you want with them, yet it seems as though when I read fanfiction (which is admittedly not often) it's always in some crazy rural jungle thing. I just thought I'd explain the way I envision this working in a city, just in case it isn't clear: I figure you go to the gym every day, like going to work or school, and you can train or you can battle (which is where you make money). So no camping. I like animals and I like nature but I also like flush toilets and not having allergic reactions to a deluge of mosquito bites. Thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited, etc.
06 X-Offender
Delilah was pretty sure she was a criminal mastermind. She had paid to get on the trolley only once, having purchased a day pass for five dollars, but nobody had asked to see it. There were plenty of signs on the trolley and at the trolley stations saying things like "All Passengers Must Have Tickets", but there seemed to be nobody making sure that they did.
Only once had somebody asked to see her ticket, when she was using the trolley with Whitney, who also never bought a ticket. Delilah had shown him her months-old day pass, but Whitney apparently cleaned out her handbags more often than Delilah did because she "couldn't find it" and so they were told to get off at the next stop (which happened to be their stop anyway, so it was no great loss).
After this experience, Delilah kept her now almost-a-year-old day pass in her wallet, but if security personnel got on the trolley, she always got off and got back on in a different car.
Such was the case one spring day as she was on her merry freeloading way to the Goldenrod pokémon center, as she was planning to go home for Easter after winning her seventh badge in Mahogany. An official-looking man with a walky-talky got on, so she got off, and decided to wait for the next trolley, because all the cars looked crowded.
She was still continuing to see men (and occasionally women) in Team Rocket uniforms around; how they managed to get around without being questioned she did not know, except perhaps that nobody believed that Team Rocket was back, or that just wearing a uniform wasn't grounds for anything.
One of them was sitting on the black bench by the trolley schedule. She sat down next to him and out of the side of his mouth he asked her, "Who are you, a newcomer?"
"What?"
He glanced around surreptitiously and leaned in. "We've run out of uniforms," he told her under his breath, not looking at her. "One of my guys is going to get more. The studio is just around the corner."
Delilah hated not knowing what people were talking about. It made her feel stupid. "What do you mean?" she asked, assuming he had a good reason for talking to her.
"Just down the corner," he said, nodding to the street. "You'll know it, it looks like it's closed."
She blinked. "The photo studio?"
"Yeah," he said, nodding. "Hurry up, you better go, now."
"Okay...thanks," she said, standing up.
It must be Lance, she figured, as she made her way to the studio where Keanna Sherman had picked up her pokémon's photos. Lance Siegfried must have been in town, and looking for her. She was so expecting to see him when she got to the studio that she was sort of speechless when he wasn't there, and didn't know what to say to the man who was.
"Um..."
He smiled. "Are you a newcomer, too?" he asked sympathetically. "We had to recruit new members, and then we ran out of uniforms..." He rolled his eyes and sighed, walking to a rack of black uniforms. "Since you're here, why don't you change as well?"
Maybe Lance would show up later. In the meantime, she figured she would just go along with this; maybe he wanted her undercover. The man asked for her dress size and gave her a uniform, which she obligingly changed into in another room.
"Look at you! Pretty good," he said when she was done. "Oh, but don't scare people walking around like that, okay?"
"Oh, right," she said, and put her coat back on. After all, she didn't want people thinking she really was in Team Rocket.
"So, are you headed to the NBC Tower?" he asked her.
"Is that where I should go?"
"I don't know—where were you told to go?"
"I was not told anything," she said.
He rolled his eyes. "Typical," he scoffed. "This whole thing is so disorganized, it's ridiculous. I can't wait until we get some real leadership again. I'm sure if you go to the NBC building you'll get some instructions. You know where it is, right?"
"Yeah, by the mall?"
"Right. Cross your fingers!"
She laughed as she left the studio. Hopefully that was where Lance was. She should have given him her Pokégear number in Mahogany, then she would know what was going on...
She took the trolley to the Civic Centre stop and walked into the NBC building. Snoops walked along cautiously next to her. She was about to head up the staircase when she bumped into something hard.
"Oh, excuse me," she giggled in embarrassment as she took a step back from the large black man. She had another go at the staircase, this time the half of it that wasn't blocked by him, but again she bumped into the Rocket who had apparently shifted his position accordingly.
"Only Team Rocket through here," he said.
"Oh! Right," she said, and took off her coat.
He laughed. "You must be new," he said, stepping aside. "You look pretty good in the Team Rocket uniform! Go on ahead."
"Thanks—"
"Delilah?"
She turned. It was Adam.
"What are you doing?"
"Umm," she said, because she wasn't really sure.
Suddenly he frowned enormously and began to stalk over to her. "Are you kidding with this?" he demanded, gesturing to her. "What, you think joining them is going to help you get stronger?"
"Well, I—"
"That's stupid!" he almost shouted. "Take this off!" He grabbed the puffed shoulder of the uniform and pulled on it.
"Hey—!"
The security guard pulled Adam away from her. "Mr Harlow, I don't know what your problem is with this girl, but you have no business—"
"Get your hands off me!" Adam snarled, struggling out of his grip.
Adam glared at her, and she and the guard stood there awkwardly for a minute. She adjusted the uniform, fixing the hemline where her slip was showing.
"I want to talk to you," said Adam, but it kind of sounded more like he wanted to have rude and nasty sexual relations with her.
"You don't have to," the security guard told her.
"That's okay," she said.
"Give me a holler if he gives you any more trouble, okay?"
"All right, thank you," she said, following Adam up the stairs. He was wearing probably the tightest pants she had ever seen, so it wasn't too arduous a task.
Upstairs were a bunch of cubicles with computers; Adam pulled her into an empty one and she told him what she was doing. "So you're trying to be sneaky?" He scoffed. "How...meek! You should be confident enough that you don't need to do that. What are you trying to hide?"
"Well, I thought that Lance Siegfried had this set up so that—"
He scowled. "Is he here?"
"I don't know, I thought he was..."
"I want a rematch with him," he said. "And then I'll battle you."
"Uhhh...okay."
Adam told her he'd found out that Team Rocket had abducted the radio tower's director, after he made her change out of the uniform.
"Hey, hey! Keep out of—oh...!"
The two men stopped abruptly when they saw Adam. One was very muscular and the other was short and had kind of a lumpy face.
"Mr Harlow!" fluttered the short one. "Gosh, I...! I didn't know you were here!"
"We're so sorry for bothering you!" drooled the muscular one slavishly. "Is there anything we can do for you?"
"That's all right," said Adam.
"Gosh! I can't believe I'm meeting you! You really are a good-looking guy—if you don't mind me saying so," he added hastily.
"No, I don't mind, it's fine."
"I wanted to be a male model, when I was a kid," said the short one wistfully. "My mother said I never could, she said I didn't have the looks for it, and anyway it wasn't normal for a boy to want to be a model."
"Oh, psh," said Adam. "Normal is only what you know."
He looked comforted by this.
"Besides," said the muscular one. "You've got a very unique face. There's nothing wrong with that."
"No? You think so?"
He grunted tenderly. There was a gentle moment between them.
Once they went back to work Delilah remarked to Adam, "I didn't realize you had so much sway with members of Team Rocket..."
He shrugged. "I'm the boss' son," he said. "Not much more..."
He was the boss' very good-looking, very rich, very scary son. Delilah already thought he was a very intimidating individual; she couldn't imagine how frightening it must have been to have him be her boss' child. "So...about your dad..."
He sneered. "What about him?"
"Uh...is he going to...reband Team Rocket?"
"Team Rocket never broke up."
"Really?"
"Yeah. That's just cover-up. They're still going."
"Huh. Wow," she said, thinking what an elaborate ruse had been constructed on her adventures with Team Rocket.
"Here, give me your Pokégear number, just in case," he said, taking his phone out of his pocket.
"Okay," she said, opening her Pokégear to check the number.
"That's cute," he said, pointing to it. It was pink and white.
"Oh, thanks," she said, and read the number to him.
"I had a Pokégear, once," he said.
"Yeah? What happened to it?"
He paused. "It fell in a garbage bin I was bending over and I threw up pomegranate margaritas on it," he said.
There was a beat, and then she laughed.
"I tried to call them and have it replaced," he said. "I just never got round to it, really...'cos I was trying to find the number, or something, while I was on the phone with a customer service person. I was looking under the seat of my car in the car park and this bloke comes up, to get in the next space, and honked his horn at me, but he well had enough room, so I didn't move. So then he got out of the car, and came up to me, and said 'excuse me', and then went back to the car. So I moved, but he didn't get in the space so I went back to what I was doing. Then he got out again and came up to me and he said, 'Excuse me...again,' and so I moved again. He called out to me, 'Move your door, I don't want to hit it,' and I said, 'It's okay, there's plenty of room.'
"'Move it.'
"'You're fine.'
"'I don't want to hit your car.'
"So then I got angry and sort of yelled at him, like, 'Look, clever trousers, I don't suppose you could have gone round the other way,' and he got out of the car, and dropped his keys and his sunglasses on the ground, and just started screaming at me. So I just stuck up my fingers at him, 'cos I was still on the phone. So he bent over to pick up his stuff, and he called me a 'privileged piece of shit'. So I turned around and stomped on his sunglasses. So he whacked mine off my face, but I caught them before they hit the ground, 'cos they were Versace. Then he knocked my hat off my head, so I hit him, and hung up on the customer service rep. Then he, like, butted chests with me, and he said, 'Back off, you son of a bitch!' and I pushed him and said, 'Fuck you!' and he kept screaming at me. So I just shouted, 'GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE!' and he went away."
She laughed again, even though (or perhaps because) she didn't think he was trying to be funny. "So what about your Pokégear?"
"Oh, yeah...I called them back and I was like, oh, it isn't working, who knows why?"
Delilah still didn't really know what was going on completely; they burst in on Petrel, who said, "Hey, who—oh, Mr Harlow! And—you again!"
"Hi," said Delilah. Immediately she realized that was probably a dumb thing to say.
"This time I won't hold back," he said, expanding a poké ball.
She won anyway.
"Okay, okay. I'll tell you where he is," he said, coming closer to them. "Listen carefully: we stashed the Director in the underground warehouse." He gestured to himself. "I am a nice guy. I'll give you the key. Take it with gratitude," he said, handing Adam a key and patting Delilah's cheek.
"Well...thanks, I guess," she said. Adam's presence certainly made things easy.
As she and Adam left the building he asked her, "So where do you think Lance is?"
"I don't know. I'm starting to think he's not actually involved at all."
"Well...what made you think he was?"
"Well, I was at the trolley station today, and this guy basically told me to go get that Team Rocket uniform, and I figured it must have been Lance's doing, because he was the one who got me doing the Team Rocket thing last time...but now I'm thinking maybe I just accidentally gave some kind of secret signal, or something."
"Well, he never showed up," he said, as if it were her fault.
"Yeah, obviously..."
He stopped, and looked at her for a minute. "I was planning to beat you after Lance," he said, removing a poké ball from his belt, "but since you are here..."
She won anyway.
He looked extremely upset. "Why do I lose?" he asked. "My pokémon are strong. I'm great at battling. So why do I lose?"
It didn't seem like he was really talking to her. She didn't know what to say anyway, so she didn't say anything.
"I don't understand it," he said. "What is keeping me from winning?"
He stood in front of her, staring at the spot where their pokémon had been. Then he sighed.
"I just don't get it," he said. "It's getting late...I guess we can continue this tomorrow..."
On the corner of the sidewalk was a homeless woman in a wheelchair. "Mey shin derm agh?" she asked.
Adam frowned in incomprehension. "Huh?" he asked her.
Even before they had gotten across the street, Delilah burst out laughing. "I can't believe you said that," she said.
"What? I didn't understand her."
"Probably because she's homeless or schizophrenic or raised by mightyenas or something," she said. "Your presence doesn't command people to speak coherently..."
"Shut up," he said, but it sounded like he was trying not to laugh.
"Don't you speak bum? I mean, tramp? Or are they vagrants to you? Or vagabonds?"
"Commoners," he said, and she laughed.
The next morning she was woken up by the awful sound of a phone ringing. "Hello?" she asked, but she wasn't sure if it actually came out right. She cleared her throat and repeated, "Hello?"
"Hi, Delilah, I'm on my way to the pokémon center," said Adam. "When can you be ready?"
"Oh. Ummm...well, I'm still in bed..."
"I'm on Park Boulevard," he said. "I'll wait downstairs for you."
"Well, then I guess I'll see you then," she said.
"Right, cheers," he said cheerlessly and hung up.
She immediately fell back asleep.
"Delilah."
She jerked awake and saw Adam coming into her room.
"It's noon," he said. "I've been waiting downstairs for an hour."
Groaning, she sat up. "How did you get in here?"
"I rented that bed," he said, pointing to the other bed in the room.
She sighed, rubbing her eyes. Adam complained at her for a minute and then went back downstairs to wait for her in the cafeteria.
After she got dressed she went downstairs, and saw Irwin handing his pokémon to the nurse. "Hi, Delilah!" he said when she called his name. "I didn't know you were back in Goldenrod."
"Yeah, well, I'm going home, for Easter," she said. "I just ended up hanging around here for a couple days..."
"What are you doing today? Are you busy, do you want to hang out?"
How could she put this? "Hmm, well, I don't know," she said. "I was going to hang out with Adam Harlow—"
Irwin suddenly freaked out. "Adam Harlow, Delilah? ADAM?"
"Well..."
"What, was Hitler busy?"
"Meow!" She laughed. "That was mean."
"Why would you want to hang out with him? Wouldn't you rather hang out with me? I'm your friend. Just tell him you want to hang out with me."
"Are you kidding? What do you expect me to do? Appeal to his generosity?"
Actually she was sort of relieved by this. If Irwin had clashed with Adam in the past, she wouldn't have to come up with an excuse about why she couldn't invite him along to hang out with them because he wouldn't want to anyway.
"Oh, look," she said.
"Hey!" said Irwin. "You just found fifty bucks!"
"Yeah...now I have to find Adam."
"Why?"
"Oh, he's always losing these things."
Irwin looked doubtful. "What kind of a dumbass is he?"
"Oh, a loving and gentle one...he uses these for bookmarks."
"What?"
"He always has a few of these lying around."
"Why doesn't he just use one dollar bills?"
Delilah laughed. "Adam rarely bothers to carry anything smaller than a twenty," she said.
When they found Adam sitting in the cafeteria, he looked at his book. "Oh, now I've lost my place," he said, taking the money. "Hey ho. They must be waxing these before distribution."
Irwin looked markedly skeptical. "Why don't you use hundreds?" he asked sarcastically.
"Oh, I do," said Adam, either missing the joke or ignoring it. "I just dip into my pockets and use whatever is floating round..."
Delilah went to the bathroom, and when she came back Irwin was gone. When she asked Adam where he went, he just shrugged, so she didn't bother. "So...what are we going to do today?" she asked in the car.
He didn't say anything.
"Adam?"
"I'm thinking," he snapped.
"For you, I find that a bit suspicious..."
"Shut up, Delilah."
She shut up. For a second, she had to wonder why. What would he do if she didn't? If she were a boy, maybe he would hit her. Although if she were honest with herself, they probably wouldn't spend nearly as much time together if she were a boy. Adam kept her on hand because of her pokémon, but it was probably a lot easier for him to have her around because she was pretty. Other than that, he basically couldn't stand her.
Of course, there was also Delilah's side to consider—she would be infinitely less willing to interact with Adam at all if she weren't attracted to him. Of course, if she had been born a boy, maybe her entire personality would be different, or maybe she would even be gay, too. Or what if Adam were a girl? Would he be any different without an SRY gene? Would it be easier for them to be friends if he had been Eve rather than Adam? Or if she had been Samson instead of Delilah?
In the end, she supposed it didn't matter. He was a boy and she was a girl and Avril Lavigne wondered if their respective genders could be given more exposition. Delilah did have to wonder why Adam had never made more overt sexual advances on her. She knew he was attracted to her and she knew he knew she was attracted to him. It wasn't like she had any idea what she would do if he did, but she had to admit to some disappointment that her sex appeal was overwhelmed by his dislike of her.
"Oh, fuck cars, I hate driving," said Adam as the back tires went over the curb outside a Petco, where they had come to run a few errands. There was a carousel nearby and Delilah immediately wanted to go on it.
She sat and watched him critique his reflection and fix his hair for a few minutes. "You certainly take good care of yourself," she said.
"Well, my father always told me to attend to my natural resources," he said absently. "Of course, in a recession, most people try to conserve, when really the thing to do is expend to create jobs."
"Well...some people just don't have resources," she said. "Some people don't have the opportunity to make that decision."
"Sure, yes, the economy is in a bad way the world over," said Adam. "It affects everyone."
She laughed. "Lucky for you, it's fashionable to look poor—no wonder you're in the Mercedes, and not the limousine!"
"Oh, shut up."
"I bet when you were a kid your allowance was pegged to the gold standard."
He didn't say anything.
"Maybe it still is."
"Shut up."
Maybe she was just too prideful, and upset that he had slept with so many girls but not her—surely she made the cut! She was a good-looking girl, and didn't really believe that Adam would sleep with a girl because of her personality. He hated everybody! Did he just hate her that much, that it didn't matter what she looked like? She was only slightly disenchanted with herself when she realized that she didn't care that he hated her and instead was just bitter that her considerable feminine charms wouldn't sway him. But was that what she really wanted anyway? Did she want to have sex with Adam or did she just want Adam to want to have sex with her?
Sex and relationships had never been of great concern or interest to her; when she met and interacted with people, she rarely, if ever, thought of them in sexual or romantic ways. She had never had a crush on anybody, something that had confounded her middle school peers, who refused to believe her, and she hardly ever even thought boys were good-looking in real life, nine times out of ten only being attracted to actors and their ilk; but even then she thought it was sort of creepy, because after all people like Brad Pitt and David Beckham and Robert Pattinson were all still real people with their own lives and it seemed somehow presumptuous.
But then, Adam was in technical terms a male model, having appeared in more than one fashion editorial; she just happened to have met him. Was it any different? In fact, was it worse? The only reason he was famous in the first place was because he was sexy; his looks and his libido were the entire basis of his celebrity. Did that cheapen her interest in him? Was it something so obvious and universal that it couldn't even be acknowledged?
Maybe Delilah really was the least romantic individual on the face of the planet. Perhaps this was part of why she was attracted to Adam: because he did not make a big production about it. In that way it never seemed patronizing, because he did not pretend that sex was anything but sex, free of woo and flattery and the more flowery emotions that Delilah thought were somehow deceptive. Was romance the opposite of reality, the way romanticism was the opposite of realism?
When they left the store with their purchases Adam lit a cigarette and Delilah asked him, "Hey, so, do you want to go on the merry-go-round."
He looked at it. "The carousel? All right. Yeah, I want that horse," he said, pointing to a rapidash on the outside of the carousel whose mane and tail had been carved to fly magnificently behind it.
As they stepped up to the platform, a kid carrying a blue balloon got onto Adam's horse.
Adam frowned, and pressed the end of his cigarette to the balloon.
The kid jumped at the sudden noise and looked up, only to find Adam looking in the other direction and smoking, all nonchalant.
Adam had to settle for a less magnificent horse, which he sat on as if it were a Lipizzaner stallion performing classical dressage. When the ride finished, the kid came up to Adam, still dragging the deflated balloon on the end of the string, and said bluntly, "My mom says smoking is the worst thing to kill you."
Adam's lip curled in revulsion.
"Were you never told not to talk to strange men?" he sneered.
The kid looked at him blankly.
"Look," said Adam. "I'm a strange man. Sod off."
He laughed at Adam's accent.
Scowling, Adam dragged him to the lady and asked her, "Is this yours, missus?"
"Oh, where have you been! Yes, isn't he a naughty little darling?"
"He can be a naughty little darling with somebody else," snapped Adam, turning sharply to walk away.
"Humph!" said the lady. "I hope a swarm of beedrills builds a nest in your stupid Mohawk, you obnoxious, child-hating jerk!"
"Beedrills I'd welcome," he muttered in the car, "if it would get bloody people out of my hair..."