Chapter 13 – Voyeurism

A few days after I literally had the first conversation in a few years with my parents, General Harding didn't turn up for work. Silas and I were occupied by trying to pretend that he hadn't tried to comfort me in the wake of the phone call, but my boss being missing from his office effectively provided us with a distraction.

The first clue I got about his absence was well, his absence from his office when I walked in at a quarter to eight. Usually, he got in before seven and took a nap to make up for his lack of sleep at night, so he not being in the deckchair by the side of his desk was unusual. There wasn't even a post-it note or some other form of notice on his desk to explain that particular deviation from his normal behaviour.

Well, there also weren't any empty coffee mugs on his desk – Adrienne always brought in coffee for the three of us at half past seven. Stepping up to his desk, I reached out to press a hand against the worn fabric of his deckchair. It wasn't warm, so he definitely hadn't come in.

Deciding that it wouldn't do any harm to let Silas out, I released him from his pokeball. He materialized on General Harding's desk, and gave me a curious look when he noticed my commanding officer's absence.

"Yes, I think he's missing today," I said in reply to the curious squeak he made. "I'm going to check it out, but if he's really missing..."

Silas opened his shell a little wider and gave me an interested look, letting out a soft chirp as he did so.

"You could get down to the vault today, if he's out," I smirked. "Want to try and... socialize with some of the other water pokemon today?"

He let out an amused snort, and bobbed his shell up and down. Reaching out with his tongue, he gripped my hand with it, and vaulted up onto my shoulder.

"Whoa, easy there, little guy!" I grumbled, as I caught him and stopped him from falling behind me. "We're going to check whether he's really absent first, alright?"

With that, I held him in my arms and left General Harding's office.

xxx

"General Harding of all people, absent?" Mary echoed, blinking in disbelief. "You very sure that he didn't go out for a bit or something?"

"Quite sure," I nodded. "No empty coffee mugs on his desk, and the deckchair's cool."

"Hmm, he might be sick," she mused, picking up the telephone on the reception desk. "Wait right here – I'll call his apartment to check."

Silas and I waited for a while as she looked up his number using a list she dug out from beneath the desk, and called him at home. Hopefully he was at home to begin with, or we might have ended up with a case of him being missing for real. So we waited as Mary began humming to herself, waiting for someone to pick the phone up on the other end of the line.

After a bit, we heard what sounded like a muffled clicking sound coming from the receiver, and Mary perked up.

"Good morning, Zachary," she began, only to stop halfway through her greeting. Her smile turned into a small frown as she heard whatever he was telling her, and she glanced in my direction. "Oh, it's alright, then. I'll send your assistant over with the documents, okay? You get some rest."

As she hung up, both Silas and I rounded on her with curious expressions. "What happened to General Harding?"

"Well, he seems to be down with a fever," she shrugged. "He said he'd been burning up since about three in the morning, so he's taking the day off."

"Oh," I replied, as Silas eyeballed me, waiting for my response to that little bit of news. "Something about documents being delivered?"

"Ah, yes," she happily nodded. "You'll have to head up to his office and get some documents that he was supposed to sign and submit by tomorrow. He said he has no idea if the fever will carry through till tomorrow, so he needs them brought over to him today."

She paused for a moment. "And for once, he actually cares about his paperwork! I ought to buy a lottery ticket or something to mark the occasion..."

"Which documents are those?" I asked, scooping up Silas from the reception desk. "I could easily drop them off during lunch, I guess. Someone probably needs to man his office today."

Mary thought for a moment. "Hmm, he said they were the only pieces of paperwork on his desk. And it's nice to see you actually bothering about staying to keep an eye on his office for today, kid."

"Ah, it's not a problem," I gave her a big smile. "No problem at all."

xxx

After dropping Silas off with Babamon at the water vault and explaining to her that he wanted to socialize a little with the other water pokemon, I went back to General Harding's office and began scrutinizing the place for possible pieces of evidence to be used against him. As I had expected, the only neat parts of his office turned out to be the bookshelves and desk, neither of which offered much in the way of what I was searching for.

He had what seemed to be hundreds of books on the bookshelves, mostly novels. The desk only had the paperwork he was supposed to finish on it – slightly crumpled from when Silas had materialized on top of it just now, but I'd seen him submit documents in worse shape than those sheets before.

I did search discretely through his desk's drawers for a while, followed by a perusal of the bookshelves' contents. Nothing that could be considered unusual turned up other than a couple of dog-eared gardening magazines, of all things, so I finally gave up after a while.

Picking out a novel titled 'The Long Walk' from his seething collection of paperbacks, I settled down in his deckchair and began reading to pass the time until lunch.

xxx

As it turned out, General Harding lived in a comfortably clean part of Canalave, in an apartment building that had a distant view of the sea. It didn't go any higher than three stories, and based on its external appearance, the apartment units weren't too big – maybe three times the size of my dormitory room, at most.

"Looking for someone, kid?" the manager asked from behind his desk, as I walked into the building. "Otherwise, all our units are occupied, so you'd have to try someplace else."

"Err, I'm looking for Zachary Harding," I replied, briefly checking the slip of paper that Mary had given to me after scrawling his address on it. "Says here that he's on the third floor, in the fourteenth unit?"

"Aye, that's Harding, all right," said the manager as he cleaned his ear with a cotton bud. "Go on up there, then."

"Thanks, mister," I nodded, heading towards the stairs.

Within a couple of minutes, I had located General Harding's apartment unit. As expected, it was facing towards the Canalave terminal – its balcony would've been facing the sea, that way. The little ceramic corals he had placed in actual flowerpots filled with soil were also a giveaway of sorts, admittedly. And even if I hadn't noticed his attempt at decorating his portion of the corridor, his immediate neighbour had a horseshoe nailed to his metal-plated door, with several sheets of paper pasted to it that had Chinese-looking inscriptions on them – most probably General Fen Siow Loong's place, since they had mentioned living next to each other sometime in the past.

I knocked on the door. "General Harding, sir?"

There was no response, and so I tried the door – to my surprise, it turned out to be unlocked. A faint smell of herbs came out through the opened door, making me wonder if this was indeed his apartment – he hardly had a reputation for being a great cook. Stepping into his apartment, I almost ran right into Adrienne, who was brandishing a feather duster.

"Oh, good afternoon," she said, as she stepped back and began dusting the tiny coffee table next to the sofa in his living room. "Delivering the documents for him to sign?"

"Oh, hi Adrienne," I gave the slowbro a small hug. "Yeah, I'm here with the documents. Is he awake?"

"He should be, since we just gave him some chicken soup," she said as she began dusting the shoe rack. "Go on in to the second room – that's his bedroom."

"Isn't chicken soup for colds, though?"

"Nonsense – soup properly made is never a bad thing," she scoffed, even as she began dusting his gastrodon, which was sleeping on the floor next to the bookshelf.

As it turned out, the apartment was indeed about the size I had estimated it to be. It had two rooms and a small kitchen in the back that was separated from the living room by a bookshelf. I could see an octillery sitting next to the stove with a ladle clasped in one of its tentacles, and figured that it had probably watched over the chicken soup. I headed to the second room, as Adrienne had instructed, and knocked on the door.

"General Harding?"

A muffled reply came back through the door, and so I opened it and stepped through the doorway. Almost as soon as I had entered the room, though, he let out a groan, "Close it – the lights are too bright."

I turned around and shut the door, and turned back to face him. And I ended up staring at him as he lay motionless in his bed.

A small, ancient-looking fan that probably generated more noise than wind was blowing at him, and the window was open to presumably let breezes in. Also, an empty soup bowl was perched on top of a hardcover book that had been placed on his bedside table. But of course, it was he himself that ended up drawing my attention.

He had mentioned that he was burning up due to his fever, and so the icepack on his forehead was not something I hadn't expected to see.

The fact that he was wearing nothing other than the icepack was a surprise, though – a pair of shorts was lying on the floor next to his bed.

Even as my mind screamed all manner of obscenities at me for being a horrendous lecher and pervert, I found myself staring at his partially-covered face. His eyes were closed, and if not for the icepack, I probably could've been fooled into thinking that he enjoyed sleeping in the nude. Then, they wandered down to his neck – not too muscled, but not scrawny, either – and then progressed to his chest.

Ignoring my brain's protests against the fact that I was presently checking out my boss of all people, my terribly disobedient eyes went on moving downwards after getting a good look his relatively toned chest – not quite a swimmer's chest, but with some muscle definition and scarring that did make it attractive to an extent. From there, I found my gaze travelling to his flat abdomen that had traces of a four-pack on it.

"Would you like some of the chicken- Zachary, put some pants on now! Your assistant is here!" It was then that Adrienne opened the door and stepped into the bedroom – right then, I had no idea if I wanted to hug or curse her for doing so. As I stood rooted to the spot and felt my face reddening, she sighed and patted me on the back. "Sorry you had to see that, but the poor dear probably felt too stuffy."

General Harding let out a grunt and mumbled a response, "He's seen me in the gym showers, and I don't hear him complaining about the view..."

"Sir!" I squawked, trying to cover my face with the folder containing his paperwork. "I don't look at you in the showers! And umm... you need to sign these."

"Gimme," he muttered, slowly opening his eyes and taking the icepack off his forehead. "I'm going to re-freeze this thing, anyway..."

He got off the bed, and plucked the folder out of my grasp as he yawned. Somewhat clumsily, he padded out of the room and headed to the kitchen. There came the sound of a fridge being opened, followed by something being thrown inside. Then, there was a thumping noise, followed by him talking to his octillery, "Hey, Ursula – seen any pens lying around here?"

Ursula let out a whistling sound, and must have handed him a pen, because he mumbled out a 'thank you' to her shortly after that. A short while later, he walked back into the bedroom and held the folder out to me. "It's done, kid."

"Umm, thanks, sir," I blushed as I tried hard to not ogle him. "Could you put on some pants, please?"

He stepped forward and crashed down onto his bed, face-first. "Whatever, kid."

"Zachary, Zachary," Adrienne sighed, as she stepped behind me and gently pushed me out of the room. "Come on, you can have some chicken soup, and then you'd best be headed back to port control."

And that was how I wound up sitting opposite her at General Harding's tiny kitchen table, having some chicken soup. Ursula the octillery was dozing by the stove as I spooned it out of a lotad-shaped bowl, and Adrienne was playing Patience using some rather aged and stained playing cards.

"This is some good soup," I told her, as I nibbled on a morsel of chicken meat that had found its way into my bowl of soup. "Where did you guys learn to make it?"

"Eh?" she looked up from her cards and blinked like a noctowl. "Sorry, what was it you were asking about again?"

"The chicken soup," I held up the lotad-bowl. "It's tasty."

"Ah, the soup recipe," she smiled absently. "Zachary taught us how to make it – it's one of the few things he can actually cook without triggering the smoke alarms. He also feeds it to us when we're recovering from injuries and the like, so it's sort of like our official recuperation meal or something like that."

I chuckled. "Given how he's admitted to being a horrible cook, I'm quite impressed."

"Oh, he IS a bad cook. But he does manage to handle his mother's recipes – like the chicken soup – quite well."

"Ah, interesting."

"And I noticed," she went on, looking at me with her large, vacant eyes, "that you were checking him out just now."

I did a spit-take then, and would've gotten her head covered in soup if she hadn't used her psychic abilities to catch it in mid-air and sent it flying back into the bowl. "I- I was not!"

"Pipe down, boy," she laughed. "He does need his rest to get better. And yes, back on the topic – you were definitely checking him out."

"Seriously Adrienne, I was not checking him out," I sputtered, wiping my chin on the back of my hand. "He's my boss! And he's also a guy!"

"Well, he's a rather good-looking guy by your human standards," she shrugged. "And unless I have suffered from some rather severe brain damage that impairs my telepathy, you don't really have a thing for the ladies now, do you?"

I hesitated for a bit, and glared at her. "Wait a minute... did you just read my mind?"

"The mind is not a book to be read, dear. I merely took a peek into your thoughts," she hummed, as she resumed her game of Patience. "Oh, a thirty – looks like the game might end soon!"

"Adrienne," I said firmly, "there is a reason why telepaths aren't allowed to randomly root through people's minds, you know."

"Nothing harmful, though," she shook her head. "You should tell him, you know."

"I will not! That could get me into some serious trouble!"

"Oh, please – you think everyone in the military is ramrod straight? I'll tell you something, dear... some of the guys we have at port control would definitely enjoy being given the ramrod treatment, themselves. Heck, some of them regularly bone others and get boned."

I could only stare at her with my mouth hanging open, as she went on with her game of Patience.

"Anyways, it's fine if you want to keep it to yourself," she said, looking me in the eye and smiling a little. "But know this, dear – nothing much can be gained without some risk-taking."

"I hate you, Adrienne," I mumbled, as I chewed on a piece of diced carrot.

"So says Zachary often enough, though really, you boys could use some good mothering on the odd occasion. More soup, dear?"

xxx

It only took General Harding two days to recover from his fever, and by the third day he was back to bouncing around port control like the hyperactive maniac that he usually was. You could practically feel the shudder that ran down port control's collective spine as he waltzed through its main doors with a huge grin on his face.

"Good morning to you, kid!" he sang, as he slammed his office door open and jumped into his deckchair. "Ah, it's great to be back in here... missed me, Linda?"

"Linda?" I echoed, even as the wall shook from the impact of General Fen's fist on it, followed by a muffled call for us to 'shut the fuck up'. "You named your deckchair Linda?"

"Well, she's comfortable," he said, sinking down into the chair and closing his eyes with a contented sigh. "And she fits two – want to join me?"

"Umm, thanks but no thanks, sir," I muttered, hoping to whatever deities might have been listening that Adrienne hadn't told him anything about what we had discussed in his kitchen while he was zoned-out in his bedroom. Oh gods, if he found out about that particular conversation...

Fortunately, Adrienne arriving with the morning's coffee drew us both back to the routine which had become our daily state of affairs at his office. "Ah, Adrienne – you're just in time! Tonight, I'll be taking the kid here for a drink."

She didn't even blink upon hearing General Harding's announcement of sorts. "And just why are you taking him out with you? I don't think he'll be that comfortable with what you and Fen do with on your Friday nights out."

"Well, he did ensure that those documents got to me and back here safely," he replied, still reclining like a boneless thing in his deckchair. "That, and it's Friday – a stag night if there ever was one."

"Sir, why do you persist in doing this to me?" I sighed, running a hand through my hair.

"Because I'm AWESOME like that – and we're going to a strip club tonight, so I think you'd appreciate the view."

I couldn't even think of an answer to that one.

xxx

"... I thought you said we were going to a strip club."

"Well, I never said that it would be women taking off their clothes now, did I?" General Harding shrugged, popping several peanuts into his mouth. "And the drinks here are good, anyway."

"Hmph, I wouldn't listen to Zachary Harding too much if I were you, kid," General Fen chuckled. "Bastard tends to get us into more trouble than he's worth."

Alright, so maybe I should have guessed that a club named the 'Cock Pit' was a gay strip club rather than a normal one where women did the stripping. And maybe I should have taken the sign declaring the club to have 'the hottest topless staff on the docks' a little more seriously. But there we were, sitting in a corner not too far from the stage, where a rather muscular man wearing nothing but a rather skimpy thong was going through a pole dance routine.

General Harding didn't seem to be particularly bothered by the show, but General Fen's eyes kept flicking back in the direction of the stage, and his wistful smirk suggested that some probably nasty thoughts were running through his head. It did make me wonder if the bespectacled Asian general was more dirty-minded than he appeared to be, but I honestly didn't want to know – ignorance was indeed bliss, as the proverb went.

"Well, Fen," General Harding pouted, "I'd hardly say it was trouble for us to come here now, was it? You seem to be enjoying the view."

Before General Fen could respond, however, there came some cheers from the stage's direction. We turned as one to check it out, and saw that the stripper was now spraying himself with some sort of oil.

"Work that body, young man!" cheered a rather familiar voice that made my jaw drop once my brain had matched it to a face. "Come closer, hoo boy!"

"Aunty Moira?" I squeaked, watching with wide eyes as none other than port control's chief engineer stuffed some bills down the front of the stripper's thong, while an equally old woman cheered her on. "What's she doing here?"

"Eh?" General Fen took a sip of his drink, and tried to skewer the olive in it using the cocktail umbrella in his glass. "Oh, Moira? Yeah, she's a regular customer here – quite a cougar, that one is."

"Cougar?" I echoed.

"Older woman who enjoys the... company of younger men," General Harding said helpfully.

A rather high-pitched laugh came from the stage, and once again we turned to look in its direction.

"Lady, please don't do this!" the stripper was saying, as Moira Hew grabbed him by the ankle. "You probably have underwear that's older than me!"

"Oh, I do – would you like me to show them to you?" she cackled, as her friend and the crowd around the stage wolf-whistled at the poor stripper's fate. "Now, come to mommy!"

"The poor guy," General Harding shook his head. "He should have known better than to let her get that close to him."

General Fen snorted into what was left of his drink. "Remember that incident with the stripper at Choco's Ranch?"

"Oh, gods," laughed General Harding, "that stripper charged her for assault, didn't he?"

"Sirs," I interrupted, aghast. "Do you always go to gay strip clubs?"

"Why not?" asked General Fen, raising his eyebrows. "They're usually less crowded and the drinks are on average a lot nicer."

"That one may just be us, though," General Harding noted, squinting into his glass. "I think there's a lipstick stain on my glass.

"Anyways, kid – what's your story?"

I could only stare at him – that question was completely unexpected. "I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Well, we don't know that much about you," he shrugged. "And you know a decent bit about us, so turnabout's fair play, no?"

"Baby tell me what's your story, I ain't shy so don't you worry!" sang General Fen, drawing several curious stares. "And what the FUCK are you people looking at?"

"... that was random, Fen."

"Hey, that was good music!" he protested. "Katy Perry and Timberland, 'If We Ever Meet Again' – and we are in a club now."

General Harding shook his head. "Thank goodness your voice isn't that bad, given your tendency to sing at random moments... but you're right! Kid, let's hear your story."

"Well..." I tried to distract myself my staring into the depths of my glass – this was not a topic I was particularly fond of. "What do you want to know?"

"How does somebody like you end up enlisting?" General Harding asked, as he drained his glass dry. "Your parents were both well-to-do business people, weren't they?"

"What's somebody like you doing in a place like this?" General Fen added in his singsong voice, as he idly watched the stripper finally making his escape from Moira Hew's clutches. "We used to be trainers, and when we lost that privilege we ended up here."

"Exactly – so how did a kid like you end up in the military?"

I hesitated, before taking a sip of my drink. "Well, I ran away."

The two of them gave me curious looks, but said nothing. Taking that as a cue to continue, I set my glass down and let out a resigned sigh.

"Never dreamed I'd be sharing this with you guys, but... promise me you won't spread it around?"

"Why not?" asked General Fen. "We're all one big family at port control, in some ways."

"If I am going to make something of myself, I'll do so on my own," I said, trying to sound forceful and yet mask the way my voice was threatening to crack. "I never want to live in a shadow."

General Harding cocked his head to one side. "So you ran away."

"Well, I did. They wanted me to take over their business someday," I murmured, watching as the club's lights reflected off a shiny disco ball that was hung above the stage. "That was why I never became a trainer – the revolution made sure that all trainers were in the military. So I went to school. But when I got to high school, I decided that I didn't want to live that life anymore."

"Why didn't you just tell them how you felt?" asked General Fen, as he finally managed to skewer the olive in his glass, popping it into his mouth.

"I did, but..." I bit my lip. "They told me I'd outgrow it, that the desire to be a trainer was a passing phase. So when I graduated from high school, I took just what I needed, and ran away. The base camp at Mount Coronet was close enough, and I lied about my age to get in. When the commandant found out, he wanted to give me the boot, but somehow he let me stay.

"One day, I fell into the tank where commandant's pet goldeen lived, and that led to my affinity test. And here I am."

For a while, we sat in silence, doing nothing save for popping a couple of peanuts, or sipping from the glasses which we hadn't already emptied. Thankfully, my tolerance for alcohol was somewhat high, since the club's manager apparently insisted on serving us alcoholic drinks only.

"Well, kid," General Harding said softly, "we all have tough decisions to make in life. So the question at the end of the day probably is whether we make the most of our choices."

"Choices are often neither good nor bad," chimed in General Fen, as he tried to discretely flick a toothpick at a squint-eyed man sitting behind him. "They're only as much as you make them out to be, I guess."

I could only nod mutely as I swirled my screwdriver in its glass. Advice was good and fine, but it couldn't possibly erase my doubts about what I had already done. Running away was one thing, and not calling or writing home for close to two years was another. Of course, they didn't have to know that – along with a whole host of other nasty things that I kept locked up in my skull. "Thanks, sirs."

"Do you know why we brought you out tonight, kid?" General Harding asked me with a concerned look. "It's because you looked like you needed to unwind, maybe hang out a little. We're fine if you want to actually get plastered, you know."

"Sometimes, we need to drown our sorrows in chemicals, like ethanol," nodded General fen sagely. "Tomorrow's a half-day, anyway – it's Saturday!"

"Speaking of which, I don't think we've had quite enough to drink, especially the kid over here... Oi, Gaston – keep them coming!"

General Fen wound up giving General Harding a sloppy, wet kiss with tongue, and I apparently ended up bawling into my commanding officer's shoulder about being a no-good runaway. For his part, General Harding managed to embarrass himself by accidentally going to the ladies' room when he needed to take a piss, which resulted in an amused Moira Hew steering him out of there as she complimented his junk.

And that was what happened when we ended up getting completely smashed that night.