Chapter 26 – Confrontation

I just about had a heart attack when my brain processed General Harding's words. It didn't take Adrienne a second to levitate my limp form and spin me about to face him. The expression on his face was a forced, cheerful one, but his eyes glimmered with the suggestion of something darker as he came closer to me.

"So, rookie, you thought you could have me hauled up to the docks for murder!" he said, sounding unnaturally chirpy as he brandished a pistol in my face. "This isn't a very nice thing to do, especially not to your boss, really. What have you to say for yourself, then?"

Even if I had not been paralysed by Adrienne and forced by her to imitate a boneless chicken – the paralysis also forcing me into remaining silent – I don't think I would have been able to provide him with a good response. Half of my mind was screaming at me for following him on the night 'mission' to inspect the deep-sea mines, and the other half was all but frothing at the mouth wondering how he'd found out about my little conspiracy against him.

"Well, answer me, you little assoholic fucktard!"

"Umm, my bad – I'll need to release his jaw first," Adrienne said, at least having the grace to sound sheepish.

General Harding rolled his eyes, and sighed, "Sweet Arceus, Adrienne. I could have shot him, you know! Let the man speak for himself, will you?

"Women," he smirked, shaking his head. "Always trying to make us guys shut up, eh? Even the psychics, by golly – you'd think that they'd see our side of the coin!"

My jaw suddenly dropped, feeling rubbery. It was almost as if someone had gripped the sides of my face tightly, and let go just like that. I reflexively shut my mouth, and felt my jaw muscles tensing. Adrienne sure had done a number on them, it seemed.

"Let's have at it, now, shall we?" my boss asked me sweetly, tapping me forehead with the barrel of his pistol.

I was still at a loss for words, but managed to scrape a reply out for him. "It was your fault!"

He reared back, his face an exaggerated mask of horror. "Say what?"

Faster than thought, his left hand shot forward and decked me across the face. The blow made me see stars for a moment, and a ringing sound started echoing in my head. I let out a grunt, but that was all I could do before he grabbed me by the collar and yanked me closer to him, until our faces couldn't have been more than six inches apart.

"My fault, you say?" he snarled, looking positively maniacal. "I have it on good authority that you did it at least partially because you wanted my job. And what about conspiring with Silas to question the pokemon down in the vaults, eh?"

I did my best to suppress the tremor in my voice, even as I began worrying not just for my safety, but Silas'. "He has nothing to do with this."

"Oh, but he does," hissed General Harding. "You see, back when you had your little episode with the prophecy, Adrienne took a peek into your head to get a copy of it. And guess what she found along the way?"

"Damn," I cursed aloud, as I realized that there wouldn't be any talking my way out of this one; he knew the truth. "So, you're just going to kill me here?"

"I could do that," he said in a thoughtful tone, suddenly stepping back and turning away from me. "But you see, that would raise too many questions. The port operator saw me going out with you, as did his poliwrath and that divermon. Too many witnesses, you see."

"You'd just wipe their memories with Adrienne or Ben, then," I retorted. A thought struck me just then. "Just like what you had her do to me, apparently."

He mulled over my words for a few seconds, before slowly nodding his head. "Ah, I get your drift. That's some very nice deduction there, rookie. Good to see that your devious little brain's still at work in there.

"I'm so tempted to kill you, really. And just like any villain in a kid's cartoon, I'll be telling you my evil plan before I do so," he said, before letting loose with a manic cackle that caused the milotic in the lagoon to let out shrill cries of distress. "But of course, you're going to end this whole shebang as clueless as you were when you started it."

"And just what do you mean by that?" I asked, feeling the beginnings of panic once again.

"Oh, I'll kill you, that much is for sure," he snorted, shaking his head. "But I'm just wondering if the gunshot would be audible from the nearest inhabited area. Or if the milotic might squeal on me.

"You know what, kid? Fuck this shit – Adrienne, could you be a dear and slowly start squeezing his brainstem for me?"

My eyes must have as wide as saucers when I heard that. Everything seemed to slow down as I flicked my gaze towards Adrienne, who was looking at me strangely. Somehow, her normally blank face managed to convey an air of something other than apathy – for a moment there, I almost got the impression that she was obeying this one request from her trainer with some reluctance.

Ever heard of the five stages of death and dying? Or was it the five stages of grief? Regardless of who those five stages were intended for, be they the dying, the dead, or the grieving, I'm pretty sure that I was forced right to the fifth one during that moment. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression... well, it wasn't like I had any time for those, did I? Somehow, an eerie sort of acceptance took root in my mind, and I could only contemplate my impending death with an unnatural feeling of calm.

A strange sensation started working its way over my body, feeling almost as if a light static shock was travelling through me. Adrienne must have relinquished control over my eyelids, because it didn't take much effort to close them and brace myself for my approaching death. Brainstem compression sounded painless - or at least I hoped it was.

There was a brief, feathery sensation on the back of my neck, and I felt my entire body seizing up as if it had been encased in quick-hardening epoxy. The pressure then ceased, and I dropped to the ground in a heap.

Before I even had time to wonder if death was really that anticlimactic, General Harding's confused voice broke the silence.

"Adrienne, what are you doing?"

I wasn't dead?

"Adrienne? He's still breathing – I can see his chest moving!"

Apparently, I wasn't dead yet.

"Oops, my bad. Could you make it an aneurysm instead? Good thing you caught it, heh!" General Harding chuckled. "Jeez, I'm slipping up, forgetting that brainstem compression was just a little too conspicuous..."

The night was silent once again, as I waited for Adrienne to finish what she'd started. Strangely enough, nothing happened.

"Adrienne-" General Harding started speaking, only to be silenced abruptly.

I just lay there, not daring to open my eyes. All that I could hear was the sound of waves lapping gently against the edge of the lagoon, and after a while, I began to wonder just what had happened.

"It's alright," a voice spoke up in my mind. "You can open your eyes now."

I knew that voice... it sounded familiar, yet was alien to me. I'd have remembered the owner of such a depressed-sounding voice for sure.

When I opened my eyes, I saw none other than Ben the gardevoir standing over me, looking uncharacteristically forlorn.

"Ben?" I blinked. "What happened?"

Ben sighed, and sat down on the sand next to me. "By the looks and sounds of it, my trainer was going to have Adrienne kill you. Luckily I got here in time."

I sat up, and looked around. Both General Harding and Adrienne were frozen in their places, looking just like a pair of statues with shocked expressions on their faces.

"Why did you come here, Ben?" I asked him, as he scooted over closer to me, and started tracing a random pattern in the sand with his claws. I felt an instinctive urge to move away from him, but ultimately decided against it. "Did you know what he was going to do?"

"Suspected, yes," he said slowly, as he flicked his red-eyed gaze towards his immobile trainer and Adrienne. "Knew for sure? No way to tell from a possible future. So I played a hunch."

"Luckily for me that turned out," I said quietly, as he sighed again and swiped a claw over the sand patterns he had been making, smudging them into nothingness. "So... are you going to kill me, then?"

Ben remained silent, and I didn't press him for an answer – honestly speaking, I didn't want one. His expression was mostly hidden by the fringe of green hair that hung over the major half of his face, but a single glance in his direction still allowed me to see his red eyes glowing dimly. It was almost as if their usual lustre had been tarnished, somehow.

I sighed, "So I suppose you're going to kill me now, aren't you?"

He cocked his head to one side, gaze not leaving his immobilized trainer's form. "And what makes you say that?"

"Like he said," I replied, gesturing towards General Harding where he stood, "I've been a threat to him. And here you are with the villainous plan, like they have in the cartoons. So this is the end, isn't it?"

Before he could come up with a response to that question of mine, I unclipped Silas' pokeball from my belt, and shoved it towards him. "Here, take him."

"Whatever for?" Ben asked, looking and sounding utterly bewildered. "Are you out of your mind?"

"If this is going to be the end of the line for me, then... I guess he deserves better," I shrugged, offering him a rather forced smile. "Find Silas a good home, will you? Just keep him out of Harding's reach – I doubt that Silas' life would be worth much once I'm gone, frankly."

"You are stark raving bonkers," the gardevoir huffed. Nonetheless, he still reached out with his powers and levitated Silas' pokeball out of my hand. "But really, there's no need for all that."

I frowned. "Silas is innocent in all this. Whatever he did was according to my instruction-"

My words were cut off in mid-flow as the pokeball flew back to my belt, and neatly clipped itself back to its usual spot. "What the hell-"

Ben tapped the side of his face with his claws for a few moments, apparently studying my reaction to that. "There's no need to find Silas a new home, my dear. No one's dying tonight, not if I have anything to say about it."

I groaned, and rubbed at my temples in exasperation. "Mother of fuck, can't you psychics ever do anything in a straightforward manner? Whatever happened to killing people with a bullet to the head? You buggers must've influenced Harding into all this drawn-out killing procedures or whatnot."

"I wouldn't have pegged you for the defeatist type. Or the suicidal type, for the matter."

"My only meaning in life presently lies in my work. And maybe this lunatic of a pokemon that I named Silas. My family is probably dreading my visit home, whatever Harding says about it. And you're surprised that I'm just that willing to kick the bucket?" I rolled my eyes at Ben's disbelieving expression. "Or is it some other prophecy that I'm not aware of?"

"Actually, it is," he said quietly, looking reasonably crestfallen.

"Sweet child of mine..."

"You know that time isn't exactly linear, right? That every second in time generates an entire subset of possible futures in a three-dimensional region?" Ben's voice was beginning to take on a manic edge, and very honestly, I was starting to get a little lost in the proceedings. "Each second in time links to a practically infinite collection of possible futures, but yet an individual can only live in one such possible future!"

"What the hell does that metaphysical crap have to do with all this?" I sighed, wondering just how I fit into this colossal mess. Well, aside from my little plot to get my boss thrown in the slammer.

"Metaphysical? Hardly, though that's how you ignorant folk tend to describe the nature of time," scoffed Ben. "Prophecies are games of probability; they describe the subset of possible futures most likely to be ventured into by a particular individual. That's why their wording is always so ambiguous.

"One prophecy may by virtue of its wording and clarity, span a whole lifetime or define just a single, particular moment in time. Despite that, some tend to be clearer than others," he muttered, perking up a little at the end of his little rambling session. "And that is why I'm not going to kill you, my dear frustrating human."

"Do elaborate," I said simply, narrowing my eyes at him as I started to think about the number of prophecies that might be floating around. There were probably a thousand of the damned things, come to think of it.

"Someday, somehow," Ben said, cocking his head to one side, "my dearly beloved, foolishly intelligent trainer is going to get into a royal cock-up of epic proportions. And you of all people will be the only one who can save him."

I got up, and stretched my back. Hell, if I wasn't going to die, then I might as well ensure that my spine didn't get stiffer than a teenage male with a swimsuit magazine. "And you of all living, thinking, psychic beings somehow believe in it? I'd find that dubious, Ben. One prophecy implicating me is more than enough!"

"What kind of fool do you think I am?" he retorted. "Normally, most life-forms have a time trail leading into one group of possible futures. But you, on the other hand, have a time trail that is just that difficult to follow."

"Adrian managed it," I pointed out, as I walked up to General Harding and waved a palm in front of his face; his lashes didn't even flutter in response. "So you're saying your abilities are inferior to those of an insane slowking?"

Ben let out a mental sniff. "My abilities are beyond his by an order of magnitude. Bear in mind that it was trying to outdo me that led to his insanity, will you?"

In the blink of an eye, my mind was flooded with a torrent of strange images. Some showed burning buildings, some showed flowing rivers, and some showed random strangers going about their daily lives. Yet some others showed questionably normal images of plants in flowerpots, dolls lined up on a windowsill, and a dusty, used diary with yellowed pages. My head felt like it was going to split open at the seams, and Ben's smug expression didn't make things any better.

"Alright, alright!" I winced, even as I rubbed at my temples to try and soothe the massive headache he had induced with his psychic abuse. "You've made your point, Ben. So, now what?"

He got up, and dusted the sand off his skin-skirt. "Fair enough. What does one do with a murderous trainer and his equally guilty protégé? And of course, I couldn't leave Adrienne untended to; that would be plain dangerous."

"You're the psychic, you can handle it," I said, shaking my head. "Seriously, you people do things so slowly, it's a wonder anything gets done at all!"

Ben offered me a look that almost managed to appear conflicted, but didn't say anything for a while. A heavy silence settled down over us for a short while, and even the milotic in the lagoon began to watch us more intently.

Abruptly, General Harding's pistol flew out of his grip and into its holster, and he blinked his eyes. Adrienne did the same, and looked around in what seemed to be confusion of a sort.

"Why, hello there, kiddo!" he said cheerfully. "Looks like it's been an exciting night, hasn't it?"

He then turned to regard his gardevoir with a curious expression. "I can't say that I recall bringing you along, though, Ben."

"Oh, I decided to play chaperone," Ben said airily as he walked over to be behind his trainer, and swatting his shoulder lightly. "You had Adrienne out for some reason, though... crowd control on the milotic?"

Adrienne merely blinked again, and yawned, scratching the side of her head and looking quite confused.

General Harding seemed to think it over for a second, before nodding his head and smiling widely at us. "Must have been, because right now, I have no fucking idea what ran through my head just now. So, rookie, how's the lagoon view?"

I sucked in a deep breath, and looked over his shoulder. Ben's eyes glowed brightly in the darkness, looking quite as if he was expecting me to say the right thing, without knowing what the right thing was.

"It was quite unexpected, sir," I replied, with my best fake smile. The brief flicker of doubt I saw crossing his expression didn't escape me, though.

xxx

Once we reached the Harding family home, General Harding recalled Adrienne and promptly went for a shower. As I waited for him to be done so that I could wash off the sand and salty feeling due to our brief trip to the lagoon, I saw Ben lingering in the darkness of the kitchen. I headed over to him, and saw that various utensils were all hovering in mid-air, with knife even sharpening itself on a sharpening stone in a rather sinister manner.

"Just what did you do to him and Adrienne?" I asked him, as he toyed with a spatula by making it turn cartwheels on the countertop.

He shook his head slowly. "Basic memory wipe, like he had her do to you when he first found out about your little scheme against him. You have nothing to worry about, really."

I frowned. "And what about Adrienne? Did you wipe her memories, too?"

Ben let out a mental chuckle at that. "Please; a slowbro is, by its very nature, slow. She won't be recalling anything about tonight even if she tried manually reconnecting those neuroconnections. And the same goes for slowking, though anyone who lets Adrian into their head needs a good dose of Thorazine, if you ask me..."

"I'll just keep that in mind, then," I mumbled, as I turned to leave the kitchen. Just as I was about to cross the threshold into the corridor, though, I felt Ben's touch on my arm.

"Wait," he said, in a soft voice, even as the shower got turned off in the bathroom, filling the house with silence once again. "Promise me one thing, please."

I raised an eyebrow at that, even as General Harding began whistling a tune inside the bathroom.

"I saved you tonight, so that when the time comes..." Ben's voice trailed off a little. "Well, when the time is right, save him."

"From what?" I whispered, a knot tying itself in my gut for some odd reason. "And how will I know if the time is right?"

"I don't know, either. Save him from whatever it is, even if it turns out to be himself," he flicked his gaze towards the bathroom door. "Please, I beg you."

Finally, I nodded slowly in agreement. Light spilled into the corridor as the bathroom door was opened, and General Harding stepped out in a pair of shorts, still drying his hair.

"She's all yours, rookie! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to grab some sleep," he yawned, as he headed back to the room we were sharing.

As I stepped towards the bathroom, Ben's baleful gaze didn't escape my notice.

xxx

The trip to Sootopolis went by faster after that, though it did feel slower at some times. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was living on borrowed time, and that I had nearly died that night at the milotics' lagoon. General Harding and Adrienne went about their daily business as normal, cheerfully and happily, while Ben seemed to share some of my sentiments on the matter. He certainly was a great deal more subdued since that night, though only Mrs. Harding really noticed it – her son and husband were quick to put it down to a crush on the medicham down the road.

At one point, I almost felt like grabbing my superior officer by the neck and shouting in his face, just to settle everything. I didn't know how he managed it, really; Ben claimed that he had wiped my memory at least once, and so I guessed that he had tasted the same turmoil I was going through before.

All I wanted to do as I lay there at night, trying to fall asleep, was to set things straight with him. But I didn't, and before I knew it, it was time for me to leave Sootopolis. Of course, knowing where I was headed after Sootopolis didn't help things get any better.

Ben did offer me a wary smile as I left, though, and his parting handshake was accompanied by the mental image of an hourglass with just a few grains of sand running through its neck. Just what it meant, I didn't know, but somehow, that image managed to soothe my badly shaken nerves.

He did teleport me to my next destination, though he was considerate enough to drop me a good kilometre or so from the actual spot. I walked up to the place where I was supposed to be staying for the next three day and was almost immediately assaulted by a veritable flood of memories – one thousand meters had never felt so long before.

The little cafe at the corner was still open, and there was Gilbert's trailer parked next to it. Of Gilbert himself there was no sign, though the clothesline was laden with several pairs of faded jeans that were unmistakably his, even after my long absence.

The three crazy mongrel dogs at the corner house were still living in their fenced-up compound, and they did offer me friendly tail wags as I passed by. That crazy old man living down the road was still watering his plants, and I noted with some amazement that they had all yet to die from being drowned on a daily basis. A strange smell floated out of Ms. Paati's house, indicating that she had probably just burned her dinner again.

Some of the folks who happened to be outdoors at the time gave me stares, which only motivated me to walk faster.

In fact, I hardly noticed that I had reached my destination until I reflexively reached into a mailbox to retrieve mail that wasn't even mine. I had collected the mail from that same mailbox for years, and the instinct to do so had remained with me, strangely enough. After I collected the mail – consisting of some flyers, a furniture catalogue, and the electricity bill – I turned to face the house which the mailbox belonged to, and abruptly forgot to draw my next breath.

The fucking house still looked the same, even after nearly half a decade.

Hesitantly, I unlatched the main gate, and walked into the house compound. Being sure to latch the gate before going further into the compound, I walked up the short driveway and stood in front of the main door. Little Japanese roses in their plastic pots waved about in the gentle breeze that blew by, almost looking as if they were teasing me for returning here when I had sworn not to.

At least, not until I had made something of myself other than a soldier who nearly got killed by the commanding officer he'd tried to oust from office.

Before I could even knock on the door, it opened, and all I could do was to blink like a noctowl at the woman standing in the doorway. Like the house, she hadn't changed one bit in the few years since I'd last seen her. Upon closer inspection, though, some things had changed in her appearance – her hair now had streaks of grey in it, and there were a couple of wrinkles in her forehead that I definitely don't remember her having.

She regarded me through a pair of narrow-framed bifocals, and made me feel a whole new bout of nervousness. I was hoping that I'd get lucky and that she would have been at work when I arrived, but of course, today it looked like she had gotten home a tad earlier than usual.

We just stood there for a bit, surrounded by a tense silence that dared one of us to break it. I swear, you could have suffocated a rock with that sheer quietness – it was that tangible.

As it turned out, she made the first move. "So, you came. I was wondering if you'd actually listen to your orders and come over."

I bit my lower lip nervously. "Well... what else would you have expected me to do? I could have returned to Canalave, but..."

She took off her spectacles, and retrieved their case from her pocket. In a flash, they were stashed away in the case, and safely nestled in her pocket. I was just about to muse that she still could stow her glasses away faster than a cowboy on the draw, when she stepped forward and hugged me tightly. I let out a squeak of surprise, and then hugged her, somewhat awkwardly.

"Welcome home, son," she said, sounding as if she was suppressing a sob as she embraced me.

I somehow managed to speak despite the lump in my throat. "Hello, Mom."