Disclaimer:

A: Skyler. Skyler are you there?

S: What? Ooh, you remembered I exist! Good on ya.

A: You're coming up in the story again soon I SWEAR. I just... I don't know what to do about this replacement disclaimer writer. They're both so good.

S: Yeah, I know what you mean. We can't just have them keep coming back in for callbacks until one of them messes up, can we?

A: Yeah. There are only so many ways you can say 'I don't own Pokemon', huh?

S: More ways than grains of sand, but a finite number, surely.

A: Yeah... hnngh, so hard.

Chapter 48: Winding Down

Amber

Mear Chun Fearg Tapa A Logh.

That's the Gold family motto, the one that we've had for hundreds of years, to the point where it's on our coat of arms. It's Old Ransein for "Quick to Anger, Quick to Forgive", and if you know my family at all, it describes us pretty well. I'll smack someone over the head for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, then given them a hug not five minutes later. It's how we are, and it might be a pain to deal with sometimes, but us Golds like to think we're pretty agreeable to be around in spite of things.

Axel is... well, he's not a Gold, I'll say that much. He's incredibly patient a lot of the time, and has this generally agreeable and approachable nature to him. It's a sort of 'happy stoicism', I'd say, masking his day to day emotions with a generic nice attitude. As such, he doesn't get angry often. At least, not visibly.

But when he gets set off... it's ugly. I've only seen it two or three times, but when he crosses over the edge it becomes this vicious, self-feeding cycle of anger that he holds onto for days. Sometimes weeks. It can be frightening, especially since it clouds his thinking and causes him to make stupid decisions. Well... stupider than usual. It is Axel, he's not exactly known for thinking things through.

It was still recoverable, though. I don't think he'd gone completely off as of yet... granted, finding out that Vanna, shocker, had been with someone else... and then losing his first ever Pokemon battle to said someone else... was enough to put anyone in a bad mood, but at that point it was more like a storm front than an entire weather pattern; we could weather it for a few days and hopefully things would be back to normal by the time we reached the Ginli border.

But no. Bad things do come in threes after all.

Axel had stormed off to the Pokemon center, ignoring my pleas for him to calm down. His face blood red, the veins practically popping out of his forehead as he muttered to himself. "It's just a battle, ok Axel?" I was trying my best to put him at ease, despite knowing it wouldn't work. "Everyone loses from time to time, the team just had an off day."

"I don't even care about that... well, I do, but... ugh." He turned to me suddenly, whipping his hand through the air angrily. "Like, that guy of all people? THAT GUY? It's my fault for deluding myself into thinking she'd never been with anyone before, but even that isn't the issue.. just... ugh..."

He almost ran into the sliding doors as he charged into the center, the glass barely fleeing out of his way fast enough. The Nurse at the front desk bowed as we walked in, though when she rose I could see she was biting her lip timidly. "Oh... hello, Mr. Jackson, you're not... these aren't more stardust-boosted Pokemon, are they?"

"No, these are my Pokemon this time, and I don't do that crap." Axel thrust the Pokeballs into Nurse Joy's hands, and she juggled them frantically for a bit to keep from dropping them. "These guys'll be fine after a good soak, I'd think." He cracked his neck. "Speaking of though, that Tyrannitar we brought in. How's it doing?"

The Nurse paused, staring at the counter. "There's... no easy way to say this..." she whispered. "But... well... we don't think it's going to make it."

Axel stared. "What did you say?" It was that curt, violent tone of voice, almost as if the nurse had been caught calling me a whore.

The Nurse bowed. "Well... we managed to move it out of that Cannon Ball and into a regular one for recovery, but it's body... it can't sustain itself without the stardust anymore. It's been pushed way too far and is so massive, without that steroid it's just... failing." She chewed her lip harder. "And if that weren't bad enough, the huge gash across its chest is causing all sorts of complications."

Both of Axel's fists were clenched, his entire body trembling. "So what are you saying we should do then, huh?"

The nurse gulped. "I think... we've come to the conclusion that the best thing for the Pokemon may be to just... delete its data." She somehow bowed lower, like her body had a hinge at the waist. "Even if we were to store it in stasis it would just preserve its injuries for the next time it was pulled out. And it's in pain."

Axel slammed both of his fists on the counter, nearly hauling himself up to get in the nurse's face. "Oh COME on. There has to be something you can do, you can't just let it die!"

The nurse flinched back and shook her head. "Sir, I'm sorry but there's nothing we can do. If you're that averse to ending its pain we can put it in storage for you but... as I said..."

Axel yanked his backpack from his shoulders and slammed it on the Pokemon center floor, then picked it up and beat it down again. Everyone was staring, one man had his phone out and was looking like he wasn't sure whether to call the police or not. I reached forward for Axel gently, catching his wrist and yanking him into my chest, gripping him tightly until he stopped struggling.

"I'll take care of it," I whispered. "Is that ok? Will you trust me to do the right thing?"

Axel panted, his exhalations sounding like sobs even though no tears were dropping from his eyes. "Just don't tell me what you did. Ever."

I nodded, kissing the back of his neck, and he broke free of my arms, heading towards the door. "Where are you going?" I called after him.

"Out. Somewhere, anywhere, I don't fucking know, I just..." The doors opened for him, and I yelled for him to stop, his body stopping as he was one foot out the door. "WHAT?"

"You have to be back by noon tomorrow, ok?" It was at times like this I really felt like his mother. Or his wife. "We can't afford to waste time if we're going to complete the gym leader circuit in time, ok Axel?"

He nodded quickly. "Whatever you say, boss." Then the doors closed behind him, and after only a few seconds I lost track of his shadow. Going after him was useless.. I knew that much. Best to give him his time alone.

I turned back to the nurse. "Sorry. It's been a rough day he's... usually not like this."

Nurse Joy smiled. "We all have our ways of dealing with bad news. Some are more graceful than others, heh. I've seen worse." She typed for a bit on the computer in front of her, then turned the screen towards me, showing me the Tyrannitar's record. "Mr. Jackson has given you permission to decide, correct? What should we do about this poor creature?"

Being a breeder, you get tough decisions like these more often than you'd like. Sure, most every pet owner has to go through the awful decision of deciding whether their beloved animal would be better off feeling nothing rather than the pain it's in, but breeders... well, multiply that by about ten or twenty and you understand why the more sensitive types don't make it.

To be fair, I'd only made the decision a few times. My step-father Hank spared me those choices when I was younger, but in the last two years or so he'd started letting me in on the nastier parts of the family business. The unfortunate truths behind keep a large number of Pokemon around until the were old and beginning to fade. I cried for two days the first time I decided it was time to put one down... but that poor Cottonee had been so shriveled up and yellow... the wind could hardly move it.

I nodded to the nurse, assuring myself that this was true compassion. "Make the pain go away." The nurse nodded, pressing a few more buttons... and in a single, horrible keystroke, it was done. The Tyrannitar was at peace.

It was the right thing to do. That being said, the next thing I asked the nurse was where the nearest liquor store was.

Qwill

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

So Cyndaquils have these four red spots on their backs which are the special places on our skin where the fire comes through when we need to get something done, right? I'm not entirely sure how it works but I think the way it works is that those areas of my back are more heat-resistant than others and so when I let the fire that's in me all the time and keeps me warm during the winter like it does now with all the pretty snow around it doesn't hurt.

Axel and I though, we worked together and decided that we needed something bigger and stronger if we were really going to fight back against Death and all of his super scary Pokemon that turn out to be nice once you convince them to stop killing people which is hard and usually involves me kicking them in the head a bunch before they calm down but... ow. Ow. So that's where Solar Flare comes from, and it really, really hurts since it's venting fire out of every pore of skin I have so it's basically a fire Pokemon's version of self-destruct like that smirky guy said when I passed out. But I got to see Champers again though and it was fun to play with him even though we ended up hurting each other a lot because Axel really didn't like the smirky guy who's apparently Champers' trainer even though he was living with the Professor while we were in Cliffkiln.

So anyways, after the battle I was soaking in the revitalization tank at the Pokemon center with Inigo and Shelligan and Medici since he decided to come say hi to all of us and it was really quiet and awkward because I don't think we'd ever been in a center at the same time and we'd definitely never bathed together and also the hurting was everywhere. When Medici came in he went "oof. That looked rough. You guys ok?" and Inigo crossed his arms and looked away and Shelligan gave a weary groan and I rolled on my back to douse my aching skin pores in the really good feeling spring.

"I feel like my repertoire is growing stale..." It seemed like an odd thing to say but Shelligan says some pretty fancy sounding things sometimes because he's almost as old as me but he's seen a whole bunch more of the world. "Kick up dust, jump into the cloud, rain lightning down... it was fresh and original for a while, but now I'd imagine the audience demands more, no?"

"I don't know about that Shelligan because yeah you do the same thing a lot but Inigo basically just swings at people with his leaf blades a bunch and he's still plenty strong so I think maybe you'll be ok but if you want to learn something new I can try to teach you!" I really liked helping people learn moves because it made me feel smart and people tend not to take me very seriously because of how I talk and act so whenever I can get them to ask me for help I do it! "We could totally get you to learn hail or something and maybe electrically charge the hail and then throw it down in little meteors to maybe make an electrical mine field that you can dart around and that would be super cool!"

"That... well, that actually sounds like it could work quite well, now that you mention it, Qwill. How long have you been sitting on that?"

"I haven't been sitting on it silly I've been thinking about it in my head and you sit with your butt!" Shelling was always saying silly things like that but that's probably because... no wait, I talked about that already. Ok. Moving on.

Inigo was upset of course and I think he actually said something like "I lost to a sword. Me. I lost to a sword. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is?" And then he started going on about Axel and he sounded like he was really upset! Something about how Axel was starting to get a big head and was treating him too much like a pet and not enough like a disciple and Medici seemed to get kind of ticked off about that but that's not too uncommon because Medici and Inigo don't really get along. Part of the reason is the thing we don't talk about because of the problem that Medici used to have and it's not really fair to use that because Inigo had that problem too but it's kind of personal so I understand.

"Look, Axel's not this perfect, wise master, ok? We all get that, Inigo. But it's unfair to expect him to be!" Medici wasn't yelling as loud as he could because he was still nursing his scar that he got from Godzilla which is what he called what hit him that I didn't get to see but heard was really scary. "He's just a guy, like any of us, and he's doing his best. He makes mistakes sometimes. Get over it. It could be way, way worse, you know?"

"I apologize for having higher standards than you, I suppose." Inigo really didn't sound like he was apologizing though. "My former master treated me as an equal before he was slaughtered. It is what I have come to expect. Axel did well to allow me my free reign for a year and I grew to respect him because of that freedom, but should he try to enforce restriction...

"He's your trainer, numbskull. He's trying to help!"

"I do not believe he is in a state of mind to help me. My former master..."

"Is DEAD, Inigo!"

"AND WHO'S FAULT IS THAT?" I sprung up and immediately tackled Inigo softly before he got close enough to wrap his hands around Medici's throat and I held him back because I hated watched the two of them fight because we're supposed to be a team and also Inigo and Medici's problems might surface and also Inigo was getting really close to telling Medici what we're not supposed to tell him! While I was doing the physical part of holding him back Shelligan stepped forward and placed one of his paws on Inigo's shoulder and spoke in that soothing tone of his that calms everyone down like he knows Hypnosis except he doesn't he's just good with words!

"Inigo, no. That's too far." Inigo was shaking but he eventually stopped pushing against me because he knew Shelligan was right and also he really couldn't overpower me anyways because I'm kind of tough and I was recovering a lot faster than he was thanks to AMBER's raising me to be super resilient and he sighed and slunk into the water of the tank.

"You are far more patient and understanding than I, Shelligan. I will continue to try and learn from you."

Medici was blinking and stunned and he was holding his chin in his hand looking at us back and forth like he didn't know what was going on. "Wait... who's fault IS it?" His eyes started to widen and he got this look like he was starting to realize something and he looked at Shelligan because Shelligan is probably Medici's best friend because they talk all the time and I'm hard to talk to even though I'm friendly and Inigo isn't friendly even though he's easier to talk to. "Shelly... what are you guys not telling me?"

"You still do not remember. Incredible." Inigo stared at Medici and then he went off into the corner to start cleaning his Leaf Blades because he likes to do that to try and calm his emotions.

"Never mind it, Medici," Shelligan said, swimming over and giving him a hug. "We've all had a rough day. We're beginning to say things we don't mean. I think apologies are in order." Shelligan wasn't just talking though because he says a lot of things by doing and so he bowed to each of us. "I am sorry that my performance was unacceptable today, everyone. I will attempt to improve."

"I'm sorry too I'm sorry too I'm sorry too! I was really really hoping not to fight Champers and so I didn't give it my all even though it was a Pokemon battle and now everyone's upset because we lost including Axel and I didn't want that to happen and so I'm sorry," I said, feeling really really sorry and splashing at the water with my forepaws in a little begging pose for forgiveness. Medici cracked a smile at that like I hoped he would and he bowed his head. "I'm sorry too. I let you guys down by not being there. And Inigo... I went too far just then. I shouldn't have talked about your master like that."

Inigo grunted. "I apologize for my behavior as well." And just like that we all got really quiet and just relaxed in the revitalization tanks because they're really good for rejuvenating you and making all your muscles feel super warm and tender and yummy! Yay!

Vanna

Maxilla has this nice row of hotel rooms that are carved right out of the mountain next to the mines. Super cute, kind of romantic, a bit like Harrow Heights Hotel as far as the overall 'feel' of the place, though at times it's more 'underground bunker' than 'sexy subterranean secret base'. It IS was one of the places where my status as Gym Leader gets me some free stays now and again, so it was simple enough to reserve some rooms for our group.

The day not having been the greatest, to say the least, after finding some quick dinner I'd holed up in my room, cradling Gardevoir in my lap. She always knew when I needed this, and after having been separated so long, I had no doubts she needed it too. I buried my chin into the top of her head, sighing. "What should I do, Gardevoir?"

We need to travel until we reach Jinford, correct? We're taking Xatu to the bird sanctuary.

"Oh... right, that's... that's right..." As if I wasn't feeling awful enough about what had happened with Arthur and Axel, now I felt guilty for having legitimately forgotten about Xatu's wish. I'd just been following along because I wanted to be there... and if I'm honest, because I still didn't want to face the reality that I might be booted from my job permanently.

That isn't the answer you wanted, is it? Gardevoir posted the note on my cheek playfully, nuzzling against my shoulder. I smiled, kissing her on the head.

"I... well, I just want to make sure I take your feelings into account since... ah..." I bit my lip. "I don't even know why I'm thinking about it. Arthur kind of walked away from us last time, didn't he?"

It's what he said he would do. Gardevoir tapped her pencil on her notepad. If you're asking how I feel about them... I don't care for Axel any more than Arthur. They're both intimidating in their own way. She began writing another note, than turned red and furiously scratched it out, stenciling another far more slowly. But... I like Axel's Pokemon. They've been very accepting of me.

"You don't have to hide it, Gardevoir, I know which one you've taken a liking to." It was the teeniest bit cruel to tease her like this, I know, but she's so adorable when she's flustered, you have to understand. She hides behind her notepad and when she realizes I can still see her she curls up onto my lap and tries to fit between my legs, like she did when she was a Ralts. I needed the closeness. "You don't have to worry or ask for my permission, you know. You should claim him for yourself before someone else does."

She smacked a note onto my face. I will if you will. I turned bright red myself... touche, Gardevoir. "It's more... complicated than that for me. I don't know what... or who... gah..." I laid back on the bed and stared up at the candelabra hanging from the limestone ceiling. "See, this is what happens when you get too attached, Gardevoir. Twice."

There was a knock on my door, and I jerked my head up, startled, my nerves starting to set in. There were at least two people that I really, really didn't want to talk to at the moment. Luckily, when they called through the door, I heard that it was Amber, and with a sigh of relief I let her in.

"Thought I'd find you here," she said, carrying a large brown paper bag with her as she flopped down onto my bed. "I imagine your day's been less than stellar."

"Yeah... you could say that." I saw her looking me over, her eyes gleaming with something like smug satisfaction. "I don't... as much as you're right, I'd rather not go into it, ok? I... got what was coming to me, I suppose."

"Vanna, shaming you is the last thing on my mind." She dug into the bag and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. "I'm just happy because I think I nailed down your drink of choice. Vanilla bourbon, yes? Yes?"

She looked so pleased with herself I didn't have the heart to tell her I was more of a wine gal. "Sounds good. I could use something stiff."

"Yeah... I figured." She poured out our shots expertly... far too expertly considering she was what, nineteen? You should only have been drinking for a year, young lady! Not that I'd expect any less from Goldie's daughter. She passed me a glass, clinking hers to mine before dumping it straight down her throat. Helix, did she even swallow? "So... Arrhur Redwood, huh?"

I curled up, nursing my bourbon. "Amber, please... I thought..."

"No, no, are you kidding me? I can't blame you at all, honest." She nodded to herself as she poured a second shot. "He's a handsome and charming military man who raises Pokemon and is a celebrity's grandson. That's the definition of a catch, Vanna, and he's chasing you. Power to you, girl."

"He's not looking for anything permanent." I sighed, holding my glass our for her to refill. "I made that mistake once already, even though he told me he was only staying a week, no exceptions." I chuckled. "I said I was ok with it... and it turned out I wasn't." I sipped at my drink, letting the sweetness of the liquor sink into my tongue before swallowing. "And now it's just a scar."

"I know the feeling." I suppose I looked shocked, because Amber laughed. "Oh come on. You didn't peg me for a complete prude, did you?"

"All relative I suppose." I swished by drink around in my glass. "Well... go on. Who was it?"

Amber downed her third... no... fourth? Shot. "Axel. Who else?"

"I thought you two seemed a bit close to have just been friends your whole life."

"Yeah, there was a time where I thought I really, really wanted him. It was right after one of these spats of his, actually, I thought 'you know, if that's as bad as he gets, I could live a great life with that guy. And we've known each other for so long!'"

"Which was the problem, of course."

"Yeah... it was awkward for a while after it happened. But these things do get better, I swear." She paused for a moment, then set her drink down and hugged me. "So just be careful about letting lingering feeling sway you, yeah? You shouldn't give him any more quarter than he's due."

I curled my legs into my chest. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you wanted to keep me around, Amber," I teased.

Amber made a face of mock disgust, then snatched my glass from me and gave me a refill. "Please. Don't think that just because we've been through more in a month and a half than most people go through in years that we're friends or anything. You're still that no good teasing hussy of a Gym Leader, after all."

"Darn tootin'!" I blew her a big kiss just to accentuate the point, which she spiked out of the air like a volleyball.

"You're incorrigible, you know that?" She sighed and laid down on my bed, her words beginning to slur a little bit. "Don't yoush ever change, yesh?"

It almost felt like she was flirting with me for a moment, and dear Helix that would have made things even more complicated than they already were, so I quickly changed the subject. "Is Axel back yet from his... um... tantrum, I guess? Should we go look for him?"

She yawned and shook her head, rolling on to one side. "No point in looking for him. He'sh way too good at vanishing, he'll be back tomorrosh." She grinned and sat up, eyes gleaming. "Say, what about yoush and I have a proper girlsh night in? Shleep over? Do each othersh hair? I don't tend to go for that short of thing, but I'll be nishe and let yoush braid me if yoush want."

The idea made me positively giddy. "Ooh, sure! Finally an excuse to wear my cute Woobat pajamas!" I started digging through my bag, pulling out the fuzzy light blue clothes and pressing them against my body. "They uh... may be on the skimpier side, since I was planning ahead and all. I hope you don't mind."

Amber laughed. "I've come to expect thesh things, Vanna. I'd be more dishappointed if they were modesht."

I giggled. "Well I certainly wouldn't want to let you down, now would I? Time to give you a sneak preview of the show!" I was still having trouble figuring out who the show was eventually going to be for but... well. That could wait for a while. Amber was going to look so cute in braids.

Dragonette

We have so much more respect for Qwill right now.

We look at this hyperactive runt of a Pokemon and we think to ourselves 'ok, well the Treecko is the serious one, the Squirtle is the entertaining one, and the Meditite is the super strong one if we remember correctly, so the Cyndaquil has got to be the annoying mascot.' But then he turns into this finely tuned engine of fiery destruction spitting out columns of flame fifty times his size and we have to take a step back and consider things again.

Maybe the Meditite is the annoying mascot?

Except we were almost sure that we recognized the Meditite and that we knew how strong he was, so that couldn't be it. And then the horrific realization sets in.

What if we're the annoying mascot?

Which is silly, since there doesn't have to be an annoying mascot in every group, but is still a valid concern because the four humors are a thing for a reason. Humours? Humerus?

No, that last one is those things we used to snap, I think. When we were killing people.

That's right. Those made those delicious sounding snaps crackles and pops when our beak used to crunch 'em. Those were goo... nope. Those were bad times. We weren't ourself.

Ourself isn't even a word, is it?

It's fitting though.

True.

Anyways, the inside of our Pokeball has been slowly changing as we've come to terms with ourself. It used to be pretty barren and just generically comfortable, like a padded cell almost. But now there's a nice big tree for us to perch on and a good breeze and a really nifty collection of books, oddly enough. Tactics stuff, mostly, books on Shaka Zulu, Patton, Amos Lovelace. We're starting to become dimly aware of why that stuff is there, and we're trying to block it out for now. It's... not a nice truth, if we're right.

We were filling our belly with some leftover noodles from the day when we suddenly felt our Pokeball shift and hit the ground, and we popped out to find that we were in some mountainous terrain somewhere, next to a small lake, the sound of a waterfall off in the distance. Axe-man was there, and his cheeks were streaked like he'd been wiping away tears, but he was smiling when we came out.

"Hey there Dragonette. How's it going?" He reached out and we dipped our beak for him to pet... we didn't have to bend nearly as far as we'd remembered having to, though. "Look at you, eh? It's all starting to come out of you, you'll be back to normal in no time. Well... maybe not normal, but a lot closer." He smiled, then took off his jacket, shirt, and pants, shivering as the winter night nipped at him. "Come on then. We should clean the remnants off you."

He tugged on our wing and led us into the lake, and we followed because well... he was our trainer, and he was pretty nice a lot of the time. And he made her voice go away which we'd finally agreed was a good thing, since she never fed us noodles like Shelligan did. Axe-man's teeth were chattering as he went knee deep in the water but he pressed on nonetheless, starting to cup water and run it across our chest, then our wings, our legs as well. We sat and watched and we saw purple glittery stuff running off of our bodies, almost like we'd been sweating it out and it had caked to our metal skin. He did this for about fifteen minutes until finally his knees were practically knocking together and so we cawed and pushed him towards the shore.

"Al-al-alright, I'll p-p-put my clothes back on." He shook and gripped his arms tightly to himself as he jumped around to dry off quickly and keep warm, then slipped back into his clothes. He was still shaking, and when he came up and wrapped his arms around us he felt cold as ice, and so we draped a wing around him to keep him from getting too cold. "That's a good girl. You've really turned around quickly, Dragonette. I'm proud of you."

Proud of me for doing what you wanted me to do, eh? No duh.

Shush. He's just being nice.

He gripped us tightly and we think we felt him sobbing again, but we could strain our neck around to look because he'd climbed up onto our back and was lying there, using us to keep warm. He growled and bumped his head against our back, then went 'ow' because we're made of metal and he's made of weak squishy flesh.

"Hey... can we fly for just a little, Dragonette? I just want to... be away from everything for a bit."

As big as he was, it was like he weighed nothing. We took to the air, and for hours he just clung to us.

We could have killed him any time we wanted. But for whatever reason, we didn't want to betray his trust.

Author's Note

I almost forgot to write one of these. I ALMOST POSTED A CHAPTER WITHOUT VIVA LA FEMINISM AT THE END.

Viva la feminism indeed, by the way. I'm pretty sure we passed the Bechdel test a while ago, but if we hadn't before, we've done it now. Three out of four speaking characters were women in this chapter, all of them named, talking to each other about things that weren't men.

And... I mean, also talking about men. Because that's the point in the plot we're at.

I feel like if I started this story over I'd take Axel out completely, and just have Amber have met a nice man or woman to accompany her searching for proof he's dead. I feel like I killed some really good potential plot-lines in favor of humor back then, I mean it's not like I couldn't have had Qwill, Shelligan, Inigo, and Medici belong to someone else. Enh... ah well. What we've got is still pretty good, I think.

Viva la feminism?