Forbidden Waters - 26
Fastidious, ruby-tipped hands steadily drew lines of darkness along predatory lashes.
Brrrrrr…
The flush of human emotions lays obscured beneath a mask of marble skin.
Brrrrrr…
A satisfied curl of the lips, stained the color of blood.
Brrrrrr…
"Hoenn News Network, Business Connections. This is Emily speaking, how can I help you?"
Margot smacked her lips, gazing into a tiny, folding mirror. "Bonjour, Emily. I need to speak with Jackson Steady, it's urgent."
"I'm afraid Mr. Steady only takes calls by appointment. I can take a message if you'd like, may I ask from who?"
She flicked the mirror shut like a pocket blade. "Margot. Let him know I'm waiting."
There was a pause, pregnant with shuffles of indecision, then a single, steady breath. "Please hold."
"Of course, take your time, darling."
"Fukin' hexcraft," Jean-Henri sputtered at the capitulation as an endless track of unremarkable but still unmistakable elevator jazz leaned back, flipping through the pictures they'd just finished polluting the hotel bathroom developing. "Got the negs packed, safe'n'sound. Box full 'o disaster; shit…"
"Good," Margot said with her head bobbing to the exciting-but-not-too-exciting sax solo coming from her nav. "Did you find their flight?"
Jean-Henri combed the feral curls of his wiry mop of hair into line. "Yeah, contact at Kalos Air says they're Fly'n coach out'a Shalour. If the dates'r right, Princes' tak'n 'em down the riverways again, fo' sho'."
"Faaabulous," she said and popped a gourmet cherry cordial into her mouth from a tiny box of luxury chocolates he'd given her that evening. "No need for them to respond to my newscast on holiday."
The hold music came to a stop, interrupted by the clearing of her man's throat. "Steady speaking, am I to understand that I'm getting a call from Iris Margot. Miss Margot?"
She smirked. "L'ultime, mon ami."
"Well shucks, ain't this an honor! To what do I owe the pleasure, Ma'am? Ain't often folks over yonder cross dex-nets to grace my humble phone. " His voice was pleasant to the ear, like that uncle you only saw once a year with all the best stories your mom didn't want you to hear.
Margot nodded to herself. Ah, I remember him now, I watched a couple segments of his last year. Could use a voice like his more often. Pin that for later. "Well, Monsieur, I'll make it quick, since I know you're a busy man. I've got an exposé I'd like to feature outside of Kalos, and I think your station would be the perfect platform for release."
"Hmmm. No ingratitude at all, the answers' yes, but… mind spilling a little tea on me?" he asked. It was clear from the subtle quake in his voice and the barely-audible tapping of his desk that he was actually jittering with excitement.
She chuckled and lounged back in the velvet seats of her limousine. "Tsk, tsk, tsk. So impatient," she sighed. "Buuut… I can let you lick the spoon off what I'm cooking, as long as you can keep it to yourself."
"My lips are tight as a Metapod fight, m'lady," Steady assured her, practically leaning in through her dex-nav speaker with anticipation.
"You know the Stones? That old League Family?"
Jean-Henri's brow rose as he heard a grunt, felt a thump near the front wheel well, and followed the subtle trail of something scraping the underside of the limousine with his nose. Probably hit a Trubbish or something. Damn things are taking over the city, shit.
"Don't I ever. Been making waves that end up flooding my sports-feed for years. That Richard boys' really taking his legacy back out of the gutter, boy howdy."
"Alright, well; let's just say that I've discovered something about Mauville's League darling that will absolutely shock you."
"It takes a lot to shock me these days." There was a quirky tiredness in Steady's voice.
"Rest assured, you and the rest of the world are in for a truly entertaining upset."
"Entertaining…" he mumbled on the other end of the line. "An upset huh?"
She grinned, gazing at the lights of Lumiose North rushing past as her driver sped them across the river causeway. "Practically an international incident."
A thump against the wood of his desk, the sound of resolution. "Alright, fair enough. I know the rules in this business, ain't no details without a contract bleeding ink. When should I have my studio ready for you?"
"This time next week would be just perfect," she said, squirming around as her vision became reality once again. "That is if your program has a spot on the books for little ol' me."
"Whatever I had scheduled for prime-time just canceled. Looking forward to seeing what you've dragged up this time. If it's half as shocking as 'Sabrina's Game', we'd be honored to help break your story."
"Oh, well, it's hard to make lightning strike twice, but I do hear thunder rolling."
"I'll keep my umbrella handy. It's been a pleasure, truly. I've got a few phone calls to make so this'll work out. Emily'll work out the arrangements with your people."
"Au plaisir, mon ami." She clapped her 'nav shut and raised her chin towards the automatic window separating the passengers from the front cab. "Joseff dear, let's go home. There's so much to do before we depart," she said as her opulent, inner-city castle of a compound dominated the horizon.
Jean-Henri shook his head, wondering how he'd somehow ended up surprised by the wickedness of her edge after all the time he'd known her. "Damn, Icy, stick'n this thing right down the kid's throat. If ya fucked 'em any harder I'd 'cuse-ya a'cheat'n," he said, swearing under his breath the vehicle had a slight shake. "That critter ya hit knocked somethin' loose."
She shrugged him off as they coasted down into a dimly-lit tunnel and rolled the window down half-way to press her thumb against a glowing, biometric lock,"An unfortunate sacrifice, but I won't pass this opportunity up," she said as the solid steel jaws of her garage spread wide, and they drove inside.
The boom of the door slamming back into place never failed to make Jean-Henri jump.
Margot's private collection of vintage cars zipped past, and the vehicle came to a stop. They patiently waited for her chauffeur to get the door. Image was everything in her business, after all, and the world needed to know that there wasn't a door in the world closed to Iris Margot. "Meyers' family is teetering on the edge in the Emperor's eyes, the least I can do is give a little pu–"
"Stop! Something's up," Jean Henri jumped to interrupt her as he heard a strange shuffling and the car jostled ever-so-slightly. He shot a look through every window, then locked eyes on the tinted, driver partition. "JO. SEFF. What's the hol'up?"
Margot knew her lovely little miscreant well. When he smelled trouble, she did herself a favor and followed his nose. "Joseff, darling, is everything ok?" she asked, finding the private switch she had to window down.
The glistening, black barrier lowered, showing the back of a hard-gelled head of blonde hair in a familiar service cap. "One moment," the driver said, slow and monotone. "Be one sec."
Her cheeks screwed up, threatening to ruin the face she'd spent so long putting back on, and she huffed in annoyance. "Well, do hurry then; wasted time is a crime."
His head turned and those brilliant, Baby-blues of his glistened in the yellow cabin light, seeming to miss eye-contact all together. "Yep. All good. Be one sec."
Jean Henri's nerves froze in his spine, and he reached into his jacket for the old-war revolver Margot conveniently ignored he wasn't supposed to have. The guy's words were off, completely different from his normal tone and pitch, bleached clean of the heavy Kalosian accent he always flaunted. "Grab the–"
The vehicles' panic-locks snapped into place, and Margot's feral instincts kicked in as the old rogue's fingers yanked at a worthless flap of plastic built into the door's interior.
Jean Henri drew the wood wrapped steel of his revolver, summoning memories from his time fighting in the service, and caught a bead on the boy's skull.
He remembered every single person he'd damned to distortion early. Remembered the place, the time, the look on their faces, the emotions in their voices, every last word, down to the subtlest, gurgling syllable. Their deaths replayed in his mind, at random, often at inconvenient times, in vivid, comprehensive detail. Folks often said he was born touched by a legendary beast, but he often wished the asshole God that stepped on his face as a babe would come and take back that photographic memory they dropped.
Sure as Shaymin sprouts, he'd see the lights dancing in his lifeless, sky-colored eyes 'til the day his body let him die…
…and it was only as the hammer was falling that he spotted a body lying in the rear-view mirror.
BAM!
The final photo taken by Jean-Henri's eidetic mind was of Joseff's head exploding into a watery mist. The lead slug he fired whined and bounced against the limo's bulletproof glass. The frightened shriek of his lover two meters left. All developed in the searing numbness of a deep, hypothermic sleep.
Margot gasped with teeth clenched in horror as a beam of bright-blue light shot through her half-open window, stinging her cheek with frost as it barely grazed her face. Then she watched with her mouth agape, scrambling back against the door as Jean-Henri's head froze into a misty, crackling mass of freezer-burnt meat.
As the clumsy slapping of his limbs against his skull slowly came to rest, a hissing, sapphire blur leapt onto the back of the seat, sat between them with a long, powerful, finned tail curled around its haunches.
"The FUCK?" It took several heartbeats for Margot's brain to assemble the morbid sounds, colors, and shapes into the truth they represented. "Y… you're-"
"Vaporeon," Richard's Pokemon said in a voice devoid of expression, and swung her tail around in a wide, expressive arc, smashing Jean-Henri's head to smithereens.
Showered in brittle shards of brain matter, Margot panicked and failed to find the emergency release as she clawed at the paneling, and pulled some nails loose as she tried to crawl through the barely-parted window. "Shit, SHIT!"
The dark mannequin of a human, for the first time in decades, was overcome with agony as her ankle was crunched to powder in her own skin, like chalk in a wet sock.
Vaporeon snarled, holding the gushing chunk of foot in her jaws, and yanked the monster of a human back with full force. Then she slammed Margot down onto the floor, knocking the wind from her lungs as her body splashed through the surface of a decorative, in-vehicle, glass table.
"Youuu…."
Unwilling to go without taking her own pound of flesh, Margot reached for a jagged shard, severing the flesh of own palm, down to the bone, and stabbed it into Vaporeon's neck. "Ffffuck you!" she screamed, striking the Pokmeon across the places she was trained in case of a Pokemon attack.
Vaporeon squeaked as the glass made purchase, and her stomach wound up to release a shrill, abyssal howl. The shiv punched deep into her throat and broke apart inside, painting Margot's porcelain face in a field of bloody freckles.
"Yooooou BITCH!" Vaporeon's voice was ragged with a guttural, malicious growl in her long, snarling breaths.
Margot's fist smacked against Vaporeon's temple, who huffed in annoyance and snapped the lady's forearm up in her jaws. With a single, bestial whip of the neck it broke with a loud, fibrous snap and flopped around the brand new joint forced into her anatomy. "Ghuuuuh!" Margot gasped, finally sucking a belly full of air, still unable to take control over her vocal chords.
Standing atop Margot's chest, staring into her soul with empty eyes, blood trickling down her bust, Vaporeon held the filthy creature down and scoffed at the silent storm of agony. "You tried to hurt my friends!"
Margot's eyes wept bitter, black tears of mascara that soaked her hair and stained her teeth black. She spotted her partner's gun, fallen near her good arm, and she snatched it up, pulling the hammer back with a sour, malicious scowl. "DIE!"
Vaporeon's tail whipped around and caught her wrist like a snare.
"Yooou…" She glowered in disgust as Margot tried to force the muzzle back around, throttling the trigger until the cylinder was spent, sending shrapnel shrieking around the limo's armored hull.
Vaporeon patiently waited for the pitiful fit of desperation to end.
"You tried to hurt my Emmi!" Her tail twisted around and the elbow came apart, drowning those hollow clicks of Margot's weapon in a cacophony of wet, meaty percussion.
Iris had some malignant strength left in her broken body, fighting against her chest being shoved back down with all the strength her legs could muster. "Fffff… ffffuck him and fffuck you!"
Vaporeon lifted a front leg up and smacked Margot across the cheek, leaving crimson lacerations in the shape of her paw. "Shut up!"
Margot spat a meaty stew of shattered teeth in Vaporeon's eyes, earning herself a dislocated jaw.
Vaporeon's tail let the now-limp noodle slip from her grip and suddenly cracked down upon the human's knees, leaving her shattered quarry helpless.
That hideous woman was going to haul them all out in front of the world like freaks in a circus and wash her filthy little hands clean as Emmi and Richard were thrown into a cell. Dialga-knows-what might've come of her and Spinel and all the rest of her friends after that. For no reason at all but to see people hurt! Just thinking about it made her angrier than she ever thought possible, repeatedly slamming the media ghoul's skull against the floor.
Even as the brass tower tolled, to the bitter end, Iris Margot fought to outrun that which always came to collect.
The long, muscular tail wound around Margot's neck and scrunched her throat closed with the churning flesh and the crunch of vital bones, forcing the woman to feast upon her own curdled puddles of gore.
"You need killing."
Vaporeon found no joy in the act of defeating this mongrel. She was no warrior, no worthy menace, not even prey! No. This thing abused the good nature of unsuspecting, honest people to drink their suffering like water. A selfish parasite with nothing but poison in their cup for anyone but themselves.
She looked into Iris Margot's eyes, hoping to spot a single glimmer of remorse for the things they'd planned to do. She'd almost convinced herself to let the creature live; that's what her Emmi would have done, right? Maybe 'Miss Margot' would cry loud enough or beg for mercy long enough. Perhaps she could promise with enough sincerity to swear upon the Great Penitent Shrines and try to make things right.
Vaporeon waited out the unrelenting moment, down to the last possible second, making damned sure that she gave the rotten bitch every chance to get right with the Gods.
Instead, Margot glared out from the hateful pits in her skull and bit down, gnashing at the bright blue flesh with ichorous teeth until that toxic animus keeping her bound to the world finally vanished. Her broken body was dumped to the floor, laid atop a bed of broken glass like the hazardous heap of trash she was.
Vaporeon slowly wiped the crime from her face and sat there breathing, in and out and in and out again, suddenly taking stock of the things she'd done in the throes of her rage.
Then she heard the muffled groan of that limousine driver coming to.
Oh shit…
Joseff heaved up from the seat in a fit of dizziness. "What happened?" he asked aloud, looking around to check for any signs of an accident, finding everything in the cabin was soaked through, including himself. "Distortion?"
He rubbed his forehead, trying to draw up the last thing he remembered before he lost consciousness and found the fat swanna-egg growing up like a diglett mound on his temple. "Ma'am? Sir? Are you guys alright?" he asked, turning his head to the back window, and squealed with surprise as he was brought nose to nose with a purple-eyed beauty perched in the open partition.
"Hi!" Vaporeon squealed with an amicable smile on her face. "You drive."
"Whaa? How the–"
Her fins slapped him across the face.
"No questions," she said as the guy rubbed the pain from his cheek.
Joseff scowled in terrified defiance, reaching for the place he'd kept his military baton hidden between the seat cushions, and gave Ol' Trusty his best, wild, haymaker swing.
Vaporeon caught the steel bar in her paw with a harmless thump, and her polite demeanor spoiled like vinegar milk. "You drive. Now."
"And what if I don't?!" He tried to pull the baton away with all his might, raising her up, and she hung in front of his face with both fists held fast to his weapon.
She frowned like a disappointed teacher, clenched her paws, and the weapon folded like fresh laundry. "You drive!"
"You're right, I should drive," he replied through a chuckle that only barely obscured the nervous giggling in his throat. "Hahahaha. Where to?"
Vaporeon hit a switch with the tip of her tail, closing the partition so her grim work went unseen. "Palace."
"Oh? Which one? So many these days. Hahaha," he stalled, trying to peek through the partition as it closed.
Her fins smacked him again, hard enough to send him reeling with a palm against his jaw.
"No questions," Vaporeon commanded again as she curled herself around his shoulders, gently guiding his face towards the console with a perfectly manicured claw beneath his chin. "Palace."
Joseff felt her warm, murderous muscles tightening with irritation as he made her wait, and hit the ignition as an impatient growl shook his whole body. "Right, silly me. Prism Tower quarter, coming right up."
Vaporeon's body loosened up and she patted him on the head as her tail slid around and buckled him in. "Safety first!"
\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/
Carlisle sat in his favorite reading chair in his favorite study, drinking his favorite tea from his favorite porcelain cup. Postwick's finest earl-gray, grown by the same family, on the same land, made the same way for hundreds of years. Delightful.
Of course he couldn't actually consume the stuff, not until his head was fully restored, but the spirit of the moment demanded he observe the rites. No two ways about it. Principle, really.
He'd dressed his best, thrilled the largest crowd he'd seen in years, captured the spirit of his great city, and rained his opponents in shining praise. Not to mention he'd been able to get out and shake the rust from his legs, finally going all-out for the first time in decades. Oh, my lands. He'd crossed blades with some of the finest fighters in the world and was laid low in honorable combat. What fun!
"La vache!" he blurted with a glitchy, static stained voice, and covered the fake moustache that Princess Bonnie taped to the plates of his spare head in embarrassment at the outburst.
An obsidian lens in the mechanical morass of his face blinked bright orange, chiming with an unobtrusive, classic-jazz jingle. "Quoi?"
In his head, an entirely different world unfolded before his sensory suite. Thousands of cameras, microphones, accelerometers, ultrasonic fields, and good old fashioned trip wires planted in a one mile radius around palace grounds fed him a steady stream of reality. In a world that he knew all too well was swarming with unthinkable dangers, it was the least he could do to ensure Their Majesties' health and security.
He would have implemented a combat drone network as well, but there were limits to civilian sensibilities. Unfortunately.
In this town it was he, and he alone, that wielded the eyes of Arceus.
One of them, at the edge of the Palace wall, detected the motion of a vehicle he recognized. A gaudy, over-engineered tank parading around as a luxury transport. The steed of a woman poised atop a house of mismatched cards. Iris Margot, the rogue.
How dare she set her sorry anatomy anywhere near the palace grounds? In the hexing hours, no less! The gall. He knew the miscreant made love with audacity, but she wasn't that stupid, certainly.
Then the gorgeous, dewlapped cheeks belonging to one of his guests of honor peeked out the driver-side window. She slunk back in, his microphones registered a loud thump as the vehicle rocked around, and then she shot from the thing like a rocket, scrambling up the walls in what looked like unchecked panic.
Hmmmm…
Mischief was afoot.
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Ribbons tightened around a naked athlete buried beneath lavish mounds of sheets. "Mrrrmmm…"
Gym-sculpted arms locked a snoozing sylveon down in a loving hold. "Chirrup… Peep…"
Spinel was snuggled up in a nest of living dreams and granted wishes, dead to the unkind world for the first time in years without the aid of booze or mints. He laid to sleep not only with a romantic partner but one for which he felt the embers of love inside and had created a beautiful fire with the kindling of a mutual appreciation. Perhaps it was a flame he'd have to work extra hard to keep big and bright, but he was no stranger to the old fashioned labor of love. As far as he was concerned now, nothing mattered more.
He wriggled with a bit of discomfort as his lover's strong, toned arms bound him up further. Nature was calling, and Spinel refused to pick up. Nu uh, nobodys' home. Leave a message, beeep.
Noooo, I don't wannaaa…
He groaned in frustration, nuzzling into Richie's neck, and kissed the boy's chin. Be right back. He wasn't sure if that intimate communication between them worked while one of them was asleep; he didn't have enough time to learn the specifics with his first. But it was worth a shot.
"Mrrkay…" Richard gruffed.
Spinel smiled at that as his ribbons unwound from Richard's limbs and he wiggled free. Glad I can share that first with you, at least.
As he quietly pawed his way to the lavatory, wobbling a bit from his dreary state, a flurry of questions and doubts assaulted his mind. Where would his life go from here? What was he to him? What could he be to him? Would Richie even take him home? Should he?
His little face tightened with resolve and held his nose up in the face of his own toxic doubt.
He didn't care. No matter what happened, from then on he'd hold the memory of Richard close to his chest. No sense in tainting the most magical moment in his life with self-destructive thoughts. No sense in giving any more ground to misery. Richard was his last chance for a love even greater than the one he'd lost so many years ago, getting back so much of himself he'd thought was gone forever. Spinel was committed, and if the world chose to cull him for it, then he'd die on that hill.
I'm yours. Ya caught me, fair and square. You can let me go if you really have to… but I'd sure love a spot on that belt.
Spinel spun around at a sudden clamoring, scratching sound, gasping in surprise.
He inspected the blue darkness of the lunar suite for a moment, and when the moment passed he gave a tired smile and slowly closed the bathroom door. Just those old ghosts again. Hope they didn't mind the show earlier. Hehe.
When he reemerged, he did so refreshed and with his coat combed pristine. He never did like the feeling of those little knots that formed at the fluffy edges of his hips and his chest, and no doubt they would have felt like little crumbs in the bed against his man's warm, bare—
Spinel's body flash froze when some powerful, constricting thing gripped around his belly and dragged him into the darkness. "Eeeeep!"
"{Good, you're up. I need your help.}" Vaporeon said as she carried him towards the door with her tail.
Spinel coughed and sputtered, flailing around with his claws lashing harmlessly against Vaporeon's skin. "Eeeee! {"V-Vaporeon?!}" He hissed, trying to keep his animated, irritated voice to a screaming whisper. "{Let me go! Can't this wait until tomorrow?}"
She tightened her grip, shaking her head. "{No.}"
Spinel's claws tried to find purchase in the tiny spaces between the massive, gilded marble tiles of their suite, flaking tiny chips away from the floor as she carried him off. "{Richie! Hel–}"
Vaporeon's smooth, muscular paws plugged his mouth shut and she stealthily dragged their mumbling, scrambling sylveon out onto the balcony.
Richard burbled and rolled around, unaware that his romantic support 'Mon was being shanghaied off into the night by his own homicidal pet fish.
Spinel, yet again, was made painfully aware at the degree to which he was a failure of a Pokemon. He bit at her flesh, bucked at her tail, raked his claws across it, smacked her with the balled-up ends of his ribbons, even summoned up a bit of his miniscule reservoir of energy, riling himself into a play rough, but in the end she just bopped him on the head and his vision swirled with compliance. It brought helpless tears to his eyes.
That was, at least, until Vaporeon leapt from the seventh floor balcony, sending them both in a death-defying freefall across a massive gap between buildings far above the hard castle grounds. She needed all her digits to grab at the grandiose architecture as they landed against a chiseled wall with a thud and made her way down.
Their descent onto the greenhouse roof was heralded by the shrill, effeminate squeals of a totally domesticated creature seeing his life flashing before his eyes. Mostly bad stuff, some good in the middle, the ending was great though! "{Enamorous please, stop!}" he shrieked as his captor rolled her eyes and huffed in frustration, hanging them from a Pyroar gargoyle overlooking the fourth floor. "{I've only ever had good things to say, honest!}"
Vaporeon leapt again, above a big, bushy row of hedges that looked like the perfect landing spot, and closed her eyes. She always did like the feeling of a good freefall, and she so rarely got to experience it these days.
"{Ok, ok, I know I called you crazy once! I'm soooorry!}" He cried, blindfolding his own eyes with his ribbons as the end approached.
They crash-landed deep into the foliage with a puff of leaves and petal blooms.
Spinel's death-cries were silenced once again by Vaporeon's tail curling around his mouth ."{Shut up or you're going to wake the whole place, slowbro!}"
Spinel's eyes jerked around, seeing that they both were, in fact, still alive, and he growled with resistance, pulling his head free with an adorable pop. "{Which of Mesprit's fits made you do that?! We could have died!}"
Vaporeon scoffed. "{You might have, maybe,}" she said, and then gestured for him to follow her through the brush. "{C'mon.}"
"{No!}" Spinel shook his ears around to look tough, instead a wreath of flowers stuck into the fluff at the top of his head and he scraped them off in frustration. "{What's so important that you need to wake me up for Black Mass and throw me out a window?!}"
"{You late-break hatchling!}" she started, eyes twitching with frustration, then she squinted and breathed in and out like Emmi said she should when she was angry, realizing she'd need to have… patience. "{Sorry. Look, I… I did something… bad.}"
He saw her, all at once, overcome with a despondent, desperate look, and Spinel's nature choked his anger dead. "{What do you mean 'Bad'?"}
She paced around, visibly sweating, tail swishing around in a fluster that knocked whole branches loose, damp with little tears that rolled down her face. "{I kept us safe, but I don't know what to do now!}"
"{Vappy, honey, what happened?}" he asked with a tender hush, rubbing his fuzzy shoulders against hers, as if he hadn't just been kidnapped in the middle of the night and thrown off a balcony.
She grumbled at the sweetness exuding from Richard's latest acquisition to the team, but it was helping to keep her mind straight so she wouldn't turn her nose up at results. "{Too many ears out here. Come on, we don't have much time!}"
Spinel let her lead him out from the bushes that he remembered plucking a bouquet of flowers from only a few days before, and winced as she grabbed at the wrought iron-bars of the fence and pried a gap wide enough for him to fit through. "{We need to tell someone. They've got eyes all over the Prism Quarter, Vaporeon. The Prince likes us, whatever it is, I'm sure he'll overlook a little… Is that a Limo?}" he asked as his face pushed past the bocage.
Vaporeon growled in frustration. "{Nu-uh, we can't tell anyone. This is bad, Spinel!}" She hopped up to the crack she'd left in the window and her body flattened out, sliding in like a ditto through a grate. "{Get in!}"
He approached as the door popped open. "{Honestly, Vaporeon you–}" He leapt inside and stopped with a gasp, screeching to a halt on the seat like a knife threatened to poke him if he slid any further. "{IS THAT A DEAD BODY?!}"
Vaporeon scoffed again, wagging her paw, pulling on the switch lowering the partition. "{Nah, that's not what a dead body looks like, silly! He's unconscious.}" She held his head and pointed to the top of his chest. "{See, breathing.}"
Spinel sighed out in relief, wiping his brow. "{Oh, thank Arceus!}"
The inner window lowered and she hopped up pointing into the passenger bay. "{Those are dead bodies.}"
Spinel pushed up with his hind paws, sliding up the seat like a frightened weedle, and the pink left his fur as his head cracked around.
The smell of bloody meat marinated in smokeless powder soaked his nose as his skin was wrapped in froslass hugs.
"Eeeaaaeee!" he squealed, backing into the steering wheel, and covered his mouth at the gruesome, bloody soup sloshing around the back as the car horn blared.
Vaporeon jumped a little at his outburst, forgetting her own upbringing for a briefest of moments. "{Oh, c'mon, it's just a couple corpses!}"
"{OHHH WHAT THE FUuuuhhh…}" He barely held his dinner in long enough, scratching at the window controls, to throw his head outside and purge the contents of his stomach down the brand-new exterior finish. He wished it had been the contents of his mind instead.
Vaporeon waited with an anxious, impatient face. "{You done?}"
He wiped his furry lips and slumped into the seat, breathing between fits of dry-heaving. "{You didn't kill them, did you?}" he asked, rolling the window back up.
She stared, unblinking. "{I did.}"
Spinel bared his teeth in panic, tugging at his ears. "{Oh my Gods, Vaporeon, why?!}"
She reached down onto the floor and tossed a blood-spackled envelope between them that spilled incriminating photos across the seat. "{Take a look for yourself, Romeo.}"
Spinel's arms shook as he picked a pawful of the pictures up and brought them to his face. "{What... how…}" Then the gravity of what he was seeing struck him like a bag of bricks. "{They were going to report us!}"
Vaporeon nodded, closing the partition.
He found a few in particular as he fanned them out and brought a claw up to his chin. "{Huh, a couple of these are really good… I like that one… This is a— Whoa, that's saucy.}" Then something else caught his attention. "{Wait, this is Grafai-Eye film…}" he peeked at the corner of the pictures where the shape of a tiny iris in bloom could be made out. "{Those people, they're–}"
"Margot," Vaporeon said in commontongue from lips that dripped with unconcealed revulsion, closing the partition, "{and some male she rutted with a few hours ago, smells like.}"
"{You… killed Iris Margot…}" Spinel squirmed around his own skin. "{You killed her and her mate. Ohhh, you weren't lying, girl, this is bad, bad, bad!}"
Vaporeon papped her paw down. "{Right, now what?}"
He raised a brow, astonished at the 'monspeech that had left her mouth. "{Excuse me? 'Now what?' Are you kidding?}"
She shook her head, starting to feel much more in control of the situation now that she had Spinel there with her, someone to share the stress. "{Weapons make messes, they don't clean them up!}" She rolled her eyes, then peeked back at him. "{I got sold to Richard before I was supposed to take that course.}"
"{But why me? Why not Carlisle? He's a certified, cold-rolled, death machine!}"
Vaporeon leaned against him, rubbing her cheek against his. "{Because you're a worldy 'Mon! You've been places, seen… things… If we get Carlisle involved then Richard might have to leave the tournament! We can't do that, it's everything to him!}"
"{Besides.}" She glanced into his terrified eyes. "{Imagine what someone rich and powerful might do if they learned someone was fucking a Pokemon on their own bed sheets.}"
Spinel didn't need to imagine such a thing. The memories of his first owner's family discovering the nature of his evolution played at the back of his mind, ad-nauseum, like a tired, grayscale rerun that hit the airwaves every night because nobody cared to replace it with anything better.
How had he ended up there? Why couldn't all the suffering he'd been through be enough payment for a good life? Wasn't it better for Richard to pull out of this thing and lay low for a while? I'll take ca—
N'uff'a that shit, Spinel. You asked fer this. You do what'cha gotta do ta keep you'n yours safe. He could practically hear Valorie's shouts as if she'd barked at him through the driver-side door.
She was right. How was a cave-woman right so often? Damn. Vaporeon was one of his teammates now, one of Richard's treasured partners. Shit, if he had half a mind to think like a real 'Mon then she was part of his nest. He'd do what had to be done to make things right by them, not by the rest of the world.
"{We gotta destroy the evidence.}" Spinel said and stared at the end of his eyeballs in deliberation.
Vaporeon hummed as Spinel's quiet thinking left a void in the conversation. "{We could eat them.}"
The Driver mumbled awake with eyes full of horror. "What!? You can't!"
Vaporeon's tail smacked him silent, and rolled them into a compliant little bun beneath the jockey box.
Spinel was glad he'd already puked. "{Are you distorted?! We can't eat them!}"
Vaporeon chuckled. "{Not by ourselves!}" Then her eyes rolled up to her brow as she pondered their options. "{I wonder if Rhydons' hungry…}"
Spinel flung his appendages around ,trying to clear the morbid smoke she was brewing up. "{Stop, stop, stop! We, uh, we don't have time for that.}" He slid down into the seat, breathing in measured time to the heartbeats beating his chest raw, ready to exhume dark moments he hoped might remain buried, long forgotten to a life he'd escaped. "{I know a place.}"
Vaporeon jumped around in excitement and lowered her head, waiting with bated breath. "{You do?}"
Spinel's gaze pierced holes into the console, straight through the engine block, right out into the street. "{Yeah… I do.} He stood on his hind paws, clutched at the wheel with two ribbons, then poised the other two atop the pedals. "{Old power station feeding the city. North of here. Outside the walls. There's a grimer pit they feed solid waste into… We won't have a key, but the door is eighth-inch sheet steel, I'm sure you can bust in… All we gotta do is roll this thing through some bay doors and dump it down inside. It'll all be gone by morning.}"
Vaporeon stopped her elated movements, backing up with a concerned paw up to her nose. "How, exactly, did you learn that?}"
"{Don't wanna talk about it.}" Spinel turned the ignition with cheeks chewing on a mouthful of bitter memories. "{Let's roll.}"
Vaporeon reached around his seat and buckled him in. "Safety first."
Around a distant corner, as the limousine bucked up and down the curb trying to make its way onto the blacktop, a pair of glowing orange eyes appeared from the darkness fogging the sidewalk.
\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/-\/
Jenny's eyes loomed across Central Intersection 1, following the exact speed, stability, and overall consideration of every driver gracing her territory. "Another long, quiet night, Bailiff," she mused, sighing in a sort of tired resolution with white-gloved fingers fiddling at her keys.
"Nine," her partner's massive head said from the center platform built between the seats with a smile.
She smirked and rubbed between the old 'Mon's ears, flicking him a piece of Poke Biscuit to snatch out of the air. "Nothing ever gets you down, does it?" she asked as the legal record of her mind replayed the events of the past week; the longest, wildest week of her life. "Service really is all that matters, isn't it?"
He gave her a fatherly, patriotic look as his nose bobbed up and down. "Nine."
She busted three snatchers from a notorious sex-trafficking ring after scouring the records of every single person caught up in the tussle at that working-class bar. Elevating her from Corporal to Sergeant in a single evening. It bothered her when the Masque went in ahead of her squad and converted the rest of the gang into a massive, critical, emergency-room case, but the law was clear: The Masque was 'The Peoples' justice,' the 'Ultimate Arbiter of Integrity and Love' or whatever the definition happened to be that week in the royal dictate archives.
She'd work with him, or around him, whatever kept them all moving towards the greater good.
She gave the new role every spark of life force she could possibly spare. Her subordinates trusted her, she'd worked with them all since they were born, after all. Her record was so impeccable that even the most pedantic of bureaucrats could only nod in silent approval. In the end, she was granted a lengthy leash for the first time in her life, and she wasted no time in putting those days to good use.
She'd kept a running log of all the places Leadership had refused to crash for this-political-reason-or-that, and now finally the time had come to take out the trash. She promised herself and everyone else that she'd be a different sort of leader, one that didn't allow the petty machinations of 'culture' or 'decorum' to block the Silver Spear of the law. In her eyes, the city was the safest it had ever been, and the accolades showered upon her by the people she'd served did nothing to cure her of that delusion.
But then that day, that situation in the Golden-Circle plaza, that absolute farce of a kangaskhan court…
She'd made a point that she would pick wrongdoers herself out of the crowd. Never would she ever be accused of leading from a cushy seat. She would lead from the front and by example, always. She trusted her judgement, and everyone around her seemed to as well.
Valerie de Blanc had a record that marked her as a totally uncontroversial arrest. So what distorted thing was it that made the Stone boy, a publicly known guest of the crown, decide she was worth putting his own safety at risk in a duel for her honor?
Everything she knew that was right with the world suddenly twisted into some theatrical, romantic horror where she'd been cast as the lead villain meant to be cut down in a heroic clash.
Fine, whatever, the Masque had spoken; she'd work with him, play her part in the stupid show, and get back to the much bigger fish needing fried. At least that's what she believed.
Her superiors thought differently.
The little, red slip of paper informing her of her demotion stung the skin of her fingers as she read the ruling. "Conduct unbecoming an officer, bringing royal guests at imminent risk of harm." Orders? "Vacate office immediately, report to Patrol Division 1 for further assignment."
And there she was, shaken like an upturned purse, in a role she hadn't served in for over a decade. It hurt. Her judgement was right, it followed the law to the black and white letter. Was she supposed to just surrender in the face of a long-wanted fugitive trying to escape judgement once again? Safety? Really? That 'Guest' was a top-tier League-Battle combatant, and the fact that just one of his registered 'Mon managed to send her entire squad's lineup straight to Intensive Care made it clear that the whole thing was childsplay to him.
And then there were that vaporeon's eyes; they just wouldn't leave her thoughts, no matter the distraction.
"Ca! Na-nine!" the old dog barked, poking her in the side where it tickled. He arrested her gaze and nodded once, shaking her back to her senses. "Ar. Ca. Raca."
Bailiff, her partner since she slid from the tanks as a cadet, had grown a lot since that morning he hatched atop her lap that fateful morning mess, but she had a lot of growing-up to do before she'd ever catch up with him, it seemed. She thumbed the lowly, copper badge below the name patch stitched to her breast and clicked her tongue. He was right, she'd spent way too much time wallowing; what mattered was that justice was served evenly to all, and she couldn't get back to that business if she was stuck crying on the ground after the first hurdle to trip her up.
"The best coffee is always brewed black," she relented, and grabbed Arcanines big, cherubic face to lay a judicious smooching upon his cheek. "Thanks for setting me straight."
Crrrrsssshhhhh! Crash! Crunch!
Like a machine, all of her senses dialed in on the disturbance, taking in the scene before she prepared to lay down the law.
A Limousine, stretch, very custom, with a very expensive, custom vehicle's registration. It had ricocheted around the intercity, eight-lane no-mans-land and came to rest against a sagging, sparking light-pole. It seemed on the up and up, all the right markings in the right places, except the fact they'd crashed to a halt in an odd-angled collision with some equally-as-expensive, sports car. The luxury coupe that hit them had sped through a red signal, probably the intoxicated indiscretion of a couple young revelers partying behind the wheel. Somebody was going to jail that night.
Traffic was already starting to clog like a curdled artery, and her opening was about to close with it, so she had to hustle. The limo was just fine, its paint was marred but the structure had barely warped at all. That coupe though…
She fired her cruiser up with a roar half as rich as her partner's howl. "Silver Spear to North Command; Code-Red-Six. Repeat, Red-Six on beat. Highballer Deuce. Administering aid."
Arcanine reached into the supply behind them with careful teeth, stuffing his stark-white saddle bags with medical gear.
"Occa-Komala, Silver Spear, Sending in the Stitches." There was a brief pause on the radio as she screeched around the corner. "Zamazenta."
Jenny thought about the blessing, and a strange twinge of suspicion started to bubble inside her. Something didn't feel right. She plucked the radio back off its clip and scowled at herself for the ridiculous show of cowardice. "Requesting backup."
An even longer silence hung on the line as she dove into the maze of civilian cars and squealed to a halt meters away from the scene of the crash. "Approved. Dark Mark is inbound."
She sighed with relief, kicked her door open, and snapped the back open for Bailiff.
He howled, announcing their presence, as if the dancing lights and siren weren't enough, and followed her in a full-tilt run for the crumpled coupe.
No spaghetti. No Spaghetti. No Spaghetti. She said to herself, like she was casting a spell, and breathed her thanks to Xerneas when she found a liquor-pickled twenty-something dangling unconscious over the deflated remains of a successfully-deployed airbag. The car was a fire risk, and that door wasn't opening without liberal application of authority, but he was breathing, and now she could too.
"Bailiff, CRUNCH!"
"Nnnuhhhh…" Spinel moaned at the muffled scream of metal being torn asunder, side by side with Vaporeon, whose jaw laid slack in a daze from the impact.
Vaporeon's head flapped around and she smacked her paws against the seat. "{I thought you knew how to drive!}"
Spinel wiped a trickle of blood from his little nose and felt around his body, making sure everything was still intact. To his amazement, it all was, even the glass hadn't shattered from the collison. "{I… I do! I had the right of way! Someone hit us!}
Vaporeon flopped around in her seatbelt, holding Spinel's arm "{Are you alright?}"
He chirped a weak affirmative with a ribbony thumbs up, and peeked out the window.
His face projected pure, unfiltered terror. "{Oh Lords! It's the police!}"
"{Oh?}" Vaporeon smiled. "{Good! They can take the jerk that hit us in and we can skiddoo.}"
Spinel growled, starting to allow his frustration with the shit show he'd been wrangled into bubble to the surface. "{We can't do that, that's, like, fleeing a scene or something!}"
Vaporeon slapped him. Lightly. Well, more of a pat on the cheek, really. She couldn't bring herself to hurt Spinel at all, she wasn't really sure why either. "{Oh yeah, I'm sure they'll totally understand the whole situation.}" She grumbled. "{We should have just eaten em, ugh!}"
His tired blue eyes scoped out the scene and saw that there was a gap in the traffic jam, leading north. Only one cop so far, and she was busy yanking that asshole in the other car free from the wreckage. The engine was still rolling, the car didn't sound like it was faltering, except maybe a little putter here and there.
He tugged on the shift with tears in his eyes. I hope you know I love you with all my heart, baby!
"{Sorry, Richie.}"
"Veee?" Vaporeon squeaked as her friend quietly rolled them away. "{Oh, good, yes, let's get going!}"
"ARC!" Arcanine shouted.
Jenny had finished laying the guy out, ensuring his ankles were the only bones that were obviously broken. "Huh, yes?" she asked, wiping sweat from her brow.
Arcanine barked at that gaudy-ass limo that was at that very moment speeding off that-a-way, to the north. Some 'very polite' people in the line had let them out, and now Jenny had to make a really tough decision.
It was a hit and run, yeah, but the limo hadn't been the one at fault. She could let them off the hook, for now, and they could hunt the owner down later for a stern scolding. She'd memorized the plate and make, so that wasn't too hard. Probably some wealthy jerk thinking he was above petty infractions.
"Oh, BLEND ME!" she growled, knowing that she couldn't, in good conscience, act that way.
She was a Jenny. Jennies enforced the law. End of fucking discussion.
She looked around and realized that there was no room anymore. If she was going to make it past the wall of cars now she'd have to wait for them to slowly, politely, get out of the way, and that's if any of the petulant civilians decided to follow her orders at all. "Hope you've been doing your sprints, buddy!"
"Silver Spear to North Command, Hit & Split in progress. Deuce is stable. Bareback pursuit!" She yelled into the personal radio clipped to her chest. She leapt atop Bailiff's back, catching the old boy off guard a bit, and she gripped onto his fluffy mane. "Let's go! EXTREME SPEED!"
Spinel's guts churned as he heard a familiar, Arcanine howl that sent him screaming back to that day spent choking one into submission. "{Oh no, oh no, oh no!}"
"PULL OVER!" Jenny screamed from Arcanine's back, holding onto his waist for dear life with all the power she had in her thighs. Gym is life. She repeated to herself, glad she never, ever skipped leg day.
Spinel squeaked in surprise at her voice, and both Pokemon met eye-to-eye with Officer Jenny.
"Holy…" Jenny gasped, recognizing the two 'Mon within, and her expression hardened. "STOP THE CAR!"
Vaporeon unbuckled herself, climbed between Spinel and the wheel, and rolled the window down. She threw her head back, gathering a burbling, wet energy that dripped down her thighs and ran between Spinel's toes, and puked up a massive column of water.
It was so powerful Spinel had to compensate by jerking the wheel left, shrieking in horror at what was happening.
Were they going to have to melt a police officer too? Granted, they were clones, but clone's weren't cheap to train and keep.
Jenny was nobody's fool, and Bailiff knew his training well. She ducked down, losing her hat in the torrent, and pulled on his fluff. She guided him to the back end of the vehicle, dodging the Hydropump completely.
"You're under arrest!" she screamed, aiming her automatic nine-millimeter pistol at the rear tires, and made her mark.
The harmless thunk of her rounds against the monstrosity's wheels left her snarling in frustration. "Fuck it. Bailiff, use FLAMETHROWER!"
Vaporeon and Spinel looked at each other as the smell of burning petroleum filled the cabin and then were thrown down into their seats as the back end of the car slumped with two explosive pops.
"Eeeeeeeeee! "{I don't wanna die!}" Spinel screamed, Jerking the wheel as he narrowly dodged a concrete barrier, squeezing into a narrow off-ramp, trying to leave no room for Jenny to follow.
She smirked, the warrior coding in her brain starting to ignite at the sight of a fleeing vehicle farting sparks from its shrieking ass-end. "Agility!" she cried.
Bailiff's snout raised and he filled the fire-lit air with a hunter's cry. He leapt, leaving a blurry trace of himself behind, and cleared the entire underpass in one bound, landing on top of the vehicle's reinforced roof with a body-crushing thud.
Jenny pressed at her radio. "North Gate, this is Silver Spear, lock down! Fleeing suspect. Hot pursuit."
Her radio squealed with an unsettling howl in response. She had no time to troubleshoot.
Spinel screamed, Vaporeon growled, and a certain someone on the floor groaned in agony.
Bailiff was starting to feel the fire in his gut roar, his mouth rippling with flames, salivating with boiled saliva. He snarled and scraped at the roof, peeling it back like a tin of arrokuda filets, and finally caught a glimpse of what was hiding in the driver bay.
"NAR?!" he whined, seeing Vaporeon's face once again.
Jenny didn't have time to look inside, she had to fulfill one last legal obligation before she did them in. "LAST CHANCE! STOP NOW, OR I WILL DO SO FOR YOU!"
Vaporeon shot Arcanine in the face with a water gun, and Jenny hugged his neck as his fiery flesh popped and sizzled in pain. Spinel jerked the wheel, trying to shake them off the top, dodging a row of dumpsters at the edge of town.
Jenny spat as Bailiff's claws kept them stapled to the roof. "VERY WELL! Bailiff, you know what to do!"
Bailiff was one of the finest trained pursuit 'Mon on the force. He'd gone through months and months of exercises preparing himself for just this sort of occasion. Jenny knew the conditions were perfect, and so she shut her trap, clenched to every part of him she could, and prepared for something that hadn't been performed in the field for ten years or more, a Cartwheel Pit.
Her Arcanine kicked with all four legs, as hard as he could to one side, and gently fell to the street as the Limousine rolled upside down. The vehicle ground itself down to fiery powder in a glittery fireworks display as it scraped to a halt.
The inside of the car reverberated with demoralized wailing. Spinel was hung upside down from his restraints, watching the image of a crumbling cement column grow in size, approaching with no way for the driver or anyone else to stop it. Vaporeon and the limo driver looked each other eye to eye, one screaming in confused horror, the other screaming in frustration.
The vehicle finally came to rest, smoking, back tires melted, roof imploded, full of bloating bodies and fucked suspects.
Jenny leapt from her partner's back and reached for a couple Incarceration Balls she kept in Bailiff's bags. "Come out with–"
Ǹ̵̢o̶͔̓t̴̪͂h̸̖̋ĭ̵̢n̴͉͝g̴̳̎ ̸̖̾l̴͖̈i̸͖͠k̵̻̑ẻ̸̹ ̵̨̑à̷̹ ̵͎̈́g̶̜̀o̷̥̐o̷̱̓d̷́ͅ ̵̝̂c̵̭͒h̴̳̀ȁ̸̤s̶͒ͅė̵̞,̸̤̀ ̶̠̐i̵͔͊ś̶̳ ̸̱̚t̴̫̒ḧ̴̦́e̷̦͠r̴̝̂ĕ̷̱,̵̡̈́ ̸̣͌o̵͈͆f̵̥́f̵̡̿ḯ̵̦c̴̱̽e̷̩͝r̵̦͌?̷̻͂
She winced and grabbed at her radio receiver, covering it to keep the noise from damaging her eardrums. "Distortion!" she cried, finding the noise still punched through as if her fist wasn't even there.
Spinel grabbed at Vaporeon, coiling his ribbons around her body, seeing she was preparing to add Jenny to their morbid stack in the back. The driver reached around for anything to use as a weapon at all, and found his bent baton.
The radio tuned itself, dials twisting with invisible thumbs, and found juuust the right station. "Ș̷̇a̵̢͊l̴̨̎ȕ̶͖t̴̩́ations!" Carlisle's voice played from the radio with a warbling, ectoplasmic static. "A valiant run, friends, but I'll be taking the wheel for a bit."
Everyone in the cabin felt their spirits crystalizing in the frosty, distorted air, and decided it might be worth letting the disembodied voice give it a go. Dying and prison were the other options, so why not?
Jenny cut the cord of her radio with her service knife, and screamed in frustration as the speaker still assaulted their ears with an ungodly noise that sent her and Bailiff's thoughts racing to dark places previously unimaginable. Only when she threw it to the ground and stomped the speaker dead did she breathe a sigh of relief and her Pokemon stop shielding his ears in agony on the ground.
She turned around at the sound of loafers clacking against the pavement alongside the hand-sculpted end of a vintage cane bearing a gorgeous, hand-cut prism pommel. "Who the?"
"Aaah, Officer, what a surprise meeting you here!" he called out, and casually came to a stop between the clone and her quarry. He looked at the devastation and Jenny swore she heard a chuckle in the static rain of his speakers. "Goodness, what a mess."
Jenny's shock finally subsided and she smiled with confidence at her good fortune. "S-Sir Carlilse! My Lord, it is fortunate to have you here to witness. It appears nobody had responded to my pursuit call, I… I don't hear any sirens coming." She marched towards the car. "Come out with your hands up!"
Carlisle put a gloved hand up and Jenny stopped like a titanium line had yanked her back. No magic, just respect… and fear. "Fine work officer, some of the best I've ever seen. This entire week, in fact. I've been quite impressed with what I've witnessed."
She lurched back in surprise. "What, I, uh, I'm not sure I understand, Sir."
He cleared his nonexistent throat and gestured to the limo. "I'll be taking over from here."
"Sir…" Completely beyond her expectations for herself, she winced at the words, and her face ran hot with humiliation. "Please, don't take this away from me."
Carlisle approached and stopped as soon as he recognized that she was backing away from him. "I'm afraid I must, the things happening here are far too sensitive for me to leave it in your hands this time."
This time? What distorted nonsense is this?
Jenny hated everything about this, the rotten luck of it all made her want to puke until she fell asleep. There were lots of people she could say no to, even as a lowly private, but Sir Carlisle, Royal Knight of the Ordre Prisme, was not one of them.
If a Jenny Unit could be demoted to cadet, she would soon be the first, she suspected.
"Right… my sincerest apologies sir. I'll return to my post." The hollowness in her voice left her sounding less human than 'ye-olde-robot' standing right in front of her.
He laughed. Long, boisterous, and with pure, enthusiastic delight. "Goodness no; no you will not. I'm not done with you yet, Silver Spear."
He… Did he just–
A Knight of the royal order had used her callsign. Someone of his station using the callsign of a clone was practically like recognizing them as a fully privileged citizen. Impossible emotions roiled around her body, and she stood in disbelief.
"I… no, Sir. You shouldn't concern yourself with me, really… I've done nothing but make a mess for myself and everyone else."
"Results are not the only metric I track, Lieutenant." Carlisle calmly whipped around towards the car. "Could you help me for a moment, please."
The old Knight rolled the car around, bringing it crashing down onto its already devastated suspension, and then he snapped his fingers with an otherworldly echo. The lock of the trunk did as he commanded and popped loose. "It's a good thing you only got so far, my dear," he mumbled, ruffling through its contents with care and control.
She got right to it, wanting nothing to do with the neurotic ghosts that were swimming around the quiet of her mind. "Why is that, Sir?"
Carlisle chuckled, hefting a couple donut spares out. "Because I like you," he said, tossing her a rusty tire-iron.
Jenny shuddered at his words, having nearly forgotten the old 'Mon's eerie reputation with the Guard. Maybe 'cadet' wasn't such a bad thing after all…
Adding even more to the surreal essence of the moment, she stood by to assist, in complete silence, and Carlisle of house Bourbon rolled the two spare tires her way, instructing her to change them out while he manually lifted the back up with his mechanical body.
Bailiff could sense something good was happening and, pending any further commands, he laid nearby, watching just in case something went awry. If anyone could have asked him how he knew, he'd never have been able to explain his dumb dog thoughts, but nothing bad ever came from helping your local Knight Gallant with an oil change. That's for sure!
It was the fastest double tire she'd ever done, and the longest ten minutes of her life.
Vaporeon, Spinel, and the Limo Driver all watched with lungs full of breath as the process went on, knowing Arcanine's watchful eye was there to keep them all good-and-honest like.
With that business done, Carlisle set the car back down, and patted his clothes clean of the dust. "Aaah, very good. I deeply appreciate your assistance. Your superiors will be hearing from me very soon, rest assured."
"It's an honor to be given the opportunity, My Lord," she replied, and then glanced up at Vaporeon peeking out at her from the rolled-down window.
He chuckled, and opened the front door with the creak of a battered old man. "The honor has been all mine, Lieutenant!" he said, coaxing Spinel aside with his hip, and shut the door.
Jenny wasn't sure how to broach the obvious mistake, but perhaps her demotion had been miscoded in the system. It was unprecedented for someone to fall so fast after an appointment, after all. "I, uh… I'm flattered, but it's just 'Private' these days, My Lord," she said.
Carlisle's eyes glowed bright and his expressionless gaze stole her nerves away. "I didn't stutter."
The Silver Spear of Lumiose finally understood what was going on, backed away, and bowed. "Right, Sir, of course. My mistake."
"Splendid, welcome aboard." Carlisle tipped his hat, and the window slowly closed as he drove off into the darkness. "Toodle-pip!"
The psychopathic Rotom's weaponized body drove along the Kalosian estate parkways with an engine that cried out for the sweet release of death, leaving Jenny there to walk her own way back onto the beat.
Carlisle adjusted the radio, picking up his favorite station, playing a tasteful assortment of smooth jazz and global oldies. "My my my, aren't you all a little screwed, blued, and tattooed tonight?"
Vaporeon chirped, happy to see a friendly face. "I'm blue!"
He patted her on the head. "Indeed you are, delightful little scamp."
Spinel was finally able to stop his relentless hyperventilation long enough to respond. "{M-Mr. Carlisle, Sir. C-can we m-maybe talk about this before you decide what to do? I…I can explain!}"
Carlisle laughed aloud, unable to restrain his amusement. "Why, what for, ma'cosine? You've done House Bourbon an invaluable service!"
"{We did?}" the two Pokemon asked in unison.
"They did?" the driver mumbled after.
Carlile shot the man a look. "Hush you!" Then his head nodded up and down to a rambunctious sax solo jamming on the old tube. "I've been concocting ways to cut Margot out of the picture without political ramifications for years. Imagine my surprise finding that my own honored guests decided to bring Giftmas to the palace early."
Vaporeon smiled, rubbing her cheek against his suit-coat. "{So you're not gonna turn us in?}"
"E-gads, perish the thought! Even if you hadn't just made my job infinitely easier, and more entertaining, you'd catch me up a crustle's bum before I fleeced family like that. Rest assured, all of this trash you've rounded up for me will be disposed of post-haste."
Spinel rolled out onto the seat, sobbing with ecstatic relief.
The driver's face went pallid. "Trash?!"
One of Carlisle's hands unfolded into a gun, and the laser dot of his blaster trained right between the idiot's eyes. "Private conversation," he scolded with a condescending little note.
Joseff got the message and shut his trap.
"{Hey, um…}" Spinel started talking, wound up into awkward knots as he tried to find the words he knew were already there. "{You keep calling me that. You've been so nice to me, My Lor- sorry, Carlisle. Why?}"
The old 'Mon booped Spinel on the nose, then cradled his cheek with affection. "I cherish each and every one of my descendents."
Vaporeon's eyes went wide and she gasped, looking back and forth between them, over and over again, in complete amazement. "{You're his Grandpa!?}"
Spinel's head tilted. "{Are you?}"
Carlisle shrugged. "Eighth great grandfather is probably more accurate, but as you know, Pokemon genealogy gets muddy the longer things go on. Needless to say, I've had my hands full keeping track of you all. When I heard house Chartreuse's little Eevee-turned-Sylveon was pawned away for a miserable pittance, I searched and searched and searched for you until my sensors shorted out. Oh, the things I've put those wretches through since I learned what they did. Their finances will never recover."
Spinel wilted. "{I was taken out of the region for a while. I don't know exactly where, but it wasn't Kalos.}"
"The Sevii Islands, I know that now, thanks to Richard starting that fight and bringing a few of your captors' into the capable hands of my newest agent. They've been… tidied up. It's been a miserable glitch in my soul and I'm glad to know you're back with us, and in good hands now at least."
Spinel looked up, blushing. "{So, you… know about… us?}"
"Your association with Master Stone has the blessing of House Bourbon, rest assured. Do keep that fact between us, of course."
"{Yes… Thank you, Carlisle.}" Spinel's racing heart was finally coming to a gentle gallop.
Vaporeon leapt around Carlisle's shoulders and nuzzled the sensors where she suspected his cheek might go, forcing him to reapply Bonnie's moustache-tape. "{You're the best! Sorry I pulled your head off yesterday!}"
He simply chortled and scratched behind her dewlaps. "Highlight of my week, mon cheri."
They rode to the sound of funky, trombone swing for the better part of ten minutes before Spinel pointed to Joseff. "{What about him?}"
Vaporeon growled. "{He tried to hit me with a baton!}"
"I see." Carlisle nodded, listening to Vaporeon's words as he pulled right on past the Palace security gates, without a single question as to his whereabouts or his intentions, up to the entryway. "You've all had quite enough excitement for one day. Back to bed with you troublemakers!" he scoffed, pointing playfully.
When his guests were back behind the palace walls, safe and sound, he rolled his joints with an unsettling, electronic whine. "Well, old boy…" he clapped his robotic hand around Joseff's shoulder so hard it made the guy hiss and buckle over in pain. "We're going to have a nice long conversion, you and I. Do you like Earl Grey?"