Story Notes:
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable species, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Plot and original characterizations are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Part V: Hates to Lose
Can’t Escape, Chapter 5: Hates To Lose.
“Wait, wait! Are you sure this isn’t going to scramble my brains?”
Fiona noticed the graffiti that was written all over a plain-looking machine embedded inside an alcove wall’s face at Linalool’s pokecenter. The comment that she was referring to read, “press 8 to scramble brains,” but she had not overlooked, “catch wild rattata, set power to HI, press 1, serves six.” Button number two featured the words, “it worked too well!” and a grotesque cartoon of a mew clawing holes into its flesh to help make openings for the plurality of wings that were bursting out of random places on his body. An improvised legend for button number five read, “doesn’t do anything, I want a refund,” and in a different pen, “it reminds your pokemon to flush the john 2/3 the time.”
Vincent adjusted the machine’s sensor band around Fiona’s head, slipped his hands into the straps of a pair of refitted headphones speakers, and prepared to place them over her ears after pressing “3” and “play” on the jukebox’s transport, which started a thirty-second countdown. “Yes, I’m sure. Trust me, it’ll be useful, and when we get into League competitions, you’re only allowed to use four moves and they have to be documented techniques. I can’t put down ‘Fiona Improvisation Numbers 1 through 4’ on your registration sheets and it will be a while before we can barter for moves that you really need. The best deals come at season’s end when other trainers are unloading leftover T.M. discs.” In honesty, Vincent had no clue what a good move-set for a weavile would look like, but he did know that Water could counter a couple elements that would harm her.
Fiona crossed her arms. “I like using Fiona Improvisation Numb—AHHHH!”
After three seconds of bone-rattling squeals passed through the headphones, Fiona had been injected with the ability to cross water gracefully and to force atmospheric humidity to suddenly condense into a crashing wave. Vincent’s account was charged for his use of the H.M. programming device and for a couple headache tablets to give to his surf-enabled weavile.
“Take these. I don’t think special maneuvers are supposed to be your strong suit, but this will cover two and a half of your weaknesses for now. Fire and Rock will be hurt as long as you make the first move, plus you’ll at least be able to fight back against Steel.”
Fiona inhaled her painkillers. “Fire, huh?” She leaned toward the vacant friend ball on her trainer’s belt. “Hey, Tio! Guess wh—”
Vincent put his hand on her shoulder and she snapped to attention. “Phil may be Tio’s best back-up, but you’ll be his support if Phil gets taken out. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
She wrung her claws together as she exited the jukebox alcove with Vincent behind her and spoke low, the playful sarcasm gone from her voice. “You taught me this surf thing so I can support Tio, not beat him up with it.”
Vincent ruffled her crown. “So you can compete from a disadvantageous position and so you can contribute more to this team.” He looked around the pokecenter, hoping to find a computer terminal that was not in use so he could at least get a list of T.M.’s that a weavile can learn in case he met someone willing to barter. What he found was a technician trying to fix three computers at once and a queue forming before the cluster of terminals that were still operational. Furthermore, comments such as, “great, this one’s dead, too, now!” were easily overheard spoken by those who were seated. He chose to complete his task the old fashioned way and pulled a dusty book labeled “W–Z” from a shelf in the children’s corner that housed volumes for letters “A” through “V” and other titles such as “My First Pokemon Friend” and “See Crobat Run.”
Jackie rushed through that pokecenter’s doors before checking-up and returning to a normal gait. Assaulted once by an automatic door as a toddler, she never trusted such wily mechanisms again. Glancing around to acquaint herself, she noticed a slim but attractive pokemon that stood with the uneasy waver of technical machine hangover. She practically ran up to it, fearlessly ignoring its claws and countenance. “Oh-mi-god, you’re so cute!”
Fiona became the center of a stranger’s attention. Were she expecting a spontaneous adjective, Fiona would have hoped for “cool” or “intimidating,” but “cute” was better than “little” and “precious,” so at least this improved upon the morning’s evaluation. Nonetheless, this girl’s tone felt slightly patronizing.
“I haven’t seen a weavile outside of the circle before. You’re just wandering around? Where’s your trainer at, cutie?”
Ah, there it is.
Fiona pointed toward the lobby’s benches. “That’s him ov—”
Jacqueline called out at the top of her lungs while practically dragging Fiona by her arm as she ran to him. “Vincent! I knew I’d catch up to you sooner or later!”
Claiming a bench, Vincent and Jackie talked non-stop for over twenty minutes, until the latter’s cellular telephone rang. “Bah; that’s Caz. He’s probably wanting to whine because I’m taking a half-hour to get Jean healed up.” She flicked it open—“yep”—and shut. “Caz agreed to a battle against a kid wearing a yellow geodude shirt who wagered a couple of quid that he could beat last year’s semi-finalist. Everyone around was using fresh-caught Bug and Rock, and Caz is a cocky bastard, so he offered to pay out one-hundred times and play the kid one-on-six. Jean knocked the kid’s kakuna down in a heartbeat, and then it went downhill. That kid must live in a haunted house or something because the kakuna was just a pet or a decoy. Ghost team wins, and Caz hasn’t stopped grousing since.” Jackie slid off of the bench and gave Vincent a hug where he sat. “I’ll get going so he doesn’t start re-dialing twice a minute. Don’t forget: I owe you lunch. Call me for anything!”
Vincent knew how she handled phone calls. “Actually, I would like a little help. I wanted to research moves for Fiona, but there’s something wrong with the network service here and the kiosks are all screwed up. I know you have one of those fancy pokedex pads; could I borrow it for a little while?”
Jacqueline thought aloud. “Hmmmmm, no! You have to keep it.” She handed him a palm-sized computer.
He blushed slightly. “Huh, Jackie, I know your family is loaded but—”
She faked a scowl that would last for one sentence before turning into a smug grin and cut him short. “Don’t be rude! Daddy brought home a test-run unit of the super-small ones they’re going to be selling next month after finals, so this old thing needed a new home anyway.” She turned with a giggle and walked away briskly to deny him any opportunity to thank her. Entering Linalool Pokecenter’s deeper corridors, she swiped her I.D. at a security door to use a private rejuvenation machine; one reserved for elite trainers, gym leaders, and girls whose daddies worked at pokemon-related technology firms.
No longer waiting for their guest to leave, Fiona’s boredom inspired her to elbow Vincent, but he barely reacted, too distracted by all the features that her-now-his pokedex offered.
“This thing knows everything,” he muttered.
Fiona shifted her attention to a row of computers along a distant wall. The brewing commotion began boiling over as the last working bank of terminals started showing symptoms of impending break-down.
Carl focused on nothing beyond his bowl of cereal, still upset that he threw away a loss to a kid not even old enough to register for league without sponsorship, until he heard something tapping rhythmically against his fifth-floor suite’s balcony’s sliding glass door. He invited his guest to enter. She immediately flopped down on his bed and spread herself fully across it, mimicking the Vitruvian Man. A moment later, she groaned and sighed as though she were releasing a thousand-pound weight from her shoulders.
Her host returned to his cereal. “Do you want me to buy some more slot machine tips so you can go to a dollar store and feed your destitute ‘trainer’ and his clumsy pets?”
Vera replied with a warning while wiggling her toes. “Stay off of the slots. The only winners today will be people sitting beside you. Play card games if you wish to earn tokens.”
Carl’s bowl ran out of flakes. “Well, what do you want, then, beside your cut?”
The green bird chirped, slightly insulted. “I wanted to enjoy a social visit with a friend. Also, this bed is nice and soft and comfortable. The ones in budget motel rooms are lumpy on their own, and lumpier when there are two frat boys in it.”
Carl entered the suite’s kitchenette where a brief blast of water rinsed clean his bowl. He then put two slices of bread into a toaster. “That bed would be all yours if you wanted it to be. The offer is still on the table.” Silence stood like a wall until it was broken by the sound of toast being mechanically ejected. Carl withdrew the toast, applied a thin layer of butter, and sat on his bed’s edge. Vera quickly wrapped him in a hug and took a bite of a toast slice as he lifted it near her beak. “Why did you go with him and not with me?” he asked.
Vera withheld her reply until he yielded the rest of her slice. “Because he said, ‘please.’ ”
Carl soon re-sat in his cereal chair at the table, leaving Vera sitting upright on his bed. She slid back carefully to lean against its headboard. “Don’t pout. I formed with him the same friendship I formed with you. In your youth, you were more like he was and is. On the last day of your field trips, both of you said that you would miss me and wanted me to come home with you. But, while you said, ‘I want to take you home with me,’ he said, ‘please, come home and stay with me.’ When I stood fast, you threw your ball at me and I teleported away. When I fluttered forward, he held his ball out to me and let me peck its activation button.”
Her host, face reddened at this point, rested his chin between his left hand’s thumb and forefinger, elbow propped on the table.
Vera let him stew for a moment before she continued. “I’ve told you many times that you didn’t catch me when you had your chance. It wasn’t because you threw your ball with poor aim. It was because when you looked into my eyes, you didn’t see a friend first and a pokemon second. Vincent did; that’s why Vincent asked me to follow him, when in the same situation, you ordered me to.” Vera re-positioned herself and spread out across his bed again, idly listening to the machinations of Carl’s mind as he digested the revelation, and continued once he finished wrestling with his emotions.
“A long time ago, when they first designed a T.M. that could teach almost any pokemon with a mouth to communicate with humans, trainers who could afford it were lining up to enter raffles to have a chance at getting one. After applying it, many of those trainers discovered that they didn’t like what their pokemon had to say. It wasn’t a month later before smug trainers were releasing their ‘talkers’ back into the wild or trading them to breeders for replacements of the same species, trying to roll back the clock and get mutes that would just do what they were told in silent acquiescence like it had always been. I overheard recently that almost a quarter of Ocimene’s pokemon population has the ability, now, since so many went back to breeders and it often passes into offspring like it were a natural skill.” Vera rose and picked up a three-leaf hinged photograph frame that stood on the table beside Carl’s comfortable bed. Its three images were of Carl with his family, including his two starting pokemon; of his first semi-finalist award reception, shaking hands with the still-champion; and of a young man with a tiny green bird perched on two fingers. She spoke to the third photograph. “Maybe if I had revealed to you that I could communicate, that I could express my emotions and thoughts to you, you would have viewed me as a friend first and a pokemon second like I hope you truly do today.” She looked toward Carl with a sorrowful and disappointed gaze. “But, I needed to see how your heart, in the dark, would choose to act.”
Vera garnished the photograph frame with a sigh as she replaced it, and then walked slowly to the table, giving Carl one final hug. “It’s okay. I love all my boys despite their imperfections.” She withdrew slowly and proceeded to the sliding glass door. “Say ‘hello’ to your sister for me in three minutes. Oh, and call your father and tell him that your xatu friend advises him to keep his shoes on and to prepare plenty of coffee; he won’t have a chance to relax after work, tonight.” The green bird showed herself out via the balcony through which she entered.
Carl watched her fly away and stared into the sky until Jackie entered through a door behind him and announced her delayed return with Jean’s ball. He said nothing to his sister, even after she noticed a green feather tucked within a gap between the photograph frame’s hinges and brought it to his attention.
With a little trial and error, Vincent successfully associated his gifted device to his League registration, and it automatically set an alarm for later that afternoon. For a summer afternoon, the air felt rather cool, thanks to an overcast sky. Phil served as Fiona’s sparring partner, letting her practice using her new surf skill as an attack without hurting him in the slightest. Vincent hunched over, seated upon a park bench, poking and faintly smudging a touch-screen. This device’s capabilities reached well beyond those of the generic on-deposit reporting devices most trainers carried, and then beyond that of the typical trainer’s device. Having come from somebody on the inside, so to speak, it could access information that trainers with their somewhat-limited consumer-grade devices would almost kill for. For example, any pokedex reports the normal fully-grown height for a weavile as three-foot-seven, but this unit could search through the physical stats of every registered weavile in Ocimene and report that Fiona’s four-foot-one stature put her in the 95th percentile. Fiona, ready for a break, happened to hop onto the bench beside him as he learned of this. After explaining to her what ‘percentile’ meant, she simply asked what they could buy to help her get those last five percentiles that she needed to become the tallest.
Seated on Vincent’s other side, Theodore suggested, “platform shoes.”
Fiona practiced a little while longer, until Vincent called out to her and Phil with a command to follow him away. Chimes of that alarm indicated that their suspension just now elapsed. They crossed Linalool with haste, intending to let Fiona participate in one-on-one sparring matches and discover if her new attack could prove worthwhile. Once they arrived, however, they learned that nobody could compete. Standing before the gym, a live reporter interviewed a mute nidoqueen with a ninjask translator. Apparently, Bill’s P.C., as the massive networking and data center was still called, went down suddenly. The nidoqueen was in pieces because her mate was being withdrawn when the system collapsed. His ball came out empty and she feared the worst. Both gym and pokecenter staff members addressed their crowds in an attempt to maintain calm, but nobody knew any details about the situation. All that was certain was that if the nidoqueen’s fears were true, every pokemon that was in the system may be gone. The trouble did not limit itself to Linalool. Trainers in the field catching pokemon were seeing their accounts being temporarily flagged as ineligible for League-endorsed battle due to having more than six active pokemon on-hand; their mobile devices could not adjust their active rosters.
“I bet you feel really lucky, don’t you, twerp?” Carl arrived for his scheduled match-up but could not withdraw his team, leaving him with only Jean on-hand. “Little mister never-going-to-have-more-than-six-anyway still has his rabble of a team with him, while the pros are having to sweat it out.” Carl smirked with his eyes closed as he raised his palms and shoulders. “Life’s not fair.”
Carl’s calm demeanor, contrasted against such panic that a majority of nearby trainers shared, surprised the twerp. “Aren’t you worried you might have lost, really lost, your pokemon?”
Carl scoffed. “Private storage, scumbag. My pokemon are safe and my team is chilling out at Dad’s place. I just needed the service running to pass them through to a ball dock.”
Vincent exited Linalool Gym and released the balled member of his team, and Vera touched down just as Hal reconstituted. “Alright; new plan, guys. I’m thinking: we hit the mall, grab a bite, and pick up a movie to watch at the motel. Sound good?”
Fiona did not really know what a movie was, but the upward change in Vincent’s vocal pitch when he ended his sentence intrigued her.
Linalool Mall drew shoppers from adjacent towns as far west as Nybomy Fields and east as Hexyloxy Harbor, which includes bullet-train passengers who ride to Hexyloxy Terminal and then take the bumpy northern route around Lake Nixymyl. Freely-wandering pokemon were also a common sight there, as the mall held its tenants to an obligation—one no other shopping center in the region would enforce on pain of eviction—that any pokemon with money to spend had a right to shop there. However, not even when a bus that loaded up at Coroxon arrived did Linalool Mall see so many pokemon walking the foot paths. Trainers and owners learning of Bill’s P.C.’s disruption of service began worrying that even their pocketed pokeballs may begin malfunctioning and let out pokemon normally kept within to be safe. Of those pokemon, however, many, unaccustomed to casual domestic life, became confused, some wondering why they were not being ordered to battle, others becoming highly defensive of their masters for fear that any and all of the pokemon nearby may attack, and others still being pulled apart, assuming they were free to fight at will. Police officers soon took to the streets with Grass-types, using their sleep-inducing techniques to pacify brawlers creating scenes.
As they toured the mall, Vincent’s group fell apart one member at a time. Hal’s skull pointed like a compass toward the food court. Theodore broke stride at a jewelry shop when he noticed a display case of heavy gold chains, and Phil sneaked a lap around the water fountain, making off with a large-denomination coin beneath his tongue when he emerged. Fiona was last to leave Vincent, the facility’s scale easily overwhelming her such that only a sign advertising performance enhancement could call her away.
Vincent neglected her absence, instead taken by a realization as he entered a media shop that it was the first time in years he did so alone, without an eager ampharos walking beside him. The classic comedy section seemed well-stocked, but Vincent rummaged through the N’s fruitlessly for some time before finding the film he sought in a bargain bucket of import flicks.
Vera flew to the second level as soon as they passed through Linalool Mall’s entrance and there she entertained one of her few vices. Slowly passing by the mall’s finest of women’s clothing stores, she admired front-window mannequins adorned in luxurious dresses and fine gloves. Despite becoming dexterous enough to handle basic tasks such as operating doors, writing awkwardly, and grasping items with cooperative shapes, and despite that immense usefulness in her freedom of flight, a part of Vera always envied humans and certain species of pokemon for having been gifted with useful hands and flesh unburdened by a layer of high-maintenance feathers, always so picky about which way they are brushed and revolting against any attempt to apply wardrobe. The very thought of having hands with fingers attractively gloved and slipping into an attractive dress brought her to shiver, which in turn stood her feathers on-end as though her imagination created affront. She accepted that sensation as a cue to return to the life that Nature graciously permitted her to live.
Vincent emerged with a media chip and a hastening stride, loath to trust Fiona’s decision making when surrounded by battle-minded pokemon and quite possibly security agents armed with tranquilizer darts. A glimpse of lamp-black-tipped magenta feathers bobbing behind a shelf caught his eye, and a sign indicating they bobbed within a nutrition store confirmed his identification of her. Fiona was awed by so many bottles filled with magical pills and powders, each promising to enhance strength, beauty, endurance, stamina, or potency, whatever that meant.
She jumped away when Vincent touched her shoulder, but her stance became normal quickly enough that he did not notice her momentary expression. “Oh! Hey, Vinny, help me find cargo. I talked to that guy over there and he said I need cargo if I want to be faster.”
Vincent corrected her misunderstanding. “I’m pretty sure the vitamin is called ‘carbo,’ and it’s outside of our budget. You’ll just have to run around a lot if you want to be more athletic.”
Fiona accepted Vincent’s refusal to buy her more vitamins in stride. Running around a lot took more time than swallowing pills, but running had also been her one talent that carried her to safety from her pack and from the cabin, so it was at least a familiar process and one she felt ready to tackle.
Vincent offered her his hand as they exited the shop. Together they collected their friends, finishing by joining Hal in the food court. Along the way, Fiona realized that her meeting Vincent was the only time in her life that choosing to run would have been a fatal mistake.
Shade was no longer kept on guard duty during the day and Zap had even gotten away with turning on the radio while his new master was out. It quickly became a best friend. A music junkie from note one, he memorized every album that Vincent owned and quickly discovered he possessed a voice to go with that addiction. He was once featured on local television after winning a regional karaoke contest, becoming the first pokemon that was not a jynx to honestly out-perform all the human contestants by a margin wide enough to escape the judges’ bias against “unnatural” competitors; be it born of seeing pokemon competing with humans or merely the speech T.M.’s synthetic origin.
Listening quit being enough for him and soon Zap sang himself into a corner. He worked in the back room at the end of his chain, having just finished hanging the hiker’s laundry to dry when he realized that the radio quit playing several lines of lyrics ago; that the music he accompanied existed only in his memory. He sheepishly leaned his head into the opened doorway and peered into the living space.
The hiker sat in his filthy chair, smoking a cigar. His ninetales posed nearby, exuding amused arrogance like a king attending the royal opera.
“I’m back again.” That lyric was correct but his pitch was quite flat. “Is my laundry done?”
Zap nodded as he had done all along.
The hiker puffed a smoke ring, unable to see Zap and not caring as his gestures no longer sufficed. “I asked you a question. You will answer me immediately when I ask you questions.”
“Yes, Sir,” Zap croaked, then coughed to clear his throat. “It’s drying now.”
Another puff of smoke; “how long did you plan to keep your secret?”
“As long as I felt like it was not my place to talk, Sir.”
Ash settled within a tray. “Good answer. I can respect that. Wild pokemon don’t normally know the words to golden oldies or how to get chili stains out of my delicates, so I am right in assuming you have a trainer.”
“You captured me in the wild. You are my—”
“How long ago did he throw you away?”
Zap shifted uncomfortably. “My previous trainer didn’t throw me away. I… threw him away. I was not wild again for very long.”
The hiker hummed. “While you were loose, or before then for that matter, did you happen to see a sneasel running around the woods? Skinny little shit, looked like the kind that would be the bottom of the totem pole and beg for scraps after her pack finished a kill. The kind that needed a victim that wouldn’t fight back.”
Zap hesitated for a heartbeat; too long.
“You have. I said you will answer me immediately. Why did you freeze on me? Can’t be stage fright, the way you were belting it out when I came in.”
“We did meet a sneasel, and she told us her side of the story.”
The hiker chuckled exactly once, very deeply. “Really. Do you believe what that little shit told you?”
Zap looked toward the crates. “I do not know if it is true or not.”
Leaning to his left side, the hiker turned to get Zap into the fringe of his vision. “Never lie to me. You’re wearing a chain staked to my floorboards. You know.”
“I do, Sir.”
“Want to know why?” He waved his cigar dismissively. “The little shit, not you.”
Zap looked directly at the hiker. “I think you want to tell me.”
“Good answer. When I found Feathers, she was looking at herself, already halfway ripped open by that little shit, and in her eyes I saw something I will never forget: absolute, complete, perfect horror. Then, she looked up at me and she tried to—,” the hiker choked, “I like to think she tried to say goodbye but all that happened was her throat twitched and a little blood trickled from her beak and she died.” He turned his antique radio on again but at a very low volume. “Besides,” he continued, “I know that look. She was begging me to save her somehow. I always wanted to see it again, in that little shit’s eyes: absolute, complete, perfect horror. But, no matter what I did to that monster, she always had a little fight left in her. Physical pain, psychological pain, it didn’t matter.” He leaned forward and gestured with a nod toward Zap’s cushion. “I could make her wad herself into a ball in that corner just by reaching toward my belt buckle, but whenever I stopped whipping her for a few seconds, she would look up at me and in those damned red eyes, a spark of life. I was never able to break her.”
A favorite tune began and his recollection waited for that song to complete. The hiker puffed on his cigar with a crooked expression. “It was obvious, really. I needed to do to her what she did to Feathers. I needed to eviscerate her before her very own eyes, but—,” the hiker twisted in his chair to look at Zap and point at him with his cigar, “I knew I would only get one chance and I was afraid. What if I turned her inside-out only to see that damned half-toothless grin underlining those red eyes of hers, still burning with the last of her life’s spirit?” He rose from his chair and walked to the sports memorabilia display case. “Laughing at me, laughing at us, right to the very fucking end.” The hiker flung his cigar into the fireplace before flopping back into his chair, causing it to creak loudly in protest of his abuse.
After a moment, Zap spoke up. “Sir, I—”
The hiker responded with a voice barely less low than his radio’s volume. “I did not ask you a question, did I?”
“You asked if I had seen a sneasel, and I still need to finish answering that question: I have, but she isn’t a sneasel anymore.”
Another creaking noise made Shade flatten his ears as the hiker shifted quickly. “You wouldn’t know that unless—unless she was caught by a trainer who gives a damn and by someone you know. Do you have a name?”
“Zap, Sir.”
The hiker stifled a laugh. “That’s a shit name, but I have no right to change it. Take a berry and go to sleep, Zap.”
The ampharos dragged his chain behind himself to reach the berry jar and a moment later curled into his bedding, an old comforter folded over itself. It was in better condition than the rags that the hiker made his own bed with, which seemed to be as old as the man himself. As much as Zap enjoyed singing, it did not justify betraying his original trainer, even if Vincent failed to fulfill his promises. However, Zap had nothing to gain and everything to lose should he fail to comply with his new master’s wishes.
A televised special report attracted a crowd before an appliance store near a Chinese food joint. Bill Senior appeared in-person to announce that despite the disruption of service, all pokemon remained in the system. He did not, however, announce when public service would be fully restored.
With a sack of carry-out to top off Fiona and Hal before bed, Vincent’s team headed out of town to their bargain motel. After almost two weeks living inside Room 8, rental-tent sleeping was a faint memory, and one that would never be exactly restored without the comfort of their night-light. They settled into an audience to view the film Vincent selected. Fiona managed to endure it completely without once laughing despite it being a comedy. This upset her slightly as even Phil seemed to understand most of its humor. Human culture was largely foreign to the weavile, and this film was from both a different region and a long-past era, presenting a world much different from her own and leaving her thoroughly confused afterward.
“So, why aren’t they allowed in the house?” She asked of Theodore.
He gave her an indignant look. “Would you want slimy things like them in your house? They’d make a mess in minutes. You would be replacing the carpet—,” Theodore stopped, knowing that one cannot tell the difference between Hal asleep and Hal awake, even if his eyes are closed and rumbling snores are flowing from his nostrils, and that Hal is not somebody to insult under any circumstance. “Anyway, you’ll get it someday, maybe.” He hummed one of the songs performed during the film while he slipped into bed. Phil picked up the tune and continued it with whistles until and after Vincent ran the shower for his bedding.
Jackie finally decided to answer her phone, understanding that stubbornness is often stronger than patience, and that her phone would ring every thirty seconds until the sun rose again or the persistent caller nodded off. She opened it with a flick of her wrist and activated communication with a twitch.
“Jack, am I rude?” Carl asked in a slightly mumbled voice.
His sister became immediately irritated. “You’re calling me at almost midnight; what do you think?”
Carl repeated himself.
“Yes, Caz, you are rude. You’re rude to everyone you meet and you’re double-rude to everyone you feel intimidated by. Did you not notice that the last time you looked in a mirror?”
Carl paused for a moment to reflect. “It’s just, Vera said something to me today and it stuck with me. She basically said that I would have her if I had said ‘please.’ ”
Jackie pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. “You wouldn’t have her any more than Vincent has her. She may be registered to a ball that he owns but she comes and goes and does whatever she wants. She’s as free now as she was at the ruins, so who cares? Go to bed, Caz. I’m hanging up now.”
As the glow of his trainer’s device’s display faded, Carl sat in darkness at his small table, staring out through a window overlooking the rooftops of Linalool City. Even if he had been momentarily polite and captured that natu, he would have eventually acted to limit her freedom and in doing so, he would have treated her as a pokemon first and a friend not at all. Vera’s uniquely-acute perception must have warned her about that danger. What the green bird meant by, “your heart, in the dark,” finally became clear to him. He did not not-say “please” because he was rude to people, but because he did not, at that time, value her as a person to even be rude to.