-4- Inconsiderate Intervention, As Told By Anton.



I really shouldn't have been doing it, but I couldn't get her off of my mind. Every few days, I had to go there and make myself feel worse. I complained about making the trips at her request, but after she wrote my part out of her script, I visited Carthamus regularly, anyway. I found a perfect spot beside Manny's house. It was hidden from the street and only visible from inside his bedroom at a particular angle, which I would exploit when he was surely not in its line. I'd settle into my hide, close my eyes, and listen.

"I've been using my imagination for weeks now, Lil'. Why won't you let me see you?"

"Sekl-e-plœt hagalej."

Franz couldn't explain how the hypnosis he applied to her affected her speech, only that it changed how things connected. Listening to it intently, I felt like I should understand it even though I couldn't. It was familiar but everything was wrong, like a strange dream. I wished I was dreaming, but this was a nightmare.

"Lilith, please. This has gone on long enough. It's like your skin has some sort of terrible secret. Look, you could be covered in scars, have big discolored patches, a regrettable tattoo, I'm still going to love you. But this behavior isn't normal and it can't be healthy. You've been wearing that robe almost twenty-four-seven since the day we met. I've never seen you out of it! I don't want to force you to do anything you don't want to do, but Lilith, I want to touch you. You, not your robe. When I hold you, it's like holding Maggie because it's the same kind of fur."

Knowing what I knew, and knowing her, that had to hurt her.

"No, Lil', don't cry. I like that, it's comfortable; but it's not you. See? I want to make love to you, not this garment that I'm seeing and feeling between us."

"Von-o-lega uidale sedu sink xi?" There was a pause before she continued slowly, "you want love, true me?"

"Yes!" Manny shouted with a tone that conveyed a desperate attitude.

The room's lights were off except for a lamp. It was perfect for my voyeurism: bright enough that I could see what was happening inside without losing my night vision, or casting enough light to leak outside and make me visible. She was standing in front of his T.V. looking nervous. She slowly raised her paws and ran them across her upper chest and over her shoulders. I wasn't sure what she was doing at first. Then she reached near her waist and fumbled around a little. Then it made sense. Manny mentioned a robe; that must be part of the image that Franz put in Manny's mind to replace what she really looked like. She hesitated and he encouraged her to continue. She was taking off the imaginary robe, and Manny was buying it.

When he complimented her beautiful nude body, something his mind was visualizing for him, she shied away. She turned her blind side to him, which let him sneak up on her accidentally. He embraced her, making her jump, and I growled faintly for a second. He spoke so low I could barely hear.

"Your skin is so soft, and smooth. Lilith, it—it feels almost the same as your robe. I don't know how you do it, but everything I learn about you is a pleasant surprise."

"Von-o-aliv nalabay t'zte sela?"

"I hope you'll pleasantly surprise me with more of my own language someday. I'm going to get us something special to drink. If you really want to put your robe back on, please do. Whatever will make you comfortable. I won't let it come between us again, if you know what I mean. I only needed to know that you knew that you could trust me with your secrets, and that I wouldn't turn you away."

Manny exited his bedroom. I watched my Magdalene take a few aimless steps before stopping before a mirror above his dresser. She looked at a large piece of paper, set it down again, and alternated between two poses. One, her true stance, springy and pliant, and her other that was once awkward but now familiar, straighter and taller for her illusion's benefit. Manny returned with a bottle and a couple glasses. I ducked back down, just to be safe, and sat idle for a little while. They made small talk, very small in her case since she still could not say more than a few of his words at a time.

When the words stopped, I had to peer through the window again. Because of the angles, I couldn't really see Manny, just Maggie on top of him and his hands on her chest. Not that there was much there like a human woman would have, but that did not seem to be a problem.

I was enthralled by her motions. She would rise and fall, rock forward and back, swaying gently, firmly, and with fluid smoothness. She moved like the mienshao I knew in the circle. I could see the pleasure in her face as the stimulation pushed her expression from deliberate to relaxed and, as she began to vocalize that pleasure, aroused. Her whiskers lifted up and outward. With a bit of a stutter she asked him, "you want love, true me?"

Manny replied with I guess something in her own words, "vono-cono-alley-eyes."

She leaned down and kissed him. Her head disappeared from my view, while his hands relocated to her flanks. That was okay; if I could see her face, his would be there too, so to hell with that. I just imagined him away and myself in his place. Until I gave in to my curiosity and started watching them together, I'd only seen the female-on-male mating method once in a movie. I thought it seemed strange, and somewhat embarrassing, compared to our natural methods. But, having seen her doing it, the pleasure on her face—I could imagine the pride I would feel if I were responsible for that. Part of me started to swell with that pride.

With every passing second, she became more vocal and more aggressive with him, and I became more in-the-moment, too. It wasn't long before Manny reached his limit. She wasn't done. I was fully ready to burst through the window and finish the job, but instead I sat there leaning against the side of his house, glancing sideways through the glass while she knelt above him and his tongue kept her moaning while his equipment rested and recovered.

My mind wandered and I glanced away, listening and longing. When she started getting loud again, my idle imagining of her being with me outside the window tantalized me so that I gathered myself up and looked inside again in earnest. I got into position just as she approached the brink and changed her posture. There is no other way to describe it, she started screwing him hard. I couldn't help my hips' thrusting forward sympathetically with the bed's rhythmic noises.

Much to my shame and the disgust of my immediate surroundings, she and I came together.

I loitered for a while, but after Manny's condom was disposed of and he was licked clean, and, a minute later, Maggie returned from the bathroom, there wasn't anything more to see but his hand on her butt as she slept beside him. I slumped down against the house again, and waited patiently for my shame to relax.

As I left, I noticed a light on inside the home on its opposite side. It must have been his roommate. I wondered what his opinion was of what was going on inside that house.



The walk home after watching them was always slow and depressed, feeling bad about what I was doing, feeling bad about what I wasn't doing, feeling worst because I did the right thing and helped her fulfill her selfish dream when I wasn't even a part of it. When I got home, I tried to sleep but I couldn't. I got up, I tried pacing as if I hadn't run around enough that night, but it did not tire me. It made things worse because it gave me more time to think about the scheme that was in my head. Such deception was quite dastardly, even for a dark-type, but I couldn't help myself. My desire had grown too strong; already just thinking about the plan working was enough to make my body grow flush and warm all over. I had to do it, and resign to begging any gods above or below to forgive me for my sin.

I gathered up what little money I called mine, something of an allowance I was permitted as a reward for good behavior. I would soon spend all of that credit. Then I added the money I took from Manny's wallet and gathered up some of Shelia's money too, to be sure I had enough. So much for good behavior. I tucked it into a shoulder bag and set off westward, through the woods toward Coroxon Gorge. I didn't go there to run away, though, like so many pokemon who were not able to get along with humans but were too accustomed to civilized ways to handle feral life. I went there because I needed something and my money wasn't enough to obtain it legitimately; Coroxon had its own way of dealing with supply and demand.

It was mid-day before I found what I was hoping to discover. A little hole-in-the-wall shop, literally speaking, that offered bootleg copies of technical machines and use of the electronics needed to apply them. I think it was a garage for earth moving equipment originally. Its interior was lit with strings of tiny lights, the area I entered wasn't any larger than my master's bathroom, and the rest was partitioned off with a plywood wall that had a hinged window in its center. It creaked open as I was about to leave with an assumption that the merchant was out for lunch. A porygon2 peeked through and asked me what I wanted.

I told it what I wanted.

It warned me not to buy it.

I insisted.

It looked sad and sold me a disc for all the money I brought.

I clamped on the speaker cuffs of an improvised T.M. programming machine and slipped my forearms into loose but effective leather restraint loops.

It turned on the power.

I thrashed about for quite some time.

It turned off the power when the process was complete.

I freed myself, clutched my throbbing head, and staggered away. As I left I heard it say, "I hope you chose wisely," faintly over the ringing in my ears.



I got home late at night, after Shelia had gone to bed but not before Franz recalled himself. He always stayed up to watch a favorite show that aired late on some nights.

As a dark-type, psychics can only do to me what I let them. However, we had been together long enough that Franz had pried open a seam, you could say. As soon as I entered my home, he was inside my head. "She was worried about you. She called Immanuel to see if you were there with Magdalene, and when he said that she ran off on her own indefinitely, Shelia thought you two might have eloped."

"Not today."

Franz dropped his yo-yo. "You changed yourself."

I started using my first language again; I had to consciously do it. "Yes. It was time. Our master trusts you with her mind and to express yourself with mental suggestion. I've been stuck grunting half-words to make quarter-sentences all my life with her and before that. Besides, if my illusion skill is enough to walk among humans as one of them, I ought to be able to speak the part."

"Is that what you intend to do? Pass for a human?"

"If I can."

"To what end?"

"I want to feel a warmth that ought to be mine."

Franz reached over the side of his recliner and recovered his yo-yo. "And if you can't?"

"I'll regret my failure and have it scrubbed out."

"Anton," he called out to me as I started to leave, telepathically shouting to get my attention, although it wasn't much louder to me, "you can't erase that one. It's in your brain, your bones, and your blood forever."

I wasn't aware of that, but I did not want to look bad, so I tried to play it cool. "I'd better be successful, then." I replied using human words without intending to.

I lied on my bedding and wondered how Shelia would react. I had planned to simply not tell her and fake being as tongue-tied as any other mute making an effort, which I had been until today. Now, though, I concluded no matter how hard I tried, she would learn what I did sooner than later. I fell asleep thinking about pokemon she had owned. During her league journeys, Shelia's team seemed to be like a waiting room with six chairs and one revolving door. Franz was an early acquisition who she kept the whole way because they got along really well together, and I, being a species very rare in this region, was a special trade opportunity that let her get something new and interesting while trading off the less-desired half of her for-the-moment tournament team. Thinking back about it, the ones that spoke seemed to spend the least time in her care. Until Shelia went to work the next morning, I managed to keep my mouth mostly shut. Once she was gone, I took a recorder and worked on mastering Manny's voice. I really did not know him as well as I needed to, but after a few hours of practice, I was as close as I could hope to get. I tried out a few other voices, too, to go with other disguises. I could try those out on the streets of Fenchone and be sure I was convincing before I got myself in too deep. I left before Shelia returned home. If she counted her money and I was in the home, she would interfere with my plans as a consequence, to say the least. In for a penny, in for a pound, I snatched a little more from her cookie jar.



How different my home town became. I blended in, instead of receiving stares for being an exotic species. I went to a restaurant and ordered food for myself without receiving any sideways glances from humans waiting to see if I was ordering for my master, too. I read a newspaper. The way that worked was somewhat unexpected; I couldn't read the words' meaning but I could read their sounds to myself and then understand that. I spent five minutes working on the front page, five more on the first section, and after that, reading felt almost natural. I returned to walking the streets and took in all the messages on signs and façades that until now were merely chaotic decorations on buildings. Not long into it, I felt like I took in too much and sought refuge at Fenchone Pokecenter.

I had to make up some lies really fast as I sat in the center's lounge. I told them I trained pokemon once, but not in this region, and I was never in the league. Three of the trainers there believed it. The fourth didn't: she had a suspicious espeon in her lap that tried to taste my thoughts and failed. They noticed when I realized this and I became uncomfortable; I noticed when they ignored that fact and I became relieved; they noticed that too, or so it seemed. While other trainers came and left, she and I conversed for almost a couple hours. Zoë found ways to make mundane topics interesting, and Twinkle—she had owned her espeon since she was very young, Zoë admitted somewhat apologetically—was more interested in snoozing than in scanning an impenetrable gray haze.

Time flew, and before I realized it, I was sitting on the west docks, watching a sunset. I wondered why I never thought to do this sooner.



At home, Shelia hardly noticed me. Franz told me that her boss dumped a load of work on her and expected it done yesterday. That was fine by me, since it meant we would not have time for discussions that might see me slip, or for her to pay any attention to an emptied rainy day fund. I drew up my plans for the next day. I needed to get Manny out of my way temporarily, and I needed not to smell like Anton the Zoroark. I got in the bathtub, turned it up to being slightly uncomfortably warm, and worked on the first problem while lathering extensively my extensive coat. With each wash and repeat I felt a little closer to having a workable plan, which I was so focused on that I didn't know how many times I had lathered up so far and thus how long I had been in the bathtub. I only knew I had to be absolutely thorough.

I, thankfully, yelped like a hound when the door shook and startled me out of my concentration.

"Anton? You could've told me you needed a bath. Ugh, you know how late it is? I need to wash myself and get to bed, too; I don't have time to towel you off."

I tried to approximate an "I can do it myself" without either saying it too well or not well enough.

"I'll give you three minutes. Get out, get as dry as you can, take the hair dryer, and finish off in the garage."

As I stood beside Shelia's car, struggling to fluff my fur and get as many watts blown through it as I could manage, I recalled the afternoon, when Zoë suggested I visit her at work sometime. She was a woman's hairdresser, but she felt she could do something dapper with the hair my illusion sported. Today I had worn an image based on a model in a magazine, so I was a little surprised that it was taking criticism on style. The real me wouldn't mind losing three quarters of this ungainly mass of born tangles, though. I went inside as dry as I could manage, and hopped into the recliner beside Franz on the couch. I never figured out how he selected which seat he would use on any given night. At his suggestion, and on his word he would not shout inside my skull again, I let him enter my mind and we communicated telepathically and subconsciously during commercials. He didn't like my plan, and honestly I didn't either. But, we concluded that I would not be dissuaded.



With Manny's car sabotaged, I donned his image as my disguise and rode a bus back to Carthamus, both for appearance's sake and to pick up a layer of mingled human scent. Second guesses followed me until I got to his door. I stood there, closed my eyes, and thought about her; what she was putting herself through. It wasn't fair to her, to me, to even him. It couldn't last forever, and I knew how bad she would feel when it finally came down. I knew because she showed me a glimpse at the gym. She said it herself: it wouldn't work.

I wasn't doing this for myself, as self-gratifying as I knew it would be. I truly believed she needed me to help her again, even if my method was highly questionable.

I applied three bold strikes with the door's knocker. I worried I might had already blown it; what if Manny was a doorbell man? I couldn't remember, and it was too late to change it. Maggie checked me out twice through a narrow window beside the door before letting me in. I had my statement prepared. "Hey. My car broke down, I had to leave it at a shop, and I must've left my keys in it or dropped them on the bus, so I couldn't get in. Good thing you were waiting for me, right?"

She said nothing and walked away to sit in front of the television. I expected some sort of a response or hint of a welcome. I couldn't stand around like a dope so I went to the kitchen and got a drink of water. I faked a phone call to a car workshop to support my story for now, then I came back and sat beside her. She was watching a mid-day game show. I almost spoke her name when I realized that she had two now, and that was what was making this situation so uncomfortable. I was successful, she saw me as Manny. But, since his perception of her had broken before, requiring Franz to hypnotize him again, she did not know for certain what and who Manny saw her as.

"Lilith?"

She snapped into her role and spouted something incomprehensible.

My plan was to start sweet-talking her, but I couldn't do it. I didn't really know how, and it wasn't the sort of thing the Manny she told me she wanted would do. I became her Manny by being Anton. I opened my heart to her. I said things I'd wanted to say but had been too proud of myself, too afraid of rejection, or too embarrassed to say in public like at the gym, to tell her. Nothing she replied with made sense, but I knew the meaning from her tone when she offered to lead me into Manny's bedroom.

Torturing myself by watching them go at it was now paying off. I knew a little too well the patterns of human, or at least Manny's, foreplay, and kept my portrayal consistent enough. I took a more dominant attitude, though. She seemed to like the introduction of a little aggression, but stopped me with a grunt before I pressed into her, indicating toward a box of rubbers on the table beside Manny's bed. I turned away from her and made an awkward dance modeled after a male stripper I saw on T.V. to distract and amuse her and to buy time while I figured out how to put it on. At least my real equipment was similar enough to Manny's to use it. A few species require special designs or materials.

I felt like I was losing control of myself as I entered her body with my own. Her breathing fluctuated, and soon she fluctuated mine, as even the slightest contraction or twitch of her strong, fighting-type muscles caused my body to respond obediently to their suggestion.

"Stop!" I grunted only a few minutes after we began. I had to withdraw myself for a second time, a little while after I continued from the first interruption I demanded. The contempt I held for Manny's inability to hold out until her climax arrived faded now that I understood what he was up against. "Sorry, I want us to finish together this time."

She rubbed herself slowly while I held my breath and focused on nothing. "Von plev nobus ehœh."

Undaunted, the third time was the charm. I got a little primal with her, nipping gently at a few of her parts, growling a little; out of character for Manny or who I thought Anton was, but it was enough to send her over the edge and I followed immediately behind her. In the moment, I never wanted the sensation to end. About a half-minute after it began, I wished that it could.

There was a small detail I overlooked: her body held me tight, and my organ was designed to be trapped by that tightness. The human she saw would have been able to withdraw smoothly. I tried to convince her that I wanted to lie with her joined as we were, but she wanted to leave. I remembered then that she tended to go and clean herself up afterward. She became angry. She shoved me away from her, drawing a cry of surprise and probably a little pain as our union moved with me. Then she slapped me. My illusion faded.

"Faxe kons cinbuj! Uidakoioi Anton! Uidagyoioi? Dolo da-le itag Mahni?"

That's all I remember of what she said. After that, it was mostly shrieks and her hitting me. I used to say, even to her face, that she wasn't a very good fighter. I was wrong; what I had seen was her without proper motivation. Not that I had any ability to get away or defend myself, so mostly it was her beating on my face and ribs while I struggled to wrestle her into a position that would restrict her from beating on my face and ribs. Fortunately for me, after a half-roll that put her on top of me, the bed began absorbing part of the impacts, but as she hit me harder each time, I wasn't sure how long it would help.

Her assault ended with the intervention of Manny's roommate. "So here is what happens in this room at night!" Maggie froze when she turned to face him, expressing absolute shame on her face and in her eyes, or at least the good one that I could see. The man continued, "I heard Immanuel's voice some minutes ago. Where is he now?"

Maggie didn't want to answer, it would have been a guess anyway.

"Tell me where he is, now!"

I restored my illusion and answered in Manny's voice, "he is at his work. By now, he is probably wondering why his car does not start."

As if the timing were appropriate, Maggie pulled herself free of me as I discarded the illusion again.

"To look like him is in your power?" He turned to Maggie. "Do you have this power, too? Maybe that explains some things that are confusing in this house."

The telephone rang, and the roommate left to answer it.

I spoke as a human, but in my natural voice's timbre. "Magdalene. I am ashamed of what I did to you today, but not what we did together. You are important to me—the most important, Maggie—and I could not stand and watch you do what you're doing to him and to yourself when you know it will only go wrong in the end."

She was crying by this point. I couldn't be sure if it was because of the incident or because she knew I had to be right.

"I thought if we mated, you would see that I can give you the physical love you want, the human kinds you like, and the emotional love you need too, from someone who has always been your friend, like Manny has, and who has always seen you as his perfect mate, as he hasn't."

The roommate came back. "Manny needs help with his auto. Are you going to come? I will give you some minutes if you need time." Maggie shook her head.

I told him where I hid the part that I took so he could find and replace it. When he left, I sat still for a while. She did, too, staring blankly at nothing, sobbing and sniffling.

I reached out toward her, but she ducked out of reach, coughing out a faint "go away." I tried to talk to her, but she would have none of it.

"Anton! GO!"

The anguish on her face made me feel the lowest I had ever felt in my life. I looked back as I stepped through the doorway. She wailed as she leaned over and buried her face in a pillow. That brought me down even further. I knew if I took another step, I could never take it back. "Magdalene, this isn't how it was supposed to go." She scowled at me and flung the pillow away as she sat upright on the bed. "All I wanted was—" She brought her paws together before herself. "—for you to—" A bright blue glow from sparkling tendrils formed between them. I didn't know she knew how to create an aura-sphere, but I knew what it meant to a dark-type like me. "—please, forgive me!" I cried as I ran down the hallway. That a few seconds later a spirit-seeking orb didn't blast me unconscious was the only evidence that in a tiny way she did.

I went to their bathroom to dispose of the rubber and wash myself. What a fool I was. I tried to fight fire with fire, using my illusion of her lover to try to trump her illusion of his lover. The kind of disaster I expected to be the result of her scheme was now the result of mine. Even if one day she could forgive me for what I had done, I knew I could never show my face, any of my faces, to her again. I didn't deserve to. And once word of this reached my home, could I show my face to Shelia or Franz either?

I heard nothing but my own heavy heartbeat and my shattered precious Magdalene crying her soul out as I left her home.

No. I didn't deserve that, either. I needed to go away. I needed a fresh start. I needed the company of someone who I felt truly in-tune with, without any of my sins haunting me.



Like an ancient warrior who disgraced his clan, the time had come for me to cut my hair.



I locked the front door behind me, walked to the street, and looked northward.



I knew who I wanted to do that for me.