---

Eternally Vernal, Chapter 9: Until Unspoken To.

---

“Lower, and bigger gently, I beseech," spake Ivana through her old translator—the new one had not yet arrived, which would have irritated her had she not bigger plans occupying her mind—“it must go all to my bottom." Another missed translation, but she added carefully, “and so must you," to make the most of it and to get a rise out of Maximilian. Mister Well's articuno had gone slumming and picked up something a mighty mite mite-like. Properly pampered, she rarely needed to maintain the recommended layer of Eight-P residue to keep the itches away. “I don't want to collide against number one stud and claw away my flesh to expose revulsion." This device seemed to be getting worse as it “learned," but Ivana was out of sighs to communicate her disappointment when it erred.

Maximilian ordered her to turn a little—this being one of the few circumstances when she would deign to obey his commands without resistance—and with a small heap of Eight-P in his gloved hand he ran it through the feathers beneath her left wing, against the grain to get a rise out of her. “Why won't you let Hemmy have a chance? Each time you've decided to get bred, you pass him by. I know he doesn't have any special prestige like the birds owned by the magnates in Simian's social circle, but since none of them got you an egg, and now you're ambushing wild trash for the thrill of it, I don't understand why you exclude him. Even if he should fail like all the others, it'd let the old bird die a happy man. Turn."

Ivana complied and complained, “I don't like his words he makes."

“—Explain."

“Word choosing and word putting. Same one two times, three times. Hard to understand."

Max tilted the can of Eight-P to fill his palm again. “I don't know if pokemon language passes like the speech T.M. does, but if you want to be a mother, it seems like you're going to have to try them all." Ivana shifted into an erect posture, knocking Max's hand and spilling the powder. Loudly she squawked at her computer. Glancing at one of its screens, Max noticed it was downloading a database to local storage: the League's database for its previous season. Max poured a replacement handful, and spoke with concern, “Cancel that! That's not what I meant by 'try them all.' "

Ivana chuckled. “I will shop from the window. Until I am excited and buy." She squawked again and turned to glare at Max once he delivered a pinch of powder with brutal force to a soft spot.

“You said you were just going to look a few days ago; now I'm dusting you for bugs. As a favor to me, for all I've done for you, make Hemmy's dream come true."

“How do you know that he dreams of mating with me?" Ivana asked, although the translator mangled it almost beyond recognition. Max was not confused by the device's conclusion and plainly admitted that the last time she had made it known that she sought a mate, an unexplained purchase of an oversized feather pillow and a five-pound sack of ice, plus an order for scheduled delivery of a dozen roses, appeared on one of the business expense receipts. So solved was the mystery of whence came the bundle of wilted stems on her balcony that Ivana stumbled upon when she returned from a spontaneous trip to “visit acquaintances" in Tartaroyal. Disinterested, she moved on: “Is my tiny accumulation of frozen water nest shaping?"

“He's begun to open up and the girl was ga-ga at first sight. Which is good because the client was one would-be-crying-for-days daughter away from buying a ralts with decent stats from a breeder's salvage roster. But he paid the king's ransom to make her happy."

“Fabric vine succeeded!"

Max hummed, and asked her to turn again.

“Top done, go down to me," she advised.

He closed his eyes and tried to take a deep breath, but there was too much Eight-P in the air to draw much air in. “Thank all that it said 'to.' " She maintained her erect posture and Max knelt to start working on her left leg. “You might need another scarf if you plan on fostering the next one. Hemmy reacquired the target this morning, so we're soon to move on it. Onyx is going to spell Hemmy and then he'll take me to find our lazy losers. Gates is back to using a commodity match reporter and Velasquez went into hiding. I grow weary of paying these fools' petty debts so they'll be able to bumble another job."

Ivana turned. “Use Hague?"

“Hague could bag it yesterday but when I call him his equipment gets suddenly lost and unless he's in a drunkard phase, even Onyx has trouble out-tracking that tracker."

The articuno leaned over him, moving her wing with its clipped-on translation device near his ear. “Lower, and smaller gently, I beseech."

“You do this to me only because you can get away with it," Max grumbled as he pushed her frosty feathers away. “Turn again; right leg, and, there, and a quick dusting on your tail and we're done with this chore."

She chattered something with a wink and complied. “I choose you when you need a friend."

Shaking the can, Maximilian realized it would only be barely enough. “I haven't needed a friend since I was—since ever."

Ivana waited until he threw away the emptied can of pesticide and removed his nitrile gloves. “You need need. I do, too."

---

Having her change of format approved, albeit by only one vote, MacLeod wasted no time in helping her gym to rise up the rankings of monthly repair bills. Or it would once the first month was over. In barely enough days to refer to the period as a few weeks, she had spent fifty per cent above par on resurfacing and other wears-and-tears. She fretted not because the receipts were up as well, both from sign-ups and spectator traffic; the star of the home team fielded by her second—a new staff position—was getting inventive and getting noticed. It began with Harrison's techs but word spread quickly and soon Carol reserved a row or two for people with pokecenter or research credentials, as some coming from as far east as Fort Uridine wanted a first-hand glimpse of an unwitting nature-power expert; not that he wasn't adept with secret-power, too. Hidden-power had been applied, a gift from said cheering section, but nobody could tell if Warden had ever used it. It did not help that his trainer rarely gave Warden any commands. Mostly he just told Warden when to back off, and sometimes his sawsbuck obeyed and other times it didn't. Some regulars in the audience would shout at Gates to demand that he tell Warden to back off, because if Warden disobeyed it usually meant that the buck would be knocked out on the next hit he took, or he would knock out his opponent with something flashy. When a match ran long, that was one way the audience could hope to speed a conclusion.

As the entertainment value of her gym's feature matches went up, so rose Carol's spirits, income, and the warmth of her reception when dealing with the other gym leaders. It was almost enough to cause her to forget herself. “Chippy, roll out of the way!" This was a command that her rhyperior learned to respond to before she finished her sentence, because it meant that Warden was behind him, and approaching about to do something that would hurt him a lot if he did not open a path. Hauling a quarter-ton of ass on a second's notice quickly grew more more irritating than being washed out by surfing pikachu coming up the coastal route, so if you were to ask him how he felt about his new partner, he would probably rather they be slotted in order than side-by-side. Letting his momentum turn him completely about and right-side-up again, he saw one such pikachu being flung into the air by antlers that looked as though they were chiseled from sandstone. On its way down, it met with Warden's rear hooves as the local star spun about to punt the rat out of bounds. It was a one-point finish, but enough to disqualify the challenger from earning a Moraine Badge. Recognizing this and forfeiting, he fought his way through the normally stoic scientists that jumped the rail to get closer and try to snap photographs of the sawsbuck as he shook his head and sneezed, shattering away the sandy layer from his antlers and letting blossoms burst back into their places. As always, Warden walked oblivious to the bustling gang, caring only to lick his mentor's face, hear a kind word of congratulation, and go back into the break room to recover.

“Good work out there, my pale magenta marvel!" Carol called aloud, entering soon behind him, “Almost too good. Did you see the old guy in the back of the good seats?"

Warden bit the handle of a plastic pitcher to place it beneath the spout of a drink fountain and activated it with an antler tip. He alone tripled the house's demand for lemonade. “I don't look at people when I'm fighting."

“Well, let's just say he's having to decide if what you've been doing out there is League-legal."

Warden plucked a straw from a nearby cup and let his head sink swiftly into the pitcher as he siphoned up its fluids. “Am I breaking the rules?" echoed from the cup once the straw struck bottom.

Carol ran a rag under a faucet and washed Warden's face, saving him some trouble. “No. But—"

“Good. Done for tonight?"

“I am. You are if you're tired. But I'm letting the house trainers oversee some open-floor till closing time plus two hours. Peak season: if we don't get rid of the trainers who don't have bed times while we can, it'll be a nightmare during the day shift."

Warden gazed at the restoration machine. “I don't like nightmares. I tried to hurt one, but instead I hurt Mentor a little."

Carol heard the door open and glanced its way, seeing Gates enter. “Warden told me why you got that lump in your pants!"

Gates strolled up and lifted his left leg, “I guess that means you want to see it." He drew up his pants leg and revealed an ice pack tied around a broad blue bruise. “We tried a different arrangement on the bed. No more experimentation, and no more night-stands." Removing the pack and tossing it into the break room fridge's freezer to exchange it with another, Gates then checked behind its other door for cheese sticks.

“Dinner of champions," Carol chided.

Warden pressed his cheek against hers. “You should go out to dinner together."

She reached up and patted the distal side of his face. “Your voice is always so monotone, I don't know if you're saying more than what you're saying," she muttered, “but I'm learning that when you get close, there's probably something to it."

Gates straightened his pants over his re-iced bruise. “What's that, Warden?"

“If you eat together, you will be happy," Warden re-phrased.

Carol turned and kissed Warden's proximal cheek. “You're such a sweetie. Well, Tony, wanna grab something? My treat; I owe you at least something greasy with spud wedges, too much salt, and a drink I can't pronounce."

Gates assented. “Sure. When you've live hand-to-mouth, you stop caring about whose hand." He instructed Warden to find “the brat" and, after confirming with Carol, told him to meet them at her truck.

“So… about Warden."

Anthony hummed a question mark.

“How is he, really? I mean, he seems to be okay here in the gym, but I keep worrying that he'll just fall over in the middle of a match. Like he did in the middle of warm-ups this morning."

Gates withdrew his wallet and keys from a small locker. “Are you afraid it'll look like he threw a fight, or you'll be obliged to give a half-earned badge?"

She slapped his side. “No! And if you insinuate something like that again, I'll give your other shin a Warden-ing to match. I mean, I can't do anything to help him. I've got this rejuvenation machine right here, and when he went down on the streets we had to load him up and drive him to the center. I'm—okay, I'm being a little selfish. I'm afraid he'll go down, hurt on top of whatever it is that has him getting dazed or passing out sometimes, and it'll be the big headline that I let a pokemon with a questionable condition fight itself to death in my gym. I mean, bad things happen once in a while, but as freak accidents; not because of the gym leader making a bad call. Just because he passes his physicals on technicalities—and I'm not sure the judgment of Harrison's techs isn't biased before I have to decide on Warden going in the circle—that doesn't override my judgment or responsibility. And frankly I do think they check him off because they want to see him being weird in my arena." Bidding a good evening to her subordinates on the way out, Carol led Anthony to her vehicle and together they entered it to await Warden and Tizzy.

Warden's patience was thinning quickly as Tizzy went from well-off patron to well-off patron, lending them each a note written in an unknown hand that effectively begged anybody who was interested in contest pokemon to make Gates an offer for her. She was not having any luck, a fact that tightened her ears and painfully so, such that she did not hear Warden's approach. Although she sensed him thinking of doing something rude, she was too distracted with her attempt to sense another mark to evade Warden's mouth as he bit the fur on her neck and flicked her into the air, stepping beneath her as she turned as to catch her upon his back. Then, he bellowed for attention and asked, “Does anybody want this cat? She wants to do contests and comes with some money!"

Somebody among the crowd did shout, “How much?" but otherwise none expressed interest.

Tizzy complained in his mind but with her arms crossed in frustration she allowed him to carry her out of Guaiacol Gym. Having clambered into the truck's bed after letting Gates recall Tizzy, Warden settled in to rest. Within the cab, two people argued about what kind of dinner they should eat. A compromise, they stopped at a casual family joint on the south-west-by-south side of town. Finding Warden asleep to taste, Gates signaled MacLeod to let him be and together they entered.

“Still making the dogs eat second and leaving Warden out of the action, I see," she commented as they slipped into a round booth.

Gates huffed, “I think the sleep is better for him than a late dinner. We'll order large and get a to-go bag."

“Enough for four?"

“Three. The brat took over a shelf and a crisper in my fridge, and I think she's arranged for one of the talker pidgeys in the neighborhood to put in delivery orders for her. She's fine."

Having entered, been welcomed, and seated, a waitress delivered menus, water, and a personal greeting with an experienced voice.

Perusing her menu's options, Carol whispered, “You should order a beer and split it with me."

Gates' response was as low in volume but much less playful. “You're too small to be safe to drive after half of one, and you're not as old-enough as you let me think you were when you thought I had one in my fridge."

Carol grinned. “Can't blame a girl for trying."

Ultimately, Gates ordered soda, and left the bench seat to make room for it. Along the way, he noticed a public telephone on the wall, and with a sliver of a balance on his account, used it on the way back through the restroom hallway.

“Thank you for calling Ocimene Psychic Network. Please hold briefly while one of our psychics senses your need. Billing begins when you hear the tone." After seconds of silence and the promised chime, he heard a voice come through—Madame Colette, as always. “You have a great darkness ahead of you and you are walking toward it. Will you turn and run?"

“Run from what? Talk straight—I'm paying plenty so don't half-information me."

“I see bloodshed ahead of you. But, whose it is, I cannot see. It is cast in spurts, it sprays on the grass—the leaves are not yet to turn red."

“What can I do about it?"

“At least one must die and you will choose who and how many. Your honor is your burden."

Gates looked up and down the corridor, frustrated and embarrassed, but relieved that nobody seemed to be seeing him. “God damn it. The ad says you give guidance and here it is, all pessimism. Give me something I can use!"

“If you stand fast, death will take the clown. If you advance, you cast lots for yourself and all about you. You may preserve some, but some will be risked and Death will not depart unaccompanied."

The phone line carried silence save for faint breathing for long enough that another minute was billed. “If I turn back, or—"

“Retreat awaits with frozen chains and un-keyed locks."

Uncharacteristically, Gates bit his lower lip for a second. “What if… what if I stop him, and, to hell with it all, just… I don't want to be a… but if I asked her—"

“You love her too much to put her on that path."

“And if those lots—"

“She will endure."

“Good enough." Gates slammed the receiver down onto its cradle.

MacLeod welcomed him back. “Is your ass too fat to fit through the window?" She dismissed her own comment with a wave when Gates asked for verification of the statement. “Never mind; just remembering a date I had a few years ago."

“Really? Who was the lucky guy?"

“Eh, gal, actually. It started with three beers, ended after three days. Actually, it ended after we sobered up but it was already arranged on our T.D.'s messages and it couldn't be worse than sitting at home, could it? It could. And she stuck me with the bill by ditching. So, your turn. What was your experimentation phase like, assuming you can remember back that far."

Gates sipped from his drink. “Nothing interesting. A few awkward dates in high school, one stupid infatuation that ended hard after nothing came of a broken condom, did some time with the Ranger Service, quit that, bounced around, got as far as using the word 'fiancee' once, but… nothing came of that, either. Years go by, and I'm looking like either your uncle or a perv in an all-night diner. How's that for experimenting?"

“Quite daring! And, just in time, the food's here to save our butts."

Before the waitress left, Carol seized the opportunity to embarrass Gates further, asking if she thought they made a cute couple. Unfazed, the waitress shook her head, “You're supposed to marry the ones old enough to have finished paying off the mortgage, Sugar. Then you bring them here to clog the last artery. Enjoy your meal."

---

Although he would rather be sleeping, a bushel of berries to choose from was enough to convince Fardeau to sacrifice a couple of resting hours, joining other trainee pokemon in a little first-basement-level room ostensibly intended for “general purpose" use. Within it, the pokemon took turns sharing stories of how they wound up here, this club being composed exclusively of pokemon that voluntarily joined the service, with their trainer or as a means to have a trainer. Fardeau was the wildest of the bunch, since he did not even know what it meant to be a trained pokemon such that he could want such a life. Thus, when asked of his story, he captured the genuine and concentrated interest of the group—they learning of a perspective as foreign as Fardeau's central Allylidene accent—by telling them about how there was something of a turf battle in his neck of the woods, with an unstable balance having been struck between some pokemon species, the native ursaring and encroaching sawsbuck in particular, that always seemed ready to tilt one way or the other. A threat to all, of course, were hunters who would come in and seek to claim the most powerful specimens they could, as though they sought to give one side of the dispute an advantage without regard for which as they would take sawsbuck one month and ursaring another. Fardeau spoke of the incident that changed his mind about matters, how a brother of his chose to move east, how he ate the flesh of his greatest rival but only after that rival was claimed by a later-unfortunate human, and how his ignorance of the indigestiblility of what he now understood to be a human-created form of wood called “plastic" nearly killed him; which, having survived it, was a relief as for a time he thought that the sawsbuck's body harbored a curse.

“But why sign up for the Rangers?" asked a pokemon of unfamiliar species.

Fardeau bit into another berry, something he had done so much in this first hour that one would suspect it were winter coming rather than summer burning at this time. “I watched the man take my rival. He met my rival's offspring, but did not kill it. He tested its resolve and accepted it as his own. If my enemy would ally with the human, I must have a human ally, too, or my tribe will be defeated."

A politoed snapped up a berry for himself with his tongue before noting, “The humans, and the Rangers more, don't care about pokemon territory in the forest. To them, it is all theirs. Wild pokemon live there because wild pokemon belong there until they agree to act the way humans want them to."

Fardeau considered that this may be the reason why Lacroix became angry when he used the symbols he was taught to make a message asking the ranger to help him drive back the sawsbuck and other species they aligned with, and took another berry to comfort himself. He muttered something about how he may have made a big mistake.

The frog comforted him. “You'll get used to it, working with humans. I've had a few, it's easy, just remember this: they'll throw away the best advice if you force it on them, but they'll take the worst if it's only offered."

Fardeau laid himself down and ostensibly listened to the others sharing in the circle, but most of his mind devoted itself to figuring out how best to “offer" Lacroix opportunities to help the right pokemon recover their feeding grounds.

---

Biting a rattata's neck and tossing it aside, Warden contented himself by eating of the recently ripened berries that the rat had found. It scurried away without presenting comment or challenge. Old Mentor taught him this technique for finding the best berries, and once again it served his protege well. The nostalgic feeling was not quite right, however, and why became clear when so did the sky and Warden looked up through a break in the canopy. Till now, he had yet to eat from a berry patch that hung all of its berries lower than his shoulders. His stomach growled and soon he had devoured them all, save the half-finished one that the rodent began. Again, he acted according to his received lesson, and cast that half into the bushes near to where he had cast the rat. Seconds later, it flashed by, quick-attacking the fruit—his speed a necessity to ensure no risk of engagement or starvation.

Warden pressed on into the woods and surveyed it. In his limited experience, he compared it to Œufweiß's mansion and that of her neighbor: A dwelling just the same, but different in its details. His sojourn continued for quite a while, and when he realized how far he'd gone, he forgot whatever it was that he had been thinking about. Turning to one side, he started walking again, hoping to recover the thought. Instead he felt a strange chill followed by a bout of vertigo. Stumbling forward, he noticed a couple lights. He heard a voice. It sounded like his own, but not one with which he had ever spoken. Faint as a whisper, urgent as a shout—

“…toward the light, the lights so many, the lights only one, the lights that guide, the lights that shine, the lights that cast the shadows…"

Lurching forward on jittery limbs, Warden propelled himself up from a road-side ditch and before a brand new sedan.

So deep. So dark. Fading, fading, and gone yet again.

---

Scoparin District made its fame in a few ways. The most obvious was its genesis: A student rally to protest a tax levied by Coumarin District on non-residents who used Coumarin utilities grew into what people on the city side of the district soon called “The Lawn Dwellers" because of the young hippies' fondness for loitering in grassy spaces. It was a cold civil war for three years before the president of Scoparin University found the audacity to demand succession. Like all intellectuals, he had done most of his homework and thought that he had everything in order: A full survey of the land that was to become independent and a large sum of money to begin paying for it, an eligible trainer to serve as a gym leader and a site for the facility, as well as the many other needed tidbits that could be built up from what Scoparin had on hand, such as water, sewer, and officers of the peace. Coumarin's city council disapproved of the offer, since the whole point of the tax was to do a better job of perpetually milking Scoparin for the prestigious college cash flow it was bringing through. They rejected the lump-sum offer three times, slightly sweetened each go around. After that, the Dwellers and the Porchers—as annoyed life-long Coumarin citizens were becoming known, an allusion to them yelling at the Dwellers to get off of their lawns—began coming to conflict in the dozen city blocks that lay between Scoparin's ceremonial gates and the overall mass of Coumarin. The city appealed to neighboring districts for a lease of additional police and to the national committee to quash Scoparin's motion. The committee heard the case and in its wisdom turned to its most revered, although at that time not eldest, member to offer a suggestion, as the voting was falling short of the necessary super-majority required to impose rule of the many over any one.

Iwamoto gestured for a screen to be activated and for his xatu to sample the message on his mind so the bird could repeat it to a young lady who was seated off to the side and responsible for the technical details of presentations. Soon, a number of images appeared on the display.

“A few of you might recognize this," he began, “Scoparin, before it became much of anything." Two of the council members nodded in agreement, but most seemed to question the veracity of these photographs. “This is how I remember it, mostly because that's where I discovered Harmony in nature, which I've kept with me ever since. Back then, it was dense pokemon country, and had some of the greatest variety in all of our land. Then, someone got the bright idea to build a pokemon laboratory there. Trees came down so buildings could come up. Students from Rennin University justified cutting a safe path from the north, and a demand for supplies from Hexyloxy pulled all of Coumarin's growth south-westward. Students needed dorms, more buildings. Lake Muramis offered recreation, so a net ball became free for anybody willing to fish out the occasional grumpy gyarados or annoyed milotic. It had been only ten years, but when I came back, Scoparin was gone. And now, what became of it wants to earn that name for itself." The respected gym leader stood and left the room—importantly, taking the gavel with him. The screen continued its slide show, working its way through one of Masato's personal photo albums. The older members of the committee observed it, while some of the younger ones checked their messages. All jumped in their seats when that gavel struck the hardwood table that their seating surrounded. “Scoparin is a land of pokemon. If these people wish to bear that name and soon represent it with a seat at this table, they must prove that at least one among them understands pokemon: to guide them, to care for them, and to earn their respect and their willingness to rally at their master's cause. Let the sons and daughters of that land as surveyed decide whom they will name their champion, and should that one defeat the champion that Coumarin selects, Scoparin District as defined by this motion before us shall be established."

Often chided for their promiscuity, the Dwellers typically expelled their accidental bastards into the natal ward of Coumarin's nearest hospital, well beyond the land as surveyed in Scoparin's redistricting proposal. A few years passed and the matter of independence was largely forgotten, since the detailed verdict of the council required Scoparin University to comply with the original terms that Coumarin had imposed and new students did not feel the sting of a tax that was just another line item on their invoices.

But one day while digging through the stacks, a librarian found an old relic of the research facility's newsletter. It featured a slice of life story whose headline caught her eye: “It's a boy for Nurse Grovewell!" The photograph it labeled was taken minutes after little Calvin was born, most importantly, in the building destined to become Scoparin University's original infirmary.

The university president had found his champion.

---

“He's with us," “He's with us," “He's with us": a mantra it became as Gates was authorized by Harrison's voice to move about Scoparin's pokemon biotechnology building. They—students, faculty, and security staff alike; alike in attitude and in the Scoparin University coat of arms that everybody wore somewhere on their outfit and everything displayed proudly, nothing so much as a pokeball excluded—looked down their noses snidely enough at MacLeod, but seemed offended by the poacher's presence. Moods lifted only when they arrived on a deep basement level, and not a morgue, to see the place where Warden had been taken to. Led to observation, they watched a video feed that presented an operation in-progress. An image of red glow, shaped Warden-like enough to be assumed as him, was suspended in large tank of gelatinous fluid. A cluster of glowing spots above him flickered and sometimes rotated behind a disc that seemed to be glass and shaped in different places like lenses and prisms. It, too, moved sometimes. Within the tank, strange metal robotic arms reached into the red form, slowly and gently except for very subtle but forceful twitches.

“What in God's name is this?" Gates asked.

A technician pushed a few sliders around on equipment that looked like survivors of a recording studio fire. Indeed, part of something featured a plastic face-plate that bolstered Gates' suspicion. “Have you ever wondered what it's like inside a pokeball?" Gates admitted to assuming that it was like being shrunken down and drugged with sedatives. The technician laughed, “You're right that it is supposed to calm them down, especially on capture so they'll be docile enough to establish a rapport with when you let them out for the first time—supposed to—but the experience of being mostly energy and almost no matter, instead of mostly matter and almost no energy, is more complicated than that. And here in our lab, we play with it."

Harrison spoke up, “ 'Play' is too modest. These researchers have pioneered our study of energy-phase pokemon. With any luck, we may one day understand where new pokemon species come from and how they access their powers. Perhaps even find a way that humans can harness it. And you're now a part of a better tomorrow. By lending us your sawsbuck—"

“I signed the paper because you said you could heal him! I was under duress; the rest won't hold up in court. I know a hell of a nasty lawyer, you know."

“I do know Mister Syfax. I was finishing up my masters' when he joined Scoparin Law. As I was saying, its strange case will provide us with a wealth of information. Nowhere else have we found a living pokemon that our pokeballs can't calculate a solution for, and his ability to unwittingly select which type of the multi-type power moves he expresses when under combat pressure may provide clues to how those powers manifest."

Gates looked away from the presentation of the operation. “Is that why you guys were so quick to offer a hand?"

“Time was of the essence. We're duty-bound to save every pokemon we can, and especially—" Harrison cracked a smile and visibly accepted that he could not hide his motivation for superlative and surely expensive heroics. “You promised us a chance for further examination, and I'm sure you can imagine how the weather bugs in Climate Studies reacted when they started getting photos of a sawsbuck that invented a few new seasons."

“With all due respect, Mister Harrison, I don't give a shit. I just wanted him not to finish bleeding to death or spend weeks in a body cast mounted on a creeper. Is he going to be okay?"

The technician pressed a button. “Spathor, how's it going? Your patient's trainer's asking."

Spathor touched a trigger with his thumb, twitching one of the robotic arms. “Limb bones are about set, except for the joints that got crumbled to sawdust. Reference image data from the sawsbuck population should be enough to reconstruct them if I place everything right. Give me ten minutes to finish this part and I'll be ready for you to turn on the positioning guides."

Carol had wandered around the mysterious equipment and found a window into the room wherein Warden's operation progressed. “So, it's like he's in a ball and you guys are being the rejuvenation machine?"

The technician leaned back in his chair. “Yes and no. It's like he's being scanned by a ball, between matter and energy states. Spathor's putting the broken bones and torn flesh back where they belong, and then we'll let the computer try to do the rejuvenation thing in vivo."

Gates asked, “Can I talk to him? Can he hear me?"

“Maybe," the technician admitted, “but let's not add that variable to the equation."

Carol returned to the group and placed a hand on the technician's shoulder. “If Tony wants to talk to Warden, he can. It made him better last time."

Gates demurred, “No, I'll let them do their thing. I don't want to distract the robot controller guy. If Warden gets stuck at ninety-some per cent, then I'll give him some encouragement."

Harrison seized an opportunity to show them out. “I think we can secure a couple of spare dorm rooms. It just wouldn't do to have visitors sleeping in our lobby."

Anthony took that to mean that it just wouldn't do for Scoparin's reputation, but Carol had another concern. “One room will be fine. This guy's no threat."

Her will be done, Harrison arranged for a room in housing for visiting presenters and temporary faculty members to be unsealed and arranged posthaste. The late hour, indeed the last of its series, robbed Gates and MacLeod of their initiative. Exhausted by the excitement of the day's competitions and the terror of the night's incident, neither even bothered to discuss what should be either an awkwardness or a suspicious coordination as they managed to wordlessly share use of the bathroom to become bodily washed and dentally brushed (et cetera) without embarrassment. Their tacit endeavor concluded with both wearing mere undergarments, laying beside each other in bed, for a time motionless. A parked car's alarm howled and awoke them around two-ish. “So, this is what it's like," Carol said with a lilt in her voice. Gates groaned. “I guess if I do get married, this will be my new normal. Lying in bed, some old guy making the mattress sink down just enough to notice the tilt."

“They make mattresses that don't do that. Saw it on T.V. when the dogs wouldn't let me surf on commercials."

She reached across and grasped his arm. “I'm sorry about what I said. You know, 'no threat.' That probably sounded bad. I just meant I know you wouldn't hurt me, even though the lonely young woman in me who's a little scared of being mostly on her own wouldn't mind it if it meant she wouldn't be, anymore. And, keeps telling me to try to trick you into being somebody you aren't."

Gates' replied with an unintelligible mumble.

Slowly, Carol rolled over and leaned near his right ear. Whispering into it: “Are you dreaming about me, Tony? I hope not. Dream about her again, about the me I wish I could be."

Slowly, Carol rolled over and let her head sink into her pillow. Taking the nearest corner of the blanket, she touched it to each of her eyes after closing them.

Not another word was spoken in that room before sunrise.

---