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Eternally Vernal, Chapter 8: Record Low.

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Neglecting his opportunity to focus on the positive aspects, such as his having lost enough weight to use a different hole on his belt, Gates chose instead to speak in the frustrated tones of a man who had been missing meals being asked for more food by his somewhat demanding charge. “Then go out, find a burger joint that's friendly, and buy whatever you want. You got two thousand pounds for sending Vel to a free dinner and for sending me to get arrested for not getting drowned; put 'em in your belly. Now leave me and my noodles alone!" he shouted at the peak of his outburst. Despite ordering Warden away, it was Gates who did the leaving, taking his cup of ramen into his room and slamming the door behind himself.

Warden snorted and kicked the kitchen's vinyl, putting a couple dents across an established scar. “Cat," Warden shouted in the pokemon's private language, “look inside Mentor's head and tell me how to make him happy!" By the time Tizzy leaned up from her plush bedding, Warden had crossed the living room and stood himself before her.

Flipping up her mask, she rebuffed his request. “I won't dirty myself by taking into me anything from a human mind." She rolled over and dismissed him with a wave of her paw. Warden growled for a few seconds before Cyrus interceded.

“Warden, Master has instructed you to go out for your breakfast."

Warden turned enough to glance at Cyrus and spoke softly, “I don't know if I know how to. I've watched him buy food at places, but…"

“But you don't want to make a mistake." Cyrus gestured toward the door. “Come along, we'll share your permission." Above the place where a thief once hid when nobody thought to look there hung a small bag with a looping strap attached. “Drop that over my head so I can wear it. Put your money card in its pocket and I will show you how you can buy food with it." Warden complied and watched Cyrus demonstrate how to turn the doorknob using a small rubber mat that had been hidden away for just such occasions. Seth complained to himself—having been left the responsibility of getting out of his comfy pose on the couch and walking all the way over to the door to secure its locks behind them—something about doors not being much different from light switches.

“Master has every reason to be angry," Cyrus informed Warden as they turned onto the sidewalk, “Velasquez kept his money and isn't answering calls, Tizzy is taking over the apartment—literally since her money paid for the next month's rent—and you got a decent paycheck for not telling him where to find the cat when you knew. I think that's what's bugging him most of all."

“I apologized. He gave me some new rules to know when I should tell him things he isn't asking about. Why is he still unhappy?" They approached a corner and Warden stopped upon noticing that Cyrus now sat beside a post, apparently because of the cars speeding by he was unwilling to approach the curb. Warden felt agile enough to dash across, anyway. “I have been told to help Mentor by telling him things that will change his mind on what he wants to do. I will. Doesn't that make it okay?"

The crosswalk signal illuminated a white emblem and Cyrus led Warden across safely. “I don't know who told you that, but, yes, if you're worried he's about to make a mistake, it's always right to warn him. But Master is still unhappy whether or not you remind him that we're having a lean summer, and if Tizzy did read his mind like you asked her to, he would be furious that you suggested it."

“How do I make Master happy? Neighbor Pig told me some things I could do but he said that I should not do them unless Mentor asks me to, first. But if he doesn't know to ask, it is like when we hunted the Cat, but the rules Mentor gave me don't fit them. Help me."

Cyrus asked for details and listened with a steadily increasing level of shock as Warden enumerated the pig's ideas of recreation. Ultimately, he advised Warden, “I don't think any of those things would work. Or should ever be spoken of. He was right, not unless asked." Cyrus noticed shortly thereafter that the tapping of Warden's hooves crossing the concrete had stopped. He turned, and saw Warden standing beside a curbside mailbox, resting his head upon its arching top. “If you don't come along, you can't get a filling breakfast."

Warden remained spaced-out for a while. “I've had many breakfasts. My second breakfast was years ago. I smell bark and leaves. You can bark but I can't leaves: I flowers."

“Warden?" Cyrus asked, hoping to capture the sawsbuck's attention, although Warden only responded by closing his eyes. “Let's be going. You should get the food you wanted so we can go home. Mentor will be upset if he wants us and can't find us."

Warden snapped into an erect posture as though he'd heard a gunshot. Stepping away from the box, a shimmer cascaded across his pelt.

Cyrus glanced ahead, to where Warden was looking with a distant stare, and leapt before him, snorting some flame. “No! You will follow behind me."

Warden lowered his head and let some electricity fly between his antlers. “Why should I?"

“Because I am stronger than Seth is, who has already asserted his dominance over you, and because you don't know where to go."

“Wrong!" Warden shouted. The charge dissipated as Warden shook his head gently and relaxed his stance. “I don't know what to do but I have to!"

“What do you mean, 'what to do?' Why are you holding yourself responsible for things that aren't your fault?" Cyrus asked, calmly.

Warden looked in a few directions as a convertible pulled up alongside them, stopping according to a signal light's demand. Inside, the driver vocalized and gestured in sympathy with the music on his car's stereo, although he reacted with a start when Warden stepped as near as he could, craning his head and neck over its passenger seat, to declare, “This man looks like he is happy. Man! What do you do to be happy?"

The gentleman turned down his stereo's volume, and upon hearing Warden repeat himself when he asked, he answered the buck's question with, “A blonde or a red-head. Tonight I'm hoping for both. Now, get away from my car, 'Buck." The signal changed and he drove away before Warden could ask for additional details.

Cyrus turned and walked away, looking back to say, “I don't think his advice will help, either. Let's look around. Maybe inspiration will strike."

Warden trailed behind Cyrus by a few paces. He kept his ears swiveling and his eyes opened wide, but inspiration never presented a hint of itself, so were it lurking, it must have been soundly intimidated by the strength that he and his compatriot presented. After traveling a few blocks, Cyrus indicated a turn and a solution to the problem that motivated their departure. “There, Warden. That fuel station has around back an automat for pokemon with money cards." The word “automat" was, at first, untranslated in his mind, but what it was called meant less to Warden than that its use was regulated by a rather muscular pokemon that warned Warden off of his intent to shove other pokemon out of his way. “Take a place in line and wait, Warden," Cyrus ordered in agreement with the proctor.

Warden huffed and let his antlers spark a little from frustration. “I'm hungry and I'm bigger than these pokemon are. They should be happy with eating what I leave behind," he complained, bristling a bit as Cyrus stepped squarely in front of him.

A couple of minutes later, the houndoom sat while a loudred before them agonized over a choice of flavors, and arrived at a fitting rejoinder. “And you should be happy, too. Just, be happy, Warden. You are allowed to share a comfortable bed, yours is a master who so far likes you better alive than he likes you as food despite his going hungrier than you have been, and soon you'll be eating a second breakfast—something Master is doing without, I add. Maybe if you learned to show proper appreciation, Master would feel a little happier, too. I'd be balled for a day if I gave Master a hint of the attitude you've been giving him. Isn't this better than how you had it in the forest? Don't you want to show him with your happiness that he was right to let you become his protege?" Warden considered those questions intently, and long enough that he became the one holding up the line, briefly. At Cyrus's command, he bit the exposed edge of his payment card to draw it from Cyrus's vest and to jam it into a reader slot. Having not invested any of his time in becoming proficient in reading many words beyond his mentor's name and the word “resident" as part of his mail sorting tutelage, he resorted to sight and sniffing at the edges of the doors to find one that offered a bacon sandwich. Tapping a button on the box, its clear shutter opened and a platform extended, offering up its contents. Before occupying his mouth with it, he instructed Cyrus to choose an item, too. Cyrus was satisfied with some cheap, generic meat factory seconds.

Warden watched with envious eyes as the loudred stood upon a picnic table's bench seat and used his hands to easily handle his breakfast. Ignorant of the irony in that it was taking its time when it surely could have swallowed its meal and many others in one gulp, the buck instead contemplated the benefit that having hands provided, and the potentially many actions that his lacking hands prevented him from taking that could raise his mentor's spirits. “You have no hands. How have you kept Mentor happy when he wasn't?"

Cyrus licked his chops, having just finished. “Nothing. I do what he asks me to do and how that affects his happiness is his own business."

Biting its paperboard fold-over handle, Warden dropped the basket-like bowl in which his meal came into Cyrus's the same, and deposited both in a nearby garbage can. Cyrus complimented Warden's table manners; this inspired Warden's continuing concern. “Mentor is angry when rules are broken. What rule is broken that is making him angry now?"

The houndoom took a moment for consideration, “All of them. He's supposed to be king of his castle, but a princess from afar has taken over; the treasury is empty; and one of his subjects has been acting in a way that's bordering on treachery." Cyrus specified the buck with his gaze.

Imperceptive, Warden felt bad after asking who that actor was. “Mentor needs to teach me how to act right, then. If I am hungry I need to eat, and I will not lie to Mentor and say different. But if that makes him unhappy, what can I do? Even if I come to this place to eat when I am hungry, Mentor won't be happy. He wasn't happy before we couldn't buy enough food so buying food can't help things be better; just not worse. I want to defeat his problem for him!"

Despite Warden's emotionally charged plea, Cyrus merely stood, stretched, and yawned. “I don't know. Forget about your problems and help him forget about his own. Licking his face seems like a good start. I remember when we were allowed to do that freely…"

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Gates awoke from a half of a nap not too long after he had finished his noodles and rolled over. Rising and readying himself for a walk, he emerged into a room painted a still unfamiliar color. “Tizzy! Get up and over here. Seth, where are your brothers?"

“My brother—and I intentionally specify that word as naturally singular—took the brute out to contaminate our town's air with his floral fragrances." Seth changed channels. “The stench of our latest coat of paint bothers me less in earnest than merely thinking of your absurd deerling's potpourri sticks. Let us hope piously that Brother Cyrus returns with said sticks, disembodied, as evidence that life may return to a happier state for us all." Tizzy stopped to stand before Gates as Seth finished growling and grumbling whatever it was he was trying to say.

“Rhetorical question, Seth." Gates knelt down by leaning forward with his palms on his knees. “We're going to find a place to sign our lives away, and you're coming with me because if I don't take you, I won't recognize this place when I get back. Are you willing to walk on your precious paws or do you want to be balled?"

Tizzy gave Gates a suspiciously bright smile and brought him his shoes before gesturing negatively at his ball clip. Although the first half of the journey differed from the first time that he sought this path, it soon joined up with its ghost. At that point, he glanced down the street, the wrong way. Three blocks along was the edge of what he regarded to be his neighborhood when he was younger. An inkling to go back almost lifted one of his feet, but only almost. His life had been spent protracting the past; badly enough already that he now retreads this route. Tizzy sensed his conflict and started ahead of him. Gates soon followed and Seth, who had wandered away to find a fireplug, next caught up.

Gates found the Ranger Service's branch office right where he'd left it. Not much had changed, including the plastic trees in the lobby and the magazines on the table, although somebody did finally replace the ever-empty box of tissues at least once in the last two decades. Tizzy asked Seth what this place was and why they were there, and was dismayed at the prospect of being dragged out into the forest to have her fur ruined by being brushed more by bushes than by her master—who surely would not make any special effort to maintain her grooming schedule—for the purpose of helping fools who thought better of battling beasts in the woods than letting their pokemon perform for the judges. Her concern lessened when Gates reached the part of the application form that asked about which pokemon he owned, would be willing to accept, go through Ranger training with, and had any phobias about, as she sensed his imagining himself with Warden, Cyrus, and Seth, but never herself. Oddly, there was another pokemon on his mind with a similar physical profile as her own, although a lower stance. Concentrating on picking up on his thoughts without penetrating them, she recognized one entity with two remembered forms and a long name. Anxious and curious, Tizzy hopped onto the chair beside Gates and watched him write. Under a heading, “Any pokemon known personally to the applicant that have completed Ranger training," he wrote, “Glaceon, Freja Wintergreen," and checked the box for “Previous or current owner."

Thankful that he was not imagining her getting soil between her toes, Tizzy relaxed a little and stood proudly as though she were waiting for the judges to come by. She felt one good trade away from earning her twelfth ribbon.

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A sheet of paper stapled to the face of a fence otherwise marked with the words “post no bills" caught Warden's eye as he and Cyrus walked along by. “Brother, explain these pictures." Cyrus returned to where Warden had stopped and too examined the advertisement. “It's a contest that moves from city to city. Trainers and their pokemon compete in strange games and win money and prizes. There's a big 'Battle Frontier' facility somewhere way east, this is their way of getting people to sample their competitions."

Warden struggled to recognize the poster's words. “If I win money and prizes, Mentor will be proud of me; right?"

Cyrus sat. “If; maybe. You could probably win some small stuff by crashing into and kicking around pokemon in the simple sparring fights, but they save the good prizes for strange things that only some pokemon are qualified for."

“I will show them my qualify," Warden asserted, “Teach me how to be there."

Examining the poster again, Cyrus admitted, “It's a long walk—but not too long—across town to where this says they're set up, and today is one of the days it's open. I'll see you to it if you want to go, but be sure you want to spend half of the day waiting in lines for a few chances of coming home with something, when you could go to a store and buy Master a pack of cheese sticks and a greeting card that expresses your feelings with a cartoon character and a witty limerick, instead." Cyrus watched Warden stare at the poster as though he intended to either intimidate it into opening one of its images so wide that he could step through and into it, or to cause it to burst into flame. So still he stood that Cyrus grew bored and looked around, only to notice a shifting shadow beside himself. Leaping aside, Warden collapsed onto the spot where Cyrus had till now sat. First to check if he were still breathing and second to attempt to rouse him, Cyrus licked Warden's nose a few times. Said nose eventually crumpled itself, a prelude to Warden sneezing powerfully enough to knock free his flowers and return his antlers to full, green foliage.

Lazily returning to his hooves, Warden raised his head and took a deep breath. “I smell something good. Let's hunt it down. Can you smell its trail?"

Cyrus reluctantly turned to face the direction they were walking before the poster interrupted their travel. “You wanted to go this way, to the edge of town, remember?"

Warden reared up, punched holes for his hooves through the fence on each side of the poster to help him stand up tall, and took a deeper breath, swinging his head around again. “Yes, that way is where I need to go. But first…" Warden pushed himself back from the fence, stepped away in reverse until his rear hooves reached the curb, and shimmering with a glow about his body that accumulated in his hooves, he launched himself over the barrier.

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“Got it figured?" asked a voice coming around a corner.

“Kill me now," Anthony muttered.

Carol would have none of his grumpy attitude. “That doesn't sound like the ex-community service dude who was begging for a day labor shift a few minutes ago. That sounds like somebody who gets kicked out on his ass and begs Nurse Joy for some leftover pokemon chow after they feed Adoption Alley. Now, put on your smile and your name tag, because tonight's open-floor and lots of summer munchkins are going to be coming up to you with dirty fingers holding sign-up cards that you get to try to read. And if you let my line back-up, I will refuse payment."

Gates flipped over three sheets of paper stapled together and selected an option on the gym's reception counter's secondary terminal to restart the training and testing program. “When did you become my virtual ex-wife?"

Carol stepped behind him and spoke softly over his shoulder, “In your dreams, Sweetheart. Remember?"

He half-turned to his right, and jumped when instead of seeing her still there he felt her slap his left ass cheek as she departed. “Don't forget to watch the printer. Open-floor night; it will run out."

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“This way is where I need to go!" Warden bellowed from a block away and across the highway. Cyrus followed in parallel till finding a crosswalk to rejoin him, and then asked how he got there from here, and also which season coincided with his antlers looking like ocean coral and his pelt having a striking fuchsia motif, but all Warden said—that made any sense at least—was that he wanted to be near the other building and made himself be there and that he felt like it would make him tired if he went back the same way. “I found more things that smell good," he added, “and swimming pools. One had a blonde and a red-head by it and they smelt very good, but they did not want to help me make Mentor happy and told me to go away."

“You'll probably get that every time. Did Seth or Grumpig ever talk to you about making Master happy in a way that involves women?"

“No."

Cyrus surrendered to the mystery and in silence he and Warden worked their way to the fairgrounds, where Ocimene's Battle Frontier had established their temporary facility. There they passed along many disappointments—events that required a trainer's participation or at least presence—until they came upon some smaller events that allowed entry of any pokemon willing to queue for a shot. “Alright, Warden. If you want to duel for some prizes, you can go over there. It looks like it's for points and they're giving out berries and vitamins. I don't know if—" Cyrus fell aside.

“You aren't in the line so I can push you out of my way," Warden proclaimed, looking more like he usually did, except that his flowers were only buds.

Cyrus stayed pushed-aside, and watched Warden's bouts whenever his turn came up. He performed a little better than he had at the gym, but only because half of these competitors were stretching the lower limit of the term “trained for pokemon battles" and a few were clearly wild pokemon understanding that if they behaved and went along with what the other pokemon were doing, they would get berries for bruises, which was not too bad of a deal. Between bouts, Warden would stagger back to Cyrus, deliver his prize, and rest a moment before getting back in line. Cyrus watched the crowd; occasionally a persian would catch his eye, but the one he was hoping by chance to see did not appear. Amid negotiation with a zigzagoon, hoping to trade one berry for a plastic sack with which he and Warden could carry home the goods, a collective gasp emerged from the audience, people and pokemon alike. Looking toward the circle, he watched a solidly frozen salamence be pushed across the circular boundary by a winter sawsbuck, its white antlers adorned with clear crystalline flowers.

When Warden returned to Cyrus, the flowers had melted away. Dropping a vitamin bottle at Cyrus's feet, he admitted, “The man said I can only win six times."

Cyrus heard a rustling sound, and found the zigzagoon beside him, offering a sack. Accepting it, he let the zigzagoon carry off one of the berries. Then he counted and realized it was actually a second of them; not unexpected. “Hook an antler through the handle and I'll fill this up. Then we can go home and you can show Master what you did to impress him."

Warden complied and added, “I can do more. We must come back when this man goes home so I can win six more times."

When his mouth was free between items, Cyrus disappointed Warden. “I think you're done for the event. You'll have to wait for the next time they come to town." Warden was so distraught when he learned that he could not help support his family by winning carnival prizes every day that his posture slackened and he spoke of feeling aches from his combats. Walking toward the entry and exit, Cyrus observed over half of the crossing Warden's pelt shift to brown and develop a full head of autumn leaves, and over the second half, those leaves falling away, those not landing inside the sack leaving a trail behind them.

Along the way home, waiting at a light, Warden lowered his head and noticed a hint of a trail. He asked Cyrus to confirm his suspicion, which the houndoom did: “Master was here today. The gym isn't far. Maybe he went there."

Warden looked down the roadway. “The gym is where we fight. He wanted to see me fight… and I wasn't there."

Cyrus contested, “He might've gone there to look for you, but if he did it was because he wanted to see you, not to see you fighting."

Raising his right fore-hoof, he held it up and tensed its muscles, so firmly that they strained and began to vibrate. “I should've been there. I should've been with him. I shouldn't have left. I shouldn't have… I shouldn't… why did I—I wanted to be strong like him, I wanted to show him that I wasn't going to let him down." Warden slammed his hoof down with force great enough to turn the surface of the sidewalk into a paper-thin layer of chalk beneath it. He looked straight up at the sky and rolled his head around in a gentle waving motion. “Stop pushing me down. Why are you pushing me down?" Warden reared up, kicked at the air, and sneezed, snorted, and gasped as though he were suffocating; perhaps, drowning. “Why is it dark? Why are you pushing me down into the darkness? Stop, Father, help me up, let me be—" Warden's legs buckled and he collapsed.

Cyrus reckoned that Guaiacol Gym was the nearest source of aid. He pulled away the plastic bag and, with it, dashed down the sidewalk.

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Warden regained consciousness that evening inside Guaiacol Pokecenter's medical wing, in a familiar padded room. Unaware of its reputation, Warden was delighted by first the smell and next the flavor of the hospital food that sat awaiting him on a tray well within reach. As he began rising from where he lay, the door opened and Gates entered.

“God damn it, Warden, what the hell is wrong with you?" he shouted as he ran to his sawsbuck's side and gripped him in a fierce hug. “I mean it. Warden, what the hell is wrong with you? They said your tests looked like you haven't eaten in a week. We're not that bad off, and—"

“You didn't put me in the hole." Warden raised his right leg and rubbed it against Gates' left hip, which combined with Warden placing his head on Gates' right shoulder made something of a hug of his own.

“What—what hole?" Gates asked, slowly rubbing Warden with his hands.

“The hole where you put Mentor's guts. You could have put me in it, but you didn't." Anthony broke a sweat, remembering that exchange. “I remembered my father today. Before Old Mentor. He put me in a wet hole. He didn't like me because he could not teach me to make fire. He hurt my mother because she made me like she was, not like he was. He put me in the hole. It was dark. I loved him and he put me in the hole."

Gates slapped Warden gently but firmly. “You're leaning on me, too hard. I can't hold you up—"

Warden pushed off of his front left leg and sprang backward into a prideful pose. “You don't have to. Not anymore. Old Mentor picked me up and out of the hole, but he never taught me how to fill the hole up and stand on it. My sack is gone. I want to show you my prizes. Does Cyrus have them?" Warden seemed not at all disappointed when Gates admitted that he paid little mind to the sack of stuff that Cyrus cast aside behind the counter when he burst into the gym and found him fighting with a printer, but soon tried a few times to find a chance to interrupt the conversation between his mentor and a staff doctor to suggest that they go back to the gym to retrieve his items. Said conversation involved technical details, but it boiled down to a conclusion that Warden's body chemistry was as anomalous as his ball image had been. Their suggestion that Warden be retired from competition in favor of intense medical study received no second, as Gates was unwilling to rule it out as a matter of potential financial necessity and as Warden became instantly incensed at the suggestion that he was weak, adding that he would rather pass out and keep fighting until he became doubly passed out than not to fight at all if Mentor did not order him otherwise. Feeling unappreciated for his cautionary concern, the doctor signed off on Warden as being provisionally cleared to fight but not to operate heavy machinery and dismissed them.

On their way out, they acknowledged Harrison, who returned a small wave, too engrossed in a telephone conversation and a large book on his desk to offer any company.

“And again, it's you and me walking out of here, only this time I'm twice as worried that you will suddenly fall to pieces on the pavement."

Warden slowed to fall behind his mentor. Nudging Anthony and causing him to reflexively raise his left arm, Warden slipped in beneath it. “Did your father love you?"

Gates walked for eight paces. “Yes, Warden. He did."

Warden leaned his weight a little, just enough to cause Gates to stumble and catch himself with a shift of his feet. “When you are not feeling happy, think about that so you can feel as happy as I always am."

Would that he could.

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