---

Eternally Vernal, Chapter 3: Tunnel Visions.

---

A vertical blind slat that refused to synchronize with its mates let a sliver of the sun's first light pour through Gates' bedroom window and pool as warmth on Warden's tuft. Soon overcharged, he rose, stretched, and tried to share his energy with his mentor. Licking Anthony's face, once, twice, thrice, twice twice, yet again, and finally twice thrice—or ought that be thrice twice?—that now be-slobbered visage's right eye opened.

“Don't you have anything better to do? Like turn green?" Anthony did not expect a meaningful answer, but Warden vocalized enthusiastically. Then, Warden stared, waited, and grunted. “Go wake the dogs, why don't ya?"

Warden bounced upon and bounded from the mattress faster than Gates could get his body's upper half upright. He wiped his face with his hand. Then, he wiped his hand with his bed sheet. Then he decided that today would be a good day to wash the lot. At least, as good as any. He dragged the sheets away behind himself, wadding them up and casting them down the hallway into a heap near the kitchenette.

As they landed, their absorbed odors were evicted to waft through the living room. Seth snarled half-heartedly; deerling in the mix only reminded him that there were no other humans' scents on the cloth. However short their visits, guests meant better meals, and better scraps. Today, the most he could pray for would be bacon, and as though kismet, today's Calvin Grovewell's Gourmet was focused on that very manna. Seth dashed into the kitchen and stole a dishtowel—how embarrassing it would be for a professionally-trained pokemon such as himself to let inspired salivation touch a couch cushion.

Warden visited Cyrus's window. “I don't see your friend."

“Neither do I," Cyrus admitted, slightly shifting his paws' positions on the windowsill.

The deerling watched the same nothing that Cyrus watched until he grew bored. “You and she should decide on a time."

Cyrus let his fore-half fall to the floor. “That would take the fun out of it." He glanced at Seth and the television, and turned back to face Warden. “There are worse ways to waste time staring."

---

If Basil Northerncourt possessed any sense of humor with which to appreciate Lacroix's gambit, he suppressed it. “Impersonating Ranger organization personnel by proxy," he decreed while adding the charge to a list of failings discovered during this audit. Francois swiped a Rangers hat from Fardeau and used it to shoo the bear from his terminal and chair before replacing it on a hook near the door. “At the rate you're losing points, I strongly suggest that when I finish inspecting the equipment locker this matter of having a wild ursaring in your station and believing itself as under your care ought to be cleared up."

Francois's shoulders drooped. He glanced at Fardeau. The bear looked angry; but not furious. “You know I didn't actually save you. I just helped. Why didn't you glom onto that doctor? Look, I've had it." Francois opened the door. “If you want to be my pokemon, then follow my orders. Go out and patrol a circuit around the perimeter of the forest."

Fardeau grunted and snarled before plodding past Francois and onto the station's porch. Francois followed the beast out through the door as part of a dodge when he noticed that Freja was readying a snowball. Hearing it splatter on the inside of the wall, Francois ignored the attempted assault and encouraged the bear's continued departure. Fardeau paused, however, when Freja whistled and trotted behind him, giving him a Rangers hat. Fardeau reared up to stand, put it on, and maintaining the two-legged stance, left with a prideful stride along the automobile path. “The hat is magic," Francois muttered over—but for—his partner as he walked past her to re-enter, “hat off, he's a bear, hat on, he's a man." Out of sight when Northerncourt returned, the auditor asked what became of the bear. Remaining ambiguous, Lacroix answered him, “He is no longer wild. He obeys my orders."

“Good, good," exhaled Basil, making another note, “We will, of course, expect him to be transported to home base for proper ranger-aide pokemon training when the next course begins."

“Of course," Francois assented half-heartedly. Behind Basil's back, he shot a dagger-sharp glance at Freja as she lost her composure and let a number of high-pitched giggles escape.

---

Seated in the center of his couch, flanked by hell-hounds and trying to look through a deerling that decided it needed to be directly in front of the television, Gates ate a B.L.T. while distributing small amounts of B to those surrounding him. Despite his attempt to pawn off some L and T, the deerling demanded strict alphabetical order. Before them on the screen aired the morning news, and a profitable tragedy caught Anthony's ears.

“…although the young trainer's equipment was discovered near the recreational area, authorities are now expanding their search radius to much of the area surrounding Mount Buchu. Trainers with tracking experience are being recruited to aid in the search…"

Tearing a gigantic bite from his breakfast, Anthony cast what remained on the coffee table for his team to fight over. He tripped on his bedding and almost fell, but with a dramatic kangaroo-like hop salvaged his momentum and barely didn't choke on what he was at the time swallowing. Hurriedly donning something publicly presentable, he called across his apartment. “That's a sure per diem if we join the search and a sure reward if we find him. Cyrus, you've got the nose. Warden, if I know my stuff, you're fit for support. Seth, you get the watch."

That was music to his inconspicuous ears.

Gates paced down the hallway, evaded the laundry now neglected, and as best he could reloaded the dogs' food and water dispenser. With a couple clicks and flashes, he took his chosen two and set off for downtown. Locking the deadbolt behind them, Seth climbed into the couch, rolled over, and wiggled around. No Wardens, no problems.

Gates' first stop was Guaiacol Pokecenter. He snagged a terminal to offer his services to the ranger station near Mount Buchu. When asked for references, he told them that Ranger Wintergreen at Allylidene Station Five would vouch for him. Awaiting approval, he investigated pokedex information and took a few notes. Approved and granted an expenses voucher, Gates then rushed to the local market and cursed that the pokemon products were kept at the rear of the store. He released Warden and put the deerling upon the counter where he saw a sign advertising technical machines and other premium products. “This thing can learn flash, right?"

The clerk turned around and spoke with a laugh somewhere between amused and suspicious. “Aw, everybody knows that. Give me a harder one."

“No. Give me a T.M."

Using a key and operating a device that genuinely looked like a speculative fiction film prop that would store samples of space alien organs, the clerk asked, “Limitless or one-shot?"

“What's the difference?"

The machine shuffled around stacks of acrylic cases containing discs. “About forty quid."

Gates opened his wallet and remembered its nearly vacuous status, but also that it contained a freebie. Then again, to spend it on flash—even limitless, it would not resell for much. His mind drifted toward something the dogs could use. Warden's mind drifted toward something interesting on the counter and asked Gates about it with demanding tones; garbled vocalizations that brought Gates' attention back to the real world.

The clerk welcomed his customer's return to alertness. “Your sap-sipper seems to have a lot to say. We do have one speech in stock if you're interested, probably the last one we'll see till fall."

Anthony looked at Warden. Warden shook his tail and vocalized once more. Anthony ran his finger along the card in his wallet. “You know, everything in my life's been screwed up one way or another since I met you. If I get you this, you're going to make me regret it, aren't you?" Warden stared at Gates, took a combative pose, and nodded his head with a snort. “Damn right you better. I'm not going to tolerate you slacking off." Gates put his trainer's device on the counter, “There should be enough in there to cover one flash, and," he withdrew the card that Maximilian gave him and, after two false starts, handed it to the clerk, “this deerling better have a lot of important things to say." Warden came to realize what was going on, and pranced in a tight circle on the counter, recognizing that he just now gained another angle from which he could prove Seth wrong and extend his lead. The deerling's dance of happiness distracted Anthony from noticing the clerk's reaction to the card.

After returning to the pokecenter, Gates spent much of his balance to trade-up his T.D. for a model with some communication features and activated his account on it. Immediately, Velasquez pinged him. “Should I put a wager on how long this one lasts?"

Having solicited a nurse's assistance, Anthony pecked together a reply while they walked to the jukebox alcove. “Who's making the book?"

“You are," Carlos replied, “two to one, steaks at Jerome's, says you break it before the end of next month."

“On." Anthony disabled incoming messages and turned to the nurse. “He struggles during the squealing, and I've heard this is one you don't want to screw up." He flashed her the flash T.M., and noticing her reaction, twisted his wrist to show the other one.

“Oh, yes; that one's a doozy," she confirmed, “He won't be fit to fight for most of the day, after that. Do the easy one first."

Anthony loaded the flash T.M. into the machine, pressed a button, and drew out from its cabinet appropriate speaker cuffs. “As long as he can walk; he'll be back-up, anyway. We're going to Buchu; see if we can find that lost kid."

The nurse crouched and held Warden more with a hug than a grip, although he quickly realized how well she restrained him. “I hope somebody can. Losing a trainer is a terrible start to the summer."

The countdown reached six. Anthony placed the cups over Warden's ears. Until a piercing squeal obliterated all internal monologue, he considered which was more heartless: her phrasing that statement as though the League's season was what mattered, or that his own involvement was on spec.

---

Francois's arms were getting tired, but the only open space on the award wall was near the top. “We really have to find that—"

Freja whistled curtly.

“—bear before—"

Freja struck the back of his head with a tiny snowball. Francois strained to look over his shoulder. She signaled with her right paw. He moved a substitute for a document frame over another inch. She nodded and whistled again. Francois tacked up the award. It was a facsimile print-out in a plastic binder envelope, but it did affirm that Ranger F. Wintergreen received a perfect evaluation. The facsimile machine had printed another page, but it was just a second warning for Ranger F. Lacroix that his performance is expected to improve.

“There. Every morning you can wake up, stretch your legs, bury me in frost, clear your eyes, and admire this proof of your greatness. May we find the bear, now?"

Freja admired her memo for a moment, but alas, duty called. With a little effort in laying it out, she rolled into her vest and fastened it properly. Headed to the door, she complained at Lacroix for being unready, as he was looking for his own hat. In that moment, he considered where the snowball had struck: the wall behind the hat hook. With a frustrated yell he demanded of her an explanation why she gave the bear his hat rather than one of the extras in the closet. At her terminal, she selected a pattern of symbols that Francois interpreted as, “Knowing family, smelling their smell; remember his friend, you."

---

“Hey, hey! Watch that hand."

Gates' complaint was answered telepathically by the kadabra that was wrapping him with her arms and pressing her body against his in the center of a triangle cornered by silver posts. “You're paying me to do this with you." She let her hand wander a bit, again.

“No, the Ocimene Rangers are picking up the tab, and if you aren't going to hurry this up, I'll take the damned bus."

She found the right spot. “Hold your breath, Sir," she projected.

Contrary as ever, Anthony opened his mouth and let words fall out, some of them asking why he should. During their prolonged teleport to a set of silver posts temporarily installed at a distant ranger station, he realized why: only the air in his lungs was coming along with him, and the air he and his transporter traveled through was not interacting with his bronchioli. Fortunately, their matter re-synchronized before he passed out. Gates' legs nearly buckled as he felt his weight return, and Kit's buckled indeed, causing her to fall to the ground.

Kneeling over her, he patted her cheek rapidly and with increasing force hoping to revive her. Although she showed no expression of reaction, she immobilized his hand and cautioned him, “Be gentle, Friend. Pokemon girls with whiskers usually find them to be sensitive." Mentally manipulating, she twisted his hand a little and used it to gently caress her left cheek and left whisker. With a slight smile, she opened one eye a sliver and sensed his reaction. For four tenths of a second, he considered it, but then the door slammed shut again.

Gates left her lying in the triangle to approach a busy open-air tent and spent the next fifteen minutes being briefed by the rangers, examining maps of the mountain with its many cave systems, and learning about the search efforts heretofore. A gut feeling, a sinking feeling, gripped him and he selected a grid square to search first and a few others that looked like good candidates. Confirming that they had not yet been searched, he signed-off on his selection, stood, and turned. The kadabra now sat on the ground beyond the triangle, sipping slowly from a can of lemonade. Gates concentrated on a question to say it loudly in his mind, “Are you still in my head?"

She vibrated a spoon that rested between two right-claw digits by wiggling those fingers. “A little."

“Don't you have more fares to pick up?"

The spoon fell slack and motionless. “You know how my powers include a hint of foresight. Not many fares today, but a chance that you change your mind and want to go home. I don't sense you getting what you want from this mission."

Gates left the big map and walked to the silver posts. “Tell me what you see," he demanded.

Kit stood slowly and looked into his eyes. “I can't see it, like you think of 'seeing'; it's not certain yet and I can't focus well, but—I'm sorry, but I don't feel you becoming a hero today."

Gates took a deep breath, despite—if not in spite of—her not having instructed him to. “You know, that's part of why I train Dark. You Psychic-types are always pessimists, always teasing with half-information, and always trying to pull something. Let me guess, you suggest I withdraw my offer to help search for that kid and spend some time getting to know you better."

Kit opened her mouth briefly, but said and projected nothing.

“Yeah, I know your game. Go find another fare to feel up."

She heard him speak, and heard in his mind an addendum that he did not say as he walked away. Standing, she wanted to reply to and with a lot of things, but her sixth sense kicked in again. It would be of no use. Kit closed her eyes and reflected on the faint sensation she felt, when she first saw him and made a prediction based only on her first impression of him, before considering that he would act according to first impressions, likewise. It would've been nice if he were a Psychic-type, too. Alas, those humans were always defensive, always seeming reasonable at first, and always evading their happy endings. She walked through the triangle, vanishing with a flash as she crossed its center, upon which a single drop of saline fell as the surrounding glow faded.

Although he could not really notice it when it was there, Gates did sense her departure as whatever link she had established in his mind pulled away. He turned back and walked to where she just was, finding her lemonade can left behind. He stomped it flat, spraying its fluid about the spot and discoloring his well-worn boots. Taking the can to a bin alongside the station, he noticed a public telephone attached at its side. Out of curiosity, he checked his T.D.'s balance and finding not enough balance to be worth saving but enough to be worth tossing away on a bad habit, he inserted his trainer's card into the telephone's slot, and at the tone, entered a number that he was ashamed to have memorized.

“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—that of Madame Colette, as always. “I sense that your mind has been touched. It has been stirred and agitated, but not by that touch but your own action. Is this what you wish to ask about?"

Gates smirked as he habitually did when a psychic, at his call or on television, asked any question of a client. “Don't you know?"

“I see many paths, but you must choose your course."

“Then tell me, will I find him?"

Madame Colette made a funny sound. “Most likely. You have resisted her protection and you refuse to be guided off of it."

“Her pr—are you talking about that teleport fox?"

“That what box? I sense a feminine soul trying to aid you. Do you want me to examine it through your contact?"

“No, forget it. Just let me know if you ever happen to see it in your crystal ball going away forever. I'll throw myself a party."

“Will you ask anything more of me?"

He glanced at his account balance on his T.D., little remained. “The job that the esquire offered. Will I?"

“Yes."

“Should I?"

“No."

“Why not?"

The line went dead and Gates' balance displayed zero, but he heard a whisper nonetheless, gentle as a disturbance in otherwise still air, “He has suffered enough."

---

“Wa ga-ba na-ba-ba-ka-ga-ga-fa!"

Gates glanced back at his deerling and saw it kicking at a rock as though it had sinned against them. “Yeah, break that rock and see if there're any other vowels inside. Cyrus! You still got a trail?" Cyrus barked and spat a fireball up the hillside. Noticing where it landed, the poacher could not help but ask, “What the hell was this tot thinking?"

After Cyrus shared his thought, Warden tried his best. “Ha wa pawa-ba laka fa sa-ga da para!"

Gates rolled his eyes with tepid regret. “Well played, Maximilian. Well played."

“Ha da wa-pa?"

“Worry about birds, not words, Warden. They supplied us with meds but revivals are on me; those crystals are over six pounds a pop, you know. Assuming a gone-feral pidgeot doesn't just carry you off and eat you."

“Bada?"

Pointing toward the sky, he found an example. “Bird, Warden. Bird."

“Bada-bada ga boom!" Warden let a little electricity arc across the tuft between his ears and bolted up the grade, getting halfway from Anthony to Cyrus before losing his footing and tumbling down, halfway back before being caught by a stony outcropping. Gates overtook and picked him up, wedging him beneath his left arm. “What did I tell you about showing off?"

“Da doo ta."

Gates sighed. “Da ra, Wadan. Cyrus, did he really climb this shit? Where are you?" A fireball flew over a ledge. When Gates got over it, he found Cyrus and a small cave entrance. It was not on the map. Out of curiosity, he kicked a rock and watched it gather momentum as it skipped down at least thirty meters of incline, changed direction, and continued down the hill half lengthwise, making for an area near the regular trail that had been searched earlier. “That explains the bag. At least it fell alone."

---

His build having shifted away from “athletic" and toward “stocky" in a slow progression that began many years ago, Gates had a little trouble following his pokemon into the cave entrance that Cyrus identified. It soon opened up enough for him to take a crouching stance, which he happily adopted. After receiving instruction and making three failed attempts, Warden managed to cast flash upon himself. A far superior illumination than what Cyrus's fiery breath or Gates' flashlight could provide, Warden trotted ahead and passed the houndoom with a prideful strut. He almost made a snide comment, having grown accustomed to Seth's presence, but caught himself.

A faint clatter of hooves, claws, and steel-toed boots echoed deeply as the path snaked along, ever widening. Gates called back his too-far ahead luminary, and in the interim cast his torch upon something that crunched under foot. He found a light aluminum can with a trigger nozzle on top. Although obviously spent, the printing on its side indicated that the can could be redeemed for a bob; two in Coumarin. Gates shoved it into his bag, telling himself it was evidence, but knowing that he would not leave behind a dropped shilling, either.

The next time Warden tried to step ahead, Cyrus bit his nape and pulled him back. Gates knelt beside them and opened his pack. “Gifts from the rangers. I hope they fit." He withdrew two small plastic masks, each sized approximately to match the snouts of his pokemon. Having worn one before, Cyrus did not mind, but only being threatened with being put in his ball and consequentially not proving his usefulness to his mentor convinced Warden to take a moment to get used to a filter pinching his nostrils and adding resistance to his breathing. Although he would not be as acutely affected, Gates prepared an impromptu mask for himself from a handkerchief. Keeping near the stone wall, he leaned around a corner and saw into a rather spacious chamber. Equipped with a colored filter, he used his flashlight's beam to paint the ceiling and confirmed Cyrus's sense of hearing. “Fire in the hole," Gates whispered to himself as he pulled a pin from another tool of the ranger service's cave search kit. The zubats within became alert as a repel grenade clattered across the floor, and all scattered when it detonated, emitting first a bright, disorienting flash, and then a broadly dispersed fog. Immediately, Gates ordered Warden to stand at his side, bringing his radius of illumination into the chamber soon enough to see the straggler zubats making their escape. “Alright, we know the easy way out." Snapping three differently colored glow sticks, he marked the chamber, the inlet, and the outlet. “Lead the way, Cyrus. We ought to find another can in a hundred meters or so."

And so Cyrus led his companions through a winding passage. Indeed, from spent repel can to spent repel can. Their investigation, slowed slightly by brief interruptions from lone zubats hankering for a blast of fire, progressed steadily until Gates noticed a familiar boot print in some powdered stone, surely a wound caused by a diglet eruption in the distant past. “Warden, run a circle around this area for me."

The deerling happily dashed fore and aft, clambering up the walls where he and it were mutually inclined. He bounded off of a graveler which quickly roused to complain and quickly collapsed as Warden kicked it senseless. For a moment, the fawn staggered in a bit of a daze afterward, but continued casting light about to aid Gates' survey.

“Woah, there. That slope." Cyrus and Gates worked their way to where Warden stood. “That's how we got in. This part loops unless you go deeper." Gates snapped another glow stick and placed it near the passage. “Alright, time to go deeper."

A passage downward led to a wide chamber, very moist and somewhat noisy, littered with stalagmites. Cyrus complained whenever he stepped in a shallow pool, but Gates ordered him to press on. Warden seemed delighted. Weaving around the stone needles, he watched with awe as their shadows danced with him, alternatively reflecting and wanting for his glow. Nearing the bottom, Warden delighted in a new game: channeling orbs of energy at the gravelers that rose to defend their territory. Gates had not seen Warden do this before, and paused to check his trainer's device. He did so briefly, as Cyrus barked and, with Warden's display threatening other gravelers into acquiescence, led his party to the rear end of the chamber. A trickle of flowing water indicated yet another deeper level to this hell. Something crunching beneath Gates' right boot got his attention. Lifting it away, he discovered a now shattered claw attached to the other remains of a small, Bug-type pokemon. His hopes sank into the earth, and he and his companions followed it down.

---

Seth growled. “Doing that, you're going to make a ruin of them."

An umbreon, entangled in now somewhat disheveled bed-sheets, scoffed at his complaint. “Human beds are too comfortable to resist, and rolling around in sheets; yes, it's a wild thing to do but it beats fall leaves paws-down. Join me!" She rolled about some more. “Again."

“I'm exhausted. You've worn me away." He hopped to stand with his forelegs on the edge of the bed. “My brother and I were trained for tracking and brief, intense conflicts. Not for steady endurance."

The sheets glowed until she wormed out of them enough to reply to him face-to-face. “Could've fooled me. Intense was the first word on my mind, and you endured."

Seth lowered his voice and his vocabulary, “It's been a while."

She watched his subtle body language. “Are you totally sure? You said that your trainer's trained Dark forever and this place definitely needs a woman's touch, and nothing gets me hotter than a Fire-type. Me plus here equals synergy for you and me and your brother with crap taste in cats to have a crush on and your master who needs something defensive and street-smart on his team. I don't like showing my hand, but I can talk to him if that's what it'll take."

Seth got up upon the bed, nudged the wad of bedding to roll the umbreon over, and laid himself down beside her. “Our lordship accepted a deerling into our fold. Defensive and street-smart are not amongst his interests."

The umbreon wiggled and kicked the sheets loose, squirming free and resting her head on a pillow stained through its previously removed case with dried blood. “I've spent too much time in this town. Either I conquer some territory, or make off with some booty. Life's too short to spy through your window and wonder if I finally found a home. I like you, Seth; and I'd like for this to work. But if you're sure that it won't, I need to move on."

“I like you, whatever your name is—"

“It's whoever's is most convenient."

“—Indeed. But, speak honestly, if our lordship had selected me as his valet and assigned Brother Cyrus to watch duty, you would have broken in again, convinced him that you meant no harm, regaled him throughout the day, and told him that you liked him after making a final argument for your adoption." Each “him" that he spoke carried a greater emphasis; the fourth was almost a bark, though the rest of his words were at an even volume.

The umbreon rolled over to stand, licked Seth's nose, and flopped down beside and against him. “Of course. Plans must be flexible, but plans must be followed through, too. That doesn't mean I don't like you, though. I think we have a lot more to share. If Cyrus were here instead of you, it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun, and I might have given up early."

“You are a selfish monster."

She giggled and nodded emphatically. “I know. I wasn't when I was an eevee, though. I can't un-evolve, but I would like to be like she was, again, even if only for a moment. I got close, today. Thank you for that, Seth."

“How did you escape this place unnoticed?"

The umbreon stood up and held her head high. “A magician never reveals her secrets. Neither does a thief. I'm going to steal dinner before I go. Oh, does your master have any good, strong needles? The lock-pick I have now is worthless. That's why you heard me at the door."

A pang—the guilt of treachery—coursed through Seth, but then he remembered how imbalanced had been Gates' treatment of his loyal dogs versus the leniency granted to the deerling. “He has some leather tools in the closet. Amongst them are large needles."

She licked his nose again, visited the closet, and sniffed out what she needed.

“Perfect!" she exclaimed, finding one of just the right length and gauge. Needles leapt from a plastic tray to her left paw's pad when she passed it over them. She selected one, bit it alone, slipped it beneath her left paw's fur, and then replaced the others in the case. “There's another option. You can blow this pop stand and come with me. I prefer to work alone, but even on the road, it'd be nice to have somebody warm to curl up with when the sun rises."

Seth rose and perched on the edge of the bed. “No. I am no fool."

The umbreon closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let glow her rings. “I know. If you'd agreed, I would've called you one. But, I would be happy if I knew a pokemon like you was waiting for me whenever I returned to a hideout. I'll lock up on the way out; you never know what kind of monsters might want to come in."

Long after the umbreon left, Seth remained on the bed, breathing through the resistance of a few layers of bed-sheet. The sheets needed to be washed this morning and doubly so now, but the melange of scents—himself, his lordship, his brother, the deerling, and that bandit—it was an intoxicant and he knew that he would always remember it fondly.

---

Little remained: scattered bones, scraps of clothing, and a wallet that—despite having been chewed on—still contained a young trainer's identification card. Collecting that as evidence, this case was closed. Using his T.D., Gates took a few morbid photographs of the scene and its surroundings. The final photograph he snapped captured an army. A number of gravelers blocked the exit, a cluster of zubats hovered above them, and a few quagsires had risen from the mire.

“Cyrus, hold still." Gates quickly dug a few X-items from his bag and an appropriate berry to steel his houndoom against water, expecting the quagsires would attack early since their water was only good against the houndoom and the gravelers would not appreciate it in a melee. “Warden, you got plenty of that green energy left in you?"

Warden hopped and sparked a little. “Ya!"

The quagsires started weaving through the stalagmites; the zubats, the stalactites.

“Here, you need a berry, too. Cyrus, shoot down what bats you can and try not to get killed. Warden, green shit anything but the bats and come back to me whenever you get hurt; if you can't fight, it's three more skeletons in this corner."

The cave dwellers took positions beyond the reach of Warden's flash.

Gates reached into his pack for revive crystals and found a plastic wrapper. Then, two. He then had an idea, whispered a prayer, and unwrapped Max's rare candies. “Warden, your pappy was a big tough buck that could beat any other pokemon in the forest, right?"

Warden, having experimented with using his illumination to push the quagsires away a step and make them re-position, turned his head aside to reply, “Papa a-fa-na pakka-ma."

Gates crouched beside Warden and wrapped him with his right arm, its palm holding two small crystal spheres. “Eat these; please, please evolve; and show me that you inherited his strength."

One of the quagsires managed to have a thought and announced it. The zubats chattered with chirps of such high pitch that Gates hardly noticed and Cyrus cringed. Then, Cyrus recognized a signal and responded to it as immediately as did the enemy. The zubats came down like a curtain. Cyrus mantled one of the broader stalagmites and put all of his power into a heat wave that buffeted them in-flight. He heard his master shout, “Yes!" behind himself, but glancing back, it was not in celebration of his knocking out half of the bats and weakening the others that now struggled to recover from head-first landings into the sides of stone pillars. It was in celebration of Warden's transforming body. Carefully incinerating the zubats that rose to fight on, Cyrus heard the more distant warriors beginning their approach. Hoping that he had bought enough time, Cyrus leapt down. Instead of using the terrain as a firing platform, it now became his cover as Rock- and Water-type attacks launched from the darkness began showering the chamber.

It was an alien sensation for Gates; gazing upon the most magnificent buck that he had ever seen, struck with a strange guilt and a misplaced fear, a combination of a trained impulse to claim a superior trophy and a deep-seated need to somehow protect this particular one from others like himself. A stray pebble hit him in the head and reminded him of their immediate circumstance. “Green for the blue ones, if you run out, kick the gravelers until there's a gap and we'll run for it."

Warden licked the first droplets of blood that emerged from his mentor's forehead before grunting aggressively and taking a familiar stance. “No run. You chose me to win this fight." A rippling glow shimmered all over his pelt and collected near his hooves. With a war cry he sprang toward the darkness. Dashing the tips of the stalagmites, he brought his illumination to the quagsires. They bellowed their complaints, surely that this was not the pokemon they were recruited to battle.

Cyrus yelped and a burst of flame gave away his position. Gates threw a berry toward him with a trained motion that betrayed his youth's obsession. Meanwhile, the remaining zubats proved to be a steady source of harassment, distracting Warden and disrupting his attacks. He responded by bringing the fight with the quagsires up-close, barreling into them and discharging his energy balls point blank. Soon, Cyrus wove around near the wall and found his way back to Gates, sniping with an ember one zubat that plotted an ambush against his master. Seeing their mercenaries nearly wiped out, the gravelers poured into the middle, separating the sawsbuck from the others and aiming to encircle it. Gates pulled a can of lemonade and a small pick-axe from his bag. “Do you still remember rock-smash?" Cyrus barked in affirmation and opened his mouth. Anthony poured. “Get them from behind and hide in the dark when they react. If we take turns, maybe we can pick enough of them off." A loud blast deafened them both: desperation led the gravelers to begin using self-destructive tactics that included casting off their outer layers with violent energies. Warden cried out and clambered across rocks with a limp. His new body's flesh was torn and bleeding in places. “Slight change of plan. You hide on the left, we'll fight together from here. Go, Cyrus." Gates threw his tool like a tomahawk to founder a graveler that came at him from his right. He started maneuvering to recover it, but realizing that he had a clear line of sight, he instead used his pokeball to recall Warden from across the chamber. Re-releasing him and hastily blasting his wounds with a medicinal spray, Gates glanced over Warden's back to watch the faintly illuminated line of gravelers regrouping and preparing to come upon them again.

“Behind me!" Warden asserted as he moved two steps with a turn to stand beside Anthony and let his body absorb successive hails of fractured stone coming from their left.

“I know you're fast enough; can you hit a few, get them busy, and then we can make a break for it?"

When the foremost of the gravelers appeared at the edge of flash's radius, they fired another volley and retreated into the darkness to hide from any counter-attack. It was poorly aimed, but Warden shifted position again to protect his master. “No break. Nourish me. I will win this fight."

Gates popped the top of a lemonade. “This is the last one; don't you dare argue with me again." Warden opened his mouth and aiming the can coarsely Gates crushed it in a haste to fire its fluid down his sawsbuck's throat. Warden's body glowed briefly as he leapt at the belligerents like a pink and brown lightning bolt, moving even faster than before. Beyond Warden's glowing radius, Cyrus coughed a wisp of flame. When the illumination followed Warden and left Gates in darkness, he felt for the wall and shuffled toward the exit. By the time Anthony reached the upward passage, Warden had defeated four gravelers, suffered blasts from two—they joining the piles of unconscious rubble that did so before—and now he danced with three final fighters.

“Warden, we run now!"

Again bloodied and limping, and now having trouble maneuvering about the stalagmites, Warden complained. “No! I win this fight!"

“Warden, that's an order, God damn it… God, damn it, shit!"

Cyrus yelped, having reached the same conclusion as Gates, the man now sloppily grasping for Warden's ball and a second or two later clicking its button rapidly in panic. Warden spat some blood after taking a direct hit from a stone that dazed him and then noticed what the others just saw, although he was not sure about what it warned of: Two of the gravelers were glowing a fierce white after flinging themselves at him with a desperate leap each from the tallest of the nearby stalagmites. Unseen by Warden, the third graveler glowed likewise but was barreling in to roll beneath Warden from his right rear side. Warden glowed too, but red, as his ball de-materialized him. However, his energy form vanished from sight before being drawn in, overwhelmed by bright flashes as the three gravelers exploded; completely, permanently. The force of the combined blast bowled Gates and Cyrus over. Gates fell hard against the stony cave floor. Cyrus recovered his bearings, licked Gates' cheek, bit his arm and tugged it, sat against him, and finally, out of ideas, howled. When Cyrus stopped to breathe, he heard himself howling back, reflected as a chorus but distantly faded.

---

Lacking the strength necessary to move toward the light, Gates instead faintly cursed at it. Soon, it was obscured by a figure; a face cast in shadow, but he could smell the breath: astringent. He heard something echo in his mind and rolled his eyes shortly before closing them again for some time. Later, light, and more grumbles. Gates rose from his bed a little and examined the monitor cables stuck to his body. The echo came back, and he understood it this time.

“They said I can't give you any. Drinking alone's bad. Drinking alone with another is worse." Gates looked to his left, where sat in a chair a kadabra with a bottle of vodka. Kit waved the bottle around, letting slosh the last fifth of its contents. “I'll drink for you for your health and for you to go out of my mind."

Feeling at the bandages on his head, Gates slowly spoke, “I'm what?"

“After you abused me, I went to Coroxon. I'm weird. When I drink this stuff I might stop seeing or I might see too much. I saw you get hurt. I had to come or I would see it forever. Why the hell does my soul mate have to be a human? And a jerk about it, too." She took a bold swig; slightly too bold as she coughed a bit of it back into the bottle and a bit onto herself. Checking to his right, Anthony noticed that his other pokemon and his property were all absent. Answering his question as he thought of it, Kit continued, “Your houndoom is good. The other one," she reduced the bottle to a tenth, “he got scrambled."

“What!"

Kit groaned and clutched her head with her free hand. “Not so loud. I'm wasted. It's what I read off of the nurse after she ran the balls; I don't know what it means."

Anthony pressed a call button to summon a nurse, hopefully one in the know. “I guess I need to thank you."

“No, you need to thank me."

He mumbled a confused sound as she walked across the room with deliberately placed steps, set the bottle aside, pulled him up from the bed using telekinesis, and kissed him as squarely as she was cross. Unsure if his action was willful or at her influence, he returned it nonetheless, and when her power no longer supported him and he fell back into his bedding, the moment seemed to have been too brief.

“You're welcome. Look, when I was at the bar I met somebody and we're going to travel together; see if we can find where we belong. Probably it's a bad idea, but we were both drunk at the time. Still am. I am. She, maybe. Whatever. Listen, I saved your life so if I come back, I'm making me your trainer and making you the man I sensed you could've been when we first met, without this bullshit attitude you've picked up. If I don't, I found somebody better that you which shouldn't be hard and you'll never know what you missed, but I'll give you a taste to remember me by."

Gates gasped when, with a touch of her digits against a patch of exposed skin near his forehead's bandage, Kit forced a fragment of somebody else's stolen experience into his mind. It was gone in a blink and so was she and her emptied bottle. He looked around; the quickly fading glow of teleportation being nearly all that she left behind. A nurse entered, and accused Gates of somehow smuggling in and hiding alcohol despite having been unconscious for nearly twenty hours.

---

“Guaiacol Gym, home of the Moraine Badge. How may we defeat your pokemon? Hold please."

What else could Anthony do? At least the faint on-hold music was pleasant.

“Loud MacLeod, whatchya need?"

“I need a favor."

Carol took a second, “Uh, new guy? With the little pink thing?"

“Anthony Gates, yeah"—yeah, he hoped—“I had a bad fight with some wilds and they're holding me in the infirmary for observation. I need somebody to reload my dogs' feeder tomorrow. It wasn't full-up when I left."

Silence, before, “Will there be cans there for me to put in it?" Silence, before, “I'll take a six-pack of the cheap stuff out of your wage."

“I hope I can earn it back real soon. Just ask my landlord to let you in. Thank you, Miss MacLeod."

“Think something of it; you owe me a big one. And please, Carol is fine. Save 'Miss MacLeod' for when I have you on the clock and at my command."

Gates hesitated. “Yes, Ma'am."

“Get better." She disconnected on the full stop.

Anthony laid himself down and rested until morning.

---

Awakening on his own with a need to micturate and without recollection of his whereabouts, Gates stumbled out of his bed, took care of business, and left his room. He wandered till he found an elevator. Trusting its directory, he descended to a basement level dedicated to the treatment of pokemon. Unlike a center, which specialized in minor injuries and out-patient treatments for men and 'mon alike, this area was specialized for bodily trauma beyond what the rejuvenation machines could re-arrange, and down one hall, something akin to hospice care, for old pokemon to be heavily medicated, spend some time in a peaceful, artificial environment suitable for their species in the wild, and be euthanized in their, final, sleep. Searching for a service desk, he passed a family with a few pokemon among them, all expressing various degrees of grief. Following them when their paths diverged, assuming they knew their way, he came upon a counter and a nurse, and asked about his companions.

“Your houndoom is ready for pick-up," she proclaimed after he identified himself, “but your sawsbuck is still being processed."

“Still? It's been—" a while, although he was not sure of the date.

“Still. See," she sent a copy of Warden's ball log to a slate and held it up, “there's its last center visit, as a deerling. We don't have its pattern as a sawsbuck in the network. So, since its live image was obliterated when you withdrew it, here," she pointed at the final entry on the log, “the ball has to reassemble your pokemon. The good news is that what it puts together might hold together long enough for the body to heal, since the ball does have the last good image data to start with and it was only a few minutes old. The bad news is that a commodity-grade ball chip is trying to solve a hundred-trillion piece jigsaw puzzle. It's going to take time and energy. You can take the ball and let it run, but it can only work on re-assembly with external power because the battery won't last without it. Do you have a hopper at home?"

Gates shook his head and asked, “How long?"

“Until either the ball clicks and goes back to normal mode, or the ball buzzes and ejects the release button cap. Or you can have the ball's control overridden and take a chance by releasing it, although I'd call it fratricide unless everyone is certain that the re-assembly effort isn't making progress anymore."

“I'll take my dog and my suggested two days of bed-rest and come back." The nurse nodded and gave him Cyrus. Riding up the elevator, every time Gates closed his eyes, if only to blink, he saw Warden aglow with flash and agility, his sly and confident smirk having grown with his body, looking back at him. His deerling was brave, fearless, and would never give up in his pursuit of earning the respect of his mentor. The elevator's bell chimed, its doors opened, and Gates returned to his room. He crawled back into bed and made himself comfortable with a reflexive platitude. “He'll be waiting for me when I'm discharged. He won that fight."

---