Chapter 51: A Spirited Discussion
Blake IsleyWednesday, February 16, 2011Type: Ghost
I woke up early and felt a little ethereal. Now that I’d regained some of my mastery over aura, I felt the pull of the Distortion more acutely. It was an unseen miasma, a layer of reality that only I could perceive. Through it, I spread out my senses and felt the city slowly rouse itself from slumber.
Quietly, I slipped out of bed so as to not wake up Mark. He skipped school and came home late, getting an earful from Ms. Wells last night. Later, he told me what he’d really been up to:
The aftermath of Lung’s capture was still being felt. Whatever else could be said about the ABB, the gang was still a central pillar in the Asian community. Without the not-dragon’s unifying presence, the gang fractured along ethnic lines. They’d been fighting, albeit quietly so as to not draw cape involvement, to claim what territory and resources they could.
Already, most groups had been swallowed up, forming the three biggest gangs: Chinese triad, Japanese yakuza, and a loose confederation of minor gangs that represented the Southeast Asian community. Because of this, the various communities had been going through a bit of “redistricting” along the edges.
People were “encouraged” to move out through higher protection fees or other forms of harassment. It wasn’t anything overt, and almost never violent, making it hard for cops to act on it. Mark had been helping a friend of his relocate a few blocks.
I smiled and shifted into a gengar. He was a good guy. Curious, I merged into his shadow, and from there, tried to enter his dream. It was something that was possible for any pokemon capable of Hypnosis, Dream Eater, and Nightmare, and gengar could learn all three.
I wanted to see what he was dreaming, maybe play a little prank if I could influence it one way or the other. Unfortunately, “possible” and “I could do it” were two different things. I could tell he was dreaming, and that it wasn't especially unpleasant. I could choose to eat said dream for sustenance, but that was all. I tried for several minutes, but I simply lacked the finesse.
Disappointed, I floated out of his shadow. I did still feel a bit of that pranking urge so I went into the kitchen and found the cookie jar. I scraped out every Oreo cream filling and replaced it with toothpaste before heading off to school.
X
School was forgettable. I had math, history, and English today, exactly none of which I expected to use in the future. I still wanted a diploma, if only because it was what was expected of me, but I found myself growing increasingly disillusioned with the American education system. Forget about college, keeping my grades up while being a hero was hard enough.
Truthfully, I was hoping for a decent payday from Dragon. If I received royalties for the tech or berries, then maybe I could use that to finance my heroics. “Wandering dogooder” wasn’t really a viable career option on Earth-Bet unfortunately, but I felt I could make it work.
After school, I rushed through my homework assignments before heading towards the hospital. I felt like I hadn’t been there in a while, what with the gangs making trouble. It was a pity. I enjoyed playing with the children.
On my way, I got to thinking. Maybe it was the ghost type in me, but I was reminded that I hadn’t played a good prank in a while, either. The Oreo thing this morning was nice, but it didn’t quite scratch that itch.
And what was a more classic haunted spot than a hospital?
Giggling to myself, I ducked into an alley. Quietly, so no one else could hear, I whispered, “Shift, banette.”
I shrank down as the shadows reached for me in a yawning embrace. My flesh and bone faded into the aether, leaving behind a cocoon of Distortion that housed my soul. Its surface took on texture until it formed the shape of a doll with a zipped up mouth.
Banette weren’t innately evil. Despite popular myth, they weren’t solely created from the resentment or hatred of abandoned dolls. If they truly were nothing but balls of hate, ghost masters like Phoebe would never bother to tame them. There were plenty of other powerful ghost options. Rather, they were born of strong emotions.
Phoebe once told me about a particular banette on Mount Pyre. It was born, not of resentment, but cherished love centuries ago. The original owner died long ago, her duty as priest and overseer passing to her son. The banette, though it had never been formally captured, remained with her family for generations, acting as both defender of the summit and intermediary between humans and phantasms.
When Team Magma stormed it for the Red Orb, it marshalled the ghosts of the mountain into a vengeful storm. The Distortion stirred by its fury had been what alerted me to the situation at the time, though I hadn’t gotten the story until later.
In the end, it chose to burn rather than abandon its family. So stubborn was its defense that Maxie was forced to turn the summit into a molten wasteland with his mega camerupt. That incident, and the death of the old couple, had been what truly set Hoenn’s ghost mistress on the warpath.
That hadn’t been pretty. Phoebe was a cousin of the caretakers, same clan, and she took their passing personally. She dropped the bubbly, airheaded Alolan dancer shtick and became every bit the avenger ghost types were known to be.
Fuck the rules. Fuck due process. No one, not even Steven, was fool enough to stand in her way after that. I hadn’t been part of the high-level discussion, being from Sinnoh and all, but as far as I knew, the League gave her a map with known cells marked and ran for the hills.
Entire Magma cells were wiped out overnight. She didn’t kill, that was too kind; no, she left them trapped in unending nightmares, customized for each individual. Their members filled mental asylums to capacity. Psychic healers developed all new shades of trauma just from trying to diagnose their patients.
It took a while before the ghost mistress was back to her sunny, cheerful self. A while, and many, many bodies.
I huffed and shook my head to clear away the bad memory. Being a creature largely formed from Distortion, hanging on to such memories could have a negative effect on me.
I sat up and looked around. The alley’s shadows seemed so much darker around me, as if beckoning me home. The pull of the Distortion was much stronger in this form. Emotions, especially the spikes of negativity, pressed into me from all sides.
It was as intoxicating as it was dangerous. I’d have to take care not to lose myself to the negativity. Because, unfortunately, negative emotions were felt more acutely by people, especially in Brockton. There was just more of it than the positive side of the spectrum.
Shrugging, I sank into the shadows. As Titania said, if there was too much negativity, the answer was simple: Make more positivity. Sure, she said that as an emoti-vore who treated clown college like a cooking lesson, but it probably applied.
X
The hospital had long since become a familiar haunt to me. I hadn’t visited every wing, but I did know the emergency room and urgent care wings like the back of my hand. I knew the location of every break room, supply room, and bathroom.
My ghostly urges had yet to be met. The toothpaste wasn’t enough. The city needed more amusement. Or rather, I needed more amusement.
Which was why I decided to haunt the shit out of this place.
I poked my head out of the shadow of a sofa. This was the most popular break room in the ER, and never empty for long. Nurses, interns, and doctors all dropped by in staggered waves roughly based on when they clocked in.
Currently, there were four nurses gossiping over the water cooler. The subject was roughly what I expected. I found out over the past two months that nurses were the single horniest demographic I’d ever known, and I was including rangers on long-term assignments in that. There was an unceasing wave of drama about who slept with who and why.
To be fair to them, they tried to keep it away from me and Amy. I only first cottoned on to the drama when I saw Amy healing some nurse discreetly. Turned out, walking around for ten hours each day was hard with a genital rash and the poor bastard caved. We whispered of that man’s dead dignity like Kalosi nobles whispered of AZ’s folly, with great awe and pity in equal measure.
I extended my shadow and emerged just outside their field of view. Then, with a silent hop, I landed on the kitchenette counter and settled myself next to the microwave. Then, I formed a needle of Distortion and pricked myself on the sole of my foot.
“Ow!” one nurse yelped as she hopped onto one foot. She was a shirt, mousy woman who reminded me a little of Amy, except she knew how to smile and pretend she meant it.
“What’s up, Jen?” her friend, a lanky blonde, asked.
“Something poked me!”
“What?”
All four of them looked around. One, a tall, black nurse known for her bedside manners, found me. She came over and picked me up. “Hey, was this always here?”
Jen, the woman I’d poked with Pain Split, looked me over. “What? No, what is that?”
“A doll. I haven’t seen it before. It’s kinda creepy.”
“Well, if it’s none of ours. Maybe one of the doctors from the last shift left it behind,” the fourth nurse pointed out.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
She tossed me onto the couch. I laid there, face down and hiding a grin. I waited patiently until the nurses began their conversation. Then, once they were distracted, I sat up.
I poked the same nurse again.
“Ow! There it is again!”
The fourth nurse, a petite Viet who often worked in the burn ward, spotted me. “Did that doll just move?”
“What? No way. I tossed it on the couch.”
“Yeah, and it was over there. Now it’s here, one cushion over.”
“So it bounced. Dolls do that.”
“Uh huh…” she muttered. The other three turned around. Before she turned to join her friends, I waved. She bounced away as if she’d been burned. “Fuck! Oh, no. Fuck no. That thing just waved at me!”
“Trini, what the hell are you talking about?” Jen, the one I’d poked earlier, sighed. “Dolls don’t move.”
Nurse Trini shook her head. She backed away. Her fear tasted like toasted peanuts. “Nope. That thing moved. I’m telling you. It waved at me.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I know what I saw, Jen. How did it poke you?”
“It didn’t poke me. I must have some cramps, that’s all.”
“Don’t care. I’m out. That thing gives me the creeps.”
So saying, she stalked out of the room with as much dignity as she could spare. I’d met Nurse Trini a few times before. I didn’t know she had such a low tolerance for the supernatural. I felt a little bad, but I was committed to the bit now.
The three remaining nurses began to chat. Though none of them claimed to be afraid, I noticed that every one of them kept at least a side eye on my position. It was an unspoken bit of synchronicity that ruined my fun.
I could escalate of course, with Night Shade, Role Play, and Will-O-Wisps, but that was a bit too far for my taste. That kind of hell was reserved for murderers and child predators, like Coil. So, I patiently bided my time. People could stay on guard for only so long, especially untrained civilians.
Then, something changed. I heard the stomping of feet as the break room door opened. Amy Dallon had arrived.
She wasted no time. She stomped up to me and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. She held me out like a boy might hold out a gross bug to his sisters. “Is this the ‘haunted’ doll?”
I knew then. Nurse Trini had tattled. Maybe not directly, but she’d told someone and Amy probably overheard. I looked up at her and knew immediately that she had me pegged.
No amount of playing dead would work. She could do something even most trainers back in my world could not: Victini awakened her aura. As an empath, she had zero issues identifying me, especially given my annoyance with the tattletale.
Without waiting for a response, she stalked over to the attached bathroom.
“Panacea? What are you doing?” Nurse Jen asked.
“Giving this thing a bath. In the toilet,” she deadpanned.
I twisted out of her grip. Dropping to the ground, I crossed my plushie arms with a pout. “You’re no fun, Ames.”
“Fun? Stop scaring the nurses, Menagerie.”
“M-Menagerie? That’s Menagerie?” Nurse Jen asked. Fear quickly turned to annoyance. “That wasn’t very funny.”
I transformed back. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll get to work.”
“You haven’t come here in a while. Do you need another tour?”
“No, I’m good. I think I’ll just set up in my usual spot for a few hours before making the rounds.”
“Okay, you do that.”
X
Amy and I headed out from the hospital at around seven to grab dinner. We were done for the night because we’d agreed to meet up with Quinn Calle, the lawyer Amy’s mom recommended. She’d done so with great reluctance, like a cubone giving up its club, but had admitted that Calle was “disgustingly good at his job.”
The meeting took place at an expensive sushi place near the Boardwalk by the name of Yuraku. It was the kind of place I’d never have considered on my own. Hell, the only reason I was willing to eat here was because I wasn’t the one paying for it.
So close to the Rig, it was one of the few high-end Japanese restaurants that hadn’t been forcibly affiliated with the ABB. I wouldn’t have known, but Carol had made a point of telling me. She struck me as the kind of woman who was conscientious of how she “voted with her money,” as they said.
The three of us drew quite a crowd as we waited for the lawyer. Carol was in a sharp business suit, with a briefcase I assumed was filled with case laws or whatever else lawyers carried to battle. Because this was a battle; she’d made that very clear.
Amy hadn't bothered to change out of her customary robes. She was given a choice: dress skirt and blazer like her mom, or her cape outfit. I was quite sure she’d rather jump in the bay than dress like her mom, so her robes it was. After all, this involved her as Panacea, not Amy Dallon.
As for me, I had no intention of unmasking so I was in full armor, with only the faceplate removed so I could eat. Beneath, I wore a domino mask to further hide my face because I didn’t trust the helmet to fully shade my eyes.
Eventually, Calle arrived. He was a tall, Hispanic man in his mid to late thirties. He might have been described as handsome had it not been for the prominent scar that stretched from his left nostril to his cheekbone. Or maybe that added to his “roguish charm” or something.
“Ah, you must be Menagerie,” he said. He had a surprisingly normal voice, not the general sleaziness I associated with men of his profession. The glimmer of greed in his aura was much harder to hide, however.
I shook his hand with practiced ease. I’d never been part of the League proper, but I’d certainly rubbed shoulders with enough bigwigs to know the dance. “That would be me. Thank you for meeting with us on short notice. I heard you were out in Chicago.”
“Oh, please. When I heard the newest rising star in the cape world wanted to chat, I booked the plane ticket that minute.”
“Yes, that sounds like you,” Carol scoffed, “always quick to seize any opportunity.”
“Carol, Carol, you say that like that’s a bad thing,” he replied with an easy laugh. “I’m greedy, hungry, you might say. The way I see it, that’s a good thing. My clients know that I’ll fight for them because their interests are also my interests.”
“There is more to the law than your pocketbook, Calle.”
“I’ll leave that ‘more’ to you high-minded folk. Now, I believe this is Panacea, yes?” he asked rhetorically as he turned to Amy.
Amy had taken a subconscious step back to avoid the social interaction but now found herself at the center. “Y-Yes. Hello.”
“Why don’t we head inside? This place was excellent the last time I was here. You’ve got good taste, Carol.”
I almost laughed out loud at the face she made in response. She really didn’t like her acquaintance. Given how prickly and taciturn she was normally, I took her willingness to see us through this dinner as proof of her sincerity. Deeds over words and all that.
The hostess, a pretty, Japanese lady with her hair tied in a ponytail, barely even blinked at our arrival. She confirmed Carol’s reservation and took us to a private room upstairs. The place reminded me a lot of Erika’s gym in Celadon City. Or, more specifically, the tatami-lined napping spot the narcoleptic gym leader set up for herself amidst her garden.
We sat down to a table already set, with complementary green tea steaming gently by each plate. At the center of the table was a plate of savory rice crackers we could nibble on while we waited for our food. I assumed this was similar to Italian restaurants leaving out free bread and olive oil.
“We’ll talk as we eat,” Carol said as she began marking the rolls she wanted on their menu.
“Of course, but I’d like to ask you something first, Menagerie,” Calle said.
I grabbed a cracker and purposely munched on it as loudly as I could. Taking the cup of green tea, I made sure to slurp. Technically, I was supposed to rotate the cup to avoid the “front” before making as little noise as possible.
If Erika was here, she’d probably have scrunched her noise with judgy distaste. She’d been the one to teach me the finer details of Kantoan–Japanese on Earth-Bet–tea ceremonies. I was… passable. She drilled me for several days before finally declaring that I wasn’t “a complete boor.”
It wasn’t my fault. They were mind-bogglingly dull. The only reason I bothered to learn at all was because I’d been invited to Janine’s wedding. I respected her and her father enough to at least pretend I cared about the custom. Well, that, and had I ruined the ceremony, I was sure I’d get a mysterious case of “food poisoning” somehow.
“Divine retribution,” Janine would have called it. “Vindictive ninjas” was the more likely answer.
I set down the tea and faced Calle. “What do you want to know?”
“Why me? While I admit to having some experience with business law, that is not my primary practice. In fact, I typically represent villains in an attempt to lessen their sentences, quite the opposite of what Carol does.”
I nodded. That was true. It hadn’t taken me long to do a bit of research about him. The man had a reputation that bled out even beyond the legal industry. “That may be so, but you are an expert at negotiating with the PRT for the individual rights of parahumans. I don’t need someone to represent me in court; I need someone to deal with the PRT for me. I was told that you were the best at that.”
“Haha, that almost makes me sound noble. ‘The individual rights of parahumans,’ that’s certainly one way to put it. But you are correct. I’m quite flattered to have been recommended by Carol Dallon herself.”
The food, roughly an even split between rolls, nigiri, and sashimi, arrived on a pinewood boat. It was only the third time I'd ever had a sushi boat in both lives; being a professional bum didn't exactly give me many chances to indulge. I was looking forward to it.
After the initial pleasantries, the conversation mostly flowed between Carol and Calle. Amy and I were there just to witness the negotiation process. I listened with half an ear as I sampled the various seafood combinations.
Most of the conversation flowed over my head. And judging by the look of disinterest on Amy’s face, the same went for her. Still, I could at least rest assured that we weren’t being taken advantage of with her mom here.
The gist was that Calle would represent Amy and I by establishing a limited liability company that would handle our berry production and royalties from the technological IPs I’d given Dragon. It felt a little strange calling those blueprints intellectual property seeing how I hadn’t actually designed them, but I supposed that’s what they were.
Calle would receive a flat sum as well as a small percentage of the LLC’s annual revenue, whenever we got around to having a revenue at all. In exchange, he’d continue to act as our on-call corporate counsel moving forward.
The meeting went well enough. He was certainly all smiles by the end of it. Personally, I was glad to be done with it. Amy and I split off from the law sharks to go stretch our legs.
She must have felt as cooped up as I did because she barely complained when I teleported us to an abandoned warehouse to train. Or maybe she was developing that quasi-masochistic taste for exercise that all martial artists picked up sooner or later.
One could hope.
Author’s Note
Quinn is exactly the kind of man Carol hates: Completely amoral, but hides his personality behind a handsome face and good social skills. She likes her good and bad guys to be less complicated.
I have no idea if what I said about the LLC was right or not. I kept it vague because I ain’t a lawyer.
Animal Fact: Black vultures can grow up to two feet tall with a wingspan of five feet. They are indeed still a type of raptor, and possess the equipment to prove it.
They will sometimes wait for a cow to give birth, only to rip apart the newborn calf before it can even stand as the tired mother watches on. There are even stories of black vultures... helping the delivery as it were... Yes, they'll literally reach inside cow vag and help themselves to some super-veal.
Pre-veal? If beef is cow meat, and veal is calf meat, what do you call technically-still-a-fetus meat?