Spirits' Edge

[Namohysip]

And yet, it seemed that Buffet had left them behind for now. He was still there, a little, fairy-sized Hydreigon that flitted over Brisa's shoulder, but he said nothing to assist in the conversation one way or the other. He felt, at least for now, that it was not his place to interfere unless addressed directly.

 

[Dragonfree]

Brisa's house. Huh. Kind of old-timey but still remarkably normal for being, you know, a Pokémon house with quadrupeds living in it.

She headed straight for a door without words and knocked on it, and a voice invited them in, in the same kind of weird cowboy drawl that she had.

So this was him, a haggard-looking fox man in a dusty office. Apparently Pokémon wore clothes over here? (But Brisa didn't?)

He had to crane his neck up when the Delphox stood up to his full height. Brisa's evolved form was one thing, but her father had the advantage of being not only fully evolved but bipedal. God, Dave couldn't wait to not be the size of a fucking puppy.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa found her voice. "No, this ain't a dream, Pa. I don't fully understand it myself, but this is kinda like a... a constructed environment fer our spirits, made from yer unconscious mind or somethin'. It... it doesn't matter how. The point is, I came here to... to speak with you."

Jesse nodded, peering thoughtfully at them. "Yeah. Okay. This is the doin' of a Voice of Life, ain't it? And that ain't Flygon Altair y'got with you, that's some other, hydreigon-lookin' bastard. Which means..." His eyes widened. "Brisa, are you speakin' t'me from another fuckin' world?"

She nodded, ears flattening.

"Okay. Okay. Y'can explain it to me real slow like, but first, just tell me honest: are you safe?" He shot another piercing look at Dave. "And who's the fella?"

Brisa took a full breath. "I'm fine. This is Dave, he's one of the people workin' with me to save the world we're visitin'. He's... like you, Pa. He's human. Dave, this... this is Jesse Stranger."

"And what's yer friend here fer?"

 

[Dragonfree]

"Yeah, hi," Dave said, narrowing his eyes at the Delphox. "David Ambrose. I'm here because your daughter asked me to."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa watched the two of them with apprehension. "I wasn't sure what to expect when I came here. I needed someone I trust to come with me."

"Right," said Jesse, slowly. "Pleasure t'meet ya, David. I'd offer you a drink, but I suspect our bodies ain't all that real right now. So. Why don't you tell me what this is about? Give it to me plain."

That was quite the request, given how weird and convoluted everything seemed. "...Alright," she said.

Deep breath. It was best if she got everything out in one go.

"Myself and upward of thirty other pokémon and humans were sent by a reformed Dark Matter entity to a pokémon world where we've been fightin' a dozen kinds of possessed and maddened legendaries to save it from an interplanar enemy invadin' from a human world. And we've been doin' pretty well so far but... I'm startin' to feel like we're outmatched. And outplayed."

She met Jesse's stare as he chewed it over. Scratched his cheek. Hummed.

"Is that so," said the delphox. He raised a brow at Dave, as if looking for a second opinion.

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave sighed irritably. "Look, the point here was meant to be that you could help. But apparently we can't physically bring you over anyway, so that's kind of a moot point even if you wanted to."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

"Yeah, that figures. But you're here anyway..."

There was a weird look in Jesse's face. More earnest, hopeful, than she remembered him ever being. It faded so fast, Brisa found herself wondering if she'd imagined it. It was frustrating to realise, but he'd only ever been difficult, hadn't he?

"...is there somethin' else you reckon I can do to help?" he said, after an awkward pause.

"You tell me," she replied. "Fer some reason I thought maybe you'd have advice to give. But now I'm lookin' at you, and I'm realisin' you ain't vanished back to yer world, you just left home without so much as a letter, and I don't know what kind of advice you could even give me."

The delphox looked wounded, ears drooping, for less than a second before he stiffened up. Again, he'd lost composure. How was he taking seeing her in person unexpectedly? "So that's why yer here. You wanna know where I went, and why. You want closure."

He was right. He was fucking right. Brisa felt an itch behind one ear, and a pressure behind the eyes. Was he–?

"I can feel you in my fuckin' head, Pa."

Jesse held his arms out, palms up, and shook his head. "There's where I ain't, ranger's honour. I just know you, kid."

"Fine," she said. If they were gonna skip to that part... "Where the fuck are you, Jesse?"

Her father gave her a hard stare for a moment.

"Can't say."

 

[Dragonfree]

"The fuck's that supposed to mean?"

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Jesse looked at Dave like he was an idiot child. The tension between the two of them began to bubble. Brisa could feel it in her skull. Anger. Suspicion. Jealousy?

Jesse leered at Dave, and spoke with an excess helping of derision. "Oh, y'think I'm gonna be tight-lipped about my whereabouts to my fuckin' kid but I'll open right the fuck up to some human stranger who ain't even from my world? The fuck d'you know about me, or Brisa, or my world, anyway? Fuckin' nothin', I'll bet."

 

[Dragonfree]

Oh, of course, there was the guy Brisa'd described. "I mean, I know enough. How about we start with the bit where you merrily broadcast to your daughter that you'd like to put her down like a fucking animal because she was a bit of an edgy teen? Because that was a memorable tidbit. Here's a thought, maybe after that you owe it to her to tell her where the fuck you've been."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa's blood froze in her veins. Judging by his face, Jesse's was boiling.

"What do you think you fuckin' know, huh?" hissed Jesse. "You think—" He cut off, his eyes snapping to Brisa's. There was a cauldron of emotion there; she saw anger, confusion, fear. Pretty much the same things she was feeling. Thanks, Dave.

She felt a prickling in her head. This time, she was certain. He was done with his search before she could process what he'd just done.

He'd read her mind. Again.

Jesse clenched a clawed fist and glowered at Dave. "Y'think you know what fuckin' happened? You have no idea what kinda position I was in, you presumptuous asshole. Who the fuck are you to judge me? D'you know how the law works in my world? How anything works? You ain't had to be father to a kid who folks refuse to see as a person."

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave let out a barking chuckle. Well, wasn't that almost suspiciously specific. "Funny thing about that. Yeah, I'm familiar, I've got eight of them. Got some shitty laws where I come from, too. Dying to hear how the law made you want to put your daughter down and call her an animal. You know, where I come from the people calling my kids animals are the pieces of shit enacting the laws against them."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

"Eight?" muttered Jesse, wheels clearly turning in his head. Then he heard the rest of what Dave was saying and narrowed his eyes at the poochyena. Brisa knew that expression. She knew what came next. She backed out of her father's office, and went to shelter from the imminent diatribe somewhere, anywhere else in the house.

It turned out her room existed here, too.

<><><><><>

Jesse

"Eight?" muttered Jesse, wondering what kind of rowdy household this guy lived in. Wasn't a kid or two enough? Then he heard the rest of what the mutt was saying and just about lost his damn mind. Had this motherfucker even listened to what he'd just said?

He caught Brisa leaving the room out of the corner of his eye. Good. It wasn't right that she should have to listen to this.

"Do you have selective fuckin' hearin' or somethin', pal?" he seethed. "The fuck do you think I did? Have you got the impression somehow I have anythin' but my daughter's best interests at heart? I love Brisa. Don't you fuckin' dare imply otherwise."

 

[Dragonfree]

"I mean, correct me if I'm fucking wrong, but the way she described it, you were having an argument about her playing with her friend too hard, you were all up in her brain about it like the world's most possessive parent, she imagined some shit to make you go away, and you called her a violent animal and said you'd fucking put her down. That doesn't sound real fucking 'her best interests' to me."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Jesse's mind was starting to bleed, which would be obvious to anyone who wasn't a goddamn dark type. If this self righteous little shit could only hear Jesse's thoughts he'd know how wrong he was, and be ashamed of himself. But he couldn't. So he didn't.

What was the point in talking to this prick anyway? To defend himself to someone he didn't know? Could he even do that? How could you persuade someone of painful, difficult truths without opening your head and pouring out your thoughts? How could you tell someone how regret like this felt without letting them feel it too? Feel how afraid you could be when you could see what went through your daughter's head, and the blood at her mouth, and not know whether it was her imagination or if she'd already murdered someone.

Goddamnit. Goddamnit. God fucking damnit.

For the hundred thousand millionth time, Jesse wanted to go home.

"Listen... just... you don't understand. It wasn't like that. I was beggin' her to stop fightin' 'cause she had no idea how to hold back. I was scared I was gonna leave the house one day and find she'd been fuckin' lynched for tearin' out someone's throat. And she fuckin'..."

Jesse wanted to scream.

Get a grip, Stranger.

"She had the most vicious fuckin' things in her head, okay? She was picturin' me all torn open and bleedin', she was fantasisin' about crushin' her friend's windpipe fer fuck's sake. I panicked. I thought something for a split second I'd never have fuckin' followed through on."

He slammed a paw into the wall.

"You'd have thought the damn same!" he snarled. "And she ain't even supposed to fuckin' remember that shit! It wasn't real!"

 

[Dragonfree]

That'd hit a sore spot. Wasn't like that, of course it wasn't.

"By which you mean you tried to erase it from her memory? That doesn't mean it wasn't fucking real, Jesus. What, you think because you've got psychic powers you can just rewrite reality so that anything inconvenient never happened? Well, it fucking did, and she's been convinced she's secretly a violent animal ever since, so good fucking job having her best interests at heart."

You'd have thought the damn same. God, this fucking guy. What the fuck did he think he knew. There was a funny, sticky feeling congealing in his throat. Oh, no, violent fantasies? Like Brisa wasn't just a normal fucking kid. Like he'd ever really had anything to worry about. "And guess what, one of my kids was way more fucked up than Brisa could ever hope to be and it still never once crossed my mind to fucking put her down, you piece of shit."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

What the actual fuck was this clown talking about? Jesse was about to lay into him to say no, you dense motherfucker, that's obviously not what he'd fucking meant, but then—

Brisa had remembered the whole time? And taken it to heart? What the fuck. How? By the time Dave was done speaking, he'd given himself a headache working out whether the fucking mongrel was bullshitting him.

"Oh yeah?" he said, wondering where this could possibly be going that would make this moron's point stick. "How's that, then? She pull the wings off bug types fer fun, or somethin'?"

Wait, 'was'? He'd thought that meant my kid grew up just fine but the wording wasn't right. People said things like 'when my eldest was young' or 'used to', they didn't say 'was'...

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave gritted his teeth, rage boiling in his throat. "No, you fucking ingrate. She was a genetically engineered half Scyther, in a world where Pokémon aren't fucking sapient. She didn't have normal human empathy. She actually wanted to kill and eat people and I just had to teach her why she shouldn't. You're here feeling real fucking sorry for yourself because what, your perfectly normal talking Pokémon daughter once imagined some violence in her head, and you wildly extrapolated that she was a fucking animal and a budding murderer and just thought to yourself that she should fucking die? That the people who'd, what, lynch her for it would be right? You sick motherfucker, my kid was actually shot down after killing some zealot to save another kid. So when you say 'you would've thought the damn same', no, I fucking didn't. What kind of twisted excuse for a human being thinks their own kid is a fucking animal, or that they should be put down?"

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Jesse blinked. Had he... heard that right? He reached to confirm from Dave's surface thoughts and his probe slid off the dog's mind. Fuck. Fucking dark type.

"You... your daughter killed folks?"

His jaw clenched up so tight he could barely get his words out amidst a full-throated growl.

"Your daughter killed folks and fuckin' died fer it and you're lecturin' me fer bein' afraid the same thing might happen? All I've done since I had my kid is try to keep her safe. I don't know why the fuck you're so ready to think otherwise—you really think that just 'cause I had a wretched fuckin' thought one time that I actually fuckin' wanted to harm my daughter? Gods, are you bein' wilfully fuckin' stupid? Seems t'me like I got it more right than you, you reprehensible prick. Brisa ain't killed anyone so far as I know and she's still fuckin' alive!"

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave tasted bile in the back of his mouth, nausea crawling in his stomach. The nerve of this fucker. Why'd he even tell this slimy fuck why Mia died? Would he ever not have just taken it out of context and squeezed that square peg into the round hole of the rhetorical bludgeon he wanted? "Fuck your self-pity. You know, even when Mia was casually telling me she wanted to tear my throat out and eat me, or whatever the fuck - and she actually fucking meant it, she wasn't a teenager trying to provoke me - at no point did I fucking think to myself that I should kill her, you twisted fuck. I just went and got her some fucking hotdogs and talked to her about why you don't eat people, like a civilized goddamn human being. And I fought tooth and nail against the kinds of actual motherfucking animals calling for these kids to be put down, because they're fucking people. Do you think Brisa's a person? Because if that would ever fucking cross your mind you don't fucking sound like it."