ACL: 47. Rotom is motor backwards.

Chapter 47: Rotom is motor backwards.

Brockton Bay, NH, USA
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Type: Electric

I woke up feeling refreshed and renewed. Energized. Downright electric, one might say. My early morning schedule of yogurt, berries, brief meditation, and running was restored to me.

Being the Lord’s day, many of my siblings went with Mrs. Wells to the local chapel. We older kids used to go as well, but we’d all fallen from the faith in one form or another. So long as we kept out of trouble, or at least kept trouble away from the Egg House, our matron was wise enough to understand that faith was not a thing to be forced.

That turned out to be a source of great relief for Cherie. The way she kept shooting nervous glances at me when Mrs. Wells brought it up, I was pretty sure she thought I’d force her to attend. But no, that would have been downright hypocritical of me.

Besides, there was a decent chance she’d spontaneously combust if she entered a holy place. Arceus offered redemption to all, but that was only possible when they weren’t piles of ashes, rainbow-KFC notwithstanding.

I returned from my jog with the children having left already. For that matter, the orphanage as a whole was abandoned. Mark said he was going to go hang out with his buddies and Derek was probably pushing baggies of weed. Leah must have dragged Cherie off to the mall, possibly so Cherie could legally buy her booze. I remembered overhearing them talking about something to that effect.

That gave me free run of the place. I looked around for things to do. The Egg House was a place of laughter and boisterous roughhousing. And, admittedly, of childish whining and bitching as well. Most of all, it was a place that felt lived in. Seeing it so empty was eerie.

Still, no one ever said I was someone who did not seize upon opportunities. I held out a hand and giggled. “Shift, rotom!”

Rotom were strange creatures. They were ghosts, but unique in that the spirits in question did not animate organic matter or objects of sentimental value. Technically, they did not animate any form of matter at all, instead choosing to inhabit balls of plasma.

Being both electric and ghost types, they had the power to possess any form of technology. They could even change their typings to thematically suit their “bodies.” When a rotom took over a microwave, it could use Heat Wave. When one took over a washing machine, it could use Hydro Pump. And when occupying a lawn mower, even the mighty Leaf Storm was on the table.

This had been an ongoing source of wonder back in my old life. A microwave, of course, lacked the power or internal mechanical structure to produce that much heat, never mind the wind to project said heat. Same for a washing machine. The less said about where those “leaves” came from, the better. And yet, rotom were capable of bending the laws of physics and common sense to make it happen.

Of course, many trainers pointed out that pokemon did that on the regular. But rotom were somewhat unique in that the internal mechanics of their bodies, being household appliances, were fully understood.

In other words, scientists knew exactly how a lawn mower worked. There was no mystery to be solved there. Or, there shouldn’t have been. But rotom collectively gave them the finger anyway.

It was good then that rotom were seldom malicious. They were spirits of mischief, with a love of pranks that rivaled even the most infuriating gengar.

I owed a bit of payback to Cherie and Mark: Cherie, for siccing the kids on me, and Mark, for being a hopeless simp and allowing it. I could think of no other pokemon better suited to exact my vengeance.

But first, I had work to do. I buzzed from appliance to appliance, fixing every problem I could find with a hefty dose of reality-bending spectral power. And there were many. Like most orphanages, we were never rolling in dough. The appliances we had were all purchased secondhand, or had been donations from this or that person to the church Mrs. Wells attended.

With each jump, information flowed into my mind without rhyme nor reason. I was no engineer, nor was any rotom ever, but I understood intrinsically how to manipulate every appliance I occupied. It was as if the appliance had become a part of my own body.

No, not “as if,” that was exactly what was happening. I knew how the cooling system in the refrigerator worked because it was as much a part of me as my own thumbs. I thought, and my body naturally obeyed. Filters, pipes, and wires cleaned themselves. Surfaces were polished to a mirror shine. And when I left, everything worked as if the fridge had just come off the factory floor. Aura was truly the most bullshit of powers.

I actually had to consciously stop myself from straightening out dents and buffing out the scuffs. I could explain everything else as me being in a spring cleaning mood, but those little physical imperfections were beyond me.

Job done, I headed off upstairs, to Mark’s and my room. He’d taken his phone with him, but he had left behind his MP3 player. It was an old model, though it had been new when he bought it four years ago. He spent months saving up for it by mowing lawns and delivering newspapers. Then, Mrs. Wells had surprised him by paying for half, saying his diligence deserved to be rewarded. Just looking at it made me smile.

Inhabiting an MP3 was a strange experience. There was no such thing as a “sound type,” but I found I could use Uproar, or maybe Hyper Voice when I stuck my ghostly head inside.

I browsed his music choices. Mark was the kind of guy who didn’t really have a favorite genre. He most often listened to hip hop, but that was more because he needed the beats for his break dance routines than because he enjoyed the music style more than any others.

I was pretty sure he hadn’t deleted a song since he first got this thing. He had everything from the Protectorate Pals theme song to that one solo from Bad Canary’s ill-advised rapper phase before she reinvented herself. And his collection was ever-growing. He told me about a buddy who used Limewire to download every song that came out.

That gave me an idea.

I didn’t know much about tech, but even I knew how sketchy those file-sharing applications could be. It wouldn’t be strange if a few of his more recent songs weren’t as advertised.

I quickly found his most recently downloaded tracks and deleted random snippets before replacing them with odds and ends.

“Brycen-Man! Hero of Icirrus! Come listen to the thrilling tales of the ice-cold BRYCEN-MAN!!!!”

“Hello? Brockton County Morgue & Pizza. Your loss is our sauce. Pickup or takeout?”

“Welcome to the Legacy of Steel walkthrough. Here, we’ll talk about the deeplore behind the eighteen shrines and Menagerie’s connection to the Yangban.”

“The cookiecutter shark has among the most powerful jaw muscles of any fish relative to its rather diminutive size…”

“I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause”

“Are you happy, maggot? Does listening to this pussy-ass song on this pussy-ass MP3 make you feel like a man, you dickless wonder? DROP DOWN AND GIVE ME FIFTY!!!”

I giggled as I exited his MP3. He wouldn’t know why all his newest songs were fucked, but that was okay. I knew, and this knowledge lit a warm, vindictive fire in my chest.

I moved on to Cherie and Leah’s room. Cherie, still pretending to be a college student, had a laptop. It was pastel-pink, with little bunny stickers on the face. It was also far more high-end than anything anyone else in the orphanage owned, though I’d eat my own armor if she actually paid for it. Still, that extra bit of tech gave me a lot of creative leeway.

For starters, I changed her laptop’s display and keyboard input language to Mandarin Chinese. Mark was always clamoring for a chance to talk to her. I didn’t want to hear him say I never did anything nice for my bro.

Second, I took a screenshot of her desktop. I then made that screenshot the background image before going to the settings and hiding all desktop icons. I had no clue how tech-savvy Cherie was, but I had a feeling the answer was “not very.” It’d take her a while to figure out what I did.

Lastly, just to be extra-petty, I hopped out of her laptop and stuck a piece of tape over the sensor of her mouse.

X

I left the house at around lunchtime. A part of me wanted to wander the city, looking for more people to prank. But as exciting as electric types could be, my day was largely spoken for already.

Dragon had agreed to speak with Carol Dallon about our budding drug empire and I wasn’t tactless enough to leave Amy to deal with that alone. Even with Sarah Pelham’s attendance, I had a feeling Carol would be difficult to talk to. Admittedly the temptation to ditch was strong.

We met in the Dallon family living room. There, we talked for hours and hours, so long that we had to order takeout for dinner.

We started with a brief recap of everything Amy and I had done. Everyone knew I could grow new berries and plants, but I talked about how I always felt I could do more, make berries with interesting effects. I told the two adults about how I’d gotten Amy’s help to verify that my creations were truly harmless, just as the PRT had done when I ran around creating urban gardens as meganium.

Then, Dragon chimed in with her own report. She told them about how we kept in contact following Coil’s case, and how I’d contributed other blueprints to her arsenal. She covered her own findings, confirming that the berries were harmless, and that she was looking to get them approved for use on a wider scale.

In the end, Carol had no choice but to agree. Amy was already in too deep. With attention from both Dragon and her own older sister, she couldn’t just shut it down on a whim.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that once she’d given us the greenlight, she went all-in on advising us. It was a weird dichotomy: On one hand, she hated that we hid our activities from her. On the other hand, she was like a rollercoaster. She’d climbed to the summit of whatever reservations she’d had, and now rode down to support us on inertia alone.

Though it was like pulling teeth, she recommended a lawyer for me: Quinn Calle. She spat the name like a curse. He was a “sleazeball whose only concept of values was money.” Funnily enough, she never once questioned his capability to represent me before the PRT, just his ethics, or lack thereof.

I took that to be a glowing recommendation. Surely, if even his enemies acknowledged him, he must be as much of a shark as Archie’s sharpedo.

By the time our meeting ended, Carol agreed to convert a part of her garage to a bonsai display. A few sunlamps over a shelf of berry trees would suffice, what with Amy being Amy.

She also agreed to set up a meeting between me and this Calle person as soon as was convenient. He was a busy man who likely wasn’t even in the city at present, what with his clients being parahumans from all across the country, but she said he’d likely make time for a client such as myself.

X

Brockton Bay, NH, USA
Monday, February 14, 2011
Type: Rock

I slept like a proverbial rock last night. Funny, because I had rock types today.

My revenge prank on Mark and Cherie had been received with mixed reactions. Mark rolled with the punches as he always did. Hee found some of the jokes funny and chose to keep a few of the songs.

He also didn’t know that I was responsible. He thought his MP3 playlist had gotten corrupted somehow. Or perhaps he did know and was smart enough to let sleeping houndoom lie. My bro’s always had a one-track mind when it came to his hobbies, but that wasn’t to say he was a fool. He’d been rooming with me since we were kids so if anyone would notice any changes about me, it was him.

He had no way of knowing exactly how I’d fucked with his music, of course. He only knew as much as any layperson when it came to pokemon types. But judging by the way his emotions fluctuated between irritation and awe whenever he saw me, he had his suspicions.

Where Mark was happy enough to just vibe, Cherie made no secret of her disdain for me. We were stuck in an “I know that you know that I know” state of impasse.

I felt her annoyance, and so felt smug. She felt my smugness, and so knew exactly who messed with her laptop. She could still use the Start menu to access her programs, but knowing I’d somehow frozen her desktop in place got on her nerves something awful.

I basked in her irritation all morning and savored it like a glass of the finest shuckle wine. Thus refreshed, I headed for school with a skip to my steps. She would escalate, she wouldn’t be Cherie if she didn’t, but I felt that this little prank war was a better use of her spite than any possible alternatives.

X

School felt different today. Oh, nothing was wrong, but there was an unfamiliar energy in the air.

My fellow students were likewise tense, in both a good and bad way. I felt a hefty dose of the usual teenage anxiety and boredom, but also joy, desire, nervousness, and even a bit of simmering resentment. With this cocktail of emotions came a great deal more whispering and giggling than usual.

I slid into my seat beside Dean. He usually knew what was going on. My lunch was a turkey and cheddar on rye, with a few slices of tomatoes, simple and easy to make. “Yo, what’s everyone fussing about?”

Dean greeted me with a bro nod. “Hey, Blake. What do you mean?”

“Everyone’s been whispering about something or other and I’m starting to feel like I’m missing something. Did something happen over winter formal?”

“Oh, right, you weren’t there.”

One of Vicky’s friends leaned forward with an eager grin, always happy to gossip. “Parker got himself arrested for hosting an afterparty after winter formal. Booze. Weed. Some uppers. You know how it is. A sophomore named Jonathan OD’d on something so the cops got called.”

“Jenna, that’s not your story to tell,” Dean chided with a frown. “We shouldn’t gossip about stuff like that. The school’s already on edge because of it.”

“Exactly. Everyone’s on edge because everyone knows, except Blake, apparently.”

I nodded slowly. That sounded like none of my business. I didn’t even know who Parker was. “That’s rough, poor kid. Is he alright?”

“Dunno. The principal announced an anti-drug campaign though, so we can expect a bunch of lectures and assemblies this week or next.”

“Jonathan’s fine,” Amy grunted as she sat down between Vicky and myself. “Saw him Saturday, around lunch. I just made sure there wouldn’t be any permanent damage but he’s still in the hospital.”

“You didn’t fix him completely?”

“Nope. I was here at winter formal on Friday and spent all Saturday morning cleaning up after Menagerie.”

Jenna looked at her in confusion. “You healed Lung?”

“Yes, but I mean all the other ABB guys Menagerie ran over to get Lung to come out. Oh, and Oni Lee.”

“I don’t think Oni Lee can be blamed on Menagerie,” I pointed out dryly. New Wave was the one who took him out. This was slander, damnit. “I heard it was your cousin and aunt who fought him.”

“He started it. It’s his fault,” Amy said definitively. “Anyway, I had something else going on and was pretty tired so I went home after making sure he wouldn’t have any complications. He’s not going to have a good time for a few days.”

“Oof, harsh,” Jenna hummed, in that way that teenage girls did when they didn’t really care.

“Who knows? Maybe a bit of suffering will convince him to not do drugs again.”

Vicky wrapped an arm around her sister. “Speaking of Menagerie, Ames~”

“No. Nope. Nu-uh,” Amy said flatly. Her eyes flickered to me with dawning horror. Clearly this was the other thing I’d missed. She tried to squirm out of her sister’s grasp, but that was a fool’s errand. “We’re not talking about this, Vicky.”

If I was the subject of conversation, I wanted to know about it. More to the point, I could feel Amy’s mounting panic. “Talk about what? What’s that about Menagerie?”

“Oh, you know. It’s Valentine’s Day,” the blonde said with a dazzling smile. “Don’t you think a guy should make his lady feel special today?”

I took a bite of my sandwich. That explained the generally more amorous atmosphere around here. The abrupt end to the afterparty was probably why some people were bummed or angry, but it was still Valentine’s Day.

Still, I didn’t let my thoughts show. I nudged Dean in the side. “Hear that, Dean? Go make your girl feel special.”

He laughed goodnaturedly. “I already did. I bought her chocolates and flowers. And we’re going on a date after school.”

“Fair enough. You know, I completely forgot it’s Valentine’s Day today.”

Amy slammed her head into the table. “Fuck my life…”

I smiled like butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. I said nothing, but she could feel the glee that wafted off me like heat from a magcargo. “Is that why people keep glancing at our table? They think Menagerie’s going to do something silly?”

Vicky nodded enthusiastically. She slammed a fist into her palm in unspoken threat. “He better. My baby sis deserves to have a special day!”

“No, no I don’t. I’m an awful girlfriend,” Amy groaned. She looked dead inside. “I hope he forgets about today. Like, hit his head repeatedly. Where’s Lung when you need him?”

“Don’t say that, Ames. Menagerie seems like a pretty thoughtful guy. I’m sure he’s got something special waiting for you.”

“I don’t want this. You can’t force me to celebrate Valentine’s Day.”

“Come on, you enjoy his antics.”

“Some. I enjoy some of his antics. And under protest.”

I couldn’t help it. I had to throw fuel onto the fire. “So, what were you hoping Menagerie does for Amy?”

“Nothing,” Amy insisted, glaring at me. “He’ll do absolutely nothing if he knows what’s good for him.”

Vicky laughed. “Don’t mind her. She secretly loves everything he does. Did you know? She started a bonsai collection because her boyfriend gave her a tree?”

“Aww, that’s so sweet,” I cooed with a knowing smirk.

“Yeah, I know, right? Dean and I were going to invite Amy and Menagerie on a double date but I forgot to mention it when I saw him on Saturday.”

“You could invite him after school. I’m sure he’d be thrilled.”

Dean, ever the peacekeeper, coughed awkwardly. “Now, now, maybe we should let Menagerie and Amy celebrate in their own way.”

Amy scoffed. “Yeah, listen to your boyfriend, Vicky. He’s smarter than you.”

“Thank you…?”

“Oh, god, what have you done?” Amy gasped, horrified. “See what you’ve made me do? You made me agree with Dean!”

I laughed and listened as the table threw out a few more ideas. One girl thought Menagerie should make Amy a giant bouquet of flowers. Another suggested a ride on the “pink unicorn.” A third thought it’d be romantic if Menagerie took her flying, maybe out over the ocean. It wasn’t lost on me that these were things they would have preferred.

With each new suggestion, I saw Amy’s shoulders droop lower and lower. She probably thought I was taking notes on how to best embarrass her, but it wasn’t as if I could do most of the things they were suggesting. If rock types were half as romantic as these girls thought, then Brock would have had a girl by now.

But then, I had an idea. It wasn’t like Amy was my girlfriend for real. Not everything had to be about her. Admittedly, I doubted I’d ever stop teasing her, but I could do that and contribute to the city, right?

Right.

Truly, I was a genius beyond compare. 

X

I placed the last parakeet into the cage and extracted my finger quickly. That one was especially ornery and really didn’t like being touched, not even by me. He pecked at everyone and had drawn blood from Stacy more than once.

He set his beady, little eyes on a female near the food bowl. With a final malicious chirp my way, he fluttered over to shoot his shot.

“You’re done, Blake?” Stacy asked as she came into the backroom. The clinic kept some of the more sensitive animals here because constant foot traffic near the lobby would stress them out.

“Yup. Cleaned the cage, refilled the food and water, and hid bits of fabric in the cage so the parakeets could find them for their nests,” I replied.

This was a weekly task, usually undertaken by either me or Stacy. We only had ten parakeets, but they required a lot of space so they had a whole five feet long cage to themselves. Cleaning it was a pain, especially because of the ornery bastard, so we usually flipped a coin for it.

Stacy tossed me a foil-wrapped pupusa, still warm from the toaster. “Catch. And good work today. Thanks for cleaning the bird cage.”

“No problem. Where’s the doc, anyway? Is he out today?” I set it aside and washed my hands in a nearby sink before picking it up again.

“Yeah. Valentine’s Day makes my parents all romantic and shit. He clocked out early so he and mom could have the afternoon to go on a date.”

“He’s the boss. Man can set his own hours,” I said with a noncommittal shrug. I unwrapped my pupusa and took a bite, humming with appreciation. “This is new. Good, but new.”

“We had mashed sweet potatoes yesterday so mom added the leftovers into the pupusas this morning. The filling’s sweet potato and roast chicken.”

“It’s nice. Sweet, savory, and a little smoky. Your mom’s an angel.”

“Yeah, anyway, we can close up. I finished with the other cages while you were dealing with the hellbirds.”

“It’s just the one that keeps biting you.”

“They all look the same. They’re all guilty by association,” she groused.

“Pretty sure that’s racial profiling, Stacy.”

“Don’t care, I hate them anyway.”

Author’s Note

As promised, I completely skipped the chat with Carol. The big takeaway is that she’s grudgingly on board, and that she wrote a letter of introduction to Quinn Calle, the fandom’s magic, fix-it lawyer.

Animal Fact: Spiders curl into a ball when they die because they don't have muscle fibers like we do. Instead, they move their limbs via hydraulic pressure.

They manipulate the pressure of a fluid called hemolymph (their equivalent of blood). Increasing pressure makes their legs extend, while decreasing pressure makes their legs curl inward again. This pressure obviously decreases when they die, which is why all spiders curl up into little, forbidden raisins when.