ACL: 37. Bundle up, it’s cold outside!

Chapter 37: Bundle up, it’s cold outside!

Brockton Bay, NH, USA
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Type: Ice

As I’d told myself, I skipped school today. It felt weird. As much as I bitched and moaned about the evils of government-mandated education past the age of thirteen or so, I was a fairly good student. Not top of the class maybe, but I did get into Arcadia via a writing scholarship.

Then again, if there ever was a good reason to ditch, I figured stopping Heartbreaker’s kids from wreaking havoc in the city was a good one. It was right up there with making an ice rink in defiance of Vista and starting random snowball fights with tourists.

I considered asking Amy to cover for me in school, but that would have been a bad idea. Unlike in my cape persona, I wasn’t actually close to her. In fact, because I was considered one of Dean’s friends, Amy supposedly didn’t like me. And I most definitely couldn’t ask Dean; the man didn’t know I was a cape in the first place.

That was a minor concern anyway. If an overly responsible teacher called, I’d have Cherie field the questions on behalf of the orphanage. I was dealing with her family drama so surely that wasn’t asking too much.

No, my current problem was one I’d never quite found the answer for: boredom. Plain, mind-numbing boredom. I'd forgotten how unpleasant stakeouts could be. Lisa did say that they would arrive between 11 AM and 1 PM from Route 101 west of the city, but I arrived early by several hours just in case. I found a spot overlooking an empty stretch of road several miles outside the city and settled in for the wait.

In the pokemon world, I used to amuse myself by singing children’s jingles incessantly in my head until Titania inevitably threatened to throw my sleeping bag into the river. Here, even the simple pleasure of driving my gardevoir up the wall was denied me. Truly, there was something wrong with Earth-Bet.

‘I think there’s something wrong with you, Blake,’ Victini said dryly. ‘It’s a wonder how that poor gardevoir put up with you for so long.’

‘Excuse you, I’m hilarious. And she ate my joy from teasing her so if anything, it was a mutual exchange.’

‘Of course. Do you want to have a little sing-along in your head?’

‘Eh, why not? None of that techno crap though.’

‘Didn’t you spend a lot of time in Nimbasa City while you were in Unova? Electronic music is quite popular there from what I remember.’

‘It is, and I hated it. Elesa was a fantastic hostess, but I couldn’t stand her gym’s music at all.’

‘Fine. Ooh, how about something from Virbank?’

‘That works.’

So that’s what we did. I nibbled on a bagel I’d bought from a local chain and talked to the voice in my head.

Turned out, we didn’t know that many songs in common so we ended up signing a bunch of holiday jingles to pass the time. It was how I found out that Victini had a ridiculously high vocal range, maybe because she was a mouse-rabbit-thing.

I wasn’t just fooling around. While we tried to deafen each other with our nonsense, I stretched out my newly reawakened senses. I was still a far cry from the aura master I’d once been, but empathy was the most basic skill available and I was making fast progress. Teaching truly was the best way to consolidate knowledge. 

Eventually, at roughly half past noon, I felt a pair of minds approach and I knew I had them. They were rather distinctive; all the Vasils were. It was something I’d begun to notice with Cherie, the sheer apathy of their minds.

As easy as it was to dismiss them all as sociopaths, that wasn’t strictly the case. The mind was a far more delicate and nuanced thing than armchair psychologists realized. They could feel some degree of empathy and affection, just like everyone else.

The best way I could describe them was that their minds were akin to the lasting injuries of a burn patient. Their nerves were deadened and numb, muted by a  lifetime of emotional abuse and hedonism. They sought out greater pleasures so that they might feel, only to exacerbate that numbness in the end.

Victini and I shuddered at that. It all sounded awful. A part of me wanted to help them, but I’d read their files. Not everything they’d done could be excused by their upbringing, nor could I house them at the orphanage. Cherie would very likely kill them in their sleep, if any truce between them even lasted that long.

‘You can’t fix everything,’ Victini said sadly. ‘Not even with my help.’

‘No, you’re right,’ I said tiredly. ‘But this world’s so fucked up. They should never have grown up this way at all.’

‘Will you target their father for this? Many of my siblings would consider this an act of aggression and retaliate accordingly. Rayquaza keeps going after deoxyses… deoxii?... whatever. Ray keeps going after them just because they happen to cross his domain.’

‘Isn’t that because deoxys are dangerous and might threaten whatever ecosystem they land on?’

‘Eh, I’d say that’s only part of it. It’s mostly the nope-rope getting territorial.’

‘Well, I’m not Ray. I’m not sure where I’d even start. Sure, I could kill Heartbreaker, but what would I do with all of his children?’

‘Work with the local humans, I guess. It’s something to think about.’

It was time to put my plan into action. Ice was my type today. It wasn’t the best for an alpha strike like this, but it wasn’t the worst, either. I’d just have to be careful not to freeze the highway solid.

As I felt them approach, I felt an indescribable urge to turn into a baxcalibur and eat their car. As funny as that could be, it would also cause multiple car accidents. Not to mention, Nicholas’ power was fear aura; people probably wouldn’t have healthy reactions to a baxcalibur under the circumstances.

No, I first needed to stop traffic. Then, I had to take down both Vasil brothers without giving them the chance to retaliate or take anyone hostage. I considered simply following them into the city, but I feared that would only make things worse. Their standard operating procedure included securing hostages as soon as possible and I wanted to avoid that.

“Shift, froslass,” I muttered quietly. If Amy asked, yes, I could in fact be subtle about this.

Becoming a froslass was a strange experience. For one, I was now female, at least biologically. It didn’t change anything practically speaking, but just knowing that I could now theoretically pop an egg out of my phantom, technically-undead crotch was a little bewildering.

Then there was the heat. It was now uncomfortably warm, as though the world had gone from a frosty February afternoon to the humid heat of summer. I immediately hated my life.

Made sense, froslass dwelt primarily in icy caves dotting the frosted peak of Mount Coronet. There, temperatures could dip as low as negative two degrees Fahrenheit. Brockton Bay was chilly, but we averaged about forty degrees in February during the day.

I waved my wide sleeves and tossed out a Hail. Then, a few more for good measure. Icy winds howled as snow swirled around me, blanketing me in a comforting embrace. Most people would probably turn blue in minutes, but I found the blistering chill to be as pleasant as the spring breeze.

I took a deep breath and breathed out. Powder Snow was the delight of children everywhere. It was wonderful, an on-demand winter wonderland that could be utilized by practically every ice type. Of course, a powerful ice type could do considerably more with the move, such as forming a snowy barricade as tall as a man and as fluffy as a cloud.

Soon, the first car ran into the snowdrift. The second bumped into the first, denting the bumper and probably shaving a few months of life off the brakes. But no one got hurt so that was all I cared about. Shouts of confused cursing filled the air.

Ghostly aura enveloped me as I faded from view. Despite what many people claimed, ghost type energy, sometimes called the Distortion, wasn’t strictly negative emotions. Nor was it fueled by negative emotions.

“Distortion” sounded like an odd description, but that was more literal than most realized. It was chaos. It was entropy in the material world, and discord in the immaterial. Ghosts were often drawn to negative emotions because spite and grudges lingered, literal distortions in the spiritual fabric that made up the sea of souls.

I sank into the road as if it were a still lake. Even through the murky haze of Distortion, the spike in malice and spite told me where to go. It felt a little like being underwater and following the ripples of a pebble that broke the surface.

“What the fuck is going on up front?” the man I recognized as Nicholas snarled. He was pitiful, maybe an inch or two taller than Cherie and about as skinny. He might have been considered good-looking, but his impatience and sadism wafted off him like the smell of rotting flesh.

“No clue,” Guillame responded. “I haven’t touched anyone’s senses, dumbass.”

I nodded. That was one more thing to consider. Nicholas needed to be removed before he could activate his fear aura, and I had to make sure not to touch Guillame. Otherwise, he’d blind me in a desperate escape attempt and things would get messy.

I wasn’t worried for me. I was a froslass; tracking their unique mental states wouldn’t be a problem. I was worried that if he could truly steal the senses of those he touched, he’d try to steal mine and seriously hurt himself. The human mind wasn’t geared to perceive like a pokemon, and most certainly not a powerful ghost type. If his power tried to forcibly mimic whatever it scanned from me, he’d likely have his brain dripping out of his ears.

I rose from beneath the car, my crystalline head breaching the asphalt like a whale rising for air. The violet haze lingered. The temperature dropped a few more degrees as a ghostly chill took hold. I saw the undercarriage of the car freeze over, forming jagged, white hoarfrost around the chassis.

“I-It’s s-so c-c-cold,” Nicholas stuttered.

“O-Out. I-It’s a c-cape. We’re s-sitting d-ducks here. P-Power o-on. Clear u-us a way o-out,” his brother said as his teeth audibly clattered.

I couldn’t have that. I rose higher, right between Nicholas’ feet in the passenger seat. My disproportionately large eyes glowed with a sickly, yellow light. I nailed the pair with Leer, the atmosphere and aura of my presence enough to make them startle.

“Hello, boys~” I purred with a menacing grin. They opened their mouths to scream but they couldn’t so much as gasp before a lance of Distortion sank into their bodies.

Confuse Ray was weird, even by the bizarre standards of pokemon moves. It was often compared to Supersonic because it had a similar effect in battle, but the two worked somewhat differently. In reality, Confuse Ray shared similarities with Night Shade, another ghost type move. Both manipulated ghostly aura to induce feelings of unease and paranoia.

The result was that unlike Supersonic’s more mundane form of disorientation, Confuse Ray tended to inspire fear, and did so in a way that didn’t always  have a biological explanation. It was why the move was so damn hard to resist. Pokemon could be trained to ignore discordant sounds with some practice, but almost no one could fight effectively while ghost type energies played merry havoc with their emotions and showed them illusions of their deaths.

While the two men were distracted, I used a quick burst of Ominous Wind to knock them out before dragging Nicholas like a sack of potatoes off the side of the road. He’d definitely use his fear aura as soon as he woke up again, but he had to have a range limit, all powers did. Just to be safe, I pulled him a few hundred yards to the side and formed manacles of ice around his hands and feet before ditching him in a forest clearing.

That left Guillame. I had no idea if his power registered those he touched passively. If it did, he could wake up and blind me even though he never consciously touched me. I doubted that’d be the case, but I had to play it safe so I transformed back and waited a minute. I took a seat on the hood of their car.

“H-Hey, which cape is that? And why the fuck is he dragging people off the road?” I heard someone shout.

“Is that a villain? This is a kidnapping right? Someone call the PRT,” another responded.

“No, that’s Menagerie. He’s a hero, took out the Empire and stuff. Haven’t you been reading the news?”

“Bold of you to think your sister can read.”

I ignored the subsequent bickering. My minute was up. I shifted into a frosmoth and covered Guillame in silk until he looked more like a ball of yarn than a man. Frosmoth silk wasn’t anywhere near as durable as ariados silk, but it couldn’t be broken by a regular human either.

Then, I began carefully rolling the silk ball towards his brother. I probably looked like a fuzzy, oversized dung beetle, with tons of wintery fluff, of course. I turned to the small crowd that had gathered and waved, my feathery antenna swaying gently in the breeze.

My little operation hadn’t taken long, but Route 101 was a highway and there were plenty of cars behind us. When they found out that I was a hero, and therefore unlikely to kill them, they all whipped out their phones to gape.

“Ah, hello there. This has been your unscheduled heroic kidnapping incident,” I said with a cheery chirp. Frosmoth were adorable. And a bit shy, but that could be suppressed by my usual personality. “Remember, drive safe, check your engine lights, and for those who are unfamiliar with this glorious city: Welcome to Brockton Bay.”

X

The average PRT response time for a confirmed major cape incident was around four to six minutes. I would later find out that “Menagerie mayhem” now qualified as a major cape incident. That was plenty of time however; I was long gone.

I flew through the sky as a robotic penguin. Or was iron bundle an owl?

I supposed it didn’t matter. This so-called “paradox pokemon” was another anomalous acquisition in my arsenal. It was from the same future timeline as iron valiant, the ill-fated attempt of a scientist to create the “perfect psychic.”

Thankfully, this little guy wasn’t designed for that, nor did it have any homicidal designs on humanity. It wasn’t designed for war at all, though its dual ice-water typing made it rather potent in combat.

Rather, its primary purpose was conducting meteorological surveys in arctic conditions. With powerful optical scanners, it could pierce any blizzard. With its thrusters, its active range could easily cover the northern ice caps. Best of all, being primarily a mechanical construct, Nicholas’ fear aura washed off me like water off a duck’s back.

The brothers had been wrapped in silk and locked in an enclosed, hollow ball of ice. That way, so long as I kept reinforcing the ice, I could fly as fast as I desired. Well, I did have to stop on occasion to give them breathable air, but that was fine.

“Last Christmas, I gave you my heart~ But the very next day, you gave it away~” my speakers blared. Was it torture to force them to listen to Mariah Carey? Probably, but they deserved worse.

Even flying at a sedate pace, barely above the speed of sound, I reached my destination in less than four hours. Considering I’d just flown cross-country to Los Angeles, I thought that was pretty good.

‘You know, you could have just asked me to teleport you all here,’ Victini said in my mind. ‘I mean, that Hollywood sign is pretty distinctive. I’ve never been here, but a picture and a pin on a globe would have sufficed.’

‘Yeah, but where’s the fun in that? I caught them so I may as well have some fun with them.’

‘Your fun is torturing them with horrible music for four hours?’

‘They deserve worse,’ I defended, ‘and Mariah Carey is a classic.’

‘You’re a sadist. You might actually be worse than Yveltal. At least she’d make it quick.’

‘Bacon-bird? You’ve met her?’

‘Pft. Please, please say that to her face. And yeah, Kalos and Unova went to war a few times, remember? Unova conquered a decent section of Kalos for a bit. I’m pretty sure there’s a castle made by an old Unovan king somewhere.’

‘Oh, yeah… I think I remember something like that. I didn’t know you fought for Unova though. Or Yveltal for that matter.’

‘I did for a short while, back when I thought the king at the time had a good reason,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Then, as you humans are wont to do, he decided to turn a limited, defensive war to protect Unova’s coasts into a full-scale invasion. He called it a counteroffensive, but he was ultimately just greedy, desperate to leave behind a legacy as a glorious general. I withdrew my support but he kept going like the bullheaded fool he was.’

‘Sounds rough. How’d the war end? I don’t remember reading much about it.’

‘Yveltal happened. So much death, and so close to the Legend of Death? Yeah, she woke up and she really wasn’t happy. I had to step in again to stall her while a plucky little girl from Kalos woke up Xerneas. The two of us managed to talk her down after that.’

That was a sobering thought. Human folly almost destroyed Kalos, maybe Unova as well. I wondered how many ancient civilizations had come and gone without anyone the wiser, with only the likes of Victini to remember them, if she cared to at all.

It was why regions and kingdoms so seldom went to war in my old world, and why even the so-called terrorists kept strictly to an unspoken code of conduct. By the time I’d been born, the Leagues had entrenched themselves, replacing old nations and regimes in favor of coexistence. When literal gods slumbered, it was best for humans to tread softly.

I hovered with my package above the Los Angeles skyline. I didn’t dare fly lower, lest Nicholas cause a mass panic out of spite. Instead, I blared more Christmas songs until someone checked in on me.

A few minutes later, I saw a gray figure rise from the PRT building. The stylized tower emblazoned across her chest was immediately recognizable, as was the gray, featureless helmet that everyone knew was there for show. Alexandria of all people did not need head protection.

I dipped my head. She was one of the greatest heroes in the world; even I had to pay homage to the best Earth-Bet had to offer. “Hello, Alexandria. I was hoping you’d be the one to show up. My name is Menagerie, an independent hero.”

I couldn’t see her expression, but I got the impression that she was studying me. “You are a hero from Brockton Bay, I believe. Congratulations on clearing out the Empire.”

“Thank you. I didn’t think you’d recognize me.”

“Your name has come up several times now. Powerful, impulsive, but with a good heart. You’ve flown a long way, and with passengers.”

“These are Nicholas and Guillame Vasil, sons of Heartbreaker. They were attempting to infiltrate my city in search of their siblings, who each ran away from their abusive father. I’ve decided to let the children stay, and that means these two can’t be allowed in Brockton.”

“So you’ve come to place them on my shoulders.”

“Yes, I’d heard that you were immune to all master effects. If anyone can keep them secure, I figured it’s you.”

“You heard right,” she said with a self-satisfied nod. “Are you certain the siblings they are looking for won’t cause trouble for your city?”

“I am,” I said, nodding firmly. “If they do, I’ll be the one to deal with them accordingly.”

“Hmm, very well. This is somewhat irregular, but I will accept this prisoner transport.” She flew over and grasped the ice cage in her hands. “Will that be all?”

“Well, not exactly. I was considering going after Heartbreaker. I read that he has several dead man’s switches. Is there a way to disable them?”

She shook her head. “No, not at present. Dragon keeps an eye on known thralls, but we are unsure if he has any more, nor can we arrest people simply under the suspicion that they might be victims.”

“I see… And what if I told you that I could potentially clear master effects?” I asked carefully. I couldn’t without some preparation, but there was a butt-flapping rabbit in my soul who could.

“That would be worth considering, but it is a question for the chief director of the PRT, perhaps the head of the Canadian branch. We would need to test and verify your claims before moving against Heartbreaker, of course.”

“I understand. Thank you for your help with these two, Alexandria,” I said respectfully.

“It’s a minor issue. You do good work, Menagerie. I look forward to the things you’ll accomplish in the future.”

Author’s Note

The average temperature of Mount Coronet’s summit is taken from Mount Everest. It really is negative two degrees there. Comparatively, Boston, the closest city to Brockton, has an average daytime temperature of about forty degrees in February.

Iron bundle has no lore. No one really knows why it was made, or how. I like the idea that it wasn’t made with combat in mind. Why is every cyborg in fiction a death machine anyway?

The Kalos-Unova war is canon. In Pokemon X/Y, there is a castle with statues of Reshiram and Zekrom in the garden. I’m just guessing at how it ended though. 

What’s this? A positive interaction with Alexandria? Truly, this must be the greatest AU. Or, you know, she’s not an idiot and doesn’t blanketly antagonize rising heroes for no reason.