Ghost Town

To start with, how dare you go and kill off a poor little vulpix and just brush it aside so callously! How heartless could you possibly be? ;~;

I mean, her death (and that of a poor little faun! how dare you brush that aside so callously! :V) did like define the whole future course of Jodi and Tacoma's lives, so there is that, I guess? Honestly, Helen didn't receive much characterisation, so I never had much of a chance to get attached to her before I threw her off a cliff in a pile of ice.

Lack of seriousness aside, the title of this chapter is an interesting one, to be sure. Starting off it is very similar to the last time we were treated to Tacoma's POV with the constant beating herself (she and Shane should share notes, tbh) and putting a negative spin on almost everything. There's one bit that stands out to me and prevents it from getting a bit tiresome and that's getting to see the reverse viewpoint of the Nick/Tacoma dichotomy. For all her cynicism and bad attitude, it does seem like Tacoma genuinely appreciates Nick and enjoyed his company. It was nice to see Nick's concerns for her were being reciprocated and that they felt a certain closeness. Even if it does pose the awkward question of what Tacoma should do about her current predicament. And it does serve as a catalyst for a bit of extra tension between Jodi and Tacoma, which is a plus, I suppose.

Depression is tiresome, honestly. Tacoma's thoughts are meant to be repetitive – but I have tried to keep each repetition brief, and sprinkle a few new things on the top each time, as with Nick here. Besides, we kind of had to get to stage where things start coming out into the open now – this is the third-to-last chapter, believe it or not – and I needed a way to catalyse the action.

I'm sure this doesn't come as a shock to you, but at this point I see some of Tacoma's self-destructive behavior and am reminded a bit of Gwyneth and some of the harsh thoughts she had about herself in Go Home. Not a complaint, because I think there are enough important differences between the two of them that Tacoma isn't coming off as some sort of carbon copy. Namely with the specter of a murderer hanging over everything and Tacoma trying to come up with ways to justify getting Jodi to bow out of this sleuthing stuff so it doesn't get her killed.

I mean, I'm still depressed and self-destructive – I'll admit that freely – so I'm hardly going to stop writing people like Gwyneth and Tacoma. Some kinds of depression have a way of partly erasing your personality, which accounts for a lot of the similarities between them, but hopefully there's enough of their original selves (that's a bad way to talk about it, especially with people who made the transition from child to adult while depressed and so don't really know what their “original selves” might be, but you get what I mean) in there still for it to make them seem like different people.

You finally give us the details on the avalanche. I wasn't expecting Tacoma to identify herself as the cause... only for things to loop around to something neither of them could've expected and turn the entire situation into an instance of poor communication kills (a friendship). I'll admit there's a certain cliché to the whole idea, but it did catch me off guard, so I can't complain. And I think the follow-up full projection thing, where the big, glaring issue in the room is talked through and Tacoma confesses why she went and told Jodi this stuff works as a good way to tie it all up together. It was also helpeful for me, because I didn't realize that Tacoma was trying to get Jodi to drop the investigation by making Jodi hate her until you spelled out for me. Which goes to show how good at picking up on things I am. :V

It's okay, I don't think Tacoma herself knew she was doing it until now! This is the first time she's actually formed a conscious thought to the effect that she has to make Jodi hate her enough to give up on trying to save her.

It is also very clichéd, I'm not gonna lie. But like, a lot of this story is, honestly, because it's just a bunch of my favourite ideas stuffed in a bag and shaken up into a new configuration, so if nobody's complaining about the rest of it then I'm hardly going to view this part as particularly terrible.

Personally I feel this line is out of place within the context of what’s going on.

Good call! I'll remove that.

I too like Tacoma also cares about Nick, enough that she seems to consider have him take care of the chapter house. Realistically Nick probably can’t handle this on his own.

Well, he definitely can't now that he's been arrested, no. :V Honestly, I think Tacoma wants Nick to do it so that she and Jodi don't have to, which is not the most noble motivation but which I can't really blame her for. She's a child. She shouldn't be involved in this.

Oh so we get more context concerning the avalanche. I find it odd Tacoma wasn’t informed about the Tyranitar but Jodi was. Either way though, Tacoma’s self destructive behavior was unpleasant to witness to say the least.

Don't worry, we'll learn how it was that Tacoma missed the memo! Like, Jodi wants to ask her this – because if nobody told her then something went really wrong with the process, you know? She should have been told – but in this chapter, she's really just calming her down enough to be able to talk to her, and it didn't feel right to add some more exposition after the dance scene. There's some more of this conversation at the beginning of the next chapter, which will be up soon.

THE HALVARSAGA

THE AMAZING HAWLUCHA MAN

I already have a feeling Tacoma didn’t want Jodi to go through the chapter house with her being hesitant several times before. It’s sweet that Jodi went to comfort her at the end, very cute interaction there.

I'm glad you think so! I've been turning that scene over in my head for months and months now, looking forward to when I would get to write it, and by the time I actually did come to write it I'd thought about it so much I couldn't see it clearly enough to be sure if it had the emotional impact I wanted it to. From the response it's got, across all the places where this is posted, it seems like I didn't need to be worried.

Thank you both! Sorry to be so brief – and late – in my responses, but this weekend has not been conducive to posting fanfiction. I'll get the next chapter up this evening.

GHOST TOWN | GO HOME
& assorted one-shots

girl-like-substance

the seal will bite you if you give him half a chance

Posts: 527
Pronouns: xe/xem

Ghost Town Jul 15, 2018 17:41:52 GMT

Post by girl-like-substance on Jul 15, 2018 17:41:52 GMT

THIRTEEN: HELLMOUTH
JODI

Truly, Jodi cannot dance.

Still. It was worth it just to see Tacoma's face. There's only so long you can be serious before it starts grating your mind down to the bloody core, and Tacoma had been serious for far, far too long. So: some music, some dancing, or rather some stumbling around the tower as Tacoma led and Jodi tried her inadequate best to follow. Tacoma laughed then, with the tears and the blood still wet on her cheeks, and Jodi knew she was going to be okay even when the alarm clock rang and Jodi had to leave.

That's all it was, really. She just … had to be sure. And she still says it's worth it, even if she might actually be dying right now.

Jodi opens her eyes to the shrilling of the alarm, struggling for breath. Everything hurts – leg, head, chest; it feels as if most of her organs decided to take advantage of her absent mind to try and break out of her body. She can't breathe for some reason, and then she opens her mouth and realises her nose has bled and blocked her sinuses.

“Lothi,” she wheezes, though not much sound actually makes it out. “Lothi …”

He is there, turning her head so the blood can run free, squeaking and dropping chocolate on the pillow. She tries to take it, fails, lies still again.

Six minutes, she realises, was probably a bit much to ask.

Lothian's humming intensifies, are you okay are you okay are you okay, and Jodi smiles.

“Actually feeling pretty good,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “Think she's all right.”

The hum travels from bone to nerve, changing in timbre until it is an unmistakeable but what about you?

“Uh. Feel like I might die? But pretty good all the same.”

A familiar soft whoosh, and Tacoma's face swirls into existence above the desk.

“Jesus,” she says, staring. “Are you okay?”

Jodi gives her a thumbs-up.

“Trying to be,” she mumbles. “Just gotta eat something.”

The clock is still ringing. Tacoma scowls, and without Jodi quite catching how switches it off.

“Nikki,” she says. “Sit her up, yeah?”

Clawed paws descend upon her shoulders, and the next thing Jodi knows she is being forcibly propped against the headboard. Nikki is not the gentlest nurse around, but at least she can lift her; Lothian struggles to get leverage if he isn't in the air.

“Oof,” she gasps. “Thanks, Nikki.”

“Should we get your parents?” asks Tacoma. “Lothian, go get―”

“No,” says Jodi, shaking her head, fumbling for the tissue on her bedside cabinet. “No, don't.”

“You need help―”

“It's my body,” says Jodi, too drained to mask her irritation. “Might be busted, but let me deal with it myself.”

Tacoma stares, mouth working silently, and bows her disc.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sure.”

Wonderful. There's all that effort Jodi put into cheering her up down the drain, then. But okay, it had to be said.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, pressing the tissue against her nose. “I'm just tired.”

“No, you're right,” says Tacoma, without looking up. “You're right.”

There is a conversation to be had here, but Jodi can't manage it right now. All she can do is sit and wait for the blood to clot and her head to stop spinning, and then finally she feels like she might be up to opening the chocolate bar. She drops it twice, but eventually she manages to make a little tear at one end, and after that the hard part is over.

Tacoma watches her the whole time. She probably doesn't mean to look this horrified, Jodi tells herself.

It's fine, anyway. Jodi gets that a lot.

“God,” she sighs, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “Okay. Okay, next time I'm only gonna go for five minutes.”

“There isn't gonna be a next time,” says Tacoma. “Please. Don't do that again.”

She doesn't say not for me. She doesn't have to.

“I'm pretty sure how I destroy my body is my own prerogative,” replies Jodi. “Ouch. No. Sorry, I didn't mean …” She sighs again. “I'm really sorry. Can I have a minute?”

“Sure,” says Tacoma, much too quickly. “Sure, as long as – as you need.”

Jodi nods her thanks, closes her eyes. The dark beneath her eyelids seems to rush and roar, like the waterfalls thundering in the pitch black of the Mount Mortar caves. There seem to be voices in it, just a little too quiet for her to catch; she resists the temptation to try and listen. You pick up things, when you send your mind out of your body like that. Giving them an opportunity to follow you back in is not advisable.

Lothian puts another chocolate bar in her hand. She's going to need more than that – when she can walk, it will be time to raid the fridge again – but it'll do for now.

“Okay,” she says, opening her eyes. “Okay. I'm all right.”

Tacoma and Nikki share a look. It's so unexpected that Jodi almost laughs.

“You sure?” asks Tacoma.

“I mean, it's a relative thing, but like it's always a relative thing.” Did that actually make any sense? Hard to be sure. Jodi's thoughts still haven't quite found their way back to their usual seats yet. “Anyway,” she says. “Thank you for the dance lesson.”

Tacoma goes a darker shade of purple.

“Um,” she says. “Was my pleasure.”

“Not sure when I'll get to put what I learned into practice, but you know. Glad I did it.”

“Dork.”

“Ah,” says Jodi, with her best sententious nod. “You're insulting me. So. Guess you're feeling better?”

She hopes she hasn't asked too soon. Tacoma's face does close a little, but Jodi senses this is more out of habit than actual annoyance.

“I dunno,” she says, voice serious. “I … I really liked that, Jodi. But. I still – I mean if I didn't …”

Jodi waits for her to finish, although she knows she won't.

“I know, Tacoma,” she says, after a few seconds have passed. “But I'm glad you liked it. I liked it,” she adds, and is rewarded with another spectral blush.

“Like I said,” mutters Tacoma. “My pleasure.”

“You dance much?”

“Not for a long time.” Tacoma hesitates. “I … you are sure, right? About the tyranitar?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Right, sorry, I don't – shouldn't doubt you.”

She takes a breath. “It was good, though. Dancing. I'm – grateful.”

It sounds like each word has to be pushed uphill before it makes it out her mouth. Pretty much what Jodi was expecting. The Patsy Cline and the dance was only ever meant to calm her down. And to make the most of an opportunity that might never come Jodi's way again, but the important thing is that it helped calm Tacoma down.

“It's okay to still be hung up on the avalanche thing,” says Jodi. “Really. I mean it.”

Everything about Tacoma's face and mind says she's about to argue.

“Yeah?” she asks, instead.

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “If you wanna talk more about it …”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean – I dunno.” Tacoma shudders, ripples spreading through her face as if through disturbed water. “What else is there to even say?”

“Well, um … sorry, but there is one thing.”

“Yeah?”

Wary, guarded. Tacoma is calm, yes, but that could change. Jodi has to ask, though, and this is still probably the best time.

“I kinda – sorry if this is the wrong time – but I kinda need to know how you missed the news. 'Cause if no one told you, that's – something went really wrong, you know?”

Tacoma's lip twists.

“Yeah,” she says. “Guess it did. I dunno, Jodi, I guess I just wasn't there when he said.”

“But you never left.” Jodi can see her in her mind's eye, through the haze of seven years and half a ton of painkillers: little Tacoma, tall even then but not as broad or strong, clinging to the chair by Jodi's bed like she was afraid someone would drag her away. “People kept saying you should go back to the Centre, but you didn't want to. I remember that. You lived in that hospital ward.”

“The ranger came there?”

She says it like she really doesn't know. How is this even possible? She had to have been there. She had to.

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “He did. Don't you remember?”

Tacoma shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “I don't.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I think. Or …” One of those patent Tacoma scowls, like she thinks she could intimidate the past into revealing itself. “I dunno. Was he tall? Light brown hair?”

Jodi's own mental image of the ranger is a little shaky; she wasn't at her best when he and his colleagues flew in to rescue her, or when he visited her in hospital. But this seems broadly right to her.

“I think so, yeah.”

Tacoma's frown deepens.

“I remember … I remember he visited,” she says slowly. “I think. Dunno why. I guess I assumed to see if you were okay?”

“That's when he told us, though,” says Jodi. “All of us. You, me, my parents. I'm sure of it.”

Tacoma sighs.

“Maybe you're right,” she says. “But I don't remember.”

“How, though?” Jodi is pushing too hard now, she can tell, but it's so difficult to stop. She has to know how this happened, how someone like Tacoma ended up so convinced she was the bad guy. “Sorry. I guess … I guess maybe you forgot. Maybe you didn't want to know if it meant it wasn't your fault.”

Tacoma snorts dismissively, but what she actually says is:

“Yeah, maybe. I think … I think I remember looking at the floor. Scared. Knew he knew it was my fault, and …” She sighs again. “I don't know whether I'm actually remembering this or just making it up,” she says. “Can we leave it? For now?”

“Sure,” agrees Jodi, relieved that they haven't started fighting again. “Sure.”

“Not like it matters,” says Tacoma. “Must've been a pretty dumb mistake, whatever it was.”

The words sound like they're meant to hurt them both. Jodi ponders this one for a little while, trying to come up with an answer that both of them can accept, and settles in the end for something that responds to what Tacoma means, rather than what she says.

“You know if you carry something really heavy for a really long time, it's hard to straighten up again afterwards?” she asks.

Tacoma rolls her eyes.

“Jodi, I know where you're going with―”

“So yeah,” she continues. “You thought you killed them and broke my leg for seven years, Tacoma. I don't think you should expect yourself to be able to put that down right away. But …” She shrugs. It's much harder than it should be to raise her shoulders, but it's the right gesture for the sentiment, and that means she has to make an effort. “Whether you want me or not, I'm gonna be right here to help you while you try.”

Tacoma blinks the kind of blink that's probably hiding tears. Jodi is reminded of the last time she saw Tacoma crying, inside the tower, and isn't sure she manages to hide the little stab of pain it sends through her chest. It took everything she had to stay calm and soothing then, seeing Tacoma – actual Tacoma, in her actual body – in that awful place, looking so … defeated. She'd imagined what Tacoma's existence was like before, of course, but nothing could have prepared her for that.

“Thanks,” she says. “I … God, are you sure? Are you seriously sure you wanna do this?”

The sound of her voice just breaks Jodi's heart.

“Yes,” she says, smiling regardless. “Absolutely.”

And though Jodi is absolutely certain that she isn't feeling it either, Tacoma smiles back.

Neither of them are okay. It's all right. They're here, together again after all this time, and though they don't even know what they're going to do with tomorrow when it comes they have that much at least. Nikki brings Tacoma over to the bed, and they sit there for a while the way they did when they were kids and small enough to both sprawl over it, listening to the radio. Sometimes they speak. Mostly they don't. Both of them need to rest, after everything.

After a while, Tacoma nudges Jodi with the edge of her disc and asks her if she'll go get something to eat. Jodi accuses her of acting like her mother in addition to sharing her musical taste; Tacoma laughs, albeit weakly, and says she won't ask again. So Jodi goes, Lothian following her with quick, nervous footsteps, and is caught in the kitchen by her father, who takes one look at her and orders her back up to bed immediately.

“What were you doing, Jodi?” he asks, plying her with bread and cheese and fruit. “You look like you died and someone dug you up again.”

“Homework,” Jodi lies. “I … wasn't in the right frame of mind. Sorry. Kinda messed up.”

A sigh, aggressive, exasperated.

“I know your work's important to you, kiddo, and I want you to do well, but I can't help but feel that the weekend after Tacoma's funeral isn't the right time.”

“I know,” says Jodi, with unfeigned shame. “I know.”

Her dad looks at her for a long few seconds, the crows' feet at the corners of his eyes crinkling in concern. He looks like he might say any number of things, but in the end he just tells her to eat and take a nap.

“Come down later, okay?” he says. “Because I'm going to have to tell your mother about this, and she's going to want to know you're all right.”

“Sure, Dad,” she replies. “I just need some rest.”

He nods.

“I don't need to tell you to keep an eye on her, amigo,” he says to Lothian, who puffs out his chest in a way that suggests he is the very best at keeping an eye on things in general and his partner in particular. “You too, Nikole.”

Less of a visible reaction from her, though even weakened by fatigue Jodi's empathy can pick up on something that might be agreement. Her father waits for a response for a while, evidently not noticing the shift in her facial ridges, then turns away awkwardly and says he'll see Jodi in a bit.

Tacoma reappears as the door closes, unfolding from the rock in Nikki's claws like a complicated umbrella. Her face is unreadable; her mind, dark.

“He's right,” she says. “And, uh, I'll be okay without you for a bit.” Pause. “Promise?”

She clearly doesn't mean to sound so uncertain about it, so Jodi pretends not to have noticed and just says okay instead.

“Got to send Lothian out first, though,” she adds. “I think we should still watch Nick, even if we're not breaking in.”

“But what― no, fine, okay. Guess you're right.”

That's as much resistance as she offers. Some corner has been turned here, Jodi realises. God. Tacoma probably wouldn't want to hear it, but she is so proud of her right now.

“What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing,” says Jodi. Then, aware that this probably won't be enough: “Dancing.”

That stops that line of enquiry pretty fast. Tacoma goes all stumbling and hesitant (and cute), and Jodi is able to send Lothian off without any further interruptions. He's much more reluctant this time, with his human looking so ill, but after making some enormously extravagant promises that neither she nor he really believe will be fulfilled, Jodi manages to get him out the window and flying off to Tacoma's house.

“Right,” she says, after a protracted and kind of embarrassing struggle to get the window closed again. “Definitely got to sleep now.”

“Yeah,” says Tacoma, as she falls back onto her bed. “Talk later, Jodi.”

Her attention never wavers. Right up until the moment she falls asleep, Jodi can feel it curling around her mind, as soft and dark and comforting as a summer night camped out on the trainer trails.

Jodi really isn't up to accessing Lothian's memories that night – not that she wants to just yet, anyway; she couldn't bear to put Tacoma through that. She comes down later, is told off and fussed over, and then wakes up at eight to her mother shaking her arm. Go to bed, chickadee, she says. Else I'm gonna be carrying you there.

The rest of the night is lost to her. In the morning, Lothian is back, though she has no memory of his return; at some point, he must have wedged himself artfully under the duvet with her, because when she wakes she has her arms wrapped around his angular shoulders.

“Huh,” she says, blinking sleepily. “Missed me, did you?”

He clicks his nose at her and buries his head in the curve of her neck.

“Yeah, I know.” She sighs. “I'm sorry, Lothi. I know you don't like to leave me.”

A tingle in her palate: Lothian is declaring he won't do it again. They're probably going to have an argument about this later today, when they have to send him after Nick for a third time, but fine. No sense getting him upset now.

“Okay,” she says, hugging him a little tighter. “Let's stick together for now, huh?”

Most pokémon don't like hugs – reasonable enough, when you consider the fact that they must feel like they are being captured by some big predator – but noivern have a habit of enfolding noibat in their wings, creating echo chambers so they can teach them the vocal signatures of the colony. They tend to keep doing it into adulthood, less to teach them than to signal to another noivern that they like them, and though Lothian has always been a little concerned that Jodi's wings seem to be missing a few vital components he accepts her hugs as somewhat clumsy attempts at the same behaviour.

It's always been a comfort. Helen would tolerate hugs, when Jodi was too young to know any better, but Ash never would. That the last surviving member of her team actually seeks them out is something rare and precious.

Lothian clicks his satisfaction at her answer and pulls his head back, his hug quota fulfilled. Jodi sits up and sees Tacoma on the desk, dark wisps of something fading away around her.

“Morning,” she says, leaving it unmentioned. It was already obvious Tacoma has been practising her ghost powers; it's also obvious she doesn't want to talk about it yet. “You okay?”

Tacoma hovers on the edge of a lie for a moment, and then backs off.

“Not really,” she admits. “Keep thinking about … everything.”

Figures. Jodi takes a moment to think of a good response.

“I need to shave and stuff,” she says. “Then I'm gonna go eat my parents out of house and home. Wanna come listen to the radio with me while I do it?”

Half-smile, hurt eyes.

“Yeah,” says Tacoma. “That sounds pretty good.”

And it is pretty good, honestly. Jodi's parents are working, and without school to get her up Ella sleeps late; the two of them have the kitchen to themselves, to listen to the oldies station that Tacoma likes and watch Lothian and Nikole argue wordlessly about who gets the last red apple.

They don't talk about Tacoma being dead, or about Nick, or about the capacity of ordinary people to kill their friends and neighbours over rocks. They don't talk about anything that cannot take place in a warm kitchen with snow on the windowsill and the smell of coffee in the air, and so when the phone starts to ring and Jodi goes out into the hall to answer it she does so without the slightest suspicion that anything might be amiss.

“Hello?”

“Hey. Is Ella there?”

Jodi doesn't recognise the voice, though that isn't unusual. She often struggles with recognising people on the phone; apparently it's an empath thing, a failure to identify a voice without the familiar psychic mindprint to go with it.

“I don't think she's up yet,” she says. “Who's calling?”

“Charlie.” Who on earth is that? Jodi knows pretty much everyone in town, and the only Charlie she can think of is Charlie Rackham, out in the Cedarshade development. But he's far too old for this to be him. “Charlotte Fay?” the voice clarifies, and suddenly Jodi gets it: Jessica's daughter. She was following her round at the wake, helping out.

She was also in the library that day, staring at Jodi while she went through the microfiche archives. And walking around town with Ella on Saturday.

Hm. There is something here, but Jodi can't quite see it yet.

“Okay,” she says. “Can I take a message?”

“Oh. Um – hang on, is that – is that Jodi speaking?”

Jodi can't tell what that is in her voice, not without her empathy. It might be fear.

She really hopes it isn't.

“Yeah,” she says, uncertainly. “Is something … can I help you?”

“Um, uh, no,” stammers Charlie. “It's – it's fine, really. I – actually I guess you'd wanna know too? I mean – uh – sorry, I was gonna say, I saw – and I thought since she's been following the whole investigation thing she'd wanna know – and, um―”

“Slow down a minute,” says Jodi, trying not to sound too defensive. “What's happened, exactly?”

“Uh … they just arrested him? Like Chief Wicke and Sergeant Winter, they came over with that – um, I mean they got him to come outside and open the garage, and there was like – apparently it was his car? They were looking for it? And―”

“Wait.” Jodi can feel her pulse in her chest all of a sudden, like the slow rumble of an incipient landslide. “Wait, Charlotte – Charlie – who did they arrest?”

“Oh. Right. Um – like Nick. Annie's brother? Nick Wroth. Yeah.”

The rumbling is louder now, so loud it cannot possibly be her heart. It sounds almost like the roaring she heard when her mother told her that Tacoma had died.

“Shit,” she says, unthinking, and hears as if from a great distance a nervous laugh come down the line. “Sorry. I didn't mean to swear. I'll … I'll let Ella know you called, Charlie. Thank you.”

“Oh, it's fine. I mean I was just going to say, you know, because – because I thought that – well, I mean …”

“Thank you, Charlie.”

“Ah. Um, yeah. Cool. Uh … bye?”

“Goodbye.”

Jodi puts the phone down without waiting to hear more, although the rumbling is by now so loud that she isn't sure she would hear it anyway, and walks back into the kitchen.

Lothian looks up sharply. Tacoma narrows her eyes.

“What's wrong?” she asks, suspicious, afraid, and Jodi tells her, and everything that they had shut out of their warm kitchen with the snow on the windowsill and the smell of coffee in the air piles back in again in an instant.

“Oh,” says Tacoma, her voice cracking. “Oh, fuck.”

He didn't do it. This is what Jodi keeps telling Tacoma, to try and reassure her. He didn't do it, and when the cops find all the evidence they'll come to that conclusion too. The fact that Jodi can't make herself believe this will happen doesn't do much for the strength of her argument.

They argue quietly, furiously, making sure their voices stay low enough to be concealed by the radio, and then when Tacoma's panic has blown itself out Jodi suggests diffidently that now might be the time to take a look at Lothian's memories.

“But you're not going, right?” asks Tacoma, the fear stealing back into her voice. “You won't actually – I mean you promised―”

“I did,” agrees Jodi, although the way she remembers it she never actually made it a promise. “We're not gonna do anything that you don't want to, Tacoma. I just feel like we need to know as much as we can before we can decide what we are gonna do. You know?”

Tacoma is boiling over on the inside, all her anxiety sublimating into anger that rolls off her in thick waves like the heat from a funeral pyre. Jodi expects at least a little of it to show, but all Tacoma does is nod.

“Yeah,” she says, with a certain unconvincing calm. “I guess that's … I hate that you're always right,” she adds, a little of the anger breaking free.

“It doesn't always feel so great for me, either.”

“What?”

Jodi shakes her head.

“Never mind. C'mon, let's go upstairs. Ella will probably be down soon anyway.”

Back in her room, tissues and chocolate at the ready, Jodi climbs stiffly back onto her bed – she's getting a little sick of it, honestly; she seems to have spent half her waking life this week lying down here – and sets up with Lothian. She puts her hands on his temples, feels him send the required vibes buzzing down her arms, and―

in the eyedark I must use the CLICK and wall and CLICK and oddbat and CLICK and colony of metalthings scattering CLICK sounds all tumblewise on their clustered sphereselves and I am very patient, am goodbat, CLICK and oh? oh? someone else is CLICK and CLICK and it is littlebat! fluttering away scared of me HELLO but it does not want to play and―

Forward, the staccato bursts of sound that make up Lothian's night exploding all around her so fast that the world is one huge silvery firework; nothing changes but for littlebat and featherbat, out to hunt but driven away by the presence of a dragon on the rooftops, and then―

door closing and CLICK and oddbat in the street, crawling all biped (balance! how!!) with CLICK lightningape behind, foot drags pain slow would be easy fight not fruit but sometimes meat good for growing babybat CLICK oddbat and metalthings hiding in eyedark but CLICK lightningape smells pauses CLICK oddbat in street I know sounds: come on too cold to be playing silly buggers like this CLICK lightningape follows ah partner! I have partner in homenest worried but swirlghost and bignik there so but wait CLICK another oddbat, tiny little featherbat riding so tiny!! HELLO but it is not listening―

She cannot pull herself away, but that's what Lothian's for; he knows what needs to be done by the movements of her mind and switches to vibration three immediately, disrupting, cancelling, gently sliding her out of his skull and back into hers.

“Augh,” she mumbles, wiping blood off her lip. “God …”

The room comes slowly into focus, Ella's painting and the shelves of books swimming through one another until they find their places on the walls.

“You okay?”

Tacoma's voice.

“Sure,” says Jodi.

“Liar.”

“Yeah, okay. You got me.”

She sits up, stiff and painful, and starts to fumble open the chocolate bar. She's going to need more snacks soon. Maybe some dried fruit this time. Jodi likes chocolate, but she feels like she's eaten half a cacao tree this past week, and she could use a change.

Three sets of eyes on her face: Nikole's red glare, Lothian's anxious yellow gaze, Tacoma's opaque green lozenges. Jodi ignores them as best she can, eats, and settles back against the headboard.

“He found it,” she says. “The chapter house, I mean. It's kinda difficult to tell from the memory 'cause it's all in echolocation, but … I think it's in the store.”

She closes her eyes, sees again the strange shadow world of Lothian's ears open in the dark beneath her eyelids. It isn't what it's really like – Lothian doesn't experience this visually – but it's as close as her brain can get to the way his functions. Even that took years of working with him to achieve. Jodi is not a great telepath, and accessing sense-data your brain can't read is difficult even for those who are.

“Yeah,” she says, watching silvery lines shimmer in the night, describing rooftops and walls. “From the sound of it … I think that's the florist's? Where Lucy Fisher works? So. Yeah. Around the corner there … that has to be the store.”

“Nick knows that?” asks Tacoma. There is an urgency to her voice that makes Jodi want to offer her a hug, though right now she's certain she can't even get up. “He knows where it is?”

“Yeah. I think he does. And also – the reason he knows is because he saw some people leaving.” She frowns at the echo-picture, trying to figure out who it is she's looking at, but it's hopeless. “I can't tell who from the memory, though. Except the first one. That thing behind him – I'm pretty sure that's an electivire. So that's Harry, I'm guessing.”

“Right.” The information seems to go in one ear and straight out the other; Tacoma's mind is still full of that first thought, casting a long, dark shadow over everything she's feeling. “So Nick knows, right? And he can do it? If we clear his name, he can do whatever it is he's planning?”

“I think so.” Jodi pauses. “Wait. If we clear his name …?”

“If we had evidence,” says Tacoma. “I mean, there has to be something in the chapter house―”

“Tacoma, I just promised you that I wasn't going to go there―”

“―and if we could tell someone―”

“Tacoma!” cries Jodi. “C'mon. Calm down a sec, please.”

She reins herself in with a visible effort, her disc juddering as it slows.

“Right,” she says. “Right, I just – Christ, Jodi, you know he'd hang for this. You know?”

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “I know.” She hesitates, wondering if she's supposed to ask just yet, but before she can decide Tacoma continues anyway.

“Right now all the evidence points to him,” she says. “The car, the cabin – all that weird stuff he left in there, all the lies about being in Alola. None of that looks good. So …” She takes a breath. “Would your parents believe us if we told them?”

“Yes,” replies Jodi, without a second's hesitation. “If you showed yourself to them, then they definitely would. But … you know they'd just go to the police, right? We can't ask them to break into the chapter house.”

“Oh. Shit. Of course.” Angry sigh. “Sam and Gabriella?”

“I think they might,” says Jodi. “But I don't know if I can ask them to do that, Tacoma. You know how Sam and Nick investigated the chapter house, way back when? I think they both got found out, and that's why they had to leave town. If people found out that Sam was investigating again … well, I don't think they'd give her the option of leaving this time.”

Tacoma's disc stands still for a moment.

“You think they'd kill her?” she asks.

“I do,” says Jodi. “Maybe Gabbi, too. And I'm really sorry, Tacoma, I can't ask them to take that risk.”

“No,” says Tacoma, sullenly. “No. Guess you can't.”

The silence feels like a living thing, some thorny monster sitting in the room with them and hissing its fury whenever anyone tries to speak. For a long time neither Jodi nor Tacoma can meet each other's eyes, busying themselves in picking fluff from Lothian's fur or in watching Nikki scratch dead skin from her armour, and then because it is her job to take on this burden Jodi steels herself and speaks.

“Okay,” she says. “Tell me what you want, Tacoma. I'm not gonna do anything without you.”

“Course you aren't,” snaps Tacoma, her anxiety sublimating into anger. “Sorry. I mean. I mean, fuck.” She moves her mouth as if she's grinding her teeth, although Jodi isn't sure that's a thing she can do any more. “Why is it … why?” Plaintive now, her mind setting thin, sour notes chiming through Jodi's own. “Why?”

Get up, Jodi tells herself. Hug her. But it's the same old story, chronic pain, mutant brain, and after the weekend she's had she just can't seem to make it off the bed.

“Because they've been doing this for years,” she says, hoping her voice is enough. “They're the ones with all the power and we're just two kids. And that's never gonna be an easy match-up.”

She doesn't mention that the last time two kids went after the chapter house, both ended up being run out of town. That feels like it would be an unhelpful thing to say, and she's sure Tacoma knows this anyway.

“I … have to clear Nick's name,” says Tacoma. “I can't let him be … I can't. So. I guess I'm going after all. But you should―”

“If you go, I go.”

“I can't die. You―”

“―will never forgive myself if I let you go alone.” Jodi raises an eyebrow. “Besides. Nikki's tough, but you're gonna want someone with hands for this, Tacoma.”

“Jodi―”

“Can't have it both ways, Tacoma. Either we're friends or we're not. And if we are, I'm not letting you go into the lion's den by yourself.”

“Friends. Right.” The jagged green slash of Tacoma's mouth twists like a scar under strain. “Uh … thanks, Jodi. I'm sorry it worked out like this.”

“Hey, no need to talk like we've already lost,” says Jodi, with an optimism she can't quite make herself feel. “If they had a meeting yesterday, they're probably not gonna have another one tonight, right? Even if they do have one, Harry and the others left by nine, so if we go later, it'll be fine. We'll be in and out before they even notice.”

“You don't believe that.”

Jodi's smile fades.

“No,” she says. “I guess I don't. But … but I'm hoping it, anyway. Is that good enough for you?”

Tacoma laughs. It is not a very pleasant sound.

“Not sure,” she says. “Guess it's gonna have to do.”

It's simple, really. Any teenager worth their salt is good at sneaking out, and Jodi is still a teenager for a few more days yet; she takes a long nap in the afternoon, is appropriately sombre and withdrawn at dinner when her parents ask if she's heard about Nick, and then at one o'clock she wakes Lothian and Nikki and makes her way out of the house.

Simple. Most of the time, Jodi is annoyed at the way people look at the cane and underestimate her, but sometimes it plays to her advantage. She's been doing this for years at this point, and as far as she knows her parents have never even dreamed that she might be capable of such a thing. It's going to be a shame to finally tell them, when all this is over and Tacoma can safely reveal herself, although she also kind of wants to see the look on their faces when they realise.

Thinking about this is less uncomfortable than thinking about what they're about to do, but as they make the long walk to the store, following Lothian through the freezing dark, it gets harder and harder to keep it up.

Tacoma says nothing, of course. She doesn't have to (streaming from her mind: relief that Jodi is coming with her; fervent hope that she can save Nick; shame at making Jodi promise not to come and then dragging her here anyway; fear that Jodi and Nikki and Lothian will die; a vast and pitiless anger at the world in which any of this is a thing that can happen), but Jodi can't help but feel it would be nice if she did. The silence is making this much creepier than it has to be.

Lothian hoots softly, and a moment later something buzzes at the base of Jodi's neck: stop, he says, we're here.

“This is it,” she says, squinting ferociously through the dark and not seeing much except a vague impression of something big in front of her. “Apparently.”

I see it. Tacoma's voice is clipped, curt. Jodi looks around instinctively, and sees a glowing purple crack in the surface of the night, gleaming dully on Nikki's claws. What's going on inside that rock? Don't need light to see, if I concentrate. And …

Jodi catches a glimpse of indistinct movement out of the corner of her eye, and a moment later, something clicks.

Like turning your alarm off, says Tacoma. You know what the Pokédex said. Beat up a guy with his own shadow.

Jodi blinks. She was expecting to have to get Lothian to do this, honestly. He can scream a door off its hinges, or – with a little more time – vibrate the bolt in a lock till it shears in two. Usually he just does this to follow Jodi into rooms he's been shut out of, and so it's something she tries to discourage, but she's always figured she might have a use for it some day.

“You …?”

Unlocked it. The crack glows brighter for a moment, fades again. Not hard. Shoved a shadow in and twisted.

“You can do that?”

Yeah. Can we just get inside?

“Right, sorry.” Jodi pats the door until she finds the handle, pushes it open and steps aside to let Lothian take point. He gives a vibrato all clear, Jodi passes the message on to Tacoma, and the next thing she knows, she's shutting the door behind her.

They did it. They actually broke in.

Jodi takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly through her nose. She has done a fair few things in her life that are technically illegal: underage drinking, some trespass, a couple of experiments with drugs during her first year at uni. But this is the first time she's done something whose consequences hang over her in quite this way. If she's caught … well, okay, she might just get murdered by secretive cultists, but even if she isn't, things won't ever be the same again. This is Mahogany, after all. It's a town with a long and very invasive memory.

Bloody hell. At least it's warmer in here..

“Okay,” she whispers, although she isn't sure Sarah or Roy would ever be able to hear from up in the flat. “Let me get the torch―”

No, says Tacoma. Not yet. The glow intensifies again. Windows. No curtains. Someone could see the light.

“Okay. Where are we?”

Corridor behind the shop floor, I think. Trying to remember if Everett ever said anything …

“It's fine.” Jodi reaches out into the dark and finds Lothian's ear with her fingertips. “Lothi? Time to do what we talked about.”

She hears an affirmative hum, and the scratching of claws on floorboards as he makes his way down the passage. The plan was always to avoid going upstairs, if they could; the chapter house might well be in Sarah's flat, or even be the flat, but sneaking in there is a completely different proposition to skulking around on the lower level. Before they attempt that, they need to make absolutely sure that there isn't a hidden room on the ground floor, or an entrance to a secret basement.

Fortunately, you can't hide a room from Lothian and his sonar. If there's a space behind a wall, he will find it. Jodi waits there in the dark, trying not to shift nervously on her feet; after a moment, her eyes adjust, and she starts to see the faint outline of a window behind the curtains. Not quite such a moonless night after all, it seems.

Jodi, says Tacoma.

“Yeah?”

I'm gonna come out of the rock.

“Okay.”

She appreciates the warning. If Tacoma had just jumped out, in the middle of the dark and the silence, Jodi thinks her heart might have stopped.

“Right,” says Tacoma, shaking out her disc. “Now I can see better. Lift me up a bit, Nikki?”

A soft grunt from somewhere in the shadows, and Tacoma rises as if by magic; without the glow of the crack, Jodi can't even see Nikki's claws.

“Yeah, I recognise this,” mutters Tacoma, her eyes glowing a brighter shade of green. “Door to the shop floor. That way to the stockroom in the back. Up there” – she motions into the dark with her head – “that's Sarah's flat.”

Jodi starts to fidget with the handle of her cane.

“Please don't remind me,” she whispers. “I'm trying not to think about that.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Tacoma withdraws a little, thread collapsing back into the rock. “It's, uh, my first time too. Breaking in someplace, I mean.”

“I kinda hoped so.”

Thin, nervous laugh.

“Yeah,” says Tacoma. “Yeah.”

Time ticks by. Jodi looks at her watch without thinking, only remembering that it was her old one that glowed in the dark when she finds herself unable to read the face. How long has it been? Probably only a minute or two, but it feels like hours. Where even is Lothian? She can't hear him any more. He would call if he was in trouble, right? Yes. Yes, he's just being stealthy, is all―

Found something, he announces, and Jodi starts so hard she almost trips over.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” she says, trying to catch her balance against the wall. “Just Lothi. He's got something.”

“Where?”

“Dunno. Hang on, let me …” Lothi? Come show me.

Finally, she can hear him again: there's the scratching, there's the familiar swish of his tail.

“Hey,” she whispers, bending down and feeling around for his head. “Hey, Lothi.”

He nudges her hand for a moment, broadcasting a soothing vibe, then turns and taps his tail against her leg.

“Okay,” she says. “Lead the way.”

Down the corridor. Around a corner – Jodi is glad of her cane; if she didn't have it to probe ahead before she takes a step she would have walked into the door frame – and into a space that feels in some indefinable way larger than the one she just left.

Nikki snorts, and Jodi steps carefully to one side to allow her through.

“Stockroom,” says Tacoma. “Only window is on the other side of those shelves, I think, and it looks out onto the yard. So … you're okay to put the torch on, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Kinda hard to be sure. But, um, I think so?”

“Okay,” says Jodi, trying hard to be calm, to put her empath training into practice and keep her own nerves and Tacoma's separate. “Here, um, here goes.”

The light is dazzling, after so long in the dark. Jodi points it down at the floor and looks away, eyes watering; after a couple of seconds, she brings it up and her eyes down again, and sees rows of cans ahead of her. Corned beef, mostly. Some tomato soup. She has no desire to read the labels but they push their way into her head anyway.

Lothian looks up at her, pupils shrinking to pinpricks in the sudden light. Absolutely fearless. He's concerned, because his human is afraid, but he has no idea where her fear is coming from, no real reason to feel it himself.

“Hey, there you are,” she says. “That's better. Why don't you show me what you've found?”

He squeaks quietly and stalks off between the shelves, past unopened crates and still-wrapped pallets. It's probably Everett's job to unpack this stuff, Jodi thinks, and immediately wishes she hadn't. She follows, doing her best to put that line of thought from her mind, and swings the torch back and forth across the shelves, trying to assemble the circles of visible room into a coherent whole. How big is this room? Hard to say, and she doesn't want to raise the torch too far and shine it out of the window by accident.

Lothian stops. She lifts the torch a little, and sees the gleam of metal shelf fittings.

“Here?”

Apparently so. Lothian rears up and grips the edge of the shelf, then drops back down to all fours.

“O-kay,” says Jodi. “Do we have to move that?”

“Nikki can,” offers Tacoma.

“I know, but that feels like it would be loud. You know?”

“Oh. Crap. Should've thought of that.”

Jodi runs her fingers over the shelf, searching for some kind of catch. People come in and out of here all the time, right? There has to be an easy way to move this thing.

“Help me out here,” she says. “Tacoma? Lothi? Some kind of secret switch or―?”

A floorboard creaks upstairs.

Tacoma's eyes meet Jodi's.

“The light!” she hisses. “The―”

“I know!” Jodi replies, fumbling frantically with the torch. “I'm trying, I keep missing the bloody―”

The creaking develops into footsteps. Where are the stairs? Are they heading for them? And where the hell is the switch for the torch―?

The footsteps stop.

Jodi wasn't sure it was possible, but this is actually more worrying than if they'd kept going.

Something dark crawls over the surface of the torch, and it clicks off. Jodi starts again and this time she does trip, but Nikki reaches out with unerring accuracy to catch her as she falls.

“Thank you,” she mumbles, too busy listening to pay attention to her words, and then―

A toilet flushes, and the footsteps creak their way back across the ceiling as Sarah makes her way back to bed.

Silence. Jodi clicks the torch back on.

The corner of Tacoma's mouth twitches.

“Your face,” she mutters, an unstable bolt of raw affect ricocheting around her mind, and whether it's her own emotion or just her empathy mirroring Tacoma's Jodi feels the same burst of hysterical laughter welling up inside her. For a couple of long and painful minutes she and Tacoma are stuck choking on twin giggling fits, shaky and breathless and terrified, and then at last it's over and Jodi can gulp down a frantic breath of air.

“Oh God,” she gasps. “Oh God, I … I don't think I'm cut out for this.”

“Me either.” Tacoma swallows. “Christ. I thought she was gonna … I mean I guess I could have, uh …”

She can't seem to finish. Jodi is okay with this. She didn't really want to hear how that sentence ended.

“Look, I think I saw something anyway,” Tacoma says quickly. “There. See?”

A little purple flame appears beneath a shelf just above Jodi's head. She looks up, sees a square cut into the metal.

“Right.” She hesitates. “D'you, um … d'you think it's gonna be loud?”

“Jesus. Don't jinx it.”

“Right.”

Breathless pause. Lothian sweeps his tail back and forth impatiently; Nikki sniffs and starts eyeing up the food.

“So are you going to …?”

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “Yeah, I am.”

She presses the button. Something clicks once, then twice, and then on the third click the wall swings silently inwards and takes the shelf with it.

The four of them peer into the darkness beyond.

“Stairs,” says Tacoma, eyes glowing again. “Going down.”

She glances at Jodi.

“Ready?”

Jodi supposes she could lie about it, but Tacoma would never believe her.

“Nope,” she says, stepping through the doorway and angling the torch down the stairwell. “But it's okay, I'll go first.”

As she starts moving down, step by painful step, she can feel Tacoma's gratitude at her back, burning as warm and bright as a fireside in midwinter; and despite herself, despite the dark and the murderers and the almost-being-caught, despite everything that has gone wrong with the world so that this night can even happen, Jodi finds herself starting to smile.

The stairs go down for far longer than seems reasonable or even possible, the winter cold thickening again with the dark and the dust, and when they finally make it onto level ground again, the torchlight picks out huge slabs of time-smoothed stone beneath their feet.

“What is this place?” murmurs Jodi, flicking the torch around. The walls look just as ancient: pillars with their flutes worn out, the stones in between pushed half-out of position with the weight of the years and the town above. No decoration; the pillars have no capitals, just push straight into the ceiling. Aggressively functional. Someone built this corridor to last, and not much else.

“Dunno, but it's been here a while,” says Tacoma. “Longer than the store has, for sure.”

“Longer than Mahogany has?”

“Yeah. Probably.” Nervous sort of smile. “Guess there really is a secret fortress down here after all.”

“Yeah,” agrees Jodi. “Just didn't really think there'd still be people hiding in it.”

Lothian's ears swivel on his head, mapping the darkness. Jodi doesn't think the corridor is small enough for him to be scared – he's fine with houses, after all, and even cars as long as Jodi's with him – but something is bothering him. The dust? His nose is sensitive, even for a noivern; Jodi never takes him anywhere without also taking his special bat antihistamines. They're in her bag now, if he needs them, though it's always difficult to get him to take them without some fruit to hide them in.

She glances at Nikole, and sees her tense, one claw cupped around Tacoma's rock and the other held away from her side, ready to swing. Not just allergies, then. There's something else here. Something that the pokémon can sense.

“What is it, Lothi?” asks Jodi. “What's the matter?”

He scratches hesitantly at the floor for a moment, then sends a single vibe thrumming through her nervous system:

Big.

“What'd he say?” asks Tacoma. “You look, uh … well. What'd he say?”

“Big,” says Jodi. “Just … big.”

A brief pause, during which both of them try not to think about the possibility of a pokémon-based security system.

You could fit a tyranitar in here. Not one of the really big ones – the ceiling's pretty low – but given the starting point, that isn't really very much comfort.

“Maybe he meant this place,” suggest Jodi. “Not, you know, something that lives here.”

“Yeah,” says Tacoma. “Maybe.”

Jodi starts to fidget with her cane, rolling the handle between her fingers.

“We have Lothian and Nikki,” says Tacoma, twisting uncomfortably on her thread. “Right?”

“Yeah,” agrees Jodi. “We do.”

When was the last time Nikki battled? Given what Tacoma said, Jodi can't imagine it was any time recently. And Lothian hasn't done more than scare people off for many years now; he didn't seek out human partnership for strength, as so many pokémon do, and so he hasn't needed Jodi to keep him in good battling form since her journey ended.

Can't back out now – and can't hang around being afraid, either; stand still too long and she might never move again. Before Tacoma can think of a response, Jodi starts to walk, and because she goes so too does Lothian, and Nikole behind her, padding along with a lightness of step that speaks to a readiness to pounce.

The corridor yawns ahead, dark and empty. Once or twice Jodi thinks she sees something, someone, but Lothian never reacts and so each time she tells herself it's nothing and carries on like everything is fine. Which it isn't. But you know.

God, she wishes she had something to put on the end of her cane. The dust muffles it a little, but the way it clicks on the stones is really starting to get to her. Not least because it's the sort of sound that carries in the still air, and somewhere in here is something that Lothian can only think to describe as big.

She never really noticed how ominous that word is before.

“How the hell has nobody found this already?” asks Tacoma, voice hushed. “This place is huge. And if it really is the fort, it has to be older than the water mains, right? So how didn't they find it when they dug those …”

“Not sure,” says Jodi. “Maybe people have found it, and, um … you know.”

She regrets saying this as soon as the words have left her mouth. So does Tacoma, although she doesn't actually say anything.

“Anyway,” says Jodi. “Um, look, there's – crap, is that a fork?”

Worse: a crossroads. Jodi looks for footprints in the dust, but it looks like a lot of people have passed through here; there are a huge confusion of shapes and scuffs in the dirt, not all of which look like they were left by human shoes. Partners have come here too. Hopefully that means that the big thing isn't loose, whatever it is; Jodi doubts the pokémon would be too happy with some giant predator on the prowl.

Nikki sniffs the air, like she thinks she might be able to scent her way to their destination, but all that happens is that she sneezes.

“Bless you,” says Jodi, trying to lighten the mood a little. “So. Lothian? What direction?” He cocks his head to one side, thinking, then looks back the way they came. “Yeah, okay, I'd like that too, but we can't turn back now. Which way is the big thing?”

He tenses, and she feels his no vibrating deep inside her.

“Lothi.” She plants her cane, bends down as far as she can. “Lothi, listen, I know you're worried but you have to trust me, okay? We have to do this.”

He fluffs up his mane and lashes his tail a little – but it's all just to make her wait; it's his prerogative as her partner to get snippy when she tries to do something like this. He concedes, as they both knew he would, and after some disconsolate squeaking flicks his ears forward again and slopes off down the right-hand path.

“Thank you,” says Jodi, and gets a vibe in response that is the exact equivalent of a human harrumph.

It's not quite enough to make her smile, but she thinks about it, and given where they are and what they're doing that's more than she had any right to expect.

The footprints get thicker; the dust, thinner. In some places, the stones even look shiny, worn by decades (centuries?) of passing feet. They must be getting clo―

There's no warning whatsoever. The pain comes from nowhere, screaming out of the dark like a childhood nightmare, and cuts her legs out from under her in one savage motion. Her cane slips from her hand – the world spins – and she's lying on something warm and bony, clutching limply at her belly and trying breathlessly to scream.

“Jodi? Jodi, are you okay?”

Tacoma is spilling out of Nikki's claws, grown huge and shadowy with her panic. The bony thing wriggles beneath her, shifts her gently onto the stones, and then everything vanishes into a musky dark and the thin whine of Lothian's disrupting vibration cuts through the hailstorm in her skull.

Her training knows what to do, even if right now she doesn't. Jodi leans into the vibe, feels it echo and re-echo through her mind, and as the pain begins to fade remembers that she exists.

“Aah!” she gasps, trying to sit up and realising that the darkness is Lothian's wings. “What did they do to you?”

Lothian squeaks and rolls off her, clouds of dust rising all around him. Jodi barely even notices; the pain is fading, but it's still there, a hunger so deep it feels like her stomach has been scooped clean out of her abdomen.

“The big thing,” she says, breathing hard. “It's – Tacoma, they're starving it. It's lost and alone and it's so hungry and―”

“Jodi,” says Tacoma. She is still larger than she was, her fog stretched thin and wide into a disc half as large again as usual. “Jodi, what the hell is going on?”

Her fear is distant, drowned in the bigger emotion of the creature raging in the bowels of the chapter house. It is old – so old that even the sliver of its past Jodi is able to sense makes her head hurt – and it is as far from human as anything Jodi has ever encountered, but pain transcends species. And this thing is in a lot of pain. It's been trapped here for a long time, long enough that it barely notices its wounds, but it cannot forget the hunger.

Nor can Jodi, now. She's always hungry, but this is something else.

“I … there's something in here,” she says. “The big thing Lothian mentioned? It's trapped somewhere in here. Being tortured, starved. God, it's so …” She stops, tries to take a deep breath, but her chest hurts too much for her to fill it properly. “It hurts so much,” she whispers, holding her wrists close to her chest as if this might somehow dull the pain. “Like nails in my bones.”

“Jodi,” says Tacoma. She says it like she has no idea what to say, but it's okay; the feeling is there, glowing beneath the words like moonlight through curtains. Difficult to make out, through the pain of the big thing, but it's there. “Jodi, what the hell is going on?”

“I dunno.” She hunches further over her aching joints. “We have to find out.”

Lothian tugs on the sleeve of her coat, heedless of the dust that cakes his teeth. Jodi uncurls a little, lays a stiff hand on his neck.

“Thank you,” she says. “You saved me. Again.”

She feels him make some kind of response, but it's too hard to make out with all the interference.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, smiling instead. “Can't get it right now.” She brushes some dirt from his mane and looks up at Tacoma and Nikki, still watching her like they're afraid she might shatter into glass. “Um … Nikki?”

A snort, an outstretched claw, and Jodi is dragged back up onto her feet. Nikki holds her there until Lothian has given her back her cane, and then a moment longer, just in case Jodi falls – which, to be fair, she nearly does; her legs hurt as they haven't since the last surgery. But she stays upright, just about, and with an effort even manages to unhunch her shoulders.

“Okay,” she says, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “Okay, we have to go.”

“Just like that?” asks Tacoma. “C'mon. Seriously, Jodi, what the hell―?”

“We're close, Tacoma. Real close. And there's only one way we're gonna figure out what this is.”

“I know, I just …” She shakes her disc furiously, shrinking back to normal size. “Are you sure you're okay?”

“No,” replies Jodi. “Obviously not. But we're here, aren't we? And if there's anywhere in town we'll find something to clear Nick's name―”

“Yeah, I know,” growls Tacoma. “I get it, Jodi. I'm the one who brought us down here―”

“Tacoma.” Jodi wishes she could do more, but even standing is an effort right now, with the big thing's pain screaming in her veins. “We can't do this right now.”

They almost fight about it. Even here, even now, they almost fight about it; Jodi doesn't need her empathy working properly to see Tacoma's fury. But they don't, of course; Tacoma gives in and turns away, glaring angrily into the dark.

“No,” she mutters. “We can't.”

Jodi isn't sure whether she'd welcome a hand on her thread right now. But she takes the risk, and at her touch Tacoma faces her again, and as their eyes meet a vast number of unspoken words pass them by, awaiting a better moment.

“Almost there,” says Jodi softly. “I'm sorry I scared you.”

“Thanks.” It's not what Jodi was expecting to hear. From the look on Tacoma's face, it's not what she was expecting to say, either. “Let's just do this and get out of here, okay?”

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “Let's.” She takes her hand away and holds it out towards Lothian. “Can you get me my torch, please?”

He can. She thanks him, wipes the torch down on her coat, and points it back down the corridor.

One painful step forward, the big thing's wounds dragging at her flesh. Difficult, but manageable.

“You all right?” asks Tacoma.

“Sure,” says Jodi. “C'mon.”

Nobody believes her, not Tacoma or Lothian or Nikki or even herself, but they don't challenge her about it either, and the four of them move slowly onwards into the dark.

It isn't far now. Jodi knew it wouldn't be; her empathy's range is pretty limited, even for emotions as strong as this one. Just a little further, and the corridor merges with several others into a single broad hall.

She flicks the torch back and forth. At one end, the darkness recedes forever. At the other …

“Hold up,” says Tacoma, her eyes burning green again. “It looks like the floor's busted.”

“It's there,” breathes Jodi, not quite hearing her. “Sleeping, but …”

She loses the sentence partway through, starts limping down the hall towards the hole.

“Wait!” hisses Tacoma. “Jodi? Jodi! God – Nikki, catch up with her!”

Lothian comes too, nose and ears twitching so fast now that they almost seem to blur in the air. Not much further to go. Jodi can see the hole better now, a huge rift in the floor stretching thirty feet or more across, and by the light of her torch she can make out strange shards jutting from its rim like pieces of glass from a broken window. Stone doesn't shatter like that, though. But is that even stone? Jodi moves the torch from the broken stone at the pit's edge to one of the shards and sees the light stick inside it, a perfect triangular slice of the beam standing there in midair.

“What the hell?” asks Tacoma. “That's not the floor, that's – that's the air.”

“Space,” says Jodi.

“Dimensions,” says Tacoma, finishing the thought. “What Nick was monitoring …”

There are so many conclusions to draw and so few that seem to make sense. Jodi can see more of the shards now; they start to shine as she gets closer, the cone of light from the torch growing thin and moth-eaten as slivers of it stick in the fractured air.

And then, quite suddenly and without really knowing how, Jodi is right there on the edge, looking down, and at last she sees it.

The inside of the hole is as impossibly broken as the rim, sharp spurs of spacetime stabbing inwards and distorting her vision like warped glass, but it's not enough to hide the occupant. It fills the pit to the edges, its flanks and arms pierced in a thousand places by the crystalline knives that sprout from the walls, yellow ichor oozing from the rents in its black hide. As the torchlight scatters from spike to spike, Jodi sees first a tiny head, slumped with sleep or resignation, then skeletal arms, one buried up to the elbow in the broken spacetime and the other simply pierced through the wrist – and then at last the belly, split open down the middle as if by the blow of some cosmic axe. It gapes up at them like a mouth, and then Jodi sees the huge tombstone teeth at its edge and the forks of a massive tongue lolling from its corners like dying pythons and she realises that it is a mouth, that this creature's entire body is one single gaping thirty-foot mouth―

The head moves. Just a little twitch, as the light glued to the walls sneaks in beneath its horns, and then a sharp jerk as it snaps back on the bloated body, featureless blue eyes squinting up through the dazzling glare.

“Oh shit,” breathes Tacoma. “Jodi? Jodi, I think we need to―”

It's like someone flipped a switch. One moment the big thing is startled, inquisitive – and the next it is suddenly, savagely mobile, wrenching uselessly at the shattered space pinning its arms in place, tongues rising up towards them and revealing great flabby pincers at the end, soft and wet and reeking of old meat, and its wounds bleed and Jodi's limbs seize up with phantom pain and it screams―

And they are gone, swept away in Nikki's arms while Lothian sprints after her with Jodi's cane in his mouth and the voice of the big thing echoes down the tunnel after them like exploding suns, like alien whales in Martian oceans, like nothing on earth that Jodi has ever heard or ever will again, and somewhere in the middle of the pain and the hunger and the noise she realises that they are completely and utterly out of their bloody depth.

Last Edit: Jul 24, 2018 17:29:48 GMT by girl-like-substance

GHOST TOWN | GO HOME
& assorted one-shots

bay

Posts: 206

Ghost Town Jul 19, 2018 5:34:21 GMT

Post by bay on Jul 19, 2018 5:34:21 GMT

Oh dear over Jodi exerting herself, though this gives an extra detail of how she handles her body more than just her gender. Just thought that's kinda interesting you went that angle.

So Tacoma not knowing about the Tyranitar is her pretty much repressing her memories of that huh. While I know that happens sometimes, I'm still not the biggest fan of miscommunication the biggest cause of drama. Hopefully the avalanche situation will be fully resolved soon.

Looks like Tacoma and Jodi has to go to the chapter house after all so they can clear Nick's name there. As for what they had found, my first guest is one of the UBs, specially Guzzlord, because of the references to Alola, dimensions, and hunger. Really looking forward how all this wraps up!

Firebrand

Posts: 194

Ghost Town Jul 26, 2018 23:09:43 GMT

Post by Firebrand on Jul 26, 2018 23:09:43 GMT

I got way behind on this, but I knew I had to catch up before the end, so I'll be reviewing the three chapters I haven't gotten to here.

I'll admit, the thing that struck me the most about Nick's chapter was how easy it was for him to pretend he had taken his Alola trip when he was hiding out in the cabin. That's so... 20th century, to just be able to crumple up a plane ticket just so, and to say "Oh, yeah, I was at X place" while really being at Y place, and so long as the alibi looked convincing, you were okay. Now, I'm not sure it was actually that easy to lie about a trip, but it was enough for me to suspend my disbelief.

I also liked the scene where Jodi confronted him, just because Nick is such a cerebral character and lives so much inside his own head. I think Jodi is my favorite POV (I don't think I can say POV character, because Gabby is definitely my favorite, and since she has POV chapters... but the chapters from Jodi's POV are my favorite. Anyway, I digress) but I always find it so interesting how the rest of the cast responds to her psychic powers. And because Nick is so inside his own head and very self-aware, the mental tightrope he walks while talking with Jodi makes for a really compelling scene.

I noticed while reading the chapter that he never directly addressed what it the device he was working on was, which made him opening the car and not being told what was in it a bit infuriating, but after the last chapter, I think I have my suspicions. What I don't have any suspicions about is Tacoma's killer, by which I mean I have literally no clue. I'm like 98% sure that Harry showing up leaving the chapter house is a red herring. The fact that I don't know isn't really a fault of your writing, I don't think, mostly because when it comes to reading these sorts of mystery stories, I like to let myself get caught up in the narrative and wait for the reveal at the end (and also I've learned that I always guess the wrong guy so it's better to just keep reading).

The Tacoma chapter was pretty heavy, as Tacoma chapters have tended to be. I believe I've remarked before that Jodi is this relentlessly positive force in the story, and Tacoma is definitely the foil of that. But the emotional crux of the chapter, where Tacoma finally owns up to causing her former best friend's injury and killing her pokemon, only to learn it wasn't her fault and that Jodi never blamed her in the first place, was really a punch in the gut, even from my perspective as a reader. For the entire story, Tacoma's character has been under a cloud of guilt, and I'm glad that it did come back in the next chapter and Tacoma doesn't feel suddenly absolved, because like Jodi says, that sort of thinking takes a while to recover from.

I'm not sure if I didn't pick up on it before, or if you started drawing it out in this most recent chapter, but it was fascinating how you showed Jodi interacting with Lothian and using auditory powers. The bit where she views his memories was really well done, and captured how very differently a creature that views the world via sound experiences things, and how he views other creatures. I've probably mentioned before that I'm always fascinated at how much sentience people in this fandom give pokemon. I definitely pegged Lothian and Nikki as further down the sentience scale than Hierro, for example, but I think I underestimated Lothi, and the gap between him and Hierro isn't as wide as I originally thought.

On a different note, and another thing I'm not sure if I didn't notice before, or if it became more pronounced here, is that the dialogue between Jodi and Tacoma has become a lot more staccato. It's been a while since I got caught up with this fic, so maybe it's been happening all along, but I definitely noticed it in this most recent chapter. I took it to mean that they've started to become more comfortable with each other, and Tacoma is starting to warm up again, so they don't need as many words to communicate. But maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.

And the chapter house! I was wondering if the basement hideout under the store would make an appearance in this fic. It always struck me as something that had to have been preexisting in Gold and Silver, and that someone definitely would have noticed Team Rocket undertaking a large scale excavation (although, given some of the things the pokemon villains get away with...) and I always just chalked it up to some kind of hideout for the ninjas that I think once lived in Mahogany. I had no idea what to expect the girls to find in the chapter house, but I definitely was not expecting that! I'm eager to see how this all ends!

admin

Posts: 272

Ghost Town Jul 27, 2018 2:38:35 GMT

Post by admin on Jul 27, 2018 2:38:35 GMT

So! I’m going through thirteen chapters of material with no notes and absolutely no direction. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ I’M GONNA DIE, BUT LET’S DO THIS ANYWAY.

So I guess the first thing to start off with is, of course, acknowledging that bit you said about how this isn’t really a murder mystery is fascinatingly true. I mean, yes, that’s also a thing. That is most definitely Jodi and Nick’s main goals, aside from other personal matters. But you know, it’s also true that this is really just a catalyst—an almost plot MacGuffin to kickstart a story about how literally everyone is a mess.

That’s it. That’s the moral. Everyone is a fucking mess; it’s just that some people are better about it than others. Or at least that’s how I see it because literally everyone in Mahogany has their problems except maybe the pokémon, and sometimes, I’m not even sure then. (It’s more of a spectrum, really. There’s Nikki, who until she was reunited with Tacoma was more or less a mess. But then there’s also Morgan, who’s a flawless space marshmallow cat. Everyone else seems to fall somewhere in between, with Lothian sort of nudging towards the Nikki end of the spectrum by virtue of having to be the support for his sensitive trainer and the weird af rock ghost girl she hangs out with.)

But if I took the time to describe everyone, this review would be pages upon pages long before I’d even gotten to anything but character comments (even if that is most of the point), so let me just point out some highlights.

For starters, I’ll say that while I don’t remember much about the original beginning of this fic (if I recall correctly, it was retooled heavily shortly after you released it), I do have to say that this version does wonders with Jodi. That’s really the first thing that stuck out to me, setting aside the obvious fact that we’re talking about the first chapter. The whole of it is very careful in the way it follows her, in how it details her interactions with the people around her and herself, in the subtle details of her dead name cropping up and her nervousness and even in how slow it is to get home and kick things off. So when she finally comes out (in the glorious “I’m not Alex” line, which is perhaps the most blunt and alien way she could have done that … as she outlines literally in the next paragraph with, to be fair, good reason), it’s a blow. It’s a hard break. It’s all of the emotion you’re building up slamming back down in a few words.

And honestly, that’s a good way of describing the rest of the fic, just to totter off onto a commentary about style and plot for a second. You’re very efficient with your words. Sure, on the surface, it feels like there’s a lot of content. Some of the chapters might even be overwhelming for the newbie who’s not used to chewing on 20+ page forays into characters being absolute living train wrecks. But there really was no place where I thought a detail was out of place or unnecessary. I couldn’t even help but think about what you were telling me concerning nova, when you give us those brief glimpses into 1970s Johto or characters’ backstories. (I was about to say, “For example: what the fuck’s a florin? Dunno, but we get enough to go on,” but I just wikied that and learned that evidently, that was actually a real thing, and the point is it still felt natural without breaking the flow of the story, you know? Also, better example below!)

Take, for example, Tacoma’s baggage. I’ll get into it in more detail from the character side of things a bit later, and I realize this isn’t actually a concept that has to do with nova much at all, but the point is you leave us with a sense that it’s a thing. Every time it’s brought up until Tacoma finally comes clean, it’s briefly mentioned, with either subtle hints (something happened that left a young woman with a shit leg) or as a character’s ongoing train of thought (Tacoma always thinks about this moment, so it’s not anything new). So the reader just kinda falls in line with the information and takes it like natural pieces of the landscape that’s both familiar and practically years old, which means if we do start asking questions (I mean, yes, of course we do), it’s easier to ask the right ones because those are the bits that don’t quite feel natural. Sure, Tacoma thinks of herself as an awful person. That part is the natural bit. What isn’t is the why, and that’s what we start asking, especially when she starts talking about how she fucked up with Jodi. In short, it’s subtle, but it’s a strong narrative flow.

(Of course, regarding the actual bits of worldbuilding, I do have to say I love this take on 70s Johto. It’s a strange yet familiar hybrid of American and British, and it’s very easy to imagine its people as being proud even though they’re not as shiny and cutting edge as their Kantan neighbors. There are all these little details like the bit about when movies come to Johto, how they’ve clung to their own language despite the lack of difference between it and Kantan, how they refuse to adopt the Kantan money system, and even the fact that Patsy Cline is a thing there, all of which just paint them as a colorful country sort of people. And then there’re all those little bits about Goldenrod too that of course I pick up on because I’m me, but I love how there’s such a contrast between that and Mahogany with how it’s this modern mecca for Johto where people like Jodi can actually exist … but also, you’re still pretty damn likely to have the crap beaten out of you in an alley. It’s a background rich and alive with details, is what I’m saying.)

Back to the characters, though. Like Jodi. It’s hard not to feel for Jodi starting off, but I admit it’s also hard to get a good sense of who she is, largely because of the whole empath thing (which … I’ll get to in a moment). But to be honest, I like her, and I can pinpoint the moment where I really started to like her: the one that I told you about in private. It was that moment when Tacoma tells her she’s fucking gorgeous, and after Tacoma snakes back into the keystone, Jodi just stands there for a moment and repeats it incredulously, as if she doesn’t believe it herself.

And that just fascinates me about Jodi, because for all she is as an empath, we don’t really see her emotions outright. Her struggles are mostly caused externally. It’s the transphobia she experiences (not only from the Man and the town itself but also, more significantly, from her own family in Ella. It’s her vigilante investigation and all the resistances she’s meeting in the process (from Sam, from all the red herrings, even a little from her own physical restrictions). And it’s her constant need to care for others when she tries to head off Tacoma’s mood swings or in the details her chapters bring to the table concerning the Spearing household or Ella or even Nick a little. But we don’t really see Jodi reflect on much of this—at least, not so much in comparison with Tacoma (who, okay, has not much else to do but reflect, but we get the sense that even if she had a body that wasn’t a ghost in a rock, she still would narrate her chapters the way she does). But there are glimpses, like how Jodi stands at a desk and repeats Tacoma’s compliment or in how she rubs her chin in the morning or wraps herself up self-consciously or even in how she talks about her limitations (except when someone else brings them up).

In a way, it reminds me of you, as I’ve said. Granted, all of your main characters are deeply personal. They’re all transitioning, and you’ve made it no secret whatsoever that that’s the point. But Jodi, I think, is more like you than practically anyone else you’ve created, intentionally or not. Sure, there’s always an element of quiet self-doubt in your characters, and practically all of your characters (barring maybe Gwyneth, but I’m not even sure then) are actually hella competent despite all they say or think about themselves. But Jodi? Jodi’s subtler about it. More reserved, and she lets her abilities dominate a lot of her identity while not quite acknowledging herself as a full person beyond them. (How many scenes involve her or someone else describing her as psychic or otherwise supernatural before anything else, including the fact that she’s trans?) So her self-doubt isn’t a focus. It’s quiet and contained in snapshots so quick you’d miss them if you blinked. And I dunno; this just sort of reminds me of your posts on Tumblr, where you create this poetry and art and also say, “By the way…” Or readers just get a vibe that there’s something else there, but you don’t really come out and say it.

But anyway. Point is, Jodi just feels real, but she’s also interesting because her realness is more implied than outright stated.

And then you have Tacoma.

Tacoma resonates with me, and she does so hard. Maybe it’s because her wounds are still very much raw, even though she’s started to take steps to heal. Maybe it’s that thing Jodi said about how you can carry a weight for so long that when you don’t anymore, it’s hard to stand up straight. Or maybe it’s just the vicious amount of self-destruction she has obviously done before and after death over something that wasn’t even her fault.

And now, feels. I read the revelation on the bus, and I literally pressed my tongue into the back of my teeth and stared out the window for a while because of the moment where Tacoma snaps. Like, that entire bit where she’s faced with actual vindication and just fucking denies it to the point where she has to hurt herself because goddamn, what else is she if not guilty was just … heartbreaking to watch. And so very real.

It’s just … the whole thing about what Jodi said. (I dunno. I just really like that metaphor.) Like, it really is difficult to let go of bad vibes, even when you have support and love on your side. It’s just so very easy to get locked into those bad headspaces and refuse to conceptualize yourself as someone who’s deserving of love (or at least not a monster). And it’s often as nonsensical as Tacoma’s outburst. Of course knowing that you did nothing wrong should be a relief, but sometimes, you just want to hate yourself instead.

But also, it’s a fascinating moment because it’s very rare to see memory played with in fic. Truth be told, human memory is a fluid thing, and it’s far from reliable. At its worst, the slightest misremembered detail warps an entire experience. At its best, you get something like what happened to Tacoma, where your biased memory tells you something that’s technically true except for the fact that you’ve focused on all the wrong details. Or you’re simply missing key information because brains are just Like That. So it’s a terrible thing to build an identity on, and of course that’s what a lot of us do, Tacoma included.

In other words, it’s no wonder she reacted the way she did, but also, it should be interesting to see how her story wraps up. I mean, sure, you were hinting at a physical resolution as well as an emotional one, but at this point, I’m sort of looking forward to that emotional resolution more. Because, well, Tacoma’s character arc is just so well-defined here. Like I said, while Jodi has her own issues, most of those will follow her well past the story’s end. Her growth is slower and subtler because while there are absolutely things that could be better about her (her self-confidence issues, the presumably pre-transition dysmorphia, etc.), it’s a tall order to assume they would be resolved within a single fic. I mean, fuck, this is 1976. Half of the things that can help her come to terms with herself aren’t even available yet.

But Tacoma? Tacoma’s at least easier, and she has been growing. She started off violent to herself and to others, she’s been called out on it, and now she’s been told that she doesn’t have to be that way. She’s been told that not only did she not hurt someone, that someone will still love her regardless of all her mood swings and venom. So she has a means of growing past this.

Especially, you know. Now that she’s facing down a guzzlord and the entire reason why she’s dead with the aforementioned person.

And I could talk at length about other characters too. Like how I love Gabriella for her elegance (and how much she reminds me of Sailor Neptune) or Sam for her roughness (and how she reminds me of every butch I’ve ever known, so A+), or how Ella’s reaction is sort of realistic (she’s slow to change and accept her sister, even though she and Jodi had that talk) or how awesome of a mother Michelle is for supporting Jodi or about that one weird bit in Leon’s part of the funeral chapter (wherein he gets a little uncomfortable about Jodi) or even how delightfully punchable Cos is.

But I kinda also want to wrap this up on Nick. Because hoo, I like Nick too. Not only because he’s a mess and probably a touch spineless (just thinking about how he hid out in a basement with his lover while riots went on in Saffron) but also because he’s such a fantastic red herring. You never know with Nick. One moment, you see him completely destroyed, so you think, “There’s no way he did it.” And the next, you see him with his magneton at the funeral going on about how things had to happen the way they did, so you’re thinking, “Oh my God, it’s the most obvious suspect.” And back and forth until Jodi interrogates him, and even then, it’s difficult to tell whether or not he was even involved because, sure, he says someone’s been monitoring his mail, but what was with that whole bit at the funeral?

I mean. Okay. Yeah. He absolutely, 100% is on some level responsible for Tacoma’s death because of the fact that, you know, that was his package that got her killed, but still. And anyway, why was he so secretive about his project? Why didn’t he just pick the keystone up himself? Or is that folded into his slight spinelessness, where he’d be okay with letting his niece handle that instead of taking the risk himself?

But on the other hand, it’s also hard not to like Nick too because for all his spinelessness, he’s a sympathetic character. I mean, he was clearly emotionally wrecked by Tacoma’s death, and even after he’s finally crawled out of his hole and started taking action, it’s very, very clear he’s still a mess. Dude just needs a hug and to see Tacoma. And maybe also a slap across the face, but still.

And finally, shout-out to the pokémon, especially Lothian (who is an Excellent Bat, goodbat, and someone I would read an entire chapter focusing on, ngl) and Morgan (who got even cuter after you explained that, no, she actually was trying to fight the giant bat-dragon at a funeral because things that are small and jingly and adorable are 100000% most likely going to try to kill things that are not). Because as much as this story focuses on its humans, its pokémon are still a bag of fun and adorable. But also, the pokémon are very much like slightly sentient pets here, which is to say they’re done well. And more importantly, it’s just fun that the pokémon often mirrors the partner in some way. You have Moira, who is so much of a punching bag she’s not even the first Moira. You have Turing, alien and difficult to read. You have Nikki, violent and passionate and loyal, and Lothian, nurturing and affectionate and soft-spoken (even for his species). And of course, I caught the whole thing about Morgan and Jack without you needing to tell me, but on the other hand, I also kinda see how they’re well-suited for their partners too. Jack is an extroverted (in his own ornery way), off-beat seagull that was forced to adapt to the mountains, as much of an ill fit for the backwater town as Gabriella herself is. Morgan, meanwhile, is an adorable fluffball that doesn’t mind oil and will literally fight a dragon (that is, an adorable fluffball exterior wrapped around a rough interior), whereas rough ol’ Sam still hangs onto old memories fondly and is content with a quiet, mundane life so long as Gabriella is by her side (that is, a rough exterior wrapped around an adorable fluffball interior). I love it when that much thought is put into a pokémon’s personality. In this fandom, it’s frequently all (the pokémon act so much like humans it’s easy to forget they’re not) or nothing (the pokémon are an afterthought), so that attention to detail and dedication to making the pokémon be unique and present members of the cast is certainly welcome.

Man, all this talk, and I’ve barely touched the plot. Sort of. To be fair, so much of Ghost Town’s plot is its characters and how they’re messes together. Even when Jodi is investigating the murder or trying to push that thread along, it’s still about how much of a mess someone (Tacoma, Sam, Nick, Nikki, Jodi herself) is. So I admit it feels like we’re getting to the juicy part, and it should be interesting to see how this will all wrap up, especially since we’ve suddenly be confronted with a straight-up rip in spacetime after chapters of Jodi being the only supernatural thing in the story. Still, it wouldn’t be like you to end a fic on a note that isn’t anything but satisfying, so long story short, definitely excited for this weekend.

Four pages of review aside, good luck with the conclusion! This was quite a ride already, so the last hill should be fun.

girl-like-substance

the seal will bite you if you give him half a chance

Posts: 527
Pronouns: xe/xem

Ghost Town Jul 28, 2018 22:22:30 GMT

Post by girl-like-substance on Jul 28, 2018 22:22:30 GMT

(Sorry -- review replies will be up tomorrow. I have a lot to say, and if I'd written up my responses today I wouldn't have got the chapter out on time. Another note: this is not, as previously advertised, the final chapter; it was, but then it turned out to be about 20,000 words long and I was like nope, not inflicting that on anyone, and cut it in half down the middle. So without further ado, here is the actual penultimate chapter.)

FOURTEEN: THE HUMAN CONDITION

TACOMA

Looking back on it now, the escape has an unreal quality to it, like a 3AM nightmare considered over a lunchtime beer on Saturday afternoon. Tacoma isn't even sure how they got out, honestly. She remembers Nikki running, Lothian galloping strenuously at her side, unable to spread his wings; she remembers Jodi sealing the secret door, stumbling back out into the bitter Mahogany night. She remembers the slow, silent walk back to her house, scarcely able to breathe for fear they'd hear the roar again and look up to see the shadow of those noisome tongues against the stars, ready to snatch them up and draw them into that awful mouth.

She remembers the mouth most of all. Remembers seeing the outline of the beast's spine and ribs through the sickly blue flesh of its palate. No organs in there, no sense, no anything that matched what Tacoma knows of biology. Just a hunger that could swallow Mahogany whole.

If those jaws had closed on Tacoma, she has no doubt that she'd be dead all over again, for real this time. Not even a ghost is coming back from that. If they'd closed on Jodi …

She tries not to think about this, but of course it's all she can think about.

She remembers so much, so vividly. But back in Jodi's room, with no evidence of any of it but Jodi's missing torch (in the pit now, lost for ever) and the dust all over her clothes, it feels like none of it could have really happened at all. There's no such thing as nightmarish mouth-chested monsters, right? And there definitely isn't one trapped in a razored nest of shattered spacetime buried in the remains of a fifteen-hundred-year-old hill fort accessed through a secret door in the back room of her local fucking grocery store.

Right?

Jodi closes her bedroom door and leans against it, breathing hard. She looks at Tacoma.

Tacoma looks back.

“That happened,” she says.

“Are you sure?” asks Tacoma.

“No.” Jodi pulls off her gloves with trembling hands, though she fumbles and drops them before she can put them on the desk. “Or maybe … I mean it had to be real, right? I felt it. All that hunger.” She touches her wrist, like the echo of the pain is still there. “My empathy doesn't work in dreams.”

“Right.” Pause. Should she …? Probably. “Hey, sit down,” says Tacoma. “You look beat.”

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “You're right.”

She shrugs off her coat and climbs stiffly onto her bed, Lothian going with her to help her along. He settles himself curled around her, his tail and head both draped over her lap, and she busies her hands brushing the dirt from his mane.

Nikki's probably dusty too, but unfortunately Tacoma's going to have to leave her to deal with that one herself. She'd like to soothe her – she can hear her pulse racing through the wall of her chest, right behind her head – but for the moment just staying here and not thinking about how Jodi could have been eaten is taking everything she's got.

“Well,” says Jodi, chewing her lip. “I think … I think we know where the bodies go.”

Tacoma nods; she's figured it out too. People going missing. A monster from another world. Jodi thought they were starving that thing, but now they've seen it Tacoma figures maybe that's just how it feels all the time; maybe it can't ever fill the emptiness in its impossible chest. And so many people disappear in these woods, and so few bodies are found.

“But then why did they put your body in the river?” asks Jodi. “I don't know what that thing's meant to eat, but I'm betting it'll take anything. They could've got rid of all the evidence right away.”

Tacoma shakes her head.

“Would've been a waste,” she says. “They'd just figured out Nick was onto them, right? Knew he was trying to do his thing with the spiritomb rock. And they know he and Con don't get on, right? You feed Con some evidence that the guy he hates most might've murdered his niece …”

“Oh my God.” Jodi's jaw actually drops slightly. Tacoma has never seen that happen before – wasn't even sure it actually did, outside of books and TV. “They deliberately set him up?”

“Why not?”

“No reason, I guess.” Jodi sighs. “I know people are awful, I shouldn't be surprised, I just … these are people we know, Tacoma. People like – God, Lothian saw Harry coming out of there, didn't he?” Lothian's ears twitch. “Nice people,” she says, sadly. “People I thought – people I thought better of.”

Tacoma isn't sure what to say; she hadn't even thought about that. Christ. Imagine that: Harry, smiling the way he does when he welcomes her off the train, standing around by that pit and talking to his friends about how it would be a criminal waste of a good corpse to throw Tacoma to the beast. Kill two birds with one stone, he'd say. Stop the rock reaching Nick – and stop Nick for good.

“Jesus,” she says, and something in her voice must sound bad, because Nikki clutches her a little tighter when she hears it. “You're right.”

“And that thing,” murmurs Jodi, hardly listening. “I don't even know … I mean, I know there are weird pokémon out there, but―”

“That wasn't a pokémon,” says Tacoma flatly. “The way that pit was fractured? With that thing stuck in it? I don't think that thing's from our dimension.” She shudders, and can't even bring herself to feel ashamed about it. “You saw, right? How … empty it was?”

“I saw,” says Jodi. “I saw.”

Silence. The wind picks up outside, begins to moan and whine around the lampposts in the street.

“I don't know what to do,” says Jodi, sounding close to tears. “Tacoma, I just … I don't know what to do any more.”

Lothian whines and curls tighter around her. Tacoma just stares. This is Jodi, right? This is the girl who's carried her through all of this, who's never fazed by anything, who has psychic equanimity and the kind of courage Tacoma can only dream of. Sure, Tacoma has sensed her distress, through that psychic link – but Jodi's always had an answer, even if all she can say is let's watch TV for a bit, we'll think of something later.

She hates herself for thinking this. Jodi is human, isn't she? Human, and only a handful of days older than Tacoma. She can't be any more at home with all this.

But if Jodi wasn't so nice she'd say that this was an unhelpful kind of thought, right, so Tacoma tries to swallow it and focus on something more useful.

“Hey,” she says. “Give me to Jodi, Nikki. Now,” she adds, when Nikki hesitates, and listens to her sniff in irritation as she deposits Tacoma in Jodi's arms. “Jodi,” she says, growing bigger, trying somehow to extrude some sort of misty arm to put around her. “It's gonna be okay.”

“Is it?” Jodi shifts Tacoma into one hand so she can wipe her eyes. “The only way I can see this ending is everything stays the same. I don't think even my parents would believe me if I told them what I saw, and sure as hell Con won't. He thinks I'm insane anyway.”

Her bitterness filters through the link, sharper and more acerbic than anything Tacoma has ever seen outside of a mirror.

“Who cares what Con thinks,” she starts to say, but Jodi doesn't let her finish.

“Me,” she says. “Because I'm an empath, Tacoma, and I don't get a choice about it. And because I'm pretty sure we can't take on the chapter house ourselves. Unless you have a plan?”

She says it in an angry sort of way that makes it clear she does not expect Tacoma to say yes. And sure enough, Tacoma doesn't – but she has something else to say instead.

“No, I don't,” she tells her, looking up into her eyes. “But Nick did. And if he was looking for a way into the chapter house, he was ready to put it into action.”

Jodi's eyes widen.

“What?”

“We have to speak to him,” says Tacoma. “And we will, okay? Say you want to visit. Hell, they'll probably ask you to, since you're psychic and all. I'll think of some excuse. And then” (another of those fake inward breaths) “then you'll get the truth out of him. I know you will. You almost got it the other day, right?”

“Are you sure?” asks Jodi, with a kind of nervous self-doubt that reminds Tacoma of the way she took the news that she was beautiful.

“Of course you will,” says Tacoma. “I'll be there too, yeah? We'll figure something out.” She stretches her thread as far as it will go, trying to bring herself level with Jodi's eyeline. Can't quite reach, but whatever. Close enough. “We're not beaten,” she says, and although even she can't say whether she believes this or not it sounds so good in her mouth, like something a real person would say. “You're not beaten,” she adds. “Not yet.”

A weak, embarrassed kind of smile.

“You have a lot of faith in me,” says Jodi, wiping her eyes again. “Sweet of you.”

“Yeah, well, you're pretty sweet yourself,” retorts Tacoma, mock-mean to hide the fact that she's gone a deeper purple. “You, uh … deserve sweet things.”

Now Jodi's blushing too. Part of Tacoma wants to just tear into the both of them for being such sentimental dorks, but a larger part is too awestruck and afraid of the fact that she did a good thing for once to dare ruin the moment.

“Thank you,” she says, trying to figure out how to hug Tacoma without dropping her on Lothian's head and having to give up halfway. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't be giving up like that.”

Tacoma snorts.

“You literally can't give up worse than I've done,” she says, hoping it sounds like a joke and not just bitterness. “Look, it's … God, it's like quarter past two. Let's just go to bed, okay?

“That's probably the best idea either of us have come up with all night,” says Jodi. “Right. Nikki is glaring like she wants you back, so―”

“Let her glare a minute,” says Tacoma, giving up on the idea of a hug and just leaning into Jodi's shoulder instead. “She's gotta learn to share me sometime.”

So they let her glare, and Lothian quietly pulls back and leaves them to it.

It's been a fuck of a bad night, all things considered, and tomorrow doesn't look like it's going to be much better, but Tacoma can't deny that this helps.

Knock knock.

“Jodi?”

Ella's voice. Sounds wrong, somehow.

Tacoma vanishes back into the rock and opens her window again, a sick dread in her heart. As usual, she was up first, watching fresh snow build up on Jodi's windowsill; it's past eleven now, but Jodi and the pokémon are still asleep. All that creeping around in the dark had to catch up with them eventually, Tacoma supposes.

Listening to Ella now, she has a horrible feeling that it might be about to catch up with them in another way, too.

“Jodi, uh … sorry, but it's kinda important.”

The blanket nest shuffles and stirs.

“Ella?”

“Hi. Yeah. Um … the cops are here?”

Jodi sits up suddenly, wide awake. Her eyes do not leave Tacoma's rock.

“What?” she asks.

“The cops are here. They said it was about Tacoma.”

Okay. Okay, maybe it's just a coincidence. Maybe they just need a psychic to have a chat with Nick.

Maybe.

Tacoma begins to pick her lips.

“O-kay,” says Jodi, brows knitting together. “Um … tell them I'll be right down.”

“Okay.” Tacoma hears no footsteps: Ella's still there. “Everything's okay, isn't it?”

“Yes, Ella,” says Jodi. “Everything's fine, I promise.”

“Right. Right, cool, I'll – I'll go tell them.”

“Thank you.”

Tacoma waits to hear Ella go down the stairs, then sticks her head out.

“I'm coming,” she says.

“Wasn't gonna try and stop you,” replies Jodi. “Talk to Nikki, okay? I don't think we can take her.”

They say these things easily, naturally, as if making plans to meet up for coffee later. As if it were all just a matter of logistics.

If there were anything left in Tacoma's stomach, she thinks she'd probably be sick.

Ten minutes later, they're both on their way downstairs, Nikki left unwillingly in Jodi's room and Lothian stalking on ahead. Tacoma can't actually see – she's back in Jodi's bag again – but she keeps the link open anyway, watching lipstick and tissues tumble over her vision while she strains her ears to hear who it is that's turned up.

“Hello, Jodi.” Byrne Winter. Tacoma doesn't have much of an opinion about her; she's the first female cop in Mahogany and possibly all of north Johto, which is definitely some kind of milestone, but she also has a dragonair – and that has always struck Tacoma as suspicious. There's something annoyingly superior about people from the Blackthorn dragon clan. Like they think pure tribal blood and a big scaly partner make them better than you.

“Hi, Sergeant Winter,” says Jodi. “Sergeant Brennan. What's this about?”

Simeon too, then. Him, Tacoma actively dislikes, if only because he ratted her out to her parents once when he caught her drinking stolen beer in one of the abandoned trailers in the Cedarshade development when she was fifteen.

“Tacoma,” says Byrne. “Would you mind coming with us to the station? There are a couple things we need to discuss, in light of recent events.”

“You mean Nick?”

“We really can't talk about it here,” says Simeon. “I'll fill you in at the station.”

“Okay,” says Jodi. “Will this take long?”

“No. Shouldn't do.”

“Fine. You hang on a sec, Ella, I'll be back in a minute.”

“Okay,” says Ella, nervously. “Sure.”

The ride to the station is horribly, unnervingly quiet. The only one with any desire to break the silence is Lothian, who clicks occasionally and gets a telepathic answer from Jodi that Tacoma senses without properly hearing. Without being able to see any landmarks, she has no idea how long it takes; all she can be sure of is that she has far too much time to think.

Did that torch really fall in the pit? Or did someone see it? And if they did, if they knew – would the kind of person who could frame Nick for Tacoma's murder be ready to throw Jodi to the cops as well?

The entrance is in the store. Sarah knew what the chapter house was. Oh hi Jackie, Tacoma imagines her saying, phone against her ear and Jodi's torch in her hand. No, I'm afraid I'm calling on business. I think I might have had a break-in …

Tacoma runs out of skin tabs to pull off her lips, and starts probing the wounds on her hand instead.

After what seems like hours, during which time Tacoma successfully manages to make all of her knuckles start bleeding again, she finally hears the engine turn off and the doors open. Doors, the stamping off of snow from boots, words with Jackie – and then, just like Tacoma was afraid of, Con.

“Hello,” he says, and from the reaction in Jodi's mind Tacoma knows his omission of her name is one hundred per cent deliberate. “I'll take it from here, Byrne.”

“Chief Wicke,” says Jodi. “What's this all about?”

“I'll explain. Can you leave Lothian out here?”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it,” he says, cool as the snow outside. “Thank you.”

A nervous little pause, then a sigh.

“Lothi? I need you to … yeah, I know. I know! But you have to, okay?”

“Caradoc and I will look after him,” says Byrne, to the distinctive sound of a ball opening. “Won't we?”

Whatever response Caradoc has, it's silent. Figures. Dragonair aren't really known for their voices.

“Okay,” says Jodi, and now there is just the faintest hint of a tremor in her voice. “Lothi? Please.”

He hisses furiously, but apparently he agrees. Tacoma hears boots on tiled floors, a door closing, chairs being pulled up.

“Thank you for coming out this morning,” says Con. “I appreciate it.”

“Sure,” says Jodi. “Are you going to tell me what this is all about now?”

The silence stretches out, like a knife being pulled slowly across a throat. Tacoma jams her fingernail deep into the broken skin over her knuckle, feels the slick hardness of her bones.

Someone puts something on the table. Jodi inhales sharply.

“Do you recognise this?” asks Con.

The torch. Tacoma knew it. They left the torch and Sarah found it and―

“If I'm not much mistaken, it belonged to your grandfather,” he continues, and Tacoma pauses in her exploration of her wounds, startled. How on earth would Con know that? “And then to your mother, before she quit. Now, I think, it belongs to you.”

Wait. That's not the torch.

Jodi's lighter? Tacoma didn't even know she had it on her last night. Did it fall from her pocket when Nikki grabbed her to run away?

“Do you know where this was found?”

She doesn't answer. Tacoma can't tell if she's afraid or just plain stubborn.

“I'm waiting,” says Con. He still hasn't said Jodi's name even once. He knows, right? He knows exactly how much of his intent she can sense, and he's levering it against her.

Christ. What Tacoma wouldn't give to leap out of the stone now, cut the lights and scare him shitless with the blazing of her eyes in the dark.

“I don't know,” says Jodi, at last. Her voice sounds strong, still. Somehow. “Are you going to tell me, or are we going to sit here all day and stare at each other?”

Con pauses for a moment before he answers, just long enough to indicate that he is not at all impressed.

“In the back room of the store,” he says. “Sarah called us early this morning.”

Fucking called it! Tacoma grimaces, senses the purple flames all around her flaring up with her anger. Goddamn Sarah and the goddamn chapter house. They knew Con hated Nick, and they know he doesn't like Jodi, either. And most of all, they know that he is a small-town cop right down to the core of his tedious little soul, and given a piece of evidence will pursue it doggedly to the obvious conclusion.

“Right,” says Jodi. “What was it doing there?”

Even she's struggling to sound unafraid now. Not hard to see why. This is the kind of trouble that sticks, in Mahogany. Everyone knows everyone. And that means everyone feels entitled to judge.

Besides. Michelle and León would be disappointed, and considering the kind of relationship Jodi has with them, Tacoma feels like that would hurt her most of all.

“Well, I was hoping that you could tell me,” says Con mildly. “I have to say, I was pretty surprised. You're not the type to do something like this.”

Again, no answer. Now Jodi's fear is strong enough that Tacoma can sense it through the link, sour and dry as sloes.

Con sighs.

“Okay,” he says. “Can I take a guess? You're not a thief. You've been looking into Tacoma's death, still. Even after you were warned against it. And for some reason, you thought that Sarah was connected, so you started poking around in the store.”

Tacoma hears skin rubbing against something hard: Jodi, rolling the handle of her cane between her fingers. She's probably chewing her lip too, right. Can't blame her. Con is closer to the truth than she'd like.

“How d'you know I was warned?” asks Jodi warily.

“Because I asked Gabriella to talk to you,” says Con. “It's my job to notice things.”

Okay. Gabriella didn't actually do that though, did she? So not so close to the truth after all.

Small comfort, honestly. Tacoma does not like where this is going at all.

“So,” he says. “I'm going to take that question as confirmation that I was right. I'm glad we're not denying things here.” The rubbing sound gets faster, punctuated with clicks as Jodi's cane taps against the edge of the table. “You are going to stop this,” Con says, quietly and clearly. “You are going to stop this now, and then I won't tell Sarah who this belongs to. Or your parents.” Pause. “Do we have a deal?”

A clatter: Jodi's hand has slipped and her cane has fallen to the floor.

“Let me get that for you,” says Con, over the scraping of the chairs, and then Tacoma hears a sharp intake of breath and feels Jodi's panic flood the connection, so hard and fast it's all she can do not to spring out of the rock to her defence. Two agonising seconds of silence pass – and then there's Jodi's voice, small and fearful:

“Please give me back my cane.”

Tacoma never got it, before now. Never really understood what it was that Jodi's cane meant. But trapped in this rock, dependent on her partner or her friend to take her places, it all starts to make sense.

She isn't even sure if Jodi can crawl, if maybe she still isn't meant to put weight on her left knee. By holding her cane on the other side of the table, Con might as well have cut her hamstrings.

He leaves her hanging for a long moment. Tacoma imagines him looking at her, at the cane: oh, this old thing? and a smile like a shark's, vapid, dangerous. She clenches her bleeding fist hard, the last of the scabs cracking open again, and then just as she thinks she can't hold herself back any longer she hears him speak:

“Sure,” he says. “And we'll both forget about this. Yes?”

The rustling of some quick, desperate movement.

“Yes,” says Jodi fervently. “Yes. Okay. I'll just … I'll go home.”

“That's a good idea,” says Con seriously. “Don't let me catch you here again. I'm not going to cover for you twice.”

He says it like he's doing her a favour. Like he actually believes this, like he did any of this by accident.

Strange feeling, wanting to hurt someone else as much as she wants to hurt herself, but Tacoma supposes there's a first time for everything.

“Right,” says Jodi. “I'm sorry. I was stupid.”

“No,” says Tacoma fiercely, knowing she shouldn't distract her but too angry to hold her tongue. “Don't apologise to him!”

She doesn't get an answer, which strikes her as fair enough. If Jodi even hears her, she definitely has more important things on her mind right now.

“I get it,” Con tells Jodi. “You're upset about your friend. We all make mistakes.” He waits for her to make some kind response to his attempt at amicability, but none is forthcoming.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, I don't see any reason to keep you here. You can go now.”

Jodi says nothing. Tacoma listens to her breathing as they make their way back down the corridor to the lobby, and then to Lothian's anxious scratching and squeaking as he checks to see if his partner's okay. He doesn't sound convinced to Tacoma, but then she figures she probably doesn't know enough to tell for sure.

“Someone missed you,” says Byrne. Jodi mumbles a response that Tacoma doesn't catch. “Sure,” says Byrne. “Seems that way.”

“All right.” Con's voice again, making Tacoma's gut twist with hate. “Byrne can drop you back―”

“Actually, there's one thing I want to do before I go,” says Jodi. She sounds better now, with her cane in her hand and her partner at her side. Probably Lothian could take Con and Moira, if it came to it. Maybe not Caradoc, but still. Hard not to feel a little better with a dragon in your corner. “I'd like to visit Nick.”

“What?” Byrne sounds like she wasn't expecting that. “Jodi, I don't think that that's―”

“Hang on a moment,” Con interrupts. “Why?”

This is Tacoma's cue, of course. Jodi's sweet, but you can't trust her to have a good story prepared.

“Because you want to see him for yourself,” she says, raising her voice a little. “Because you want to know if it's true.”

“Because I want to see for myself,” repeats Jodi. “Because I want to know if it's … you know.”

“Jodi,” says Byrne. “I really don't―”

“No, let her.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” says Con. “Let her see his guilt.”

Tacoma snorts.

“Jesus Christ,” she mutters. “What circle of hell is it that cops go to when they die, again?”

“This will put an end to it,” says Con. “You hear me, kid?”

“Yes,” says Jodi. “I hear you, Chief Wicke.”

There's that old steel in her voice again. Feels good to hear it, after that awful interview.

“Okay,” says Byrne. “Right this way, Jodi.”

Footsteps, slithering, scratching. Tacoma worries her busted knuckles and broods.

“Are you okay?” she asks, when the silence becomes unbearable. “Sorry for interrupting.”

Jodi's answer comes a bit too fast for comfort.

It's okay. I'm okay. He just …

“I know. I heard.”

I feel wrong, says Jodi, sounding like she did after her last talk with Con, way back at the start of all this, but before Tacoma can come up with any kind of answer Byrne tells her that she's going to have to leave Lothian out here and Jodi breaks off contact to argue with him again. Byrne then has to check her bag, and of course she asks about the rock, but fortunately it seems she doesn't recognise what it is and accepts Jodi's lie about focusing stones; Tacoma hears it all without really listening to it, suddenly overcome with nerves. Nick's right there. Her uncle is right there on the other side of a door, and why the hell did she even decide to come, Jodi doesn't need Tacoma's fear dragging her down―

Do you want to talk to him? asks Jodi.

“Oh,” says Tacoma. “Um. No. No, it's … it's fine.” She can't show him what she is. Even if he knows about spiritomb, she just can't do that to him. “I mean, I can, I guess, if – if you need me to … but I don't know if they have a security camera down here? So, uh, maybe it's not such a―”

It's okay, says Jodi, infuriatingly nice. It's okay. I won't make you do anything you're not ready for.

Tacoma Spearing, niece of the year. She picks anxiously at her knuckles, and waits with bated breath as Jodi makes her way down the passage.

“Ten minutes,” says Byrne, opening a heavy metal door. “I hope you find what you need, Jodi.”

“Thanks,” says Jodi. “Okay.”

The door closes. Only one set of footsteps now, and the click of a cane.

“Hi,” says Jodi, after a while, and Tacoma knows they are no longer alone. “I came to visit.”

For the longest time there's no answer at all, and then a sigh so painfully familiar it makes Tacoma's heart feel like it might split in two.

“Well,” says Nick. “Not sure how you talked your way in here, Jodi, but here you are, I guess.”

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “Guess I am.”

This is a different kind of silence to the one in the interview room. This is the silence of a grown man trying to find the courage to admit to a teenage girl that he's fucked up.

Assuming Nick thinks of Jodi as a girl, that is. Tacoma really hopes he of all people does, but after Con she can't help but be suspicious.

“I don't know how long they're gonna let me have, so I'll cut to the chase,” she says. “I had Lothian tail you after I left on Saturday.”

“What? You …” Nick breaks off, laughs hollowly to himself. “Christ. I knew you were smart. Don't know why I thought I'd talked you round.”

“Call it insurance,” says Jodi, and despite herself Tacoma has to smile. For once, Jodi's managed a halfway snappy retort. “I saw where the entrance is, Nick. And I … I went in there last night.”

Pause. Tacoma wonders what she'd say, if she was Nick and some kid told her that she'd broken into the chapter house. She isn't sure she'd have any words. She definitely isn't surprised that Nick doesn't seem to.

“You saw it,” he says.

It's not a question.

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “We did. Me and Lothi and Nikki. And now, Nick … now I don't know what to do.”

Tacoma can hear all of it in her voice: the pain of the beast, the two-in-the-morning despair, the second-hand nausea from Con, the panic of having her cane taken. And yet she's here, right? Still here, still asking all the right questions. Tacoma would have gone home to get drunk and hurt herself long ago.

“Okay,” says Nick. Can he hear it too? Or is it just that he knows what it is to see that creature, that nobody can come away from it unchanged? “I don't think I can in good conscience keep hiding this stuff from you. So.”

He doesn't finish the thought. Maybe there's a gesture there that Tacoma missed, or maybe that's just all there is. So what? So nothing. So.

“What is it?” asks Jodi.

Nick sighs.

“A visitor,” he says. “I don't know, exactly. Some dimensions aren't well understood. Most of them, even. Don't know what kind of things might live there. But the general term for things like that – things that have come here from another world by accident – is a faller.”

He sounds so professional. For the first time, Tacoma can imagine her uncle at the head of a lecture hall, notes in one hand and a stick of chalk in the other. Students at Yellowbrick can attend any lectures they want, provided they also attend those compulsory for their subject, but she's never gone to any of Nick's. It would have been weird. Like it is now.

“A faller,” repeats Jodi, testing out the word. “So it wasn't them? They didn't … I don't know, summon it?”

“Don't think so. More a case of right place, right time. Wormhole – that's a portal – opens up, poor bastard falls in and gets stuck in the doorway, so to speak. Then some poorer bastard finds it, and well.” Nick sighs again. “Doubt you of all people need telling that people do terrible things when they're afraid.”

In the old days – way before Tacoma's time, back in the days of the feudal lords – they used to build temples when they found places that seemed holy, touched in some way by Ho-oh or Lugia. Where fire and flood are close to the surface of things, as Alistair once put it in one of his more interesting sermons. A pure spring. A cave of glow-worms. A forest grove. These things were built upon to keep them separate and divine.

What would the people who did things like that have done if they had found the monster? If they had found something connected to neither Ho-oh nor Lugia, some other power so vast and alien they could never hope to understand or conquer it?

Look at the monster. See the mouth, see that its whole body is shaped by hunger.

How do you worship a thing like that?

Tacoma thinks of a drifter with a movie star name snatched from her trailer, falling past the crystal spines towards that gaping chest. She thinks of the kid who ran away back when she and Jodi were in school. She thinks of hikers, of wanderers, of loners without anyone to mourn their passing.

“How long?” asks Jodi, her thoughts evidently on the same track.

“God knows,” says Nick. “Longer than the town. Maybe it's why people settled here in the first place. Not like this place has much else to recommend it.”

The sound of his voice makes Tacoma shift uneasily on her sarcophagus. Somehow this kind of sourness is much worse coming from someone other than her. Worse still from someone like Nick.

“Sorry,” he says, after a brief and awkward silence. “I'm, uh. Not at my best right now.”

“It's okay,” says Jodi. “I don't think either of us is really doing great.”

“Hah. Yeah. Guess not.” Nick takes a deep, steadying breath. “Jodi, can I ask you something?”

“Okay,” she says, wary. “What is it?”

“Why did you come here?”

Jodi hesitates. Tacoma wants to help, wants to come up with some kind of reason for her, but she can't seem to speak, all her breath trapped deep in her throat by some malignant force.

“I … know you had a plan,” says Jodi. “And I can't let this continue.”

“No,” says Nick. “You think I'm going to ask a kid to do this? I know I've been irresponsible, but―”

“You called me an adult on Saturday, Nick. Can't have it both ways. And besides,” she continues, before he can reply, “you started all this when you were my age, right? Back when Mae West died and you broke in yourself.”

“How did you …?”

“Like you said,” says Jodi shortly. “Smart. Do you want help or not?”

Tacoma stares into the dark so hard her eyes sting. She wants Nick to relent, because this is what Jodi wants; she wants Nick to refuse, because if she has to send Jodi back down into the chapter house she is going to smash her other hand too. She wants Nick to relent, because saving Mahogany is the right thing to do. She wants him to refuse, because this whole thing is terrible and she can't stand to be stuck in it a moment longer. She wants him to relent. She wants him to refuse. She wants―

“Yeah, okay,” says Nick. He sounds tired, and ashamed. As he should be, honestly. As Tacoma is. “I want you to know I'd never ask if there was any other―”

“Well, there isn't,” says Jodi. “Tell me, Nick. How do we end this?”

“Close the wormhole,” he replies. “That's what I've been doing all this time. Whole reason I went into dimensional studies was to find a way to get rid of that thing.”

There seems to be something hard gripping the inside of Tacoma's chest. Nick's a hero after all. Ten years – more than ten, even – of working secretly against the chapter house and its murderous inhabitants. Collecting materials and knowledge, biding his time until he was ready to drive his lance directly into his opponent's heart.

Tacoma knows there's a gap between the way kids see adults and the way adults really are. She knows there's no such thing as heroes, only people who are less defeated than the rest.

Still. Her uncle has dedicated his life to defeating this evil. That's something to be proud of, at least.

“Took a long time,” he's explaining, slipping deeper into lecturer mode. “Lot of trial and error, too. Most of my colleagues are interested in how we might open wormholes, not close them. For a while I investigated ghost-types – dusknoir can move on the shadow plane, spiritomb contain a small dimension inside them. That, uh … that's why my contact sent me that rock. It's inert, see – someone found a way to seal it off, stop the ghosts from coming out. The Ghost Studies people thought it was something to do with taking the lead spirit out, somehow, but―”

He stops. Just like that. Tacoma knows this kind of stop; it's the kind you make when you suddenly realise that your cleverness has run away with you, and you have for the last five minutes been so focused on your idea that you have forgotten to feel the emotions you were meant to.

Faced with that, she almost doesn't even notice that she's finally learned why the rock swallowed her up in the first place.

“Doesn't matter,” he says, his disgust oozing through his words like mud trickling into shoes. “I thought I could learn something from it and I was wrong. So I moved onto the next thing, and I forgot I'd asked my contact in Ghost Studies if I could study the rock. I wasn't expecting him to send it to me, I really wasn't.”

It's her, isn't it? He hasn't mentioned her, but of course that's what it is. He wants to tell Jodi the truth about her dead friend, confess his sins in the hope it might buy him some kind of redemption.

God. Maybe fucked-up just runs in the family.

“I'm not gone,” she whispers, picking her knuckles. “I'm sorry …”

Something warm and bright begins to glow inside her, fighting the hardness gripping her chest. Jodi must have heard her. That's pretty bloody embarrassing, really, but not so much she's going to argue with her if she wants to use her psionics to help out.

“I'm sorry,” says Jodi. Tacoma thinks she's talking to her for a second, and is faintly surprised to hear Nick answer.

“Yeah, so am I, Jodi. So am I.” He speaks quickly, viciously, then stops. When he starts again, his voice is kinder and more measured. “Look, it's over now. What I was trying to get at was that I did find a way, in the end. When I went to Alola – I really did do that, by the way, just not when I said I did – I got the last of what I needed from the experts there. It's the world capital for extradimensional research.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Not a lot of people do. But there was one researcher there whose paper I'd read, and … well, the specifics don't matter. I came back, set up shop close enough to Mahogany to monitor the wormhole but not so close that the chapter house would find out and come for me, and built myself a machine for closing it.”

This is great news, it really is. It's just that Tacoma suspects that making use of it is going to involve breaking into the chapter house. And maybe, maybe, there's a happy ending here where nobody ends up dead and the cult falls apart without its horrific ravening totem – or maybe they have a guard on the door now, or they figure out it was Jodi who did it and send someone after her for revenge, and then Tacoma has to spend the rest of eternity with the fact that no, she really did destroy Jodi after all.

“You did?” asks Jodi, none of Tacoma's fear evident in her voice. “So where is it? Did the cops―?”

“No, I hid the machine before they arrived,” he says. “In the drawer of Tacoma's bedside table. Red button, blue button, drop it in the pit and get as far away as you can.”

“That simple, huh.” That's not relief in Jodi's voice. Tacoma couldn't tell you what it is, but it's not relief.

“That simple,” confirms Nick. “I didn't want to get it wrong.”

“No,” says Jodi. “I guess not. So … red button, blue button? And then it's all over?”

“Some of it. The bit about feeding people to a monster from another world, anyway.”

“And you? Will you be okay?”

Pause.

“That, uh … that depends. I've called my – my lawyer, and―”

Behind them, that heavy door clunks open again, and Nick falls silent.

“Time's up,” says Byrne. “Satisfied?”

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “I've seen enough.”

Looks like she's finally learning how to lie. She sounds exactly like an empath who's just tasted someone's guilt at killing his niece: shocked, exhausted, pained.

Or maybe it's too good to be an act. She must be feeling some of it for real, after everything that's just happened.

“All right,” says Byrne. “Back for you in a moment, Nick. Ecruteak forensics have just got back to us about that cabin of yours, and we have some more questions.”

“You know where to find me,” he says sourly.

“Come on, Jodi. I'll drop you home. Your sister will be worried.”

“Thanks, but I'll walk.” The metallic boom of the door closing. “I have a couple of errands to run in town, and I'd rather not walk back here again.” Momentary hesitation. “Can I use the phone and tell her?”

“Sure,” says Byrne. Her voice is friendly in a way that Tacoma doesn't trust at all. “I don't see why not.”

“Thank you.”

They keep walking. After a few seconds, when it seems unlikely that the conversation is going to start again, Tacoma dares to speak.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

No, says Jodi. Are you?

Tacoma snorts.

“What the hell do you think?”

Yeah, says Jodi. I honestly don't know what I expected you to say.

Ella is scared. Of course she is: she's thirteen, afraid that someone's going to murder her or her sister in the dark the way they did Tacoma, and she just saw Jodi get gently but firmly taken away by the cops in connection to a murder. But she also trusts Jodi, and she wants to be calmed down, so after a few minutes of soft tones and soothing lies she seems to accept that although everything seems terrible it is, in fact, okay.

Fine. Next job.

They don't discuss this, although they both know what it is they're planning on doing. Talking about it seems dangerous, somehow, like if the idea gets out there into the world it might run off and leave them on their own. Instead, Jodi tells Tacoma that she's in a little bit of trouble right now, and could Tacoma talk to her, please? Just keep talking? And Tacoma has no goddamn clue what to say, but she knows Jodi still has Con in her head, still has a man carving his hate into the back of her skull like he did his initials into that tree in Three Pines; and so Tacoma starts talking about her parasitology course for some reason, about Professor Leadbeater and his obsession with a particular kind of quasi-living rust that infects steel-types; and it sounds completely inane even to her, but she keeps talking, and Jodi keeps on trudging towards Long Avenue, emitting sporadic uh-huhs, and then at last Jodi sighs and says okay.

Thank you, she says. That would've been way harder on my own.

Tacoma shrugs.

“'S fine,” she says. “I'm your friend. You know.”

Yeah. I know. She sighs. We're here, though. And, um, I won't be able to hear or speak to you while we're in there, since I'll need to concentrate on not having the grief melt my brain. So if you need anything, any kind of preparations … now's the time.

Like what, Tacoma almost says, but she is determined not to be an asshole this time, so instead she shakes her head and forces herself to put her bleeding hand down at her side.

“Let's go,” she said. “Get this over with.”

Okay. Can you help me think of a reason to get up in your room? It has to be something urgent. 'Cause Nick just got arrested on suspicion of your murder and honestly this is the worst possible time to turn up here uninvited.

“Oh. Right.” Why didn't she think of that? “Uh … Nikki's acting up. She has this soft toy she likes – you know how kangaskhan like to hold things? It's this cuddly teddiursa my aunt who doesn't know what I like gave me when I was a kid – and you think it would help. You know it was probably in my luggage, but you have to check my room anyway, because things are so bad with her right now.”

Brilliant. Thanks. Brief pause. Are you ready?

She's already asked, but fine.

“Yeah.”

Okay.

Knock knock. A long pause. Tacoma steels herself for another familiar voice―

“Oh,” says someone she doesn't know at all. A girl, by the sound of it. “J-Jodi.”

“Hi, Charlie,” says Jodi. “I'm really sorry, I know this is a bad time, but―”

“Yeah. It kind of is. I―” Charlie (whoever that is) breaks off and starts again, a little quieter. “I'm really not meant to let anyone―”

“Please,” says Jodi. “Just hear me out. It's Nikki – she's really acting up, like I think she might break something, and I think if I can just get her that teddiursa doll she likes, I could probably calm her down.”

“I don't know – Mum was really clear that I shouldn't let …”

“I won't disturb anyone, I promise. I'll just come in, go check Tacoma's room, and then leave. Please, Charlie.”

Tacoma holds her breath …

“Okay. Okay, if it's just for a moment.”

… and lets it out again.

All right. They're in. Thank God. There wasn't really any sort of backup plan here.

“Thank you,” says Jodi, with that special earnestness that only she can manage. “C'mon, Lothi. Quietly now.”

The door closes, and three sets of footsteps make their way across the hall. Tacoma listens hard, hoping to hear some evidence of her family even as she dreads it, but there's nothing. No TV or radio in the background or anything.

Possibly the silence is actually worse than if there was something.

“Here,” says Charlie pointlessly, leading Jodi upstairs. “Her room is on the end there.”

“I know,” says Jodi. “Thank you.”

She doesn't hesitate. Tacoma hears the door open and knows she is right now in her room again, at last. Two weeks late and without her suitcase or her body, but she's here.

She feels less strongly about this than she thought she would. It just doesn't seem real, not while she's in the rock and unable to see anything but the inside of Jodi's bag.

“Okay,” murmurs Jodi. “Bedside table …”

A drawer opens. Small hard things slide around on wood. And then―

“Found it,” whispers Jodi. “I think. Not sure what else this could be.”

“Nice,” says Tacoma, because she feels like she should reply even if Jodi can't hear her. “Now let's go.”

Good thing she can't be heard, honestly. That came out much more desperate than she would have liked; her house is a bad place to be right now. She might not have Jodi's empathy, but she can tell a bad situation when she finds one, and the silence is making her skin crawl.

“Did you find it?” asks Charlie, as Jodi closes the door.

“Oh!” Tacoma's view jumps wildly, dim shapes sliding across it as the detritus of Jodi's bag slithers over the rock. “Sorry, you startled me. I wasn't expecting you to be waiting here.”

“Um.” Charlie laughs nervously. “I … yeah. I figured that, um. You know.”

What is up with this girl? Tacoma has never met anyone this jumpy before. The thought strikes her that maybe it's because of Jodi, and she feels her knuckles sting again as she clenches her fist. Jodi doesn't need this. Not again, not after Con. Can't the kid at least be polite?

“I'm not sure that I do,” says Jodi. “Sorry.”

“Oh. Uh, never mind. Did you find it?”

“No, unfortunately.” Jodi sighs. It's a pretty good fake sigh, all things considered. “I'm gonna have to try to calm her down the old-fashioned way. But thank you for letting me look. I know this came at the worst time.”

“Oh, it's okay!” says Charlie, far too eagerly. “I mean, I – since it's you―”

“Since it's me?”

“Yeah. Um. You know. You're – you were Tacoma's friend. And you're looking after Nikole. So.”

There is a long, long silence. Tacoma is at this point completely lost; there's something here that's not being said, something bothering both Charlie and Jodi, but with only their words to go by she hasn't got a snowflake's chance in hell of figuring out what it is.

“Charlie,” says Jodi carefully. “I don't think that's what you meant.”

“I-it is,” stammers Charlie. “I mean it, like of course―”

“You've been staring,” says Jodi. “Everyone has, but you've been really staring. In the library, and the other day when you were out with Ella.”

What? That's the first Tacoma's heard of any of this. She doesn't even know who Charlie is, let alone that she and Jodi apparently have some kind of history. How has she missed this? She was right there in the library with her, and she didn't even know there was anyone else around but Lorna.

Hard not to be hurt by this. It's unreasonable, yes, but Tacoma's world is small right now, and even tiny things like this seem huge when you stuff them into a space as cramped as that.

“Are you okay?” Jodi asks. One step forward, cane clicking on the floor. “'Cause Charlie, I'm psychic, and now that I've actually met you, I'm not sure you're doing this because you have a problem with me.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” says Charlie, but she's an even worse liar than Jodi. “I'm fine. Really. It – it's just a surprise, honestly, 'cause I didn't even know that this was a thing―”

“But you wished it was, didn't you?” (Soft, pained noise from Charlie that makes Tacoma's insides shrivel up.) “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to assume. But if you're looking for some kind of answer, Charlie, I might be able to help you with that.”

The thing that Tacoma isn't getting is right here now, hanging over the conversation like the ominous shadow of a honchkrow. She feels like this is something she shouldn't be listening to, and at the same time as if she cannot possibly close the link on it.

“It's nothing,” says Charlie, her voice thick with the potential for tears. “I'm …”

“You can tell me,” says Jodi. “I know we don't really know each other, but if there's anyone in town you can talk to about this, you know it's me.”

Tiny sob. Jodi takes another step forward, and her coat rustles in a way that suggests an arm around shoulders.

“Hey,” she says. “I'm sorry. I know it really hurts.”

“I just want it so bad,” whimpers Charlie. “I just really …”

“I know. Believe me.”

“Ugh.” Deep sniff. The sound of someone pulling away. “Sorry. Stupid of me.”

“Not stupid at all,” says Jodi. “I promise you, I was at least this much of a mess.”

The penny finally drops. A girl called Charlie. Short for Charlotte, right? This is Charlotte Fay, Jessica's daughter, and that's why she's here; Jodi did mention that the Fays were helping her parents out. Tacoma's never heard anyone call her Charlie before, but then, she barely knows her; she's just a kid who lives two doors down.

Anyway. There has to be a reason why she prefers Charlie to Charlotte. And judging by what the two of them have just said, it might well be the same reason why Jodi prefers Jodi to Alex.

Tacoma is stunned. Somehow it never occurred to her that there might be more than one person like Jodi, even though she knew there must be. Even if she'd thought about it, she would have guessed that Jodi had to be the only one in Mahogany.

But then – Jodi didn't know till recently, right? And Charlie sure as hell wouldn't have found out that this was an option for her any other way.

He, even. Tacoma should stop saying she. She wouldn't call Jodi he; she should extend Charlie the same courtesy.

“I'm sorry for being creepy,” says Charlie. “I heard about you, and it was like … you can do that? But I didn't want to ask because – well, because Mum and Dad have been talking about you, and, um – sorry, but, um …”

“It's fine,” says Jodi, although Tacoma gets the distinct impression that it is not. “I'm guessing they don't get it.”

“No.” Charlie sniffs again. “They don't.”

This feels like the kind of silence in which someone is trying to find the right words.

“Okay, Charlie,” says Jodi. “I don't want to rush you or anything, and I think that this probably isn't the best time or place to have this conversation. But I want to ask you one thing right now, and I'd like you to answer without thinking about what your parents are saying. Can you do that for me?”

“… okay.”

Charlie's voice is very small. Tacoma is in awe of Jodi's capacity to deal with this; she herself would have been completely lost the first time Charlie started showing any sign of distress at all.

“Do you really want to be a girl?”

Charlie swallows.

“No,” he says, so quietly Tacoma almost misses it. “No, I don't.”

“Then you're not one,” says Jodi. “Only you get to make that decision. You wanna be a boy, you can be.”

“I can?”

The disbelief in his voice is painful to hear. He really didn't think anyone would ever say anything like this to him, did he? So he's been skulking around these past couple of weeks, staring at the one person in town brave enough to do what he wishes he could and sinking deeper and deeper into the green slough of envy.

This is what it is, Tacoma realises. This was Jodi, once. Tacoma imagines her alone in a room in a strange city with no company but Lothian and these thoughts, this pain; she imagines what it would be like if there wasn't a cool older kid to swoop in and turn the hurt into an idea you could hold and act upon. If you had to figure it out for yourself. If, when you did, you had to take that terrifying leap alone.

She never asked. She thought about it, that one time, but Tacoma never once asked how long Jodi has known, or how strewn with thorns the road that led to her introducing herself by her new name that morning really was. And now, listening to Charlie, Tacoma realises that even a connoisseur of self-loathing like herself probably only has a partial view of what that must have been like.

Shameful, to have left it so long. But so what; she's always ashamed. Better to be glad, right? Better to be glad that Jodi is here for Charlie, that one person at least gets a shoulder to lean on as he figures this shit out.

She tries it on for size: gladness, bright and crisp as morning in early autumn. It doesn't fit very well, and a moment later she throws it off again, unable to bear it one more second.

At least she tried, huh.

With her lost in thought, the conversation slips away from her; when she comes back to it, Charlie is apologising again and Jodi is telling him that it's fine, really, she is more than happy to be here.

“You know you're stuck with me whether you want me or not, now,” she says. “And you have my number, right?”

“Yeah. Same as …”

“As Ella's. Just ask for me.” Brief pause. “I'm really sorry, but I don't think I can stay,” says Jodi. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I-I don't know.”

“Sorry, wrong question. Do you feel better?”

“Yeah.” Tacoma can hear the smile in his words, faint and surprised. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Good. Call me soon, okay? We should talk some more.”

“Yes. Yes, we― yeah. I'd, um, I'd really like that.”

Rustling.

“Hey,” says Jodi. “You did something real difficult. And I'm sorry, there's a lot of difficult things to come, but still, you should be proud. Okay?”

She sounds almost like Michelle for some reason, the Goldenrod gloss wearing away from her words and revealing the Mahogany beneath.

“Yeah,” says Charlie – hesitant, fearful, hardly daring to believe what he's hearing. “Okay.”

Tacoma finally cuts the connection.

“I'm not bloody crying,” she says, but of course even if there was anyone around to hear her they wouldn't be fooled for a moment.

It's been a hell of a morning. Con, Nick, Charlie – and then, when they get back, Ella and Nikki, too. Jodi takes one and Tacoma the other, and by the time they end up in the same room as each other again it's past two o'clock.

“Okay,” says Jodi, coming back into her room and holding the door for Lothian. “That was a lot of lying I just did, and I don't know if she believed all of it, but I guess it's okay. I can tell her the truth when we're done.” She shuts the door, slumps in her chair while Lothian climbs on the bed. “Oof. I'm sorry, I've had a bunch of distractions. Are you okay? I know you weren't really expecting to go back home today …”

It's the first time they've spoken since their conversation on Tacoma's doorstep; Jodi might have tried to talk to her on the way home, but Tacoma had the window closed. Needed a little time alone, after her awful, silent house and that whole awkward thing with Charlie.

“'M fine,” she replies, from her usual perch in Nikki's claws. “Are you?”

“I honestly don't know.” Jodi sets her elbow on the desk and rests her head on her hand. “I feel so … weird. I mean, there was Con, and I didn't even know he was – I knew he didn't like me, but I wasn't expecting that.” She closes her eyes. “Should've done, I guess. People feel like they can get away with things. With me, I mean.”

“Yeah?” asks Tacoma.

“Yeah.” Jodi smiles without opening her eyes. “It's sweet of you to get angry on my behalf, but you don't need to.”

“Someone has to. You let them get away with that?”

Now Jodi opens her eyes, but there's no trace of a smile at all on her lips.

“They'd do it with or without my permission,” she says. “And there are so many of them, Tacoma. I can't fight every single battle. I don't have the time or energy to back that many lost causes.”

Well, Tacoma's screwed up again, hasn't she. Great. True friendship, right there.

“Sorry,” she mutters. “I guess I wouldn't know.”

“It's okay.”

“No it― sorry. Never mind.” Perfect recovery, Tacoma. Bloody flawless. “Anyway, uh, so Con's a giant mound of dickcheese, but Charlie, huh?”

There: the smile is back like a sunbeam piercing clouds. Almost enough to make Tacoma jealous, honestly. Be nice if her name made Jodi smile like that.

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “That's why 'weird' and not 'awful', I guess. I mean … two of us, here in Mahogany? What are the odds?”

“Pretty low, probably.”

“You're telling me. I barely know anyone like me in Goldenrod.” Slow shake of her head. “Guess we really need to come out of this okay now, huh? I'm not gonna get eaten while Charlie needs me like that.”

What about me, Tacoma's jealousy wants to know, what if I need you – but she jams the words back down her throat. Not everything is for her. This thing that Charlie and Jodi share? That is not something that needs Tacoma's intervention. Or that of anyone who isn't … like them.

There's probably a word for that, for the opposite of Jodi. Tacoma has always been the one with the vocabulary, but she feels like Jodi probably has her beat in this particular area.

“Sure,” she says. “Kinda figured it's not the sort of thing you wanna do alone.”

“No,” says Jodi. “It's not.”

“Mm.” Tacoma shifts uneasily on her thread. “About that. Did you, um, wanna talk about it?”

“Not today.” Jodi seems unsurprised by the question, which Tacoma supposes is actually pretty reasonable for a psychic. “That's a conversation I'm gonna have to prepare for, and I'm really not up to that now.”

“That's cool too,” Tacoma hastens to assure her. “Really. I just – thought I'd ask.”

“Thank you.” Jodi smiles. “You're sweet.”

“Sometimes. So, uh, you gonna show me that machine Nick made or what?”

“Oh. Right.” Jodi laughs. “You know, I almost forgot about that. Actually no, I honestly just completely lost track of why we even went to your house in the first place. Sorry. Lothi? Can you get my coat?”

He squeaks and drags it over to her, where she goes through the pockets and comes up with an old cigarette tin, cut apart and soldered inelegantly back together around a tangle of wires and diodes. Two scraps of plastic glued to the side, one red, one blue. Just like Nick said.

“Doesn't look like much,” says Tacoma. “That little thing can send that monster home?”

“I really hope so. I didn't get a chance to ask Nick if he'd tested it.”

“He seemed to think it would work.”

“Yeah. Hopefully that means it'll put an end to this.”

She's talking like they already know what's going to happen tonight. And sure, they do, but Tacoma was hoping for – well, for she doesn't know what, really. Something. Some idea, some line of enquiry, that would mean that her very mortal friend doesn't have to go back to the chapter house.

There's nothing, of course. But she figures she might as well argue about it anyway.

“So we're going,” she says. “Are you sure?”

Jodi gives her a look.

“Aren't you?”

For all her long words, Tacoma has no answer for that. Aren't you? Meaning – you saw what's down there, you know what they do with it, and you still doubt? You still think that we can walk away with our hands clean? That if we see evil in the world we are not obliged to make a stand?

Yes, Tacoma doubts. No, she doesn't think that they can walk away without guilt. She just wants to do it anyway, and if that means blood on their hands then so be it, they will hold their bloody hands and talk about things more important than the loss of other people's loved ones. And eventually they'll get over it.

But Jodi doesn't think that way. Nor does Nick. He gave them his machine on the condition that they use it. And as much as Tacoma doesn't want that responsibility, it looks like she's going to have to shoulder it.

Fuck it. Lying hasn't been doing her any favours; let's try honesty for once.

“I don't know if I ever could be,” she says. “Not sure if I'm that … kind of person. But, uh. I think you are. So I'm with you, I guess. And if anyone tries to kill you, I guess I'll beat the shit out of them with their shadow.”

Jodi stares. For so long, in fact, that Tacoma starts to regret saying anything. And then she smiles (sunbeams again), and glances up at Nikki.

“Can I?” she asks, reaching out, and then when Nikki blinks her assent lays her hand on the thin tendril of fog that binds Tacoma to the rock. “Thanks,” she says, returning her gaze to Tacoma. “As for you … that was really sweet. Right up till the part where it got violent, but you know, it's all part of your charm.”

Tacoma tries to smile, because this is a joke and you are supposed to smile at these, but even with Jodi's hand on her she can't manage it.

“Just don't die tonight,” she says. “Think you can swing that?”

Jodi considers this for a moment, and then nods. Something about how deliberate this movement is makes it seem much more comforting.

“I will do everything I can,” she replies, simply. “I hope that's good enough.”

And it isn't, really, but what are you gonna do, so Tacoma nods back.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

Tacoma has never really known an afternoon like this. Slow, quiet, cold with unspoken terror; the closest thing she can think of is waiting to go off to university for the first time, but even nervous as she was then she never feared for her life. Now she keeps looking at Jodi and wondering if this is finally the day she finishes the job and gets her killed properly.

Tacoma knows there's no job to finish. That she didn't really break Jodi's leg or kill her partners. But knowing is not believing, and in the mouldy recesses of her soul Tacoma can't help but keep clinging to her story. It's not like she has much else left to cling to, at this point. There's Jodi, obviously, but you can't treat people like lifeboats, and Tacoma cannot pin all her hopes on her.

Especially if Jodi ends up being eaten by the chapter house beast.

Damn it. She's trying not to think about it, but that seems to take significantly more effort than Tacoma has to spare. The thought returns, again and again; she stops talking, starts picking her lip and knuckles inside the rock while outside Nikki lows for attention and Jodi tries unsuccessfully to mediate. Eventually even Jodi's patience gives out, and she joins Ella in front of the TV, putting Tacoma's rock on the cushions where she can see the screen.

Reruns of sixties Kantan sitcoms. None of them watching laugh. After a little while, Ella shifts closer to Jodi, and without speaking Jodi puts her arm around her.

Tacoma watches them watching TV: black-and-white reflections in their eyes, Jodi's fingernails vivid against Ella's blue sweater. The way Ella clearly wants to lean on Jodi but knows too well that she would squash her to follow through.

Tacoma wants to go home, so badly, but this is home now, this prison cell in a hunk of old stone, and there's nothing she can do but sit here.

Eventually, Michelle and León come home, and the silence is broken by the sound of tired people shedding layers. They come in and stop as one, both smiling to see their daughters curled up together.

“Well, this is all very domestic,” says León. “Good day?”

“Yeah,” says Jodi. “Uneventful. You know.”

Ella looks at her, eyes full of bewilderment.

“But …”

“But?” Michelle comes closer, her fatigue falling away from her in an instant. “But what?”

Jodi sighs.

“I mean, I did run into Carrie Savage in town,” she says, and maybe she really did do that on the way home from Tacoma's house because goddamn, even Tacoma can't tell if she's lying. Okay, so León and Michelle will figure out what she isn't telling them first thing tomorrow, when they hear Jodi was seen going into the police station – but hopefully by then they'll be able to come clean about everything, anyway. “That's all.”

“That so?”

All eyes on Ella. And, well. She might not know what's going on, but Tacoma can't deny, the girl knows how to take a cue.

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess it just … startled me.”

“But you're okay?” asks Léon, and then as the image disappears Tacoma realises she's closed the window. She sits there in the gloom, blinking in confusion; for some reason she can't figure out where or who she is, and then a moment later it's all over and she slides back into her body with a thump.

It takes a moment, then she shakes it off and settles back into the familiar comfort of the pain in her mouth and hand.

She's not okay, but that's okay. Nothing ever is.

There's no one standing guard tonight. Jodi and Lothian sweep the store very carefully from the street, one with her mind and the other with his ears, and are able to say it with certainty: there really is nobody here. Something about this makes Tacoma's skin crawl. Why not? What trick are they missing here? Because there has to be one; the chapter house can't be completely unguarded the night after a break-in. That just doesn't make sense.

“I know,” says Jodi, when Tacoma points this out. “But I'm telling you, there's no one here.”

Tacoma grinds the heel of her hand against her sarcophagus.

“I don't like it.”

“Me either. Maybe they're not expecting us to come back. Maybe they thought we got scared off by their pet monster.”

“You don't keep a cult secret without being more paranoid than that,” says Tacoma bluntly. “Maybe we should call it off. Come back another time―”

“No.” Jodi's voice is still a whisper, but it's the most emphatic one Tacoma's ever heard. “We're here. And we can't let it go on any longer. Besides, we forgot to look for any evidence last night. And if we're gonna save Nick, we have to find some.”

Of course. Tacoma had almost forgotten, too scared of losing Jodi to remember that Nick's life is on the line too. The death penalty was abolished last year in Kanto, but as always Johto lags behind. Not that it's given out that much any more, even here; still, though, for killing your beloved niece in cold blood? Yeah. Tacoma has a feeling that that might just earn you a short drop and sudden stop.

It occurs to her that Jodi might be manipulating her here, and then a moment later that she doesn't care. Maybe she is, but that doesn't stop her really meaning it. And anyway, she's right. No matter how big a coward Tacoma is, she just doesn't have it in her to leave Nick to the gallows.

“Yeah,” she mutters. “I guess.” She presses down a little harder, feels the grain of the stone pushing against her palm. “Fine. Sorry. Get the rock out and I'll do the door.”

It's easier in the dark. The shadows hate her still, wriggle in her grip like fish trying to flip their way back out of the boat into the water, but with so much darkness to draw on there's no question of losing her grip. A little applied effort, and the door swings right open.

“Okay,” she says. “Let's get in there and I'll come out. See better.”

Inside, the store is just the same as last night. Tacoma's not sure how her night vision works; everything still looks dark, but somehow she can tell the difference between all these different shades of black: that's the windowsill, that's a shelf, that's a tin of corned beef. Black writing on black labels, all perfectly legible.

Nikki growls softly to herself. Tacoma twists around to touch her nose to her snout, but she pulls back, baring her canines.

“C'mon,” hisses Tacoma. “I don't like it either, but we have to. Okay?”

The scales of Nikki's ridges shift, move into aggressive patterns that among other kangaskhan would either start a fight or scare them off, and which here just make Tacoma sigh angrily.

“Last time, Nikki. I promise. We go in, we do our thing, we get out.”

It seems to work. Nikki is far from happy – even if Tacoma couldn't see in the dark, it would be hard to miss the way every other breath seems to rasp with the suggestion of a growl – but she's her partner, and if Tacoma is set on going back down into the hell tunnels then she is bloody well coming with her. By the shelves with the switch, Jodi is just straightening up after what Tacoma assumes was a similar but more telepathic conversation with Lothian, whose tail is switching back and forth like anxious clockwork.

“Guess Nikki's not happy either?” she whispers, raising her torch a little.

“No,” says Tacoma. “Don't blame her.”

“Yeah. Same.” Jodi turns to face the shelves, flicking the torch up and down in search of the button. “Let's just keep moving.”

Hard to argue with that. They're close now; they shouldn't slow down, or otherwise they might just stop for good. Jodi presses the switch, and then it's back down that awful tightly-spiralling stairway, Nikki moving slowly so she doesn't trip and Lothian abandoning the steps entirely to climb around the walls instead. Back into the dusty, crypt-close air. Back down the tunnel where Lothian starts sneezing, and past the crossroads where Jodi starts limping and holding herself awkwardly, and back into that hall once again.

Back to the pit.

The four of them stop a little way back from the edge, Nikki and Lothian visibly distressed and their partners not much better. Tacoma looks at Jodi, her face bone-pale above the vivid red of her scarf, and says:

“This is it, then.”

And Jodi looks back and says:

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

She clamps the torch she stole from her parents between her arm and her side and takes Nick's machine from her pocket.

“Two buttons and it's all over,” she says, brushing the casing with her thumb. “It kind of doesn't even seem real, huh.”

Over, huh. Sure, thinks Tacoma. So long as nobody comes seeking revenge.

“Mm,” she says, noncommittally. “Let's just do it, please.”

Jodi nods.

“Okay.” She fidgets with the machine for a moment, turning it over and over between her fingers. At her side, Lothian drags his eyes away from the wormhole and whines at her in an I know you don't want to be here either, so why don't we leave kind of way. “Sorry,” she says, without looking at him or Tacoma. “It's just sorta … terrifying.”

“Yeah,” agrees Tacoma. “Sorta.”

Pause. It is so unbelievably quiet down here. You wouldn't know there was a monster from another world just a few yards away.

“Okay,” says Jodi. “I'm gonna―”

And at that moment, someone turns on the lights.

Last Edit: Aug 13, 2018 17:08:56 GMT by girl-like-substance

GHOST TOWN | GO HOME
& assorted one-shots

girl-like-substance

the seal will bite you if you give him half a chance

Posts: 527
Pronouns: xe/xem

Ghost Town Jul 29, 2018 16:18:51 GMT

Post by girl-like-substance on Jul 29, 2018 16:18:51 GMT

Thank you for your patience! Here are the replies I owe:

Jul 19, 2018 5:34:21 GMT bay said:

Oh dear over Jodi exerting herself, though this gives an extra detail of how she handles her body more than just her gender. Just thought that's kinda interesting you went that angle.

Bodies are just awful, honestly, and they were undoubtedly worse in 1976, especially if you were a trans woman in a small town without any real transitioning resources at your disposal. It's been in the background, because Jodi as a person is always defined by the people around her rather than herself, but I feel like Jodi's cavalier attitude to her own bodily safety might well have something to do with that.

Jul 19, 2018 5:34:21 GMT bay said:

So Tacoma not knowing about the Tyranitar is her pretty much repressing her memories of that huh. While I know that happens sometimes, I'm still not the biggest fan of miscommunication the biggest cause of drama. Hopefully the avalanche situation will be fully resolved soon.

Nor am I, which is why I made this as non-miscommunication-y as possible. Everyone did what they were supposed to. The ranger made sure everyone knew. It's just that, well, Tacoma hated herself so much she refused to believe any version of the story in which she wasn't the villain – and while that's not something that can easily be resolved within the span of two weeks (man, this story feels longer than that, huh?) I think you can rest assured that by the end, she is definitely going to be doing a lot better than she is now.

Jul 19, 2018 5:34:21 GMT bay said:

Looks like Tacoma and Jodi has to go to the chapter house after all so they can clear Nick's name there. As for what they had found, my first guest is one of the UBs, specially Guzzlord, because of the references to Alola, dimensions, and hunger. Really looking forward how all this wraps up!

Indeed! They've found a guzzlord, but of course they have no clue what it is, so I couldn't just say that. It seemed like a good choice, not only because it's one of the more unsettling UBs to look at, but because of its pokédex entry, which essentially states that although it looks fearsome and outlandish, it's considered a pretty common organism in its home universe. That's something to bear in mind as we go into the conclusion. And finally – as ever, thank you for the review!

I got way behind on this, but I knew I had to catch up before the end, so I'll be reviewing the three chapters I haven't gotten to here.

I guess you needn't have rushed! Sorry, I really hyped up this update as the final chapter, but trust me, we did not want a 20,000-word chapter. That would've been rough for all of us to get through.

I'll admit, the thing that struck me the most about Nick's chapter was how easy it was for him to pretend he had taken his Alola trip when he was hiding out in the cabin. That's so... 20th century, to just be able to crumple up a plane ticket just so, and to say "Oh, yeah, I was at X place" while really being at Y place, and so long as the alibi looked convincing, you were okay. Now, I'm not sure it was actually that easy to lie about a trip, but it was enough for me to suspend my disbelief.

No, there were absolutely ways to check this in 1976 – although they were a bit slower than they are in 2018, not least because all the relevant records would be on paper and would have to be sifted through by hand. But Nick isn't expecting much in the way of scrutiny, obviously: he's trying to outwit some members of a secret society in a small town, not the cops. That Tacoma died and a real police investigation was launched is absolutely not something he was planning for.

I also liked the scene where Jodi confronted him, just because Nick is such a cerebral character and lives so much inside his own head. I think Jodi is my favorite POV (I don't think I can say POV character, because Gabby is definitely my favorite, and since she has POV chapters... but the chapters from Jodi's POV are my favorite. Anyway, I digress) but I always find it so interesting how the rest of the cast responds to her psychic powers. And because Nick is so inside his own head and very self-aware, the mental tightrope he walks while talking with Jodi makes for a really compelling scene.

Thank you! Given that 90% of what I write is essentially people talking about their feelings, I'm always looking for ways to make a big conversation more dramatic in the same sort of way that an action story might differentiate a big fight from the usual ones. Also can I just say, I love that everyone has apparently independently decided that Gabriella is their favourite? Because that is just exactly what I was trying to do. Everyone likes Gabriella in the world of the story; she has an infectious charisma and isn't afraid to abuse it. I wanted her written self to have a similar kind of effect on my readers, and it looks like that's kinda worked.

I noticed while reading the chapter that he never directly addressed what it the device he was working on was, which made him opening the car and not being told what was in it a bit infuriating, but after the last chapter, I think I have my suspicions. What I don't have any suspicions about is Tacoma's killer, by which I mean I have literally no clue. I'm like 98% sure that Harry showing up leaving the chapter house is a red herring. The fact that I don't know isn't really a fault of your writing, I don't think, mostly because when it comes to reading these sorts of mystery stories, I like to let myself get caught up in the narrative and wait for the reveal at the end (and also I've learned that I always guess the wrong guy so it's better to just keep reading).

Well, I had to have some mystery, in this story that wound up not actually being a murder mystery! Anyway, what Nick was working on has been revealed now, of course; I never considered it too much of a secret, with him being a specialist in extradimensional research and there being an ultra wormhole in the chapter house. I feel like those things together made it pretty easy to guess.

As for Tacoma's killer – well, thing is, I straight-up haven't given you enough clues, and that's absolutely intentional. Because while I pretended this story was a murder mystery in my intro to it and in the tagline in my signature and all that, that's all just misdirection. I think I may have mentioned before that this fic is in many ways an affectionate nod to Twin Peaks – the old one, anyway; I haven't seen the new one – which, the way I interpret it, hooked people with a murder mystery and then hit them with a very emphatic condemnation of its viewers for being the kind of people who are interested in seeing dead, raped women in media. It asked: what's wrong with us that we like these stories about violence against women? What kind of man is empathetic and kind enough to be capable of rising above that? And what happens if that one truly empathetic man travels into the heart of the violently bigoted mythology we've made to justify our world?(Spoiler alert for a show that's like 27 years old: it, uh, doesn't work out great for him.) Part of the way it did that was by first withholding information from its viewers and then giving them too much, so that the credibility of the story of Laura Palmer's death collapsed under the weight of its own signification.

So like, Ghost Town isn't a condemnation of culture in the same way – I couldn't see much mileage in retreading the same ground – but of course it's taking a lot of the same cues, right down to the murder-mystery-turns-into-a-soap-opera thing and the supremely-empathetic-protagonist thing, and so I've deliberately kept back most of the information that you'd need to positively identify the killer. There are probably still a couple of people who've guessed, just because there always are, but I'm not surprised that people keep telling me they have no idea, is I guess what I'm saying. Man, I took way too many words to actually say that. Hopefully my rambling was vaguely interesting at least? Anyway, I'm also the kind of person who gets caught up in the narrative rather than trying to figure out whodunnit, I think. I've written Ghost Town very particularly from that kind of perspective.

The Tacoma chapter was pretty heavy, as Tacoma chapters have tended to be. I believe I've remarked before that Jodi is this relentlessly positive force in the story, and Tacoma is definitely the foil of that. But the emotional crux of the chapter, where Tacoma finally owns up to causing her former best friend's injury and killing her pokemon, only to learn it wasn't her fault and that Jodi never blamed her in the first place, was really a punch in the gut, even from my perspective as a reader. For the entire story, Tacoma's character has been under a cloud of guilt, and I'm glad that it did come back in the next chapter and Tacoma doesn't feel suddenly absolved, because like Jodi says, that sort of thinking takes a while to recover from.

Honestly, it's going to take her a lot longer than the two weeks of the story to work her way out of the pit she's dug herself. But hopefully by the end it should be clear that she's on the mend – and Jodi too, because Jodi is … not really doing so great herself. Like, she figured out that she was trans, all by herself, in 1976! That must have been bloody horrendous, and I wanted to have someone acknowledge that before the story was out (hence this bit in the latest chapter), because Jodi is so focused on other people's issues that she tends to efface her own – like, that's why she's relentlessly positive. She has a need to be a lodestone by which other people can navigate. And that it's Tacoma who finally recognises that Jodi must have gone through a lot to get to the place where she is now also feeds into what you say: she's getting better. She has been kind of a selfish asshole for a lot of the story so far, and it's time now that that started to change.

I'm not sure if I didn't pick up on it before, or if you started drawing it out in this most recent chapter, but it was fascinating how you showed Jodi interacting with Lothian and using auditory powers. The bit where she views his memories was really well done, and captured how very differently a creature that views the world via sound experiences things, and how he views other creatures. I've probably mentioned before that I'm always fascinated at how much sentience people in this fandom give pokemon. I definitely pegged Lothian and Nikki as further down the sentience scale than Hierro, for example, but I think I underestimated Lothi, and the gap between him and Hierro isn't as wide as I originally thought.

It's definitely become more of a thing at this point – the last time we saw Jodi using Lothian to help with her ESP was back in Con's chapter, I think. This is just actually the first time we've seen Jodi's powers in action from her own perspective; bit late, but it just hasn't really come up yet – as makes sense, since honestly her psionics are something she would probably rather not overuse if she can help it, given how expensive and draining an instrument her brain is to keep operational.

As for Lothian – idk, I always get the feeling that if you were actually inside an animal's brain, you'd find it had more complex thoughts about the world than you anticipated. They might be completely incomprehensibly alien (if a lion could talk and all that), but they'd be there. Lothian and Nikki are definitely much more animal than Hierro, in that their intelligence is not a human kind of intelligence, but I also feel like their thoughts have been sculpted by long association with humans – Nikki was raised from a joey by Tacoma, if you recall, and Lothian was a noibat when Jodi first met him. So I don't know how representative they are of their respective species.

On a different note, and another thing I'm not sure if I didn't notice before, or if it became more pronounced here, is that the dialogue between Jodi and Tacoma has become a lot more staccato. It's been a while since I got caught up with this fic, so maybe it's been happening all along, but I definitely noticed it in this most recent chapter. I took it to mean that they've started to become more comfortable with each other, and Tacoma is starting to warm up again, so they don't need as many words to communicate. But maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.

Nope, that's right. It's been a long two weeks, and they're (a) much more familiar with each other now and (b) under a lot more stress. Plus, they've had their minds connected for quite some time at this point (although Jodi still doesn't seem to have realised it) – words aren't quite as necessary as they used to be.

And the chapter house! I was wondering if the basement hideout under the store would make an appearance in this fic. It always struck me as something that had to have been preexisting in Gold and Silver, and that someone definitely would have noticed Team Rocket undertaking a large scale excavation (although, given some of the things the pokemon villains get away with...) and I always just chalked it up to some kind of hideout for the ninjas that I think once lived in Mahogany. I had no idea what to expect the girls to find in the chapter house, but I definitely was not expecting that! I'm eager to see how this all ends!

Oh, I couldn't write a story about secrets in Mahogany without talking about the giant complex underneath the town! Ngl, it's a big reason why I picked this town in the first place. I believe that canonically the Rocket hideout actually is a former ninja lair – it's either a Team Rocket grunt who tells you that or it isn't, which I realise now is the least helpful possible way of phrasing that but okay – so obviously I had to make use of it. But I also had to come up with something interesting to put in it, clearly, and since Gen VII was kind enough to provide me with an alien creature defined entirely by unthinking hunger, I really couldn't pass up the opportunity. It's huge and flashy and a perfect distraction from the fact that honestly, it's just an animal caught in a trap. The only monsters (other than the pocket ones. Look, let's not get stuck on semantics here) in this world are human.

Anyway, I have rambled on for far too long at this point. Thank you, as ever, for the review!

So! I’m going through thirteen chapters of material with no notes and absolutely no direction. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ I’M GONNA DIE, BUT LET’S DO THIS ANYWAY.

You survived! :D Congrats! And in the end you weren't late to the party at all, because apparently I can't judge how long is too long before I get to the point where I'm thinking about posting a chapter. :V Anyway, before I get into all this, thanks are owed to you up front for enabling me to talk pretentiously about my characters and writing process at length, so thanks, and uh, I guess I hope that this is a thing that anyone is actually interested in hearing about?

So I guess the first thing to start off with is, of course, acknowledging that bit you said about how this isn’t really a murder mystery is fascinatingly true. I mean, yes, that’s also a thing. That is most definitely Jodi and Nick’s main goals, aside from other personal matters. But you know, it’s also true that this is really just a catalyst—an almost plot MacGuffin to kickstart a story about how literally everyone is a mess.

Yeah, pretty much! As I said in my response to Firebrand, this isn't a murder mystery. I set it up as one, and I chose an appropriately murder-mystery-y tagline for it, but that's just to sucker people in; this is a bunch of people trying really hard to stay upright with their shoelaces tied together, and about what happens when a very empathetic person travels to the eye of a massive emotional hurricane. (But more of that when we come to talk about Jodi, I guess.)

That’s it. That’s the moral. Everyone is a fucking mess; it’s just that some people are better about it than others. Or at least that’s how I see it because literally everyone in Mahogany has their problems except maybe the pokémon, and sometimes, I’m not even sure then. (It’s more of a spectrum, really. There’s Nikki, who until she was reunited with Tacoma was more or less a mess. But then there’s also Morgan, who’s a flawless space marshmallow cat. Everyone else seems to fall somewhere in between, with Lothian sort of nudging towards the Nikki end of the spectrum by virtue of having to be the support for his sensitive trainer and the weird af rock ghost girl she hangs out with.)

Honestly, I'm not sure Nikki's doing so hot, even now; her whole 'violently protective' thing is definitely meant to be read as a little more extreme than you might expect even of a kangaskhan. She's picked up a lot of bad habits from Tacoma – understandably, since it was Tacoma who raised her (and named her after her favourite uncle, I'm going to add, since nobody's brought it up yet), but still something that's going to need addressing, eventually. It's not really within the scope of the story to do anything more than suggest that, same as for most of the characters, but it's there.

For starters, I’ll say that while I don’t remember much about the original beginning of this fic (if I recall correctly, it was retooled heavily shortly after you released it),

I actually just cut out a prologue that I got told on FFN was unnecessary, an analysis with which I agreed entirely; it was kinda just there as a little shout-out to the opening of the Twin Peaks pilot, where a man walks out of this house that's clearly seething with unspoken tension and finds a corpse washed up by the edge of a river, and tbqh it didn't really add anything to the story except even more length – a commodity which Ghost Town already has in great abundance. (The document full of cut content for this story is … alarmingly large, at this point. With all of it included, I must have written somewhere in the region of 180-190,000 words of this nonsense since I started this project in January.)

I do have to say that this version does wonders with Jodi. That’s really the first thing that stuck out to me, setting aside the obvious fact that we’re talking about the first chapter. The whole of it is very careful in the way it follows her, in how it details her interactions with the people around her and herself, in the subtle details of her dead name cropping up and her nervousness and even in how slow it is to get home and kick things off. So when she finally comes out (in the glorious “I’m not Alex” line, which is perhaps the most blunt and alien way she could have done that … as she outlines literally in the next paragraph with, to be fair, good reason), it’s a blow. It’s a hard break. It’s all of the emotion you’re building up slamming back down in a few words.

Glad you think so! It always feels like a risk to deliberately slow down my pacing, especially at the start of a story when a reader isn't necessarily invested enough in the characters yet to want to wait for the payoff, but Ghost Town really needed to be slow. It's about a world made up of lives which are in turn made up of details, all set in a place where life moves at the kind of sluggish pace that suggests it's not far off just lying down and dying by the side of the road. Compressing things any more than I had done felt like it might be more efficient, but it would have taken away a lot of the distinctive feel I was going for with Mahogany. Or so went my reasoning, anyway.

And to focus on that one moment for a second – I've written a lot of stories where that moment has gone badly, or been deferred because the character knows it will go badly, but none where it's gone well in this particular way, where the other party doesn't really understand but is trying to figure it out. It felt like something that I hadn't really seen in other stories, either. And since it fit really well into a story where it was important that Jodi have a safe base of operations in this otherwise vaguely hostile town, that meant I just had to have a go at writing it.

And honestly, that’s a good way of describing the rest of the fic, just to totter off onto a commentary about style and plot for a second. You’re very efficient with your words. Sure, on the surface, it feels like there’s a lot of content. Some of the chapters might even be overwhelming for the newbie who’s not used to chewing on 20+ page forays into characters being absolute living train wrecks. But there really was no place where I thought a detail was out of place or unnecessary. I couldn’t even help but think about what you were telling me concerning nova, when you give us those brief glimpses into 1970s Johto or characters’ backstories. (I was about to say, “For example: what the fuck’s a florin? Dunno, but we get enough to go on,” but I just wikied that and learned that evidently, that was actually a real thing, and the point is it still felt natural without breaking the flow of the story, you know? Also, better example below!)

That's … quite something. Thank you so much! I'll be honest, I write stories that I always feel are too long, and out of which I cut a huge amount – but which I always struggle to shorten even more on the second editing pass, because I keep thinking well, this detail's kind of important for X reason, and this is important for Y reason, and this is … And so it's good to know, seriously, that things don't drag too much. I always aim for 90-100,000 words, since that feels like a reasonable number, but when it comes to stories like this, where detail is everything, that just doesn't happen. Especially when they're serialised the way my fics are, because serialisation means each chapter has to have a meatiness and solidity to it that a chapter of a novel isn't required to have. So I end up writing 50,000 words more than I intend to, even after cuts, and I worry that this excessive amount of content is wasting people's time. And it's really, really good to know that that's not how it's coming across.

Also that people are willing to indulge my endless interest in repurposing extinct currencies to use for my fake countries, but that's by the by.

Take, for example, Tacoma’s baggage. I’ll get into it in more detail from the character side of things a bit later, and I realize this isn’t actually a concept that has to do with nova much at all, but the point is you leave us with a sense that it’s a thing. Every time it’s brought up until Tacoma finally comes clean, it’s briefly mentioned, with either subtle hints (something happened that left a young woman with a shit leg) or as a character’s ongoing train of thought (Tacoma always thinks about this moment, so it’s not anything new). So the reader just kinda falls in line with the information and takes it like natural pieces of the landscape that’s both familiar and practically years old, which means if we do start asking questions (I mean, yes, of course we do), it’s easier to ask the right ones because those are the bits that don’t quite feel natural. Sure, Tacoma thinks of herself as an awful person. That part is the natural bit. What isn’t is the why, and that’s what we start asking, especially when she starts talking about how she fucked up with Jodi. In short, it’s subtle, but it’s a strong narrative flow.

And again, my main response here is basically 'oh thank god that landed'. Other than extreme length, the other issue I've identified with a lot of my fiction is that it's often not very plotty. Like, there's often a lot more of people talking about their feelings than there is, like, people going out and doing things to overcome an issue and achieve some form of progress – which feels like a particular concern in a story like this where I basically wheel out a plot in the first couple of chapters and then take it offstage to quietly drown in a bathtub while the actors just keep going. And sure, for some people I don't think it does work; they seem to be left wanting more obvious forward momentum, but it's good to know that for others the ways in which the story tries to keep your interest actually do keep their interest.

(Of course, regarding the actual bits of worldbuilding, I do have to say I love this take on 70s Johto. It’s a strange yet familiar hybrid of American and British, and it’s very easy to imagine its people as being proud even though they’re not as shiny and cutting edge as their Kantan neighbors. There are all these little details like the bit about when movies come to Johto, how they’ve clung to their own language despite the lack of difference between it and Kantan, how they refuse to adopt the Kantan money system, and even the fact that Patsy Cline is a thing there, all of which just paint them as a colorful country sort of people. And then there’re all those little bits about Goldenrod too that of course I pick up on because I’m me, but I love how there’s such a contrast between that and Mahogany with how it’s this modern mecca for Johto where people like Jodi can actually exist … but also, you’re still pretty damn likely to have the crap beaten out of you in an alley. It’s a background rich and alive with details, is what I’m saying.)

Excellent! Like, I sort of didn't want to have to do a whole bunch of research about 70s Japan, honestly, and also wanted the fun of inventing a country from whole cloth, so this was a way of killing two birds with one stone. And it was a fun challenge to meld small towns from either side of the Atlantic into one another the way I did here; this is a place where they say 'bloody hell' and listen to Patsy Cline, where it's a toss-up whether you're safer pretending to be cousins in a small town or living a bit more openly in certain districts of the capital, where nobody can resist looking across the border towards the money while at home they struggle to feed their kids. So while I didn't take the exact location fron the games, what I did take was the flavouring: Johto has a really strong sense of itself and its history, of the things that make it distinctively Johtonian – and it doesn't want to give those up, especially since at this point in its history, with Kanto's star in the ascendant and its own economy in tatters, that's pretty much all it has left. In a way, I guess, Tacoma's the most Johtonian person of all. Which brings us neatly back to the characters:

Back to the characters, though. Like Jodi. It’s hard not to feel for Jodi starting off, but I admit it’s also hard to get a good sense of who she is, largely because of the whole empath thing (which … I’ll get to in a moment). But to be honest, I like her, and I can pinpoint the moment where I really started to like her: the one that I told you about in private. It was that moment when Tacoma tells her she’s fucking gorgeous, and after Tacoma snakes back into the keystone, Jodi just stands there for a moment and repeats it incredulously, as if she doesn’t believe it herself.

[...]

But anyway. Point is, Jodi just feels real, but she’s also interesting because her realness is more implied than outright stated.

I've had to cut this for length, but that is just so right, and I'm glad that it came across. Jodi's empathy wasn't diagnosed until she was in her teens, and that means that for the crucial formative years of her life, she was just stuck with everyone else around her in her head without any way of filtering it or even realising that this was something that was happening. And that isn't anybody's fault, but it's something that you can't ever get away from – and I think that's why she is as she is. She is constantly effacing herself, to the point where she takes a slightly unhealthy satisfaction in removing herself from situations and inserting a positive Jodi-shaped presence in her stead, because this is what other people want from her, this is what she thinks they needs. There were a bunch of reasons I didn't want to go with a first-person narrative for this story, but Jodi was one of the big ones: I needed to emphasise the fact that a lot of the time, as an empath, as someone who is currently one of Mahogany's focal points, she simply treats herself like a stage on which the action of the story is dramatised.

And then I thought, well, hang on, I want to write about trans people, because if authors can get away with going their entire careers without ever writing about anyone who isn't cis or straight then I can do the same thing except only people who aren't cis or straight, and if Jodi is trans, then that's kind of in direct opposition to all that. Because her making the decision to follow through with her desire to be a girl – that is not the act of someone reduced to compliance and conciliation by her empathy. The world really doesn't want her to be a girl, and the fact that she's turned around for once, despite her empathy, and said no, actually I'm gonna do this is for me the thing that makes her such an interesting person to write about. And the moments like the one that you singled out, where she's like “wait, I am pretty?” – those are where I wanted these actual desires to show, in opposition to her usual "never mind me, I need to do soothing vibes, I am an empath" kinda thing. Just at the edges of her narration, in the corners of her life, she's starting to push back against the person she is defined as by her powers.

At the time I came up with the idea for Ghost Town, I'd just finished Arbitrary Execution, which is all about doubt, and I wanted to figure out a way of writing about these same trans girl issues without just coming up with the same character as Artemis. Jodi was the result. She deals with her doubt the way she's dealt with everything else in her life: by making it disappear, by being an empath instead of a human being. Except that the fact that she's declared herself to be a girl means that she's rapidly approaching a point where she can't do that any more without destroying what she's built for herself over the past year, and while that's not something that can be solved within the bounds of this story – nor something I would attempt to solve, honestly, because I have no fucking clue myself how to do that – I did want to vaguely gesture at it. And from your (wonderful, nuanced) reading of Jodi, I think I might just have managed that. So: thank you.

And now, feels. I read the revelation on the bus, and I literally pressed my tongue into the back of my teeth and stared out the window for a while because of the moment where Tacoma snaps. Like, that entire bit where she’s faced with actual vindication and just fucking denies it to the point where she has to hurt herself because goddamn, what else is she if not guilty was just … heartbreaking to watch. And so very real.

[…]

In other words, it’s no wonder she reacted the way she did, but also, it should be interesting to see how her story wraps up. I mean, sure, you were hinting at a physical resolution as well as an emotional one, but at this point, I’m sort of looking forward to that emotional resolution more. Because, well, Tacoma’s character arc is just so well-defined here. Like I said, while Jodi has her own issues, most of those will follow her well past the story’s end. Her growth is slower and subtler because while there are absolutely things that could be better about her (her self-confidence issues, the presumably pre-transition dysmorphia, etc.), it’s a tall order to assume they would be resolved within a single fic. I mean, fuck, this is 1976. Half of the things that can help her come to terms with herself aren’t even available yet.

It's so hard to not be the villain, right? Because at least if you were the villain, you were in control. If it was your fault, you have someone to blame, a direction in which to focus your hate, and also you don't have to face the fact that sometimes terrible things happen to people who don't deserve them. Who wants to believe that? The world makes so much more sense, is so much closer to the kind of morality you get in stories, if you're the bad guy. And that's what I wanted to dramatise with Tacoma – I say wanted, I guess I mean 'actually achieved', because obviously I'm basically just repeating what you've said at this point.

Anyway, Tacoma has that kind of story in her head – and more than anyone else in the fic, I think, she is a storyteller; she's the one with the most obvious repetitive verbal tics and metaphors (who and why, the atom bomb thing, etc.), the one who I tried to give an impression of as someone who is (consciously or not) cutting up history to fit in her scrapbook. Even more so than Nick, and he's probably the one she gets it from. That made her a dangerous (and therefore narratively interesting) companion for Jodi, who pretty much opens herself up to revision by anyone who wants to have a go. Like, I figured that in order for either of the two of them to grow, they were both going to have to get over at least some of their issues – Jodi can't help Tacoma if she can't stand up for herself and acknowledge that Tacoma is kind of being an asshole, and Tacoma can't help Jodi if she can't acknowledge that she herself isn't the architect of Jodi's disability. The two of them actually share many of their issues – it's no coincidence that Tacoma is really stuck on how 'gross' her new body is, for instance. For all that she thinks she doesn't understand what Jodi's going through, she probably has a better idea of it than almost anyone else in town. It's just that neither of them have realised quite how similar they and their demons are yet, and how deeply they're capable of supporting each other.

But you know what, they're kids, they're nineteen, they'll figure it out. Like, considering that Jodi is more or less managing being trans at nineteen in 1976, I feel like she at least is going to be pretty bloody formidable later in life, and I get the impression that she'll drag Tacoma up there with her whether she wants it or not.

And I could talk at length about other characters too. Like how I love Gabriella for her elegance (and how much she reminds me of Sailor Neptune) or Sam for her roughness (and how she reminds me of every butch I’ve ever known, so A+), or how Ella’s reaction is sort of realistic (she’s slow to change and accept her sister, even though she and Jodi had that talk) or how awesome of a mother Michelle is for supporting Jodi or about that one weird bit in Leon’s part of the funeral chapter (wherein he gets a little uncomfortable about Jodi) or even how delightfully punchable Cos is.

Thank you! I really wanted all the characters to have their own lives, their own hangups. Ella really wants to have Jodi as her sister, but she's just so scared of it that she keeps screwing things up; León is trying really hard to be a good man, but has that thing that sometimes afflicts middle-aged men who are trying to get used to the fact that they suddenly have attractive grown-up daughters, and who haven't ever been taught to properly manage their emotions because it's 1976 in a backwater town in nowhere country; Michelle slowly gets over her tendency to view Jodi's gender primarily as a thing that might get her in trouble as the story wears on, which is unrealistically fast but you know, this is a story, not a biography; Con is everything you ever thought the Chief of Police in a small town might reasonably be, a little caught up on his own status, unable to form any real relationships with the townspeople, proud of his open-mindedness and yet incapable of seeing Jodi as anything other than a delusional schoolboy. I didn't get to explore all of these characters as fully as I'd like – quite a lot of it was cut to save space, including a second Con POV segment in the funeral chapter, which I actually really wanted in order to keep his character close to the surface of readers' minds – but I really loved putting what I could of their stories into the background of Mahogany life.

And then there's Sam and Gabriella, who were going to be background characters but who, uh, then became major characters because I started writing Gabriella and accidentally fell in love. I don't know what I expected of myself, honestly, I literally wrote this story “because 70s lesbians” and yet somehow I wasn't expecting Sam and Gabriella to steal the show (and force me to majorly rewrite the story so that a good chunk of the plot hinged on their actions, too). But they're just so much fun, is the thing. Like, in some ways they're types – Sam is the Butchest Butch To Ever Butch because goddamn if I could get away with that in any story it was going to be the one set in the seventies, and Gabriella is basically a femme fatale, except the story doesn't frame her as an antagonist because, unlike the films noirs it draws upon, the asshole thirty-something male detective is the obstructive Police Chief instead of the hero. But hopefully there's enough individual detail to them that they're more than that – and they're definitely meant to be a hopeful vision of the future, too. Leaving aside the fact that they deliberately try to exist in a way that lets Mahogany kids realise their options, they're just really obviously Tacoma and Jodi from the future. Sam was clearly once violent and angry, but has since learned to master herself; Gabriella undereats and overworks, is emotionally intelligent and ruthlessly protective. As I've said, neither Tacoma nor Jodi can expect to be healed by the end of the story, but I wanted to include some hints that there's peace to be found at the end of their road. The world is terrible enough without taking away the few happy endings that people like them are allowed in fiction.

But I kinda also want to wrap this up on Nick. Because hoo, I like Nick too. Not only because he’s a mess and probably a touch spineless (just thinking about how he hid out in a basement with his lover while riots went on in Saffron) but also because he’s such a fantastic red herring. You never know with Nick. One moment, you see him completely destroyed, so you think, “There’s no way he did it.” And the next, you see him with his magneton at the funeral going on about how things had to happen the way they did, so you’re thinking, “Oh my God, it’s the most obvious suspect.” And back and forth until Jodi interrogates him, and even then, it’s difficult to tell whether or not he was even involved because, sure, he says someone’s been monitoring his mail, but what was with that whole bit at the funeral?

To be fair, Nick wasn't in a basement at the time – he and Miles watched Saffron's equivalent of Stonewall from the window of Miles' apartment, so y'know, they weren't complete cowards, although they did still refuse to participate because they were afraid for their jobs, so, uh, yeah, that ... still doesn't reflect that well on them. As for what he said at the funeral, I'm … honestly not sure what you mean, because he doesn't say anything at all about things having to happen the way they did. Perhaps you're confusing that with the segment from the killer's perspective? Because the killer says stuff about things having to happen that way, but Nick just says a bunch about how great Tacoma was. So while he is an obvious suspect, he's maybe not quite that obvious.

I mean. Okay. Yeah. He absolutely, 100% is on some level responsible for Tacoma’s death because of the fact that, you know, that was his package that got her killed, but still. And anyway, why was he so secretive about his project? Why didn’t he just pick the keystone up himself? Or is that folded into his slight spinelessness, where he’d be okay with letting his niece handle that instead of taking the risk himself?

I can now answer this without spoilers, I guess! I had meant to imply from Nick's reaction to finding the letter from Keith that he wasn't expecting to be sent the keystone via Tacoma – if at all – because he'd already moved on to his next idea, but this latest chapter hopefully makes this much clearer. Nick is culpable, sure, but not as culpable as he thinks he is. He didn't deliberately have Tacoma carry the keystone. Whether he's the kind of person who would have done is another matter.

But on the other hand, it’s also hard not to like Nick too because for all his spinelessness, he’s a sympathetic character. I mean, he was clearly emotionally wrecked by Tacoma’s death, and even after he’s finally crawled out of his hole and started taking action, it’s very, very clear he’s still a mess. Dude just needs a hug and to see Tacoma. And maybe also a slap across the face, but still.

He really does. I mean, even just his relationship with Tacoma kinda redeems him, I think. He was clearly really good to her, and she thinks the world of him – like, it's probably not a coincidence that when she was a kid and found a motherless baby kangaskhan in the woods, she named her Nikole, you know? And all that aside, you can rest assured that when Gabriella finds out that he tried to do the lone hero thing after all – and then sent Jodi to the chapter house in his stead – he is absolutely going to get that slap, and then some.

And finally, shout-out to the pokémon, especially Lothian (who is an Excellent Bat, goodbat, and someone I would read an entire chapter focusing on, ngl) and Morgan (who got even cuter after you explained that, no, she actually was trying to fight the giant bat-dragon at a funeral because things that are small and jingly and adorable are 100000% most likely going to try to kill things that are not). Because as much as this story focuses on its humans, its pokémon are still a bag of fun and adorable. But also, the pokémon are very much like slightly sentient pets here, which is to say they’re done well. And more importantly, it’s just fun that the pokémon often mirrors the partner in some way. You have Moira, who is so much of a punching bag she’s not even the first Moira. You have Turing, alien and difficult to read. You have Nikki, violent and passionate and loyal, and Lothian, nurturing and affectionate and soft-spoken (even for his species). And of course, I caught the whole thing about Morgan and Jack without you needing to tell me, but on the other hand, I also kinda see how they’re well-suited for their partners too. Jack is an extroverted (in his own ornery way), off-beat seagull that was forced to adapt to the mountains, as much of an ill fit for the backwater town as Gabriella herself is. Morgan, meanwhile, is an adorable fluffball that doesn’t mind oil and will literally fight a dragon (that is, an adorable fluffball exterior wrapped around a rough interior), whereas rough ol’ Sam still hangs onto old memories fondly and is content with a quiet, mundane life so long as Gabriella is by her side (that is, a rough exterior wrapped around an adorable fluffball interior). I love it when that much thought is put into a pokémon’s personality. In this fandom, it’s frequently all (the pokémon act so much like humans it’s easy to forget they’re not) or nothing (the pokémon are an afterthought), so that attention to detail and dedication to making the pokémon be unique and present members of the cast is certainly welcome.

I mean, the pokémon are the stars of the franchise, honestly. You know? The story is meh, the characters are cardboard, but man, the creature design, conceptually and aesthetically, is almost always rock solid, and that's what keeps me coming back to the games again and again. The idea of going on this semi-mythologised kind of coming-of-age journey with these creatures is just so great to me. A core part of the pokémon world is the fact that humans have learned to share space with the inhuman, to be willing to try and understand completely alien intelligences – and despite all the ways in which I'm sure the pokémon world is exactly as awful as our own, that feels like a really valuable thing to me, much too valuable for me to discount when I'm trying to imagine what a world with pokémon might actually be like.

So I guess what I'm saying is, it's good to know that the effort I put into all of that is appreciated. I dithered for literally days about whether or not I could get away with giving a Mahogany-born psychic a noivern as a partner rather than, like, an espeon or a ninetales or something else that is (a) definitely actually found in Johto and (b) you know, actually psychic, but I'm glad that I did. Viewed from the other end of the story, and all of these responses going “I love the weird flying dog, he is a Good Boy”, Lothian is honestly just kind of perfect. I'm delighted that you picked up on the joke with Morgan and Jack, too (I've been waiting for someone to comment on that for months) – as well as the fact that they're also so much more than that joke, that they match their partners like daemons in His Dark Materials. Which, I literally just realised as I wrote that sentence that that's actually probably where a lot of this “metaphorically significant partners” stuff comes from. Huh. Neat.

Man, all this talk, and I’ve barely touched the plot. Sort of. To be fair, so much of Ghost Town’s plot is its characters and how they’re messes together. Even when Jodi is investigating the murder or trying to push that thread along, it’s still about how much of a mess someone (Tacoma, Sam, Nick, Nikki, Jodi herself) is. So I admit it feels like we’re getting to the juicy part, and it should be interesting to see how this will all wrap up, especially since we’ve suddenly be confronted with a straight-up rip in spacetime after chapters of Jodi being the only supernatural thing in the story. Still, it wouldn’t be like you to end a fic on a note that isn’t anything but satisfying, so long story short, definitely excited for this weekend.

Four pages of review aside, good luck with the conclusion! This was quite a ride already, so the last hill should be fun.

Well, let's be fair – Tacoma is also one of the supernatural things in the story, as, y'know, a spirit bound into a rock by an ancient curse. :P But yeah, honestly, this has been a really great review to receive. As I said, one of my biggest concerns is whether or not I'm justified in making my characters the plot, rather than like a plot the plot, and it really kinda reaffirms that this way of telling stories that I've spent the last few years trying to fine-tune is something worth sinking all this time into. Thank you! Seriously. And I hope you enjoy the conclusion when it comes. Sorry there's a bit more of a wait than originally advertised, but on the plus side, it's definitely going to have it all: daring assaults, fighting words, dramatic revelations, giant monsters, eleventh-hour interventions – and, at long last, a heartfelt confession. All of this is coming up very soon now – but for the meantime, thank you for reviewing, and everyone for reading!

Last Edit: Jul 29, 2018 16:55:14 GMT by girl-like-substance

GHOST TOWN | GO HOME
& assorted one-shots

bay

Posts: 206

Ghost Town Aug 3, 2018 5:27:43 GMT

Post by bay on Aug 3, 2018 5:27:43 GMT

Oh dear, as if Con didn't think highly of Jodi is bad enoug,h he took advantage of her disability too which is pretty cruel. At least the two get to talk to Nick later, some interesting connections with the UBs and Fallers to what's been going on in town. Not surprising the other scientists would prefer opening the wormholes, too bad that may cause more harm than good.

The scene with Jodi and Charlie is an emotional one. Must be a relief for the both of them, Jodi finding someone else who is also trans, and Charlie fiding out it's totally possible to go with the gender he's comfortable with.

Ahhhh and now you had to stop with that cliffhanger. Can't wait for the conclusion, see you then!

girl-like-substance

the seal will bite you if you give him half a chance

Posts: 527
Pronouns: xe/xem

Ghost Town Aug 8, 2018 9:12:55 GMT

Post by girl-like-substance on Aug 8, 2018 9:12:55 GMT

Oh dear, as if Con didn't think highly of Jodi is bad enoug,h he took advantage of her disability too which is pretty cruel.

Yeah, it's really not great of him. D: On the other hand, he probably didn't do it in the cartoonishly evil way that Tacoma imagines he did – which of course doesn't excuse it whatsoever, but at least he's not like a pantomime villain.

At least the two get to talk to Nick later, some interesting connections with the UBs and Fallers to what's been going on in town. Not surprising the other scientists would prefer opening the wormholes, too bad that may cause more harm than good.

Yeah! The faller stuff is all so interesting, and the UBs are so strikingly designed to look alien to the pokémon world, that I wanted to use them here as the centrepiece of the mystery. If that was a thing that existed in the world, I figured people would absolutely be interested in studying it and opening wormholes to poke at other universes; I also feel like if massive, weird creatures fell through these rifts into our world, people would absolutely be being people about them, which is to say form some sort of horrible murder cult centred on them. Among other things.

The scene with Jodi and Charlie is an emotional one. Must be a relief for the both of them, Jodi finding someone else who is also trans, and Charlie fiding out it's totally possible to go with the gender he's comfortable with.

Yes, exactly. I wanted to finish off the plot thread about Charlie, of course, but I also wanted to round out the array of reactions Jodi gets in Mahogany. She's had all kinds of supportive (and otherwise) reactions, but I also wanted her to find a kindred spirit, too. She has to scrape together some kind of a life after this is over, after all, and I don't know if or when she'll move out of Mahogany. Her continuing to live here, at least for a time, needs to be believable.

THE HALVARSAGA

THE AMAZING HAWLUCHA MAN

Ahhhh and now you had to stop with that cliffhanger. Can't wait for the conclusion, see you then!

Thank you for the review! You don't have long to wait! :D

GHOST TOWN | GO HOME
& assorted one-shots

girl-like-substance

the seal will bite you if you give him half a chance

Posts: 527
Pronouns: xe/xem

Ghost Town Aug 8, 2018 9:44:19 GMT

Post by girl-like-substance on Aug 8, 2018 9:44:19 GMT

Content warning: In this chapter, there is a closer engagement with Tacoma's history of suicidal ideation than we've had before.

FIFTEEN: LOVE AND WAR

JODI

The first thing Jodi thinks about is the machine.

Can she get it into the pit? Maybe. She might be able to throw it, or get Lothian to drop it in, but now there are footsteps behind her – and didn't Nick say something about having to run after she set the machine off? She's pretty sure he did. If her escape route is cut off, then it might be too dangerous to try and close the wormhole. Jodi wants this over with, of course, but not at the expense of anyone's life.

The second thing Jodi thinks about is that they might be about to kill her anyway.

She takes a long, deep breath. Lothian and Nikki have already turned around; at some point, she's going to have to join them.

“Okay,” she whispers, and turns.

She must have missed them in the dark, but there are construction lights set up along the sides of the hall, their glare impossibly bright after all time skulking in the shadows; in between them, the approaching figures are grey and shadowy, looming like a pack of machoke closing in on a sick deer.

“Oh my God,” she murmurs, as her brain starts to adjust to the light and the panic. “That's …”

Is that Deb Franklin? And Sarah, Roy's tail curled around her shoulder. Harry – and God, that's Jacob, fur so silvery now with age that his stripes have all but disappeared. Max Lockwood, whose brother fished Tacoma's corpse out of the Rageriver. Pete Fisher from the mill. Sally Fawkes, who with her husband is renovating that house that's never finished. Dick Jeffries from the post office.

Real people. Just like she was afraid of. Not faceless murderers, not imaginary cult agents, but actual people, people who have populated the stage of Jodi's life since she was a child. She stares, and stares, and as Lothian leaps between them and her with a warning hiss she feels like she might throw up.

Nikki is moving forward too, holding Tacoma's rock back and her other paw forward, claws curled into a vicious fist. Next to her, Lothian spreads his wings with a sharp snap, ears swivelling forward in the very last warning you get before he blasts you.

Tacoma herself is nowhere to be seen.

“All of you,” murmurs Jodi, watching them approach. There's young blood here too; that's Victor Orbeck and his donphan, who she remembers from school, and Rusty Bates who was two years above her. Keeping the flame alive for the next generation. “How many of you even are there?”

Ten, as it turns out. There's just one more to come, stepping out from between Victor and Pete with his partner scurrying along at his heels.

He looks at her, and through the dull note of the beast's pain and the uneven roar of the cultists' anger and the uncomplicated animal fury of the pokémon Jodi feels his sorrow cut her to the bone.

“I did everything I could,” says Con Wicke. “I got Gabriella to warn you off, I tried to scare you, I showed you how guilty Nick felt, but you just couldn't let it go, could you?”

Jesus fucking Christ, says Tacoma. Him?

Hard to breathe. Hard even to stand. She hears that noise again, the one she heard when her mother told her about Tacoma, and when Charlie said that Nick had been arrested. The one that isn't there but which roars in her ears like a hurricane of flames.

They stare at her, the ten of them and their partners, who love them the way Lothian loves her, and their eyes slice through her nice coat and her eyeshadow and her skirt and her new boots right through to the mess of tortured flesh beneath.

And Jodi cannot say if the sickness scraping the inside of her gut is theirs or hers.

“I'm sorry about your cane,” Con tells her. He has a gun, Jodi sees: his police pistol, held casually at his side. Like he thinks maybe she won't notice. “I know that was a low blow, and I don't want you to think that I'm the kind of man who does that. But I was desperate. I just thought, if you were a little more afraid …” He sighs. “None of us wanted this, you know.”

Jodi says nothing. There is no breath left in the world to speak with.

“Nothing to say for yourself?” Pity, not anger. His friends are angry, some of them – Victor, Deb, Dick – but not him. “I've tried to be patient with you. You just wanted to do the right thing, after all. That's admirable, really. And I'll admit, I'm partly to blame here. I shouldn't have got you involved. I was looking to keep the Ecruteak detectives out of this, but it was a miscalculation, I know.”

His voice is so reasonable, so calm. He believes every word. Jodi thinks that maybe she does too, except that these are his emotions, not hers, aren't they? Or are they? It's so hard to tell, because after all she is so dumb sometimes, so misguided; look at her, standing here with a cigarette tin in her hand, thinking she can throw it in the wormhole and end this.

“You liked Tacoma,” says Con. “You clearly need help that you aren't getting. I understand that, Alex. But you've forced our hand.”

She really has, hasn't she? It's all her fault. Her fault for persisting with this investigation, for her asinine insistence that she is a girl―

Asshole, growls Tacoma, out of nowhere. Don't let them get to you, Jodi. They know you're an empath. This is deliberate.

Jodi starts.

“Huh?” she murmurs. “But …”

I told you once already, didn't I? You're fucking gorgeous.

Tacoma's mind howls with faith, a huge angry lioness of a feeling that sets itself between Jodi and the cultists the way that Nikki and Lothian have done, claws out, fangs bared. Jodi stares at it for a moment, uncomprehending – and then all at once the world slams back down into place around her with a crash.

She looks at Con, at Deb glaring, at Victor with his face like he's smelled something bad. She looks at all of them, these people who think they can decide who lives and who dies, and she says:

“My name is Jodi, Con. I think we've established that already.”

Right on cue, Lothian hisses sharply, flicking his wings several intimidating feet outwards and making Moira leap back to Con's side, cheeks sparking.

You tell him, says Tacoma. God. You had me worried there for a second.

“You're still sticking to that, huh,” says Con.

Behind him, Dick scoffs, and Deb shakes her head. Their minds make a symphony of spite, ten sickly notes of mistrust and revulsion chiming out above the bassline of the beast's pain – but Tacoma is here, and Lothian and Nikki, and though they can't quite crush the ache in her bones their fierce love is more than enough to keep the cultists' emotions at bay.

“Look, there's no need to get defensive,” Con says, half-raising a hand in some semi-formed gesture. “Let's be civil here, all right?”

“Civil? You're murderers, and you're asking me to be civil?”

“You don't know a damn thing about what you're talking about,” snaps Deb all of a sudden, her pidgey flaring his wings on her shoulder. “We are the only reason this town hasn't gone under―”

“So killing random people is your civic duty, is that it?”

“Enough, both of you,” says Con sharply. “Listen, Alex, you have two options here. You can keep mouthing off until you start a fight, at which point you get yourself and your pokémon killed. They're strong, I know, but you're not a trainer, and without proper direction they're not going to be able to take all of us at once. Or you can listen for a minute, and we can settle this like adults.”

He's right, says Tacoma. And I think he's realised that you can't set the machine off yet either, 'cause otherwise you'd have done it already.

So? asks Jodi, trying hard to look like she's thinking over Con's ultimatum.

So keep him talking. The only thing he hasn't planned for is a vengeful spiritomb. But we're only gonna be able to surprise him once. Trying to think of how and when.

She is terrified, Jodi can tell – but there is nothing at all in her voice but anger. Under better circumstances, it might make Jodi proud to see her this driven; right now, however, that kind of positivity is a little hard to come by.

“Fine, then,” she says, glaring at Con over the arch of Lothian's wings. “I'm listening, Con. What have you got that's so important to say?”

“Don't you take that tone with us, you little―”

“Dick,” says Con warningly. “Come on now. He's a kid.”

“'S a fucking pervert, is what he is,” growls Dick. It's almost funny, really. This is the same tone of voice he uses to complain about kids loitering in the street, or the way radio is worse than it was in his day, or the scandalous length of girls' skirts these days. Except that honestly it isn't really funny at all. “Let's have an end to this, Con.”

At least she's getting them riled – as well from Dick and Deb, Victor and Max are looking restless too. They're more likely to make mistakes like this, right? But Con's the important one, and he still seems so calm. Just like the cop he is.

“I have to agree,” says Max. “We're not going to come to an understanding here. Better just to end this and get some sleep at least.”

He steps forward as he speaks, and then hurriedly back again as Nikki snarls, eyes flashing. Moira darts forward again, apparently less afraid of her than of Lothian – but before things can go any further there is the sound of something huge shifting and the roar of the beast rolls out overhead, with a wet slapping sound that has to be the forks of that grotesque tongue pounding on the walls of the pit.

The pokémon hate it. Deb's pidgey rockets off to the other end of the hall; Victor's donphan trumpets loudly and stamps his heavy feet. Even Jacob shrinks back a little, as if he could hide his massive bulk behind Harry. Nikki just freezes up, eyes rolling in their sockets, and Lothian squeals like a stuck pig – but there's nowhere left to run now, and with their partners in trouble they don't even consider backing down.

“You'd best keep those two in line,” says Con. He hasn't reacted at all; none of the cultists have. Jodi supposes they must hear this all the time. “Our mutual friend doesn't like loud noises.”

“Yeah?” Keep him talking, Tacoma said: well, here's something to talk about. “What is it, anyway?”

“Now that's more like it,” says Con. “Conversation, not confrontation.”

So fucking condescending, mutters Tacoma. She's right, Jodi realises. It's difficult to tell sometimes, with ten minds pushing at hers, but Con is being a jerk. She does her best to cling to Tacoma's words, to absorb her feelings in place of Con's, and feels the angry little flame inside her swell in response.

“It's for the town, like I said.” Deb's pidgey is fluttering back now; she holds out her hand as she speaks and he settles himself nervously on her wrist. “I don't know what you think we are, but this isn't a cult. We keep that thing fed because of what it does for us.”

“You can't have missed that these are hard times,” says Con, like he's talking to a child. “The mill barely made it through the war, for a start. Over in Blackthorn, they've closed the mines already. But Mahogany's clung on, just about. It's because we have something nobody else does.”

“In my grandfather's day, they worshipped it,” adds Harry, with the same genial smile he uses to greet people at the station. “Of course, we know better now – modern times, after all.”

“But it can't be denied it has an energy to it,” explains Con. “You're a sensitive kid, Alex, and you've travelled some. You must have felt it. How this town is different to others? How it feels like home?”

Jodi doesn't like the light in his eyes. It isn't even faith, really; that would be acceptable, even if horrible. But what she's getting from him is the grim satisfaction of a man undertaking a painful duty. He hates this, doesn't he? But he's the Chief of Police. Mahogany is his town. And if this is what it takes, then this is what he will do.

“It is home,” she says, voice guarded. “So you know …”

“Not just for you. Doc Ishihara. Byrne Winter. Gabriella. Your own father, Alex. People come here, and something about it catches them.”

“My dad stayed because of Mum―”

“And what made her special?” asks Con. “Nobody can leave this place. Nick and Sam were told never to come back, and look at them. They just couldn't stay away.”

Nick came back for his family, protests Tacoma. It's not … how does he not see that? How do any of them believe this shit?

“The beast must be fed,” says Deb. She says it with such conviction, such confidence, that for a moment Jodi catches herself thinking duh, of course and has to concentrate again on driving Deb's mind out of hers. “Now more than ever. We can't let what luck is left dry up now.”

“We've still got the mill,” says Dick, and the note of desperation in his voice makes Jodi's breath catch. “They lost the mines in Blackthorn, but we've got the mill.”

It can't be real, can it?

You of all people don't need telling that people do terrible things when they're afraid, said Nick.

Yes. Yes, it absolutely could be real.

“That's your excuse,” she mutters, disbelieving. “That's your … That's why you killed all those people? Mae and everyone? To feed this poor thing you have trapped here because you think it can – what, buck up the economy?”

“I don't expect you to understand.” Con still refuses to react. Almost everyone else is glaring mutinously at her now, but as far as Jodi can tell his self-control hasn't even wavered once. “The mill, it― you have to be able to see the bigger picture. You're young. You don't―”

“Care,” finishes Jodi. “I don't care, Con. Even if you're right, and you're not, you can't murder people. That's all you are. Murderers.”

“That's enough,” snaps Dick. “Con, how long are we supposed to stand there and listen to this horseshit?”

“Yeah.” Deb narrows her eyes. “We do this town a service, Alex. We take care of things that don't belong here, and we keep the mill afloat. If you don't have sense enough to be grateful …”

The mill, the mill, the mill. They keep saying that, over and over, as if the fact it isn't out of business just yet is some kind of signal from the divine. As if they really believe that luck can be bought with blood.

Deb shakes her head.

“We all know how this is going to end,” she says. “Let's get it over with.”

“Fine, then,” says Jodi coldly, as Lothian slaps his tail angrily against the ground and sets the beast moaning in its hole. “Let's cut to the chase, then. Was it you who killed Tacoma, Con, or was it Harry?”

A reaction at last: Con seizes up, very nearly takes a step back; at his side, Moira blinks and rubs up against his leg, but he barely seems to notice.

Jodi knows then, even before he speaks. She can feel it gushing from him like blood from an unhealed wound. But when he finally says it, she still finds herself frozen with shock.

“It … was an accident,” he says softly. “I told Moira to stun, but she – she's getting old, and she …”

It's like someone screaming in her ear, wordless fury that does not admit any response but stunned silence. An accident. It was Con, and his senile raichu misinterpreted his command. Thunder wave, thunderbolt, what's the difference? Nine thousand volts, give or take. And a dead girl carrying a stone that just needed one last soul to come back to life.

Tacoma's mind is dizzyingly empty. Jodi reaches out, tentative, and gets a one-word response:

Motherfucker.

“Yeah,” she murmurs, too taken aback for telepathy. “Yeah …”

“It was never meant to happen,” Con says desperately. “Don't you see? Tacoma was a good kid. She had prospects.”

Jodi isn't listening. She's caught up in the working of her thoughts, this new piece of information slithering in to take its place alongside the others.

“You needed to hide the body,” she says. “And you knew Nick was working against you again …”

“I found the cabin.” Max this time. “It's my cousin who rented it to him. We knew all along. His rock, his schemes. When Tacoma died―”

“When Con killed her,” Jodi corrects, and as Con flinches she senses a sudden vicious delight catch fire in Tacoma's mind.

“―Con got her back here, and we came up with a plan,” Max continues, as if she hadn't spoken. “Feeding Tacoma to the beast seemed inappropriate.”

“Her family, you know,” says Harry, and his sympathy is so genuine that Jodi almost screams. “She was very well loved. It would have been barbaric to keep the body from them.”

Con still hasn't spoken. He stands there, back ramrod-straight, face pale.

“None of us wanted to see her gone,” says Sarah. “She was such a promising young thing. We aren't monsters. We only take those who won't be missed.”

How can they say these things? How can they stand there and say this to her face like that? She tries to protest, to point out that Sam missed Mae, but her voice is so weak with shock that nobody even seems to notice that she's spoken.

“We made the best of a bad situation,” says Harry, shrugging. “The Spearings got a funeral―”

“―and Nick's project was shut down,” finishes Sarah. “We planted Tacoma's bag near his cabin, and Con guided the police towards it. Except that you got there first, didn't you? And stole his little toys, it seems. Naughty boy.”

“Yeah,” mutters Con, unfreezing at last. “Yeah, that's – that's right. We did what we could. None of us wanted this to happen. Alex, you have to believe―”

“Why do I have to believe you?” cries Jodi, finding her voice. “Can you even hear anything you're saying? You―”

“That's enough.” Con swallows, squares his shoulders. “I don't know what I expected from you. Maybe I thought you'd understand – psychic and all. But you're just a bloody child.”

“What …”

Con raises his gun, holding it carefully in both hands, and Jodi's voice dies in her throat.

“I don't think we can come to an agreement,” he tells her. His voice sounds strange, but she can't look at his face to see why; she can't even take her eyes off the little black eye of the gun. “Toss your poké balls over here, Alex. Now.”

“You think you're faster than Lothian?”

Her voice comes from somewhere outside her. It doesn't sound anything like she remembers it.

“I think that you're not stupid enough to put that to the test,” says Con. “Not with so many others here to get involved.” His gun never moves, like the carved revolver of the soldier on the Goldenrod war memorial. “Poké balls. Now.”

Lothian recognises the words, shrills his protest. Nobody seems intimidated; they can see which way the wind is blowing.

“You're just going to kill me anyway.”

God knows why she says it, but it comes out like a threat, like it's something she can hit him with. Behind the gun, Con's mouth compresses down to a short, dark line.

“Yes,” he says. “I am.”

His voice is quiet, but the starkness of his words rings horribly in the air. Jodi hears a weird noise, like something small drowning alone in the dark, and a second later realises that she is the one who made it.

And then, out of nowhere, Tacoma speaks.

Jodi. Calm as unbroken ice. Do you trust me?

Yes …?

Do what he says.

Jodi does not question her. She wants to – but she wasn't lying, she does trust her, and so she does not question her and just puts Nick's machine in her pocket so she can take out the balls instead.

“That's it,” says Con. “Over here.”

She throws them. Nikki and Lothian follow the balls with their eyes, and for one awful endless second she can feel the panic roaring off them – and then Deb and Victor scoop them up and the two of them vanish in the same flash of light.

Tacoma's rock hits the floor with a crack. Behind her, the beast growls at the sudden noise.

“In my pocket,” says Con, without taking his eyes off Jodi. “Clamps.”

A poké ball can't hold an unwilling pokémon for long, especially strong ones like these two – but there are ways and means. The clamps cops use on your partners when they arrest you will keep anything short of a berserk gyarados trapped for a couple of hours, at least. Jodi watches Deb and Victor attach them to the balls, and hopes that Tacoma knows what she's doing.

Con's expression never changes.

“Bring me the rock and the machine,” he says.

Jodi starts.

“It's on the floor,” she begins, but nobody answers, and she doesn't finish. She can't fight. She just has to trust Tacoma. Because Tacoma said to do what Con says, and Tacoma is the smart one, and …

You're doing great, she tells her. Her voice is not quite level, not any more, but she's trying. C'mon, Jodi. I need you to put me in his hand.

That black eye stares, unblinking. Con clears his throat.

Jodi swallows.

Okay, she says, forcing herself to take a step towards him. I trust you.

It's so hard, walking towards these people, that gun. What if he just shoots her now? What if Tacoma has miscalculated? What if his finger slips and the gun goes off and it ends, right here, right now, all that effort and all those sleepless nights obliterated in a single concussive instant, and they feed her to their idol because she's not like Tacoma, not an asset to the town, and her parents and her sister don't even have the comfort of a funeral – what if that? What if that right this moment?

“We don't have all night,” says Deb. “Get on with it.”

Forget it. She trusts Tacoma. And Tacoma said to do it, so Jodi plants her cane and bends down as far as she can, straining to reach. It is slow, and it is inelegant, but there is a gun pointed at her head and a raichu and a donphan and an electivire, and at any moment there could be an explosion and her mutant brain could turn to crumbs of meatloaf―

It's okay, Jodi. Something pushing at her mind: a feeling, some clumsy effort on Tacoma's part at mimicking Jodi's soothing vibe. It's mostly just a non-verbal I'm here, but the effort itself is touching, encouraging. Just give me to him. And be ready.

I trust you. For some reason, Jodi can't seem to say anything else. I trust you …

A few terrible seconds of straining and grasping. She does manage to pick it up, but it slips through her fingers almost immediately and she looks up apologetically into the barrel of the gun.

“I'm sorry,” she says, hating herself for conceding. “It's on the floor …”

Nobody answers. She looks at them a moment longer, at all those faces staring at her weakness, and feels the snarl of Tacoma's anger swell into a roar.

Keep going, she says, struggling now to keep the soothing tone. You're nearly there.

Jodi isn't. It takes her a long time to get the rock off the ground, and then longer still to unbend herself with its weight hanging from her hand. She leans heavily on her cane for a moment, gasping for breath, then at a sharp word from Con starts to limp slowly towards him.

“Here,” she says, sullenly. “Have it.”

She holds out the rock. Con looks at it for a moment, then takes it.

“Okay,” he says. “Now the―”

Showtime, growls Tacoma, and the shadows in the room begin to move.

“Hey, Con!” she yells, and his terror explodes out of him so hard it almost knocks Jodi off her feet. “Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me.”

He cries out, and Jodi sees Tacoma move as he thrusts her away – but she refuses to be dropped, keeps pushing herself towards him with a caustic fury that seems to singe the world where it touches, and then something cracks like a whip and Con's panicked mind lurches several feet upwards into the air.

“You're dead,” he jabbers. “I saw them burn you, you're―”

“I got better.” Tacoma's voice is huge, deep. The voice of a giant. What's happening to her? Jodi stares as hard as she can through the dark and sees nothing but the vague movement of some huge shape that cannot possibly be Tacoma's disc. “I could kill you,” she tells him. “But you know what? I think I'd rather testify.”

The thump of someone hitting the ground, hard, and then the skittering rattle of an object – a gun? – being kicked away.

“Nah,” says Tacoma. “Don't think so.”

An impact. Con wheezes, breathless, and somewhere about twelve feet up Jodi sees the light of Tacoma's eyes as she turns.

“I'll have our partners back, too,” she says. Someone – Deb? – shrieks; the dark shifts, like deep water disturbed by carnivorous fish, and Tacoma turns her blazing eyes on Jodi.

“Red button, blue button,” she says. “You wanna do the honours?”

Jodi's face feels odd. It takes her a moment to push through the shock and realise that she's smiling.

“Yeah,” she replies. “Yeah, I actually kinda would.”

“Hold tight, then.”

“Wait, what are you gonna― oh my God!”

Jodi has never been swept off her feet before, and she really wasn't expecting it to happen any time soon, but there it is: she's in Tacoma's arms (arms?) now, a little dizzy and a lot startled. That's a body she's being held against. When did Tacoma get a body? How, for that matter?

“Hold tight,” says Tacoma, half sick, half exultant, and as Jodi clutches desperately at her neck the two of them surge towards the pit without touching the ground. Jodi shrieks – but almost before she has opened her mouth they are already there, staring down through the faint glimmering of the crystal maze into that horrifying mouth.

There is just enough light trapped in the broken spacetime to see the beast staring back, tugging fruitlessly at its trapped hands. Its tongues slap wetly against the edges of the wormhole, unable to quite reach the morsel there at the top.

Jodi watches it for a second, fumbling in her pocket for Nick's machine. It really is just an animal, isn't it? Or something like one, anyway. Not a god, not a monster – just some poor starving creature, far from home. Maybe it doesn't make sense to her, but it probably does to whoever lives in the universe it came from.

She holds the machine out over the pit, fighting the pain in her bones, and the forks of the beast's tongue strain upwards, desperate.

“You're free,” she calls, thumbing the buttons. “Get home safe, you hear?”

She lets go, and the device starts to fall – fast at first, then slower, and slower still, the air growing thick and treacly around it. The beast reaches out hungrily with its tongue-pincers, but something about the uncanny aura seems to repel it; it tries to touch it, pulls back sharply, tries and fails again. Jodi watches, mesmerised, and then―

The lights come back on.

Is it that Tacoma's concentration slips? Her anger runs out? Jodi has no idea. But she looks up, startled, and as the dark disappears she sees the hulking creature holding her start to shrink. The shadows bleed from Tacoma in gouts, fleeing back to the walls; she gasps, dwindles, and a moment later is something like her old self again, a vague humanoid shape in purple fog.

Jodi's eyes are so wide it almost hurts. That's Tacoma. That's actually her. A little more purple and a little softer around the edges than Jodi remembers, but it's not a swirling disc, it's her, almost exactly as she appeared inside the tower.

It's just so sudden, and she's just so cool. Jodi stares up into her face, and Tacoma stares down into hers, and then without either of them having to say anything they both turn to look down the hall at the cultists.

They are scattered all around the room, depending on which direction they thought the exit was in when the lights went out. But now they're turning, looking at them, and Jodi has a horrible feeling that without the dark and the surprise and the being twelve feet tall, Tacoma is nowhere near as scary as she was thirty seconds ago.

Con is hunched against the wall behind Moira, white and shaking. He isn't getting up again any time soon, judging by the blank pain resonating through his mind. But Max is scratching his head, his lips forming the word ghost, and Sarah is letting go of Harry's arm, and Victor is soothing his donphan, eyes locked on Jodi's face.

“Tacoma?” she asks. “I don't think they're gonna stay shocked for long …”

“Yeah,” says Tacoma. Her voice is normal again now, the booming echo gone with the dark. “I gotcha.”

She shoves the two clamped poké balls into Jodi's pocket, then tightens her grip and breaks into an awkward run, weaving between the scattered cultists like a cyclist through traffic. Behind them they leave silence, and then murmuring – and then, when the floor starts to tremble and the wormhole to crackle and whine, shouting and footsteps.

Jodi loops both arms firmly around Tacoma's neck.

“I think they're coming,” she whispers, all too aware that this is not a helpful thing to say. “I think …”

“I know,” says Tacoma, without looking at her. She doesn't sound breathless at all. Maybe she never will again. “I don't know if it matters. They know where you live.”

Jodi hadn't even thought of that. Where are they going to hide? Where can they even hide, that these people won't find them? She imagines skipping town, heading back to her flat in Goldenrod and never seeing her parents again. Or Ella. Or Charlie.

The beast's pain spikes inside her suddenly, and then disappears. The whining of the wormhole goes with it.

“I think the portal just closed,” she says.

Tacoma just keeps running.

Jodi supposes that there probably isn't much else she can do.

They pick up speed further along, where the lighting is worse; there the dark answers Tacoma's call, buoys her up and lets her for a fleeting second here or there fly rather than run, before her power runs out and she is dropped back down on the stones. The first time, Jodi gasps and clings to her tighter, but after two or three more it becomes commonplace, just something Tacoma can do now, and she starts worrying about what happens next again.

Tacoma never takes her eyes off the passage ahead, but in her arms, Jodi has all too many opportunities to look back. Max and Victor are the fastest, the pounding of their footsteps steadily inching towards them – but the real threat is the pokémon. Victor's donphan trumpets loudly and flings itself forward, curling up into a huge rubbery wheel that rumbles towards them far faster than seems possible for a creature of its size. Jodi watches its tusks spinning, winking in the fitful light, and as it bears down upon them cries out on the left―

The shadows gather around them and Tacoma swoops to the right in the blink of an eye, leaving the donphan to shoot past and smash heavily into a column, sending clouds of dust rolling across the room and making Jodi duck behind Tacoma's shoulder to protect her eyes from flying chips of stone. When she looks up again he is back on his feet, lumbering out of the dust cloud in search of his target, and as his piggy eyes meet hers Jodi flinches. He really wants them dead. It's so rare for a partnered pokémon to actually be willing to kill a human but he really really wants them―

“Left again!” she hears herself yell, and Tacoma shadow sneaks them out of harm's way a second time, cutting it so fine that Jodi feels the wind of the donphan's passage ruffle her hair. Her hand moves of its own accord, searching her pocket for the poké balls – but of course there's no help to be had there. You need a special key to get those clamps off. Until their partners manage to smash their way out, it's all on Tacoma.

“Nearly there!” says Tacoma, and Jodi tears her eyes away from the recovering donphan to see the exit to the staircase, up ahead on the right. When did they even turn the corner? Jodi could have sworn they hadn't reached the crossroads yet, but apparently they're nearly out – except that Deb's pidgey is here now, twittering and beating his wings, and blades of air slice viciously into Tacoma's back, pulling her fog apart in misty shreds. She gasps, stumbles, but Jodi concentrates, reaches out, and a second later grits her teeth as her own back explodes in a riot of pain.

“I got you,” she mutters. “Let me take the pain, you just – ngh – get us outta here.”

Tacoma looks like she wants to argue, but doesn't; she nods, keeps going, and as the pidgey screams his fury again and fires another gust into her shoulder Jodi steals the pain once more, the muscles of her arm shrieking in protest. She cries out – grips Tacoma tighter – the donphan springs forward out of the settling dust―

Tacoma flings herself into the stairwell, and the donphan crashes into the door jamb hard enough to send cracks racing across the stone. He uncurls again, trumpeting irately, but he can't manage the stairs and now Victor is here, fumbling for a ball to get him out the way―

“Tacoma!” yells Jodi. “Go!”

It's dark in here: again, Tacoma can kind of fly, each stride taking her up three steps or more. But she's still struggling under Jodi's weight and trying not to crash into the walls, and Victor is much fitter and has no one to slow him down, and he is right there and the pidgey keeps striking, turning Jodi's back into a painful mess with empathetic vibration, and that's Victor's hand swiping through Tacoma's substance, reaching for Jodi – but there's the exit, there's the greyish square that marks the end, and with a sudden burst of energy Tacoma shadow sneaks the last yard and a half, right the way through the stockroom to the door. But who's―?

“Someone's here!” cries Jodi. “Tacoma, look out―!”

A sudden dazzling light, blasting the shadow-strength out of her in an instant; Tacoma staggers heavily back against a shelf, cans tumbling all around her, and someone grabs Jodi's arm.

“Let go of her,” the stranger snarls. “You―!”

“No!” Jodi clings to Tacoma as tight as she can. “No, it's―”

“Tacoma?”

The light fades away, dies back down into an upraised paw. Through the watering of her eyes, Jodi sees something pink and fluffy – and at its side, a brawny woman with her hand on Jodi's arm.

“What the,” begins Sam, and then as Deb's pidgey flutters out of the stairway shakes her head. “Never mind. You two – out, now. Morgan, deal with this.”

Tacoma needs no encouragement. She's out of the room even before Sam's done talking; behind them, Jodi hears Morgan jingle and then a sudden sharp whoosh that makes the pidgey scream and fall. A chime – a crash – the bellowing of the donphan―

Out into the night, ducking around the side of the building towards the front. Something pale and ghostly dives past them, and from inside the store Jodi hears the ululating scream of a wingull given free rein to indulge his violent tendencies.

“Sam,” she gasps, staring over Tacoma's shoulder at the doorway. “Are those two―?”

“Other bastards need to worry, not them,” she replies tersely. “Into the car. Now. Before they figure out what's goin' on. Gabs!”

“On it!” calls another familiar voice, and without quite knowing where she came from Jodi sees Gabriella diving through a car door, scrambling for keys.

“Quickly!” yells Sam, wrenching open the back door. “In!”

Tacoma thrusts Jodi along the far seat, jumps in after her. Her cane gets dropped in the process, but Tacoma snatches it up and shoves it into Jodi's lap.

“Lothian?” asks Gabriella. “Where?”

“Ball,” cries Jodi. “He's right here.”

Sam whistles sharply. White light explodes out of the doorway, followed by Victor's donphan and what looks like a small tsunami; the donphan hits the wall of the hardware store, bricks smashing all around him, and does not get back up. Morgan skips cheerfully out after him, Jack fluttering above her head, and the second they jump in onto Sam's lap Gabriella guns the engine and the chase fades away behind them into the silent dark of a Mahogany night.

So quiet. Four hearts racing in unison at the back of Jodi's head. It feels like the world has ended, but of course it's only the pursuit.

Tacoma looks at her. She is dark and her hair swirls around her head in spiralling curls and she is so bloody beautiful.

“Jodi,” she says.

“Yeah?” says Jodi.

“Is it okay if I―?”

“Absolutely,” says Jodi, eager, embarrassed, and as their lips meet she feels like she is flying, her love and Tacoma's colliding in her head and fusing with a blast that shakes her skull to its foundations. It pours out of her in nuclear torrents, flooding the car, the street, the town, the world; as the wave breaks over Sam, she laughs and slaps the dashboard, too caught up in the rush to care that Tacoma is meant to be dead.

“Told you,” she says triumphantly.

Gabriella sighs.

“Yes, all right,” she says, though she can't keep herself from smiling. “Honestly, Miss Spade. Sometimes you're just insufferable.”

It comes out, as they drive through town. When she heard about Nick's arrest, Gabriella knew something must have gone wrong with his plan, and she went up to the station that afternoon to bat her eyelashes at Con and extract from him a few minutes alone with his prisoner on the pretext of concern for Annie. That was when she learned what Nick had said to Jodi, and so after she was done asking him what the hell he thought he was playing at sending children to the chapter house, she came back home and spoke to Sam – who, by fortunate coincidence, was just finishing up work on Janine Williams' car.

“So we had a way in and a getaway vehicle that they wouldn't know was ours,” says Gabriella, glancing back at them in the rear-view mirror. “And a pretty strong suspicion you wouldn't wait for a better night. You wanted to save Nick, right? You and … and Tacoma.”

Neither of them have asked about her yet. Jodi is grateful – as is Tacoma, by the feel of it. Tacoma would probably also feel bad about it, but given that they kissed just five minutes ago and are now holding hands, Jodi is pretty confident that Tacoma's mood will hold for a while.

“Yeah,” she says, a little awkwardly. “We, um, we did. But we did do it, though. His plan? I don't know if he told you about the wormhole …”

“Yes, he did.” Gabriella sighs. “I can't believe he asked you to do that.”

“It worked. I think. The monster is gone. And …” Jodi sighs. “And I think Con will confess. If me and Tacoma go down to the station―”

“Wait, Con?” asks Sam, incredulous. “Are you kiddin' me?”

“No. It's – it's a long story.”

“Which we will leave for now,” says Gabriella firmly. “Tonight, we're just going home.”

“Thank you,” says Jodi. “I think seeing Tacoma destroyed him, honestly. If we tell the other cops … well, I just hope it's enough to take the others down with him.”

“I hope so.” Gabriella's eyes meet hers in the rear-view mirror, checking again that she's okay, that nobody hurt her. Which in the end nobody did, apart from herself. Taking Tacoma's pain will have triggered a psychosomatic response and by morning Jodi's back will be covered in bruises, but it's okay. Everything is, right now. She is holding Tacoma's hand and everything is so okay it almost hurts.

“Hang on,” she says, glancing out of the window. “My house was that way?”

“You just pissed off a bunch of murderers,” says Sam, trying unconvincingly to give the impression that she isn't curious to know more about Con. “And they all know where you live. Better not, eh?”

“Where …?”

“Petrol station,” says Gabriella. “Stay with us tonight, and in the morning we'll call your parents and do some investigating of our own.”

“See what the mood is like,” agrees Sam. “I ain't sending you home if you're just gonna get killed.”

“Oh.” Of course. No story ever just ends, does it? There's no such thing as a final confrontation. Turn the page, and all you find is the start of another chapter. “Um … thanks.”

“We should be the ones thanking you.” Gabriella shakes her head. “I can't believe you did it.”

“It was Nick really,” says Jodi. “He made the machine. And then Tacoma got us out of there―”

“Wouldn't have been able to do it without you,” says Tacoma, and something in Jodi's chest flutters to hear it. “Kind of embarrassing. Big scary ghost pokémon and I almost get killed by a dumb pidgey.”

Pause. Sam and Gabriella exchange a brief look, over the heads of their partners. There are questions here, but they are too kind to ask them right now.

“I'm sorry, I never said,” Gabriella tells her. “But it's good to see you again, Tacoma.”

Much to everyone's surprise, Tacoma smiles.

“It's good to be back,” she says. “It's so goddamn good to be back.”

“Here you go,” says Gabriella, setting two cups of coffee down on the kitchen table. “Obviously hot chocolate would be better, but we don't have any, I'm afraid. We do have brandy, though. So if you'd like …”

“Oh God, yes,” says Jodi. “Um, sorry, but d'you have a cigarette, too?”

Gabriella laughs.

“Sam lives here,” she says, pouring a generous slug of brandy into each cup. “So yes, I think we might just about be able to find one somewhere. Hang on a moment.”

She goes off in search of Sam, leaving Jodi and Tacoma at the table. Lothian glances after her, then up at Jodi, in case Gabriella's absence means he's allowed to climb on the table and get closer to his partner; Jodi tells him no, and he returns his head to her lap instead. He and Nikki are back now, after Sam applied a little ingenuity and several power tools to the clamps on their balls, and both seem much more concerned about making sure their partners are safe and unhurt than they are about the way Tacoma has suddenly acquired a body. Lothian almost screamed Sam unconscious after she released him, not realising the fight was over, and Nikki hasn't let go of Tacoma's arm since she figured out she had an arm to hold.

“Do you think you can drink this?” Jodi asks, looking across at the two of them.

“Dunno,” says Tacoma, picking up her mug. The fog of her hand is splattered with green light, dripping from her smashed knuckles. Jodi hopes they heal. How do physical injuries even work for ghosts? “Let's find out.”

She takes a sip. Jodi watches the dark stain of the coffee spread inside her face, dissolve into her fog, and as Tacoma lowers her cup the two of them smile in unison.

“Nice,” says Jodi. “That's so good.”

It's meaningless, happy little words that come out without anything behind them except the effervescent delight of being here, safe, with Tacoma and their partners and the future that they glimpsed there in the back of that semi-stolen car.

“Yeah,” says Tacoma. “It really is.”

“Here you are.” Gabriella is back, holding a pack of cigarettes; she offers them to Jodi and Tacoma and then takes one herself. Lothian withdraws reluctantly from Jodi's lap, aware that this is a signal his human is about to make the smoke he hates again, and a moment later Nikki follows suit, flaring her nostrils in distaste. “Let me get a match – Sam normally has Morgan light hers, so―”

“It's fine.” Tacoma snaps her fingers, and watches Gabriella jump as purple flames erupt at the tip of each cigarette. “'M a spooky-ass ghost, so you know.”

“Huh.” Gabriella inspects the cigarette, smouldering violet between her fingers, then takes a tentative drag on it. “Okay,” she says, emboldened. “I bet that comes in handy.”

“Yeah,” says Tacoma. “It does.”

Three plumes of smoke. Sips of brandy-laced coffee. Jack on the counter, feathers fluffed up and single eye closed.

Jodi could cry at how lovely it is, she really could. But instead she just blows a smoke ring, and watches Jack start up into wakefulness to snap at it and see if it can be murdered.

“Heya, cats and kittens,” says Sam, coming back in with Morgan. “Did the sheets, so Gabs' room is ready for you. She's graciously lettin' you have it for tonigh―”

“Oh, save it, handsome,” says Gabriella, sounding tired. “I really don't think we need to fake it right now.”

Sam shrugs.

“Fair enough,” she says. “In which case, you two have the room where we keep Gabs' shit. Watch out for the bucket. There's a leak.”

“Charming as ever,” says Gabriella drily, putting her arm around Sam's waist. “Come here, you.”

It's hard not to stare. Jodi has only in the last couple of weeks become aware that she likes girls as well as boys, but she's known about Sam and Gabriella for years and years, and of course she's dipped her toes in Goldenrod's gay scene. Still, here's something strange and arresting about seeing these affections on display in Mahogany, in the yellow light of a small-town kitchen after midnight, something that makes her heart swell even larger than it was before.

This really could work, couldn't it? It works for Sam and Gabbi, so it could work for them too. This ridiculous, impractical thing that has been growing inside her all this time could actually – and they could really―

The future is too huge and scary to think about right now, after the night she's had. She pushes it away and reaches out for Tacoma's hand instead.

“Thank you,” she says, as Tacoma reaches back and grips tight. “Seriously, I don't even know how to―”

Sam holds up a hand for peace.

“Forget about it,” she says. “We're just glad you're not dead.”

“We haven't even explained …”

“It's fine,” says Gabriella. “It can wait until morning. Really.” She stubs her cigarette out on a saucer, and as if sensing Jodi's wonder reaches up to smooth the collar of Sam's shirt and prove that this really is something that can exist in the world. “Go on. You must be even more tired than I am.”

She is, honestly, and so is Tacoma. It takes a while to get Lothian and Nikki to let go of them, but after a while they seem to work out that their partners want to go to bed and move out of the way long enough for them to make it over to the room. It's small, and cold, and most of it is taken up by a crumbling shelving unit full of the detritus of someone else's life, but it's clean, and the bed looks comfortable, if narrow.

“No, Lothi,” says Jodi, as he immediately decides to stick his head in the bucket to see what's in there. “Leave that alone.” He sneezes, pulls his head out, and sits down next to the bed, yawning widely.

“Nice to see they've calmed down a bit,” says Sam from the doorway, watching Nikki lean back on her tail to look around the room. “Right. We'll leave you to it.”

“Goodnight,” says Gabriella. “Bathroom's just opposite.”

“Okay,” says Jodi. “Um … do you have a razor or anything? For tomorrow?”

“Ah.” Gabriella blinks the slow blink of a woman realising something she feels like she should have known already. “I'll find one first thing in the morning,” she says. “I think we have some of those little travel shaving kits in the store.”

“Thank you. Sorry to be a bother.”

“No bother at all, Jodi. Sleep well.”

“Thanks, Gabbi. See you tomorrow.”

“Night, kids,” says Sam, her voice hovering deliciously between mockery and affection, and then at last the door is closed and the two of them are alone.

The bed is kind of low. Tacoma holds out her arm without being asked, and Jodi uses it to lower herself carefully onto the mattress. A moment later, Tacoma joins her, a huge comforting mass of seething fog.

It must feel strange for her, having this new body. Maybe Jodi can help with that. Without hesitation, she leans in close and rests her head on Tacoma's shoulder.

“I haven't said thank you yet,” she says. “You saved my life. Again.”

“Again?”

“You called the ranger.”

“Oh. Right.” Ouch. That might not have been the best thing to mention. “Well, uh … you're welcome. You're cool. You know?”

“Says the coolest kid in town.”

“Hmph,” says Tacoma, clearly unable to decide whether to be pleased or upset. “Dunno about that. Don't even know what I am, now.” She nods at the mirror across the room, on one of the shelves. Her mirror-self looks back at them: a human head on an almost-human body, its edges soft and ill-defined. The face is right, though; it looks exactly like Tacoma's did in life. Her hair has a mind of its own, its curls shifting and twisting like her disc did before, but even so, it's definitely her. “Not sure how I did … this.”

“About that,” says Jodi. “I kinda have a theory.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jodi is sort of surprised Tacoma hasn't worked it out herself already; the study of pokémon is her thing, after all. She fidgets with her cane, considering where to start, and says: “You remember what the Pokédex said? Spiritomb hate people, 'cause of how they're made. But – and correct me if I'm wrong here – I think that maybe you actually kind of like at least one person?”

It comes out more hesitant than she wanted, but maybe that's okay, because it makes Tacoma smile and put a nervous arm around Jodi's waist.

“Yeah,” she says. “You, uh, might be onto something there.”

“Right,” says Jodi, pretending not to care about how much she's blushing. “And there are some pokémon that evolve when they get close to their partners, right?”

Tacoma starts.

“So you think …?”

“I think that nobody has ever made friends with a spiritomb before,” says Jodi. “So nobody has ever found this out. But now …” She gestures at Tacoma's chest. Through the translucence of the fog, she can see the rock hanging where her heart would be, its surface riven with innumerable cracks. “Your rock is in there,” she says. “I don't know if you can see. But it looks like it's broken, and I'm willing to bet it can't really hold you back any more.”

Tacoma touches her chest, peering into the mirror to see.

“I heard something,” she murmurs. “I pushed and pushed and I heard these voices … Didn't know all the languages. Someone said 'at last' in Johtoni, I think. I thought – I don't know what I thought, I wasn't really paying attention. But I know I heard it.”

“You think it was the other people in the tower?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Tacoma sighs. “I think they might be gone now. I guess the only reason I didn't was 'cause of Con and the others.”

There is a question that has to be asked here. Jodi is a little afraid of the kind of answer she might get, but there's no getting around it.

“Did you want to go too?” she asks.

Long silence. Tacoma withdraws her hand from Jodi's waist; Lothian stands up suddenly, sensing a change in the air, and climbs up onto the bed at Jodi's side. Standing by in case of sorrow.

“There's some money hidden in my room,” says Tacoma. “Found it in a park. I should've handed it in to the police, but I didn't. I kept it 'cause I had this plan, right?”

Jodi doesn't say anything. She's fairly sure that this is not one of those questions that require an answer of the listener.

“So I take it,” continues Tacoma, “and I buy a train ticket to New Bark, or to Pallet, I guess. I haven't checked the ferry listings yet, so I'm not sure which. Then when I get there, I buy some tape and I get on a boat out to Cinnabar Island.”

She has so far been talking straight ahead of her, at the shelves, but now she steals a quick sidelong look at Jodi, too fast for Jodi to tell what she finds in her face.

“The trip takes a few days, right? So in the middle of the second night, when we're as far away as we can be from both the mainland and the island, I go out on the deck, check nobody's around. Then I put some tape over my mouth and round my wrists so I can't swim or call for help and I climb over the railing and go.”

Jodi breathes in, once, sharply. Lothian starts to hum to her, but somehow the vibe gets lost inside her, its warmth cancelled out by the growing chill in her bones.

“Nobody knows where I went,” says Tacoma, her voice as quiet and empty as a gutted library. “Nobody ever finds out. And there's no mess left for anyone to clean up. I'm just … gone.”

Another long silence. Nikki lurches upright and stomps over to make what Jodi assumes are consolatory kangaskhan faces.

What can be said? Jodi could tell her about the early days in Goldenrod, when the exhaustion tore at her like eagles' talons, when she looked at the girls on her course and hated them for being so pretty, when her tutor called her in because the bile in her was making empaths cry from two classrooms away. When she thought that this was it. That this was just how life was, and everyone had lied to her about it throughout her entire childhood.

But Jodi was lucky: she figured it out in the end, after Carmine took her to that bar on Honey Street because she thought that that Alex Ortega guy was gay and needed to figure it out, and accidentally made her figure out that she was a girl instead. Sure, that created a whole new mess to clean up, but at least she realised she didn't have to stick to the life she was handed at birth, and that helped a lot, for her.

Thing is, Jodi is pretty sure Tacoma's had that moment too, and that it hasn't helped her at all. And if that's the case, talking about how it gets better isn't going to make a blind bit of difference.

“You didn't go,” Jodi says, in the end. “You stayed.”

“Because you needed me. They were gonna kill you.”

“But you didn't go before, either. You didn't get on a boat to Cinnabar, and you didn't jump in the ocean.” Jodi puts her arms around her, and though Tacoma's mind is thick with loathing for her own desperation she immediately leans into the embrace. “You stayed then, too.”

“Because I'm a fucking coward,” mutters Tacoma, into Jodi's hair. “Nikki – and Everett and my parents …”

Now Jodi gets it. Why has Tacoma been so angry at herself all this time? Why has she acted like it's her fault she's dead? Because it's what she wanted. And now that it's come to pass, it's as if she did it all herself.

Jodi really didn't think they were ever going to have a conversation as painful as that one about who caused the avalanche, but apparently this is it.

“I'm sorry if I hurt you,” whispers Tacoma, sniffing. “But I needed to tell you, Jodi. 'Cause I am not okay, and if you want to do this, if you want to … to stay with me, then you need to know what you're letting yourself in for.”

Jodi hugs her a little tighter.

“You can't ditch me that easily,” she says. “It's okay to be messed-up, Tacoma. It won't last forever.”

“Won't it?” Tacoma pulls away suddenly, gesturing at the mirror. “Look at me, Jodi. Maybe I have arms now, but I'm still a monster.”

“So am I,” Jodi tells her, and something of her conviction must show in her voice because Tacoma freezes like a deer caught in headlights. “And I'm sorry, Tacoma, I don't have any answers, but we can be monsters together, if you like. Maybe one day we'll figure out how to be people again, maybe not. But we can try.”

Tacoma shudders, her body rippling in misty rolls, and now she definitely is crying, wiping angrily at her eyes with the back of one hand.

“I'm sorry,” says Jodi. “I didn't mean to upset you.”

“No. 'S fine.” Nikki holds out her claws, gripping Tacoma's hand clumsily between them. “Thanks,” mumbles Tacoma, trying to smile for her. “Yeah, Jodi. I think I'd like that. I just … I didn't think I was gonna still be here. I don't even know what I'm gonna do now that I am.”

“Want me to tell you?”

Tacoma hesitates, afraid of what she might say, then nods.

“You're gonna go home,” says Jodi. “You're gonna get Nick out of jail, and you're gonna testify against Con and his asshole friends, and you're gonna come to my birthday party, you're gonna enjoy Christmas, you're gonna get drunk with me on New Year's Eve. And you're gonna go back to uni and become the best bloody pokémon doctor on the peninsula, and then … then I guess we're gonna have to figure a lot of things out, but not tonight, okay?”

Jodi can sense the thoughts churning behind her eyes. It's so hard to believe – but they just saw Sam and Gabriella, didn't they? Saw them standing in the kitchen with their arms around each other, saw them throw themselves headlong into trouble in the middle of the night to rescue a couple of idiot kids from a murder cult. And in a world in which even something as unlikely as this is possible, maybe there's room for a couple more scraps of good luck yet.

“No,” agrees Tacoma. “Not tonight.” She sighs. “Sorry. I guess I'm just tired.”

“That's fine. I mean, it was kind of a full night, right? We sent the monster home, we broke up the cult, we solved your murder and discovered a new species of pokémon, all in about an hour.”

Tacoma makes a noise halfway to a laugh.

“Yeah,” she says. “Pretty good going, huh?”

“Yep. Pretty good going.” Jodi nudges her gently with an elbow. “D'you wanna go to bed? I don't even know what time it is, but I don't think we're gonna get anything done now that we can't do better in the morning.”

Tacoma nods.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “You're probably right.”

They put out the light. The mattress is narrow, and Tacoma is slightly bulkier than she was in life, but Jodi is small, and between them they just about fit. It's good – Jodi is sure of that – but strange; she's never done this before, and she isn't sure Tacoma has either. Their partners seem to feel the weirdness too. Nikki reaches out for a moment as if to separate them, then seems to think better of it and lies down to rest; Lothian puts his foreclaws on the edge of the bed, peers carefully at each of them in turn, then squeaks some kind of cryptic approval and pulls back to curl up nearby, apparently satisfied.

Jodi chuckles quietly to herself.

“Well, that was the hardest part,” she whispers, glancing at Tacoma. “If they're happy with this, then I guess it's all gonna work out fine.”

Tacoma's eyes glow green in the dark, wide and serious.

“Yeah,” she says, and in the movement of her mind Jodi can tell that she is trying hard to mean it. “All gonna work out fine.”

Tiny night noises fill the room: the ceiling dripping slowly into the bucket, Lothian snuffling at dreams of fruit, Nikki's breathing as she waits for her parter to fall asleep. Jodi looks up, feeling the happiness brimming over within her the way it did on the drive out here, and sees behind Tacoma's eyes the slow realisation that this is actually happening.

“I know,” whispers Jodi, looking up into her face. “I can't believe it either.”

Tacoma smiles, hesitant, uncertain.

“I don't even know what comes next,” she says.

There's a world out there, full of spite and fear. There are people who would kill you if they think they could get away with it, and know that they probably could; there are families who need to be told about Tacoma, and about what she shares with Jodi; there is a boy called Charlie who is going to need more help than Jodi even knows how to give. There is the darkness in Tacoma, waiting for a quiet moment to wrap its clammy fingers around her wrist and drag her back down into its lair. There are battles to be fought. There are hard conversations to be had. There is so much lurking out there, and all of it will crash down upon them the moment dawn comes.

Jodi sees it all, and shrugs, and tilts her head up to plant a kiss on Tacoma's lips.

“Me either,” she says, as Tacoma's nervous joy sings in her veins. “But I'm real excited to find out.”

Author's Note

And we're done! Thank you so much for sticking with my weird, not-really-a-murder-mystery-after-all story till the end. <3 Just one small announcement: while I know I normally leap straight from one fic to the next, this time I'm going to be taking a bit of a break. I might do a one-shot or two later this year, but otherwise, I'm going to take the rest of 2018 to focus on some other projects of mine, and possibly some of 2019 too, depending on what kind of progress I manage to make. Go Home will still be updated fortnightly, of course, as it's all been written already, but I kind of need to take some time away from these massive chapterfics and maybe get some sleep for once instead of spending all night writing. Thank you for your understanding, and, as always, for taking the time to read a thing I made. It means a lot to me that this is how you've chosen to spend your free time.

Last Edit: Aug 20, 2018 19:54:13 GMT by girl-like-substance

GHOST TOWN | GO HOME
& assorted one-shots

bay

Posts: 206

Ghost Town Aug 10, 2018 7:03:13 GMT

Post by bay on Aug 10, 2018 7:03:13 GMT

Oh boy, so first off the reveal of the killer finally (under spoilers incase late readers drop by).

SPOILER: Click to show

While I suspected Con might play some role in it due to his heavy insistance of wanting Jodi to stop investigating, didn't occur to me immeditely he would be the killer since I wouldn't know what his motive would be in doing that. However, I was half right about whoever was involved in that fight in the funeral chapter leaves a huge clue. = P

Speaking of the funeral, after finishing reading the ending, I went back to reading the last part of the funeral chapter and that brings a whole new perspective of what was occuring in Con's mind. It does seem he feels a heavy weight being the cause of Tacoma's death since his dialogue in the last chapter and his POV in the funeral chapter matches his feelings there. Even that, I still want to kick him for not calling Jodi by her real name and still wanting to keep the "status quo" of the town if you will.

Oh, and finally there's this response to Minty's review that I can't help but be amused:

I didn't get to explore all of these characters as fully as I'd like – quite a lot of it was cut to save space, including a second Con POV segment in the funeral chapter, which I actually really wanted in order to keep his character close to the surface of readers' minds – but I really loved putting what I could of their stories into the background of Mahogany life.

Either you didn't actually delete Con's segment there or you meant some other Con POV content you deleted lol.

Now to the rest of the chapter. Love that Tacoma got to scare off everyone and she and Jodi got to escape with Gabi and Sam (and Tacoma and Jodi's kiss the icing on the cake). The reveal that Tacoma was planning to have herself be swept away is a lot to unpack there, but of course Jodi will still be by her side aw.

Again congrats on finishing, this has been a fun ride from start to finish!

Last Edit: Aug 13, 2018 4:49:09 GMT by bay

admin

Posts: 272

Ghost Town Aug 12, 2018 0:17:36 GMT

Post by admin on Aug 12, 2018 0:17:36 GMT

Anyway, uh, so Con's a giant mound of dickcheese, but Charlie, huh?

I love it when the story reviews itself for me. Good night, everybody!

Nah, but forreal, I can see now why you had to split the chapter. Because ultimately, how do you follow up the revelation that the whole murder plot thread was tied to an interdimensional hellbeast? When you’re dealing with ill-equipped young adults, you don’t. You have them running in terror out the door, only to collect themselves and figure out what the fuck Plan B is.

(And on that note, I’m delighted that Gabriella straight-up asked Nick what he thought he was doing sending Jodi, who’s both disabled and young enough to still have a full life ahead of her, off to face the aforementioned hellbeast armed with only a makeshift portal smasher made from a cigarette tin. Sure, he didn’t have much of a choice, but when you put it like that…)

But before I get into the final chapter, one last note about the penultimate: I actually like the scene with Charlie. Sure, it puts a pause on the prepwork for the final battle, but on the other … it’s not just tying up that loose end of who tf that kid was and why he was staring at Jodi, was it? It was also building up the fact that this is who Jodi is. Jodi is not alone. Jodi is a role model for others. Jodi can be something other than that psychic kid who just found out she’s trans. It’s a moment of healing and confidence and kinda motherhood, and I am now super-duper tempted to write fic in which an older Jodi discovers the internet and takes multitudes of Charlies under her wing.

That said, Con and a partial review response. I have to admit that before these chapters, I’d interpreted the killer’s part in Tacoma’s funeral to be part of the red herring: still from Nick’s point of view, but labeled as the killer’s to continue making us think of the most obvious solution. But now that Con came out that, yeah, he’s the one (or part of the one), that should’ve been made more obvious, tbqh. How do you keep a secret as big as “this town has a murder not-cult in it” from getting out? By involving the chief of police, of course! And in any case, it should’ve been obvious from the get-go because you did offer little details: the way Con was described at the beginning (a jock, the sort of person who thinks nothing of carving his name into ancient trees, that sort of thing), not to mention the fact that he has an electric-type powerful enough to take down dragonite (and she’s not even the first Moira). I mean, even the way he treats her should’ve been an indicator: while everyone else seems to treat their pokémon as pets, children, or actual partners, we barely get much screentime out of Moira, despite the fact that Con himself is a supporting character. She’s more of a tool or a living gun than an actual partner, which says a lot about how Con views living beings (if the tree wasn’t enough of an indicator). I mean, fuck, man, even the rest of the cult are more in sync with their pokémon and nature than Con is; it’s just that they have very deluded ideas about what is and isn’t necessary for survival, whereas Con.... >>

Plus, he’s just not the best at empathy, and he gets stuck on traditional values (with the way he talks about Jodi). Of course he’s the epitome of the status quo—the human form of middle class white ______, which would happily throw lesbians, children, and the homeless into the maw of literal destruction.

(I mean, I know he says it’s an accident, but he’s still a dick with no empathy, and he still planned on hurting Tacoma. It’s just that he’s now a moronic dick with no empathy.)

Speaking of, I think one of the fun parts of the last chapter is the moment when Jodi stares down a good chunk of Mahogany and realizes, “Shit, these are real people.” It’s a similar revelation to the one I’d made while listening through Alice Isn’t Dead, which is also about queer people with anxiety fighting monsters and becoming monsters in a quasi-America, and I’m only bringing this up because I fully blame it for the fact that I’m thinking about metaphors for current politics. But the point is just like in Alice Isn’t Dead, the big bad isn’t a faceless entity. It’s just a recognizable face, warped by hate or close-mindedness or religious fanaticism into something that’s capable of terrible things. And in a way, that’s more satisfying and scary of a villain because you recognize and almost understand. Of course Mahogany’s citizens would do unspeakable things to protect their idea of the status quo. Of course Jodi doesn’t belong in this group (which is why Con’s use of her deadname is even more poignant besides of course he would), and of course they would protect a hellbeast, just like the generations before them. That’s their normal, and the unknown—the life they have without the hellbeast but with plenty of Jodis—is a lot scarier. It takes effort to adapt and to change and to accept that all the things that made up your past (and possibly who you were, period) are, well, figments of the past.

But also, for all the fantasy elements between this and the other media I’m consuming, it’s just really fun commentary. Just the thought that normal can be dangerous, that monsters can come from nostalgia and protecting the status quo, that the dedication to an idealized past and the definition of normalcy that’s alive in the moderate is just as if not as dangerous as extremism because it can easily be transformed into that far-right violence and all.

Point is, it’s just really fascinating commentary, and honestly, that moment where Jodi is facing down Con (why did I keep calling him Cos in my other review? idk) with Nick’s machine in her hands is just. Beautiful because of it. Ugly in a way, too, because of course many of us freaks have known people like this or been in situations like this, but the realness and frankness about what it looks like and what it feels like to be faced with that (because the self-doubt and hurt and confusion Jodi is facing isn’t just a thing that only empaths can feel) makes it beautiful in the same way the violence and gore and claustrophobia of Alien is beautiful, if that makes sense.

But it’s especially beautiful when Tacoma pushes Jodi to fight back with that fucking beautiful line. Like. I loved the idea of weaponized self-doubt coming from a monster that’s intensely real, but just watching the two of them embrace their queerness and burst out to fight back—first with calm words from Jodi, then with the rage and violence and shadows of Tacoma—was just … satisfying.

…also, I kinda want to say there’s a metaphor in the use of guzzlord too, isn’t there? I mean, there’s that whole thing about how Mahogany is a distinctively American town (with, okay, British flavor, but that’s capitalist too, so it counts) and how Deb says there’s an energy about the beast that gives the place its aura and makes it go on despite how all points of reason say that’s an economic impossibility. But it’s like. It’s a town straight from all those depictions of late 50s Americana. Sitting right over the mouth of the literal embodiment of gluttony (and maybe greed too). And it’s only “resolved” when a queer person slams the door shut on it and kicks out the supports from beneath the wholesome, American townspeople. Like … there’s so much I want to say, but that would require an entirely different essay. Also, yes, this likewise ignores the fact that the guzzlord is just a trapped, hungry animal far more innocent than the Mahogany townsfolk (which means it’s hard not to feel sorry for it, especially in the last moment we see it, when Jodi empathizes with it a little), but still.

(Also, with all this talk, I kinda wonder where Pryce was during all of this and where he stands. Part of me wants him to be hella queer too or at least an ally because, you know. Canon character and all. But on the other hand, knowing how in some canon universes, he was literally ready to kill for the sake of a lapras—and yeah, that’d be multiple universes—part of me understands that he was probably in on this too. But. Tangent.)

But more importantly, damn, that final battle between Tacoma and the townsfolk. Like, I’m so happy to see Tacoma make full use of her creepy af form to do some shadow beating, and that battle was simultaneously creepy as hell and beautifully described. Just…

How she's doing this Jodi has no idea. The lights go out one by one, from the exit down to the pit: one two three four five, the darkness racing closer and closer as the cultists turn and stare and swear – and then it swallows them all and in that moment, as everything descends into a sightless shouting panic, green light blossoms in the dark and Tacoma lurches straight into Con's face.

“Hey, Con!” she yells, and his terror explodes out of him so hard it almost knocks Jodi off her feet. “Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me.”

He cries out, and Jodi sees Tacoma move as he thrusts her away – but she refuses to be dropped, keeps pushing herself towards him with a caustic fury that seems to singe the world where it touches, and then something cracks like a whip and Con's panicked mind lurches several feet upwards into the air.

You can feel the rage here. It’s even in the word choice just as much as the actual choreography. (Caustic fury—the kind of thing that leaves an acid taste on the back of your tongue and everything.)

Furthermore, A+ on making full use of your characters’ powers at the end too. Like, one of the hardest things is to manage details and actually make things that seemed important during the build-up of a fic actually be important at the end, and everything feels like it comes into play here: Jodi’s empathy, Tacoma’s ghost powers, and the fun reminder that, yep, pokémon are in here. (I agree with your statement that pokémon are the main point of the franchise, but when you have supernatural characters, it wouldn’t be difficult to forget them, you know? Especially when you’ve written a situation where the main characters’ pokémon are unavailable for battle.)

Also, the final fighter is a jingling, fluffy clefairy owned by the butchest goddamn woman in all of Mahogany. I just. Love you right now.

And speaking of love, I also am delighted that Jodi is turning out as the soft but chain-smoking pillar of elegance while Tacoma is the butch with the liquor-laced coffee. Like a mini Sam and Gabriella, those two.

But on a more serious note, I love how quiet the ending is. Like, it’s a bunch of little moments that ease us back down after a rush, but it’s also the ending that the story needs. There isn’t a definite, solid end, really. Sure, Tacoma will testify, but knowing the way this world works, who even knows if that’ll avoid ending up as a giant mess too? And Jodi is right whenever she goes through that list of things that are still there (Charlie, who needs help; Tacoma, who has a darkness in her both literally and figuratively; etc., etc.). But those are problems for another day and another story, and for now, it’s just about Jodi, Tacoma, and a narrow bed. And that’s satisfying in ways I can’t describe with words.

That said, honestly, the only nitpick or even negative moment I had (although there was a moment where there should be a paragraph break, but I kinda can’t find it atm) was this, and it’s only because it comes at such an otherwise powerful moment full of shippy vibes that I really want to know what it actually meant so I can better picture what’s going on:

and then as Jodi clutches desperately at her neck surges towards the pit without touching the ground.

So I kinda feel like the “at” should be another “as,” but then the surges and so forth kinda tripped me up further. Like. Okay. Tacoma’s holding Jodi against her body, right? So she and Jodi are surging towards the pit without touching the ground, kinda Superman-holding-Lois-Lane-style, yeah? So Jodi’s arms are around Tacoma’s neck and everything.

But … on the other hand, Tacoma can still kinda morph her body and shape it to be whatever she wants it to be because ghost magic, and this is between the moment when she’s a giant and the one where she reforms as herself, so it’s also possible that she’s shifted back to a more familiar spiritomb-like state, which means the “neck” would be referring to the thread that formerly held her to the rock, right? Granted, that’s a more awkward position, so idk.

I … I just want my dramatic lesbian moment.

But! Other than that, this was a fantastic ending to quite a ride, and I just want to say thank you for writing this. ;D

I hear you about taking a break from writing, though. Your last few fics seem to be very personal and thus would understandably be very draining on you. Still, it’ll be nice to see what you come up with next, so I’m looking forward to that time a couple years from now when you’re back at it.

Dtmahanen

Witnessing (and participating in) shenanigans

Posts: 123

Ghost Town Aug 12, 2018 2:58:59 GMT

Post by Dtmahanen on Aug 12, 2018 2:58:59 GMT

Holy mother of Arceus, is this review super freaking late! I am so sorry it took me this long to get back into this, but you know how life is. And school. Mostly school.

Anyway.

This is a review for Chapter 6, because I would've reviewed the whole thing had it not been for the fact that it's been so long, and I need to take it a little slower. As such, it's just one chapter, but it's such a good chapter than I'm not complaining.

Let's start with the obvious: Gabriella and Sam are absolutely freaking adorable and I love them to BITS. I feel like you've captured the essence of what a good relationship is like, stored it in a bottle for a while, and just spilled the whole thing on the two of them, because it just clicks. The banter between the two, the fact that they basically have no secrets at this point, the fact that they have these tiny little routines that seem inane at first but just...right? And this is coming from someone who's never BEEN in a long-term relationship, so the fact that I feel that when I read about them just...it works. Granted, I feel like I see a lot of this in my parents, who've been married for 27 years at this point, so to see many of the little intricacies that I notice with my mom and dad being mirrored in Sam and Gabriella makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

And I'm sorta glad to see that I'm not the only one who's not happy with Con's attitude towards Jodi. When I saw Gabriella's reaction to the little ticks in Con's demeanor when mentioning certain topics, like he has to compromise something in his "moral integrity" or something to acknowledge Jodi as an equal member of society, that just ticks me off, and I'm glad that someone else was ticked off about it too.

Finally, I'd like to talk about THEM. I really hope you aren't bringing ants the size of buildings into this fic. (Hands up if you get that reference.) But in all seriousness, okay, maybe Sam might've been onto something last chapter when she was warning Jodi about snooping. If there's a group that's potentially doing something shady or horrifying that the police can't do anything about, yeah, that's not a group I'd like to mess with. I can't help but associate THEM with Team Rocket, as they played such a big part of the games in Mahogany Town, but I haven't read the rest of the story yet, so I can't be sure, and I'm really sure that Team Rocket doesn't put people's souls into rocks in the games. (Or maybe they DID! Spoooooky.)

I'm still super intrigued by this story, and even though I know it's technically finished, I'm still gonna be leaving reviews for a while, because dammit I need to catch up. Looking forward to more.

“Most of the titles for my pieces arrive because on computer, you have to call them something. So I have.” -Ringo Starr

Ambyssin

Definitely a winter

Posts: 110

Ghost Town Aug 12, 2018 19:51:22 GMT

Post by Ambyssin on Aug 12, 2018 19:51:22 GMT

Well, I made it through to the end. But I did not write out thoughts as I was reading, so this review may seem... lackluster compared to usual. My apologies, but I think that, for my sanity, I just needed to shift toward post-commentary reviews for something larger like this.

Starting off, I'm too lazy to go back to my earlier reviews, but I'm pretty sure I made a passing joke comment about UB's being confirmed when Nick mentioned Alola. I'm going to count that as me calling it and do a proverbial fist-pump. You can't see it, of course, but I did it. Guzzlord in all of its toothy glory would not have been the UB I expected. But, thinking about it, if you need a way to conveniently make bodies disappear, Guzzlord would make an excellent UB for the job. Nebby would too, I suppose, but then you risk your victims somehow returning via another Ultra Wormhole much later. I think what makes the whole infiltration scene work well is that it's coming from Jodi's already-fatigued beyond the point of reason perspective. She's been exhausted throughout the fic, but it's especially bad here. Her brain's practically soup by this point, so she can't really process ol' Guzzy terribly well.

Then you have Tacoma's next chapter, where it's clear that her anger and self-loathing haven't receded at all despite Jodi saying the accident wasn't her fault. Which is true to life, I suppose. The thing about irrational thoughts, no matter how self-destructive they are, is that you will cling to them even in the face of solid evidence or a logical counterargument. And that's exactly what Tacoma does here. There's a constant shifting toward her own thoughts despite the issues Jodi goes through with Con and Charlie. And it's always followed by Tacoma lambasting herself for it. Which, I guess, is a good set up for the ending where we finally see that Tacoma's death made her angry because she was basically seeing everything that would've happened had she gone through with her ideations. This fic already took being present at your own funeral to the next level, so why not the rest of it?

So, I'd like to say the Con revelation caught me off guard. But, as I said, I watched Hot Fuzz and that twist was done there, too. Granted, I figured you pretty much had to have someone with a more important role in the story play a big role in the chapter house. If you just filled it with background characters from the town, then you risked the conflict losing some of its impact. Con was probably the best choice you could've made in this situation. That's not to say I don't think you handled it well. There's this idea permeating the chapter house after the Guzzlord discovery that these are real people going about their everyday lives and you showed that off well with Con. He's still trying to act mild-mannered and like he has the weight of the town on his shoulder. You do manage to splice in just enough admiration for Guzzy's powers to make it sound convincingly cultish (despite the "we're not a cult!" line). If anything, I got serious vibes of Lusamine under Nihilego's influence. These townsfolk were disturbingly attached to Guzzlord in much the same way Lusamine was toward Nihilego. I'm sure it was intentional.

I thought the ending was a nice way to wrap it up, for what it was. Would I have liked the satisfaction of seeing Con & co. arrested and seeing what Jodi and Tacoma would be going on to do with their lives? Absolutely! But you don't write those kind of endings. With that in mind, the only source of confusion for me is as to what exactly I'm supposed to consider Tacoma now. Is she still a Spiritomb? Did she achieve some sort of fakemon evolution or mega evolution? It's not entirely made clear. I don't think you have to make it clear, I was just curious. Mainly because as human as you've treated Tacoma there is still the fact that she's technically a Pokémon to some degree while Jodi is still decidedly human. So, in the back of my head, I kept thinking "Oh dear, this is an intimate human-Pokémon relationship" and, if this wasn't a very niche story, I'd have been worried about you getting blowback over it. At the very least, I can make this zinger: "I see Jodi's taking 'romancing the stone' to its logical extreme." :V

Aside from that, though, I enjoyed Tacoma finally getting to unleash her rage (10/10 Hugh impression, BTW) and use spoopy ghost powers to whisk Jodi away from the collapsing wormhole. A lot of paranormal stuff. It took awhile for those elements to shine through this much, but I'm glad to see they played a role in the climax. Thanks for sharing this with us and, yes, you definitely deserve a break. Lord knows you've been at this way longer than I have. Good grief. XD

Avatar by Jordy (https://toonirl.tumblr.com/), personal commission.

Firebrand

Posts: 194

Ghost Town Aug 14, 2018 0:43:23 GMT

Post by Firebrand on Aug 14, 2018 0:43:23 GMT

So, that's the end.

I'm glad that after all they went through, and as dark as this got at times, Jodi and Tacoma managed to come out with a happy ending. Obviously, as Jodi says in her narration, there are no such things as finales, just new chapters, and they still live in the 70s, which will make their future together fairly difficult, but, at least for now they're together and happy and probably not going to get killed, so I'll chalk that up as a happy ending.

I will say that Con played his cards pretty close to his chest in the pov chapter he had way back when, especially when he was actively investigating Tacoma's murder. I remember you went back and made some edits, so it may be that some things changed there to hint towards his reveal at the end, but I only read the original chapter. However, I guess I can't say I was surprised that he was revealed at the end, because Nick was pretty definitely ruled out and the guy with the Electvire felt like a red herring (although I guess with him being in the cult and all...). I know it's not exactly a murder mystery, but I couldn't help but wonder. I think I'd sort of narrowed it down to Con or that weird professor who gave Tacoma the rock and followed her somehow, except the latter wasn't a townie, and never showed up again, and also just generally didn't make sense. But I definitely got an odd vibe from him for like the three paragraphs he was in the story and I think I factored his involvement too much into my theory.

Anyway... I think the moment where Jodi, Tacoma and their pokemon are poised at the edge of the pit facing down the cult is probably my favorite in the fic, by which I mean the part where all Jodi's companions bolster her up with their love and confidence in her so that she can stare down the cultists. I think I've used the whole "finding the strength to stand up to the bad guys with the power of love and friendship" in like, literally everything I've ever written (so I guess I'm biased), and especially in this franchise I feel like it has a place, even in a grim, grounded piece like this. Pokemon at it's core is a Saturday morning cartoon, and in that moment, when that tried and true Saturday morning cartoon trope came into play, I knew that Jodi and Co. were going to make it out all right. At the risk of patting my own back, it and the part where Tacoma bursts out of the stone in her powered-up form (which was super awesome) were probably the most Hawlucha Man-esque scenes in the fic, and for the ultimate clash against the bad guys, it definitely worked, especially as the tone shifted from one of pretty consistent soul crushing despair to one of desperate hope.

On the subject of the cult, I found their argument with Jodi regarding the appeasement of Guzzlord interesting. They say that keeping it fed protects the town and keeps the mill from closing, and it also keeps people coming back. But of the examples they give, Nick and Sam came back because someone they knew was murdered and fed to Guzzlord and they wanted to find a way to stop it, and Jodi's dad is given the very reasonable explanation of staying for Jodi's mom. As far as keeping the mill open... I'm inclined to think that correlation doesn't imply causation, but these are UBs, so... who knows? Well, we as the audience do, because Mahogany survives until the "present day" of the main canon, so clearly they got along okay after the wormhole closed. But the UBs also give off some kind of aura or energy, and I think it's implied that Guzzlord was the power source that eventually led to the downfall of parallel universe/future Ha'ouli City in USUM. So I guess I'm not sure where I fall on this. Obviously I think Jodi has a point in that it's awful and barbaric that Guzzlord was kept trapped presumably for generations, on top of being starving and in pain, but maybe the cultists were telling the truth and Guzzlord's power/influence did keep the mill open? Like I said, I'm inclined to think that's all just superstition on behalf of the cult, but I literally can't even with the UBs because all sense of logic, physics and reason just went right out the window the moment they were introduced.

In all, I think this was a really good, really satisfying end to a really great piece of writing. I hope you enjoy your time off to decompress, you've certainly earned it! (But that said, I eagerly await anything new you put out!)

girl-like-substance

the seal will bite you if you give him half a chance

Posts: 527
Pronouns: xe/xem

Ghost Town Aug 18, 2018 18:31:00 GMT

Post by girl-like-substance on Aug 18, 2018 18:31:00 GMT

Time for a nineteen-page review response! I really should've started drafting this earlier because I guess this is gonna take me all day, but okay, I have some tea, some music, a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's 106 miles to― wait, I think I took a wrong turn there somewhere. Regardless: hit it!

Holy mother of Arceus, is this review super freaking late! I am so sorry it took me this long to get back into this, but you know how life is. And school. Mostly school.

No worries! I do indeed know how life is. And school. So much school. Anyway, I'll do your review response first so you can avoid seeing all the spoilery stuff in my replies to the others.

This is a review for Chapter 6, because I would've reviewed the whole thing had it not been for the fact that it's been so long, and I need to take it a little slower. As such, it's just one chapter, but it's such a good chapter than I'm not complaining.

Oh, that's fine. Chapter 6 is honestly one of my favourites! The side chapters are so much fun, and the ones where I get to follow Sam and Gabbi around for a bit are especially fun.

Let's start with the obvious: Gabriella and Sam are absolutely freaking adorable and I love them to BITS. I feel like you've captured the essence of what a good relationship is like, stored it in a bottle for a while, and just spilled the whole thing on the two of them, because it just clicks. The banter between the two, the fact that they basically have no secrets at this point, the fact that they have these tiny little routines that seem inane at first but just...right? And this is coming from someone who's never BEEN in a long-term relationship, so the fact that I feel that when I read about them just...it works. Granted, I feel like I see a lot of this in my parents, who've been married for 27 years at this point, so to see many of the little intricacies that I notice with my mom and dad being mirrored in Sam and Gabriella makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

Thanks! One of the things that I wanted to write about with Ghost Town is a kind of longer-term survival than I usually do; all the heroes of the story are people who are in some way made to not be people, (Jodi, Tacoma, Sam, Gabriella, some others who you won't have encountered yet) and the idea was to chart their progress across the generations, in a way. Sam and Gabriella are as far back as we go, and that made them a lot of fun to write because mature long-term relationships are so goddamn adorable to me. (Bonus points for being, like, the archetypal butch/femme power couple, which is a trope I am making heavy and completely shameless usage of here because again, so adorable, and anyway I figured if I could get away with it in any story, it'd be the one set in the seventies.)

And I'm sorta glad to see that I'm not the only one who's not happy with Con's attitude towards Jodi. When I saw Gabriella's reaction to the little ticks in Con's demeanor when mentioning certain topics, like he has to compromise something in his "moral integrity" or something to acknowledge Jodi as an equal member of society, that just ticks me off, and I'm glad that someone else was ticked off about it too.

Oh, of course! As I say, Sam and Gabriella are absolutely in the same subset of peripheral people as Jodi, and there's definitely a fiercely protective edge to their relationship with her. Especially in a decade like the seventies, which was pretty grim, you have to stick together, and if you're the older party in a relationship like that then there's always a sense of obligation, I feel. Then before you know it, ten years have gone by, there's a new generation growing up, and you watch the people you were looking after take on the same role you did for them.

Finally, I'd like to talk about THEM. I really hope you aren't bringing ants the size of buildings into this fic. (Hands up if you get that reference.)

Well, there certainly is some unusual radiation and underground confrontations in this story, I'll say that much, but if you want to know more you'll have to do some further reading yourself. :V

But in all seriousness, okay, maybe Sam might've been onto something last chapter when she was warning Jodi about snooping. If there's a group that's potentially doing something shady or horrifying that the police can't do anything about, yeah, that's not a group I'd like to mess with. I can't help but associate THEM with Team Rocket, as they played such a big part of the games in Mahogany Town, but I haven't read the rest of the story yet, so I can't be sure, and I'm really sure that Team Rocket doesn't put people's souls into rocks in the games. (Or maybe they DID! Spoooooky.)

I'm pretty sure that the tunnels under Mahogany canonically predate Team Rocket, actually – there's like a sign or a bit of info you can see on the map that implies there's been a ninja hideout there for centuries or something, which was actually the impetus for my decision to set Ghost Town there. But you're on the right track in thinking about secret lairs and that kind of thing!

As for whether Sam was right … well, she knows quite a bit more than she's saying, that much is for sure. She's more or less given away that this isn't the first time this has happened, and I think any would-be investigator would be foolish to ignore the fact that she was clearly involved in some way. There is most certainly a darkness in Mahogany that has operated unchecked for a while.

I'm still super intrigued by this story, and even though I know it's technically finished, I'm still gonna be leaving reviews for a while, because dammit I need to catch up. Looking forward to more.

I'm hardly gonna complain about more reviews! :P Thank you for reviewing, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story!

A note: from here on out, spoilers abound, so! Read on at your own risk.

Oh boy, so first off the reveal of the killer finally (under spoilers incase late readers drop by).

While I suspected Con might play some role in it due to his heavy insistance of wanting Jodi to stop investigating, didn't occur to me immeditely he would be the killer since I wouldn't know what his motive would be in doing that. However, I was half right about whoever was involved in that fight in the funeral chapter leaves a huge clue. = P

Absolutely. I knew the fight could be read either way, as confirmation that Nick was involved or as ruling him out completely, and it was interesting to see some people take it one way and some the other. I deliberately kept Con's motivations hidden, but I did try to imply that he is exactly the kind of person who would fit into this vile cult so that it would make sense when he revealed himself.

Speaking of the funeral, after finishing reading the ending, I went back to reading the last part of the funeral chapter and that brings a whole new perspective of what was occuring in Con's mind. It does seem he feels a heavy weight being the cause of Tacoma's death since his dialogue in the last chapter and his POV in the funeral chapter matches his feelings there. Even that, I still want to kick him for not calling Jodi by her real name and still wanting to keep the "status quo" of the town if you will.

Yeah, that was part of the plan – like, he is absolutely an awful human being and doesn't really deserve anyone's sympathy, but he is still a human being. That's important to the story. Because one of the points of Ghost Town is that yes, evil is banal and tedious and utterly vacuous, but it's also made up of a bunch of ordinary people. Con is human, for all that he is also a murderer who finds it easier to believe that feeding people to a giant monster will help protect his town than that some of his fellow human beings are people.

Either you didn't actually delete Con's segment there or you meant some other Con POV content you deleted lol.

There was going to be another Con segment in the funeral chapter, as a red herring to ward people off interpreting the ??? segment as being from his point of view (since, you know, it was already pretty clear it was the POV of someone who wasn't willing to use Jodi's real name or pronouns), but the chapter just got too long, and I had to cut it. I'm not sure whether that was a good idea or not; it kind of helped to weave together Nick and Sam's POV segments better than happened in actuality.

Yeah. There's hope! There's always hope. Everything is almost as awful as it was before, and there's no guarantee that anything will get better or even that anyone will actually face trial for their crimes – but hey, they escaped, and they got a kiss, and as long as they're still alive (or undead, I guess) there's hope for their future. Like Gabriella, I don't believe in heroes, but I do believe in survival. And so that's the happiest ending I could muster for these two.

Again congrats on finishing, this has been a fun ride from start to finish!

Thank you! And thank you for being such a consistent reviewer, too; I really appreciate it. <3 Glad you enjoyed the ride!

Anyway, uh, so Con's a giant mound of dickcheese, but Charlie, huh?

I love it when the story reviews itself for me. Good night, everybody!

Pretty much! 8D

Nah, but forreal, I can see now why you had to split the chapter. Because ultimately, how do you follow up the revelation that the whole murder plot thread was tied to an interdimensional hellbeast? When you’re dealing with ill-equipped young adults, you don’t. You have them running in terror out the door, only to collect themselves and figure out what the fuck Plan B is.

Yeah, they needed time to collect themselves – and having written them collecting themselves (and setting up for the ending, of which more in a bit), that ended up being like eleven thousand words, soooo … yeah, didn't really have much choice but to split it. And I'm glad I did. The original ending was definitely a little rushed in the effort to get 20,000 words out in just two weeks while also, you know, showing up to work every day and getting the odd review in, and the version that I actually posted in the end is much stronger, I think. It also benefited from being from Jodi's perspective, both because this is a second homecoming chapter, in a sense, so there's a pleasing symmetry to the beginning and the end, and because the confrontation was much more dramatic when viewed from behind her eyes. Tacoma was much less badly hurt by the revelation of who it was they were up against, which, for a story that's at least in part about the vacuous, absurd, utterly everyday nature of human evil, was not the tone I wanted.

(And on that note, I’m delighted that Gabriella straight-up asked Nick what he thought he was doing sending Jodi, who’s both disabled and young enough to still have a full life ahead of her, off to face the aforementioned hellbeast armed with only a makeshift portal smasher made from a cigarette tin. Sure, he didn’t have much of a choice, but when you put it like that…)

Ngl, Gabriella is more or less transparently an authorial mouthpiece, a lot of the time. :P Which is not to say that she's always right, but like, it does make her the one who gets the satisfaction of asking people what the hell their problem is. Nick has his heart in the right place, but his steadfast refusal to ask for help is so annoying. The sensible thing would have been to ask Jodi to get the device and then go speak to Sam and Gabriella, you know? To band together, to create a group, a plan, all the things you actually need to resist oppression successfully. Gabriella's view of mavericks is kind of my own; heroes are important as mythic icons, but in practice, if you try to fight the system alone as just some person on the outside, you are going to get squished. Nick is lucky as hell that Jodi had Tacoma to help.

But before I get into the final chapter, one last note about the penultimate: I actually like the scene with Charlie. Sure, it puts a pause on the prepwork for the final battle, but on the other … it’s not just tying up that loose end of who tf that kid was and why he was staring at Jodi, was it? It was also building up the fact that this is who Jodi is. Jodi is not alone. Jodi is a role model for others. Jodi can be something other than that psychic kid who just found out she’s trans. It’s a moment of healing and confidence and kinda motherhood, and I am now super-duper tempted to write fic in which an older Jodi discovers the internet and takes multitudes of Charlies under her wing.

I'm glad you think so. I was really undecided about the Charlie thing for ages; it does break up the flow of that final preparation, of course, and at this point in the story that's kind of a big deal, but on the other hand it's about preparation for who Jodi is going to become, in future. One of the things Ghost Town is about is long-term survival in a hostile world, and it's no coincidence that Jodi is growing up to be Gabriella: as Sam and Gabriella have looked out for her, so she will in time be looking out for others. These structures, this support, is what keeps people alive. Like, where was Charlie going before he heard of Jodi? Honestly, nowhere good, and without her it'd be a toss-up whether he survived it. A dying little town that synthesises the worst of small-town America and small-town Britain in the seventies is an awful place to be Charlie Fay.

And like … it would have been hard to move that encounter between him and Jodi any earlier in the story, you know? Much of Jodi's arc has been about her finding her own role in the world; to have her speak with Charlie earlier on would have spoiled that. And since character takes precedence over plot in this story, I eventually decided that it would be best to slot Charlie in here, as Jodi and Tacoma gather their resources for the final push. I'm glad that the reasoning behind that is clear, and that you think it works.

That said, Con and a partial review response. I have to admit that before these chapters, I’d interpreted the killer’s part in Tacoma’s funeral to be part of the red herring: still from Nick’s point of view, but labeled as the killer’s to continue making us think of the most obvious solution. But now that Con came out that, yeah, he’s the one (or part of the one), that should’ve been made more obvious, tbqh. How do you keep a secret as big as “this town has a murder not-cult in it” from getting out? By involving the chief of police, of course! And in any case, it should’ve been obvious from the get-go because you did offer little details: the way Con was described at the beginning (a jock, the sort of person who thinks nothing of carving his name into ancient trees, that sort of thing), not to mention the fact that he has an electric-type powerful enough to take down dragonite (and she’s not even the first Moira). I mean, even the way he treats her should’ve been an indicator: while everyone else seems to treat their pokémon as pets, children, or actual partners, we barely get much screentime out of Moira, despite the fact that Con himself is a supporting character. She’s more of a tool or a living gun than an actual partner, which says a lot about how Con views living beings (if the tree wasn’t enough of an indicator). I mean, fuck, man, even the rest of the cult are more in sync with their pokémon and nature than Con is; it’s just that they have very deluded ideas about what is and isn’t necessary for survival, whereas Con.... >>

Exactly. Con doesn't seem like a murderer at the start, but that's because he doesn't think he is one. He is the epitome of the kind of person who can destroy other people because they aren't really people. That's why Tacoma's death hits him so hard: he's killed other people, sure, but they were people like Mae or Jodi, not like, actual people. But obviously nobody knows Tacoma is the big gay disaster that she is (Con even wonders if she had a boyfriend in his POV chapter), so as far as he knows, he just killed a child who was a real credit to the town by accident. This is an excellent excuse for me to drag out a minor detail that everyone forgot about months ago but which was actually the answer to the mystery:

[Everett] is crying silently, motionlessly, and Con turns away with a sick guilt beginning to fester in his gut.

Had to be done, he reminds himself. Had to be done.

It really doesn't make him feel much better.

In context, that line sort of implies he's feeling bad about breaking the news to Tacoma's family, but of course it's basically a confession (or a Con-fession! I'll, uh, see myself out), a hundred thousand words before he actually reveals himself.

Plus, he’s just not the best at empathy, and he gets stuck on traditional values (with the way he talks about Jodi). Of course he’s the epitome of the status quo—the human form of middle class white ______, which would happily throw lesbians, children, and the homeless into the maw of literal destruction.

(I mean, I know he says it’s an accident, but he’s still a dick with no empathy, and he still planned on hurting Tacoma. It’s just that he’s now a moronic dick with no empathy.)

As the incarnation of the status quo, he kinda had to be pretty heartless. Empathy is meant to be a weakness in the callous world that Con represents, which is obviously why I opposed Con and his pitiless crew to the empath and her undead girlfriend. Structure! It's fun and it's satisfying. As for the fact that he's kind of dumb – again, as I've probably mentioned somewhere already in this interminable response (sorry, my thoughts are all over the place, I am a couple of hours into this thing at the moment @_@), that's definitely meant to be the case. Evil is … stupid. And boring. And it doesn't make any fucking sense. Like, I know this whole feeding people to a giant metaphor for capitalism is absolutely ridiculous and not something a reasonable person could do, but people aren't reasonable and honestly it is hard to write satire when the real world is already run according to the inane logic of a Saturday morning cartoon villain. But you know, I had to try, because the alternative would be screaming and that is much less interesting to read.

Speaking of which …!

Speaking of, I think one of the fun parts of the last chapter is the moment when Jodi stares down a good chunk of Mahogany and realizes, “Shit, these are real people.”

[...]

But also, for all the fantasy elements between this and the other media I’m consuming, it’s just really fun commentary. Just the thought that normal can be dangerous, that monsters can come from nostalgia and protecting the status quo, that the dedication to an idealized past and the definition of normalcy that’s alive in the moderate is just as if not as dangerous as extremism because it can easily be transformed into that far-right violence and all.

Pretty much. There's not so much Alice Isn't Dead in this (sidebar: how fortunate it is that Welcome to Night Vale took off and provided a platform for Fink and Cranor to each create much more powerful and aesthetically interesting stories, it strikes me as incredible and wonderful that we live in a world where a person can make a living doing that) as Night in the Woods, an influence that I didn't want to reveal till the end because, you know, given how that game goes down, the reveal of the cult and the guzzlord and the terrible actions that people blunder their way into simply because it's what they do wouldn't have been nearly as much of a surprise. (I also didn't actually realise I was imitating it till after I came up with the guzzlord thing and was like, well, crap, this story has already been told way better than I could ever manage but I've started so guess I now have to finish it anyway. Hopefully I managed to make the plot my own, even though I semi-unconsciously stole the main idea of a horrible monster that people sacrifice to beneath a small town?) But like, in general, I feel that stories that try to deal with the exhausting low-level evil that veins our world like a bloodshot eyeball seem to be getting more and more common across all kinds of media recently, presumably because everyone is asking how do I respond to a world like the one I find myself living in? and realising that hey, if nothing else, at least you can scream.

Point is, it’s just really fascinating commentary, and honestly, that moment where Jodi is facing down Con (why did I keep calling him Cos in my other review? idk) with Nick’s machine in her hands is just. Beautiful because of it. Ugly in a way, too, because of course many of us freaks have known people like this or been in situations like this, but the realness and frankness about what it looks like and what it feels like to be faced with that (because the self-doubt and hurt and confusion Jodi is facing isn’t just a thing that only empaths can feel) makes it beautiful in the same way the violence and gore and claustrophobia of Alien is beautiful, if that makes sense.

It absolutely does make sense. And that's why I'm so glad I split the ending and gave this part to Jodi – because it just makes that whole thing sharper if it's an empath who's seeing it. And also, thank you. A lot of what I write is more or less an attempt at putting experiences I and/or people I care about have had into words in such a way that (a) other people in the same boat can go hey, someone gets it and (b) people who haven't had those experiences can go oh, okay, so this is what it's like. So if I've achieved that here, with any of the particular things I wanted to describe (failures of memory, staring down people who look at you and do not see a person, edging your way back into the affections of someone you thought you lost), then that's good enough for me. Many of these experiences sound kind of unreal when you say them: yeah, I have some foundational memories that are demonstrably falsifiable, people told me that I was wrong at the time and yet I still have them, or people get away with killing people like me on a daily basis, and one reason I wrote Ghost Town at all was because these things happen, are happening, keep happening, and I had to tell somebody in a way that didn't sound made-up.

But it’s especially beautiful when Tacoma pushes Jodi to fight back with that fucking beautiful line. Like. I loved the idea of weaponized self-doubt coming from a monster that’s intensely real, but just watching the two of them embrace their queerness and burst out to fight back—first with calm words from Jodi, then with the rage and violence and shadows of Tacoma—was just … satisfying.

Sometimes You Gotta Talk But Sometimes You Just Gotta Punch A Guy: that's the Jodi and Tacoma school of fighting injustice! :V But in all seriousness, I've always felt that you can't engage in reasonable debate with a person taking an unreasonable position. At the same time though, it's unreasonable to attack someone who is willing to engage in reasonable debate, so like, that's why you have Jodi and Tacoma, each of them representing a necessary part of resistance, each unable to win alone. And of course, it's not a coincidence that this is the moment where they admit to the fact that they've been falling in love with each other probably since they were kids. (There was actually going to be a bit in the end scene where Tacoma is like “I've had a crush on you since I was a kid, but I knew I liked girls so I thought I was doing it because you were nice and I was trying to fit in” and Jodi is like “but I had a crush on you and I thought I liked boys and was trying to fit in” and Tacoma is like “well, I guess I must've sorta known you were a girl even if you didn't yet” and Jodi goes extremely red and hugs her, but I just couldn't fit it in alongside all the more important details.) Their monstrous otherness is, on an emotional level if not on a literal one, definitely part of what gets them through that situation.

…also, I kinda want to say there’s a metaphor in the use of guzzlord too, isn’t there? I mean, there’s that whole thing about how Mahogany is a distinctively American town (with, okay, British flavor, but that’s capitalist too, so it counts) and how Deb says there’s an energy about the beast that gives the place its aura and makes it go on despite how all points of reason say that’s an economic impossibility. But it’s like. It’s a town straight from all those depictions of late 50s Americana. Sitting right over the mouth of the literal embodiment of gluttony (and maybe greed too). And it’s only “resolved” when a queer person slams the door shut on it and kicks out the supports from beneath the wholesome, American townspeople. Like … there’s so much I want to say, but that would require an entirely different essay. Also, yes, this likewise ignores the fact that the guzzlord is just a trapped, hungry animal far more innocent than the Mahogany townsfolk (which means it’s hard not to feel sorry for it, especially in the last moment we see it, when Jodi empathizes with it a little), but still.

Things can be more than one thing at the same time, you know? The ultra beasts in particular – they're all about context. They have designs that don't fit with the ethos of the pokémon world, too busy or abstract or alien, and more than one has a pokédex entry saying something like “this thing appears as some kind of horrific unstoppable monster to us, but in its home world it's just like a squirrel, they're everywhere”. Part of why I picked guzzlord was because it has an entry like that too, and it can take on a whole range of different meanings. In the context of Mahogany (and this story, which names the chapter in which it appears after a common medieval depiction of the gates of hell as a way of encouraging you to heap even more conflicting meanings on the poor thing), the guzzlord absolutely is the metaphor you describe. It might even be what the townsfolk think it is, too; somewhere in Ultra Space, guzzlord were used as the power source for ultra!Hau'oli, after all. So it's kind of all these things at once, and when it's defeated it's absolutely both just a creature being freed and a vicious blow being struck by the abject at the social order that created it. Because honestly, and I realise this goes against all my efforts to humanise all the characters – fuck Con and everyone like him. You know?

(Also, with all this talk, I kinda wonder where Pryce was during all of this and where he stands. Part of me wants him to be hella queer too or at least an ally because, you know. Canon character and all. But on the other hand, knowing how in some canon universes, he was literally ready to kill for the sake of a lapras—and yeah, that’d be multiple universes—part of me understands that he was probably in on this too. But. Tangent.)

You know what, I have no idea! 8D I guess I only really included Pryce in this story because he's old enough in-game to have still been training in the 70s, and also I thought I'd better give Mahogany at least some kind of a future by showing that it was in the process of acquiring a Gym. At this point, Pryce is a respected figure in town, as Mahogany's sole professional trainer, but I'm not sure if he's an important enough person to have been inducted into the cult, though I guess he might have been if it had still been around after he becomes the first Leader. (Maybe he is: I don't know if the cult would die just because its totem is gone.) I also didn't know Pryce was a stone cold killer, so, uh, that's news to me!

But more importantly, damn, that final battle between Tacoma and the townsfolk. Like, I’m so happy to see Tacoma make full use of her creepy af form to do some shadow beating, and that battle was simultaneously creepy as hell and beautifully described.

[...]

Furthermore, A+ on making full use of your characters’ powers at the end too. Like, one of the hardest things is to manage details and actually make things that seemed important during the build-up of a fic actually be important at the end, and everything feels like it comes into play here: Jodi’s empathy, Tacoma’s ghost powers, and the fun reminder that, yep, pokémon are in here. (I agree with your statement that pokémon are the main point of the franchise, but when you have supernatural characters, it wouldn’t be difficult to forget them, you know? Especially when you’ve written a situation where the main characters’ pokémon are unavailable for battle.)

Thank you! I've realised that despite writing mostly about people talking about their feelings and getting emotional over landscapes, I've actually ended almost every long story I've ever written with a big action scene, the sole exception being Go Home; it's good to know that this one stands with all the rest. I had to get the pokémon out of the equation because despite what Con and Tacoma say, I felt like Lothian and Nikki could have murdered everyone in the room (and would have done if it came to it), not least because Lothian could have just, like, screamed and knocked everyone out. (I think in my head I came up with some bullshit excuse why he didn't, like “oh, he has to focus his sound waves on an individual person's nervous system, so he can only do it to one person at a time”, but in the end I just sort of sidestepped the issue and didn't include that in the scene.) I wanted to have everything come to a head: people who think callousness is strength and feeling is weakness attacking Jodi through her empathy; Jodi fighting back so that her empathy is a crucial part of how they escape; Tacoma making enough progress with her self-loathing to embrace her ghostliness and, as promised way back in chapter two, beat up a dude with his own shadow; and Sam and Gabriella showing up to help save the day. Because like, this fight isn't over, and I don't think Jodi and Tacoma can actually win it, but I wanted a happy ending, and that meant everything had to come together and feel satisfying, even if the future is uncertain.

Also, the final fighter is a jingling, fluffy clefairy owned by the butchest goddamn woman in all of Mahogany. I just. Love you right now.

I thought you might approve of that. :> Jack and Morgan may not always see eye to eye, but if there's one thing they can agree on, it's that violence is a criminally underrated solution to most of life's problems. And also, tbqh, it struck me as kind of funny to have a seagull and a space cat beat up an elephant.

Also, to be fair, it's not hard to be the butchest woman in Mahogany. The only real competition is Tacoma, and though I've implied some admiration on her part for Sam she hasn't figured out that this is what she wants to do with her life (undeath?) yet.

And speaking of love, I also am delighted that Jodi is turning out as the soft but chain-smoking pillar of elegance while Tacoma is the butch with the liquor-laced coffee. Like a mini Sam and Gabriella, those two.

Of course! As I said, they're part of a chain. Sam and Gabriella, Jodi and Tacoma – and, in future, when Jodi and Tacoma are older and have their shit together, some other kids in turn. Because even if you can't win, you can survive, and pass on what you know to the next generation of monsters. That was about as positive an ending as I could come up with.

But on a more serious note, I love how quiet the ending is. Like, it’s a bunch of little moments that ease us back down after a rush, but it’s also the ending that the story needs. There isn’t a definite, solid end, really. Sure, Tacoma will testify, but knowing the way this world works, who even knows if that’ll avoid ending up as a giant mess too? And Jodi is right whenever she goes through that list of things that are still there (Charlie, who needs help; Tacoma, who has a darkness in her both literally and figuratively; etc., etc.). But those are problems for another day and another story, and for now, it’s just about Jodi, Tacoma, and a narrow bed. And that’s satisfying in ways I can’t describe with words.

Exactly. It's … not going to be easy, at all. I don't even know if Jodi and Tacoma can stay in Mahogany; I seriously doubt either of them would be comfortable living there, even if part of Jodi would really love to, and they probably wouldn't be safe there, either. I mean – okay, Jodi's probably right that Con is about ready to confess, but who knows if the other cultists will let him? And what court is going to believe that there was an extradimensional monster squatting in secret tunnels under Mahogany, when there isn't anything there now but a big hole? The fact that the fortress beneath the town is still secret enough by the time of the games for the Rockets to move in suggests that this wasn't a massive trial that made an impression on the public consciousness, or even that made news in Mahogany itself. The only thing that we can say for certain that Jodi and Tacoma achieved was that the hideout underneath Mahogany was abandoned. Everything else – whether anyone answered for their crimes, whether people stopped being killed, whether Jodi and Tacoma had to flee till things blew over, or even forever – is up for debate.

But like, I think consolation in fiction is important, especially for people who are used to seeing stories in which they get bad endings, and whatever happens next Jodi and Tacoma have done something incredible. I'm delighted you liked the ending. It was meant to be satisfying, despite how bleak things are, and it's good to know that it is.

I … I just want my dramatic lesbian moment. :(

Ask, and ye shall receive. You were right, it's 100% a Superman carrying Lois Lane thing with them flying to the pit, and I've reworded it to make that clearer. It was one of those sentences that you rewrite a dozen times in editing and still can't figure out how to make it clear what it means, and then someone points it out after you've posted it and you go back to it and see a way to fix it immediately. Thank you!

But! Other than that, this was a fantastic ending to quite a ride, and I just want to say thank you for writing this. ;D

You're welcome! I had a great time writing it, too.

I hear you about taking a break from writing, though. Your last few fics seem to be very personal and thus would understandably be very draining on you. Still, it’ll be nice to see what you come up with next, so I’m looking forward to that time a couple years from now when you’re back at it. ;)

Thank you! It's not a break from writing, exactly, more just one from writing fanfiction in particular. I'll still be trying to transcribe the nonsense in my head (for one thing, I have a novel about androids to finish! and another one about Hell that needs editing!), just … without the pressure of a fortnightly schedule for once, because damn has that got hard to maintain, especially now I'm reviewing more. And I think it would be healthy to get some more sleep, tbqh.

(I say all of this, but you are all fully aware that I've immediately started writing a Ghost Town side story, so, uh, oops. If it makes a difference, I'm writing it extremely slowly.)

Anyway! Thank you so much for your reviews; they've been so thoughtful and incisive and just generally a delight to receive. <3

Nothing to apologise for! This is a long story, and you know, if anyone makes the effort to read it and respond then I appreciate it.

Starting off, I'm too lazy to go back to my earlier reviews, but I'm pretty sure I made a passing joke comment about UB's being confirmed when Nick mentioned Alola. I'm going to count that as me calling it and do a proverbial fist-pump. You can't see it, of course, but I did it. Guzzlord in all of its toothy glory would not have been the UB I expected. But, thinking about it, if you need a way to conveniently make bodies disappear, Guzzlord would make an excellent UB for the job. Nebby would too, I suppose, but then you risk your victims somehow returning via another Ultra Wormhole much later. I think what makes the whole infiltration scene work well is that it's coming from Jodi's already-fatigued beyond the point of reason perspective. She's been exhausted throughout the fic, but it's especially bad here. Her brain's practically soup by this point, so she can't really process ol' Guzzy terribly well.

You're absolutely right, you did make a joke, and I made a cryptic response to the effect of 'well, wait and see'! Though they're not using the guzzlord to make the bodies disappear, exactly; that has the cause and effect the wrong way round. Rather, they're using the bodies to feed the guzzlord.

As for the infiltration scene – well, thanks! I wanted to emphasise its weirdness (even if only so I could undercut it later), and Jodi's POV was an obvious choice. It's been a rough couple of weeks for her, I have to say.

Then you have Tacoma's next chapter, where it's clear that her anger and self-loathing haven't receded at all despite Jodi saying the accident wasn't her fault. Which is true to life, I suppose. The thing about irrational thoughts, no matter how self-destructive they are, is that you will cling to them even in the face of solid evidence or a logical counterargument. And that's exactly what Tacoma does here. There's a constant shifting toward her own thoughts despite the issues Jodi goes through with Con and Charlie. And it's always followed by Tacoma lambasting herself for it. Which, I guess, is a good set up for the ending where we finally see that Tacoma's death made her angry because she was basically seeing everything that would've happened had she gone through with her ideations. This fic already took being present at your own funeral to the next level, so why not the rest of it?

Yes, she keeps coming back to herself, as usual – but she's also trying to not come back to herself, so you know, I feel like there's some progression there! She's doing her best, even if her best isn't very good. And I think she'll be okay, in the end. I couldn't realistically have her recover just in the span of two weeks, but I wanted to leave her in a place where you get the sense that, eventually, she's going to feel better.

So, I'd like to say the Con revelation caught me off guard. But, as I said, I watched Hot Fuzz and that twist was done there, too. Granted, I figured you pretty much had to have someone with a more important role in the story play a big role in the chapter house. If you just filled it with background characters from the town, then you risked the conflict losing some of its impact. Con was probably the best choice you could've made in this situation. That's not to say I don't think you handled it well.

Well, it was always going to be one of the supporting characters! :P That didn't leave you with many options, honestly; it's why I didn't bother giving people quite enough information who the killer was. Like, people were either going to think there aren't enough clues, I don't know or based on the number of characters, it can only really be Con or Nick or Harry, and probably only really Con or Nick because Harry would be cheap and uninteresting. And if the latter, they'd have figured it out almost from the start.

There's this idea permeating the chapter house after the Guzzlord discovery that these are real people going about their everyday lives and you showed that off well with Con. He's still trying to act mild-mannered and like he has the weight of the town on his shoulder. You do manage to splice in just enough admiration for Guzzy's powers to make it sound convincingly cultish (despite the "we're not a cult!" line). If anything, I got serious vibes of Lusamine under Nihilego's influence. These townsfolk were disturbingly attached to Guzzlord in much the same way Lusamine was toward Nihilego. I'm sure it was intentional.

They are very attached to their guzzlord, it's true. I don't even know if it has any magic powers, but they really want it to, don't they? And sure, none of what they say makes any sense whatsoever, but that's kind of the point. Major evils arise in the world from the actions of people who consider themselves perfectly reasonable and upstanding citizens. They're all just people, and they're all just going about their business, and a lot of people have died because of it but hey, that's just what happens. I feel like I've said that a lot in the course of this review, but I guess it's kind of a good response to quite a lot of what everyone has to say. @_@

I thought the ending was a nice way to wrap it up, for what it was. Would I have liked the satisfaction of seeing Con & co. arrested and seeing what Jodi and Tacoma would be going on to do with their lives? Absolutely! But you don't write those kind of endings.

It would be kind of unrealistic, huh. Like, what are the odds that anyone ever faces any consequences for their actions? Pretty low, I'd say. Even if Con is inclined to confess when confronted, his friends might not let him do it. This was the happiest ending I could swing without it seeming fake, really. Jodi and Tacoma are okay, for now, and I guess they'll probably be all right in the end; I don't think they can really stay here in Mahogany, but they'll find something that works in the end.

With that in mind, the only source of confusion for me is as to what exactly I'm supposed to consider Tacoma now. Is she still a Spiritomb? Did she achieve some sort of fakemon evolution or mega evolution? It's not entirely made clear. I don't think you have to make it clear, I was just curious. Mainly because as human as you've treated Tacoma there is still the fact that she's technically a Pokémon to some degree while Jodi is still decidedly human. So, in the back of my head, I kept thinking "Oh dear, this is an intimate human-Pokémon relationship" and, if this wasn't a very niche story, I'd have been worried about you getting blowback over it. At the very least, I can make this zinger: "I see Jodi's taking 'romancing the stone' to its logical extreme." :V

It's a full-on evolution, yeah! I just didn't want to leave her as a severed head for the rest of eternity. In an exchange that never made it into the story but which in my head definitely happens at some point in the near future, Jodi wanted to call the new species spiritacoma, but Tacoma insisted on spiriternal.

As for Tacoma technically being a pokémon – that doesn't really matter, I think? Both she and Jodi are perfectly capable of giving consent, as two adult sentient beings. There's nothing inherently wrong with their relationship that I can see.

Aside from that, though, I enjoyed Tacoma finally getting to unleash her rage (10/10 Hugh impression, BTW) and use spoopy ghost powers to whisk Jodi away from the collapsing wormhole. A lot of paranormal stuff. It took awhile for those elements to shine through this much, but I'm glad to see they played a role in the climax. Thanks for sharing this with us and, yes, you definitely deserve a break. Lord knows you've been at this way longer than I have. Good grief. XD

Thank you! I have been writing fic since … 2010? 2011? With maybe one or two exceptions, I've done a full chapterfic every year since then – usually while writing an original novel alongside. I can't sustain that pace any more; I have to take some time away to focus on my original stuff, and when I come back to fic writing it will probably be on a more reasonable schedule than every fortnight.

But! For now, thank you for being such a consistent and conscientious reviewer! Hopefully you'll like what I have to offer when I start tossing new material up here again.

It was about as happy as I could make it! As I've said in my responses to other people, I can't see anyone other than Con facing justice for their actions, and it's debatable whether Jodi and Tacoma have really changed anything, but they survived, and for tonight they're happy. That seems reasonable enough to me.

I will say that Con played his cards pretty close to his chest in the pov chapter he had way back when, especially when he was actively investigating Tacoma's murder. I remember you went back and made some edits, so it may be that some things changed there to hint towards his reveal at the end, but I only read the original chapter.

I mean, as I pointed out to Minty, he did kind of admit it:

I made no changes to that chapter other than to flesh out the investigation a bit further. Like, Con really was devastated by what happened; he's okay with killing disposable people, because he is the kind of guy who doesn't really see them as people at all, but of course Tacoma wasn't disposable in the eyes of the cult, she was a promising young woman who was a credit to her town. None of it was meant to happen. And yet honestly it was only ever a matter of time until these assholes destroyed something they weren't meant to.

However, I guess I can't say I was surprised that he was revealed at the end, because Nick was pretty definitely ruled out and the guy with the Electvire felt like a red herring (although I guess with him being in the cult and all...). I know it's not exactly a murder mystery, but I couldn't help but wonder. I think I'd sort of narrowed it down to Con or that weird professor who gave Tacoma the rock and followed her somehow, except the latter wasn't a townie, and never showed up again, and also just generally didn't make sense. But I definitely got an odd vibe from him for like the three paragraphs he was in the story and I think I factored his involvement too much into my theory.

Yeah, like I said, there are basically two kinds of reader for this story: the one who goes there aren't enough clues, I don't know who did it and the one who goes well, there are only so many characters, and these ones have been ruled out, so … And if you happened to be the second, then you know it has to be Con. That's why I said in a previous review response that people would either be surprised or completely unsurprised when the killer was revealed.

As for Tacoma's professor, he didn't actually follow her. Are you thinking of the Kantan car that was seen on the night of her murder? Because that was Nick; he mentions in his chapter that he took pains to be seen driving back to his sister's house that night, to bolster his lie about having just arrived from the airport. Professor Allbright is just Nick's friend in the Faculty of Ghost Studies and the guy who gave Tacoma the rock. He spends the entire story still in Saffron.

Anyway... I think the moment where Jodi, Tacoma and their pokemon are poised at the edge of the pit facing down the cult is probably my favorite in the fic, by which I mean the part where all Jodi's companions bolster her up with their love and confidence in her so that she can stare down the cultists. I think I've used the whole "finding the strength to stand up to the bad guys with the power of love and friendship" in like, literally everything I've ever written (so I guess I'm biased), and especially in this franchise I feel like it has a place, even in a grim, grounded piece like this. Pokemon at it's core is a Saturday morning cartoon, and in that moment, when that tried and true Saturday morning cartoon trope came into play, I knew that Jodi and Co. were going to make it out all right.

I love that device too! Not least because like, as Gabriella says, there aren't any heroes when it comes to fighting systems like the one that has taken root in Mahogany. That's not something any one person can defeat; you have to work together. So I get to use the power of love and friendship thing and have it be thematically relevant, too, and that's an opportunity I couldn't possibly turn down. Besides, Jodi is an empath: love is literally power for her in a way that it isn't for other people!

At the risk of patting my own back, it and the part where Tacoma bursts out of the stone in her powered-up form (which was super awesome) were probably the most Hawlucha Man-esque scenes in the fic, and for the ultimate clash against the bad guys, it definitely worked, especially as the tone shifted from one of pretty consistent soul crushing despair to one of desperate hope.

Well, if the author of the Halvarsaga and The Amazing Hawlucha Man likes my action scene, that's high praise indeed! I'm glad you enjoyed it. For some reason, I really like a big dramatic action climax, even to stories that are mostly about the dread and exhaustion of trying to live in a hostile world. I think Go Home is the only one of mine that doesn't have one, mostly because it doesn't have any antagonists to punch. And like, in a story where you kinda know that even after everything the heroes did nothing is really going to change, I needed to build to as hopeful an ending as I could. Plus, Tacoma needed to get some kind of a body back – I think the world is grim enough without writers being shitty to fictional LGBT+ kids – and you know what, a fakemon friendship evolution felt like an appropriate way to round things off. I started hinting that desperation might let her break free of the rock some way back, when she managed to manifest a hand because without it she'd have fallen in the river; this was the end result of that particular thread.

On the subject of the cult, I found their argument with Jodi regarding the appeasement of Guzzlord interesting. They say that keeping it fed protects the town and keeps the mill from closing, and it also keeps people coming back. But of the examples they give, Nick and Sam came back because someone they knew was murdered and fed to Guzzlord and they wanted to find a way to stop it, and Jodi's dad is given the very reasonable explanation of staying for Jodi's mom. As far as keeping the mill open... I'm inclined to think that correlation doesn't imply causation, but these are UBs, so... who knows? Well, we as the audience do, because Mahogany survives until the "present day" of the main canon, so clearly they got along okay after the wormhole closed. But the UBs also give off some kind of aura or energy, and I think it's implied that Guzzlord was the power source that eventually led to the downfall of parallel universe/future Ha'ouli City in USUM. So I guess I'm not sure where I fall on this. Obviously I think Jodi has a point in that it's awful and barbaric that Guzzlord was kept trapped presumably for generations, on top of being starving and in pain, but maybe the cultists were telling the truth and Guzzlord's power/influence did keep the mill open? Like I said, I'm inclined to think that's all just superstition on behalf of the cult, but I literally can't even with the UBs because all sense of logic, physics and reason just went right out the window the moment they were introduced.

Pretty much! I deliberately left it unclear as to what the truth was, for all the reasons you describe. I'd also add that it's kind of up to you to decide whether there's a lumbermill in Mahogany in the present day: do we not notice it in-game because we're playing as a child who is only interested in pokémon training, or is it just not there? If it isn't, maybe that's because of the guzzlord being sent home or maybe that's just because it failed, as businesses often do in hard times. Has Mahogany survived on the back of the Gym and a concomitant rise in tourism, plus any other business it can scrounge up? We can't know for sure one way or the other. I'm not going to offer a canonical answer as the writer, but as a reader, I'd say my interpretation of the text is that the cultists are wrong. I don't know if that's just because I want that to be the case or not.