Aaaaaand I wasn't kidding when I said the next chapter would be up soon. \o/
Anima Ex Machina
Twenty-Eight: We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
As Bill soon learned, the gray forest did whatever he wanted it to do except let him go. He could bend trees, convince the sky to turn green, even populate it with pokémon if he wanted, but it would never end.
More than that, there was no real concept of time, but he already knew that. He knew that sometimes two minutes in the gray forest would be an hour outside. Other times, seconds in reality would be years there.
Yet both facts never seemed as real to him as they did when he woke up next. The first several hours, he screamed and cried and clawed at himself in a desperate attempt to get rid of the memory of the attack. All he could think about was how he floated in a dark space behind his eyes but could hear the voices of his friends, could feel his body lash out and act on its own. The second several hours, when his voice grew hoarse and his limbs grew weary and caked in dried blood, were spent in complete misery. Adam hadn't made its presence known, and there was no end to Bill's dream in sight. He was trapped, unable to apologize or fix anything he had done outside of that space. All he had, as he lay on the soft earth, was the memory repeating itself over and over again.
In the third several hours, he got up and started walking. That was the part that took eons.
He had no aim. Although he knew the path through the forest by heart and wanted to go home – his home, the lighthouse on the cliff – he knew he would never reach the end of the forest if he tried walking straight there. So instead, he wandered aimlessly, weaving a winding path between the trees. He made the sun set and the moon rise. He made storms roll in (but never soak him) and clear away. He made ghost-like eevee and squirtle and swablu flit through the trees and fill the forest with sounds, and he made them disappear and fall silent. But he couldn't escape, and he couldn't see what was outside the forest. Eventually, his memory of the outside world began to fade. There was no way for him to tell how long he had spent wandering; he felt like he had been wandering for years but knew it wasn't relevant. So long as he made the sun and moon rise and set when he wanted them to, days didn't mean a thing to him.
Every so often, he would settle down in a spot and close his eyes. He didn't think he was sleeping in those moments. They were simply dark expanses of time that stretched across two points of the gray forest. Occasionally, in these visions, he would reach out and see a flash of light, but the flashes would fade and plunge him deeper into the darkness.
After one of these moments, he felt Adam's presence.
"There you are," Adam said. "I have been looking for you."
Bill sat up. He knew where Adam was – behind him, in a tree – but he didn't bother acknowledging the parasite.
"Upset, are we?"
A rustle and a thump signaled Adam's fall from its perch. Bill could hear the crunch of leaves with the creature's every step. He felt its warm arms slide around his shoulders and embrace him tightly, and all at once, his body tensed.
"Is that any way to treat your partner?" Adam purred.
Bill narrowed his eyes but said nothing in response. Eventually, Adam drew itself away from him and stood.
"I came to congratulate you on a job well done," Adam said. "You battled a member of the empress's court and survived. Had you fed properly beforehand, you might have actually succeeded in doing real damage to him."
In the beat of silence, Adam didn't expect Bill to reply. Because of that, it drew itself away from him, bowed its head slightly, and exhaled.
"Incidentally, that is what happened, if you were wondering. I warned you, did I not? We need fresh, raw meat in order to regenerate ourselves. Pokémon meat especially. We can absorb their regeneration factor and accelerate our own healing, and we need the boost of energy their meat can provide in order to power our own abilities. Cooked meat loses that quality, and your animal 'jerky,' while it may sate our hunger, does very little for us in terms of truly sustaining our abilities. It is nothing more than candy to my kind."
Bill shifted in his seat. Out of the corner of its eye, Adam watched him.
"Did that pique your interest?" Adam asked.
Its host stood, clenching his hands by his sides as he kept his eyes on the ground.
"I must say, I am rather pleased," Adam continued as it rose to its own feet. "Many hosts fail to adapt. That is why rogues are uncommon to rare. Humans, from what I have observed in my dormant state, are particularly fragile. You are indeed different from the others. Perhaps you are worthy of being my partner. There certainly is hope for you as a warrior."
"I'm not a monster," Bill hissed.
Adam lifted its chin. "Is that what you think of my kind? Monsters? Dear host, we are far above that. We fight when it is necessary."
"I'm not," Bill replied, his every word grunted slowly through clenched teeth, "a monster."
"Is this about your loss of control? An amateur mistake. You will learn to harness and control that rage and then channel it towards only necessary battles."
"I. Am not. A monster."
"Is this about the fact that you nearly killed that girl of yours?" Adam's voice dropped low, but it was dripping with his amusement. "The interesting one. Lanette. Oh. You promised her that you would never lose control, did you? Well, this certainly complicates things. Perhaps it would be better this way. You no longer would be burdened with the task of fighting for her favor. After all, I doubt that she would have anything to do with you now that she knows exactly what you will eventually become."
"I. Am. Not. A. Monster."
Adam hesitated. "This is not about Lanette at all, is it? Oh… I see. It is about the boring one who fears my kind. Yes, you could have killed her. She only stood there, after all. A fairly easy target, had it not been for the runt protecting her." It paused for a second time. "I wonder what she thinks of you now. You must forgive me for saying such, but I have never been very fond of sisters. Nothing good has ever come of them. That having been said, the little one would only serve as a distraction to our mission. Perhaps it would be best that she thinks of you as a monster, then."
"I am not—!"
Bill whirled around to face Adam, but he stopped dead in his tracks. There, behind him, he saw himself as a human. The expression was still the unnervingly blank mask Adam always wore, but everything else – the fingers, the skin, everything – was exactly what he remembered seeing in the mirror as a complete and independent person. Adam drew a hand – rounded tips, no claws – to its mouth.
"You dropped this on the way here. I simply picked up what you discarded. It is not like you need it anymore," Adam explained. "But I do find it curious how much you identify with that body now."
Shaking, Bill looked down and drew his steel-plated hands into view. His tail curled behind him in an anxious knot, and he was aware of the fangs filling his mouth for the first time since he began walking.
"Do not fear it," Adam said. "Incidentally, I read something fascinating in your mind while you were preoccupied."
Bill looked up and slowly backed away from the parasite. The blank look on its face suddenly seemed more terrifying than anything else he had faced thus far.
"Nyctophobia, the irrational fear of darkness," it said. "In truth, it is not fear of the dark itself but instead of the things that are in the dark."
With each word, Bill slid backwards. His back eventually hit a tree, and his hands clutched its trunk. A cold, clammy feeling flowed through every point of his body, and with every second, the gray forest grew dimmer and dimmer.
Then, the corners of Adam's mouth twitched.
"Monsters like us, Bill, have no reason to be afraid of the dark," Adam told him. "It is what we find when we wake up that we should fear the most."
At that very second, Bill woke up.
He saw nothing.
Literal.
Unending.
Nothing.
---
The plastic cooler in Lanette's lap rattled violently. She slammed her hands on its top, pressing the lid down to keep the Master Ball inside it closed. Her lips curled back in a snarl, and turning her head away from Steven, she growled just low enough that her voice was masked by the sound of the engines in the Caravan.
"Stop it!"
Even though Lanette tried to keep her voice down, Steven still looked over his shoulder at her. The two of them sat on the back of Steven's metagross as it glided through the air behind the van at the rear of the convoy; Wallace had taken Lanette's place in the truck's cabin on her request. She, meanwhile, sat with her back to the gray-haired champion and her attention mostly consumed by the container in her lap. While it remained mostly quiet for the better part of the journey, there were moments when the ball inside it tried to crack open. The lid would tilt open slightly as a white light flickered from within it, and at these moments, Lanette would slam it closed again, forcing the ball to shut on the pokémon trying again and again to escape.
After several attempts, Steven risked speaking up.
"Lanette, don't you think that maybe we should let him out? He seems pretty desperate," he said.
"We don't know what we'll be encountering if I do," Lanette growled.
"Steel-type attacks aren't effective against metagross," Steven reminded her. "Why don't you let him out when we stop, and I'll worry about keeping him under control?"
"No."
Steven raised his eyebrows at his companion. Lowering her head, Lanette spread one hand out on the plastic lid, pressing it down with as much force as she could apply.
"He stays in," she said firmly.
"You can't keep him in there forever," Steven responded as he faced forward.
"Why not? He barely has any aptitude on the field, he shows very little interest in battling, and he somehow attracts more trouble than the psychic. In total, weak and a hassle when he's in control; dangerous to everything around him when he's out of control. As far as I'm concerned, this thing is nothing but dead weight to us."
"That thing is your partner," Steven answered. After a slight hesitation, he added, "I've read about you, you know. The two of you created the storage system together, right? Trainers all over Japan have both you and Bill to thank. I'm one of them."
Lanette leaned forward to press even harder on the lid of the cooler. "Forgive me for failing to understand your point."
"My point is your partnership is what made you famous. Neither of you could have done it alone. Isn't that right?"
It took a few moments, but Lanette finally answered. When she did, her voice was even lower. "It was a different time back then."
"Maybe so," Steven admitted, "but if you believed with all your heart that no part of what's in that Master Ball is Bill, you wouldn't be this upset, would you?"
"Upset?" Lanette snapped.
"It seems to me that his attack on us hurt more than just Vito's alakazam. You cared enough about him to take him with us, yet you're personally seeing to it that he doesn't escape his ball."
For a long while, Lanette gave Steven a side glance. Even though he could see only one of her eyes, he noticed the dark look in them, the glitter of sheer anger and of something deeper and more painful than she was telling him. He wanted to reach out to rest a hand on her shoulder, but she moved, shifting her eyes to the path and leaning away from his reach. Then, she opened one of the pouches on her belt and pulled from it a poké ball. Tossing it into the air, she let it crack open and release her solrock. As soon as the light faded, it shook itself awake and floated alongside its mistress.
"Go to the front of the Caravan and release the signal," she ordered. "We're stopping for a moment."
"Stopping?" Steven asked.
In the same instant, her solrock nodded and soared over the rest of the Caravan to the front of the line. Lanette, refusing to respond to Steven, slid off Metagross's back with the cooler in her arms. Her feet hit the ground, and she crouched as Solrock flashed twice behind her. Then, as she rose to her feet, the van, the truck, and the metagross all halted in their tracks.
"Lanette?" Steven called. "What's going on?"
She turned to him. "You think I care about that monster?!"
One of her hands reached up to yank her crowbar from its sheath. The other dropped the cooler to the ground. Her boot connected with its side, sending it arcing away from her until it split open and spilled onto the ground. From within it, the Master Ball rolled until it cracked open in mid-cycle. A flash of light lit up the path, and finally, a few yards from Lanette, Bill appeared, kneeling with his head bent low. He wearily opened his eyes and blinked at the black dirt.
"What are you doing?!" Steven shouted.
"What I should have done as soon as I found this thing!" she barked.
Launching forward, she dashed across the distance between herself and the ixodida. The steel-type looked up, the situation dawning on him a second too late. She jumped on him, driving his back into the dirt as she pinned him down with her crowbar. Her knees held her weapon against his stomach while one hand shoved his shoulder into the dirt. The other reached for her side and unsheathed her knife. Its blade glinted in the sunlight, and all at once, Bill felt terrifyingly lucid.
"Lanette, no!" Steven yelled.
Right then, the champion's hand grabbed Lanette's wrist, and an arm curved around her waist. Steven yanked her to her feet as she screamed and struggled desperately against him.
"Let me go! I have to—I have to…!"
"Stop!" Steven cried. "You don't know what you're doing!"
"I know exactly what I'm doing!" she screamed.
Her eyes flashed at the ixodida. As he sat, scrambling to piece together the situation, all Bill could see was the red of her eyes. Angry, dark red. He shook and inched himself backwards, away from her as she glared at him.
"You liar!" she shrieked. "You monster! You promised me! You promised me that I wouldn't have to do this again! You… you…!"
For a split second, Bill could see her face twist, her eyes narrowing and misting as her mouth stretched. She turned in Steven's grip and shoved an arm into the champion's chest.
"You bastard," she growled. "Let me make this absolutely clear so that even you would understand. We're done. I'm willing to believe that you had Bill's memories, but as far as I'm concerned, you killed him. I don't know what you are, but you and I have no further business between us. I'm not your friend, and I'm not your partner. You are nothing but a monster. So, you want your freedom? Take it. Take the Master Ball and do whatever you want with it. But don't you dare come anywhere near me again, or I swear to all the gods, I will end you. I mean it this time."
Shoving herself away from the champion, Lanette stormed off, nearly bowling over Tate on her way towards the front of the Caravan. The psychic shuffled out of her way and nearly fell over Metagross as he clutched a plastic container to his chest. Righting himself, Tate frowned and continued towards Steven.
"What's her problem?" he asked.
"It's… probably complicated," Steven replied as he narrowed his gray eyes at her back. Then, he nodded towards Bill. "Tate, who are we looking at here?"
The psychic glanced towards the steel-type. His eyes flared with blue light briefly as he looked the creature over.
"Hard to say," Tate said.
Steven froze. "Hard to say?"
"I can't get a good fix on which mind is in control," Tate explained, "but I do know it's not hostile. It's just… sitting there."
"Make sure he sits there, then," Steven said. "I've got to go calm Lanette down."
He turned and swiftly made his way to the front of the Caravan. Tate watched him briefly before starting forward with the plastic container in his hands. Halfway between the ixodida and Steven's metagross, the boy cracked open the container. Bill sniffed, catching the scent of dead fish in the air. Perking up, he glanced at the container as Tate tipped it forward just enough for him to see its contents: a dead and gutted feebas. Tate sighed as he approached.
"You're not going to give me any trouble about this, are you? Because whether you like it or not, you're going to have to feed someti—"
As soon as the boy was within arm's reach, the steel-type interrupted him by swiping the container out of his hands. Tate recoiled and clutched one of his wrists as he watched his companion bite into the head of the fish. After a few seconds, Tate shook off the shock and assumed a fighting stance. His eyes took on a brighter glow as a blue aura ebbed off his skin.
"All right, you—"
"Relax," Bill said between bites. "It's me."
Tate paused for a few seconds, his mind probing the other ixodida's. Then, he lowered his claws and let the blue light fade.
"You're actually eating a pokémon," he said incredulously.
"I figured a few things out," Bill responded.
"Like what?"
Bill swallowed. "That the consequences of resisting are far greater than giving in."
Tate furrowed his eyebrows. "Huh?"
"I'm sorry. It's too difficult to explain right now."
Bill grasped the half-eaten fish as he shakily stood. With his other hand, he shoved the plastic container back into Tate's hands.
"Thanks for the fish," he said. "I should go before Lanette comes back."
"What? Wait, go where?" Tate demanded. "Look, if you're worried about whether or not she'll try to kill you—"
"That's…"
Bill shook his head and looked at the ground. Her words resounded in his head, and in that instant, he shivered and bared his teeth in a grimace. He could hear her voice and the tone she used when she called him a monster, but he couldn't see her face. All he could see was the thing that snapped him out of it when he attacked everyone. The image of wide, brown eyes staring up at him. The small face, the blank expression, the way the girl's tiny frame stood within range of his claws.
A stabbing, cold pain struck him to the core the second he realized he nearly broke a completely different promise he made to Lanette. He had only one duty on the Caravan, only one reason as far as he knew as to why Lanette kept him on the team, and he nearly forgot about it. He nearly forgot about
her, the small, scared face in the rain. What's worse, he nearly broke his promise to Lanette in the most fantastic way possible. He could have killed her, and no matter what he did, he just couldn't shake that single thought.
It scared him to think of how close he came to being that kind of monster.
He could feel Adam's presence in his head, but he tried desperately not to think about it. His thoughts quickly shifted to his own words.
"That's part of it, but it's not everything," he admitted quietly. But then, as he raised his eyes, his voice grew louder and stronger. "There's something I need to do on my own."
Tate frowned. "What's that?"
"Train. Naturally."
Bill crouched with a smile, spreading his arms out as a golden aura flickered around him. Before it could ignite into a full-fledged Magnet Rise, it faded, and a sudden, stabbing pain ran through his torso. He choked back a cry as he doubled over and wrapped an arm around his stomach. The other hung limply, still clutching the fish. At the same time, Tate started forward.
"Um, look, I don't think you're well enough to go by yourself," the boy said. "Maybe if you just waited, we'd—"
The steel-type shook his head. "No. I need to do this alone. There's something I need to figure out, and I can't accept help to do it."
"No offense, but you're not exactly great at defending yourself. And since you're right now more than a little bit hurt, you know that you're taking a huge chance by going out there alone, right?"
Slowly, Bill began to smirk again. "I realize that completely, Tate. Regardless of what the others may think of me, I'm not stupid."
"Then what's so important that you have to risk putting yourself in danger over it?" Tate demanded.
Bill said nothing, opting instead to broaden his grin a little bit wider. His gaze met Tate's, and in that brief second, the psychic froze. A flicker of blue light danced in Tate's eyes, and a second later, the younger ixodida stiffened and backed away.
"While I'm gone, watch over Hope for me," Bill said at last. "I'll come by to visit her once I've gotten through the first part of my training, but until then… just make sure she's safe. Please."
"Um…"
"Also, please tell Wallace and Steven that I've gone," he continued. "Eventually, I'll be ready to train with them as well."
Tate closed his mouth. The blue light continued to flicker through his eyes for a few more seconds.
"And tell Lanette that I'm sorry," Bill finished, his voice softer than it was a moment ago, "and that someday, I'll make this right." Then, with one last glance to Tate, he smiled once more. "Thank you."
Then, he bit into the back of the feebas and held it in his mouth like a cat holding its prey. He dropped to all fours and darted into the underbrush that way, tail disappearing under the bushes before Tate could say another word. Behind him, the psychic only stared at the vanishing arrowhead as Steven returned to the end of the Caravan, this time accompanied by Wallace. Steven cast a curious glance towards the psychic, who finally turned to his companions.
"I think I'll ride with you guys this time," Tate told him. "I need to talk to you about Bill. He's in serious trouble."
"The fire-type?" Wallace asked as he climbed onto Metagross's back.
As Tate leaned down to scoop up the Master Ball, he replied, "No. Worse."
He stopped, examining the ball carefully. Its purple surface glinted in the sunlight no matter which way he turned it.
"Much worse," he said.
---
It was easy to forget whether it was night or day in Polaris Institute. Most of the complex was guarded with thick, windowless walls, so a view of the sun was a rare site limited to the windowed corridor between the Outer and Median Rings and the windows of the employee suites. Even then, sometimes, sunlight itself had no meaning to an overworked scientist.
For that reason, John barely knew what time of day it was when he ambled wearily to his own suite. He only stared straight ahead as he trudged through the halls of the Outer Ring, found his door, and drew his ID out of a pocket. However, as soon as he placed his hand on the door, it swung open before he could unlock it, and all at once, he was intensely aware of his surroundings.
Raising his eyes to the ceiling, he sighed, shook his head, and stepped into the dark apartment. Nonchalantly, he slipped his lab coat off and hung it on a hook beside the door. His heel kicked the door closed before his feet shuffled forward, carrying him through the doorway to the kitchen on his left. As he flicked on the lights, he cast a gaze towards the other door on the adjacent wall. A soft glow emanated from the sitting room beyond it.
"Remind me again what your name was," he announced to the room. "Athena? Ariadne?"
"Ariana."
John moved to the other door and poked his head out of the kitchen. In the next room, he saw the shadow of the woman sitting straight on the couch. The soft glow of a laptop screen – from a computer sitting on his coffee table – illuminated her long, crossed legs.
"Ah." He nodded and drew back into the kitchen. "I could never keep your damned codenames straight."
"My apologies," Ariana said flatly.
"Think nothing of it. Now then. Before we get any further, my dear, how did you get in?"
Ariana pushed herself forward and stood gracefully. "A perfectly valid question. You must know, though, that as chief of security, I have the liberty of indulging in… perks."
"No, no! No need to get up!" John strode out of the kitchen with a glass of scotch – straight, no rocks – in hand. "I was just fixing myself a drink. Would you like anything?"
Ariana cautiously sat back down. "No. Thank you."
"Are you sure? I've got a bottle of aged whisky. The real stuff, straight from Glenmorangie."
"Professor," Ariana said, "we have important matters to discuss."
"I'm sure we do," John replied cheerfully.
"Where is Professor Oak's assistant?"
John paused for a moment to take a sip. "Huh. That's not one of the topics I was expecting. He went home. Seems his mother's sick. Poor creature."
"You're lying," Ariana told him. She drew out the syllables as if she was giving him a warning.
To that, John smiled. "That's true, but I don't think it's any of your business where he is. And it's especially not your boss's."
As he raised his glass, he peeled one of the fingers clutching it away from its sides to point at the laptop on the table. Ariana turned her head but said nothing in response. Instead, a third voice spoke for her.
"Turn the screen to him, Ariana. I want to see him when I speak."
Obediently, she turned the computer, revealing a screen-wide image of a man reclining in a large leather chair. He smiled as if he was speaking to a long-time friend, but his eyes looked hungry and dark.
"Ah, Professor John McKenzie," he greeted. "It's been awhile, hasn't it?"
"It certainly has, and I had hoped it'd be longer." John took another sip. "Say, there's something I've always wondered about your organization. Why have you never tried to take control of the storage system? Seems like that would be your idea of fun, and my boy doesn't exactly know how to make himself inconspicuous."
Taken aback, Giovanni frowned. "It was never of interest to us."
"Is that so? Well, so long as it had nothing to do with me. I don't want you to think I'd ever gone soft." John took a third sip and winked at the screen.
"Are you stalling, John?" Giovanni asked in amusement.
"Not really. It's just that you're of no interest to me, Mr. di Roketto."
"So Ariana tells me," Giovanni said. "From what I understand, if given the proper incentive, you would consider rejoining the fight for our cause."
At that, John snorted into his drink. He had to pull his glass away to burst out laughing. The sound of his voice boomed through the room and echoed off the walls.
"Ah, you Rockets have such a fantastic sense of humor," he said. "No, I didn't say that at all. What cause, anyway? World domination? Have you ever really looked at the world lately? What in God's name would you want to do with that thing? Besides, you haven't got a thing I want. I don't want money, my family doesn't need protection, and I couldn't care less about power. What's there that you could possibly offer me?"
Then, it was Giovanni's turn to smile. As John watched the other man's lips pull back into a broad, white grin, he did his best not to shudder or lose an ounce of composure.
"Come now," Giovanni drawled. "There must be a reason why you've been hiding in Goldenrod City for almost twenty years."
"Yeah. I like it there," John replied as he raised his glass. "The food clogs the heart, the lights keep you up at godless hours, the booze flows freely, the pachinko parlors seduce you with expensive prizes, and the girls have legs miles long. What more could I want?"
"Your old reputation."
John stopped. He drew his glass to his lips to hide a faltering smile, but he didn't dare tear his eyes away from the screen. Giovanni noticed this and leaned towards the camera on his end.
"You can't deny it, can you? You were once the star of the Pokémon Symposium. The greatest mind in Pokémon biophysics. A brilliant inventor in his own right. Creator of the TM and HM systems. The man who wrote the book on move tutoring and who outshined Professor Samuel Oak at the peak of your career. And then, suddenly, he reappears in Goldenrod City addicted to gambling, women, and alcohol. Suddenly, he publishes papers that can be easily debunked by the most amateur researchers fresh from Celadon University. Suddenly, he becomes involved in countless scandals. Nothing too earth-shattering. Conning trainers. Fixing pachinko machines. Dealing with small-time yakuza families. Abandoning whatever work he bothered to do. How did it feel, John, when researchers in the Symposium began ignoring you? How did it feel when they began writing you off as a has-been, a charlatan, and nothing more than a mad scientist? How would you feel if I told you I had the power to erase all of that?"
John downed the rest of his scotch and walked over to place his glass on the table. As he remained bent towards the screen, he cracked another smile.
"I'd say you're an idiot." Straightening up, he started walking back towards the hall. "If I wanted any of that, don't you think I would have bothered to fix my own reputation? All it'd take would be a few papers here and there to prove that I'm not as much of a twit as I pretend I am. After all, if the Symposium lost all hope in me, I wouldn't be here, would I?"
Giovanni laced his fingers together and placed his hands in front of his mouth. "Is that so?"
In response, John turned and said, "Of course. Anyway, now that it's clear that you have nothing to offer me, I'll be off. Ariana, not that it matters considering this complex is full of your people, but make sure you lock up before you leave. Help yourself to anything from the kitchen, but I'll warn you right now, the bedroom doesn't contain anything that'd be interesting to you or your boss. Or if there is anything, don't tell me about it because I don't want to know what tickles your fancy."
Ariana curled her hands into tense fists on her knees. Meanwhile, Giovanni moved his hands to reveal an amused smile. John, failing to notice either of these expressions, disappeared into the kitchen.
"Where are you going, John?" he asked.
"Where else?" John poked his head out of the kitchen to hold up a bottle of scotch. "The infirmary. The Nurse Joys get prettier the drunker you are, and if I'm arrested by the lovely Jennies of the security personnel, I'd rather be the happiest old man on Cinnabar Island while it's happening. And if you don't mind me saying so, talking to you puts me in that kind of mood."
"Isn't it rather early for that kind of behavior?"
John tilted his head. "Is it? What time is it?"
"Noon," Ariana replied curtly.
"Oh."
John nodded. Then, after a pause, he uncorked the bottle, took a swig, and disappeared into the kitchen again. The next sounds either of the Rockets heard were the rustling of John's lab coat and the door clicking open. Ariana immediately stood and rushed towards the front hall. When she found John next, the door was halfway open.
"It would be a mistake to make an enemy out of Team Rocket," she growled.
He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Well, see, here's the problem."
Throwing open the door, he stepped outside. Turning back, he saw Ariana's face illuminated in the sliver of an opening. Her jaw was set, but the skin of her face was bright red. It looked as if she was doing everything in her power to control her anger.
John took this as a challenge.
"The problem," he told her, "is I'm not afraid of you at all."
With that, he slammed the door shut in her face and walked calmly down the corridor.
He’ll get there eventually lol. And haha, like how both Adam AND Lanette called him idiot. He's a lovable idiot, though. :3 As for the part with Bill (or Adam for that matter) going crazy, glad Tate came at the nick of time and the return of Lanette’s crowbar lol. 
