Chapter 12: Chaotic Good Before 10:30am

Somewhere on the edge of her hearing, her watch's pager went off. The internal randomizer chose something classical out of the fourteen different lyrical selections it had at its disposal to get its owner's attention. A long stream of insistent sounding chords that refused to be ignored for the minute and a half they droned on for.

But being wedged haphazardly between a light sweater and a pair of polar fleece lined jeans, the sound of the pager was muffled. Even the gentle green luminescence of the watch's tiny screen, desperately flashing "Message Waiting" under the large black LED that read "6:02am" was hidden, leaving the person leaving the message little choice.

The painfully annoying ring filtered through Miranda's mind with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. She'd chosen the high-pitched, incessantly whiney chime for just this reason. The repeated, painfully annoying sound was one of the only things that could pry her out of bed from the deep sleep she'd been experiencing, and wished beyond anything else she could still enjoy.

Miranda waited for several moments, her not yet fully conscious mind forging a shortly lived dream around the sound where she was eating breakfast and her cereal kept making strange ringing noises. At last, however, Miranda remembered where she was, and realized the origin of the sound.

"Cursed thing," she grumbled, trying to remember where the edge of the bed was, despite there being ample space to stand on either side, "I'll get rid of it yet.

By the fifth ring, Miranda was sitting on the edge of her bed, shivering naked in the morning's chill and looking back over her shoulder at the still sleeping form of Misty. Looking warm and content, still wrapped securely in the layers of blankets, and somehow blissfully unaware of the cell phone's final piercing ring.

"Lucky you," the courier said with a smile, reaching back to brush her lover's hair from her eyes, envying her immensely.

Miranda turned back to where the sound had come from, and considered the consequences of simply going back to bed. Of just wrapping herself in her blankets again, of sharing Misty's warmth and feeling her lover's soft skin against her own until sleep came to take her once more.

"This had better be good," she grumbled, leaning forward to dig her watch out of pile of clothes she'd set aside for that day, "The world had better need saving or I'm breaking someone's kneecaps..."

It took her a moment to recognize the number that scrolled by at her command. But the little emergency icon that lit up above it jogged the courier's memory. "Why would she need my help?" Miranda inquired of the little jumping rattata icon before glaring at her backpack that held her cell phone, "Oh well, whatever. I'm sure it's good."

Reluctantly, Miranda pried herself off the bed, staggering slightly and only now noticing the unpleasant fuzzy taste in her mouth that only added to her dislike for being up that early, as stepped halfheartedly into her Winter jeans and gazed longingly at Misty one last time.

In the time they'd been together, sharing beds and joined sleeping bags alike, the she had never snored, or ground her teeth, or flailed her arms dangerously in her sleep. Misty had been, as she was at that moment, quite. Content to reach out and hold onto Miranda with a slight smile crossing her face from time to time. A still, unmoving monument to deep contentment and a beautiful reminder of the love they both shared. Only now, she was alone. Her hand reaching out to where her beloved had been, her fingers desperately gripping at one of Miranda's overstuffed pillows, and looking so forlorn that it nearly broke Miranda's heart to simply leave her there.

"I love you," whispered the courier, her hand clenched and held against her naked chest as she looked down at Misty's sleeping form, wondering which she'd feel guiltier for. Leaving her beloved behind, or ignoring whatever medical emergency Lavender Town's Nurse Joy was calling her in to assist with.

"I'll regret this either way," she muttered after a moment, and quickly shuffled into the rest of her clothes and grabbed the cursed artifact she called a cell phone before quietly leaving the room and heading downstairs.

The kitchen was filled with dull gray light as she walked in, the cold linoleum beneath her feet reminding Miranda that she needed a new pair of woolen socks. And as she punched the numbers reluctantly into her cell, she spotted the large wooden container Bob often kept full of his left over baked goods.

"Joy?" she asked into her phone, using only the right side of her brain, as the left couldn't muster the will to be polite that early in the morning.

"Ms. Lilcamp?!" came the desperate, and all too loud voice of the para- veterinarian, the sounds of the ocean intersplaced by other muttered voices that sounded gruff yet equally worried, "Oh good! I'm so glad you're up. I need you to bring your gastly down to the South Beach. There's been an accident."

"He's a haunter now," the courier corrected, wincing as she turned down the volume and pulled open the small door hopefully, "Why, what's happened?"

"Um, I need someone who- Oh! Hold on!" Joy replied, her voice suddenly muffled as she yelled at someone half incoherently before returning to Miranda, "I need someone who can put pokemon to sleep."

"Gee, thanks," Miranda chuckled wryly, smiling happily as she yanked a reasonably fresh crescent roll out and took a bite.

"No, I mean I need a pokemon with hypnosis!"

"What's wrong with Morticia?" Miranda asked, opening the fridge and shivering as she held the phone between her shoulder and cheek in order to grab out the large pitcher of orange juice she found.

"Um, the dewgong hit her pretty hard the moment she tried to 'sing'," Joy explained, her tone becoming more worried, "I had to 'return' her, and she'll be down for at least a few hours..."

"So why me?" Miranda asked, stuffing the rest of her crescent roll into her mouth and chewing as quickly as she could, "Why not Zack or somebody? Or just get a tranque-rifle brought over?"

"His injuries are quite extensive," Joy explained as Miranda tilted her head back and poured the orange juice straight into her mouth, not caring as some of it dribbled down her cheeks and landed on her gray woolen socks after dripping off her chin, "The drug could kill him. Also, um... You're the only one who's answered the call. Sorry."

"Eh, no problem," Miranda assured her, setting down the mostly empty container on the counter and trying to belch as quietly as she could into her hand, "I can be there in less than five."

"Great!" exclaimed Nurse Joy, unaware that the cell phone was already lying on the island counter next to the orange juice, slowly spinning in place as Miranda hurried out the front door...

It wasn't the first time Miranda had wished her glasses were photosensitive as the wind stung her eyes into tearing up, but that morning ranked fairly high upon the list. The sun above seemed as cold, and harsh as the stiff breeze off of the water, yet its blinding rays of pale yellow light seemed far more offensive than the icy chill that cut through her Fall courier jacket as she rode her mountain bike recklessly down the front porch steps.

"I hate days like this," she muttered rhetorically, standing on her pedals to make better time as she sped away from 1313 Mockingbird Lane, and cut through her neighbor's yard to reach the road leading to Route 12 quicker, "Why can't bright and sunny days be warm, and cold days be dark and dreary?"

There seemed no answer, even as she skidded to a halt before the winding staircase and left her mountain bike to clatter noisily to the ground as she took the stairs two at a time.

As she went, she glanced up at the mob of seabirds, both mundane and pokemon circling overhead and wondered if she wasn't too late. But as Miranda reached the halfway mark, a shouted warning broke Miranda from her reverie, causing her to react without thinking.

With a panicked shout, the courier leapt over the side of staircase, gripping the railing at the next landing as a cone of strange, multicoloured light enveloped the entire flight of steps she'd been using. A second alter, and the now shimmering wooden stairs shattered into splinters, having reached a temperature that neared absolute zero.

"Aurora Beam?" Miranda pondered, glancing down below her dangling feet and out across the beach to where a crowd of fisherman cowered behind a determined looking woman in a long black cloak.