I think at this point you don't even need the warnings, but oh well…
This chapter contains lemonade (as in RIGHT NOW!).
If you're confused about something, read the author's note at the bottom or send me a message/email/review if that doesn't help. Or just review… or don't, I'm not your boss or anything, but it's highly appreciated!
Thank you all, here's a new page of the story. Enjoy and review!
-+-+-+-+-+STORY TIME!+-+-+-+-+-
-+-Neo Osaka - Ranko-+-
She ground her hips against the girl's mound with increasing fervor, a hand on her breast and the other against the nipple of her latest acquisition. Moans escaped both pokegirls as Mari bucked and thrashed until she was back into the proper position, finding the titillating caress of clitoris against clitoris driving her further onto the edge.
"Harder!" She hissed, light flashing on the chest of her victim. "Harder Ranko, make your mistress cum!"
A combination of humiliation, obedience, and pleasure both artificial and not, drove the panthress to grasp the infernal's hips and thrust the both of them at a maddening pace. An orgasm was quickly rippling through Ranko's partially unwilling mind, but the magic running through her body impeded her from stopping until the one dominating her with so little effort reached her own peak.
Mari's eyes squeezed shut, hands gripping tightly whilst her release remained denied to her.
Then she saw them, the green gaze, watching her squirm and debase herself in animalistic rutting, looking at her body shudder in the ultimate pleasure of exposing herself in front of them.
"Oh oh OHHHHH!" She screamed, electricity coursed through her veins, every muscle in her body tensing and freezing into position while the tsunami of sensations exploded in her loins and spread out through her in warm ripples of desire.
Crumbling onto the wall of fur and flesh and that was her current bed partner; her right hand absently found the corresponding breast and began massaging it. "Good girl." She muttered, flashes of magic sending pleasure to her victim with the spoken words. "Very good girl."
Ranko's entire chest rumbled with a purr that emanated from deep in her gut, the sound turning into a harsh growl only seconds later when she realized what she was doing. Obsidian claws unsheathed and her hand slowly inched towards the back of Mari's neck.
It felt like it would be so easy to just kill her then and there…
"Ranko…" Mari drew the panthress' attention and looked into her gold eyes with an innocent look.
But Mari didn't appear as the infernal that had just raped her. She had long brown hair and dark brown eyes, with a face that made the former tigress' gut clench as memories of a spatula wielding titto fleetingly crossed her mind.
'Ukyo.' The thought made her freeze, the claws retracted instinctively before she could will it.
"Don't forget it, Ranko." As she spoke, her hair returned to a fiery red, her eyes melting back into pools of blood. A superior smirk danced across her lips. "You're mine now, you can't hurt me."
The growl intensified in her throat, but Ranko couldn't move again. The wrenching in her gut felt like someone had stabbed her with a hot iron while she kept looking onto the body of the hateful woman, causing her a flood of emotions, half of which she didn't want to have.
"Good girl." Mari reinforced, watching as a short flash of pleasure sparked through the powerful body beneath her.
Pulling every drop of hatred into her glare, Ranko attempted to summon enough energy to attack the infernal, to cut her in half and tear her to bloody shreds.
The only thing she managed was to make the growl louder. "I won't be yours."
The smirk grew as Mari caressed the tense neck of the Menace. "That's the first time you didn't threaten me first and deny me later." She whispered huskily, lecherously grinning at her. "Very good girl."
Ranko's hips bucked as another small orgasm clawed through her nethers. Her fangs clamped shut as she glared more intensely, trying to swear death upon the accursed woman. But the words just couldn't reach her lips.
With a snarl, she looked the other way. Pain, humiliation, anger, and guilt burnt in her chest.
"Don't worry, little kitten." Mari slowly began to dissolve into the air. "No matter what you do, you will be completely mine soon." A slim hand caressed Ranko's throat. "When you finally break, you'll kneel and beg me to collar you, and you'll make your mistress very happy."
Another pang of artificial lust exploded across Ranko's body at the thought of being turned into a pet, wearing the black spiked collar all of Mari's personal thralls had. A sign they were above all other slaves, a symbol of being both protected by the infernal and devoted to her.
What she knew to be herself felt seething hatred at the thought of being 'tamed' by the monster hiding under the seducing flesh.
A small uninvited corner in her mind bubbled in excitement at the prospect.
Her inner turmoil was intense enough she didn't realize the infernal had left the room up and until she had vigorously whipped her head in either direction. The solace was a half-welcome respite from the conflicting emotions that kept appearing whenever in Mari's presence, it gave her more time to think and filter out what she knew had been forced inside her.
The sea of her mind began to be tinged red in anger once again, the feeling roared through her chest now that the fresh memories allowed it to froth higher with increasing power until her claws were unsheathing on their own yes again.
Right above her right breast the magical curse began to dimly shine, Ranko's eyes opened broadly in fear as she felt the anger quickly turning into lust. With the amount of images of her on her knees servicing the source of the very torture, her rage and loathing kept climbing, never reaching a peak as the magic forced on her was converting it all into sadistically powerful desire, an aggressive lust that demanded immediate satisfaction.
Gritting her teeth, she recalled her self-training, drawing control over her rampant emotions. It was a long minute before she had managed to stop the anger, but the lust had already begun to burn bright and she could feel herself with a quickened pulse and short of breath.
A frustrated growl and she forced her will upon the urges, using the moment to rush to the bathroom, ignoring the pleasurable sparks that came with each step as her folds caressed each other. Cold water began to pour out and the feline nearly yowled in frustration as the icy cold liquid robbed her of her breath completely and drove her heart into a race as it tried to keep on with the shock of the cold.
The lust abated, but the embers didn't fully die out, merely becoming dull enough for her to have a firm grip over them.
Dejectedly, Ranko realized that her anger towards her situation was constantly becoming easier to control and smother out, while at the same time the artificial lust was bringing more vivid fantasies of future debasement at the hands of the infernal creature. Fear grew inside her as she thought of the possibility that the lust that came from those fantasies would no longer be artificial given enough time. A part of her knew it was becoming a reality.
A part of her already wanted to give up and sink into some sort of mindless obedience and lust, the idea in on itself something that was becoming an increasing turn-on despite her best attempts. The rest of her was desperately looking for a way to fight against Mari's mind-magic, a battle that was impossible for much longer, resisting against something that felt so good and 'right' corroded the very foundations of her willpower. Each time she felt the idea of giving up was the one that made more sense.
She wouldn't admit to it, but she was terrified.
Not caring to dry herself, she drenched the floor as she padded her way out of the shower, entering the common room. Her ears picked out the screams of the fallen angel as the girl was being broken into her next evolution, Ranko ignored them in favor of Mari, another pang of anger sweeping over her as she realized her eyes remained lingering wantonly on the naked flesh of her tormentor.
The infernal hadn't noticed the feline's presence or simply didn't care at the moment, she was languidly draped across the couch gazing intently into the crystal ball, as she usually did on those moments she wasn't away doing whatever it is she did outside of bitching or commanding others around. The infernal was muttering something under her breath, low enough that it was impossible to interpret, though the general outline of her mumbling sounded frustrated and even borderline angry.
That made Ranko's ears perk and the Menace turned to gaze at the mystical glass sphere, feeling curious.
She recognized the young man that was in it, having seen him a couple times in the enchanted item since she had returned from her mission and even once before that. Now that she paid attention, she remembered hearing it was because of that particular tamer that Mari and her troupe had moved into Neo Osaka in the first place. The man was currently walking in what appeared to be the commercial district of the city, behind him there was a white and red fox type along with a black haired tall fighting-type and what appeared to be an elf.
The longer she observed the attentiveness and worry on Mari's expression, the more she realized whoever this tamer was, he was important to the infernal somehow.
Ranko's expression suddenly became a mask of neutrality, any and all feelings and thoughts pushed deep down where she had yet to surrender. A bubbling happiness was rising from that bit of her she was certain had yet to be tainted, and it gave her the determination and focus she needed. With every bit of concentration she could muster, she lunged at Mari.
The reaction of the infernal was a bored one, apparently having expected the attack days ago. With a dejected sigh, she drew an arcane symbol in the air with a glowing finger faster than any human eye could follow, and the panthress' trajectory was suddenly shifted while still mid leap. The feline crashed against the table with a loud sound of breaking furniture, but Ranko was quick to shoot to her feet and attempt a swipe at her hated foe at least once, secretly hoping to draw blood for the effort of it. But her hands struck an invisible wall and she suddenly couldn't move anymore.
Mari looked distraught for only a second before sighing. "And where does this rebellious streak come from? I believed we had passed this phase already?" A second motion of her hand threw the menace-type against the far wall and pinned her there.
"Do it, kill me!" Ranko roared at her, snarling and snapping her fangs as she couldn't move anything else. "End me already!" She ignored how a number of girls were peeking at the unfolding situation. "Break me and burn me you piece of shit! Anything would be better than this!"
"Now why would you want that?" Mari giggled lightly. "It's so much more fun when you lose yourself to me bit by bit." Her hand grasped the breast and kneaded it once, the nipple stiffening almost instantly. "And you're aware of that, aren't you? I bet you're even starting to enjoy it too."
Glancing sideways in humiliation, Ranko kept her lips tightly shut.
"Do not fret, dear." Her tormentor whispered wickedly. "Your struggles make this that much more enjoyable to me."
Ranko's jaw tightened further as she felt pride she should not have felt. Opening her eyes to stare at the broken table, she saw the glass orb shattered; she directed every bit of that false pride to the sight of it. She turned to stare straight at Mari, savagely snarling again. "You will regret not having killed me when you had the chance." She focused on the shadows around her and teleported to the door, escaping the magical bindings that had been holding her.
There was a pause as the Menace teleported a second time and vanished. One of the girls watching the unfolding situation rushed to her mistress' side. "Should I bring her back?"
Pondering for only a second, she shook her head. "No. She'll go kill some ferals and come back in a day or two once her steam runs out. I'm in no rush and we have no need for her for the time being."
-+-Neo Osaka – Corona-+-
"But I don't want clothes…" Sakuya half whined and pouted at the same time. "My fur works just fine." To emphasize her point, she brought her hands together on her tummy and stretched her arms downwards to cause her chest to swell in his direction as she tried to make her elbows touch one another.
Mario adverted his gaze quickly, else risk an awkward moment of weakness.
"Mine are comfortable enough." Verde added. "And they can still last for a while."
Corona just walked with a steady frown as she looked around.
"Not going to complain?" Mario commented off-handedly at the third member of the harem.
"Should I?" Her voice was firm, though she quickly shot him a smirk. "And tell these two boneheads the main reason they should have new clothes or I'll do it for you."
That caused the other two pokegirls and the human to look slightly confused.
Corona smirked further. "Oh, right, he doesn't talk about this sort of stuff and you haven't read his thoughts yet."
Quickly, she pushed them back and away from Mario, enough to ensure he couldn't hear them. She lowered her voice to lower than a whisper as she and the other two huddled together. "The real reason he thinks you need clothes is because he wants something that he can take off, mainly with his teeth." There was a grin on her face as she kept talking. "From what I learned, people from his world have this sort of clothes fetish, mostly focused on the act of removing it~"
The sudden predatory looks Mario received from the trio of pokegirls once they finished talking in private formed a knot on his throat. "Anything I'll regret?"
Skipping ahead of the group, Corona looked back to her harem sisters and the trio nodded. "Not you personally, just your wallet."
Mario gulped air loudly.
-+-Five hours later…-+-
The three pokegirls walked down the street with looks of utter satisfaction. Mario followed behind with a built in frustration at many various things and of many various kinds.
All of them had taken the chance (repeatedly) to tease him throughout the whole endeavor. Somehow Corona had organized them into torturing him and his libido. Mario suspected she had used Dream Time to arrange it all because otherwise he couldn't figure out when she could have done it.
A peek, a caress, an intentionally dropped item, an aggressive random kiss, a grind of hips… the attention was more than a welcome twist to what the male was used to, but it had become the source of more frustration than what he felt comfortable with on a public setting.
Each of them had picked several attires for casual wear and one for training/traveling with a multitude of replacements since it was very probable they'd tear at one point or another. Currently they had their 'combat' clothes on.
Front and center was Verde. She had taken 'S-X Fighters' brand of clothing, which appeared to be focused around giving the wearer room for easy movement with little care for material durability. In this case, she had a pair of light green jeans that were flexible enough for her to throw a high kick without effort, while so deliciously tight around her hips that Mario's eyes had trouble keeping on anything that wasn't her rear. Atop that she had a simple lawn green cotton shirt with a ripped off midriff and the rest of the shirt tied up so as to give her chest a wonderful definition, all the while with no cleavage being revealed. She had kept her gray fur snow boots simply for their familiarity.
Sakuya was wearing a dark blue military styled vest and fatigues with a whole lot of pockets that covered every inch of it. Mario knew for a fact there was not one scrap of fabric underneath those two pieces of clothes, as the dark kitsune would keep the buttons of her vest to reveal maximum cleavage and her pants had a low cut that gave the impression of being a wrong movement away from showing too much.
And with Corona on the right, the pinielf caught Mario by surprise as she was wearing light gray sweatpants and a long sleeved hoodie with the same coloration. Both of these had material to spare as they were very baggy on the slightly short and slim pokegirl.
Though the latter of the trio was wearing by far the least revealing or inviting clothes, the pinielf would glance at him sideways from under her hood and shoot him a hungry smile that made it just as hard to keep focus on the task at hand as the clothes the other two wore; especially when she took advantage of the bond to push images of their recent encounters in the shower.
The three of them had tested and tried many different combinations to come out with the things they chose, and were very much aware of the effects they had on him. Somehow the knowledge of the torture they were imposing on him made them carry themselves with greater confidence and energy.
Mario had also bought some clothes for himself while the girls were on their own clothes hunt.
It was marginally surprising to see that male clothes were more expensive in general, and the human was slightly torn by the fact that picking something marginally decent could end up a waste of money.
So while he picked a set of brown fatigues, sweat pants, sneakers, and a hoodie for whenever he didn't care what he wore (from the female section to spare his pocket some of the pain), he was currently wearing black jeans that were loose enough to allow him movement without strangling anything below the waist, a simple white long sleeved button up shirt, black button duffle coat, black and white stripped scarf, and a pair of dark gray fingerless gloves. Something the girls had approved of in unison, if only seemed a bit more focused on what sort of underwear he'd be wearing.
His combat boots remained however, since there were no male shoes to his liking that seemed able to stand the wear and tear of travel.
Silently in the corner of his mind, the two digits representing what was left in his bank account blinked red in urgent need of nourishment.
Hurrying to take position between Sakuya and Verde, he wrapped his arms around their hips and grinned slightly. "Well, we're officially broke. At least until we can manage to sell some more of what we got from the elves." He declared grimly.
"We could look for someplace to sell them while you start looking around that university you spoke of." Sakuya's hand snaked to her back and shifted his hand so his fingers were on the hem of her pants. She shot him a discrete wink as she wiggled her hips slightly. "I'm sure it could be good practice for Corona to figure out who'd purchase what for the highest price."
"Yup." Corona grasped Mario's other hand and smacked it against Verde's ass cheek. The hun growled at the short pokegirl who merely grinned back. "And it would work to start Sakuya on telepathy training."
"And I…" Verde grabbed Mario's hand as it was about to leave the spot it had landed on and returned it there. She shot him a feral look when he gave a playful squeeze; the gaze giving him shivers in all the right ways. "…will stay with you to keep you from getting into trouble."
"It's a plan then. Let's look for the university first. You-" The hand on Sakuya had inched under her pants and he gave her a playful pinch to emphasize that he was talking about her. "-will teleport there with Corona once you've sold out what I told you to, it gets dark, or either of you get into some form of trouble."
"Yes, Mario." She cooed his name out as she stopped to press herself against him.
Something about what she had just done made his blood boil. "First time you say my name since you evolved." He noted she had not mentioned it even after evolving.
"You're being a Good Master and giving us orders." she replied with a coy grin. "Good Masters should be rewarded."
Corona and Verde burst out in laughter and his face took a hint of red without his consent.
"You'll hear from me tonight." He growled with a mock glare.
"Is Master Mario going to punish me?" A slender finger went to her lips, her tails wagging. "Are you going to unleash all the beastly urges on my poor fragile body?" She leaned closer, breasts pressed against his chest. "Will you use just me to make all those naughty thoughts you've been having all morning into a reality?"
The laughing from the other two suddenly died out, and Mario was yanked back as Verde was glaring at the dark kitsune. "No chance in hell, you had almost a full day for that when you evolved."
"And you had your chance last night while I was left in the corridor." Sakuya's coyness vanished as she snapped with a frown, then pointed at Corona and glared at the pinielf. "And you tried to skip your turn this morning. It's my turn now."
"Anyone add another word to this argument and it will be nobody's turn until spring." The human spoke into Verde's soft breasts loud enough to be heard.
Though Verde let go of him from the bear hug, his head remained where it was while his hands tickled at her sides. With a huff she shoved him off with a mock glare.
With a broad grin, he looked at the three. "If you start arguing about who gets what, I'll start toning things down so all I do is keep you tamed and nothing more." The troubled expressions that crossed each of their faces were the answers he was expecting. "Sort this out on your own, but don't forget I also need some rest every few days. I'm not a sex machine."
"Much to everyone's regret." Corona quipped. "Though we're trying to get you there."
Mario leveled an evil smile at the pinielf. "If what you want is a sex machine, I'll get you one."
There was something about the tone in his voice that made Corona suddenly stand very still, a shiver climbing up her spine and she wasn't sure if it was a good sign or not.
Sighing, Verde shook her head. "I'm the Alpha, this sort of thing should fall on my jurisdiction." She declared. "With or without taming the new one, you need the rest. No extended sex."
That caught Mario's attention and he glanced at her. "Extended sex?"
"It means that we take what you feel like dishing out and don't seduce you into going the extra mile." Corona chuckled.
"I… guess that's reasonable." Scratching the back of his head lightly, he had not expected them to have a term for it.
Their taming no longer on the balance, the trio relaxed visibly.
"Great." Verde was the first to clap her hands loudly. "Girls, we've got a busy day ahead of us, we better get moving if we want to make the week a productive one." She looked down at Mario with a short smile. "Orders?"
-+-Neo Osaka University - Kim-+-
"…and that!" Her hand slammed against the blackboard with enough force to shake some of the chalk off of it, the extra emphasis going on to the large formula that covered over half of it. "Is why instant ramen will ALWAYS be better than pre-cooked vegetables."
The audience remained deathly silent for a very long second.
The teacher straightened out and gave a stoic look over the entirety of them. "Questions?" A single shy hand was raised and she pointed at it with her laser pointer with such precision the red dot appeared squarely in the center of the hand. "You in the back, speak up."
"I thought this was a physics class?"
"How dare you question the intrinsic correlation between taste and the fundamental laws of the universe!?" She hissed. "Even a pea brain would be capable of realizing taste is the result of a chemical reaction! Is it not physics the ruler by which any form of chemistry is measured!? How do you expect our buds to ever comprehend the absolute truth that is taste if not because-."
"But…" The young man interrupted her, hand still raised. "Wouldn't preference in taste be a thing of opinion rather than physics?"
The eyes thinned into a single line while the carrot orange brows lowered into a parallel of them. "Do I have to explain to you how a brain works as well?" As the boy shook his head vigorously, she gave a satisfactory nod. "Even a computer requires the firings of electrons and-."
The door to the room opened, bringing the rambling to a screeching halt before it could start. A woman with a fatigued expression and panting for air had nearly stampeded her way inside in the rush.
"Teresa?" The teacher lent a hand to the gasping intruder and helped her to the chair. Clapping twice, she turned towards the students. "Well, this is awkward, seems I was in the wrong class after all. Good day everyone."
The brunette named Teresa silently mouthed 'Thank you'.
With a nod and a whipping of orange hair, she briskly made her way out of the classroom without taking the opportunity to look at the students one last time before closing the door at her exit.
"Another day, another favor. Good going Kim." She whispered to herself as she began walking down the corridor. "Keep this up and she'll be showing you her apartment within a month, and then…"
A series of giggles escaped her as she had a maniacal grin on her face that would have scared most people off. She glanced through the window at the campus grounds, at the couple dozen students still going about and at the casual tamer that came and went with a pokegirl or two at his side. None of the breeds seemed of particular interest, a Peekabu at the corner, a Slicer here, a hun there… maybe the Cherry at the back could prove competent in summoning? Would her tamer be willing to have her be a test subject in one of her experiments?
Kim shook the braincase that contained the awesome brain that was adored and revered by most of those competent enough to know what an Euclidean Rune Chain was and why it should not be attempted outside of a level four static barrier unless you wanted a dead magical pokegirl. Though that reduced the number of admirers to about a couple dozen, Kim was content in knowing said admirers and herself held more brainpower than the rest of campus put together.
The dispersed thoughts were gathered back in place and her inner clock ticked. She had an actual class filled with her own mostly lovable morons to teach. By now the smarter percentage of the group would be finishing the small exercise she had used as a delay tactic.
It was still a mystery to her why she had yet to find a human smart enough to find the answer to the bipolar opposition of negative influence in less than two hours. Maybe it was because she always wrote it in Gaelic rather than the standardized system?
She could've teleported straight to the classroom, but Kim found a brisk walk was more enjoyable. The feeling of her labcoat fluttering behind her always reminded her of the days she had used to wear a cape back in Vale. "And damn their code of attire!" She shouted out for no one in particular to hear.
Dejectedly sighing, she stepped right into her class and gave them a look over. There one student not looking in frustrated confusion at his paper but seemed rather smug instead. A frown wormed onto Kim's face, that student was around the middle of the curve when it came to mental aptitude and knowledge of magic. A genius Tomas was not.
"All done already?" At his arrogant nod and smug expression her frown wrinkled to levels only found on raisins. His profile came to the fore of information and quickly disregarded. Based on what she already knew, this student should not have finished by now. "Let's see about that…"
Hurriedly going to where the student sat, she glanced down at his paper, which was completely blank. Her eyes however, didn't miss the pokedex screen that showed an image of her surrounded by tastefully naked men and covered in what would've passed as skin lotion by some of the frequent participants in the sex circuits.
The smugness in the student's face grew as he made a motion towards the bulge in his pants.
Kim just shook her head with an exasperated sigh. Every year it was the same, someone would find a picture they weren't supposed to be looking for and suddenly expected she would just lay on her back and spread eagle for them.
She was still pressing the issue with the board, demanding students to at least have one to two years' experience as a tamer to ensure the ones more lacking in common sense would not be capable of bothering anyone anymore, but it was an iffy subject at best with what how much money was made out of it all.
The blue ring on her left hand glowed and with a speed several times that of a human her hand snatched the pokedex straight out of the young man's grasp. The flash that followed from the red ring made the pokedex glow faintly in the same coloration.
"Oops, I accidentally cursed it." With a smile she gingerly placed it on the table. "Seems the spell will only gather ambient heat until it eventually gets hot enough to melt. It should take about… two to three hours. But don't worry, so long as you manage to- HUN!"
Her shout made the whole classroom jump in their seats, but she was already heading for the door. She hated that she had to hurry but she couldn't waste any time. The image of the hun and her tamer were now on the top of her list of things to process.
The young man's face matched to a 84% the one on the pokedex profile, 90% if the scars were healed and 99-100% if one excluded the weight loss from having to live in the wilderness with two or more pokegirls to take care of throughout several months.
Kim had to admit his choice of clothes had fooled her for a moment into believing him to be from the city and not a tamer that had just come from the northern tundra. Speaking of which, how HAD he reached the city so quickly? Though he had a Nogitsune, she had evolved up north so teleportation to Edo should be very unlikely on his own. She had been expecting he'd take at least a month or two barring potential epic confrontations of love and battle against either the organized crime syndicate that was the League Police or the Yakuza.
Hmm… she could write a novel about that, maybe include a young meek male tamer that would help with-
NO! Finding the potential test subject came first, yaoi fanfics could be made at another time.
Eyes frantically searching through the windows, she spotted the large hun before the man with a black jacket and a scarf beside her.
Without thinking twice, she gathered energy to the white ring on her right hand to activate the teleportation spell.
One delightful trip through the ever churning chaos of the Ether, she was standing before the two with her most enthusiastic smile on her lips.
"Goo-."
The fist that connected with her jaw exerted a force equivalent of four non-elemental 9mm rounds being shot at the same time, the speed of which had left the 'D' still on her lips.
She laughed at her own joke if only inwardly.
Kim felt the cracking of her jaw before she heard it with her eardrums. Her perfect recall allowed to watch in slow motion detail how the fist was attempting to imbed itself into her skull, straight lines becoming curves as inertia made her head whip sideways while her eyes remained as best in position as they could under the shaky circumstances.
There was a temporary blackout on her consciousness, two to ten seconds worth. The world spun back into existence, and she was face down on the ground. The grass did not seem greener up close.
Primary analysis revealed a small concussion that had reduced her processing capabilities by 4%. Secondary analysis estimated one to three months before her brain would go back to full power.
Her current project of world domination would be delayed two to three years because of that.
Hindsight told her that it was definitely a bad idea to startle a hun.
Common sense and self-preservation warned her not to do so again.
Pain receptors agreed.
"You're not mad?" Female voice, a grave one, but still appeared female. Potential for it being the hun 86%.
"Yeah… no, not really." Male, calm, deep, and with a sexy Slot accent. Hopes it's her future lab assistant 65% and rising. "She scans as a Supe-Bra Genius." Caution, unwilling to let just his eyes determine the facts. Hopes at 68%. "Had you killed her… then we'd have a problem rather than an accident."
Stating the obvious. Hope 56%.
Deciding playing possum would get her nowhere, she let out a groaning sound.
"Definitely not dead." The exasperated sigh that followed made her believe the greeting had gone less than ideally.
She realized they were both prone to stating the obvious so she had something in common with him, variable now holding at 64%.
"Well shit. Sorry about that." hun apologized. Which was a good sign for him, it meant he had manners and taught at least some of them to the brute. Hope at a record 70% for this as of yet not fully confirmed male. "You got any healing stuff on you?"
"On the Pokepack, so no." Lack of being prepared sent him down to 67%. "I got a couple Great Grapes though." Scratch former judgment, 74%. "You're not allergic or anything, right? Moan once for no, twice for yes."
Worry for her life – Not knowing Great Grapes can't cause allergy attacks + Giving out orders that could become kinky in the proper circumstances = Future assistant in physical stress relief at 83%.
Kim moaned once to confirm.
"Verde, carefully turn her around. Just one sec and I'll pour the juice."
The hun's quick obedience of the orders was slightly surprising, but with the young male taking twelve seconds instead than the promised one, Kim's expectations remained at 83%.
The sweet Great Grape juice poured onto her mouth, and Kim's eyes began to focus as her jaw settled back into position with the aid of the brute's hand and a cracking noise. Further pain ensued but not comparable to the one from impact. There was a faint taste of blood on her mouth but it went ignored under the uncomfortable feeling of her teeth resetting themselves into position.
Willingness to cover her in juices even when in a public area, 87%.
A quick review of other times she had assessed a potential assistant left her slightly dazed at her own willingness to take into consideration someone she had not personally confirmed up close to fit within her standards of handsome.
Well, seemed she was too good for him. Current score 82%.
Opening her eyes, she saw him looking down on her with a sexy white and black scarf. The look on his face suggested remorse and suspicion, his extended hand a silent offer for her to use it to stand up.
"Oh, sure, thanks." She didn't hesitate to take the hand and shoot to her feet. Giving him a once over made it easy to imagine him as a warrior under the disguise of society. A hunky warrior that could have his way with whatever young meek male got close to…
"Um… ma'am?" His words brought her back to reality; she left Hope at unity and stopped counting.
She discreetly wiped off the speck of saliva on the corner of her mouth.
"Yes, um, you may be wondering who I am." She nodded. Even if her brain was just 96% of its potential for the next months, she could still outsmart anyone in the next couple hundred kilometers at the very least.
Somehow her amazingly gifted brain managed to make her bite down on her own tongue without any apparent reason. The remainders of the Great Grape healed it up, but not before she felt the pain and winced.
"Owie." She rubbed her cheek. "Motor skills on my jaw haven't yet-." She stopped her rambling before it could start. Surely he'd want another sort of answers at this point. "I'm Katherine, Kim for short."
She offered a friendly hand to the brute first, best make sure there was no bad blood. "I work here in the department of Magical studies. The simple explanation of it is we try to find out the connection between the laws of physics and those of magic." The human had big hands, and a quick glance downwards revealed he also had big feet. Kim held from giggling at the wonderment of how well proportions were maintained. "I'm a sort of colleague of Miranda, and she asked me to take a look at your magic since it seems her tests left you outside the standardized box."
"She did?" The expression on his face shifted to full blown apologetic, almost grimacing. "I'm really sorry about the punch; I've been training Verde to fight against teleportation capable opponents and…"
Kim rapidly shook her head. "No, no, it was my fault." She didn't miss on the fact he had placed his pokegirl under specialized training, could he have a particular adversary in mind? "I was so excited to see you here ahead of schedule I momentarily ignored that you're actually a tamer and surprising one usually is bad for your health. There was this one time when a student tried to… and I'm rambling, so sorry about that, breed quirk and the entire sort, can't really stop when I get all energetic. And here I am babbling again!"
The hun gave her tamer a look that suggested a silent plea to break Kim's jaw a second time. The Super-Bra Genius shut her mouth with a loud clamp, looking nervously at both tamer and pokegirl, Mario shook his head in exasperation.
"Please ignore that." He made a somewhat welcoming smile. "I'd sure like to know why I can't seem able to do any form of magic, but the main reason I'm here is because I'm looking for information."
"Then what better place than the university!?" She slapped his shoulder soundly, pulling him towards her laboratory. Already she had a dozen possible tests she wanted to try out. "Even with the information filter, most academic discoveries are so way over the government' head that we usually don't have to worry about them censoring it all. I was considering moving out of League to continue my research but the funding for being one of the few willing Super-Bra's in Edo is far heftier than what you'd find in other places."
"Yes, very interesting, but I'm looking for information regarding portals."
That froze Kim on her tracks and she whirled around to look straight into his eyes, her own blue green eyes glimmered as she intently looked him over. Her brows furrowed. "Portals both for places within this universe as well as those connecting to other universes are forbidden tech. Extra forbidden in Edo."
Her voice had lowered to almost a whisper. "Just trying to study it could get you a lifetime sentence in the prison-island the whole League seems so damn proud of."
Mario raised an eyebrow. "Well, that answers that. And I had thought Edo laws were more lenient."
"Edo laws are broadly left to be interpreted by the officer that enforces them. Be they lenient or brutal." Kim spoke coolly. "This translated that most times the job of judge and jury is left to the police, while at the same time punishment to the officers can only be determined by someone higher in their command chain."
Her tone took a dark inflection. "Just to give a bit of perspective, as soon as rumors about Ranma Saotome's Speech had become known enough, the League blocked out anything so much as making a reference to the event. Nowadays the only reason anyone in Edo knows about the inter-dimensional traveler is through word of mouth."
There was anger in her voice for a moment. "The cherry on top is that just a week after the mass censorship, new laws were approved to force all Fuzi to be screened and immediately incarcerated if their views didn't match Edo's. I'm certain some of them were true psychopaths, but most were certainly not." She shook her head and quickly smiled. "So if you're looking to study portal tech, I suggest you head to Blue. If nothing else at least they hold the Pure Energy Patent© so portal tech may be within their grasp already."
"Fuzi? Pure energy patent? I'm not familiar with either of those terms." He did not look confused by everything else she had said, or horrified by the open critique to the emperor's holy nation of Edo as with nearly every other one of the 'sheeple'.
"Fuzi means floater, that's what we call the ones that come from other worlds." Kim nodded with a smile, there was nothing like giving information to those who asked it. "The Pure Energy Patent© is a piece of magically protected software that allows pokepower to run on nearly 100% efficiency. Taking into consideration the expected growth rate, with such tech you could use a starved mousegirl to fuel all energy requirements for Edo throughout the next five thousand three hundred and fifty four years… approximately." She wanted to also account for natural disasters and potential wars but she didn't have the numbers and didn't want to waste time estimating them now. Maybe later, right now Mario seemed able to catch on quickly. "And it costs just as much as you'd think it would. Currently there are rumors that Edo is saving up quite the sum of money to purchase one of those chips, but as always it's all unconfirmed."
The way the young man was looking at her suggested intrigue, though not so much at the information she had just revealed but at… her?
"Did I say something strange?"
"No, it's just…" He shook his head. "You seem very informed."
A conflict in intended responses surged through her and she struggled between the humble blush or a confident and loud boast. She wanted to show appreciation for the compliment with maximum efficiency in the delivery of the intent. Considering he was in the company of a hun, she estimated greater contrast in the present personality traits around him would prove more effective in maintaining his attention and increasing effectiveness of her transmitted gratitude and that of future messages.
Route mapped out, she blushed and shrunk slightly, averting her gaze to the side. "Thanks." She secretly wanted to tell him to wait until he saw her lab in action, but now she'd likely receive a second compliment rather than just the one. "We could postpone this to another day if you'd like, but if at all possible I would appreciate it if I could put you through some tests right away. Miranda and I have come up with a theory of the nature of your abilities and determining what they are would make teaching you the basics of how to use them much easier."
Mario turned to look at Verde, but her response was a shrug of the shoulders.
He turned back to her. "Sure… we wouldn't mind. The original plan involved us spending practically all day here anyways."
Kim's eyes twinkled at his use of 'we'; he was the sort of tamer that took into consideration his girls' opinion? "Right this way!" She eagerly stepped in front of the two to hide her nibbling of her lower lip. This tamer was raking up points!
"So how did you meet Miranda?"
"I was a fresh out of the ranch G-Point back at Vale; got taken in to one of the older Head Mage's harem so I could help him place his knowledge into the posterity of parchment and paper. He was going to die so it was my and an A-bra's job to extract all his magical knowledge before he expired. As it turned out the geezer had a whole lot of stuff in that head of his and a whole lot of protection for it. Took us five years of non-stop work to get it all on paper." There was an energetic skip on her step.
"I was handed control of his research after that since the A-bra got sent to someone else's team and the mage's old harem was given out as gifts since they were all powerful spell casters. The mummy had been attempting to find ways to improve upon the G-Stylus's power to create a different kind of splices. Problem was he only had a handful of cheap replicas for study and testing."
It wasn't until they were approaching the building that the small electric fence became visible, circling around the three story high structure as the first protective measure of many against forced entry. "I sort of went on a small two yearlong adventure looking for an original G-Stylus and found Miranda in the process. She convinced me rather thoroughly not to continue that particular line of study and after a couple mishaps and accidents I got a position here researching the fundamental laws that govern magic. It's been four years since, and if Hichiga-san did the decent thing and died of a heart attack, I'd be the head of the whole place within the week. I'd be able to finally move those funds from finding better ways to industrialize magic through the abuse of pokegirls into actually finding out how the magical energies tick."
There was a pause at the metal doors as she blinked repeatedly, turning around to face them. "Did I just say the Hichiga part out loud? Well, doesn't matter, René hates him more than I do." Clearing her throat, she swiped her card on the reader. "Hello René, asking clearance for myself and two guests, tamer and pokegirl."
Mario took the chance to look for the aforementioned cameras and found nothing but gray cement wall, glass windows and the handle-less doors. There was a loud buzzing and the doors slid open to admit their entrance.
Inside was a small waiting room with four chairs and a single blue door at the far end. The whole thing appeared unused and not that well taken care off, with thumbed and yellowed magazines scattered on a coffee table and the leather on the chairs cracked and worn out.
"Right this way!" She repeated, ignoring the lobby and going straight for the blue door.
"Just how do you study the fundamentals of magic?" Mario took the silence as an opportunity to ask. "Get two big cannons and shoot magic at each other to find out what it breaks into?"
There was a split second as Kim glanced at him from over her shoulder. "We're not at that point… yet." She sounded dejected. "Magic in and of itself is an energy that exerts force to its surroundings following certain rules. We call it the fifth fundamental force since it doesn't fit within any of the other four ones."
Verde glanced at Mario and then at the other pokegirl's back. "Which four?"
"Strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravity." The young human spoke out before he had thought it through.
This time, Kim halted before the blue door and stared at Mario intently. "…that's…correct." Her brows knitted against each other. "Where did you learn physics? Your entry doesn't mention you went to any university."
For a fraction of a second he felt like slapping his face. "I was homeschooled, one of my mothers was a Ka-D-Bra that had been a teacher in Noir." He had quickly calmed his reply with a confused but reassuring expression. "I didn't know that the four elemental forces were first taught at university level though."
"Most forms of real education on the more complicated side of things like medicine, math, and sciences start at university level." Though she spoke calmly, her eyes kept looking Mario up and down, as if attempting to figure something out. "Unless it's private and insanely expensive, schooling for students below sixteen tries to teach the little meat-bags ways NOT to get themselves killed, to varying degrees of success. Most people skip that for various stupid reasons and straight out become tamers or work in whatever their parents do once they reach the proper age." Shaking her head, she pressed her hand against the wall next to the blue door and it slid open with a hiss, revealing a long pristine white corridor.
"Where would my ice abilities be?" Verde interrupted the moment of silence, the look in her eyes showing great curiosity.
She stared at Mario as if expecting him to answer. Kim only waited a heartbeat before she continued walking. "It would fall on the fifth category, but after that it's a complete mess."
She growled something under her breath that sounded very close to 'damn the idiots'. "For now the only thing the scientific community has agreed on is that Magic is divided into two main branches, Potential and Intrinsic. All pokegirls have some form of Intrinsic that's particular to their species and element. An aurora punch would be right up in the Intrinsic slot. What's normally called Magic is the Potential sort, such would be an enchantment or a curse. Unfortunately, we're still uncertain if there's any real difference between the two at a fundamental level. Which is compounded by the fact that most people studying magic are more interested in learning how to make larger fireballs rather than finding out why they can summon one in the first place… well, progress is slow at best."
Her labcoat billowed behind her as they walked; Kim was humming a tune as Verde's curiosity turned thoughtful. Mario merely observed that there appeared to be no movement in the building, as they had not seen a single person since they had entered the place.
"You couldn't have appeared at a better time by the way." Kim declared as another blue door was opened, revealing a metal stairwell heading downwards. "None of the humans come during the weekend, so Hichiga and his goons won't be here to pester us. They have this knack for getting in the way of anyone who's smarter than them, so all the girls are always almost at a standstill whenever they get into the thinking chambers."
"Would the ability to summon a snow storm be Intrinsic or Potential?" Verde's question rung out as she looked on in curiosity.
The Super-Bra didn't even halt her descent down the stairs as she spoke. "We're talking about something else right now dear, do try to keep up."
Mario stopped on the spot. "I appreciate you offering help." His smile was purely cordial, his eyes cold. "But right now I don't feel like putting up with anyone, so I don't plan to spend a single second here if it's with you condescending me or mine when it comes to knowledge or intellectual capabilities." He shot a look at Verde before frowning at the surprised looking Kim. His tone of voice had instantly lost all forms of friendliness and cordiality. "I'm also very much against healing injuries caused by stupidity."
"I am not stupid, I am the smartest person I know." She had spoken out with a glare at him.
Crossing his arms, he stood straight. "I don't doubt that." A grin crossed his face. "But you didn't manage to outsmart Verde's knuckles in that first encounter though."
The memory of the pain caused her hand to raise and unconsciously rub her jaw.
It seemed that so long as she was within hearing range of him or the brute it meant she'd have to avoid pointing out their lack in brainpower.
Ugh.
"I am sorry." She felt like she was going to be sick, but it would be a minor sacrifice. If it meant she'd get her hands on decomposition magic she'd take an elfin poisoned arrow to both knees. "To answer your question: the snow storm would be the result, Intrinsic or Potential magic would be the means by which it was created. If it were you who summoned it would be Intrinsic, but if it were an Archmage then she would've needed Potential magic to do it."
Verde gave a brief nod. "Thank you." And as Kim began to continue down the stairwell, she hugged her tamer from behind, placing her lips next to his ear. "Thank you." She repeated in a whisper.
The Super-Bra peeked at that from the corner of the eye but made as if she hadn't, discretely taking the chance to cast a simple truth detection spell. "Would you…?" her words caused tamer and pokegirl to separate and Kim stared intently as she stood next to the yellow door numbered '-3' in red. "Would you have allowed her to attack me had I not apologized?"
Mario opened his mouth and for a fraction of a second appeared to taste something in the air, he quickly laughed and shook his head. "I'm not one to promote senseless violence." The light pinging noise in her ear told it to be truth. "So I'd very much rather just leave than resort to it." Truth again.
Hiding her frown, Kim opened the door and decided not to press the fact he had avoided answering her question directly. Had he suspected something was amiss? Was he used to speaking with Celestials? Did he not consider it a subject worth a simple answer?
"However…" his voice had lowered as she had turned away to open the door. "…if she suddenly decided to hurt you, I wouldn't be capable stopping her."
Truth.
She shuddered but hid the sensation as they continued further into the building. The Genius mentally assessed which defensive spells she currently had at hand and what she'd be able to do against a charging hun. A second shudder overcame her. Unless the circumstances were unlikely specific, she'd be Super-Bra paste within ten to twenty seconds after the beginning of the potential confrontation. She was too close to be able to raise a barrier in time.
Once they reached the green door with the big '01' drawn on it, Kim made a notion with her hand and it opened silently. "This is the main experimentation room." She declared with overwhelming pride while looking at the unimpressive five meter long white cube that was the room. "We've got all sorts of sensors and cameras and th-." She was about to say 'thingies' but she could still see the hun through the corner of the eye. "-spells to ensure that whatever takes place within these four walls is not only recorded and analyzed but also isolated to avoid accidents from destroying the campus."
Mario looked at the light glow the walls gave, and that the corners were curved slightly to give more of an impression of a sphere than a cube. "One would think experiments capable of endangering the campus would not be allowed to be carried out in a place so close to it."
Kim clapped her hands and grinned. "What the League doesn't know, the League doesn't try to hamper. And we've got our own secret defenses in the extremely unlikely event something does fail." The chuckle that followed was more of a cackling sort of sound. "This is where we'll do the tests today. Miranda mentioned she had given you an enchanted pen?"
His shoulders slumped slightly, and his voice lost all signs of confrontation. "I don't have it on me at the moment, sorry."
The resulting string of curses that crossed Kim's head was placed on loop to carry on the background. She hid it with a smile. "No worries, she told me which enchantments she had used." Fishing a pen form her subspace pocket, she handed it to him. "All you'd have to do is do whatever it is you do while I look at the readings. Just wait until I get everything ready and give you the signal."
He glanced at the pen for just a moment. "Ok, Verde should leave the room too, right?"
There was a pause and the researcher shook her head. "It wouldn't influence-."
"But I'm sure it'd be best if she did, wouldn't it?" He patted the hun's shoulder and kissed her cheek before she could turn to look at him in confusion. "Don't worry. If she wanted to hurt me, I doubt she'd do it from somewhere you could quickly reach her." He looked at Kim. "You don't mind, right?"
Verde's eyes glimmered with approval in a silent dare to deny her.
'Crap'. Another thought that was placed on loop in the back of her head. She shook her bright orange hair along with her head. "Not at all, just wait here while I go with Verde-san to the control room." Pausing as she glanced at the door, she stepped back into the corridor with theHhun close behind.
It seemed the tamer was much less trusting than initial estimations lead her to believe. Not that she minded at this point, regardless of the results of today's testing she'd keep herself to the most trustworthy of behaviors, no point in causing senseless suspicions.
Pausing in front of the red door, she looked at the pokegirl that wore the clothes that were very thin and very tight. "I do have one rule I'd like you to follow: don't touch anything. The instruments aren't just delicate and expensive, but also very hard to find replacements."
"I'll manage." The hHn replied with her stony expression.
"I'm sure you will." Kim swallowed hard and went into Command Room 1.
It was meant to house a dozen researchers, each with three to five screens on their posts and each showing one stream of data from one of the sensors or cameras. On the far back wall there was a large screen occupying almost its whole surface, the middle revealing the feed from a camera from inside the main experimentation room and with smaller rectangles with the data surrounded that video.
Going for the center of the room, where a large table facing the large screen and filled with buttons, Kim was about to take the large leather wheel chair before she looked at Verde's impassive stare. "Would you like to take a seat?" inwardly, she hoped the hun turned the offer down for whatever reason she may have. The wheely leather chair was hers and she didn't like others getting on it.
"May I touch the chair?"
Her jaw tightened, it was such a bother when they were just above the level of intelligence needed for sarcasm and general wise-assness. "Yes."
Verde grinned. "I'll stand."
With a sigh of gratitude and a lot of inner frustration, Kim eased her rump on the smooth surface of the chair and faced the button and knob filled table.
Verde stood facing the screen, right behind Kim. The Super-Bra cringed inwardly at the presence but said nothing.
Pressing down on the nearest green button, Kim cleared her throat. "Testing, one two, one two, one two. Do you hear me?"
"Loud and clear." Mario nodded. "Is Verde there?"
"I am." The pokegirl spoke up and the tamer smiled slightly.
"Mario, sensors are on." The researcher decided to nip the conversation in the bud. "Whenever you're ready, go for it."
Bringing out the keyboard, Kim watched the readings carefully. "He's got a couple enchanted things on him… better factor them in to reduce noise." As she began to type away, some of the wavering lines began to calm down to slow oscillations.
"Can he hear us?" Verde glanced at the screen where Mario had taken a lotus position with the pen held lightly by both hands. His vitals began to show he was relaxing himself rather quickly.
"Not unless this button is lit up." Kim pointed at the green one. "Either keep it pressed to talk or quickly press twice and it remains on until you push it again."
"Good." The hun sounded gruff. "I was wondering whether you'd be a valuable addition to Mario's harem." The truth spell had yet to wear out, it gave a small chime of approval. "A couple minor attitude adjustments aside, you could be useful to us."
Had Kim been drinking her customary coffee, she would've spilt it all over the place. Not having any beverage to spray, she just played the moment in her head while she turned to look directly at the hun. She had to crane her neck and look straight up to manage to bypass the two mountains she lugged on her chest. "You're very forward."
"You don't delay things either." Verde smirked, not taking a step back to grant either of them a more comfortable viewing of their faces. "Right now he's moody for several reasons, and having you in the team could solve several of them."
Taking a second to confirm the only thing the test subject was doing was entering a meditative state, Kim went back to look at the pokegirl. "You wanted to hit me."
"Still do." The smirk grew. "Especially when you talk too much."
Neither statement was a lie. Kim' frowns knitted her brows together. "Why tell me this?"
"He may be willing to let me hurt you, but you've caught his eye already." Verde's eyes flickered to the screen. "He'll do his best to avoid fucking you though."
Kim never thought a hun would be able to grab her interest, but she had managed the feat and without having said a single lie thus far. Her esteem for the brute rose as a multitude of questions began to bubble, fifty nine possibilities to explain the situation came up but none held a possibility greater than a single percent or two.
She'd have to ask a question again.
No, she wouldn't let herself have two sentences in a row ended on an incognita while speaking with a hun. "You want me to fuck him, as a distraction. Becoming a part of his harem is secondary to you."
There was neither a nod nor a shake of the head. "So long as he's not forced into it, I would neither help nor impede any attempts you may make." A rumbling chuckle escaped her, Kim was more surprised she had properly used 'impede'. "Doubt you'd manage it though, he has very thick inhibitions most of the time."
More surprise the hun knew 'inhibitions'. This was a rather strange prospect, it would be impossible for the pokegirl to even know those words much less use them unless her tamer made it a point to use the vocabulary or teach her.
Now that she paid attention to it, Verde had asked questions and explanations for a subject that couldn't be directly related to things such as sex, eating, fighting, or hunting. Even if her knockers were large enough to be considered average sized for a Milktit, perhaps he was at least partially sapiosexual?
Kim frowned. Was there a human male capable of that?
Reviewing the entire conversation returned a second important point of inquiry. What had she meant by differentiating between the act of fucking and taming? Physically there was no distinction between the two, other than perhaps-?
Beep
The sound was just a small warning. Kim placed the whole conversation and line of thought for future progression and turned towards the screen in search for what it was that had shifted a variable enough to activate the warning.
His heart rate was nearing the crawl of fifty beats a minute, breathing was slow, but calorie consumption was slowly rising. Magical energies showed minor fluctuations in the area surrounding his hands; the enchantments placed on the pen had stopped emitting a signature reading.
According to the data, the pen had spontaneously stopped being enchanted.
"What the…?" Her hands went to the keyboard, deleting the modifications she had made to reduce noise and increasing sensitivity. Still nothing.
BEEEP
A minor alarm now.
Light began to spin around the pen as Mario's brow furrowed, the mana in his body suddenly began to go haywire and churn in every direction at the same time. The magical signature of the pen came back a hundred fold in strength. Everything was going in every direction, the dampeners kicked in at the same time Kim's fingers began to fly across the keyboard. The sensors were numbed down while the barriers were reinforced to avoid damage to any of the other experiments or spells in the lab.
One look at the readings from outside the room showed whatever it is that was happening was not being fully contained despite all barriers remaining intact. She bit down on her lip and pressed on the big red button on the center of the table. An accordingly annoying spinning light appeared flashing brightly as everything that could be used to stop things from destroying the campus in the event of an accident were activated at the same time.
She added a command to impede any signs of this state of emergency from showing inside the experimentation chamber or on the records.
"What did you do?" The hun's voice was deathly calm, the room temperature had lowered a full degree.
Glancing at the outside readings, Kim sighed in relief as whatever it was that Mario was doing appeared to have stopped from escaping the chamber. "He's perfectly fine, I just ensured my more sensitive toys wouldn't get hurt."
Verde growled. "Those were a lot of lights and sounds for 'fine'."
"That's because the usual stuff didn't work." Kim shrugged, giddiness rising in her chest. "It may not be strong, but it wasn't stopped by the barriers. With how delicate some of the things here are, I couldn't risk the leakage." Information was still being picked up by the sensors in the room, the spinning light was slowing down and the swirling mana inside him was beginning to show a pattern.
"It's as if he's…" she tilted her head sideways, a fury of written commands had several of the redundant sensors focusing on the swirling magic that was inside his body. "…he's blocked." She concluded, the readings showed it wasn't stabilizing any more than the half chaotic mess it currently was.
Verde reminded of her presence with a grunt. "Why?"
Frustration rose at not being able to answer, a sense of excitement mixed along with it. She didn't know the answer! "Not sure." Kim grinned and pressed the green button. "Mario? You can stop now."
BEEEP
Even though it was towards a more stable position, the alarm had been triggered as all readings had drastically shifted. She took a moment to include those variations as standard and expected within the current experiment.
"Good news or bad news?" The human panted for breath as his brow was covered in sweat.
"Both." The scientist replied while standing up. "Sit tight, we'll be there in a minute." She touched the big red button and the spinning lights died out. She glanced at Verde with a broad smile. "I'm going to pick a couple things up and we'll do the test again. I'm estimating this will take several hours of rinse and repeat."
The hun rolled her eyes. "Is science as boring as you make it sound?"
"I don't find it boring one bit." Though she shrugged, there was a smile on Kim's lips. Oh how wrong the brute was, she had probably just stumbled into a breakthrough! "No one's going to give us the answers, so we can't give up on finding them. Even if it takes us years of hard effort with little chances of success, with everyone else criticizing and denying your every word with nothing but ignorance and fear."
Verde was surprised. The fact she had shown this emotion at this point was a surprise in on itself. "That's… honorable."
Kim's brows furrowed, had that been a compliment? "I… um…. thanks?"
She dismissed the line of thought as they walked away from the experimentation room, a floor down, and into the entrance to the Vault. Though it seemed like an easily accessible room with no security and a lot of interesting looking items on gray metal shelves, none of what was there was of actual value to their research.
Pressing her right hand against the far wall, all ten rings on the hand lit up with white light for a fraction of a second. There was a smooth hiss and the wall parted to show the wall had been four feet thick. "Stay here, please." Kim pointed at the line that had appeared next to the entrance of the Vault. "Step past that and the automatic defenses will vaporize you." There was a moment as Verde gave her a flat look. "It will slice you to bits so small someone could accidentally breathe them. And I don't have the authorization to turn it off."
Growling, Verde crossed her arms but didn't move from where she was.
The inside of the Vault was lit with dim red light, each object within having its own pedestal and no tags to make it easy for recognition. Whistling excitedly, Kim picked a wooden sphere the size of her fist and then a small wooden box that didn't appear to have a lid. The doors closed behind her once she had exited it. She took the chance to shift the setting of the various layers of protection to better block what her new test subject could emit.
In her head, she was already starting to guess what results would be yielded through the test. Both enchanted pieces were no longer capable of functioning in varying degrees. The magic that had been carved on them dating from centuries before Sukebe was ever born. Though their research had showed the artifacts to have had harmless uses from their very design, their troupe of researchers still took extra care in keeping them secret; there were a great deal of powerful people that would not react kindly to knowing they were messing around with magic from before the era of pokegirls no matter how harmless.
Stepping into the experimentation room, they found Mario still on the lotus position without his shoes nor anything atop his white button-up shirt.
"On to the results." Kim spoke while carefully placing the two objects on the floor in front of him. "First the good news: it appears you should be able to use magic, if only in small quantities. Bad news: something is impeding your energy to become stable enough to channel into a spell and I'm not sure what it is."
She pointed at the two items. "Wooden sphere is enchanted to draw in lightning and disperse it harmlessly as light; box has a spell to heat up a room. I'd like you to try out the same thing as before but with these as your new targets."
"Shouldn't I get some cheese for the effort?"
His attempt at humor passed over Verde's head, but Kim grinned. "If things take too long we'll have a break. For the time being the best we can hope for is to learn of the nature of your block. With that knowledge a way to 'unblock' it should become evident."
Technically she wasn't lying, but she wasn't telling everything either. Regardless of its nature, most forms of magical blockage could be pried open with a strong enough increase in mana flow, if only with the risk of some minor temporal side-effects. But right now she cared more about how much data she could gather about it. She'd confirm whether he truly was a decomposition mage when she got her hands on that pen Miranda had enchanted.
She also was very curious about the strange energy that had somehow bypassed the barriers.
There was much to test!
The line of thought she had put to pause earlier came back and she glanced at Mario intently. He was at the age tamers were usually looking for a way to retire and search for some other source of income. His face was within the acceptable levels of handsome, the physique seemed well trained under his shirt, the scars and slight outline of muscle hinted at a lifetime of light training and several battles fought and survived. Kim would have been lying if she declared she hadn't had worse.
The psychological review she had constructed showed care for his partners if a slight distancing from others. The fact he had not appeared stumped at anything other than the use of certain words left her to believe his education had been more thorough and extensive than most humans his age.
A mental calendar told her she would require a taming in a limit of three and a half days before she'd go feral. Unfortunately her breed was cursed with the abruptness of the fact, losing their minds to the irrational state overnight rather than slowly descending into it.
Probably had something to do with the fact all Super-Bra's were already mad in one way or another.
She tapped her chin as she planned out the possibilities. "It may take us several days of constant testing to get to the bottom of this problem. Just how free would your timetable be the next week or so?"
Mario glanced at Verde worriedly and then back at Kim. "We're hitting the road Friday morning. I want to study about portals and apparently Blue is the best way to go."
'Crap.' Three more looped strings of curses were added to the background noise that were her thoughts. Maybe having him as a permanent guest in the Dungeon would be the best idea? The thought was scrapped, Miranda had a vested interest in Mario for some reason and if Kim had learnt anything from the archmage, it was that it was in everyone's interest not to mess with Miranda's interests.
She thought back to her short conversation with Verde. Her emphasis on the word 'fuck', her blatant attempt to bait Kim into taking the seduction of the hun's tamer as a challenge. A powerful set of inhibitions plus a desire for a more intimate kind of contact meant that gaining his trust would make Kim's needs have a relative priority for him above many other things.
It meant she'd be likelier to get him to willingly stay for a while longer.
"If that's the case then we'll have to cut things short for today, I have to go make some arrangements." Kim drew from her experience on how to succeed in getting a taming out of a male rather than from another girl in need to keep her sanity. A plan was formed to find out and work herself into Mario's list of priorities. Already she'd have to spend whatever was left of the day reviewing all the data to maximize future testing efficiency.
She created a list of people and favors to ask in exchange of having most of her next week free for the experimentation and testing. A second list of people she had some blackmail on was also created in the eventuality some of her petitions were turned down. Hichiga occupied the top three spots of that list since he'd likely try hogging the experimentation rooms for himself like he always did.
With a motion towards the door she picked up the wooden sphere and box. "I'll have to put these back in place, so René will come to lead you both back outside." A moment of pause and she gave him a short smile, using her right hand to pull a stray strand of orange hair behind the ear. "Are you free for brunch tomorrow? I've got to reschedule a lot of things and can't convene with you any earlier. Hopefully we'll find what you're looking for before you have to leave, but I'm going to have to review today's data to better understand the nature of your problem."
Mario stood up while holding on to his jacket. "Um… sure. I'm not interrupting anything important, right?"
"No problem whatsoever, I'm just glad to help a friend's friend." She could've mentioned he would be saving her of a week of dealing with idiots who thought her work wasn't important, but instead added 'Guilt' to the new list of potential things she could use to extend his stay. "Tomorrow at eleven sound good? The university has a good lunch room and tomorrow's a Sunday. It should be mostly empty."
Using the half second it took him to consider her proposition, she reviewed what clothes she had available and the 'sexy librarian' gear was set aside from the fetish section. Strengthen the intellectual look appeared like the best option, and the opportunity would be great to measure if he actually had some form of preference for intelligence in his partners.
"Sounds like a plan." He commented.
Putting the most 'come hither' look she could make, she combined a wink and a leer. "Sounds like a date."
That appeared to get the fulmination she had hoped for, so before he could recover or she could screw up, she walked out the experimentation room. René appeared floating besides her, lazy as ever as she materialized with a bored look on her face. "Evil laugh yet?"
"I'll wait until I'm in the Vault." Kim declared in a hushed voice. "You take them out and send the test's data to my room for later review." A mental alarm clock went off and the Genius sighed when the grumbling of her stomach followed. "And get me some takeout, it's going to be a long night." She also made a note to contact Miranda and tell her the tamer was here already.
The video-girl did a mocking bow before vanishing back into the outlet on the wall. "Aye aye." The sound came from the speakers on the corridor. "You slave driving sex-addict shut in." It added in a low static sound.
Kim screeched to a halt mid-stride. "I heard that!"
+-+-+-+-+-STORY END-+-+-+-+-+
+-+-+-+-+-CURRENT HAREM-+-+-+-+-+
-Dark Kitsune (Sakuya)
Speed x6 / Agility x6 / Hearing x6 / Smell x6 / Isolation Aura
-Hun (Verde)
Speed x4 / Strength x4 / Durability x4 / Endurance x4 / Reduced Feral / Cold Resistance / Hunting Aptitude
-Pinielf (Corona)
Strength x2 / Endurance x2 / Agility x4 / Vision x3 / Smell x3 / Flesh Bending / Fighting Aptitude / Longevity
+-+-+-+-+-A.R.-+-+-+-+-+
(Author's Replies)
Vendettadabeast: Corona's much older than she lets on, and her character has a LOT of back-story (kind of to be expected when she's older than what your average human could ever live), but at the same time she's the sort of "I don't like to talk about personal life" persona so having her past come up is somewhat of a challenge. Either way, by comparison alone with her other two harem sisters (Sakuya and Verde), she's got a ton more of experience.
The girl that's currently being 'Interrogated' by Mister J isn't a Godiva, she's a Mahavi, not sure if I ever mentioned the breed in the story tho...
cko2: On the time stamp thing, for now you might as well assume everything's taking place in the same day unless otherwise specified (more or less, currently working on that).
As to Corona and the additions to the harem (or not), my lips are sealed for now.
sandcrawlr: Hahaha, though a Jokette was my original idea, it was just too corny/predictable/obvious, and Mister J needs to have a bit more of a surprise in him for this to work out, the Joker was never famed for being predictable and I'd rather keep things interesting. So no, there's no Jokette over there.
+-+-+-+-+-W.C.-+-+-+-+-+
(Writers comments)
Thanks again to TMFett for a good Beta'ing and for those few of you that had time during finals to read/review my chapter (those of you still on it, GOOD LUCK!). As you may have noticed this chapter is nearly twice that of the usual, I'd brag and claim it's compensation because I posted late or something like that but in truth it's because I couldn't find an appropriate point to break it off without making either chapter boringly short. So the end result is that this chapter has a little over 14K words, making it the longest chapter yet (chapter 10 has 18K, but it's also got three pokegirl entries, so it doesn't count).
The story's coming along and Kim (for those of you confused, she's the one Miranda spoke to through the mirror) has found a new test subject... though one not very preoccupied about what others may or may not feel. Mario's bullshit meter is filling up and, apparently, it'd be bad if anyone tries to coerce him into anything if it's reached full capacity. (PS, I also enjoyed a lot writing her up, crazy people just seem more... fun?)
Next chapter we get to see a glimpse of the Splice Miranda created among other things, I should have it (with TMFett's help) up and ready around the 22nd, but again, things are too chaotic and (yet again) there might be a full week's delay. Sorry about this but I can't promise on a single date until I've managed to re-create a backlog of chapters.
Until next time, and good luck everyone!