by Kestral
Tanya had gotten a little happier as things went on. Ash had commandeered Gary's vehicle and gotten them to a pokecenter after medkits had been used. Especially as every medkit HAD been used and medical treatment was STILL a priority.
Ash, sometimes known as Red, had been an idiot in some ways but when there was a crunch going on things seemed to connect a little faster in that head of his.
"Master?" Tanya asked as Ash came in. "It's been six hours."
"Statements, psi-probes," said Ash, dragging himself towards a bunk and looking like he'd just gone on a marathon Taming session. "Truth spells. Lawyers."
"That bad?" Tanya asked. She had known it would be bad, just not that bad.
"REAL bad," said Ash, thumping onto the mattress. "How's everyone?"
"Stable," said Tanya. "It looks like Gary might pull through despite the blood loss. He's going to be out for awhile though - the face was only part of the damage and he did lose a lot of blood."
"Good," said Ash. "What about..."
"The total was seventy-four Buzzbreast," said Tanya. "One of the biggest swarms on record. Twenty survived and will be divvied out to different Tamers. They're still looking for the Hive."
"Everyone else okay?" mumbled Ash.
"Yes, though that boy was more weird than just Feral," said Tanya. "He'll pull through though. They're just keeping him unconscious until they figure out what kind of psychic attack or magic was used on him. They're trying to unravel some nasty spells on him..."
Tanya noticed that Ash had already fallen asleep. Not too surprising, she knew that psychic probes or attacks could really wear you out.
She pulled the sheet up to cover her Master and clucked a little at how he hadn't even thought to ask about the Salvage Laws.
It also looked like she'd have to go a little while between Tamings, so he wasn't the only one suffering.
"Pure human? Are you sure? That's a shame," said the Nurse Joy.
"They didn't inject the boy with anything more than paralysis drugs," said the Sorceress. "Buzzbreast who encounter a particularly strong or noteworthy Tamer usually paralyze them to return to their Hive and service the Hive Queen. Weak males or females usually get recruited right away, then taken back to the hive to be cocooned and the transformation to run its course."
"So she's becoming a Buzzbreast?" asked one of the three Nurse Joy, looking over the girl floating in the tank.
"No, not any more," said the Sorceress, making a couple of sweeping gestures that left sigils glowing in the air. "I've placed a block on that transformation. It won't hold forever, the viral DNA would need to be purged from her system. Alpha level magic like a Megami would be needed for that, it's way outside my power level."
The ranking Officer Jenny cleared her throat. "It's been decided that Gary and the two others were guilty of illegal activity regarding a pureblood human female, which is pretty serious due to their Protected status. The Feral boy-"
"He's not Feral," stated the Sorceress firmly as she glanced towards the Espea. The silvery psychic pokegirl nodded in return. "He's a human under a curse, with a partial spirit possession that can be triggered to dominance. Due to his having come from another universe, there may eventually be physical manifestations of that."
The Officer Jenny frowned as she had been interrupted, but curiosity won out. "Other universe? Curse?"
"Once I discovered a magical taint, I explored further. I'm guessing about the other universe, because in some ways he registers as being slightly off-phase the way a magical construct summoned into our world would. Not my field of expertise, I'm afraid. The rest is more along my fields of study. Water based transformation curse," said the Sorceress. "I tried to unravel it but the best I could do was eliminate the 'trigger magnet' portion that would cause him to turn into a girl at the worst times for him. The spirit possession is trickier, coming under various laws that prohibit me from even trying to cure it. I'd suggest making him a Tamer in the official databases with a unique Blood Curse."
"That much I've already done," said another Nurse Joy. "Though I had thought he was just from another League and his paperwork had gotten misfiled. He's listed as having the Blood Curse of Berserker with a Blood Gift of Combat Mimicry."
"That'll work," said Officer Jenny, making the appropriate notations on her own stylus. Both conditions were so rare to be almost unheard of, but something that could be accessed through the datanet.
"What of the distribution of the pokegirls? Did the old men come to a decision?" asked the Nurse Joy.
"Yeah, their decision was mainly following salvage laws," said the Officer Jenny, consulting her notes though she didn't really need to. "The condensed version is that:
by Kestral
"YOU FILTHY LITTLE - YOU BETTER LET ME GO!"
The various odd girls, some of whom looked fairly alien, fled. The door slammed behind them, leaving Ranma alone in the lab.
Ranma checked again but other than some lights changing there was no indication he'd be able to get his arms or legs free of what looked like some sort of shackles meant to contain a giant robot or something.
He waited a few more minutes, squirming and trying to get better leverage. "You too. You'd better get out of here now, or when I get free..."
Something came off the ceiling and resolved itself into another one of these not-quite-human girls. "Interesting. You ARE dangerous."
"You gonna let me outta here, or do I have to get mad?" asked Ranma.
"Oh, I'll let you out of there," said the girl-thing. "Oh my. You ARE from outside our little universe, and filled with all sorts of ideas."
"What's a Psi-dyke?" asked Ranma.
The creature froze for a moment, then laughed. "Oh. Very dangerous indeed. You felt my mental probe and managed to get information out of it? VERY dangerous. Though I'm not a Psi-dyke, that's the pre-evolved form. Psi-dyke, then Goldyke, and finally my own stage - Dyqueen. Though that's a misleading term."
Ranma puzzled through the information he'd gotten in the exchange. "So each 'evolution' thing brought you closer to that group-mind thing? Don't sound so good to me."
"Psi-dykes are the most independent," admitted the Dyqueen. "At my stage we are mostly plugged into the One, and when I evolve to the ultimate stage I will join the One."
Ranma very carefully began gathering energy as several things clicked into place in his head. One was the overwhelming hate this creature had for anything male, and an innate cruelty that made Kodachi's worst seem inconsequential in comparison. "So if you ain't gonna let me go, what are you gonna do? You don't belong here."
"Me?" asked the Dyqueen, extending her claws. "I'm going to fry that dangerous brain of yours, lock you in female form, then maybe pass you around as a pet. You'll come to like it after you're unable to think anymore."
"Uh huh," said Ranma as the Dyqueen advanced. "Just one thing."
"Those shackles are hydraulic and capable of holding an Onyx captive," said the Dyqueen. "You're not getting away."
"Ranma Saotome don't lose," said Ranma as he felt the mental fingers return, this time thrusting in as if to scoop everything out. He fought back.
After all, he already had a plan - as his chi wasn't being blocked.
"We found the Hive all right, and we've had the local Tamers assault it. Unfortunately, we now have to change the registry on John Sexmore from Tamer to pokegirl."
"Karma," said an Officer Jenny. "One who was especially abusive to his pokegirls is now a pokegirl himself."
"So what's the distribution?" asked Tanya.
Nurse Joy changed a display. "According to the records, Ash is the more experienced Tamer, so he's getting the most. As soon as they've healed he'll get one of the Buzzbreast, the Octopussy, and the Titacruel. He already has yourself - a Tigress, a Peekabu, and a CharAmanda. He might want to trade with the other boy though. Bug/Poison, Water, Water, Fighting, Electric, and Fire types. With a duplicate Water he might want to go with one of the other possibilities."
"What about those 'sisters'?" asked the Sorceress.
"The one girl still has enough human DNA to be registered as a Tamer," said Nurse Joy. "In which case she gets her two sisters and the Shadowcat."
"I thought you were going to give Saotome the Shadowcat," put in Tanya.
"Saotome's got a problem with cats and cat like beings," said Nurse Joy.
"Maybe Master can trade the Octopussy for the Shadowcat," mused Tanya. "Octopussy are primarily lesbians anyway."
"Where is he, anyway?" asked Nurse Joy.
"Asleep," said Tanya. "Apparently he got a migraine while being psi-probed."
"Yeah, that can happen," admitted Nurse Joy. "Maybe I should stop by and do my T-L-C technique."
"Hey now," protested Tanya.
"Do we know what her sisters are?" asked Officer Jenny. "I saw that they both arrived in pokeballs and were put through a full cycle. Common types?"
by Essex
"No, not common," replied Nurse Joy. "At least not if the readings are correct. Both were on their way to being rare types before one became genetically unstable and devolved into an uncommon."
Officer Jenny looked at her in shock. "Two pure humans almost became rare pokegirls? What are the odds of that?"
"Better than you'd think. The Love Balls were heavily gimmicked by someone with more talent than common sense," Nurse Joy said with a grimace. "They were specifically designed to produce rare pokegirls, but the programming was so flawed that interaction with nonhuman DNA would have killed the subject outright. In a way it was a good thing the victims were pure humans, otherwise they'd be dead."
"Typical criminal mindset; take the long odds for a big payoff and ignore the cost of failure," interjected the Sorceress.
"Nobody ever said petty criminals were smart, " Officer Jenny agreed. "What I don't understand is how they actually got such a thing as close to working as they actually did."
"They seem to have tied a gene scanner and resequencer to a genetic database containing information only on Pokegirls who start out as rare. The main processor was overclocked to perform an on-the-fly pattern match with the first entry likely to result in a successful transformation. The thing was literally cycling through an alphabetical list," recited Nurse Joy as she consulted her files. "Of course fitting all of this into a standard pokeball required them to first remove the safety features to make room for the new parts."
"Like I said, typical criminal mindset. Instead of being reduced to puddles of gore, why not tell us what they actually became; not that I don't already know," the Sorceress smirked.
Nurse Joy frowned at her associate's superior smile, but complied in the face of the looks of interest that Officer Jenny and Tanya were giving her. "The stable one is now a Bardess while the other one almost became a Dracass before devolving into a Dildoran."
"Ouch," Tanya winced. "Poor girl."
"More like a lucky girl," Nurse Joy countered, "she would have died otherwise. As it is, the researchers will be interested in knowing that a pure human exposed to Dracass DNA can spontaneously become a Dildoran. They'll likely be writing papers about this for years."
"Well, whatever else happens is none of our immediate concern," Officer Jenny said. "There are more immediate issues at hand."
"No, not common," replied Nurse Joy. "At least not if the readings are correct. Both were on their way to being rare types before one became genetically unstable and devolved into an uncommon."
Officer Jenny looked at her in shock. "Two pure humans almost became rare pokegirls? What are the odds of that?"
"Better than you'd think. The Love Balls were heavily gimmicked by someone with more talent than common sense," Nurse Joy said with a grimace. "They were specifically designed to produce rare pokegirls, but the programming was so flawed that interaction with nonhuman DNA would have killed the subject outright. In a way it was a good thing the victims were pure humans, otherwise they'd be dead."
"Typical criminal mindset; take the long odds for a big payoff and ignore the cost of failure," interjected the Sorceress.
"Nobody ever said petty criminals were smart, " Officer Jenny agreed. "What I don't understand is how they actually got such a thing as close to working as they actually did."
"They seem to have tied a gene scanner and resequencer to a genetic database containing information only on Pokegirls who start out as rare. The main processor was overclocked to perform an on-the-fly pattern match with the first entry likely to result in a successful transformation. The thing was literally cycling through an alphabetical list," recited Nurse Joy as she consulted her files. "Of course fitting all of this into a standard pokeball required them to first remove the safety features to make room for the new parts."
"Like I said, typical criminal mindset. Instead of being reduced to puddles of gore, why not tell us what they actually became; not that I don't already know," the Sorceress smirked.
Nurse Joy frowned at her associate's superior smile, but complied in the face of the looks of interest that Officer Jenny and Tanya were giving her. "The stable one is now a Bardess while the other one almost became a Dracass before devolving into a Dildoran."
"Ouch," Tanya winced. "Poor girl."
"More like a lucky girl," Nurse Joy countered, "she would have died otherwise. As it is, the researchers will be interested in knowing that a pure human exposed to Dracass DNA can spontaneously become a Dildoran. They'll likely be writing papers about this for years."
"Well, whatever else happens is none of our immediate concern," Officer Jenny said. "There are more immediate issues at hand."