Disclaimer:
This work is fiction. The work has no relationship with any person existing at any time anywhere whether real or imaginary or copywritten. Everything in this work is mea culpa.
This work is the property of Kerrik Wolf (saethwyr@ (SPAM) hotmail.com). Please remove (SPAM) to contact me.
You should not read this work if you are under the age of legal consent wherever you reside. This work may or may not contain any and/or all of the following: death, dismemberment, violent acts, implied sex, explicit sex, violent sex, rape, cannibalism, blasphemy (depending on your religion), BDSM, torture, mimes, and just about anything unwholesome that you could consider.
The pokegirl universe was first documented by Metroanime and to him all of us who reside or visit there owe a debt of thanks.
Feedback is encouraged. I enjoy hearing from people. Positive feedback will be appreciated, cherished and flaunted in front of people. Negative feedback will be appreciated, cherished and listened to, that I might continue to grow. Flames will give me a good laugh. Feedback may be delivered to: saethwyr@(SPAM) hotmail.com. Please remove (SPAM) to contact me.
Bhavacakra
Three
(11/17/-10 0800 Laramie Mountains, Wyoming)
“Well, this certainly is cozy.” Raven sounded slightly disgusted. The cave was a definite step down from what they’d had in Texas, but it beat being out in the snow. In some places the drifts were over five meters high. Past the narrow entrance the cave widened out and disappeared into darkness in spite of the light generated by Raven’s amethyst light globe. The air was dry and smelled of bear. The bear which had made the place smell had met them at the entrance to the cave to protest the invaders presence and had run afoul of Misery and her energy blade.
The mini-top was trying to wrap her ears around herself. “It’s fucking cold, that’s what it is.” She waggled one ear at her tamer. “These happen to be really big radiators and are doing nothing to help me stay warm.”
“I’ll build a fire. Tomorrow we’ll find some warm clothing that looks like it fits in.” Kerrik was pulling heavy furs from his pack. “In the meantime, try these out.”
I can take care of heating the cave. I’ll warm up some rocks. Whisper picked her way around the rocks and stopped at a relatively large one. If I heat this one up it’ll warm a good part of the cave. The sapphire in the center of her forehead began to glow. The light became almost blinding and a beam of light erupted from it to strike the rock.
The rock exploded, sending red hot shrapnel ricocheting from the walls. Misery teleported behind Raven as the archmage erected a magical shield to protect them while Kerrik threw himself flat.
Whisper picked herself up from where the blast had thrown her. Sorry. Apparently there was a great deal more moisture in the rock than I thought.
From where he lay, Kerrik chuckled. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a big roaring fire instead?”
That sounds nice.
“Bitch.” Misery was brushing flecks of stone from her hair. “I’ll kick your ass if you do something that stupid again.”
You and Raven together couldn’t do that.
Raven growled. “I could take both of you by myself.”
Kerrik shot to his feet and began shouting. “THAT IS ENOUGH! EVERYONE OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW! I AM SICK AND TIRED OF THIS BEHAVIOR AND WE’RE GOING TO SETTLE THIS RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!” All three pokegirls stared at him in shock and he snarled loudly. “I did not stutter, ladies. Outside. We’re going to have a battle to settle this once and for all.”
Misery’s eyes lit up. “You two bitches are gonna get it now.”
“I DID NOT SAY STOP AND TALK SHIT TO EACH OTHER! OUTSIDE! OUTSIDE! OUTSIDE!”
Misery’s mouth dropped. “Sorry,” she muttered as she ran for the door.
Outside the snow swirled in the breeze. Misery shivered. “It’s freaking cold.”
Kerrik glanced at her dismissively and his voice was colder than the winter that surrounded them. “I know how to warm you up. The first round will be Raven and Misery. This is a grudge match and I expect all of you to fight just as hard as you can. Here are the ground rules. No artificial aids will be allowed. That means Raven loses her staff.”
“What!” Raven looked appalled.
“If you were to keep your staff, Misery gets to keep her submachine gun and the SAP ammo it’s loaded with. Since it’s my decision, both of you lose the gear. It also means that Whisper can’t carry her knife.” He brushed the snow off of a rock and climbed onto it as the women dropped their equipment into a pile near the mouth of the cave. “Other than that, I’ll recover the loser before she dies and heal her. The winner of the bout will get a point and face Whisper while I heal the loser.” He smiled toothily as he pulled his PPHU from his pack. “The rules are subject to change without notice with the exception that in my current state I will not be entering the fight in any way and that you are not to target me.” He looked at all three pokegirls. “Considering that I keep getting assured that all of you are ready to fight at an instant’s notice I don’t really expect a response to this, but if you are not ready, speak up now.” He waited for a silent ten count. “Very well. Raven, Misery,” he gestured at the expanse of mountain in front of them. “There is your battlefield. Begin.” He checked his watch.
“I’m going to kick your ass, witch.” Misery summoned an energy blade and teleported out onto the battleground. “Come and get it.”
Raven snorted and launched a fireball at the mini-top. Misery bounced forward and caught the bolt of mystical energy in her hand, absorbing it before it could detonate. She hurled her blade at the archmage, who vanished as she teleported. The blade smashed into the rocks and sent chunks of stone flying in all directions.
Raven appeared to the side of Misery and hit her with a force bolt. The mini-top vanished and appeared right above her opponent, creating and bringing down a dark bomb on top of Raven’s head. The blast blew the two apart and spattered a spray of red across the snow. Both activated dark mist and began to heal as they summoned energy blades and moved apart.
Kerrik checked his watch again. “Rule change. Whisper, you’re up. Join the fight.”
Excellent. Whisper teleported onto the battlefield and hurled an energy blade that took Misery’s right leg off at the knee. The mini-top screeched and toppled sideways as Raven, startled by the attack, spun and released a megidolaon at the cabbit. The bolt took her in the chest and exploded in a multicolored burst of magic that stripped the snow for seven meters in all directions and then blew Whisper into a six meter drift of snow.
Raven turned back to Misery but was too slow as the mini-top’s fist glowed. The kaiser wave erupted in a beam of white energy that hit the archmage in the shoulder as she tried to spin away, chewing a chunk from it.
Whisper erupted from the drift in a spray of snow, her forcefield dropping as her sapphire exploded in brilliance. The blue beam of coherent light took Raven in the back. The pulse vaporized the lower portion of her spine and sent her cartwheeling across the sky only to vanish as Kerrik recovered her. He opened the PPHU and loaded the pokeball into it.
Misery had used cure on top of the dark mist to stop her leg’s bleeding. Now she hurled a series of energy blades in what looked like random directions until they turned in midair and intersected where Whisper stood.
The cabbit had detected their approach with precognition and shot straight up to hover as she picked up several large rocks with telekinesis and hurled them at the prone mini-top. Misery teleported to the other edge of the battlefield.
Kerrik pulled the pokeball from the PPHU and activated it to release his maharani. “How do you feel?”
Raven scowled. The back of her clothes had been shredded. “I feel stupid for letting you catch me off guard like that.”
“Good. Enter the battle.”
Raven’s mouth dropped. “You said that the winner would face Whisper.”
“I did. I also said the winner would face Whisper until the loser was healed. What I didn’t say was that the now-healed loser would enter the fight at full strength. Fight.”
Raven laughed and took to the air.
(11/20/-10 1130 Laramie Mountains, Wyoming)
Kerrik pulled the pokeball from the PPHU and released Whisper. “Fight.”
Whisper looked at him with hooded eyes. Yes sir. She took off and floated out onto the battlefield. Three days of nonstop combat had churned the snow into a muddy morass of composed of water and blood in equal portions. A multitude of limbs and other body parts were strewn where they fell, or where later blasts had thrown them. Not even Kerrik had been unscathed. He was covered with bits of dried blood and gore from the top of his ears to his feet and he scratched idly at a piece on his cheek that itched. It might have been his blood since several near misses had sprayed him with bits of shrapnel.
Raven and Misery were throwing energy blades and other energy attacks at each other as they probed for any weaknesses.
As Whisper approached, Kerrik could feel her mind touching Misery’s through his delta bond with the mini-top, but he couldn’t catch what they were communicating about. Suddenly Raven and Misery stopped attacking each other as Whisper landed in front of them. All three stood that way for several seconds before turning. Raven took to the air as Whisper floated up, her telekinesis lifting Misery with her. They touched down in front of Kerrik.
He looked at them impassively for a moment. “You’re not fighting.”
No, we are not. We have learned your point.
Kerrik started laughing so hard he slid off the rock where he’d perched for the last three days. “Point? There’s a point?” He staggered into the muck and promptly slipped, falling flat on his back as he roared with laughter. His hand landed on a severed arm and he grabbed it and waved it aloft like a grotesque flag while it rained blood and mud onto him. The black fur on the arm identified it as one of Misery’s. “I had a fucking purpose for this, but a point? This is one of the most pointless things I’ve ever experienced! What point that I didn’t intend to make did you geniuses discover?”
All three looked at each other before looking at him. We thought you were trying to make us understand that our fighting was a waste of time since no one is ahead on points after three days of fighting.
Kerrik laughed harder until tears ran down to mix with the bloody muck he lay in. “All I wanted to do was try and fight you three until you ran out of fucking hate for each other!” He tossed the hand away and tried to stand, only to again slip and fall in the mess. His laughter continued as he tried to struggle to his feet.
Raven slogged out into the mud and heaved him over her shoulder before marching back out. She dropped him on the ground and squatted in front of him. “Are you ok?”
Kerrik’s laughter died as if a switch had been thrown and the malevolent look he gave her made her straighten up in shock. “The three women in my life hate each other worse than they detest our possible foes. I live with it every day. I fucking wallow in it. Am I ok, she asks?” He flicked an ear and blood spattered to the side. “There are four fucking massive egos in this harem and there is only room for one!”
Four?
Kerrik didn’t look at Whisper. “I am also used to being in command and having my orders obeyed without question. And, until recently, I had the power to back that up. I gave up my powers because I trusted you three to work together. I think that not noticing how much you reviled each other might just qualify me as not ok. Perhaps I might even be slightly insane. It certainly means I’ve been dumber than a post.”
“He’s right.” Misery flicked the stump of an ear she’d lost in the final minutes of the fighting. “He gave up a lot because he trusted us. The man who was willing to let us be a part of his life when nobody else would trusted us and we stomped it into dirt.”
Will you let us try this again?
Laughter threatened to bubble up in Kerrik’s voice again but he kept it steady. “That’s the funny part that might just prove my insanity. Without hesitating, I will. And if you stomp all over it again, I’ll probably still bare my throat for you to slice open.”
Raven knelt in front of him and bowed deeply before reaching out and taking his hand. “Forgive us.”
His ears went flat and he shoved, knocking her flat. “If you are my woman and my friend, don’t ever fucking kowtow to me again! My servants kowtow to me and you should be no servant.”
Raven stood, watching him cautiously. “I’m sorry. I want to stay a part of your life and I’ll try not to cause you any pain.”
Kerrik held up his hand and when she took it, used it to pull himself to his feet. “Sometimes we hurt the ones we love, Raven. Just try not to do it all the time.” He looked into her eyes. “I am sorry too, that I didn’t see what was going on and try to do something about it before,” he waved at the churned up morass, “before this.” He rubbed his face and grimaced when his hand came away dirtier than it had been before. “I just snapped. I wanted to hurt all of you and knew that if I attacked you, you’d just laugh me off.” His eyes grew haunted. “So, instead I abused my authority over you and made you fight each other because I couldn’t.”
What do we do now?
Kerrik replied instantly. “We heal and try to forge stronger bonds out of our group betrayal.”
“I don’t hate Raven any more, but I’m still not going to fuck her if she keeps biting.”
“Then don’t, Misery.” Kerrik took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Raven is my maharani and she guides the harem, but you don’t have to have sex with her.”
He glanced at Raven. “And maybe we’ll get you a ball gag.” She blinked and gave him a hesitant smile in return.
“Let me get the PPHU and I’ll heal all of you up again. After that, I’ll find a nice frozen over stream, smash the ice so I can get to the water and wash out what I can from my hair and clothes. In the meantime, please gather up all the spare body parts and incinerate them. Humans wouldn’t be able to explain what took place here and they don’t like it. Hell, I’m not sure I can explain what happened here.” He glanced at the cave. “After that, we’ll see about getting some money and a hotel room somewhere.” He smiled at Misery. “Someplace warm.”
“What are we going to do about the fact that none of us look like humans?”
“Raven, we are four of the smartest people currently walking this planet. I’m sure we can figure some way to trick the rest of them.”
(11/21/-10 0030 Wasco, California)
“Oh, how the mighty hath fallen.” Kerrik shook his head and took Raven’s hand. “We, some of the most powerful beings to walk the Earth, are now reduced to hiding behind a commercial wheelie bin outside a Stop and Save waiting for the last customer to leave.”
Her fingers paused for a few seconds before tightening around his. “We have always done what we must. In the past, I’d have been here waiting for that customer to leave so he could die to feed me.”
“Then he’s lucky you’ve got me now, but considering that he’s got a bag full of Twinkies and sweet rolls along with a bottle of with cheap wine to wash it all down, I think it would have been better for you to go after the rats in the bin.”
“Do you have any idea how many rats it would take to get me a gallon of blood?”
He shook his head. “Not a clue. I’ve never bled out a rat.”
“Humans and pokegirls are my preferred prey.” She smiled slowly. “If there are no kami around, that is.”
“If you prefer kami, then kami you shall have.” His head came up. “The customer is out the door and headed for his El Camino.” They rose and walked nonchalantly towards the door of the shop as the vehicle pulled out of the parking lot.
There is a security system located in the manager’s office, but unless there is a dark pokegirl hiding there, the clerk is the only person in the building at this point.
Raven stifled a giggle. “And we can expect dark pokegirls to pop up just about anywhere, right?”
I should note that we are dark pokegirls and we are about to, as you termed it, pop up here.
Kerrik opened the door. “Evening.”
The clerk looked up from his magazine to glance at the clock. “It is morning, asshole.” His eyes went wide at the sight of Kerrik’s ears and bloodstained clothing. Then they rolled up in his head as Raven’s eyes flashed. He collapsed across the counter and slid slowly backwards to disappear out of sight.
“Whisper, you and Raven get our primary objective. Misery, grab some food for you and me while I get the video tape.”
Whisper teleported into the aisle next to the magazine rack and let Misery go. The mini-top looked around with glee. “Oooh, Twinkies and burritos!” Her eyes lit up and she gasped. “Mountain Dew! I haven’t had this stuff in ages!”
Kerrik muttered under his breath. “Hyper bunny in aisle two.” Raven burst out laughing. He headed for the manager’s office and tried the door. It was locked, so he kicked it open as a heavy grinding noise came from the front followed by the crash of glass shattering. He quickly located the video recorder and pressed the eject button to pull out the tape, which he stuck in his belt.
Misery’s voice floated down the hall as he headed back for the front. “Kerrik, they’ve got some t-shirts and hats. I’m going to grab a bag full of them for us.”
“Ok.” He opened the register and put all the money in a sack. “Misery, toss me a full can of soda.”
“What kind?”
“It doesn’t matter since I’m not going to drink it.” The mini-top hurled a can of beer across the room and he plucked it out of the air. Kerrik knelt and lifted the clerk’s head before slamming the can against the unconscious man’s temple. Blood oozed from a pressure cut on the clerk’s head as he tossed the can away and headed outside. “Time’s up, Misery. We’re leaving.”
She carried a half a dozen plastic bags full of food and clothing as she followed him out to the parking lot where Whisper was levitating the ATM she and Raven had liberated. “Why did you do hit the guy? Is it because he called you an asshole?”
“No. At this point, the police will be looking for human thieves and a large truck. The clerk didn’t have any marks to explain how he was rendered unconscious and that would be out of place in a purely human attack. They’ll believe his story is nonsense and a product of either hysteria or confusion. Pokegirls don’t steal money.”
Whisper lifted off, the ATM following her into the darkness. Raven flew after her to keep guard as they headed for the park a handful of kilometers away where they would rendezvous. Kerrik accepted half the bags from Misery to free up a hand and took it with his. She grinned and kissed his cheek before teleporting.
When Whisper and Raven landed, Kerrik and Misery were sitting on a park table and eating while bits of videotape fluttered in the night breeze. The ATM settled down next to a pond where some sleepy ducks complained at their presence. Raven used her energy blade to carefully slice the ATM door open while Whisper held the door in place until the archmage was finished cutting. Then the door was dropped in the pond while Raven looted the machine of all its cash. After she was done, Whisper chopped the ATM into slabs and dropped them in the pond alongside the door.
Raven sat down next to her tamer and offered him the plastic bag filled with twenties. “The ATM wasn’t full, but we got 7800 dollars from it. It looks like crime does pay.”
Kerrik looked in the bag. “I got about two hundred dollars from the register.” He glanced down at his stained clothing. “The money situation is pretty well in hand. Now all we need is some clothes that won’t have a hotel clerk think we’re homeless or have him panic and hit the alarm.” He looked at the half eaten unheated burrito sitting in his lap and shuddered. “We also need some real food.”
“If you’re not going to eat that, I will.” Misery plucked it from his lap and smacked her lips before biting into it.
Kerrik shuddered once more. “You will brush before I kiss you again.” He turned back to Raven. “What about you? Do you need to feed?”
She smiled slightly. “I’m hungry, but I want to wait until we have access to a bed.”
How are we going to determine who will be with Kerrik and when? Whisper gave them a bland look. I, too, will wait to eat, but we’ve all gone without being tamed for three days.
Raven nodded. “I know. We’re going to spend the whole first day getting caught up. I’ll go first so I don’t go after anyone and kill them while Kerrik is with one of you. Whoever he isn’t with will stand guard with me.” She looked at their tamer. “If that’s ok with you.”
“That sound like a good idea. I’ve got the same kind of problem Jamie and Graeme have, and a supply of their pills, but I’d rather get laid than have to take them.” He rubbed his knee. “And while I don’t really have Tamer’s Disease, three days is right on the limit for me.”
“Where can we go for a hotel?”
“We need somewhere there isn’t active combat between pokegirl and human forces going on.” Misery opened a package of Twinkies. “Is anyone current on where the battlefields are?”
“I can access the satellite net to find out if we need to, but I was hoping to pick someplace there weren’t ever any skirmishes.” Kerrik frowned thoughtfully and pulled out his pokedex, using it to access the satellite network and through it, the internet. He worked it for a moment. “Ok, I’ve reserved us a cabin for three days in Yellowstone National Park. There were never any battles there and no reports of large scale pokegirl forces. That’ll give us an opportunity to recover from my brief spate with madness before heading back to the Cheyenne area. Whisper can hunt there for food or I can hunt for her if she’d rather.” He looked up and gave them a guileless smile. “I hope you ladies like a hot tub.”
(11/24/-10 0200 Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming)
Misery snickered as Kerrik came out of the bathroom. He glanced at the smiles on the faces of the other two members of his harem. “I didn’t do it right, did I?”
Raven shook her head. “First, you need to understand that we are almost completely immune to illusions. The ones you can make when you have all your power are impossible for us to see through, but we can see through the ones you can make now.”
“Why are you immune to illusionary magic?”
“Because of the dreamara and the dreamanda.” Misery sipped at another Mountain Dew. “They were the most powerful illusion using pokegirls that Sukebe ever created.” She snorted. “They made the kyubi look like a second rate amateur. The dreamanda was the first tier while the dreamara evolved from her. The dreamanda had the ability to take a person into a completely illusory world of her own creation, kind of like a Star Trek holodeck. While in it, time passed normally for them, and if they died there, they died in the real world.” She took another drink. “The dreamara was even more powerful and warped reality around her so much that she could create a world in which she lived and in which she could bring others to torment or to serve her. The laws of this world changed at her whim and in it she was as close to being a god as a pokegirl can get.”
“Sounds pretty dangerous.”
No, they were almost useless for Sukebe. Whisper’s eyes pulsed gold in the light from the fireplace. She was cleaning a cat she’d found wandering near the trash and she peeled the fur from it before continuing. They were more interested in the worlds they could make for others than in the one in which the rest of us live. A dreamara would collect a group of other pokegirls and maybe a human and take them into her world forever. They were judged useless and the hunters were unleashed on them. Later models of hunter were modified to be resistant to illusion and then almost totally immune since some dreamara could will that they not be found by anyone wishing them ill intent.
“Did you wipe them out?”
“Not us, personally, but each of us has taken down a handful of each type.” Raven leaned back and gazed at him through half closed lids. “What were you trying for?”
His illusion looks familiar.
Kerrik sighed. “I was trying for a middle aged man of medium height. A businessman of some kind.”
Misery blinked. “I know. I’ve seen him on television. Um, Terry, no Teddy. Teddy Kennedy!”
That is it. You look like Teddy Kennedy.
“Well that’s not going to work for walking into a supermarket in Columbus Ohio. Let me try something else.” Kerrik returned to the bathroom. “Spellcasting shouldn’t be this hard for me.” The door shut.
A few minutes later he came back out. Raven grinned. “Unless you intended to look like Cher, you’re still doing something wrong.”
Kerrik swore loudly. “Wonderful. Instead of creating an individual who has the characteristics that I want, my attempts seem to be imitating real people. That does it; I’m not going to try any more illusions. Can any of you cast illusion magic?”
“No, Kerrik, illusions are not part of our repertoire. With our ability to become our enemies, we don’t need that kind of magic.”
“As soon as I get my powers back, I’m going to teach all three of you some.” He turned back towards the bathroom. “We’ll have to do this the hard way.”
Raven got up and looked at the others. “I’ll cast the delta bond spell on me and Whisper before he leaves. That way when he gets into trouble, we’ll at least know.”
(11/24/-10 0400 Columbus, Ohio)
We are monitoring your progress and will intervene if you request it or if you lose consciousness. Be careful.
“Thanks, Whisper.” Kerrik pulled his ballcap further down on his head and stepped through the doors of the Meijers hypermarket, relaxing slightly in the blast of heat that hit him as he left the snowy parking lot. He’d entered on the side where the clothing was and made straight for the men’s clothing section.
Unsure of what size he now wore, he grabbed several pairs of jeans and headed for the men’s dressing room, mentally laughing at the sign stating that underwear was required before trying on clothing.
After determining what size he needed, Kerrik carefully folded up the pairs of jeans and opened the door to put the unwanted ones back on the shelf.
“FREEZE!” Three armed guards aimed pistols at his chest.
Kerrik stopped and looked around slowly. The dressing room attendant was behind the guards and she pointed at him. “That’s her!”
One of his eyebrows went up. “Her?”
“Shut up, pokegirl!” The guard who’d spoken was so frightened that his gun quivered in his hand enough that Kerrik began to worry about an accidental discharge. It was bad enough if he got shot on purpose, but this would really be hard to live down.
He kept his voice level. “May I put these pants down?”
One of the other guards nodded. “Just drop them on the floor.”
Kerrik did so. “I want to raise my shirt to prove that I do not have breasts. All pokegirls do.”
“Some of them are small breasted!” It was the scared guard again. “Don’t move!”
Kerrik sighed. “Then you leave me no choice.” He began undoing his pants.
“What the hell are you doing?” The frightened guard jumped backwards and glared. “You’re not going to seduce me!”
“I wouldn’t try. I’m going to show you that I have a dick. Only one pokegirl has a dick and she’s supposed to look like a beautiful woman otherwise so the unusual plumbing is that much more of an unexpected surprise. I do not look like a beautiful woman so I can’t be one of them.”
“I said don’t move.”
Kerrik looked at the other guards. “If he panics and shoots me, I’d better die or I’m going to own this place.”
“Larry, stand down and let him show us.” The older guard glanced over his shoulder. “Enjoying the peep show, Mary?”
The clerk turned bright red. “She’s a pokegirl! Look at that hair!”
Kerrik dropped his pants. “I am not a pokegirl. If I were, you’d already be dead.”
The older guard chuckled and put his pistol away. “You might want to remember that you have to wear underwear to try on pants or shorts.”
“Can I get dressed again?”
Misery wants you to know that she will require proof that you are not a pokegirl when she sees you again.
Kerrik tried really hard not laugh or even smile. “Can I?”
“Sure, mister. So what is the deal with your hair?”
Kerrik pulled up his pants. “I have to keep it this long.”
“Sounds like some kind of religious requirement. Is that it?”
“Something like that.” Kerrik watched them warily. “Look, I’m not interested in pressing charges for you threatening me. I just arrived in the area and I don’t have any clothes. Can I finish shopping?”
“He can’t try on anything else unless he’s got underwear!” The clerk was still staring at his crotch.
“She’s right.”
“Sometimes the sizes are odd, but now that I know what I am, I won’t have to.” Kerrik gathered up the jeans. “I’ll put the rest of these back.”
“You do that, buddy.” The guards dispersed.
Kerrik shook his head and put the rest of the jeans on the shelves where they belonged. He snagged an empty shopping cart and began filling it with clothes, including some heavy jackets for his harem. Not wanting to draw too much attention to himself when he paid for everything with cash, he stopped when he had a couple of hundred dollars worth of clothes and headed for the checkout. Paying for a couple of hundred dollars of stuff with cash was unusual. Paying for a thousand dollars worth of clothing with cash would probably get the police called.
Once outside, he walked off the property and down to a strip mall, ducking behind it. Misery waited for him in the shadows. She chuckled. “Did you get underwear?”
He gave her a disgusted look. “From now on we steal clothes from closed stores. I am not going to get shot by some rent-a-cop who happens to be feeling like cutting a notch on his pistol with my blood, even if he can’t kill me with his popgun.”
The mini-top looked innocently at him. “Didn’t someone suggest that from the beginning? Oh, wait, I did.”
“Lesson learned. Take me back to the house.”
“Just a second.” She shoved her hand in his pants and groped him thoroughly. “Ok, you’re not a pokegirl.”
“If you think you’re funny, you’re wrong. Can we go back to the house now?”
“Don’t forget we have to leave it tomorrow. What will we do then?”
“Tomorrow I’ll find a house in the Cheyenne area to rent. I’d prefer it to be in the country, so you ladies don’t have to stay inside except when you teleport somewhere else. We’ll still have to do that for training, but if you can go outside you can help with whatever needs done around the place.”
“We can always go outside at night,” Misery pointed out.
The scene jumped as Misery took him back to Yellowstone. Staying inside at our new home might be for the best anyway. If we aren’t seen, we can’t be reported. Speaking of oddities to the humans, what are you going to do about your hair?
“I can’t cut it, but I bought a cowboy hat at Meijers. I think I can coil my hair on top of my head and hide it under the hat. My hair is thick enough on the sides that it’ll hide the fact that my ears aren’t where they’re supposed to be.”
“What happens if you cut your hair?” Raven gave him a curious look from where she sat brushing out Whisper’s green locks.
“If it gets damaged in any way, it begins growing out at the rate of fifteen centimeters an hour until it’s roughly three and a half meters long. After that, I have to carefully trim it back over the next two weeks to get it back to its normal ankle length. If I mess that up, it grows out again and I have to start all over.”
“Wow. You could make rope out of that much hair.”
“I’ve done just that more than once when I didn’t have any other materials to work with.”
Misery was going through the bags. “Jackets! Very nice.”
“We’ll get parkas later.”
“What’s this?” She held up a piece of paper. “Who is Mary and why is her phone number in here?”
Kerrik started laughing. “Mary is the clerk who almost got me shot. She showed up while I was checking out and apologized. Apparently she wants more than just forgiven.”
“I’m going to kill that whore.” Misery’s voice was as flat as her eyes.
“Let it go. How can she compare to you or Whisper or Raven? And before I get any suggestions, I’ll tell you the answer. She can’t.”
Name: Wolf, Kerrik
Age: Unlisted
Residence: Kingdom of Haven - Currently Texas League
Status: Active
Rank: NA (5)
HRA rank: Colonel
Security Clearance: Omicron
Licenses
Tamer Y
Master Tamer Y
Researcher N
Watcher N
Breeder Y
Active Harem
Raven Archmage
Whisper Cabbit
Misery Mini-top