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
Four
(11/29/-10 0845 Horse Creek, Wyoming)
Raven pulled the hood of her parka up. Her breath steamed in the still morning air as she looked around the farm Kerrik had purchased. It was what was called a FSBO, which she’d come to understand meant for sale by owner. Apparently that was important because it cut down on the time required to close on the property and it allowed them to move into the empty house while waiting for the final purchase contract. Since Kerrik was offering the full payment up front, he didn’t expect there to be any problems.
The reason they’d ended up buying the place was because there were no farms that could be rented and urban life was completely unsuitable for three nonhuman looking pokegirls and a kami. After all, even though Raven looked fairly human, her teeth were a dead giveaway and, in this age of pokegirl attacks, any female with colored hair was suspect.
They’d tried living in an urban rental home briefly in another town. Kerrik’s misgivings about the attempt had resulted in them moving to a town outside of Wyoming to attempt this, and they’d rented a home on the outskirts of the community. They’d been there two days when a kid on a bicycle had seen a glimpse of Whisper while she’d been out looking for a meal. He’d gone straight to his parents like a good little American was supposed to. They’d alerted the police, who’d pressed every panic button they had and gotten the state National Guard brought in. From what she knew, military units were still looking for them there.
Privately, Raven thought it was a shame that Whisper hadn’t eaten the kid instead of letting him escape to report their presence. In response to her statement to that effect, Kerrik had pointed out that a missing child would have been just as problematic and resulted in the area being searched.
To acquire the funds necessary to purchase the farm, Kerrik had used Virtue to access the human satellite communications network and identified two major drug smugglers in the southern US. Not being bothered by wiretapping laws or search warrants had made the process fairly quick. He and his harem had paid a visit to both of them and, after a brief but spirited conversation with their security team, forced each of them to transfer a significant portion of their available cash into an offshore bank account in the Caiman Islands. Then each of them had suffered a fatal mishap involving a dramatic suicide, compliments of Whisper. The money had been moved into a Swiss bank account and from there a portion of it had been transferred into several bank accounts in the USA. The remainder of the money had been moved into a different Caiman Island bank and then distributed to several charities devoted to improving the lot of humans across the globe.
It does need a lot of work, doesn’t it? Whisper stopped next to her maharani. I doubt we’ll be here long enough to repair the barn.
Amethyst eyes glanced at the cabbit with amusement. “And how much do you know about woodworking?”
Whisper’s mental tone was cool. The home I lived in for several years in Edo did not come with workmen. I had to make any repairs that I thought were needed.
“I hadn’t considered that. I’m sorry.”
Kerrik has made all of us more concerned about giving offense, hasn’t he? It’s hard to constantly monitor what I’m going to say so I don’t insult the people around me.
“I think its called socialization. I’m not very good at it either, but he’s right about us needing to work together.” She eyed the barn. “I think the plan is to put up the fences and then work on repairing the barn before the house.”
Why? We don’t live in the barn.
“Kerrik wants to buy some livestock for you to feed on and so the barn has to be fixed. If you go around eating the neighborhood pets, someone will become concerned and start investigating. He thinks they’ll be looking for a something along the lines of a satanic cult or a budding serial killer instead of pokegirls, but in any case we don’t need the attention.”
Humans are very bizarre creatures. I’d suspect the new arrival, pokegirls, before I’d look for anything else.
“Apparently pokegirls aren’t yet enough of a threat to shake most humans from their vaunted superiority. Only those who have firsthand experience with us would think that way and the vast majority of humans only see us on the news. That makes us a rather far away threat and therefore insignificant.”
They both turned at the sound of a vehicle and watched as an overloaded pickup truck jounced down the badly eroded gravel road and stopped at the house. Kerrik slid out of the driver’s seat while Misery got out on the passenger side.
When they got to him, Raven looked over the load. “Did you get everything?”
“I got everything they had. The rest is on order and I paid a premium for expedited delivery.” Kerrik pulled off his black cowboy hat and pulled the pins out of his hair so it could tumble down his back and free his ears. He waggled them as he looked around. “Considering how much I was spending along with the fact that this is the slow time of the year for him, the owner of the farm and ranch supply store was more than willing to open early. I didn’t release Misery from her pokeball until after I was out of town and there weren’t any problems.”
Misery dropped the tailgate of the truck with a bang and grabbed a roll of wire fencing. During one of their robberies, she’d acquired some coveralls and a straw hat and she pushed the hat back on her head as she threw the wire over her shoulder. “Grab something, ladies. This isn’t going to unload itself.”
Can I grab Kerrik?
Raven laughed as wire and t-posts began floating out of the truck under Whisper’s control. The truck’s suspension groaned as the bed came up. “I’ve never done manual labor before. This is either going to be interesting or damned annoying.”
Kerrik shrugged. “It can be both. In any case, it needs to be done, so we’re going to do it.” He pulled a device from the bed of the truck. It was a tube almost fifty centimeters long, closed on one end and with a handle on each side running the length of the tube. Made of steel, it was surprisingly heavy. “This is a t-post driver. You slide the tube over the end of the post and raise it and let it drop to drive the posts into the ground.” He handed the driver to Raven. “I’ll start marking out where the posts are going to go.”
Raven looked at the driver and turned to face Whisper. “He’s still got a lot to learn about us.”
As do we about him and in many ways, about each other. It’s good that he’s a quick study. Do you want me to start placing the posts?
“Put them where he wants. Misery and I’ll start setting up the wire.”
Kerrik marched to where he wanted the row of posts to start and scuffed aside the snow to draw an x on the frozen ground with his foot.
Please move aside. Kerrik moved back as a post floated over the x and drove itself into the ground. Is that deep enough?
“Almost. Drop it down another five centimeters.” The post slowly sank farther into the ground until Kerrik raised a hand. “That’s good.” He glanced over where the cabbit stood next to the truck. “Can you hear me or are you listening to my mind?”
Your mind. My hearing is better than a human’s but not as good as yours, although I must admit that I am not quite sure how good your hearing is.
He smiled crookedly. “I think I’ll keep that a bit of a mystery for now. Since you can hear me wherever I go, then I’ll walk along and you can drive the posts where I tell you to. This will certainly speed things along.” He chuckled. “I see Raven is helping Misery with the fence. We’ll be finished and waiting on Misery and Raven before they’ve gotten very far.”
Won’t we help them?
“I was wondering if you’d suggest that. Yes, we will.”
There was a feeling of astonishment. You were testing to see if I was willing to be a team player?
“I was and I’ll continue to do so as we weld ourselves into cohesive group.” He looked up to watch Raven and Misery unrolling fencing. “Do you know how to set up corner posts? It’s very different from setting up the rest of the fence.”
I do not. Do you?
“Yes. We’ll get the regular posts set and then do the corners before helping with the fence. We’ll also decide where the gate is going to go because that will require as special a setup of posts as the corners do. We didn’t get one today, but I ordered it and it’ll arrive in a few days.”
Does it really matter that the fence be well made? We are not going to be here very long.
Kerrik pursed his lips as he considered his next words. “I bought this place and that makes it mine. Before we leave, I’ll talk to a law firm about managing it and leave them enough money to pay the taxes for the next twenty years or so. Since the leagues will respect property rights during the takeover, there shouldn’t be any problem with me still owning it in fifteen years when we are available again. To be honest, even if I wasn’t going to keep the property, we are going to be here until February and I have to look at this fence every time I go outside. For that reason alone, it’s going to be as well constructed as any fence I’d put up. I guess what I’m trying to say is that doing a good job is a reward in and of itself.”
I hadn’t thought about it in that way, but I have felt that same desire to do a good job in never allowing a target to escape me. Or should one not feel pride in one’s job if that job is organized murder?
“You should feel pride in everything you undertake. If you don’t, you should find something else to do.”
I will remember that. What will we do in the meantime?
“We’ll string some of the fencing wire over the gate entrance. That’ll work for a temporary gate, especially since everyone except me can teleport or fly.” He flashed a smile at her. “I can jump over the fence, but often goats can learn to jump fences by watching others, so that’s not a good idea.”
What are we getting?
“I’ve made arrangements to purchase some goats and chickens. It’s the dead of winter, so I’m not paying as much as I would have in the fall, but I’m paying more than I would right before spring. Later we’ll build some rabbit hutches or hanging cages. I think the cages would work better. We can hang them in the chicken pen and the chickens will help to turn the rabbit manure and eat any feed the rabbits drop. It helps to keep down mice and rats.” His ears flicked. “Unless you like the taste of rat?”
Not particularly. Rabbit will be fine.
(12/06/-10 0845 Cheyenne, Wyoming)
“Can I help you, young man?”
Kerrik turned to see a gray haired woman wearing a nurse’s outfit. He touched a finger to the brim of his cowboy hat. “Morning, miss.” He read her nametag. “Nurse Green.”
She looked him up and down and folded her arms. “I asked you a question. If you’re here to see someone, visiting hours won’t be for another fifteen minutes.”
Kerrik glanced at the clock. “I’m actually trying to find out if I’m here to see someone.”
Nurse Green frowned. “You don’t know?” Her tone sounded like she was considering him for a psych consult.
“No, I don’t. You see, I heard a rumor that there’s a Texan here who doesn’t have any family coming to visit him. It being the Christmas season and all, I thought I’d drop by and pay him a visit.”
She looked like she still hadn’t made up her mind about that consult. “We get a lot of Texans here. Does this rumored person have a name?”
“Well, I understand he lost an arm and he was evacuated up here after being wounded.”
Her frown vanished. “You mean Jamie Harris?”
“Is that his name? That’s good to know.” Kerrik gave her a reassuring smile. “Texans try to stick together, so I figured if he’s stuck here alone, he might be feeling kind of bad about it.”
Green gave him a rare smile. “I’m sure he will be, but he hasn’t been here for long and he’s been kept sedated. I doubt he knows what’s happened yet.”
“Be that as it may, I’ve always felt that even when drugged to the gills, people know if someone else is there and sometimes that helps. Could I pay him a visit?”
“That’s sweet.” Nurse Green checked the clock once again. It was now 0850. “Going up a couple of minutes early won’t hurt anything. You’ll find Jamie on the fourteenth floor. Ask the duty nurse and she’ll tell you which room he’s in.”
Kerrik touched brim of his hat again. “Thanks.” He headed down to the elevator and pressed the call button. When it arrived, he stepped inside and waved to Nurse Green, who’d moved to where she could see him get in. He pressed six as she waved back and the doors rumbled shut.
He hated elevators. Open drop tubes were fine, but he didn’t like being inside a tiny enclosed box with no idea of what was going on around him as it moved to a different place in the world, even if it was just up or down.
As a point of fact, he hated turbolifts, too.
He blinked and gave a rueful chuckle as he realized that perhaps this was one of the reasons he despised pokeballs so much.
He’d considered taking the stairs, but in a lot of hospitals the stairs were only for evacuations and often you couldn’t open them to specific floors from the stairwell. He could, but it would involve tearing the door open and that would draw attention.
The elevator doors opened onto the sixth floor and Kerrik assumed an air of detached befuddlement before ambling down the corridor. This floor was apparently the Intensive Care Unit and the stench of the slowly dying filled his nostrils. Then nurse’s station was only a little way down the hallway from the elevator, but by the time he’d gotten there he’d seen what he’d come for.
At the end of the corridor there was a door with a tough looking Japanese man in a suit stationed on either side of it. Knowing what to look for, he’d easily spotted the tiny bulge that betrayed a pistol in a shoulder holster on each of them. Kerrik might be going out on a limb with his guess, but it was probable that Naruhito was in that room.
The nurse looked at him curiously and then gave him a professional smile. “Can I help you?”
Kerrik looked at her with a slightly vacant expression. “Um, I’m here to visit Jamie Harris.”
Her eyebrows went up and the smile became slightly forced. “I’m afraid you’re on the wrong floor, sir. Jamie Harris left the ICU yesterday. He’s on the fourteenth floor now.”
“Really? Thanks. I’m sorry for bothering you.”
She looked him up and down and her smile went from professional to friendly. “It’s no problem, sir. Have a nice day.”
She watched him until the elevator doors closed.
The fourteenth floor was the long term care ward and it had its own smell of decay and sickness that eddied around Kerrik as he headed for the nurse’s station. The nurse here had that tightness around the eyes that suggested she was one of the good ones that took each loss far too personally and often burned out way too young. On one of the myriad worlds he’d visited during his life, he’d been a doctor and he’d known one like that. She’d drowned her sorrows in men and had finally self destructed and quit nursing entirely.
Kerrik hoped this one was finding better ways to compensate for the job stresses.
The nurse looked up from the chart she was reviewing and gave him a tired smile. “Good morning.”
He smiled back. “And a good morning to you,” he read her nametag, “Miss Defenbaugh.” He tipped his hat up a little. “I was wondering if you could help me. I’m looking for someone who is supposed to be on this floor. His name is Jamie Harris.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re here to visit Jamie? I was told his family was dead.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know for sure what happened to his family. My name is Kerrik Wolf and I understand he’s a Texan and doesn’t have any visitors, so I thought I’d come by and say hi to him.”
“Are you a Texan, too?”
He flashed a quick smile, careful not to let her see his teeth. “I’ve lived there so long I feel like I am.”
She returned the smile before sobering. “He probably won’t know you’re there. We’re keeping him heavily sedated while treating a bone infection in his arm.”
Kerrik nodded to himself. Bone infections were really hard to treat and the usual treatment for one in an amputation was to do another amputation to remove the infected bone and surrounding tissue if antibiotics failed. Considering the situation, pokegirls may have disrupted supply lines badly enough that the hospital might not have antibiotics to spare. “Have they had to do a secondary amputation?”
She got a funny look. “Are you a doctor?”
He smiled easily. “I think I’m still a bit young. I had a friend with a similar problem and they had to take the rest of his leg to save his life.”
Nurse Defenbaugh relaxed and even laughed briefly. “Even with the war, you’d still have to go to medical school first.” Something beeped and she spun in her chair to check a display. Apparently nothing was wrong as she turned back to him almost immediately. “The doctor is considering it, but we’re waiting to see if his immune system and the antibiotics can fight it off.” She pushed back her chair. “I’ll take you to his room.” She led him down to a room and opened the door. “I’ve got to make my rounds, but I’ll check on you two in a little while.”
Jamie Harris looked tiny in the bed, surrounded as he was with beeping machines and tubes full of liquid. Severe illness often did that to a person. Kerrik read the displays quickly. “Nothing looks too far out of normal.” He leaned over and sniffed Jamie’s bandaged stump.
The antibiotics weren’t working.
Kerrik deliberately leaned against the door to the room. “Whisper, use the delta bond and come here.”
The cabbit appeared in front of him, her antennae extended as she sampled the thoughts in the building. This is not a happy place.
“Combat hospitals never are. They’re actually pretty lucky this time.”
Whisper gave him a surprised look. What do you mean, lucky?
“Pokegirls are powerful enough that most of the time the people they hit die on the spot. You don’t normally see the kinds of wounded that artillery fire or chemical weapons create. War usually brings men with half a brain, men with no brains, men missing major body parts and men with crippling burns over vast parts of their bodies. That sort of thing isn’t common in this war. If you get hit, usually you don’t survive it.”
How does that make Jamie and the others like him lucky?
“I was talking about the ones that just die. Sometimes the living aren’t the lucky ones and in war that’s often true for the wounded.”
You are unusually grim, even for you.
He snorted. “Hospitals bring out the best in me. There are smells at a level that the humans and their disinfectants can’t sense or eradicate. I’m surrounded by the smells of death.” He shook his head and gave an empty laugh. “I’m a kami of death and I don’t like the smell of it.” He took a slow breath. “Enough of that. How is his mental state?”
The drugs tend to give people bloody nightmares of the recent past and he is no exception. It is stressing his body enough that his immune system is being suppressed. A nursejoy could fix the damage in a heartbeat.
“What about you or Raven?”
I do not think my healing powers will help him. Raven’s should. Would you like me to call her here?
“I would, but we can’t. Jamie has to be depressed enough to become a suicide bomber so he can meet Poppet. Saving her life is what makes her care about him enough to love him. I don’t think anything less will do it.”
Shikarou cured him and he stayed depressed.
“And when the time comes, we’ll probably do the same if it becomes necessary to save Jamie’s life. Until then, we’ll let the doctors try. It really all depends on how soon they realize that his infection isn’t in check and how radical a debridement they do.”
Whisper nodded. The nurse will be along in a moment. I should leave.
“Thanks for coming. Keep watching.” He hugged her and she returned it before teleporting away.
He settled down in one of the chairs in the room and leaned back. “I don’t know if you’ll remember this or not, but I know you can hear me. You will not die. I promise you that, Jamie, and I keep my promises. Your life won’t be great for a while, but there’s a surprise coming for you and it’s going to be a wonderful one. Love is usually that way, and there’s a woman out there waiting for you to come and rescue her.” He chuckled. “It’s an honest to god damsel in distress that you’ll save and who’ll give her life to you in return. She’ll love you and you’ll love her and it’ll be as good and as bad as that gets.” He listened for the nurse. She was still at least a room away. “Poppet is an arrogant, overweening bitch with an over-inflated sense of herself, but she’ll be your bitch and it’ll spawn a dynasty that will last for centuries and change the world.” He smiled softly. “And unlike a lot of those world changing dynasties, some of those changes will even benefit people outside the Harris clan. You’ll have villains and heroes in your family, but I can guarantee you that if you meet this woman, your name will be known hundreds of years from now. That’s the best legacy that a mortal can ask for and the only form of immortality you can achieve.” Jamie shifted in the bed and Kerrik grinned to himself when he saw the tiny smile on the unconscious man’s face. “The nurse is coming, so I’m going to have to stop talking about this now, but I will drop by again from time to time and see how you’re doing. I hope you don’t mind.” He smiled with sudden amusement. “If you do, just speak up.”
(12/08/-10 1030 Horse Creek, Wyoming)
The door slammed as Misery raced into the house. “We’ve got a problem, folks. There’s a cop car coming up the drive. We’ve been found out.”
Raven disengaged from Kerrik’s throat and pressed her hand over the bite. “They wouldn’t send only one car if they knew we were here. They’d send the military.”
Whisper pulled a shade aside slightly so she could peek outside. It’s a county deputy sheriff. Her antennae twitched. Some of the local farms have had livestock slaughtered and eaten. Humanoid tracks indicate the possible presence of ferals and he’s here to warn Kerrik about them. She looked back at them. It was not me.
“I didn’t think it was.” Kerrik slid to his feet and pulled on his cowboy hat. “That’s neighborly of him, but his presence here could be problematic.” Outside a horn honked and chickens trilled in fear.
Misery stopped him before he got to the door. “Just a second.” She carefully wiped down the still healing bite and plastered a bandage across it. “There you go.” She flashed a quick smile. “You’re the only tamer I’ve got and I don’t want to lose you anytime soon.”
Raven started to bristle. Then she shook her head. “I wonder if hair dye will work on my hair.”
Can you dye your irises as well?
Kerrik missed her response as he stepped outside. A deputy sheriff was leaning against his car as he watched the goats chewing on some hay. “Good morning, sheriff.”
“Morning.” The sheriff looked him up and down. “We haven’t met.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Deputy Sheriff Patrick Keyes.”
They shook. “Kerrik Wolf. I just bought the place.”
“That’s what I heard. You’ve been busy.”
“I try. What can I do for you, deputy?”
The deputy turned his attention back to the goats. “The Henderson place is your neighbor off to the west.” He pointed. “Your place goes that way about a quarter mile and butts up against theirs.” Kerrik had memorized the property lines and nodded without speaking as the deputy continued. “Henderson runs cattle on his land and, like you, has deer and some other wildlife on his place. Recently he’s seen a lot less deer and now he’s losing cattle to predators.” His mouth worked as if he had something bitter in it. “The tracks are kind of,” he paused, “odd.”
Kerrik plastered a polite expression on his face. “How so?”
“They look like human feet, but they’ve got what look like claws on ‘em. Add that to the fact that the cattle were torn to pieces before being eaten and we think there’s only one thing that can do that.”
“Pokegirls.”
The deputy blinked. “What?”
“You were going to tell me that the monsters did it. They’re called pokegirls.” Kerrik shrugged. “I’ve had some experience with them.”
“You a soldier?”
“I was.”
“Why aren’t you still?”
“Something came up.”
The deputy was quiet for a couple of minutes as they watched the goats. “Can you help?”
Kerrik glanced at him. “Call the army. They’re the ones with the answers.”
Keyes spat in the snow. “The sheriff tried. The army won’t come for dead cows. They won’t come until it gets to dead people and the sheriff doesn’t want it to get to that point.”
“I’m a civilian.”
Steam wreathed Keyes face as he chuckled. “The army says we all are. Will you help?”
“You don’t know me and you’re asking for my help.” Kerrik turned to face him. “How bad is it that you’ll ask someone you’ve just met for help?”
Keyes met his gaze. “Bad. Henderson’s lost a lot of cattle. They’ll come here next.”
“Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep a closer eye on my goats.”
“Didn’t you hear me? You’re next if you don’t help.”
“Good day, deputy.”
“Shit.” Keyes slammed the door of his car as got into it. Gravel spun as he angrily drove off. Kerrik watched him leave before going inside.
From the expressions on the faces of the ladies, Whisper had kept them apprised of the conversation going on outside. Raven cocked her head. “What do we do if they come here?”
“They won’t.”
Why not?
Kerrik took off his hat. “We’ve got a mission to do and their activities are going to make it more difficult to complete. The deputy was right. When people start getting torn apart, the military will decide to make an appearance. That’s going to make our presence here harder to keep quiet. Since it’s the ferals that are going to bring in the military, they have to go.”
“You’re going to help the sheriff?” Misery gave him a puzzled look. “I don’t get it. You told him no.”
“I can’t help them. I don’t have the power to stop the ferals and you ladies are still the enemy.” He picked up an apple. “We can’t help, but there’s no reason we can’t go after them on our own. Eat an early dinner because tonight we’re going hunting.”
(12/08/-10 2230 Horse Creek, Wyoming)
The sky was clear and the temperature had plummeted to well below freezing as the wind picked up. Through the darkness, figures crept stealthily along. From time to time individual forms would pause to examine their surroundings before moving on. Soon their target hove into view and they silently separated to begin their stalk. One of them paused and looked around slowly, its ears flicking as it sampled the night. Reassured there was no threat, it moved to rejoin the others.
A shadow flowed from the darkness and merged with the straggler. When it moved back into the dark, nothing remained behind.
Kerrik sat in a tree and fumed at being out of the impending battle. He stiffened when Whisper’s mind touched his. Misery has one of them. It’s a merrowl.
He gritted his teeth and muttered into the night. “Bloody wonderful.”
Misery looked down at her victim. The merrowl had never known she was there before she’d snapped the cat’s neck. It was typical of her prey that most of them never knew when they died.
Moving quickly, she placed her hands on either side of the merrowl’s head and squeezed. There was a quiet noise and the skull deformed beneath her hands. She drew the special knife that Kerrik had given to each of them and cut away the fur on the back of the head so she could lift out the broken bone fragments, revealing the brain. Another pass with the knife and she lifted out part of the temporal lobe. She glanced up as Raven joined her before popping the piece into her mouth.
An instant later, she knew everything that the merrowl did, from birth to death. Her body shifted, and she became the merrowl she’d just killed. Tail lashing, she stood and darted away as Raven dipped her fingers into the merrowl’s braincase.
Raven reports that there is a group of merrowl and some of their evolutions who are passing through this area. They are the scouting element for a warband of pokegirls a hundred or more kilometers to the south and are not feral. They also have two coyotits with them. Misery is infiltrating and we will proceed to capture what we can and kill the rest. It has been some time since I have hunted with a group. I am enjoying this.
“I’m not.” Kerrik glared into the darkness. “I want to be there.”
You cannot. Our efficiency would be greatly reduced because of our overriding desire to protect you from the other pokegirls. We will hunt together when your powers are restored.
He growled softly in frustration and began cursing in several languages.
Misery the merrowl joined the others as they made their attacks on several cows. A quick count revealed two coyotits, a pumara and two lionesses. Unsure of her role, she watched as the two coyotits attacked the same cow, while the pumara and one of the lionesses took another. The second lioness threw herself on a third cow and wrestled to the ground.
Not to be outdone, Misery picked out a juicy looking heifer and jumped on its back. She ripped at an ear before rolling to the side and sinking her fangs into the heifer’s throat to strangle it to death. As she’d figured, the heifer was going to take a long time to die, so she pressed her hand against the cow’s bloody ear and created an energy blade just long enough to pierce the heifer’s brain, killing it instantly. The heifer fell, but Misery kept her teeth locked in the animal’s throat until it should have died normally. Then she sat up, licking her muzzle clean.
The single lioness was watching her with a tongue lolling grin. “Little sister fancies herself a hunter and brings back prey. Are you ready to become a lioness now?”
The merrowl would have been proud of her kill and therefore, so was Misery. “If I can hunt now, imagine how glorious I would be as a lioness.”
Both lionesses laughed while the pumara merely snorted in amusement. One of the coyotits snickered loudly. “So, great hunter, how will you get your kill back to the pack?”
The single lioness favored her with a glare before nodding at the other lioness. “My sister will help her to carry it. It’s a good thing you were successful. With an attitude like that, dog, I’d not let you feed from my kill.” The other cats murmured their agreement.
Pausing only long enough to devour the organs, the pokegirls made short work of tearing the cows into manageable portions before heading off into the night. They ran for nearly an hour before entering a draw at the foot of another of the interminable mountains that covered large portions of Wyoming. Inside the draw, a second pumara stood a forlorn watch outside a cave opening. The hunting pumara stopped long enough to hand off a large chunk of meat to her sister before heading into the cave.
Inside, a purrsian was huddled up with a firecat while a second firecat was with three merrowl. All looked up with interest as the hunting party entered the cave. Food was quickly distributed and everyone settled to the job of gulping down the meat. Soon eyelids grew heavy and the sounds of snoring filled the cave.
Only Misery remained alert as she waited for her harem sisters.
Outside, the pumara finished her meal. Nobody had bothered them here and she, too, became sleepy. She slumped frequently as she struggled to remain awake. Whisper appeared in front of the pumara and grabbed her before teleporting two kilometers away where Raven waited. Bright streamers of light poured from the struggling pumara and into her two attackers. The cat pokegirl’s struggles grew slower and slower as they fed from her life energy until Raven reached out and smacked the pumara soundly in the head with a pokeball.
The archmage tucked the ball into her pocket before the capture tone sounded and shot into the air, closely followed by Whisper. They landed outside the cave and eased in.
Absorb didn’t hurt the victim and so Raven and the others went to work weakening all of their slumbering targets as quickly as they could.
Kerrik, do you have any pokeballs that do not have a capture sound? They would be very useful in situations like this where stealth is required. Without them, we cannot capture individuals as they are weakened, but have to wait until we’re ready to catch them all.
“I don’t, but they should be easy to engineer from existing designs. I’ll put someone on it right away.” He got a thoughtful look. “On your way back, someone get the merrowl’s body. I’ve got an idea.”
This should be interesting.
Only one of the firecats woke up during the capture, but she was so weak that when she staggered to her feet, Whisper knocked her out with a single blow to the back of the head.
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