Chapter 15

Chapter 15 - Wet Hot Pokegirl Summer

Having finally ended our extended road trip (yes, I know our "road" trip was spent almost entirely in the air) we set to work preparing for an even harsher journey.  I was not going after Rachel the Video Girl until I was sure we could all survive New Manhattan.  Now that we had the supplies Alice needed to make armor rings for everyone and had serendipitously picked up a NightNurse hybrid who could summon armor for a template Alice could set to work making the most essential element we needed to survive, anti-zombabe gear.

For the rest of the girls we were going to train and cross-train until I was satisfied.  With our last outing fresh in memories there was only minor grumbling about the training schedule I set.  I wished we had more powerful T2's but we hadn't been in the right kind of stores and we sure as hell weren't going looking before we had protective gear.  

After sorting through the books from the magic shop our library had expanded greatly including advanced elemental spells like Lightninga, Firestorm, and Shape Earth, a few rare finds like the Ultima spell and Regen, and some books on general theory and spell crafting that I thought Alice would love.  There were also several books on spacial warping both theoretical and two specific spells, Warp Space and Spatial Construct.  Combined properly these must be how the Vale school came up with their tent spells.  While creating a tent of our own would definitely be a goal I had another idea that I wanted Alice to try.

With five of my seven girls able to sling spells I once again had each pick a spell book to read, learn, and teach to the others.  When any of them finished one book and got the spell down she would choose another book to start reading again.  I figured Alice wouldn't get too far ahead of the others only because she had other spell research and work to do.  She had to make magical environmental suits for each of us, plow through the theory books for my project, and create a few other items we would need for the road, all on top of reading new spell books, teaching them to the others, and learning what they had to teach.

Even using DreamTime sessions to teach each other, the process of reading and practicing so many new spells would take weeks.  In the mean time I wasn't idle.  Amongst the books I had found a few on foundational magic.  I didn't know what form it would take, but I was banking on being enough like the other Authors that I would probably have magic so I started studying.  

Friday started seriously practicing with her new powers and form.  I had eventually decided to name her new breed the Lazarus.  She had unbelievable speed in her lightning form but couldn't interact with anything much beyond burning it as she became naturally intangible.  I think she was actually transforming into some kind of electric ghost form.  Hard to say.  Without the right testing equipment we had no way to really check her typing.  I could have asked Alice to come up with a spell for it, but I felt she already had enough on her plate.  

It was during her tests that Friday realized she had some kind of ability to sense life.  I was in the kitchen preparing lunch when she came running in excited to tell me she could see me through the wall.  After some experimentation we discovered she could sense electrical fields around her, even in living beings, regardless of cover, and her mind seemed to be superimposing the sense as visual information.  

She could also see the wiring in the walls if there was electricity flowing through it.  We started having to change the sheets more frequently because if the bacteria built up enough she would start to see it as a faint glow which creeped her out, and the lord knows we were having enough sex to turn the sheets into a growth medium.  She also insisted we start flipping the mattress to let the bacteria on one side dry out and die each day which led to the discovery of a small floor safe under the master bedroom.  

After a quick session of lock picking in energy blade form we heaved it open and looked inside.  It was the owner's private collection!  I figured we hadn't found it because he took all his valuables with him.  There were a few nice evolution stones, a small stack of credit chits, family photos, and some rare T2's.

I don't know what kind of harem this guy had but he had the oddest T2 collection.  He had some of the most powerful attacks available like Dark Matter, Solar Beam, E=mc^2, and Hyper Beam along with some really weird elemental combo ones like Shadow Blade which required a girl who had Dark, Steel, and Fighting types all in one.  My joy at finally having the prized Hyper Beam was suddenly dampened when I realized I had no dragon types who could learn it.  The only one I'd caught since arriving on this world was the Whorizard and I felt like she seemed kind of angry when she tried to burn us alive and eat us.  My girls got along well together and I didn't want to drop that kind of discipline problem into the mix.

Maybe I would luck into another dragon type if I kept checking storage units.  Once we had anti-zombabe gear we could check some storage ranches and see what we could find.  I made a mental note to find more pokepacks when possible.  Even setting up two of the spares for Jane and Ellie we still had a couple extras after NippleBlast, but I couldn't even guess how many thousands of girls were probably left in an average large town storage unit let alone the ones we might find in New Manhattan.  I just knew that if I had a choice I wouldn't leave them to their fate on this dead world.  Without power the storage units would slowly drain the pokeballs until the power draw dropped below a certain level or time or the elements caused the machine to fail at which point all of them might die in some explosion or implosion (dealing with a lot of energy and weird dimensional physics here) or they might simply be dumped out of the machine.  In the latter case they would either sit on the floor for eons in a ball, having long since gone feral, or release themselves to become food for the zombabes.  None of those options was a pretty way to go.  I knew I couldn't save everyone in the world, but we'd do what we could.

In the mean time Friday, Seren, and Ellie could all use the E=mc^2 technique and Ellie and Jane could both learn Dark Matter.  We'd have to experiment but I was pretty sure Alice still had Dark and Plant typing enough to learn Dark Matter and the Solar Beam too.  This was a good find.  As a reward I fucked Friday's brains out which she loved receiving as much as I did giving.  Naturally her cries and moans drew Seren who was fixing lunch and that turned into a three-way.  To paraphrase Mel Brooks, it's good to be the tamer.

As the days passed and my girls started mastering their basic techniques I started having them spar with each other in the afternoons to build up fighting experience.  The only rules were that they couldn't use attacks that wouldn't give me time to ball someone before she died.  Otherwise they were to be ruthless.  Ranged attacks were to be preferred since most of what we would be dealing with were zombabes.  Since five of the girls could use magic one of the first cross-trainings I had them do was for Alice to teach everyone but Friday and Scarlet how to use Gravitation and Heal.  Friday put them all in DreamTime to speed up the learning process while Scarlet kept watch.  

Once they were out I had them all use gravitation on themselves at a low level.  By increasing their own personal gravity during training we could force their bodies to grow stronger while gaining endurance through prolonged use of their magic and training under those conditions.  They took turns covering Friday and Scarlet so no one was left out.  We started at two gravities and added an extra g for each level of enhanced strength anyone had meaning Scarlet and Jane both started out the highest at four g's.  Then I had them layer Heal on top of that.  Since Heal just accelerates the body's natural healing rather than magically fixing damage it meant their muscles were rebuilding faster and maximized their gains from the training.  Again, I made sure to stagger who was covering Scarlet and Friday on this so four of the five who could do magic were carrying three spells continuously (their own gravitation and heal plus either one of them for Friday or Scarlet) and the last girl got a light day with only two.

Within days everyone started showing massive increases in strength as they had to work hard to achieve their normal speed and agility levels against the gravity.  When the spells were removed they gained a lot of speed as their bodies felt light and agile by comparison.  All told it was very effective training.  So effective that I decided to get in on the act.  As the squishy one who couldn't be popped into a PPHU if I broke my spine I started out at 1.5 g's.  It was strange feeling that much extra weight every time I moved, but exercising with the girls like this had me quickly building muscle definition.  Increased gravity combined with triple or better normal healing was a potent combination.

Once the girls grew comfortable sparring at that level I had them step it up by fifty percent each.  That meant the girls with only basic pokegirl strength enhancement went to three g's while Jane and Scarlet went all the way to six g's.  Not to loaf while the girls strained I went to a full two g's too.  I didn't think I'd be going much further any time soon though.  Working out in two g's was hard and I didn't have pokegirl genetics going for me.  After that we didn't do any more group increases for a while although Scarlet kept getting whoever was doing her spells to increase the pressure.  Within a month she was able to stand up to a full ten g's.  There was some concern about Scarlet and I taming with her new strength but she was always gentle and probably developed better precise control of herself than any of the others.  I have to say I was impressed with my girls to say the least.

Of course everyone had their limits.  Every day we would work under the spells until the girls couldn't maintain them any longer.  Then we'd break for lunch, rest a few hours, and get back into it in the evening for another session.  This gave people time to study their spell books and teach each other.  Once everyone had learned all the spells available and mastered all of their new techniques though we needed to concentrate more on training than learning.  

In the end I asked Alice to create a set of rings with variable personal gravity effects so that everyone could burn magic until their reserves ran out and then put on a ring to continue their physical training.  The gravity could be turned all the way down to zero leaving just the Heal running so we could stop for a while to let our bodies recover and could fully recover without any soreness overnight.  As a group we started wearing the rings all the time when the girls weren't intentionally burning magic to train endurance.  As a bonus Friday, Scarlet, and myself no longer had to trouble the others to keep spells going on us.  

The evenings were spent relaxing, doing household chores, and having tons of sex.  I had finally managed to interest a few of the girls in playing Magic, (Yes, I was still dragging those decks around.  They didn't take up much space and they were my only real reminder of home.  Besides, do you have any idea how much work I had to put in to put together a really effective land destruction deck?) and we'd taken to playing sometimes.  Jane liked my land destruction deck which I'd nicknamed The Nothing, Ellie was partial to my control deck nicknamed Mine for it's ability to steal from opponents, and I liked my artifact deck which I'd nicknamed The Printing Press since it could create lots of copies of things.  Friday sometimes joined us and liked to play my green deck, just nicknamed The Monster Deck due to the large monsters in it and the fact it was over 200 cards.  I think Alice would have liked the game but she was always too busy.  Once she got the armor rings done I intended to get her to slow down and relax, at least a little.

One evening while Jane and Friday were doing the dishes I challenged Ellie to a game.  We would sometimes bet chores on the outcome and I really didn't want to do laundry tomorrow.  When we first started playing I would naturally win easily but with a little experience the girls were all able to learn the strengths of their chosen decks and weaknesses of the others so they became real challenges.  Ellie had yet to win a game against me but she kept trying.  

This game against Ellie was tight but after twenty minutes I was pretty sure I had her cornered.  She had stolen one of my printing presses but I had gotten out three more and was rapidly outproducing her and preparing for a final charge when she whipped out a card I had forgotten was in that deck.  The card allowed her to take control of all my creatures for one turn.  Either poor luck had kept that card out of her hand previously or she had intentionally not played it before so she could catch me unawares at a time when she could win.  

She summarily stomped a new mud hole in me and leaped off her chair parading around the room and crowing about her first win against me.  As she was jumping about she suddenly pulsed with light before being completely engulfed in a bright glow.  It faded after a few moments and she stood there dumbfounded as we stared, eyes wide, at each other.  Friday and Jane came running in from the kitchen, having seen the glow.  

"Did you just..." I began.

Ellie's mouth moved but no words came out.

"What was that flash?" Friday asked in a suspicious tone.

"Um...hold on a sec," I said as I pulled my pokedex from my belt and pointed it at Ellie.  "...Well...uh...congratulations I guess.  You're a Duelist now."

"What?" she finally managed to squeak out.

Once the furor died down I declared there would be no more Magic games except between Ellie and myself since the damage was already done there.  I didn't want to accidentally turn anyone else into a Duelist.  I gave her full access to use all my cards since they would be her primary form of attack from now on.  Fortunately one of the decks I had was red meaning she would have plenty of direct attack spells to go with the more esoteric attacks and summons.  Since we had my best decks to work with and each had it's own theme she actually had a pretty wide array of abilities on top of those she had retained from previous evolutions.  She was still a magic type and had also managed to retain her Dark typing from when she was a Harlequin so she still had those powers and spells even if she lost access to her psychic ones.  Unfortunately this meant lots more training and sparring so she could feel out her new abilities and get used to using them in combat.

With all the other reading, training, and item creation going on it took Scarlet the better part of a month working with Jane to finish the armor rings.  They were works of art, each having a symbol or image on the front personalized to the person it was made for.  Mine had a miniature picture of me and the girls we'd taken with a pokedex engraved in outline.  Everyone complimented Alice on her workmanship.  She tried to play it cool but we could all see she secretly loved the attention.

In the meantime we continued training.  I think most of the local ferals were scared away by the explosions and other noise my girls made while training because few came around during that time except for a small herd of zombabes.  Fortunately we spotted them before they got into the camp and that day's training turned into a live fire exercise.  It gave me a good measuring stick for how far my girls had come and some confidence that we could do this.  We could survive.

Food might have become an issue except Alice and Seren could both speed up plant growth and between them they kept a steady supply of fruits and vegetables coming from the garden and the apple trees.  We were still eating through the former owner's supplies pretty heavily but we hadn't killed them yet so we had a decently varied diet without digging into our supply of travel food.  

Still, I would have given my right arm for some omega fruits.  Unfortunately, it was unlikely this was a world the omega trees lived on and even if they were here I had only a vague idea of where to look for them.  We did still have the Great Grape bush I carted around for a while and had transplanted it to the garden here.  Using a BerrySack that I found at NippleBlast we had been steadily harvesting and storing a small number of berries at a time and now had a large backup healing and food supply.

All told we spent a little more than eight peaceful weeks at that camp.  It was a bucolic time but all things must end.  As summer began to turn into fall we prepared to set out on the next leg of our journey into the unknown east.

Sean Abbott

Friday - Lazarus

Scarlet - Wolf Spider

Harley - Gun Bunny

Serendipity - Psifey

Alice - Archmage+

Jane - NightAngel

Ellie - Duelist