Chapter 10

Chapter 10 - A Fishing Expedition

After we got back to our temporary home I released Harley and, after hitting her with a potion, did a quick examination to ensure she didn't have a fractured skull.  The cut was across her forehead but, as far as I could tell without x-rays, concealed no further injury.  It must have been a glancing blow.  I cleaned it up and watched it heal over as the potion went to work.  She regained consciousness after an hour or so but had a headache for a while after, probably due to a minor concussion.

With our current situation I had to reevaluate our goals.  The device Friday was cobbling together from one of the spare pokedexes and several disassembled appliances would, she assured me, work just as well to power a healing machine as it would a storage unit.  She would have to monitor and recharge it with electric attacks, but it would regulate the power draw so the machines would function.  The healing machine actually had a much shorter startup cycle and would be consequently less strain on her.  The storage unit would take two hours just to power up.

With that in mind I started pouring over maps looking for somewhere with a healing machine that wasn't near a major population center.  There were a couple of remote gyms which were candidates although even they had small towns nearby.  It wasn't until I started looking up research stations that I hit pay dirt.  

There was a remote research station with a wilderness trading post set up in the foothills of the Cascades east of here.  According to the website the area saw regular traffic from passing tamers and tradesmen but most non-tamers either took the much longer but safer route around the region or used air travel to pass over it.  As such there shouldn't have been a lot of people in the area when the wave passed over and so fewer zombabes to contend with.  

Between the trading post and the research center it was almost guaranteed that they would have some way of healing pokegirls without dragging them all the way back to civilization, or so I convinced myself.  It looked like a long trek but I liked our odds of surviving the trip better than our odds of surviving without casualties against a major zombabe horde.  When I told the girls what I found Alice said she could handle transport.

Our trek to the NippleBlast research center would have taken us more than twenty days to cover on foot.  Alice had a better idea though.  She found a tree that was dying and made it grow itself into a flat-bottomed low-sided skiff.  She then used some herbs and powders she'd gathered in the woods and from the river and enchanted it with Levitation and Air Blast.  She fitted a large fan housing/blade/rudder setup she made in the forge from the rusting remains of a car to the back and we found ourselves the proud owners of a floating fan boat.

I was impressed.  I'd never ridden in one but they looked like fun, and since it didn't have actual fan blades I figured it would make a lot less noise than a mechanical version to boot.  We all got to practice driving it around the camp and only managed to hit a tree once between us.

At my request Alice did add two things to our boat.  The first was a metal rune that turned the magic off when it was removed from the wood of the boat.  Just in case we ran into living beings I didn't want anyone to be able to steal our ride.  The second was an altitude control like a helicopter.  We planned to stick close to the ground when possible as I did not want to get attacked by flying pokegirls without a seatbelt, but we would very likely run into areas where we would need to fly higher or go a long way around like cliff faces.  A vertical control would save us a lot of time and trouble.

I measured off one hundred meters and timed it at full speed.  As best I could calculate the boat could hit something like thirty or thirty-five miles per hour, almost ten times walking speed.  Not bad under current conditions and probably about as fast as we could safely go in an open topped vehicle given the likelihood of drawing ferals.  I still wouldn't want to hit a thundercunt at that speed but I was less likely to be thrown out of the vehicle at thirty mph than at sixty if I did.

We still had lots of travel food from previous gathering, the pokemart raid, and the camp store as well as camp stoves and cooking gear.  We also had the water skins we made and the camp store had provided water purification tablets for everyones' bags so supplies for the trek were plentiful.

When all was ready we loaded up the fan boat and headed east.  There were plenty of compasses from the camp store so Alice had mounted one near the rudder controls so whoever was driving could glance at it easily.  I mostly relied on the compass, using my pokedex gps sparingly for course corrections to save the battery.  Since it didn't need a mechanical fan the boat operated almost silently, just the whooshing of the wind around us and a slight whistling as it passed through the fan housing. You probably couldn't hear it thirty meters away.

We made good time for the first couple hours as we skimmed just above the treetops.  Several curious pidgey and a merowl we must have awakened came to check us out but were quickly captured with Rune Chains and pokeballed.  Alice snatched the pokeballs out of midair with her vine whips as soon as I hit them and grabbed the two that I threw that completely missed as well so none went to waste.  (At four for six I thought I did fine.  You try throwing baseballs at trees while cruising down the road at thirty mph and see how accurate you are.  Then have the trees start struggling and dodging and try again.)

By midmorning we'd covered a pretty good stretch of ground and were getting comfortable with our ride which, of course, made it the perfect time for a whorizard to show up.  She came in from above and behind.  We would have been totally blindsided if the dumb bitch hadn't roared out a challenge as she closed.  I was driving and instinctively yanked the stick hard to the left at the noise causing us to veer out of the way as she flew by, swiping at us with her talons in passing.  

Harley and Alice opened up on her with elemental rounds and mana bolts but had trouble penetrating her thick hide.  Harley switched over to ground element rounds using black spike dance and had a bit more success but the whorizard was so big she knew she would be lucky to hit anything vital.

As I circled, trying to keep us out of range of her claws and moving laterally to her so we'd be hard targets for her breath, Friday launched multiple Psychic attacks that caused the whorizard to shriek and falter in the air.  "Keep hitting her!" I bellowed.

The bitch fired several blasts of flame at us and managed a solid hit setting the front of the boat on fire.  Harley let out a shriek as she was caught in the blaze but was quickly extinguished along with the rest of the boat by Alice's water spell.  After being put out Harley looked a mess but she sat back up and started firing again.

In the meantime Friday kept pounding on the whorizard with her Psychic attack.  As her brain grew fuzzy the whorizard finally decided we weren't worth the trouble and turned away to break off the chase, but Alice wasn't about to let her go.  As the whorizard turned Alice hit her with Gravitation.  The dragon girl plummeted screaming from the sky as her weight suddenly increased massively and I swung the boat around hard to follow her to the ground.   After she slammed into a stand of trees she was apparently battered unconscious and all three of the girls used telekinesis and rune chains to drag her back up close enough so I could ball her.

We put some distance between us and the battle site in case the noise attracted anything and then I set it down on a hilltop.  Alice had used a few doses from her p-med injector on Harley but I looked her over anyway.  We would have to trim off the damaged fur or put her through a healing cycle, but it seemed the potions were enough to deal with what damage she took from being bathed in fire.  We were lucky she wasn't a fire type or she probably would have picked up the charred template.

After leaving Harley to rest I walked over to where Alice was inspecting the damage to our boat.  "Anything we should be worried about?" I asked.

She shook her head.  "I got it put out before it could burn too deeply in.  The wood is still alive.  Tonight I'll root it when we camp and make it regrow the damaged area.  The enchantments weren't affected at all."

We gave Harley an hour to nap before we took off again.  We might have let her rest until she woke but Friday spotted movement in the distance and when we woke her Harley confirmed they were zombabes with her super eyes.

We flew the rest of the day without running into more aerial trouble.  It would seem the fliers around here were grounded.  We saw severalgroups of zombabes from the air many of which had wings but were no longer capable of flight.  I had the notion that zombabes tended to herd up although I couldn't remember if I read that specifically somewhere or just picked it up in context from other stories.  At any rate I assumed most of what we were seeing were packs of former ferals caught in the fog.  Some noticed us in the air and followed us, but we quickly outdistanced them and left their line of sight.

We had passed from plains into rolling hills as evening approached and I had been looking for somewhere to fort up for the evening but I couldn't seem to find anything I thought looked sturdy and defensible enough.  Of course, between the forest and the way the terrain undulated with narrow valleys and ridgelines, we could have been passing entire villages and never known.

Finally Friday asked, "Are we stopping anytime soon?  It's already getting dark at ground level.  Pretty soon we won't be able to see to land."

"I've been looking for somewhere," I said, "but there's not a lot of people living out here.  That's good for fewer zombabes but not so good for safe sleeping areas."

"Why don't we just turn off the air blast and leave the hover on?" Alice suggested.  "We can sleep in the boat and stay safely above the ground."

I slowly facepalmed.  "I don't know why I didn't think of that.  I can only claim a combination of fatigue, distraction, and worry for Scarlet and Seren.  Great idea, babe," I said

She preened a little under the praise and then we rigged the boat for the night.  Friday suggested we use some rope to tie off to a high thin branch so that we wouldn't drift off but so there also wasn't anything a zombabe could do to reach us.  I didn't think any of us would be able to sleep if a bunch of zombabes were swarming below us and making their creepy noises.  In light of that we forwent our nightly taming activities for the noise and just piled together on top of some blankets in the boat.  We set a watch but no one had to raise the alarm.

We were up with the dawn and had a breakfast of cold and dry goods before moving on.  Friday and Alice both offered to take over piloting but I turned them down, giving one of my two reasons.  First, if we got in a fight there wasn't much I could help with EXCEPT piloting.  Second, I had actually driven vehicles before and trusted my own reflexes and instincts more than theirs on this although I would never tell them that.  

I was following the route on my pokedex with the gps and after a bit of math decided we'd probably be hitting the research station around early evening.  Alice's creation had shaved a couple weeks or more off our travel time.  I wanted more daylight when we went in though as exploring the area might take some time so I planned to stop early.

As the day wore on boredom set in and we started playing word games to pass the time.  I stopped in the late afternoon so we could cook some food for dinner using the camp stove.  We elected not to set down and after we'd done our cooking and all four of us joined the hundred-feet high club (only one person even coming close to falling out of the boat) we left that spot, flying to within 10 miles of our target before setting up for the night.  We'd head on toward the center in the morning when we'd have plenty of daylight to work with.

The following day I found a thicket a good half mile from the gps coordinates to land in.  While Alice caused the boat to grow roots into the ground to absorb nutrients and heal the burn damage from the whorizard I pulled the rune key out.  Then we all shouldered our packs and struck out on foot.  Friday was once again on point with Alice covering the rear and Harley as my bodyguard since she could support the others at range.

As we approached the location Friday suddenly turned and led us off to a spot on a small hill overlooking a meadow.  She stopped within sight of it and when we caught up we could see why.  A dozen relatively new graves with wooden planks for headstones dotted the hillside.  

"There's no inscriptions but, obviously, someone survived to bury these people," Alice said.  

I nodded.  "Let's head on toward the main complex, but be careful."

Friday signaled her agreement by creating a group psychic link so we could communicate without speaking and then led us off again.  'Just think of who you want to hear a thought and they'll receive it,' she thought.  'If you don't concentrate on a single person but just think broadcast we'll all hear it.'

When we saw NippleBlast for the first time I was looking for several buildings but I quickly realized that while the trading post had been listed as separate they must actually share a building with the research center as the whole place was a single large reinforced concrete dome built into a hillside.  We scouted the area immediately around the place and found a large burn pile of blackened bodies.  As someone had buried those others I assumed that this pile represented zombabes.  The ashes were cold when I tested them.

Since there might be someone alive here I decided to abandon the subtle approach, walk right up to the front door, and knock.  There was a comm unit on the wall by the door and I gave the buzzer a good long press.  Nothing happened.  I tried the buzzer several more times and even tried calling "Hello!" into the intercom but got no response.  

'Maybe something happened to them,' I thought to the girls.  Without thinking about it I tried the handle.  The door was unlocked!  Glancing at the girls I backed away as they took up breaching positions around the door.  

Alice phased and stuck her face through the wall.  When she drew it back she thought, 'Noone in sight.'

Friday closed her eyes for a moment.  'There's someone here.  She's about thirty meters that way,' she thought, pointing toward the center of the building.

'Alright,' I thought.  'Harley, I want you to take the lead.  Friday, concentrate on your senses, both psychic and others.  I want to know if the girl moves, but I think I read that zombabes don't show up to psychic scan so you'll likely hear or smell them first.'

We cautiously proceeded into the structure.  The entryway let onto an atrium that apparently served as both the trading post and as a reception area for the research station.  I really wanted to search for a healing machine but reluctantly decided we should clear the premises first.

Friday directed Harley as she led us deeper into the building.  We passed through a hallway lined with doors that mostly seemed to open onto offices and into a section that seemed more oriented toward research.  There were large boards plastered with pictures, charts, and even x-rays of various pokegirls, lab tables covered with all manner of glass and chemical paraphernalia, and some large cages which I guessed were for direct observation or containment of samples.  There were numerous blood splatters throughout the area on the walls and floor, even one large spray on the vaulted ceiling.  Something must have flown or climbed up there and dragged someone up to it to make that one.

Friday directed us to the far side of the section where we found a set of double doors with a small plaque reading INFIRMARY.  'She's in there,' Friday thought.  '...I think she knows we're here and is hiding.'

'Alright,' I thought, 'if she doesn't attack right away I'll try to talk her down.  If she seems at all hostile we hit her with psychic and rune chains.'

The infirmary was a long room with half a dozen beds running along one wall that could be blocked off with curtains.  Several doors let off the other side and Friday pointed to the second one.  We checked the first to ensure there weren't any zombabes and I got excited when I saw the large bulky-looking machine and the silver tray with the round indentations designed to slide into it.  Shoving down my impatience I followed the girls to the second door.

The door was open and Harley eased up to the corner.  She pulled her pokedex out, and stuck it just far enough around the corner to take a picture.  There was a hiss from inside the room but nothing came out.  She looked at the screen and then thought 'Breed?' before showing the picture to me.

It was hard to tell while she was crouching, but I guessed the girl to be somewhere between five and six feet tall when standing.  Her hair was black and pink striped and she looked to have folded feathered wings on her back.  The wings were a shiny metallic black with lighter streaks but as the same colored shiny material covered her entire body it was hard to tell if the color was natural or not.  

'I think she's a Nightnurse,' I thought to the girls.  'Let me try talking to her.'

I eased around the door frame into the room until I could see her crouching behind the desk, peering over the top to stare at me.  "Hi there," I said.  "My name is Sean and I came here looking for medical help.  Did you used to work here at the clinic?"

She tilted her head at me for a moment and then launched herself over the desk, tackling me to the ground.  The girls rushed into the room but drew up short when I thought-shouted 'Stop!'

The nightnurse wasn't attacking me.  She had used her blades to slice my pants open but then her armor folded away and she started sucking on my cock with gusto.  I wondered if she had retained her reduced feral state through evolution from a nursejoy but then stopped caring as she got even more into the act, moaning and slurping as her head plunged down again and again.

She didn't play around and before long I was cumming into her mouth and watching her swallow like she was sucking down the water of life itself.  She wasn't done though and as soon as I stopped cumming she spun around and began rubbing her pussy along my length.  I squirmed out of my pack and shoved it out from under me.  After I retrieved a stamina plus drink and chugged it I told the girls to search the infirmary for zombabes then loot it and guard the entrance.  

They walked out of the office to search while I bonded what was going to be a VERY enthusiastic member of my harem if her first impression was any indication.  Without the armor she turned out to have a slightly pale complexion with patrician features and a slightly long nose.  Her eyes were a solid black with what I thought were white pupils although in better light I later realized they also had dark purple irises.  She had firm D breasts and a taught tummy leading to lush rounded hips.  The wings turned out to be a dark purple that was almost black.

As I thrust up into her I used every art at my disposal and soon had her going off like fireworks on the fourth of July.  In the mean time the others left Harley on the door to the lab area and scoured the place finding assorted medicines, antidotes, and medical gear as well as a small cache of pokeballs and someone's candy stash.  They ate the candy while they waited for me to finish with the nightnurse.  At last I emerged from the office having defeated her in glorious cockbat.  (That would be cock combat for anyone who missed it.)  She now rested in a ball on my belt while I waited for her to get over taming shock.

"So, did I miss anything?"

"Nope," Friday said as she handed me a chocolate bar.  "By the way, you still have no crotch in those pants."

"So do we sweep the building now?" she continued as I embarrassedly pulled a new pair of pants from my pack and changed.

"...no," I said.  "If there are other zombabes here we might be driven out and I can't waste the opportunity presented.  There's a healing unit in that first room.  I'm going to get Scarlet and Seren back on their feet right now.  Friday, come show me how to attach your device."

We walked back into the first side room and powered up the machine.  I ran my girls through a full healing and cleaning cycle.  Then came the moment of truth.  I released Scarlett first.  She appeared looking around somewhat bewildered but I moved in to give her a long kiss before she could say anything.  I had really missed her and had come to rely on her support.  

She kissed me back enthusiastically and when we finally surfaced asked, "What happened?  Where are we?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" I asked.

"Hmmm... we were walking along the river... then I remember pain and then I was inside my pokeball."  Her eyes widened and she looked at me. "How long has it been?"

"About a week," I responded.  "We were attacked by a galem.  She hit you with Rollout and took you down in one blow.  I had to retrieve you quickly or you would have died.  It was a close-fought battle and she took down Seren and Harley too before Friday and Alice managed to take her down enough for capture.  By the way, the entire harem is going to practice combat teleportation when we get back.  Without that I'm not sure Alice could have made the decisive blow.  At any rate I am so glad to see you again." 

As I said that I drew her to me again in a tight embrace.  One nice thing about pokegirls, since they're built extra tough and even the weak ones have some strength enhancement, I didn't have to hold back with hugs.  With humans I always had to be careful not to squeeze too hard.

After a few minutes I let her go and released Seren.  She came out with a smile on her lips and asked, "Did we get her?"

I drew her in for a hug and kiss and told her we had but since I didn't have any restraints I couldn't tame her.   After that I filled them both in on where we were and they went out to greet their harem sisters.  (We used to use the term harem mates until Harley pointed out how harem sisters gave off a nice dirty connotation since they also had sex together.  Then we used sister exclusively.  Sex is all fun and games until someone fucks their sister.  Then it's even more fun.)

With our group reunited we spent most of the rest of the day exploring and looting the research station.  We found no other people, living or dead, but did fund personal traveling gear for several people in the living quarters and one of the pokepacks held a jackpot, a portable healing unit!  We also found a storage unit in a small room off the main lab area and decided to see what was inside.  While we waited for it to power up we continued to explore.

The trading post contained various items tamers might need including more meds, taming gear, camping and travel gear, and a small selection of clothing.  Scarlet was interested in the clothing and picked out a number of items to use as patterns for her own weaving.  I picked up a selection of restraints although the best they had still fell short of the galem's level.  She was one of the strongest pokegirls around after all.  I cleared out most of the taming section and all of the Meds, food, and drinks.

We continued looting anything we thought might be useful and especially any food or drink in sealed containers.  Our packs were nearly full by the time we left the cafeteria.  I found a safe in one of the labs and after Scarlet cut off the hinges we found a stash of evolution stones and other valuables inside.  After a couple hours we went back to check on the storage unit.  As I pulled up the menu Friday started channeling electricity to recharge the battery on her device.  The unit contained a small number of girls but I was in for a surprise when I reviewed their breeds.

"What the...?  What the hell is a MercuryBlade?  Or an AngelJoy?  Does...does that one say it's a SnuggleChamp?"

Harley looked at the list over my shoulder.  "Hmm... a BrassKit...an IronTits... I don't think I've ever heard of any of these breeds."

"More surprising to me, neither have I," I said, "and I've read through the entire pokedex.  These must be new breeds.  Maybe the nightnurse will be able to tell us something.  She should be over her taming shock by now."

I triggered the release on her pokeball and she appeared in a flash of red energy.

She looked around and then turned to me and smiled.  "Thank the gods!  I am so glad to see living people again!"  She stepped forward to embrace me so I hugged her back.

"Well," I said, "welcome to the harem.  I'm Sean Abbott and these are my girls, Scarlet, Friday, Harley, Serendipity, and Alice.  Do you have a name?"

"Jane," she said as she smiled without letting me go.

I decided she was either touch starved or just a very touchy feely kind of person.  Time would tell.  "Well, Jane, can you tell us what these are?" I asked while waving at the screen on the storage unit.

"That's the sample storage unit," she said.  "We keep the samples collected from the mountains in there."

"OK, next question.  What are these breeds?  None of us have ever heard of them before."

Jane looked at the list.  "Oh.  These are new breeds created by a mad scientist who found one of Sukebe's old labs in the area.  He apparently lived here for years in secret and combined several different breeds into splices through an unknown process that left some of them able to retain access to their base breeds evolutionary tracks.  Others have entirely new evolutions noone's ever heard of.  At some point there was a fire which destroyed most of his research notes and the equipment he was using and many of his creations escaped.  The scientist himself died in the fire and we've never found anything to even tell us his name.  For whatever reason his creations all settled in a large hidden valley at the base of the mountain a little north of here and were only discovered a few years ago by a tamer traveling through the area."

"The MercuryBlade is a splice of a Mercury and a BladeBunny.  She's a lethal combatant and seems to prefer ambush tactics using her liquid form.  The AngelJoy is a splice of an Angel and a NurseJoy.  Incidentally, I evolved from one into what they named a NightAngel.  I have many of the traits of a NightNurse but I'm both celestial and infernal at the same time.  The SnuggleChamp is part SnuggleBunny and part Amachamp.  We don't know what he was going for with her, but most of the scientists agree she was likely a failed experiment.  We only found one of them so either her parthenogenic process is slow, her breed was mostly killed off by the others, or she was a true splice and never procreated."

"The BrassKit is a cross of a Brass and a Kitsune.  We think he was trying to create a physically strong psychic and had limited success.  We haven't determined how much because no one's been able to tame her.  She actually produces some kind of psychic field internally even while unconscious that fires the pain receptors.  None of the scientists could keep it up long enough to do the deed.  The IronTits is actually a combination of an Iron Chef and an Ar-tits.  Everyone around here argues about whether she was supposed to be a support specialist or what... at least, they were," she said with a frown.

"Well that answers that," I said.  "Can you tell us what happened here at the station and how you came to be the only person here and feral?"

"Whatever happened did so while I was in my ball.  My master put me up while he was taming one of the station staff, but after a long time when he didn't let me out I finally let myself out."

"Great!" I interrupted.  "I've been really hoping to find someone who could teach my girls to see out of and escape their balls.  Uh, sorry.  Please continue."

"Well, when I got out of my ball I found zombabes all over the place.  I killed all the ones inside the building and found the broken hatch they came in through and sealed it off.  I don't know where they could have come from though.  At any rate I tried calling for help, but apparently there was a fight in the mechanical room and the main transmitter was damaged.  These hills contain heavy metal deposits which draw signal requiring a much more powerful transmitter than normal for a satellite uplink.  Without parts I had no way to fix it or rig something else that would reach the outside world.  After that I buried our people, burned the zombabes, and sealed myself in the dome with enough food laid out to last for months.  I knew I'd never make it to another town before going feral and I figured eventually someone would come for a supply run so I hoped and waited for rescue.  Are you a rescue team or just a passing tamer?" she finally asked.

"We actually came here hoping to find a healing machine," I said.  "You just happened to get lucky."

My face turned grim.  "And now for the bad news.  Those zombabes you fought weren't just a local phenomenon.  As best I can tell there was some kind of magical zombabe poison wave that propagated over most of the planet.  Most of the population everywhere, including the ferals, were either killed or turned into zombabes.  It looks like the entire world has gone dark."

As I spoke she looked more and more horrified.  "Oh my gods!" she exclaimed.

'Finally,' I thought, 'someone else who can share a sense of the scope of this tragedy.'  (The only one of my girls who ever had much attachment to modern society was Harley, and she was just a bunnygirl at the time and had been L5'd since.)

"Noooo!" she cried, dragging her hands down her cheeks in mourning.  "If they're all dead then I'll never know how The Young and The Tamerless ends!"

'Ooorrr not...' I thought.

"There will never be any more episodes!" she wailed.  "I'll never know if Gigi and Danny recognized each other!  They were teasing that up for months but one kept leaving the room right before the other entered."  There were tears in her eyes now.

"There, there..." I said in a sarcastic tone while patting her back but she didn't notice.  I began to wonder if her breed makeup hadn't included some bunnygirl as well.

Once we'd pretty well looted the place of anything we wanted we prepared to leave.  As Harley unlocked the seal on the front door Friday suddenly grabbed her arm, stopping her.  'I smell zombabes,' she thought.