Plenty of Time

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4   (July 1^st, 189 A.S.)

                “Okay Doctor, suture it up. That’s all we can do for now,” called out the senior attending surgeon on duty.

                The active resident nodded his head sadly while his Night Nurse patted him on the back reassuringly. The surgical team left the room while the other Nurses unhooked the patient from the various apparatuses and prepared to wheel him back to his room. After all appropriate paperwork was completed and filed, one of the human doctors slowly approached a anxious, borderline terrified group in a waiting room for those who have family in an hospital emergency situation.

                A single male and his three ‘girls were maintaining a constant worry until they noticed the approaching doctor, and their expressions turned to a mixture of hope and fear. The doctor took a few breaths before breaking the news to the man at the center of the nervous women. He raised a brow at the… interesting choice of pokégirls, but wisely didn’t comment in this atmosphere.

                “Sir, your son is out of surgery,” the doctor began professionally.

                “Well,” the father began, “how is he?” His voice was raised in his desire to extract information from the doctor. Slow moving information was always a bad sign.

The doctor sighed briefly before glancing at the three ‘girls. “Which is the, errr, mother of the child?” The father gave him a seething look before gesturing to a rather tall, not-very-near-human snake animorph with tattered wings. At this gesture, the medical professional was certainly surprised. “But, don’t Nidoggs have longevity? None have become pokéwomen yet.”

The patient’s father gritted his teeth at the delay in finding out his child’s health. “You’re right, she became a pokéwoman before she evolved. Not even longevity can reverse aging. Now, HOW IS MY SON DOING?!”

The doctor frowned at the man’s yelling but decided to remain calm. Upsetting a man in his position would prove a career ending move. “Would you please follow me?” he asked calmly. When the three pokégirls stood with their owner, the doctor promptly interjected, “Mother and Father only please. You’ll need to put up the other two.” The man grumbled an apology to the insulted looking pokégirls to his side before ‘balling them and proceeding to follow the doctor with his Nidogg in tow.

Technically the doctor had lied. Generally, the pokégirls would have been allowed to remain in the waiting room, but he didn’t want to be the scapegoat for whatever trouble a Demoness and a Succubus got into when left alone. How that man retained his political career with such a troupe of ‘girls was beyond him. Then again, it was probably a testament to his political ability that the two Infernals didn’t tear each other apart on a regular basis.

As the doctor reached the patient’s waiting room, he turned and addressed the parents. “Now, there is something you should be aware of before you see your child.” The parents both stiffened at that. “As you probably are aware, there are three main ways of a child developing Blood Traits, from birth, developed from puberty, or in some special instances such as near death experiences.”

“Go on,” the father said somewhat impatiently but interested.

“Well, there are two things you need to be aware of, one: a rare Blood Gift has activated in your son due to the… event that lead to his stay here. Now, we still know comparably little about Blood Traits than other medical sciences at this point in time, but we know enough that once in a while, a child with an unusual amount will surface with possibly as many as four.” Doing his best to ignore the pleased looks on the parents’ faces, he continued with the slightly less good news.

“As you know, your son was born with the Claws Blood Gift,” he said while he absently rubbed some healing gouges in his arm, “but as of now, your son has received a second. Because he is still only two years old, this is usually a sign that he will develop at least one other trait when he reaches puberty, but judging by his ancestry, it’s likely he might have even two. But, I should warn you that it is almost guaranteed that he will develop at least one curse.” The parents both nodded while the doctor braced himself for what he had to say next. “But, you probably won’t have to worry about that yourselves.”

The father raised an eyebrow. “And, why would that be?”

“Because the Blood Gift he developed was Longevity, and by the time he hits puberty, he will be more than 100 years old.”

XXX

(Company Pokétech Research Institute Lab Grounds: August 13, 299 A.S.)

                “Okay, you will be working under Lance Sullivan for the next few days.  He’s retiring before the week is out, but if you get a bad mark from him it will finish your career in this company and even this branch of most Poketéch related labs across the board. Got it?”

                The young intern gulped semi-audibly at the not so subtle ultimatum by the Ladyien in front of her, who was showing her the ropes with the aid of her perfect memory. “Is his opinion that vital?” she asked rather hesitantly.

                The Bug-type suppressed a snort somewhat ineffectively. “He’s been in this line of work since your grandparents were in their nappies. His expertise has lead to a many great things. He had a direct hand in making most Pokétech idiot proof, pokédexes portable, and making pokéballs as inexpensive as they are.”

                The intern was a little confused seeing as Ultra Balls were priced around 2000slc and wondered how expensive they used to be. “Is it going to be hard to stay off his bad side?” She was getting nervous at the aspect of a potential career finisher this early in the making.

                The Bug’s four arms went up in an odd shrug. “I wouldn’t say so. Just don’t do anything intentionally malicious or overly stupid and you should fly under the radar. Just note that once you’re on his shit list, you’re on for good.” The intern was taken aback by the pokégirls use of language causing the Ladyien to sigh in defeat. “He declared that that was the list’s official name and ordered me to refer to it that way.” The staff pokégirl shooed the intern into the office space with the final words of, “Oh, and don’t kiss his ass. That’s a good way to get on his bad side,” and then leaving the intern to get started on her basic duties that were explained to her earlier.

                On her way in, she noticed a young boy –maybe a young man if he was older than he looked- in a white lab coat jotting down a brief equation and doing some other work that she couldn’t quite discern. He looked younger than her, a few maybe. Must be an intern. He was kind of cute, so she made a note to strike up a conversation later. It was still rather early in the morning, and there was plenty of time. After locating the main computer terminal, she set to work.

An hour later, the first batch of hardcopies for her go-fer work routine was ready. After retrieving them, she glanced over to the boy in the room, who was still scribbling away, and approached him. “Excuse me, do you know where the paper cutter is?” she asked despite already being told where it was by the Ladyien.

He looked up somewhat disinterestedly and looked over the stack of papers. “Where do they need to be cut?” The intern looked at him oddly before pointing at the printed dotted line. She squeaked embarrassedly as a long, sharp talon extended from his index finger and neatly cut the papers at the line in one swift motion and then retract back up into his finger, becoming a short point curving out from his fingertip. The boy smirked at her discomfort before returning to scribbling on his sheet of paper. The intern stood there somewhat stunned but managed to shake herself from her reverie.

His scribbling managed to catch her interest and she tried to peer over his shoulder to see what it was he was doing. All it appeared to be to her was a bunch of numbers and gibberish. The clawed boy rolled his eyes and answered her curiosity without looking up, “It’s just a project some of the R+D guys are screaming at me to finish before I leave here in a little while.”

“Oh, is your internship up, then?” she asked conversationally.

The boy looked up somewhat shocked before smothering a wide smile rather quickly. “I guess you could say that,” he replied noncommittally.

“What’s the project?” she continued, feeling somewhat more comfortable in his presence.

“An algorithm for Ultra Ball Production,” he answered nonchalantly.

The intern froze a bit at this. He might not be ‘just’ an intern if he was working on such a big project, but that didn’t hold back her curiosity about one thing. “Err, why aren’t you using a computer?”

                He chuckled. “Computers? Why could I want to slow myself down that much?”

                The intern was confused. “Then how’d you get the algorithm?”

                He tapped the side of his head saying, “I’ve had it bouncing around in here. I’d never let myself get dragged down by those useless contraptions, though it helps that it ticks off and inhibits the efforts of the other R+D jerks trying to leech off my hard efforts.”

                The Intern really didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t seem to have much tact or respect, so he couldn’t be an intern… and how in hell can someone keep a complex algorithm in their head? “Why do they need a new one? Hasn’t the process already been fine tuned?”

                The boy snorted and flexed his claws a bit. “You know how Master Balls aren’t available on the open market, right?” the intern nodded and he continued, “That’s because we don’t know how to make them. So far, any and all Master Balls have been an unintentional byproduct of the Ultra Ball production and have mostly been shipped off for study elsewhere. Only one in every dozen batches, batches of a few hundred ‘balls, becomes a Master Ball. Since we don’t know how they are made, a solution for acquiring more would be to simply make the Ultra Ball creation process cheaper and more effective, allowing them to become more accessible and therefore increasing the demand for them. More demand means more production. More production of Ultra Balls means that Master Balls will become more common, even if the R+D guys decide to test half of them into destruction.”

                “Dr. Sullivan?” called out the Ladyien from earlier.

                “Yes, Jessica?” The Bug pokégirl blushed somewhat as he shortened her name.

                “Dr. Cox from the Research and Development  board of directors wishes to speak with you.”

                “Fine then, I’ve just about finished this thing anyways.” He placed final page of his now finished algorithm on the bottom of a thick stack of papers completely covered in numbers and symbols and hauled them with him out the door. Before completely leaving, he stuck his head back in the door and said, “Oh by the way Intern, in the future you might want to avoid shirking your work to hit on your boss. It’s never really a good move unless you’re looking for that kind of attention.”

                “Dr. Lance… Sullivan?” the intern asked in disbelief. Lance merely nodded his head, causing her to sputter incoherently.

                Lance chuckled. “Jeez, I squash one incompetent and now Jessy scares all the little kiddies with ghost stories of me. How fair is that?” He then trotted off down the hall, away from the two in the office space and leaving the intern in shock.

                Jessica looked innocently at the intern. “Oh, did I forget to mention that he’s had Longevity since he was a toddler and looks a lot younger than he is?”

                “You’re as old as you feel!” Lance called from the distance.

                The Ladyien rolled her eyes. “I thought it was ‘You’re as old as you act.’?”

                “Depends on what I’m arguing.”

XXX

                Dr. Kelso sat in his chair and rapped his fingers on his desk when Lance walked into his office. “Hello Dr. Sullivan,” he greeted.

                “Hello Jr,” Lance replied casually as he plopped the handwritten stack of papers.

                Dr. Kelso cringed at his nickname, while he looked to see what had been dropped on his desk. “Handwritten?” he asked disbelievingly. “You Handwrote it?!”

                “Yup!”  Lance replied all too happy with himself.

                “You can’t do this to me. Why?! Why do it? Do you have any idea how long it’ll take to type and compile?

                “Wouldn’t have that problem if my scanner design went through, now would we?”

                Dr. Cox blinked. “You’re a vindictive bastard, you know that?”

                “Meee?” Lance asked in mock offense.

                The board member sighed. There wasn’t much he could do since his contract ended the moment he turned in the algorithm as per their agreement. “You don’t have to do this you know. We still need your help and expertise.”

                Lance snorted. “No, I need this. My fancy new hormones are screwing up my judgment, something I’ve held precious for a century. Once I get this out of my system, I’ll probably come back.”

                “Yes, but a Tamer’s journey of all things? That always screws up your life.”

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s just for a short while though.”

“I know you, your definition of a short time is far longer than everyone else’s.”

                Lance shrugged. “Hey you should be pitying me. I have to go through puberty for decades rather than a couple years.

                “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

                “When have I not?”