Saturday, October 15th 302AS
0:23
Mamlambo, Jade Islands League
“Why are you still up?” Vince was about to ask his alpha as he found her still waiting outside the bathroom, but not a single word made it out of his mouth before she tackled him back into the bathroom, the two of them crashing against the fixtures and the floor. Porcelain chips fell on his head from the toilet bowl, which wasn't quite damaged enough to start leaking. “CONSTANCE?! What the hell!?”
The TickTock was on her feet, back to him; facing the door in a defensive stance. The light pouring into the hall seemed to be swallowed up by an invading shadow, and out from the shadow stepped a pokegirl, fangs glinting in a triumphant smirk. Vince reached for a pokeball off his belt as a simple reaction to the threat, but only found the waistband of his boxers. The attacking pokegirl flicked her fingers, and Constance was thrown backwards to smash into Vince again. His alpha wasn't getting back up and her body felt warm and wet. Vince looked her over, identifing the source of the warmth and moisture as blood. The vital fluid drifted up into the air to swirl about the fingers of the approaching invader. Pulling the fully formed Blood Blade back to prepare a thrust that would finish both tamer and pokegirl, the Vampire was interrupted when the door to Vince's old room exploded off the hinges and smashed into the ghost type, Mackenzie's tackle providing the force behind it. Hyperdoll and Vampire disappeared from the narrow view the doorway to the hall provided, but the crashing sound of a shattering wall gave Vince a very good idea of how things were going.
Vince stood up as quickly as he could while still managing to take enough care not to do more damage to his injured pokegirl. Constance was breathing, but struggling to do so. Vince couldn't tell if the wound was in her chest or stomach, he could only see where the blood was staining the entire front of her shirt and pooling on the floor under her. He had to get to a potion, or her pokeball, both of which were in the basement. And he needed to get by the fighting to do that.
Out in the hall, the Vampire had managed to turn the tables with her greater speed and a drain attack. Now she had Mackenzie on the defensive with her Blood Blade, the two battling pokegirls blocking off the hallway. “KENZIE! Use Electric Blade!” Vampires were enough of a threat to warrant a general plan in case one ran into them in the wilds, so Vince had read up on the entry for the moderate menace breed enough to know the strengths and weaknesses. A short spear of lightning shot from the young Hyperdoll's fingers, which Mackenzie tried to use to parry the Blood Blade with. Although the blades didn't stop each other on contact, the electricity did travel up the blood into the arm of the Vampire, blasting her back against the wall.
“What now?!” The 'easy fighting' pokegirl looked to Vince for more guidance.
“What do you mean, 'What now,' I thought they were teaching you to fight!?”
“They JUST STARTED teaching me!”
The Vampire was back on her feet by now. “Hit her with Electric Blade again!”
“I can't! I can only use a blade once!” Mackenzie dodged away from the Vampire's lunge. Vince's mind raced to figure out a plan, a plan for a pokegirl he had only met a week ago and had never even seen fight.
As things would have it, Vince and Mackenzie's battle was over though. Shahrivar entered the fray, driving the Vampire through the corner of the wall and sending her tumbling into the living room. With a deafening roar from all three of her main heads, the Chimarea charged after the attacking pokegirl as Azar, Ashtad, Pritha, and all of Vince's harem that had been sleeping outside of their pokeballs were arriving from the rooms they'd been sleeping in. Reshmi grabbed a hold of him and touched his forehead, which hurt far more than it should be now that attention was drawn to it. “Vince, you're bleeding!”
“No time! Constance's ball and the heal box! Hurry!” Verse was the first to move; the OfficerJenny reacting before Vince urged her to make haste, and he could hear her footfalls going down the stairs by the time he made it back to the bathroom to check on his Tick Tock. “Constance!”
The pokegirl that used to be the human girl Vince dated back in middle school looked up at him, “You're still-”
“Easy, Constance. Verse is getting your ball so I can heal you. Tell me then.” Constance let her head drop a little in a motion that could be interpreted as a nod.
-
Saturday, October 15th 302AS
1:59
Mamlambo, Jade Islands League
Vince was laying in the middle of the hotel bed staring up at the ceiling with the lights out and the sounds of his sleeping harem all around him. Constance was curled up on one side, she had passed out within minutes of being released from her healing cycle and now was sleeping fitfully. Reshmi was on his other side, one arm draped across his chest. Verse and Ava were both sleeping near the door to the room, the OfficerJenny in a chair and the Blazicunt somehow managing to sleep on her feet while leaning against the wall. Ione was sleeping on the other bed in the room with curled up close to her.
Vince couldn't sleep though, and he had a feeling that most of his harem really weren't either. The night had just been too exciting, what with a pokegirl attack that almost ended with him and his alpha dead. The Vampire wasn't feral either, but had been taken by the police so that was all he knew. The police also asked him and Azar a lot of questions before they were finally given a ride to the hotel they were staying at for the night. The house had taken some damage, but they weren't sure how much and the police were still investigating so there was no way they'd be able to sleep there.
Vince looked down at the foot of the bed as he felt someone's weight added to that end of the mattress. Hanako had climbed up onto his bed while he'd been thinking and was slowly crawling her way up in the channel between Vince's and Reshmi's legs to him. Vince slowly sat up without waking either of his pokegirls, he hoped, and asked in a whisper, “What's wrong, Hanako?”
The little pokekit climbed into his lap and leaned against his chest. “I'm scared.”
'Me too,' Vince replied in his head. But his fears were a bit more complex than those created in a four-year-old's bad dreams, so he wrapped his arms around the Flowergirl child and asked, “You had a bad dream?”
“Yeah.”
Vince gave her a reassuring squeeze and then set her between him and Reshmi, the Arachnae's arm going around the 'kit now that Vince was out of reach. “Well, you just go to sleep right there, and me and Reshmi and Constance, and everyone else will make sure you're safe and sound.” Vince settled back down as Hanako did.
“And Hanako will make sure you're safe, Master.” Vince couldn't help but smile at the perceptive nature of the pokekit. Not only could she tell how people were feeling, she always seemed to make them feel better too.
“I know you will.” Vince thought for a few seconds. It felt strange to him, having Hanako call him master. Of course it's what she'd learn to call him, it's what Hana always called him before she had wound up in her current state. “You know, Hanako. I don't think you should call me Master anymore.”
“Why not?” The Flowergirl 'kit sounded worried that she'd done something wrong.
“Well, because I'm not really your master. That's going to be someone you meet when you're older.”
“Will he be as nice as you?”
“Nicer,” Vince assured Hanako, “or I'll beat him up and not let him have you.” Hanako giggled at Vince's response.
“Then... what should Hanako call you?” That was the question that'd been bugging Vince lately, though it'd always been bugging him since he obtained Hana and Hanako. Yet now it was bugging him because he felt like he went with the wrong choice back then. If he was really honest with himself, about how he felt...
“You can call me... Dad.”
“Dad...?” Hanako said sleepily.
“Yeah.” Vince watched her fall asleep, and was about to lay his head back to try sleeping again for himself when a voice drifted over from the other bed.
“Master?”
With as small as an addition as Hanako was to the bed, incorporating her still prevented Vince from moving at all now. So he just responded without looking at his BelleAwesome. “Yeah, Ione?”
“Did you really mean what you told her?” Vince made an inquisitive noise when he wasn't sure what exactly the plant and electric type was asking. “About being her father.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I'm not really, but I just feel like... It was that or be her big brother, but I'm taming her mom. Dad just makes the most sense.” Vince heard the BelleAwesome laughing into her pillow. “What?”
“I'm sorry sir, it's just, I've never understood that. I was raised on a ranch, and my dam tamed me and I tamed my littermates. We were providing a need for someone we cared about. None of the humans forbid us from doing so, so the taboo of incest... being born from parthenogenesis, I just have never understood it.”
Vince craned his neck to try to see if Ione was being serious or joking. But between the bodies and darkness in between them, he couldn't make her out. “I guess it's different if there's a male involved... or more it's just a human thing. Like nudity.”
He heard Ione smothering her laughter again. “I used to understand that one, back when I was a Gloomy.”
“Hey Ione,” He waited for her to respond with a questioning vocalization, “do you like being with girls more than guys?” He got the feeling that his question surprised his pokegirl, but it was something he was starting to suspect now that he'd had her for a while.
“I... suppose. Not because I like one sex over the other, sir. It's just that, I feel free to let loose with other pokegirls. I don't like holding myself back, or being held back, when I'm with a human. But it's something I have to do, as a pokegirl.”
“Would you like it if I entered you into some sex matches every once in a while?”
“I'd love that master. I'm happy here, and if you're being honest with Hanako, I think I want to stay with you for a long time...” Again, Vince couldn't tell if she was joking or not. But it was way too early for more kids, or kits. “Are you having trouble sleeping, sir? I could release some sleep powder over that way.”
“Yeah, that'd work. Thanks Ione.” Vince barely felt the dust settle on him, but fell asleep within a few deep breathes after it did.
-
Saturday, October 15th 302AS
11:41
Mamlambo, Jade Islands League
Vince and Azar had returned home for that afternoon to collect personal items and assess the damage done to the house. The toilet had finished breaking some time between midnight and dawn, so the bathroom and a part of the hallway were now flooded. Two walls needed fixed where Sharhivar first hit the Vampire through them, and a lot of the living room furniture needed replaced, along with most of the flooring. All from a few minutes of pokegirls fighting in the home without the Chimera using any of her breath attacks. In summary, they needed to find a new place to live for the time being until things could be repaired and replaced.
Since Vince was still mostly packed for traveling as a tamer anyway, he was now down in the second level of the basement, going through the boxes of his things that had been packed up and stored when Mackenzie had moved in. Reshmi was helping him, and Hanako was playing with a very old toy from his early childhood. He paused as unfamiliar footfalls could be heard coming down the stairs. Reshmi slowly moved to place herself between the landing of the stairwell and her master.
The man that entered the storage room of the basement had dark brown hair and light brown eyes, along with a few more wrinkles and the questionable addition of some facial hair since Vince had last seen him. James Ewald tipped his hat in greeting, and the pokegirl following him, a blue haired, green eyed very near human in a police uniform, bowed politely.
“Long time no see, Vince. You seem to have been staying out of trouble to the best of your ability. So how did you get a cracked renegade researcher after your head?”
“Vsevolod...” Vince growled.
“Yep. He's the one that sent that Vampire after you. Though she was given her instructions through his Alaka-Wham and doesn't know where the kook is. So we still don't know.”
“Then why are you hear?” Vince's eyes narrowed.
“Thought I might give you a warning, suggest you lay low for a while somewhere safe. Vsevolod really does want you dead, and is willing to throw away a 'girl like a Vampire to do it. I think what saved you is he doesn't know about your foster mom's harem.”
“Huh...” This was a new side of the cop, if he was being honest. “Azar's still trying to figure out where she's going to be living while the house gets fixed and I'm going to stick around at least until that happens.” Vince's eyes trailed to the blue haired pokegirl again. He had to ask. “Is... she a Jenny?”
“Her? Oh, yeah.” Vince's eyes bugged a little. “I decided a while back I was going to try to reform. My resolve only lasted for about a week and yet somehow that was enough time for her to sink her claws in me.” There was a playful chiding to Jim's tone, but the police pokegirl was still glaring at him. “Ah well, it isn't all bad. She does this thing with her-” Jim just then bothered to notice the glare from his OfficerJenny, which had intensified. “Well, look at the time. We should be going, Donut.”
“...Donut?”
The blue haired pokegirl finally broke her silence. “Forgive my interruption, sir, but my name is Danette, sir. 'Donut' is Master James' pet name for me.” Although she was still glaring at him, Danette also had a little color to her cheeks as well.
Vince shook his head as he watched them excuse themselves and leave. Then he picked up his pokedex and stared at the time display. “Oh, wow. Where the heck is everyone? We've been down here a while.”
Reshmi and Hanako followed him up one flight of stairs, where they found Mackenzie sitting cross-legged leaning against a wall. “Hey!” She jumped to her feet and poked a finger in Vince's chest. “Look what happened when I saved your ass last night.” With her other hand she produced the electronic music player she always carried with her, but now the case was pulverized and all the components snapped in two or more pieces.
“That sucks.” Vince was about to say, but then he remembered Azar telling him how attached the Hyperdoll was to the device and noticed that around her eyes was red and puffy. He silently cursed himself for his weakness in seeing pokegirls crying. “Look, I've got an old one of mine in the boxes down a level. Actually, I think it's newer than yours. You can have it since I can play music on my pokedex.”
Mackenzie blinked in surprise, then recovered and asked, “Does it have any good songs on it?”
“Any good songs, what kind of question is that?”
“Well what good is it going to do me if the songs all suck? I can't read and I don't have any money to get new ones on it.”
Vince sighed, and then went and got the music player for her. Then he sat through the long process of connecting it to his pokedex and downloading all the old songs Mackenzie had stored on her player and then about half that many again of new ones for her. The Hyperdoll had even boldly stolen the place on his lap from Reshmi or Hanako, and kept squirming about so she rubbed against him in very distracting ways. 'She's still underage and Reshmi already wants to hurt her,' was the mantra Vince repeated to himself throughout the entire process. The fact that Hanako had taken the jealous Arachnae's lap as a consolation prize could very well have been the only thing stopping an attempt.
Then Reshmi convinced him to dump Hanako on Pritha for a while as she dragged him off to Azar's room, the only room in the house with both a door and a bed. His Arachnae was kissing him fiercely when the closet door shut itself, and Vince broke off to investigate. Reshmi shifted to her tauric form as he pulled the doors back open, only to find Constance hugging her knees in the corner under Azar's hanging clothes.
Vince sat squatted down to lower himself to the level his alpha was. “Constance...? You alright?” When she didn't respond Vince crawled into the closet with her, Reshmi shifting back to her human form and following. Both of them put an arm around the TickTock as Vince tried again. “Constance.”
She jerked suddenly, staring at Vince panicked for a split second then visibly calming down. “Mast-er Vince. You scared me. I didn't see...”
“Constance, what's wrong?”
Vince's alpha shook her head in an obvious effort to clear something from it. “I keep seeing... weird things. Things that don't make any sense because they haven't... happened.” She pulled her knees closer to her chest. “And... I can't use my magic.”
“What do you mean, can't use your magic? Do you need to rest still?”
“No! I mean, it's like I don't have any magic anymore. I can't cast anything. I can't even feel any energy in me. I...” She buried her face in Vince's chest. “I don't know what's going on.”
“Hey. It's alright, I'm sure there's something we can do. Maybe it's something with the PPHU. Come on, let's get you to the pokecenter and a NurseJoy can check you out.”
-
“I'm sorry, but I don't know what to tell you.” The Nurse Joy was flipping through a readout on the screen. “Your TickTock is in near perfect health. Definitely not anything that would interfere with her abilities. My guess is whatever is happening, it's completely magical in nature. Maybe if you contact a researcher in Isis you could arrange to have her looked at there.” The healing pokegirl gave Vince an apologetic smile as she returned Constance, contained in her pokeball, to him.
His dark skinned time mage looked at him hopefully when she was released, but her eyes cast downward when he just sadly shook his head. “The equipment here isn't finding anything wrong.” Vince jerked a thumb towards the counter. “She thinks we should head back to Isis and have a mage look at you. It's worth a shot. I'll give Aiden a call and see if he's willing to send Shannon over again, or we'll just take the ferry all the way.”
-
Once Aiden had heard the whole story, a lot of people started doing a lot of insisting on things. Aiden insisted that Vince, Azar and all of the pokegirls and pokewomen come stay at his place for however long it took to repair the damage from the Vampire attack. Shannon insisted that she be given a chance to look at Constance before Vince took her to any researchers in Isis. And Azar insisted she wasn't acting strange even though she was blushing like a naked Seraph when Aiden had mentioned that she was still a beautiful woman that wasn't even half his age. It gave Vince a clearer idea of what their history may have been, and now he wished he had the receipt so he could return it.
Vince was waiting outside Shannon's laboratory, where the Archmage was examining Constance to try to determine the reason for the TickTock's sudden loss of magical power. When she finally emerged, Vince wasn't too impressed with the Archmage's conclusion. “Constance hasn't lost any capacity for using magic, nor has she lost her powers.”
“Okay then, what's wrong with her? And that doesn't explain the visions she's having.”
“I think she's experiencing some kind of premonitions with the visions. Her breed is supposed to be able to see through time after all. As for her magic, it is all being used up in casting a spell, so she doesn't have any left over.”
“Wait, casting a spell, how can she be using her power to cast a spell when she can't cast spells?”
“Because she's already cast this one. Come in, I think it'll be easier to show you. Don't touch anything.”
Vince did as he was told, not like he'd have any idea what anything he might touch was. Constance was seated on a stool in a part of the lab void of counters or strange instruments. She smiled nervously when she spotted her master. “Alright.” Shannon declared as she waved her hand through the air in front of her. Glittering particles of light formed in the wake of her arm and quickly made the image of a line graph. “This is my theory, and I'm almost certain of it. This is a timeline, ranging from last night before you were attacked to now. Let's say that this is the exact time when you were attacked.” She poked a point in the line and a glowing dot took up residence in the space on the graph. “This is the point where I'm uncertain, but I know Ayn will be able to confirm my theory with a quick trip through Constance's mind. All of Constance's magic is going to this one spot.”
“Wait, so... Her magic is going back in time? How the hell does that make sense? She should have it now because it would just have gone back to her then.” Vince rubbed his temples as he tried to make sense of the words he had just spoken.
“Not if it were going back to a point in an alternate timeline.” Shannon grinned smugly as she went to the door to her lab. She opened it to let Aiden's Alaka-Wham in.
An antennae flicked through the air before Ayn spoke. “So, how many nights are you giving me for this?”
“None.” Shannon said definitively. “Instead, I'll let you keep your rotation in the chore list while you're out of storage.”
“Gee, how generous of my alpha. So if that is your offer, may I assume the alternative is I take up the entire list?” Shannon nodded once with a pleased look on her face. To her credit, Ayn smiled too. “That's why I love you, sister. Now, about this one's memories. Will we be bringing her master as well?”
Shannon shrugged her shoulders. “If there's no harm in it I don't see why we can't let him choose.”
“Yeah, I'll go too. I want to see how this works. Is it like what you're doing with Hana?”
“It's the same techniques. And I've almost done all I can for her. Soon it will be all up to your Flowergirl if she makes it back to you. But that's not the matter at hand. Shall we?”
The Alaka-Wham had all four of them relax and sit in a meditative posture. When she instructed them to open their eyes, Shannon's laboratory was gone. They were in a strangely distorted version of the home in Mamlambo, specifically the hallway just outside the bathroom. The most strange part of it all was that there was a second Constance waiting in the hallway, and the four of them were floating in an empty space behind her. A fuzzy border joined with the edges of what Vince finally realized was the perception of the Constance in the hallway. <This is Constance's memory of the attack. She would have been capable of figuring this out on her own, had her parents not sealed up her awareness of the flow of time after she experienced threshold. It's something the Alaka-Wham she was going to therapy for managed to do.> There was a wordless thought, like the feeling that would make one snort in disgust. <Locking up her extraordinary senses simply because it's causing her immediate troubles. It's like amputating the legs off a child because they fall down while they're learning to walk.>
Vince noticed the Constance belonging in the memory trying to see something in the darkness when he, or the memory of him, came out of the bathroom and drew away her attention. With a playful whisper he started to ask, “Why are you still up here?” He was cut off though when an indistinguishable shadow blurred forward.
“Vince! Look out!” Constance cast a spell to slow time to a halt around them, freezing what she now realized was some unknown pokegirl invading the home. She turned to grab her master and run to the rest of the harem, only to freeze and stifle a gasp with her hand. Vince was frozen in time as well, a look of shock covered his face as a small dark hole was opened up in his forehead and a large red splatter was about to coat the walls behind him.
The real Constance suddenly grabbed Vince's arm, and the memory he was seeing intensified. <No...> The voice echoed around them and came from the construct of dreamtime. <No, no, no No NO!> The memory shook her head with each repetition, tears being thrown from her eyes only to freeze in the air as they left whatever field prevented her from being affected by her own spell. <I WON'T LET THIS HAPPEN!>
The scene of the hallway exploded into a chaotic image of barely distinguishable glimpses of random events. Each glimpse was like a still frame with each subsequent frame sitting just behind it, with infinite strands of film sprawling out in more directions than Vince could perceive. The only two real figures, or the only two that Vince could still identify, were the memeories of Constance and his own corpse. Of course, his body was still frozen in time, but the TickTock threw her hands out to the sides, stretched as wide as they could as she began to draw in energy for her spell. Constance's magic was subtle, at most creating a faint golden nimbus around her hands that flickered out within seconds. Not this time though. Massive iridescent strands of power coursed around her, swirling about in a vortex that split and inverted on itself. As they whirled and whirled in a violent torrent of magic, they began to take the form of an hourglass. Particles of light started to drift around Constance's feet, getting picked up in the winds and eventually carried through the neck of the hour glass and up into the top chamber. As more and more particles found their way upward, the image of Vince, shot through the head, began to change. Like an agonizingly slow motion video played in reverse, all the gore that had flown out the back of his head returned to its proper location in his skull, and then the blood bullet fired by the vampire backed out of his forehead, patching up the hole it made as it left. As more magic coursed around the TickTock, the rewinding of time accelerated. Finally the memory of Vince was out of sight, behind the bathroom door again which was just floating in space without a frame. The magical energy that had gathered about Constance exploded and vanished, the inconceivable imagery with it, and they were in the hallway once more.
Vince watched himself open his mouth to attempt to ask why his alpha was still upstairs, when she tackled him into the bathroom, the blood bullet that had been aimed at his head instead burying itself in the door to his old bedroom. And with that, the memory played out as Vince knew it, with Constance imposing herself between the Vampire and him, and it finally ended just as he managed to recall her. In the void of being suspended in the pokeball, Vince barely started to hear words of comfort being spoken with his voice, when Ayn roused them all from the dream time effect.
Vince stared at his TickTock in wonder and then finally processed what he had seen enough so that he could give his body the command to embrace Constance, and not let her go for a very long time.