From: Karnivax (karnivax@my-deja.com)
Subject: [PW!] Normality Restored
Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon
Date: 2000/06/20
Espio the Charizard, carrying a pile of clothes, made a skidding
landing at the foot of Bill's lighthouse on the outskirts of Cerulean
City. Kyle and Jessica dismounted from the white dragon and approached
the lighthouse's gigantic front door. Kyle had barely knocked three
times before a jubilant Bill answered. Without even so much as a "Hi,"
Bill immediately invited the two Scyther and Espio into his lab. A
brand-new pair of Telepods greeted them as they entered the circular
laboratory.
A skeptical Kyle walked around one of the rebuilt
Telepods. "So...you're absolutely certain this time that nothing can
possibly go wrong?" he quickly asked of Bill.
"I've never been more certain of anything in my life," Bill
responded. He wandered over to the Telepod control panel and pressed a
few strange-looking buttons. "The Telepods are prepped and ready to
go! So who's going to be first?"
"Ladies first," Kyle offered.
Upon hearing this, Espio whispered to Jessica, "You think he's
being chivalrous or just plain cowardly?"
Jessica whispered back. "Oh, it's cowardice all right...but given
our past experiences here, can you blame him?" She took her clothes
(save for her Pokéball belt, the only item of clothing she was already
wearing) from Espio, then, with some trepidation, she stepped into the
left Telepod and shut the door.
It was then that they heard another knock on the front door. "Who
else did you invite, Bill?" Kyle asked. He turned and opened the
door, then glanced at the visitor.
Into the lighthouse stepped Vincenzo Larufa, clad in jeans, a tan
leather jacket, and a black T-shirt bearing an Autobot symbol. A lit
cigarette hung loosely from his mouth. Espio let out a roar and was
poised to bite Enzo's head off when Kyle subtly lifted one blade to
stop him. Kyle wanted badly to beat Enzo to a pulp, but not in Bill's
lab.
There was a deathly silence. "I don't recall contacting you,"
Bill eventually snarled at Enzo.
Enzo raised one eyebrow. "Since when do I need an invitation?"
Bill went into deep thought for a moment, then said sternly, "I'll
cure you, Enzo, but only if you promise never to come here again."
A cinder fell from Enzo's cigarette. Indignantly, he shot
back, "Who th' hell said anything about bein' cured?" He took a few
seconds to idly blow a smoke ring. "I came here to buy one o' yer
translators. Halberd's is busted. But frankly, if ya don't want me
around, fine. I'll take my tons o' money elsewhere."
Hearing Enzo's familiar accent, Jessica stepped out of the Telepod.
Enzo perked up, as he knew the blue-and-white Scyther
anywhere. "Jessica?"
"Enzo..." Jessica bared her fangs.
"I'll be damned," Enzo exclaimed. "I was sure ya were dead! Did
they clone ya or somethin'? Should I be callin' ya Jessica II?"
Jessica growled, "Well, Enzo, as if it weren't pathetic enough
that your Magmar missed his intended target with that Fire Blast, he
didn't even kill what he *did* hit. You *really* know how to screw up
a murder attempt."
"So Cindersaur botched things up...big deal. All's well that ends
well, Jess," Enzo replied. "You're still alive, an' I don't hafta go
huntin' for another fiancée." He then noticed Jessica take a defensive
stance. "Relax, Jess," he said coolly. "There wouldn't be much sport
in goin' for ya now, what with that Kyle punk not around to fight for
ya. Where th' hell is he, anyway?" Kyle just remained silent and
pretended to be a normal Scyther. As quietly as he could, he pressed
the release button on his seatbelt-like Pokéball belt and kicked the
belt under a table. "What was that?" Enzo wondered, hearing the belt
slide across the floor.
Kyle put on the most innocent facial expression a Scyther could
muster. "Scy?"
Nearby, hiding underneath a lab desk and staring at a laptop was
the mysterious writer that had shown up at Kyle and Enzo's last
meeting. _What the hell's going on here?_ the writer thought to
himself. _I'm not writing any of this! How did Enzo develop an honor
code? Why aren't Kyle and Enzo kicking the crap out of each other?
And why didn't Imakuni? sabotage those damn Telepods?!_ He sighed
loudly, but not at a volume sufficient for anyone else to hear,
conveniently enough. _This author-avatar thing is all falling
apart...but maybe...maybe if I abandon ship now and delete all memory
of Imakuni? and I, I can at least dodge a lecture from Jeff Hauser..._
He hit the Delete key on his laptop, instantly erasing said memories.
Then he quickly hit the Escape key on his laptop and disappeared.
Enzo looked mystified. "Did something jus' happen?"
Bill nervously replied, "No..."
Enzo shook his head. He dropped his cigarette on the floor and
stamped it out, then produced a new cigarette and a lighter from his
jacket. He pointed at Jessica as he lit the next cigarette. "Anyway,
I notice you're standin' in front o' that Telepod like ya wanna get
yerself cured. An' why would ya wanna do a dumb thing like that?"
Jessica scowled. Enzo shrugged, not the least bit intimidated. "Fine,
Jess," he said very quietly, right into Jessica's tympanum. "Go ahead
an' get cured. But if ya do, who's gonna save Kyle's life th' next
time I make an attempt to cut it short?" He grinned as he saw
Jessica's scowl begin to fade. "Ya jus' barely survived Cindersaur's
Fire Blast as a Scyther, Jess. Ya think yer scrawny human body can
take it?" He chuckled. "You'll be th' cutest pile o' ashes ever..."
Jessica was as a being pierced by an arrow of pure truth. She
could not say anything in return. In her mind she juxtaposed what Enzo
had just said with what Riptide the Lapras had said in Indigo Stadium
about her unusual talent. She uneasily came to a decision. _I may
never learn to truly appreciate my Scyther form...it may make me a sub-
human monster...but...I can't get rid of it. Not now._
Hoping that no one else could hear the exchange over the whirring
of the Telepods, Jessica started whispering to Bill. "Can you get me
back to what I was before?" Jessica asked. "A were-Scyther?"
Bill whispered back, "I...I certainly can...but why?"
Jessica responded, "Please, don't ask..." She stepped back into
the Telepod with her clothes and shut the door.
"Yer funeral," Enzo told Jessica. He was still under the
impression that she was going to be fully cured. "So Bill, will ya
sell me one o' yer translators or not?"
Bill plucked a Pokémon language translator off of a table and
handed it to Enzo. "Two hundred," Bill told him.
Enzo easily forked over the money. "What a sale!" he
exclaimed. "All right, I'm outta here. An' if you're plannin' on
shoutin' 'An' don't come back!' all macho-like, don't bother. Cliches
jus' make ya look stupid." He casually exited the lighthouse.
Bill began, "And don't - oh."
Kyle retrieved his belt again. He mentally growled, _Some day,
I'm going to get the drop on that bastard...and I'm going to tear his
slimy head off for all the crap he's put us through._
Bill stood at the Telepod control panel and adjusted a few
settings. Jessica was currently about ninety-six percent Scyther, so
Bill set the Telepods to restore ninety-five percent to the human DNA
it had once been...one percent Scyther was all she needed to be. Then
he hit the start button. The whirring noise became much louder as
Jessica, along with the pile of her clothes, disappeared from the left
Telepod in a flash of blue light.
When Jessica reappeared in the right Telepod moments later, Bill
immediately asked, "How do you feel?"
"I'm still a Scyther!" a frustrated Jessica shouted from inside
the pod.
"Calm down," Bill responded. "You can't expect a DNA restoration
of this magnitude to be instantaneous. Give it a few minutes."
Jessica sat inside the pod and waited. After about ninety
seconds, her insectoid wings shrunk down into her shoulder blades and
vanished. "Hey...it's working!" she exclaimed. When Bill's back was
turned, Kyle snuck up to the right Telepod and tried to peek in through
the small window that allowed light into the pod. However, Bill had
designed the Telepods with privacy in mind, and all Kyle could see of
Jessica was a very distorted silhouette.
Jessica tried to focus her attention on anything else as her whole
body underwent the rather painful conversion back to human. Her
Scyther abdomen deflated into nothing, and her hips, which the abdomen
had kept far apart, came back together. The six talons on her feet
were replaced by ten human toes. Her thighs and feet shrunk a bit
while her legs lengthened considerably and returned to their normal
shape. Her scythes shortened and turned into slim forearms; each
developed a mitten-like hand which in turn eventually developed five
fingers. Her spheroidal Scyther shoulders returned to their human
shape. Her body lost its insectoid segmentation. The spiny
protrusions on the back of her head flattened out and vanished. Her
fangs retracted. All of her hair - head, facial, bodily - grew back
rapidly as her vaguely spear-shaped Scyther head turned back into her
vaguely egg-shaped human head. Her sturdy blue and white scales
transformed back into soft peach-colored human flesh. The return of
her fundamental female-mammal anatomy came last. The pain finally
over, she gave a relieved sigh.
"You all right in there?" Kyle nervously queried.
"Never better," Jessica responded as she hastily put her clothes
on. She stepped out of the Telepod a minute later.
Kyle started to space out as the physical half of his attraction
to Jessica was at long last renewed. "You...look great..." he said in
a slurred voice. He was barely able to prevent himself from drooling.
"Your turn," Jessica reminded him.
"What?" Kyle responded dumbly. "...Oh, yeah." He slowly took
his clothes from Espio, hopped into the left Telepod, and closed the
door. Bill adjusted the Telepod settings to write out all of Kyle's
Scyther DNA, then started up the system. Kyle disappeared and
reappeared just as Jessica did. "That tickled," Kyle remarked. He
impatiently waited for his humanity to come back.
His transformation started after more than two minutes. All
Jessica, Bill, and Espio heard of the transformation were the sounds of
a struggle accompanied by a loud stream of expletives and blatant
defiance of the Third Commandment. Then, after about two more minutes,
the noise ceased, save for one final shout of "Damn it, that *hurt*!"
The once-again-human Kyle put his clothes on and tripped as he exited
the Telepod. Kyle had to get used to walking as a human all over
again. Jessica picked him up and dusted him off.
"Okay!" Bill happily said to himself. He picked up the checklist
of people he needed to cure and crossed off both Kyle and
Jessica. "Hmmm...perhaps I should locate that Gads fellow next..."
"Thanks for everything," Jessica told Bill. Bill responded with a
friendly wave as Jessica, Espio, and a stumbling Kyle headed for the
exit.
As they left the lighthouse, Espio wondered, "Well, do you guys
want to go somewhere to celebrate humanity regained?"
Kyle shrugged. Jessica thought about it, then replied, "I hear
there's some sort of anime convention going on in Saffron today and
tomorrow..."
Kyle almost instantly responded, "I'm up for it!" Then something
dawned on him. "And hey, we can even start celebrating right now!" He
took one of the Pokéballs off of his belt and handed the spheroid to
Jessica. "Jess, I spent about four hours at my lucky slot machine in
Celadon, and I won this just for you. Your belated birthday present."
Jessica opened up the Pokéball, and a sleeping fox Pokémon
materialized on the ground in front of her. "Vulllpix," the creature
yawned.
Jessica went starry-eyed. "Oh, thank you! It's adorable!" She
hugged the now-awake Vulpix close to her body, then, after a subtle
check, concluded, "It's a girl!" Wracking her brain to come up with a
name for the well-groomed vulpine, Jessica eventually
exclaimed, "Nova!"
Kyle looked on proudly. _You have done well, Kyle-san,_ he told
himself.
Gently stroking Nova's head, Jessica told Kyle, "Oh, I didn't
forget your birthday!" She placed Nova on the ground, then plucked her
Pokédex from her belt and called up one of her Pokéballs from cyber-
storage. She handed the Pokéball to Kyle. "I found this Pokémon all
by itself on the bank of a lake near where I was conducting 'obedience
school.' Nurse Joy told me it was a really rare breed! And I know how
much you love rarities..."
Kyle hit the release button on the Pokéball. A rather rotund
yellow feathered Pokémon landed in his arms. The Pokémon looked up
with a vacant stare at its new owner. "Psy...duck?" it wondered.
Kyle sweatdropped. "A...Psyduck?" he said with a forced grin.
He put the Psyduck down and hugged Jessica. "Thank you."
"Wait, you haven't heard the rest," Jessica continued. "You think
I'd just give you any old Psyduck? No way! That's a bona fide one
hundred percent pure Amnesia Psyduck!"
Kyle picked the waterfowl up again. "Really? You...don't say!"
he exclaimed, feigning amazement. He knew nothing about Psyduck, and
even less about Amnesia Psyduck.
"Amnesia's a fearsome defensive weapon...some say Mewtwo himself
uses it," Jessica explained. "I know that Psyduck isn't much right
now, but some day he's going to evolve..."
A stalemate was reached. Kyle wanted to avoid hurting Jessica's
feelings; Jessica wanted to avoid showing her feelings had been hurt.
Kyle's uneasy smiling and sweatdropping continued, so Jessica went off
on a different tangent: "So, what are you going to name him?"
Kyle thought about threatening water-related names. When that
failed, he settled on "Wildwing." He beamed Wildwing back into his
Pokéball, and then Jessica recalled Nova similarly.
Kyle turned toward Espio. "All right, we're off to Saffron..."
Kyle and Jessica got on Espio's back, and the white Charizard took off.
Before Espio was out of sight, Enzo stepped out from behind the
lighthouse. He had not actually left. He tossed down a Pokéball, and
out came Halberd, the bandanna-wearing Farfetch'd. "After 'em!" Enzo
commanded. Halberd started to Fly, and Enzo grabbed hold of the duck's
legs. Amazingly, the small Pokémon was able to carry the human.
As Espio soared over Cerulean City, Jessica told Kyle, "One thing
I don't get...Enzo has a crush on me...so why didn't he want me to be
cured? Does he have a Scyther fetish?"
"No, but that's pretty close..." Kyle sheepishly responded. "I
guess I forgot to tell you the whole story of what happened while you
were clinging to life in Indigo..."
--K * A * R * N * I * V * A * X--
"Some have said there is no subtlety to
destruction. You know what? They're dead."
--Jaya Ballard, task mage
