From: Karnivax <karnivax@my-deja.com> Subject: [PW!] A Bug's Life Date: Sunday, January 16, 2000 7:23 AM Confession time! This story was really just an excuse to find a practical application for the word "pentaradial"... ^_^ --A BUG'S LIFE-- Part 1 by Karnivax At long last, the vaguely blue, horribly burned Scyther re-opened her eyes. She awoke to the sight of Kyle pacing back and forth inside the E.R. with Cathode the Pikachu perched atop his head. The second Kyle saw Jessica awaken, he dashed over to her. "Jess, how do you feel?" he immediately asked. "As good as an extra-crispy, warped-beyond-recognition bug could feel, I guess," Jessica weakly responded. She looked at one of her curled scythes. "You gonna be okay?" "Oh, sure. Nurse Joy will have me back to good by the end of the tournament," Jessica asserted. "Scyther are quick healers..." "You have to stay in Scyther form?!" Kyle exclaimed. "Just until I'm healed," Jessica responded. She then added, "Kyle, look at me, then imagine me in human mode with injuries equivalent to these." Kyle thought about this briefly before admitting, "I guess I see your point..." He scratched his head nervously. "It's just that...if you're not in human form, how can I even think of asking you...to..." As Jessica sat up in surprise, a stabbing pain shot through her back. She winced, then lay back down. "Asking me to what?" She knew full well what Kyle was planning on asking, but she thought it was simply too good to be true. Kyle sweatdropped. He had said too much too soon, and now he needed to recover. "...to take care of your Pokémon? I mean, I don't think *I* can handle them." Jessica grinned. Kyle was hiding something; she knew it. "Gigawatt and Leviathan will eat standard Poké-chow. Alkaline is perfectly happy eating grass after he melts it down into toxic goo. Tendril just needs water once a day and occasional sunlight. Magus doesn't eat much, but when he does, he likes anything Cajun. Ermac runs on his own synthetic psi energy. And Lapras...well, I would guess that he eats fish." "What are you going to name that Lapras?" Kyle queried, diverting the subject away from his fabricated recovery. Jessica looked up at the ceiling in contemplation. "Hmmm...how about...Riptide?" In her current state she was too weak to be terribly creative. Kyle shrugged. "It works." It was then that the resident Nurse Joy entered the room. "I'm afraid visiting hours are over," she told Kyle. "Your Scyther needs her rest, I'm sure." Kyle lifted the top off of the recuperation chamber, hugged the ailing Jessica, and then grudgingly headed for the exit with Cathode still clinging to his head. "I don't know what I'm going to do in round five without you," Kyle told Jessica as he slowly left. Jessica sat up to wave goodbye...then fell back again as she was overcome by pain. "I'll be there in spirit!" she cheered. "You're going to win this whole tournament, I know it!" Then Kyle headed through the doorway. He had hardly gone five steps from the E.R. when he heard something that made him stop in his tracks. He heard a faint clink of metal hitting the tile floor, then a gasp from Jessica. He ran back into the room. Obviously Jessica was in much distress at that moment, for it was very rare indeed that she cursed: "Oh, *fuck*!" Kyle realized that the metallic clink had come from Jessica's adrenal synthesizer...the device that Jessica had used to voluntarily go into Scyther form earlier. The device had come loose from Jessica's arm and fallen to the floor. Kyle looked at the synthesizer. It was charred and quite warped. Nurse Joy was about to eject Kyle from the room, but she recognized that something was up. It started to occur to Kyle just why Jessica had cursed. "You...you'll eventually change back on your own, won't you?" Kyle whispered to Jessica. Jessica did not respond. After a few seconds of silence, however, Kyle could see tears welling up in Jessica's reptilian eyes. As she lay inside the recuperation chamber, she turned away from Kyle and started crying. "Just...calm down," Kyle pleaded. "We'll visit Bill, and we...we'll get him to make you a new one of these synthesizer things." Nurse Joy looked on in befuddlement. "It...it's not that easy," Jessica sobbed. "That synthesizer...it works by wiping out parts of my human DNA when I want to go to Scyther form...and then restoring it when I want to change back...or when its batteries are almost dead." "What are you saying?" "I'm saying...that when the synthesizer got blown up...almost all of my human DNA went with it!" Jessica choked. "Bill's Telepods are the only things that could conceivably return me to normal...but thanks to Shard, that...isn't...an...option..." Her voice started to break up as her sobbing intensified. Kyle was about to say something when he was interrupted by a message coming over the P.A. system. The message commanded all fifth- round participants to report to the stadium front desk. "I'd better go now...but we *will* find some way to fix this!" Kyle swore as he at last left the E.R. Nurse Joy sweatdropped, as it dawned on her that there was more to the blue Scyther than it seemed. --A BUG'S LIFE-- Part 2 by Karnivax Meanwhile, the malicious cyber-saur Panopticon and his telekinetically gifted Starmie named Regulus were taking a brief break from their fledgling movie career and going on a shopping/killing spree in the Vermilion City K-Mart. They effortlessly sliced their way through all of the innocent shoppers who were foolish enough to stray into their path. The duo rampaged all the way to the sporting goods section, where they tore apart the line of customers that was standing in front of the cashier's desk. The apathetic cashier did not seem the least bit perturbed by the fact that a cyberware-bearing velociraptor and a hovering starfish had just spaghettified four customers before her very eyes. The cashier just barely looked up from a catalog she was browsing through. "May I help you?" she asked dryly. "What could you offer in the way of projectile weaponry?" Panopticon calmly queried. The cashier pointed at the glass case on the wall behind her. The case was filled with hunting rifles, bows, and ammunition. "Hmmm...do you have anything lessss...primitive?" Panopticon asked hopefully, tapping his claws on the cashier's desk in anticipation. "Any plasssma blassstersss? Perhapsss a wrissst-mounted fusssion cannon?" The cashier pressed a button on the cash register. The glass case rotated one hundred eighty degrees, revealing another glass case on its other side. Inside this other glass case was a collection of stolen military weaponry that made Panopticon's saurian eyes sparkle. The cyber-saur felt like a hatchling in a store full of crippled cows. "Alasss, no plasssma blassstersss...but I believe that for my purposssesss, thessse antiquated weaponsss will sssuffice." Panopticon smashed open the case, then liberated a grenade launcher and a six- barrel chaingun. "Do you sssell ammunition, weaponmonger?" The cashier slowly got up and hobbled into a back room. Moments later she rolled out a giant steel barrel loaded with chaingun bullets and impact grenades. Panopticon lifted up the giant barrel, then tied it to his back with several feet of fishing line. "I appreciate your aid, human. When I rule thisss missserable planet, your death will be ssswift and painlessss." The cashier went back to reading her catalog. "Yeah, whatever." With Regulus by his side, Panopticon headed for the store exit. He left a trail of bloody dinosaur footprints in his wake. Eventually the once-again heavily-armed dinosaur was back within the company of director Stevon Schpielbunk. The director sweatdropped upon sight of the velociraptor. "Whoa, what's with the heavy artillery?" he asked nervously. "Thessse...are propsss," Panopticon lied. He noticed that the movie crew seemed to be packing things up. "What hasss transsspired? Why are we mobilizing?" "Well, you see, my Christmas movie didn't quite work out," Stevon explained. "Lieutenant Surge and I had...creative differences. But with you and your pentaradial associate [OOC: Boo-yah!] having joined our team, we're moving up to bigger and better things, oh yes!" The portly director started to gyrate on one foot in excitement. "We're going to pack things up here, then head on back to Hollywood to regroup." Suddenly something dawned on Panopticon. "Hmmm...before we depart...there isss a matter of consssequence that mussst be attended to." Then he dashed off, with Regulus in hot pursuit. Of course, the matter Panopticon spoke of was the retrieval of his unattended Pokémon, Inferno the Charizard and Proteus the Ditto. The Pokémon in question were waiting impatiently in the underground ruins of Vorge's inner sanctum for their master to return. The three eggs that had been stolen from Jessica's womb had long since hatched, and the Scyther hatchlings - two females and a male - appeared quite healthy. All three hatchlings were a strange teal color...perhaps as the result of their mother and father being blue and green, respectively. The hungry baby Scyther were busy chewing on Proteus, since the black Ditto was the closest thing to food. Inferno looked at David Bradley's stolen Rolex watch, which had miraculously survived the incineration of David's corpse. "Grrroaaarrr... <<You know, I don't think Panop's coming back...>>" "Dit to dit to to? <<What're we gonna do?>>" Proteus asked. Inferno contemplated this, then said, "Rrroooarrr. <<We'll eat the hatchlings, sell the Rolex, and take a helicopter to Cinnabar. There we will make ends meet by writing sci-fi novels under the pen-name 'Mr. Pifflegood.'>>" He paused. "Grrwaaarrr? <<You're a good writer, aren't you?>>" And that'll be the last Panopticon story for a looooong time (sorry Beth! ^_^)... --K * A * R * N * I * V * A * X-- "Our wretched society is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road." --Voltaire Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.