From: Rob (robfrompw@yahoo.com) Subject: [PW!] Unrequited Lust Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon Date: 2001-08-29 18:18:54 PST Nurse Marcia sits at the front desk of the Violet City Pokemon Center, flipping slowly through a magazine before her. It's been a hectic day, but just about every Pokemon has been healed by now and those who haven't just need to rest, so Marcia is taking a break. Although she's gazing at the images in the magazine, her thoughts are elsewhere - in fact, she's not even sure of the name of the magazine she's flipping through. She's thinking about a Pokemon - an Ditto who had quite a crush on her - an evil Ditto who she thought she had killed years ago. It was disconcerting that the Ditto's brother Mimic had not known if he was alive or dead, but that didn't bother her half as much as a prediction that a psychic made days ago, telling her that her worst enemy would come back into her life. Omelette, Marcia's Blissey, has been with her surrogate mother for so long that she can tell when Marcia's sad or scared, despite the fact that Marcia's usual facial expression is one of indifference, and now she senses both of these emotions coming from the nurse. She puts her short arm on Marcia's back. Marcia jumps in her chair a little, and she quickly turns her head to see the face of her beloved Pokemon. For most people, recognizing a familiar, friendly face would be enough to set them at ease, but in Marcia's case, her enemy is a shapeshifter - so she has to be extra careful. She sniffs the air around Omelette, and not sensing the telltale scent of Ditto, she relaxes and pats her Blissey on the head as the Pokemon rubs her back. Marcia, who has been silent since the last Pokemon Trainer left the Center over thirty minutes ago, says, "Oh, Omelette, you're so fortunate that you've never met Doppler. You don't know what he's capable of." Omelette ponders the name... she's heard it before, a long time ago, but can't recall the context. Suddenly, her eyes well up with tears, "Bliss... Bliss sey bliss." "You do?" Marcia asks, surprised. While excellent at observing her present reality using her perceptive five senses, she has a tendency to forget certain past events. Before, her forgetfulness and ability to repress the horrible things she experienced when she was younger were what kept her from wanting to commit suicide. Right now, however, her poor memory is bothering her. She concentrates on the short time span after Omelette was born but before Doppler was killed, until she pinpoints what she believes Omelette is referring to. She makes a face of disgust and asks, "You remember what we saw the Pokemon Center ruins?" Tears now streaming down her pink cheeks, Omelette nods, "Bliss." Marcia and Omelette simultaneously have the same flashback. * Flashback * Not too far away from the forest where Doppler and Nisemon are remembering the not-so-good old times, someone discovers the ruins of a Pokemon Center, embers still glowing in the light drizzle that was a furious rainstorm not too long ago. Minax places her hand on one of the only pieces of wall left standing, "I seriously doubt that this building caught fire during a rainstorm without any outside assistance. Yet, I still have my doubts and only one bullet in my revolver." A sudden gust of wind tosses the woman's wet red hair about her face and simultaneously tosses a woman's decapitated head off its perch high above... "Chan... sey..." Omelette the young Chansey gasps with tears in her eyes, horrified by the sight of the head. Though the features on the female face are thoroughly burned, mangled, and disfigured, Omelette still recognizes it as belonging to one of the joyful women who she has often seen befriended by other Chansey. Omelette feels an intense urge to heal the woman, despite Nurse Joy's lack of a body. Minax's Zubat, whose lack of eyes prevented him from knowing that the falling object that he detected was a human head, now senses Omelette's fear and wraps his wings around her, blocking her vision. Minax crouches down in front of Nurse Joy's burnt head. Joy only has a few strands of red hair remaining on her scalp, her mouth is wide open, and despite the lack of eyes in her eye sockets, the expression on her face is obviously one of terror - at least the terror is obvious to Minax, who is very familiar with that particular emotion, both on the receiving and the distributing end. After examining Joy's head to determine who could be so cruel as to kill a person endowed with such a loving soul, Minax narrows her eyes, "Doppler." She stands up when she hears a low whimpering. Minax's eyes widen when she realizes that the noise is originating from her Chansey. Minax snarls, kicks the offensive head out of sight, and runs over to her Pokemon. "Zuuuu..." Minax's Zubat tries to comfort Omelette by whispering, but the bat's high-pitched whisper isn't comforting at all. "Chaa...chaa...chanseeee... chanseeeee..." The Chansey cries, knowing that she has the ability to heal hidden deep within her, but feeling helpless because she doesn't know how use it. When Minax arrives, she relieves her Zubat. She lifts Omelette off the ground, presses the toddler Pokemon against her chest, and starts patting her on the back, "Don't cry, Omelette. I'm going to make sure that this never happens again." The moment Omelette stops crying, Minax drops the Chansey on the ground a little roughly to convince herself that she isn't going soft... * End Flashback * "Hey, lady?" The young man standing at the front desk asks, waving his hand in front of the apparently paralyzed blue-haired nurse sitting at the front desk, "Hello?" Nurse Marcia is still making the face of disgust she made when she realized what Omelette was talking about. She shakes her head, unsuccessfully trying to shake out the thought of what Doppler did to that Pokemon Center. She's now concerned that he may repeat the process with the Violet City Pokemon Center. While the Nurse Joy who is currently her boss sometimes overworks her too much, she'd never want what happened to the Nurse Joy that Doppler decapitated to happen to her... In fact, Marcia wouldn't want that to happen to anyone, which is why she killed Doppler mere minutes after seeing that horrible sight. She doesn't want to force a smile, but she manages to regain her usual indifferent gaze when she asks, without even looking at the person she's talking to, "Welcome to our..." "Yeah, yeah, I've heard it a thousand times." The young man puts his face in Marcia's line of vision, "I do come here a lot, you know. You've serviced me before!" Marcia finally realizes that the person who stepped into the Gym while she was thinking about her past is Falkner, the Violet City Gym Leader. She glances over to her side, to see that Omelette has fled into the back room to cry in private, then she turns back to Falkner, "Sorry for the wait. I was just thinking about someone." "You too, huh? I spend most of my day thinking about a special someone too." Falkner smiles at the thought of the girl he's become infatuated with in her absence, "Love can be killer, though, especially when it's unrequited." When Falkner says this, Marcia cringes, but the boy doesn't notice and keeps talking, "I mean, I just KNOW this girl's the one, even though I've only seen her twice in my life, but I don't think she feels the same way about me. I gave her my number and she hasn't even called me once. I tried inviting her to go see a movie and she turned me down. But I'll keep trying to woo her over, all in the name of love!" "That's not love." Marcia bluntly states, "That's lust." Falkner looks extremely offended, "What?!" "Take it from me, someone who's been on the receiving end of lust in the past and may or may not be soon again, depending on how demented the one who once lusted after me is - it's wrong to do what you're doing." Marcia thinks about how annoyed she'd get when Doppler would pop up unannounced and ruin the rest of her day. She sits up in her chair and tells Falkner, "You shouldn't try to convince or force someone who doesn't love you to do so just because you lust after them... and you definitely shouldn't take a strand of their hair and attempt to make genetically enhanced clones of them to do your bidding." Convinced now that the relatively new nurse is insane, Falkner isn't as offended as he was moments before. He puts six Pokeballs on the front desk and says, "Just run them through the machine. None of them are seriously injured, just fainted." He puts his hands in his pockets and thinks about the girl he's infatuated with. Nurse Marcia grabs the Pokeballs and inserts them into the nearby healing machine. Once the machine has run its course, she takes out Falkner's Pokeballs and hands them back to him. She tells the Gym Leader, who's heading back to his Gym, "Unrequited love is tragic, but unrequited lust is just plain sad." After making this remark, she thinks about Splash, who is coincidentally a few kilometers away, about to bash in the skull of an innocent boy with a lead pipe - all in the name of lust. -Marcia