From: Adrian Tymes <wingcat@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: [PW] Psyshock Date: Saturday, August 21, 1999 9:52 AM Maria Rocket wrote: > "Hmm?" Seth looked over at her. "Oh yeah, Mimiiiccccccccc!!!" > > Aerie stood dumbfounded as Seth was dragged away by the ear by someone very > tall in a scratchy brown robe. "Seth!?" She ran into the street, watching as > the crowd of party goers swallowed up Seth and his abductor. "Seth!" > > Meanwhile, Seth had regained some of his senses after emerging from the crowd. > When the robed figure stopped, Seth drew back one fist and swung wildly. It > landed hard, and Seth's felt the robed one release him. Stumbling back, he saw > him do the same, then step forward again. > > "What's this all about?" Seth pushed back his shades and looked around for > Aerie and Slasher. > > In response, the robed one lifted his hood. "Whoa, easy, friend!" "'Friend'? I've never seen you bef-...Nurse April?" "June, actually. I see you've met one of my...enlightened sisters." "'Enlightened'?" "Not Joy." Her scowl could have darkened the sun itself. Other than that, though, Seth could see the resemblance easily enough: standard short hair instead of long and flowing into her robe, swap the robe with a nurse's uniform, and she'd be a dead ringer for any of the numerous Nurse Joys. "But we don't have time. I've come here to warn you: the Doppler has taken an interest in you." She furtively glanced around. "Watch out. He could be *anything*." "Why are you telling me this?" "Because I don't want you to get hurt. Because you're a friend of Mimic, so you might be the key to patching things up between Mimic and Doppler. And because *I know who you are*." Seth blinked. "Ok, I admit. I made up my name-" June's scowl, suddenly directed at Seth, cut him off. "All who enter our bases are scanned," she hissed. "Usually, these scans are ignored: we know who we are. But a few of us saw your scan. We've been keeping it a sec-" He let her finish, but when it became apparent that she would not, Seth subconciously ducked out of her gaze. When she did not track him, he stepped to the side, waved a hand in front of her eyes, and generally noticed that she had become like a statue. "Purrsian?" 'Slasher', having walked up unnoticed, began rubbing against June's leg. "Huh? Oh, hi, Slasher." Seth quickly began trying to form an explanation for what just happened. Slightly worried - although he knew that the chance was so slight as to be practically zero - that Doppler might be listening, he took his time trying to word things so that the Ditto would not get the message while his friends would. As Seth fretted, though, 'Slasher' began rubbing harder and harder against the human statue. Before Seth noticed, June began to topple, then fall over...right over the cliff. They were only halfway towards Maiden's Peak, but that was still high enough to make a fall from the cliff painful. June seemed to recover from her paralysis after only a few feet - although maybe it was the forceful jolting against the cliff's face that violently recontorted her. The fact that she never screamed as she fell lent weight to the latter theory. "Huh? Hey!" Seth, showing an amazing speed at recovery from his contemplation, only noticed once June was halfway down. He never saw what caused her to fall; he only saw her land at the base of the cliff - not really even a beach, as the water was high enough to wash back and forth over June's broken form. "Someone call an ambulance!" Aerie came running up. "What's going on? Slasher just ran off and..." She looked where Seth was looking. "Uh-oh...umm, Seth, there's no way they'll get an ambulance down there. It's too rocky and narrow. We'll have to go in ourselves." "Down there? How." "You've never gone mountain climbing, have you?" "*I* didn't grow up *in* a mountain." Aerie rolled her eyes, then leapt down the cliff face, jumping from outcropping to outcropping. Seth blanched, more than once swearing that Aerie had missed her jump before she seemed to find footing out of nowhere. Once Aerie was down, she called back up, "I'll have to carry her carefully, in case anything's broken. Get some help, and I'll meet you where the beach begins!" She carefully picked up June and began walking in the rolling tide, making sure never to get more than knee-deep. "Right. Come on, Slasher!" Seth began running back towards the village, with 'Slasher' close behind. "Sian, sian." "She'll only be in a coma and wake up with partial amnesia? How do you know that?" "Purr." 'Slasher' shrugged. Something itched at the back of Seth's mind, but he ignored it in his race to find assistance. TBC?