“Can I ask a question?” Ranma asked as she kept in place with the older PokéWoman.
Considering that for a moment, the gray and pink-haired woman nodded her head. “Sure, Ranma,” NurseJoy responded.
“What was the Great Disaster?” Ranma asked. Everyone so far had made mention of it, and it was obviously something important.
When the woman stopped in her tracks, Ranma had to move back to stay under the umbrella. “Uh... Joy...”
The NurseJoy PokéWoman stood there for a moment, eyes going distant as she remembered something... something that was obviously disturbing her...
“...Joy?” The pigtailed Tigress asked hesitantly. The woman was looking very distraught about something.
The two just stood out there in the rain for what must have been a good five minutes... finally, it seemed whatever memories were haunting the PokéWoman left her, and she shook her head to clear her thoughts. “Ranma...” she said the other girl’s name softly. “You don’t want to know...”
Looking up at the NurseJoy, she said, “But I want to... you believe me about not being from here... so... well, I don’t know much about this world and want to know WHAT made it like it is now.”
Slowly, the NurseJoy nodded her head. “You’re right Ranma... you wouldn’t know about the horrors of that day... and I probably would be the best one to ask...”
“You are?” Ranma asked curiously. “Why’s that?”
“Like I said before, I was alive then... I had lived THROUGH that terrible time...” the NurseJoy said softly, her hand gripping tightly around the length of the parasol’s handle.
“...Could you tell me what happened? Please?” Ranma asked softly. She may have not been the most sensitive person, but even the tactless Tigress could see the emotions on the NurseJoy’s face as clear as day.
After a moment, the elderly PokéWoman nodded her head. “It was four years after I met that other you,” she said softly. “It was a start of the summer season of 303. I was twenty at the time, and I was no longer a novice, but a professional nurse of the Viridick PokéCenter. As it was summer, a time when a lot of Tamers are on the move, we were expecting to have more people coming in for the height of the season... but it would prove that there would be more than just healing a Tamer’s tired PokéGirls...”
Placing her hand on Ranma’s shoulder, the NurseJoy started to walk again. “That summer would begin what we thought was going to be the end of the world. It started off with a strong heat wave first... one that got hotter and hotter, killing farmer’s crops, Plant and Bug-type PokéGirls dropped dead, and even Water-types were having trouble. It was bothersome with constant one-hundred and twenty degree weather, but things kept on moving as usual... and then the dark clouds started coming in...”
“Rain?” Ranma asked.
Shaking her head, Joy told Ranma, “At first we thought it would... what we got was lightning storms. Without rain to accompany it, the lightning was causing fire everywhere... forests, towns... everything was so hot, so dry, it was a catastrophe. The PokéCenter was overflowing with victims, casualties, and refugees... and it just got worse... earthquakes started shaking all over not too long after, a few places even dropped off the face of the earth as they were sunk below sea-level.”
Her eyes widening, Ranma asked, “Wildfires and earthquakes?”
“Yes,” Joy said. Pointing Northwest, NurseJoy asked, “Do you see anything over there?”
Narrowing her eyes to try and strengthen her vision past the intense rain, Ranma answered, “I see mountains and stuff...”
“There used to be a huge coliseum nestled between two of those mountains...” she said seriously. “Indigo Plateau was already a victim of the fires, but when the earthquake hit us, the PokéBattle Coliseum and Capital of the Kanto League dislodged from its foundation and came crashing down. If you travel West along Route Twenty-Two and then North along Twenty-Three, you’ll find the wreckage of Indigo Plateau is still there to this day.”
“Those earthquakes...” NurseJoy said, “Also triggered volcanoes... fortunately, such a fissure didn’t happen inland for Kanto, but Cinnibuns and all of the Sexii Islands were victims of horrendous geothermal disasters, lava flowing everywhere; people tried to evacuate the islands if they could. It was so bad, even the ice caves of Fuck Island were completely wiped away from the magma erupting from the earth.”
Ranma frowned lightly. “Those getting away from the volcanoes could, right?”
“Some did...” NurseJoy told her. “But nature wouldn’t let up. The seas were restless as well. Those who left by either land or sea had problems in the forms of tsunamis and hurricanes which not only went through the oceans, capsizing boats and knocking flying PokéGirls out of the sky, but when they went inland, it just made things worse as the hurricanes turned to tornados...”
Staring at the elderly PokéWoman, Ranma asked, “Tornadoes?”
With a nod of her head, the NurseJoy PokéWoman reaffirmed, “Tornadoes. Route Twelve, which was mostly bridges connecting sparse traces of land to make a route between Lavenderriere and VerMuffEatin had been broken apart, isolating the two cities from each other. And not only did the high-velocity winds damage to Route Eleven right outside of VerMuffEatin’, but the force and the throwing was enough to kill and unlucky humans and PokéGirl’s caught in its path.”
“There were differences around the world though...” the elderly PokéWoman said, “Like those who were in the colder climates didn’t have their problems start with a heat wave. They got blizzards and snow-storms of the worst kind, practically burying them alive in houses, PokéCenters, whatever place they had taken for shelter.”
The Tigress nodded her head slowly. “That doesn’t sound good...”
“Yes, Ranma...” the NurseJoy continued. “It was world-wide calamity. Horrendous natural disasters occurring one after another, simultaneously; heat waves, forest fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes erupting, tsunamis, all that and a bag of chips... but the final straw was what made us all realize that it was the end of times...”
“What?” Ranma-chan asked.
“Meteors...” NurseJoy said slowly
The black-striped, red-furred pigtailed Tigress could only blink her eyes at THAT statement. “...What?”
Nodding her head firmly, the NurseJoy had a serious expression on her face. “Yes... even with all the damage that had been done to the world’s surface by the natural disasters, astronomers were the ones to bring the final piece of news. Meteorites, numerous ones... were all heading towards the planet...”
“What did you do?” Ranma asked the lightly-pink gray-haired PokéWoman.
“Nothing could be done. There weren’t many satellites in the atmosphere, and none of them were suited with weaponry...” NurseJoy explained. “What happened was they crashed down, pummeling the planet’s surface for what must have been three days straight, leaving only the strongest of buildings standing at the end and all of humanity wiped out completely...”
Considering that, Ranma realized that the world she ended up in had a lot of problems, ones which made her own seem almost insignificant in comparison. Destruction, pain, a majority of the planet’s population killed...
And from that, another thought came to the petite yet buxom Tigress. “Hey, Joy?”
“Hmm?” NurseJoy asked. “What is it, Ranma?”
“How is it there are PokéGirls around if there ain’t no men?” She considered what she said. “I mean, how did they survive and not the humans, and how could they continue?” Last she heard, it took a man AND a woman to create new life.
Stopping in their walk for a moment, NurseJoy brought her hand off from Ranma’s shoulder and stuck it into a large pocket along the bottom of the raincoat she was wearing. Feeling around in it, the PokéGirls woman pulled out a metallic sphere that was half red, and half white; a worn spot on the red part giving it an orange tinge
Looking over the small metal sphere in the woman’s hand, Ranma noticed that the front of it has a small round lens. The image reminded the Tigress of the stamp on the gold coins Britanny had given them to pay for the room. “What is it?”
“This is a PokéBall,” Nurse Joy said seriously. “The technology for this item was designed from stolen blueprints from one of Professor Sukebe’s labs. This item allowed a Tamer to catch a PokéGirls and keep them in a container the size of a large baseball.”
Ranma nodded her head. Yeah, she would say it was the size of a baseball.
“PokéGirls kept in a PokéBall were normally subjected to pleasure/pain training to obey their Tamer, during which they were instructed to repeat phrases of submissiveness and obedience,” NurseJoy explained. “Compliance and obedience were rewarded with sexual pleasure. Resistance and defiance was punished with mild but shocking pain and nausea. Despite being physically in a state of suspended animation, a PokéGirl is still awake while inside a PokéBall in order to undergo the training. I can tell you from my own experience that time seems so much longer inside of a PokéBall, with minutes seeming like hours...”
Ranma looked at NurseJoy curiously. “So you all survived because of PokéBalls?”
Nodding her head, NurseJoy told Ranma, “There PokéGirl Researcher I told you about, Professor Stroaks, knew what was going in... he knew there was no hope for humanity with nature going as haywire as it was. But he realized that there was a safe-spot for somebody. What he did at the time was considered illegal, I could tell you that much... I don’t know what the humans did to him, if anything at all... but because of his actions, he ensured we’d be safe.”
“What did he do?” Ranma asked.
“As his Vaporita Rita explained, the Professor used his computer and spent a good deal of his time cracking codes. The professor was able to hack into many of the Leagues central computers, since they were busy dealing with disasters rather than looking for Hackers. Keying into their satellites, and therefore, all the PokéDexes and PokéBalls all over the planet, Professor Stroaks prepared a program...”
“Program?” Ranma asked. “What did he do?”
“He set an automatic retrieval. Anyone who was connected to a PokéBall was automatically sucked back into it, and the thing was locked out from tampering, and was on an automatic timer set for two-hundred and forty hours, a full ten days...” NurseJoy looked directly at Ranma. “I was connected to this very PokéBall at time, and I was surprised to be sucked in when I knew my services as a Nurse PokéGirl were needed, and was scared as I realized that time just kept passing... and passing and passing...”
Taking a deep breath, the PokéWoman let out a sigh. “Finally, when it felt like I was going to go mad from the isolation, I was freed, along with many of my fellow PokéGirls, both nurses and patients whom were kept at the PokéCenter. The PokéCenter was a wreck, and while we found a few Domestic PokéGirls scattered around the ruins of the city, there wasn’t any other life around for miles and we could see that the rest of our city was destroyed... we thought we were the last PokéGirls alive, the last people, period!”
The woman started to look relieved. “Fortunately, we decided to stay and rebuild, using the PokéCenter as our home since it seemed to be the only building in decent condition. A week later, we got people in from Johto and Phallus... Stroak’s Vaporita was amongst that second group, and she was able to explain what had happened, and that this would not be the end, that we would continue and rebuild...” looking right at Ranma, the NurseJoy said, “And that’s just what we did, and have been doing for the past century.”
Hearing that, Ranma considered that the culture had continued for so long after such a horror as a compliment for the PokéGirls’ will to live and carry on. “That’s amazing Joy... but... how are you all still around? I mean, it’s obvious you’ve lived a long time, but Brit and that other Nurse seemed much younger... how are women born if there’only PokéGirls?”
“Well, Ranma, I’m alive because I seemed to have been blessed with Longetivity, something not normal for NurseJoys,” She said as she placed the PokéBall back in her pocket. “As for why there’s younger ones around, that’s because of Parthenogenesis.”
Blinking her eyes, Ranma asked, “Part-ay-no-what?”
“Parthenogenesis,” the NurseJoy repeated. “It’s a form of asexual reproduction among PokéGirls. This can only happen to PokéGirls, not PokéWomen.”
“Asexual?” Ranma asked.
Looking down at the confused Tigress, the NurseJoy explained, “It means that a PokéGirl can spontaneously become pregnant, with no apparent trigger. The pregnancy takes the normal amount of time, but the children born are always PokéGirls of the exact same type as the mother, usually in litters of two to five. The newborns grow up to be physical clones of their mother, with the same eye and hair color, birthmarks, everything. While parthenogenesis can theoretically strike any PokéGirl, it usually only happens to Feral ones, with the exception being when PokéGirls want to settle down and allow themselves to be put into a Breeding Chamber used by PokéGirl Breeders of old to artificially incite parthenogenesis.”
Staring at Joy with a bewildered expression, Ranma wasn’t sure what to say... but at least how they survived made sense. “So... you just... get pregnant? No work, no fuss, it can just happen?”
“Correct,” NurseJoy said. “Being a PokéWoman, I’m past that stage, and at THIS age, I’m far too old to have any children, even if there was a man round to Tame with...”
Deciding to leave this topic quickly, Ranma-chan moved the conversation to a much safer topic. “May I ask one more thing?”
“Sure,” NurseJoy said. “What is it?”
“Can we get something to eat when we get back?” The Tigress asked. “I’m hungry...”
Blinking her eyes for a moment, the older PokéWoman let out a laugh. “Sure, sure. C’mon, let’s pick up the pace to get back to the PokéCenter. The others must be worried about you too...”
And so the NurseJoy and Tigress started heading towards the PokéCenter at a steady clip.
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(Posted Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:33)
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