Catch All The Girlfriends! 2

by KJ Harlow

  “I’ve made such a mess,” she said, her voice breaking. “Look at all this blood on the carpet, I didn’t mean to–”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Starry said, crouching next to her. “You were bringing the food that we ordered. When we found you, you were already on the floor.”

  “She’ll be OK,” Pete said, finally answering Yoshi’s question. “We’ll take her into our rooms and monitor her for shock.” He nodded at his assistant, who waved one of the blazer-donning members of staff. Despite her chubby cheeks, round face and large eyes, she commanded an air of authority. Her name floated up as Yoshi stared at her.

  NAME: Blushy (Annabelle)

  LEVEL: 22

  HP: 80/80

  “Cindi,” Blushy said, crouching down, talking to her shaken colleague. “Are you OK?”

  Cindi the Chippie nodded, forcing a brave smile to her face. “It’s lucky these girlfriends found me when they did. I might have died otherwise.”

  Annabelle’s “Client Service Manager” badge reflected the chandelier lights in the hallway. “Thank you for raising the alarm so quickly. You have our deepest gratitude.” She clasped her hands in front and bowed deeply.

  “Are you able to walk?” Pete asked.

  Cindi sat up and slowly unsteadily. “I… yes.”

  Pete nodded to his assistant. Together, the two men in pink supported the field mouse, walking her towards the stairwell.

  “Excuse me a moment, I’ll be back with you shortly.” Annabelle jogged forward, barking orders to her underlings and clearing a path through the lollygaggers.

  “Arlif.” Yoshi reached around and clasped the grass-type’s bright green shoulder. She jumped slightly and turned her big eyes to her trainer.

  “I’m fine,” she squeaked. “It’s not like I haven’t seen blood before. It just took me off guard, that’s all.” The two Pamper Nurses and Cindi had already walked up the stairs and out of sight. Annabelle powerwalked back towards them, her expression severe.

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” Crystal asked.

  The Blushy shook her head, her ponytail swishing left and right. “We’ll need to get this–” she gestured at the patch of still-wet blood in the carpet at her feet– “cleaned up first. Then we need to review security footage to identify the girlfriend who did this to Cindi.”

  “The girlfriend?” Yoshi asked, furrowing his brow.

  The Blushy nodded. “An attack like that with a wound that size is most likely a girlfriend - and a powerful one at that.”

  “What sort of move can punch a hole straight through a girlfriend?” Flick asked, crossing her arms.

  Annabelle shrugged. “Any range of girlfriends.” She looked at Yoshi. “Mr. Soysauce, do you have any enemies on board who might want to attack you?”

  Yoshi frowned and looked up at the gently swaying chandelier to his left. “Not that I know of. I guess there is that one guy…”

  “Who might that be?” Annabelle probed.

  “Just one of the people I battled on the deck. He didn’t seem to like me very much and I reckon that we would have defeated him if it wasn’t for the storm that forced us to take cover, but I doubt that he would have sent one of his girlfriends to kill me because of it.”

  “We can’t rule anyone out,” the Client Service Manager said. “I will review the footage and liaise with you further once we have some findings. Once again, I apologize that this has happened. If there’s anything we can do to be of service to you, don’t hesitate to let me know.” She bowed deeply again.

  “Please, there’s no need. Nothing happened to us. Make sure Cindi gets looked after. Let me know if there’s anything we can do to help.”

  You have defeated Trainer Caleb!

  Ai has gained 890 EXP!

  Ai is now Level 11!

  Ai is now Level 12!

  Ai is now Level 13!

  Ai has learned Steel Heel!

  Crystal has gained 890 EXP!

  Crystal is now level 20!

  Starry has gained 890 EXP!

  You have received 911 Coins for winning!

  “Wooo! Awesome job, Ai, you won that one all by yourself!”

  The gym bunny flashed a big grin and held a peace sign to her furred cheek. “Take a photo of me, Daddy.”

  Yoshi pulled out his phone, stuck his tongue out as he lined up the shot and took a few.

  Ai skipped over. “Let me see.” She took the phone from her father and swiped through a few of them. “They suck, take them again.”

  “GG, dude,” Caleb said, sticking his hand out. “Your Aion’s too hot; I had to let her win.” He flashed a cheesy, too-white smile that contrasted strongly with his bronze fake tan. Ai giggled and batted her eyes at him.

  Yoshi raised an eyebrow. “Yeah right.” Yoshi looked around the battle deck. Mortimer was nowhere to be seen. Could the old man have been laying low since the attack?

  “Wait, you’re the guy who had that Chippie bleed all over your front door,” Caleb said. “Wicked.”

  “She didn’t bleed all over my front door,” Yoshi said, touching his cell to Caleb’s until the confirmation of payment buzzed through. “She bled on the carpet.”

  “Still, wicked. That’s been the most exciting thing that’s happened on this cruise so far. It’s been a snoozefest. If it weren’t for the Agate Islands, I wouldn’t be on this boat.”

  “What’s so special about the island?” Yoshi asked. “It’s not like we can get off the ship and explore it anyway.”

  “My Fiona can fly me off and over to the island. After I heal her up, that is,” he laughed sheepishly. “Speaking of which, I need to get some down coats. The island is crazy cold. So cold that if you don’t have the right clothes, your girlfriends can literally freeze, not to mention us trainers. Anyway, thanks for the battle, rematch sometime, yeah?”

  Caleb strode off, pulling his underwear out of his bum crack.

  “He’s hot,” Ai said, biting her lip.

  “What?” Yoshi spluttered. “He’s a douche, Ai. You could do so much better than him.” The gym bunny sighed dreamily, not listening to her father. “Come on, let’s get you and Crystal healed up. I want to try out this new move of yours.

  Yoshi focused on his daughter, her full stats appearing next to her:

  NAME: Aion (Ai)

  REL’SHIP: Daughter

  NATURE: Vain

  TYPE: Steel

  ACC.: Carrot Top

  LEVEL: 13

  HP: 12/40

  - ATTACK: 14

  - DEFENCE: 19

  - SPCL ATTACK: 16

  - SPCL DEFENCE: 16

  - SPEED: 15

  MOVESET:

  Shoulder Charge - Type: Normal - 21/30 PP (Ram foes with your shoulder)

  Steel Heel - Type: Steel - 30/30 PP (Strike with the ball of your heel with enough force to break bones)

  Niiiice. Finally someone else besides Soph who can use a steel-type move.

  I wanna be, the very best, like no one–

  Yoshi looked at the number. Hmmm. Private Number. “Hello, Yoshi speaking.”

  “Mr. Soysauce, this is Annabelle the Blushy, Client Services Manager of the SS Cruisy McCruiseface, how are you?”

  “Oh hi, Annabelle, I’m well, how are you?”

  “Well, thank you. Have I got you at a good time?”

  “Yep, what’s up?”

  Annabelle cleared her throat on the other line. “We’ve just reviewed some footage from the attack yesterday. Would you like to have a look?”

  “Yes, definitely.” Yoshi frowned. Ai had hopped off after Caleb the baked meatloaf and was flirting like crazy.

  “Could you make your way down to your room. A member of our team will be there waiting for you.”

  “Do you mind if my girlfriends watch too?”

  The darkened room contained dozens of screens. Or more accurately, one giant screen that was divided into several displays. A myriad of buttons winked at Yoshi in different colors along a contro
l panel that extended over 10 feet long. Five staff, three girlfriends, two men, were hunched over it or pointing at the screen. The smaller screens would merge and becoming a bigger display, zooming in on particular people. The biggest one was currently focused on some people playing poker in the Royale room.

  Annabelle murmured into a mouthpiece, holding a hand to her ear, her eyes flicking between Yoshi and the massive screen.

  “Yes, your girlfriends may watch too.”

  “OK everyone, come out.”

  The room filled with blue light as Starry, Soph, Flick, Crystal and Arlif appeared.

  “Whoa, what’s going on here?” Soph asked, ogling at all the displays. Yoshi filled her in, omitting the details of their orgy. “You’re spying on all of us?” she squawked indignantly.

  “She’s doing her job, Soph,” Yoshi said. “Someone’s attacked her member of staff. They could have been after me.”

  “Ooooor…” Flick said, elongating the vowel. “They could have been after Chester.”

  “Chester?” Annabelle echoed.

  “Chester Arlington. He gave us these tickets because he didn’t want them to go to waste. He’s the new mayor of Sapphire.”

  “I see,” the Blushy nodded. “Someone could have found a way to get onto the ship for the sole purpose of assassinating him but not have known that you took his place.”

  “So what have you got for us?” Soph asked, an edge in her voice. “We don’t have all day.”

  “Soph!” Yoshi barked.

  Annabelle bent down and spoke in low tones to two of the surveillance crew sitting directly in front.

  Frank truly had blessed this girlfriend, Yoshi thought, his eyes drawn to her round, firm ass straining against her pencil skirt. Lucky it’s dark in here too. He looked away as she stood up straight again.

  “OK, look towards the center screen please, Mr. Soysauce.”

  The displayed were folding in on themselves, their edges merging and forming a bigger screen. Seconds later, they were looking at a shot of the camera from above and to the left of the door.

  “As you can see from the date and timestamp, this is around the time that our kitchen received the call from your room for food to be brought up.”

  She nodded at another member of the crew, who promptly pressed a button, loading up an video playback.

  “Hi, this is Starry from Room 880…”

  “Oh fuck…” It was lucky that this room was dark, because he was turning red. As audio of Starry ordering 10 main courses played back, Yoshi’s and his girlfriends’ grunts and screams of passion could be heard in the background. Flick was covering her face with a hand. If there was any doubt which girlfriend was moaning with Yoshi, her entire body glowing scarlet gave it away.

  Annabelle didn’t even blink. She drew a line across her throat and one of her staff members killed the audio.

  “OK, our kitchen receives the order. Our chefs prepare it and call Client Services to bring it up. So at 5:51 p.m., you get…”

  She gestured at the large central display. Cindi strode in, pushing the trolley, each level filled with tray after tray of food. She leaned in, knocked and stepped back.

  “Don’t look away because what you’re about to see next is rather… strange.”

  On cue, the entire screen filled with smoke, completely obscuring vision. The displays surrounding the large, central display also became obscured.

  “Where did all this smoke come from?”

  “It’s not smoke,” Arlif said quietly. “It’s mist.”

  “Mist?”

  Starry nodded gravely. “Yes. I thought I was seeing things, but I could have sworn that I saw it in the air.”

  “I just remembered opening the door and feeling… cold,” Arlif said, rubbing her upper arms with her hands.

  “They’re right, it’s mist,” Annabelle confirmed. “And as you saw from the other displays, this mist blanketed the entire floor.”

  “Which meant that there was no way for you guys to see who did this,” Flick said.

  Everyone in the room silently watched the rest of the footage. The mist promptly disappeared as quick as it came. Cindi was on the floor writhing in pain, blood pumping out of her chest straight onto the carpet. The door opened, shadows appeared, presumably Arlif and Starry before Yoshi and Flick joined them.

  “That’s where it ends.” Annabelle nodded at her helpers who restored the screens to their original settings.

  “So basically we don’t know anything?” Soph said, hands on hips. “You guys have nothing?”

  “Well…” the Blushy said hesitantly. “As a girlfriend who’s fought all types, I’ve got a theory as to what type of girlfriend wanted to attack you.” She looked at Yoshi and his girlfriends and squared her shoulders. “That mist looks like a lot like Ice Veil. The attack on Cindi could possibly have been Ice Spear.”

  “Which means…?” Starry asked.

  “Which means,” Annabelle echoed, “that the girlfriend who did this was probably an ice-type.”

  27

  An Unexpected Face

  “That will be 36,000 Coins please.”

  He took out his phone and pulled up the Bank of Ohno app.

  BALANCE: 37,126 Coins

  Holding it against the terminal, he waited. Bzzzt. Just like that, 36,000 Coins, gone.

  “You’ve made a very wise purchase, sir,” the bug-type Macy said at the counter. These jackets are filled with AAA-grade down feathers, hand plucked from the finest–”

  “Yes, thank you,” Yoshi said, before turning on his heel.

  “Thank you, Yoshi,” Flick said, pecking him on the cheek.

  “Thank you, Yoshi,” Starry, Soph, Crystal and Arlif chorused.

  He shoved his hands into the pockets of his own jacket, mumbling to himself. “Are you sure you don’t want mine, Ai?”

  The gym bunny shook her head. “Already told you like 100 times, steel-types don’t feel the cold.”

  “But these jackets are like soooo cute!” Soph said, putting on an exaggerated teeny bopper voice.

  “Can it birdy, unless you want your neck snapped.”

  “Ladies,” Yoshi said, swooping in. “No one is having their neck snapped. We’ve all been on this cruise ship for a while, so I get that everyone’s patience can run thin. But we get nothing out of beating each other up.”

  “Pretty sure we still get EXP if we–”

  “No battling each other.”

  Soph and Ai walked at opposite ends of the corridor, the tension increasing with every step. They came out onto the battle deck. Yoshi looked around. Not a soul in sight. A thick layer of mist shrouded the cruise ship. Yoshi walked over to the railing. He reached out and scooped some of the air towards him, the crystals of icy condensation streaming through the air.

  The longer he stared out into the wall of frozen mist, the more detached from reality he felt. It was almost like the cruise ship had coasted into another dimension and was stuck chugging in the same spot forever. He looked down. Ice folded and cracked as the ship crushed through it. Was it me, or was the Cruisy McCruiseface travelling a lot slower these past couple of days?

  “See, no one to battle,” Soph said, throwing her arms out, loose feathers fluttering to the ground. “How do you expect me to stay sane when there’s no one to battle?” She shot a glare to the gym bunny, who was borrowing her dad’s phone and taking selfies again.

  “On a ship this big, there are definitely people to battle. We just have to find them and get them to come up here.”

  Soph uttered a cry of frustration. “When are we going to get to this Frank-forsaken island?”

  Yoshi wasn’t sure how he was going to tell her that they weren’t actually going to disembark from the ship to go on the island, so he said nothing.

  “Let’s keep exploring the ship,” Crystal suggested, a puff of frigid air rising in front of her face.

  “Is there anywhere we haven’t been yet?” Flick said, teeth chattering. Even with th
e puffy down jacket on, she was still cold.

  “We haven’t visited the captain yet,” Yoshi said. “Let’s see how Captain Maplefingers is doing.”

  “Ugh, count me out,” Soph said. “I’d rather become an iceberg out here than listen to him crap on.”

  “Alright, if you want to find us later, you’ll know where we are.” He looked at the rest of his girlfriends. “Let’s go.”

  “Urgh…”

  “Flick,” Yoshi said, putting an arm around the water-type’s shoulder. Her skin was gently pulsing between a light and dark green. “Are you OK?”

  “Nope.” She cupped a hand to her mouth and ran into the closest ladies room, which thankfully they had just passed.

  “I’m going to check up on her,” Starry said, heading in after her. “Wait here for a while?”

  “Yeah, not going anywhere.” He crossed his arms and glanced at Crystal, Arlif and Ai. “You guys don’t feel like throwing up too, do you?”

  “When you spend so much time in a swaying tree like I did, being on a boat out at sea actually feels really comforting.” The grass-type smiled.

  “I’m fine too,” Crystal responded. She hesitated and gave him an awkward thumbs up for good measure.

  Yoshi looked at his daughter. “Ai?”

  “Yeah, all good,” she said. “How far are we from this captain guy? Does he have a wooden leg?”

  “Nope, but he does have a wooden hand.”

  “How did he get it?” Ai said, her long ears bouncing as she cocked her head to the side.

  I was fistin’ a Harpie and her vagina bit it off.

  “Errr, not sure.”

  The other two came out, Flick’s pallor now a mix between green and blue. “Inside, It’s too stuffy. Outside, I can’t feel my face.”

  “Do you want to go back into your ring?”

  “Yes please.”

  She closed her eyes and zipped back inside her tiny, portable home.