by K J Harlow
You have found Team Boom Gun (Broken)!
Yoshi swung off his bag, sifting through the items:
ITEMS:
1x Empty Ring
2x Potion
Shiny Rod
Tozuck’s Lab Coat
Digital Toolkit
Rations
----
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He put it into the seventh slot. “We’ll hand it into the police station when we get to Sapphire.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” Starry said glumly.
Flick jumped in before Yoshi could even respond. “Don’t be stupid.” She put her arm around her and gave a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sure you’ll learn some awesome move next level and finally give me Soph a chance to put our feet up.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. I feel so close to remembering… something.” She scrunched her eyes shut again. “It’s like I get to a door and I can open it, but only just a crack. I can see and hear things, but…” she shook her head.
“You’re my first girlfriend and my lucky charm. Because of you, I now have a team of five hot girlfriends. Well, four hot girlfriends and one loud mouth.” She sucked her lips in, but that didn’t stop a smile from reaching her eyes. “And I reckon the deeper we go, the more you will start to remember. So don’t worry. You will play your part.”
She brightened up considerably. “Alright. Let’s keep going.”
“Question is, which way?” Flick gestured at the fork ahead. This time, it branched out into three paths.
“Easy: all of them. Start off on the left and we’ll make our way–” Yoshi said, making his way to the first path. Flick clapped a hand onto his shoulder.
“Not this again. We choose one and go as deep as we can. We only turn back if we hit a dead end. It’s gotten us this far; it works.”
“The loot, Flick, think about the l–”
“How about you follow me instead?” a high-pitched voice suggested from the shadows of the middle path.
Yoshi froze, watching a battle ring draw itself anew. “Starry, get ready.”
24
Wild Suzy Appears!
Name: Suzy
Entry No.: 61
Species: Cave Bat
Type: Dark/Flying
Nature: Independent
Rarity: *
Most commonly found in caves, Suzies find comfort in their colonies, moaning and complaining about how boring their lives are.
Yoshi put his GF-wiki away and observed the Suzy. Her knee high, lace-up boots squeaked as she shifted the weight between her feet. She was slender and waifish but of average height. A black corset with blood-red buttons down the front did well to accentuate her gentle curves.
She cocked her head to the side, pigtails falling in the same direction. “It’s your first time in these caves, isn’t it?” When the battle-ready Starlotte didn’t respond, she looked at Yoshi. “Did I overhear you saying that you wanted to find out where the loot was?”
“Starry, get back!” The Suzy put her hands behind her back, waiting for Yoshi to respond. “Any chance you have a map on you?”
She shook her head. “No map. It’s all in here.” She tapped the side of her head with a pale finger. Her nails were shiny and black. Sounds like she knows what she’s talking about. He pulled out his last Empty Ring.
Soph, Flick, Crystal and Chippie. One Water Slap from Flick might knock her out. Crystal’s Boulder Punch would be super effective against her, so she was a no go either. That only left Chippie, but she was still injured, not to mention two levels lower than Suzy.
Should he risk it with a stronger girlfriend and hope she doesn’t critical, or go with the injured, weaker girlfriend and hope the capture works on the first shot?
“Go Chippie!”
NAME: Chippie
LEVEL: 9
NATURE: Cheerful
TYPE: Normal
ACC.: NIL
HP: 14/35
- ATTACK: 9
- DEFENSE: 8
- SPCL ATTACK: 9
- SPCL DEFENSE: 7
- SPEED: 10
MOVESET:
Sand Screen - Type: Normal - 40/40 PP ((Lower accuracy by kicking and flapping sand up into opponent’s face)
Nip - Type: Normal - 35/35 PP (Bite a foe with razor sharp incisors.)
Enemy Suzy used Claw Swipe!
Grey, leathery wings burst open from Suzy’s back. She ran at the rodent girlfriend and raked her nails across her face. Chippie fell to her hands and knees, hair obscuring her face; her HP was down to 4 points.
In a heartbeat, Yoshi was by her side, unscrewing the lid of a bottle with liquid glowing a faint green. She sat on her haunches, not taking her eyes away from her foe while Yoshi wiped away the blood that had dribbled down to her chin.
“Hang in there…”
She turned to him, nose and whiskers twitching as she accepted the small HP potion gratefully.
You used Potion on Chippie!
Her HP climbed back to 29/35.
“Get back.” She pushed Yoshi in the chest as the Suzy came at her again.
Enemy Suzy used Claw Swipe!
This time, she was able to get her arms up in time. Parts of her sleeves were left hanging by a thread, blood seeping through her turtleneck top where the Suzy had managed to get through to her skin. Her HP was back down to 19/35.
“Alright! Chippie, use Nip!”
Chippie scampered on the retreating Suzy, throwing herself at the cave bat. She grabbed her around her lower torso, dragging her to the ground and shutting her eyes from the frantic beating of the Suzy’s bat wings. In one quick movement and without breaking her hold of her, she was behind the wild girlfriend, now with her legs wrapped around her. Pausing only for a moment, she drew her head back, inch-long front teeth flashing in the air before puncturing the Suzy in the soft flesh between her shoulder and her neck.
“Ow! I’m the bat here. Only I get to bite necks!” the Suzy protested. She shook the rodent-kin off her back, gingerly touching a hand to the fresh wounds. Her HP bar had only shrunk 15%. Not nearly enough to affect a successful capture. “Alright, you asked for it.” She shook her hands out, nails dark and dangerous. She ran towards Chippie and skipped into the air. She went up several more feet than the rat-kin was expecting, opening her wings once again and struck down again with the same attack.
Enemy Suzy used Claw Swipe!
Critical Hit!
Yoshi could hear the nails rending the normal-type’s flesh and he flinched. Chippie spun on her foot, her eyes already starting to roll into the back of her head. She thudded heavily into the ground, her short, light-brown hair plastered over her face.
Chippie fainted!
“Sorry, Chippie.” He withdrew her and replaced the ring.
“How about this: if you let me defeat all your girlfriends, I’ll take you to where all the loot is in here.”
“If you defeat all my girlfriends, it’s game over for me,” Yoshi responded, raising an eyebrow.
The bat-kin shrugged her pale, round shoulders. “Worth a shot.”
“How do I know you’re not bluffing anyway? And what makes you special? You’re only a girlfriend of 1-star rarity.”
The Suzy’s thin eyebrows came together, expressing her hurt at the comment. “I am not the same as the other Suzies in here,” she said firmly, clenching her fists. She seemed to be reassuring herself more so than proving him wrong. “And you don’t know whether I’m bluffing or not. Question you have to answer is, how important is the loot to you?”
“Not very important.”
“You’re lying,” she said, a sly smile on her face. “I know you’re trying to catch me. You wouldn’t send out such a weak girlfriend against me otherwise.” Yoshi didn’t have anything to say to this. He wasn’t lying; the loot wasn’t that important in the grand scheme of things, completing this errand for Poke that had dragged on for too damn long was. All he needed was any of one of the cave-dwelling girlfrie
nds in here to be his guide. If this devious cave bat was going to make things hard, he wouldn’t back down.
“You know what, I’ll take you up on your offer. EXP for you, loot for me. But I won’t let you win that easily.” He disengaged ring #3. “Go, Flick!”
The water-type assumed her fight stance. The Suzy had to avert her eyes immediately. Yoshi smiled; if she thought this was bright, she doesn’t know what’s coming.
“Flick, use Flash!” This time, Yoshi didn’t even bother trying to get a glimpse of her tits. He covered his face with the back of his arm and still light managed to get through.
“Aaaaah, my eyes!” the Suzy screeched.
Enemy Suzy’s accuracy dropped!
“Come on, that was uncalled for,” the Suzy said, face scrunched up. Yoshi looked at the bat-girl. She was flapping her wings erratically, her hands covering her face, nails mingling with her dark red bangs. She dropped her hands, blinking several times. She emitted a high-pitched screech. While Flick clamped down on her ears, the wild girlfriend quickly established her foe’s position and ran at her, arms outstretched bear-hug style.
Enemy Suzy used Claw Swipe!
She swung far too early, almost losing balance. She swung her other arm to rebalance but was still a few feet away from her target.
Claw Swipe missed!
“Flick, use Water Slap!”
The water-type closed the gap between herself and the wild girlfriend. She drew her hand back and creamed the cave bat across the face. The strike wasn’t as powerful as when she delivered it to the Crystal back at Onyx Gym, but it still sent the Suzy sprawling into the ground several feet away before she stopped moving.
“Too easy,” Yoshi said. He held his hand up to his water-type. She eyed it and completed the high-five.
“Argh!” The force was strong enough to propel him back several feet, landing on his butt.
“Ooops,” Flick said, batting her eyelids in mock innocence.
Yoshi got to his feet, drying his hand on his pants and dusting himself off.
“Alright, time to keep go–”
“No,” the Suzy said into the dirt before coughing violently.
Yoshi and Flick looked down. The cave bat was pushing herself up from a face-plant position, elbows shaking from the effort.
I thought she had fainted. He focused on her stats. “You’re down to 1 HP.” He nodded in appreciation to Flick. “Good work. Guess I will be catching you after all.”
“Is that the best you got?” she said, voice wavering.
“No, but it’s the best you’ve got.” Yoshi fished the Empty Ring out of his pocket, put it onto his index finger and pointed it at the almost spent wild girlfriend. A blue beam shot out, striking the Suzy. Her form faded, leaving only a silhouette of blue light that collapsed and zipped into the ring.
“Come on… this should be an easy one…”
Yoshi stared at his fist. The crystal on the ring pulsed red, holding its color for a second before fading. It did this a second time, this time the color not disappearing until a second later. The third time, the crystal glowed brightest, the red lighting up his face for three seconds before fading.
“Gotcha!”
Congratulations! You have caught Suzy!
Suzy’s details will be added to the GF-wiki.
Flick walked over to him. “Good work, you’ve finally got a full team.”
“What do you mean ‘finally’?”
“I dunno, I mean, maybe it would have been easier both at the Gym and here if you had built your team of six early and raised them all equally. But that’s just my two coins.”
“Yeah well, I’ve never been one to do things by the book. Like you said about me, I’m not like the other trainers.” He stared at his ring until his new girlfriend’s full stats appeared:
NAME: Suzy
LEVEL: 11
NATURE: Independent
TYPE: Dark/Flying
ACC.: NIL
HP: 1/36
- ATTACK: 12
- DEFENSE: 10
- SPCL ATTACK: 11
- SPCL DEFENSE: 8
- SPEED: 13
MOVESET:
Claw Swipe - Type: Normal - 40/40 PP (Slash sharp claws/nails across a foe.)
“Suzy, come out.”
Blue light burst forth from the ring and his newest girlfriend was standing before him. She had already gotten changed while in the ring, though the wounds remained. She swayed slightly, unfurling her wings to help her stay balanced. Yoshi pulled out his last remaining Potion and handed it to her.
“Here. Drink up.”
She looked between the healing agent and her trainer before accepting it. Flick and Yoshi watched her gulp it down. She dropped the bottle to her side and wiped her mouth on her arm, color returning to her face. Her HP was back up to 26/36.
“Thanks. Well fought,” she said.
“A girlfriend with manners! There’s someone on your team who can stand to learn a lot from you,” said Yoshi. Flick snorted as Suzy looked between the two of them in confusion. “We can do that later. First of all, we need your help.”
“Right, the loot,” Suzy said.
“Actually,” Flick said, raising her eyebrows at Yoshi. “There’s a particular person that our master is looking for in these Caverns. Isn’t that right?”
“Uuuh… yeah.”
He swung down his backpack, rummaged through it and pulled out the crumpled lab coat, making sure not to drop the dead phone.
“What’s this?” Suzy asked.
“It’s a lab coat that belongs to someone who’s lost in here.”
She took it, opening it up between her hands and checked the label. “Tozuck?”
Yoshi nodded.
“There are a lot of people who pass through the Caverns.” She said. “Well not recently.”
“Yes, but how many lab assistants?”
Suzy handed it back to him. “I don’t know. Not many. I haven’t seen one recently if that’s what you’re asking.” Yoshi hummed in disappointment. “What’s happened to him?”
“Not sure. I was meant to meet him outside the Celeste Caverns and found his coat and phone.” Suzy watched in silence, her dark eyes sliding between Flick and her trainer as he recounted to her what he knew about Poke, Starry and Tozuck.
“There’s a Starlotte on our team?”
“Yeah, why?”
Suzy looked elsewhere, lost in thought. “I haven’t seen many Starlottes recently. There weren’t that many of them to begin with, but it’s almost like they’ve all migrated out of the cave or something.” Yoshi and Flick exchanged looks. “Then again, they could just all be at the Grand Stone, doing another one of their rituals.”
“Grand Stone?”
Suzy nodded. “Yeah. It’s in a different part of the Caverns. Haven’t visited it in a while but I’m pretty sure I still know the way there. Might jog our Starlotte’s memory if she were to visit it. Wanna go?”
25
Deeper Into The Cave
“The Grand Stone crashed into the Caverns over a millennium ago. Back then, it was known as the Kryal Caverns. That purged the girlfriends, nearly wiping out all who had lived there. Over the next few generations, conservation efforts were put into place to repopulate the Caverns.”
“Repopulate the Caverns? How?”
Suzy gave Yoshi a quizzical look. “Trainers catch wild girlfriends, have sex with them, the girlfriends lay fertilized eggs and they’re incubated until they hatch, after which they’re raised to maturity before being released back into the wild world.”
“I know that,” Yoshi blustered. “I mean, who was in charge of it?”
Suzy shrugged, her wings, hitching up slightly. “Must’ve been some secret government organization that specialized in this sort of thing.” Thoughts of Labby #10, Gary Newman and SPARTA swirled through his mind.
Suzy, Felicity and Yoshi walked in silence for a while.
“That guy must’ve been tired,” Yoshi sa
id. “The one who had the job of f… fertilising those endangered girlfriends.” Flick looked back at him, her expression screaming, “Seriously?” The corner of Suzy’s mouth twitched up and she surreptitiously appraised her new trainer.
“Anyway, one of the species of girlfriend that hadn’t originally lived in the cave but called it home after the Grand Stone’s impact was the Starlotte. None of the original cave dwellers, not the Crystal, the Macy or even us Suzies know where they came from.
“Some say that the Starlotte were nomads and had travelled across Ohno following the trail of space dust left twinkling in the sky by the Grand Stone. From the Starlottes I’ve spoken to, all shake their heads and deny this. ‘We live in the Celeste Caverns, this is where we come from.’
“Others say that the Grand Stone brought the Starlotte here. That they literally sat on top of it as it ripped across space eventually taking them to their new home in Ohno.”
“So you’re saying Starlottes are aliens then?”
“In a way, yes. But maybe over time their bodies acclimatized to our atmosphere, they bred with local men and slowly became more and more human.”
“That sounds like a conspiracy theory,” Yoshi said, crossing his arms. “And besides, what does it matter? Don’t you guys have anything else better to talk about?”
“Hey, I just listen. It’s what all the other girls talk about.” Suzy stopped walking and turned to Yoshi and Flick. She still had to squint a little when looking at the Shiny water-type. “I’m not like them, the other Suzies. They hang from the ceiling all day, bitching, gossiping and complaining. I like flying around the Caverns, chatting with girlfriends of other species, grinding and levelling up. In fact, you know what?” She flicked a glance towards Yoshi’s belt. “Send your Starlotte out. I want to meet her now.”
“I’m going to go one – no, three better.” He put his fingers into rings #1, #2 and #4. “Alright, the lot of you, come out.”