PKMN-'comic': Part 4

Part 4

When we last left our protagonists, Camilla and Ginger had gotten into a rather tight spot. But before we continue that, let’s see how Caz and Shirley are doing, shall we?
It had gone quite some time now. Shirley and Caz were not so much searching for suspicious things and people as they were searching for the rest of their group.
“Jeez Laweez, were the heck are they?” Caz moaned. “My feet hurt. How long have we been walking anyway?”
“I dunno, half an hour I think. That is, at least that’s how long we’ve been searching for the others…”
“Can’t we just call it quits and regroup tomorrow?”-"comic"
“But… we shouldn’t just abandon them. Should we?”
“Oh come on, you’ve seen for yourself, there’s nothing suspicious here. And it’s not like we’re ‘abandoning’ them right in enemy territory or anything, this place is totally harmless! A sleeping Magikarp is more dangerous than this!”
Shirley wanted to believe him but she couldn’t. She had this awful gut-feeling that something wasn’t right (but, since its Shirley we’re talking about, it’s no surprise. She’s always unsure about almost everything).
“Anyway”, Caz continued, “I hope we don’t have to meet that Croagunk again, or else I’m gonna fry him nice and slowly…”
“There you are!” said a voice behind them. At first, they thought it was Miss Milania again, but to their surprise, it was an entirely different voice. They turned around, and Caz almost had a heart attack.
It was the girls from the locker-room they had accidentally walked into earlier. And they looked rather angry. Very angry indeed.
“You thought you could get away, did you?!” said the one who’d been talking to him earlier.
“It’s, uh, that is, I can explain…” Caz stuttered nervously as he slowly backed away, but they were too quick for him. The girl, who was a Buneary, quickly grasped his hand firmly and held it up.
“What is this?!” she asked him, as if to test him if he’s retarded or not.
“Uhhh… claws?” Caz said rather puzzled.
“NO! These are nothing but blunt pieces of bones, you hear? For heavens sake, girl, don’t you know how to take care of yourself?”
“Now listen here…”
“I mean, it’s not like it’s purely cosmetically. You gotta take care of your claws and talons for them to be effective in battle, or else they’re no better use than picking up food. And I tell you, that is no major subject no matter which school you attend!” The group of girls had at that point almost surrounded Caz and was already pointing out several flaws in his appearance. Caz started to feel a tiny bit uncomfortable.
Suddenly, they started dragging him away. “Whu-wha-waitaminute, what’re you doing?!”
“Oh come on, we can’t let you go around like that. First of all, we’ll fix your claws up all nice and sharp. You see, your claws are constantly growing, and you always want to sharpen them regularly to keep them even on all sides…” she went on as she dragged Caz away.
“Don’t leave me with these, Shirley” he said desperately as he gave Shirley a desperate look.
“B-but, hey wait, Cazandra…” Shirley started. The Buneary stopped and glanced briefly at her.
“Sorry”, she said in a rather superior tone of voice, “but dear Cazandra here, unlike you, has potential, even if she does need some help…”
“But I…”
“Why don’t you go comfort yourself with a piece of chocolate or something, dear! If you’d spend half as much time as you did eating, then maybe you wouldn’t flunk the tests half the time!”
Shirley stopped. As they dragged Caz out of sight, she couldn’t say a thing. The words still rang in her ears. She looked up as she suddenly realized she was moving her arm to the usual spot where she always has a candy bar in her backpack…
She slowly walked the other way down the corridor, not really bothering which way she was going. Suddenly, everything about thieves and Ginger and Camilla and Caz seemed insignificant. She occasionally glanced down at her belly.
It had been like this since her first day. There had never been any physical abuse, only mental, the sort of injuries you can’t show any scars to prove.
They had said all sorts of things. “Woah, make way, she’s coming through!” “Have another sandwich, Miss X-Large!” “A handstand wouldn’t be so hard to do if you didn’t all that weight to support!” “Good thing you have mommy and daddy’s money to rely on!”

“Watch where you’re going, you fucking fatass!!!”

That one had stung the most. Shirley had several times wanted to drop out, but neither her dad nor her mom would allow that, since they were very keen on their social status. She was sure she would have committed suicide long ago if it weren’t for Camilla, and then Caz, and eventually Ginger.
She tried to keep away her tears. She’d become very good at that since she discovered it only made things worse.
She wanted to scream, she wanted to hit things, she wanted to hurt people, she wanted to beat someone down. But she didn’t dare to.
What if someone saw her, and think that she would look silly standing there yelling and punching?
What if someone actually wanted to fight back? She would probably lose, and only get further humiliated.
In the end, she simply couldn’t hold it in any longer. She threw her fist as hard as she could upon the nearest door, without as much as a thought of who might be in there.
To her surprise and horror, there was. Someone reacted and started shouting at her, but she couldn’t exactly hear what.
A million thought crossed her mind in the matter of half a second. She wanted to run away. She didn’t want to stand there and explain that she’d hit the door out of rage. They would think it had been an utterly stupid thing to do. But the corridor was long, and they would probably catch her running away, which would be even more humiliating. No, it would be better to just stand up for what you did. At least, it would be the lesser of two evils.
Funny though, they wouldn’t come out, they just keep screaming. She didn’t exactly hear what they said; it was way too muffled through the door.
Must be a really thick door, she thought.
She tried the handle. It slowly went up as she entered the dimly lit room. “He… hello?” she tried as she searched for the light-switch. “Sorry for the banging, I was just… what are you saying, anyway?”
She found the switch. Moments later, she wished she hadn’t.
It wasn’t the door that had muffled the voices. It was the tape over their mouths.
Camilla struggled as she turned a pair of pleading eyes to Shirley. Ginger sat next to her, not really struggling but looking just as desperate. They were bound hands and feet with tape, and it didn’t look like they were getting free anytime soon.
“Holy shi-!” Shirley exclaimed. “Ha-hang on girls, I’m gonna get you out of here!”
He’d done it again; he had slipped into the room almost unseen and unheard. He grabbed Shirley by the tail and forced her arm behind her back.
Shirley squeeked. Everyone with a tail knew it was one of the most sensitive parts of their bodies, and one of the first lessons in school was how to avoid being caught by the tail. Surprisingly though, Shirley had scored fairly well at those exercises.
Of course, she wasn’t really thinking about that at the moment.
“My, my, aren’t you a little foul-mouthed today my sweet!”
Shirley turned her head. ”Dwayne!!!” she shouted, much louder than she had imagined.
“Yes, I know, fancy meeting me here, it was me all along, yadda-yadda-tadda, I won’t get away with this, blablabla, was there anything more?”
“What have you done to Miss Milania?!”
“Dangit, I knew I had forgotten something! Well, as I said to your little snooping buddies here, she is feeling just fine, and you will all meet her very shortly.”
“But why?”
“Oh please, that’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard! Is it really such a surprise that I go around swiping stuff?! Didn’t think so either.”
“You’ll never get awa-OOWW! Watchitwatchitwatchitwatchit!!!” she said as he tugged her arm harder and tog a steadier grip around her tail.
“Didn’t I already do that one? Now, if you’ll just keep still I’ll… Oh no you won’t” he said as he saw Camilla slowly getting to her feet. As in one movement, he dragged Shirley with him as he pushed Camilla down onto the box on which she had been sitting, and then kicked away both of the boxes the two girls currently resided on, causing them to fall onto the floor rather harshly. They both moaned through their gags.
“Hey leave them alo-OOOH notthetailnotthetailnotthetail!!!”
“You know, you’re not in the situation to make demands, missy. Dames need to learn to do as they’re told. I told both of them to sit there and not make a sound, else I’d take drastic measures. As they did both things, I only did as I promised. And believe me, I can get MUCH more drastic if that’s what you want…”
“Nonononono, absolutely not!”
“Now, isn’t it time you meet up with Miss Milania again?” Dwayne said with an insidious tone.
Just then, the door opened once again.
“Ah”, Dwayne said, “now girls, would you please be polite and greet my employer?”

To be continued…

PS. Oh and for everyone who’s been wondering: “why didn’t Camilla and Ginger free themselves with their powers?”, I have to answers for you.
1. The tape is made of an extra-resilient material.
2. Pokemon in this universe cannot use their attack unless they shout them out. I mean seriously, what’s the deal of being able to throw fireballs and gusts of wind at your opponent if you can’t shout a cool attack-name at the same time? (If you don’t see the logic in this, you don’t watch enough anime)

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This is what you've all been waiting for, ain't it?


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