Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Storm Warning-Part 2 ❯ Chapter 15

This story contains scenes of explicit sex, naughty words, and other horrible, offensive things.  If you are underage in you house, village, town, city, community, state, province, country, or continent: READ NO FURTHER!  If that type of thing offends your tender sensibilities, or you are stupid: READ NO FURTHER!  All characters are the copyright of their respective creators and/or owners; no copyright infringement is intended by this story.  Any resemblance to people, places, or situations alive, dead, or otherwise is purely coincidental.

 

Chapter 15

That Evening

 

Tank left the hotel dining room, limping slightly and stifling a yawn, as Gourry and his crew of Pokegirls continued to eat and squabble with one another. Where do they get the energy? He wondered as he rubbed at his gritty eyes. Washu's super stamina revitalizer had been of great help that morning in his…reeducation of Asuka and Kodachi, even if it tasted like crap, but now he was starting to feel the full effects of his exertions. There'd definitely be no Taming sessions that night!

 

“Tank!” Tank looked up to see his Alpha hurrying up to him.

 

“What's up, Washu?”

 

“Oh, not much. There are just a few things I wanted to talk with you about before you go back to the room.” Tank frowned a little at that, but obediently followed the red-haired Pokegirl as she led him to a small rec room that was currently empty. After sitting down on a couch far away from the door, Washu began speaking in a low voice. “Don't show any reaction, Tank. I've got a few…surprising things to tell you.”

 

“OK,” Tank replied equally quietly. “What's up?”

 

“Earlier today I detected some interference in my equipment so I started looking for the source. It was coming from within our room and when I checked things over there couldn't be any doubt. Our room's been bugged.”

 

Tank felt his face tighten up and he worked hard from showing any emotion. After a minute's silence he let out a breath of air and rolled his shoulders, his hand automatically reaching up to start rubbing at his short, blonde hair. “Well…That's not good. Do you think it's the same guys who jumped us?”

 

“I can't be sure,” Washu admitted. “But it's pretty high tech stuff. Not as good as what I could make, of course-“

 

“Of course.”

 

“But not too bad at all. There are both audio and visual sensors.”

 

Tank's brow furrowed as he tried to think over what he and his Harem had talked about in the room, but it was difficult to say. “Well then, I guess they got quite an eyeful and earful this morning, didn't they? I don't think we've ever mentioned the…you know. But I'm not sure.”

 

“Me neither,” Washu's green eyes flicked onto her owner's. “I think it'd be better to leave them in place, Tank. I've only found them in our room and if we remove them…”

 

“They might be replaced by something else. Yeah, I got you. `Better the Dark Lady you know than the Widow you don't,' huh?” Tank quoted the old saying, causing his Brainiac to nod in agreement. “All right, we'll leave `em. I don't like the idea of somebody snooping on us, but…” Tank sighed. “Let's not tell the others. I'll try to conduct any talks we need to have in other places. We'll only use the room for…”

 

“For nonverbal communication?” Washu asked with an arch smile at her Tamer.

 

“Not tonight, Washu,” Tank groaned, all of his muscles feeling tired and sore after the hours of Taming earlier that day.

 

“What? Do you have a headache or something?” Washu's high-pitched laughter rang out at her own joke as Tank shook his head in surrender.

 

“Anything else?” He asked his Alpha after her laughter subsided to light chuckling.

 

“A couple of things. First of all the training with Gourry, Lina and the others seems to be going better than expected.” Tank had set up the practice sessions between the two groups after seeing what talents the others had. Besides eating that is. Today he had had to mostly leave them to Washu as he had been otherwise occupied and had only caught the end of their practice session. “Lulu says she's learning a number of new spells from Lina, although some of them may be of limited usefulness due to the…zone of destruction they cause.” Tank raised his eyebrows at that, but the Brainiac went on. “And Gourry has been teaching Ryoko and myself quite a bit of swordsmanship. Whatever he may lack in brains he certainly makes up with his skills with the blade. Also, Naga was asking about Kodachi, she's seems to have taken quite a shine to her. She was disappointed to hear she wouldn't be training today.”

 

“Well, they can get together tomorrow,” Tank commented. “I talked with Gourry…Well, Lina, really. Anyway, we arranged to meet again for more practice.”

 

“What time?”

 

“10:30; I figure we can get in a few hours of work, break for lunch and go at it again in the afternoon. We'll be having a Gym Battle of some kind soon enough, so I want us at our best.” He looked up at his Alpha frowning face “What's the problem, Washu?”

 

“Well, remember what I talked to you about a couple of days ago? About where Kodachi Evolved?” Seeing her Tamer nod, she went on. “Ruri and I finished looking over the data while you were…busy this morning. There's definitely a vein of Dark Stones running through that area.”

 

Tank was silent as he thought things over for a few minutes. “OK, you and I will pay a visit to some of the different mining companies tomorrow morning, bright and early. We'll see what we can negotiate for this information.”

 

“I'd really like to get some Fire Stones,” Washu reminded him.

 

Tank nodded, but said; “I know, Washu. But I think money's going to be more important. Actually, if we have time before the training starts we might as well get some shopping done tomorrow too. Also, we need to drop Miluska and Eila off at the central PokeCenter.”

 

“Ah, so their language training will be starting tomorrow?”

 

“Yeah, it'll take a couple of days. Hopefully, we'll have finished the Gym Battle by then so we can get out of here.”

 

“But where to next, Tank?”

 

Tank smiled at his ever-curious Alpha, “Now that would be telling, wouldn't it?” He thought she deserved that after her `headache' crack earlier.

 

Shortly After 9 am the Next Day

 

Yawning, Tank stepped out of the stairwell and walked over to the hotel's front counter, Washu just a step behind him. A full night's rest had mostly restored his strength, but he still felt a little tired. Dropping his key off to the Pokegirl behind the counter, an Ingenue he would guess, Tank asked, “We should be back in an hour or so, but if we're late could you ask a Mr. Gourry Gabriev to wait for us? We're supposed to meet here and he may ask about us if something holds us up.”

 

“Mr. Gourry Gabriev? Is he the Tamer with the long, blonde hair who carries a sword and has the…eccentric Harem?” The clerk asked carefully.

 

“Yes, that's him.”

 

“All right, Mr. Tank. I'll give him the message if you're delayed.” The teenager smiled his thanks and began to walk away, but was quickly called back. “Oh, Mr. Tank! Please wait a moment!” When Tank stepped back in front of the counter, the blushing Pokegirl handed over a note for him. “I'm sorry, but this note came for you last night, but you had the `Do not Disturb' sign on your door.”

 

“OK, thanks.” Tank took a few steps away from the counter, then unfolded the note to read what it said. Washu watched as her Tamer's eyebrows suddenly rose sharply.

 

“Tank, what is it?” She asked, slightly concerned by his reaction.

 

“Take a look,” the muscular Tamer handed over the note to his Alpha. “It looks like we've got a Gym Battle coming up in a few days. And a Level One fight at that.”

 

Washu whistled as she looked over the message that confirmed Tank's Gym Battle with Harem Master Goto had been accepted. “I wonder why he took it?”

 

“Who knows?” Tank answered, a tight grin on his face. “But now we've got a good reason to train extra hard!”

 

Washu shook her head and sighed, “And I wanted to work on a few experiments too…Oh well.”

 

A Little Over an Hour Later

 

“This will have to be our last stop,” Tank told Washu as they walked up some stairs to the rather small office of the Gash Gouging Mining Corporation. “Otherwise we'll be late for our training with Lina and the rest.”

 

“Somehow, I don't think they're all that worried about punctuality,” Washu observed dryly.

 

“True,” Tank laughed as he thought over the various antics of that unbelievable group of Pokegirls and their Tamer. “But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be.” Further conversation was stopped as the pushed open the door at the top of the steps and entered a rather dingy office. A large, fat man sat huddled behind a desk strewn with numerous pieces of paper. Most of them seemed to be complicated contour maps and even more of them were tacked onto the walls around the table as well as scattered on the floor.

 

“Yeah?! Whaddaya want?” The man asked loudly after removing a well-chewed on pencil from his mouth.

 

“Hi, my name's Tank and I've got some information I thought your company might be interested in,” Tank began again for the fourth time that morning. All of the rest of the mining companies had expressed little interest in what he had had to say, so he was hoping this wouldn't be yet another strikeout.

 

“Information, huh?” The man scowled and reinserted his pencil to chomp on it for a bit before finally indicating the dusty seats in front of his desk rather ungraciously. “All right, pull up a chair, kid.” Tank and Washu quickly sat down, the Brainiac's eyes swiftly sliding all around the office, her keen intellect recording and analyzing everything she saw. “So…Whaddaya got?”

 

“The location of a vein of Dark Stones,” Tank slid a print out over to the fleshy miner. On it were the readings Washu had recorded; proof of the existence of the Evolutionary Stones, still underground. She had of course kept out any information that might allow someone to pinpoint the location without their help.

 

“Dark Stones, eh?” He leaned over the readout and began to examine it closely, only pausing at one point to replace his chewed out pencil with a fresh one. Finally he pushed the paper away slightly and settled back in his chair with a grunt. Lacing his fingers over his belly that was threatening to split his shirt in two he looked Tank over keenly with his dark eyes. “Well, it's a load line of Dark Stones, right enough. So what's the deal, kid?”

 

“We'll give you the location for 10,000 credits and 5 Fire Stones.”

 

“Ha!” The miner guffawed so hard he blew chips of wood from the pencil all over his maps. “What're ya nuts?!” Shaking his head he leaned back onto the table to explain the facts of life as he saw them to the teenager. “Look, kid. Dark Stones are valuable and kinda rare up here, no doubt about that. But how the hell don't I know the location ain't too dangerous or expensive to extract `em? Or the land ain't owned by some other joker?” Again he shook his head, his jowls swinging in counter point to the motion of his skull. “Nah, I ain't no sucker.”

 

“But you're not exactly raking in the money at the moment are you?” Washu pointed out, her eyes drifting over the dilapidated condition of the office. “So do you really have much to risk on taking a chance with our info?”

 

The miner frowned at what looked like a child with bushy, bright red head sitting in front of him. “Who da hell are you? And why should I give two damns what ya think?” He bit down so hard on his pencil that it broke in half, making him swear even as he reached for another one.

 

“Her name's Washu,” Tank answered coldly. “And she's my Alpha.”

 

“Alpha?! That little slip of a thing is a Pokegirl?! And an Alpha?!” When Tank nodded that he was right the fat miner began laughing uncontrollably, his face turning bright red as a result of his amusement. Tank and Washu had received a similar reception at the other mining companies they had visited, so they simply sat with a good show of patience until the laughter eventually dwindled to wheezing gurgles. “So, so some punk Tamer with a punk Alpha comes in here with what they say is the location of a vein of Dark Stones and I'm supposed to believe `em? How come?”

 

Tank gritted his teeth in an attempt to hang onto his temper, “Because, fat man, my Alpha is a Brainiac and knows more about science than this whole town put together. Got it now?”

 

“Brainiac? Never heard of `em.”

 

“Well, why don't you pull out your Pokedex and look it up?” Tank suggested with deadly patience. “Or are you doing so badly you had to pawn it?”

 

The miner frowned at that, stung by an insult against his company as he hadn't been by a personal one. He did, however, yank open a desk drawer to produce an old, battered Pokedex. Flipping it open, his chubby fingers quickly began typing to produce the information he wanted. The office was silent and only a few sounds drifted in from the street outside while the miner read. Eventually he closed it with a sigh.

 

“All right, maybe I misread you two.” Pulling himself out of his chair with a grunt he offered Tank his hand. “My name's Douglas. Joe Douglas.” After a quick, firm handshake the two humans sat back down again, the miner's chair creaking in protest against his weight. “And yer right, Red,” He added with a tight grin toward Washu. “My business ain't been so good lately. A couple of Feral attacks, some Pokegirls down sick, a bad storm that flooded and collapsed a shaft…Bad luck, I guess. So, yeah. These Dark Stones would be a real help for me. Now I got a question fer you two. Why'd ya come to me in the first place? I ain't exactly top drawer in the mining companies here. So why me?”

 

“You weren't the first place we stopped,” Tank admitted frankly. “And a couple of the other companies were interested, but…Things didn't work out.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Most of the other companies are stopping operations for the winter, except for some local work,” Douglas nodded his head in understanding. It was standard procedure as winter work was too dangerous and expensive in the Great White Continent to be worth the trouble. “So some of them were willing to pay us for the information after they confirmed it. In the spring.”

 

“And I guess ya don't want to stick around that long.” When Tank nodded his head, the fat miner looked him over before asking carefully. “Ya in trouble, kid? Law after ya?”

 

Tank's face tightened, “No, I've just got places to go. And I said my name's `Tank.' Not `kid.'”

 

Douglas just smiled and leaned back in his chair, chewing vigorously on yet another pencil as he thought. “All right,” he finally suggested when the silence had stretched out for several minutes. “How about this? We'll make ourselves a nice little contract. You give me the location, I'll give you 1,000 credits.” When Tank opened his mouth to protest he stopped the Tamer with an upraised hand. “Just take it easy, kid. That's like a down payment, see? I'll send a team out to confirm it, stake a claim and so on. They tell me it's legit and accessible I'll give ya another four grand.”

 

“How long would it take?”

 

“After they get to the site? One, two days maybe to check it out and let me know.”

 

“How about the Fire Stones?”

 

Douglas looked pained, “Well…As I said, business ain't been so good. I don't got so many on hand.” He thought things over, then asked. “Ya don't want to be here for the winter, I got that. But are ya planning on staying on the Continent?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“OK, whaddaya say to this? Same deal as before: one thousand now plus four more when it checks out. Add in a Fire Stone with the four grand and one more in say…three months. I'll have more…flexibility then and I can have it transferred to ya through a PokeCenter or courier. How's about it?”

 

Tank pursed his lips, his eyes flicking over to his Alpha. Washu's eyes were innocent, but he could see her fingers flashing down below the level of the desk. “All right, but let's make it three more Fire Stones and two thousand extra credits in three months.”

 

“Huh? Ya been hangin' out with a Scarecrow or something? Getting funny dreams, kid?!” The fat miner snarled, banging his fists on the table, but a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. Tank and Douglas argued back and forth for several more minutes before they finally shook hands on a deal. 1,000 credits were sent to his account right then as he gave the miner the information he needed. After his team confirmed what Tank knew was true, the Tamer would get 3,000 more and a single Fire Stone. By the end of the year, after Tank had let him know where he was staying the winter, Douglas would send him a final thousand credits and two Fire Stones.

 

“Crap! We're late!” Tank complained as they hurried down the steps outside the office.

 

“Don't worry, Tank. Everything will be fine!” Wahsu tried to reassure her Tamer, but he simply urged her to greater speed, anxious to begin their training in order to get ready for the match with Gash's Harem Master, Kiichi Goto.