Physically Impossible
By Saliaven Chronotis
Chapter2:
Amorphous Advancement
Duplica blipped over to a piece of ground directly
under her airship, followed closely by the others. Rats, she'd
hoped that the unknown location of her gym would stop them from
following, and she could beg ignorance later. But of course, they'd
followed her magical trail, which she'd forgotten in her haste to
diffuse. For all her outgoing bluster, she was actually a very
private person when it came to her personal life. Oh well, they
wouldn't recognize most of what they saw, and it wasn't like she was
changing in front of them. Going from someone else to her was
quick enough no one saw much, and she'd been lucky to find places to
change appearances otherwise where no one would see.
The airship was warded so teleportation was
impossible inside without the ship clearing her. Not wanting
anyone to know it was possible at all, she pulled out her remote and
lowered a ladder off the outer rail. With strength and speed not
her own, she ascended, followed by Gary. Ash, Misty and Pikachu
couldn't change their strength at will, and chose other means to follow
at speed. Ash cast a minor expulse and shot himself up to the
rail, grabbing on when he reached it. Misty simply floated up and
landed on deck, while Pikachu had ridden up on Ash's shoulder.
Since biometric data could be slapdash, Duplica's
back door could only be opened via psiprint. As it turned out,
this was a much faster and safer way than any other method, as it
activated the moment she turned her mind towards it, and only she
could do so. She had already learned that mindprints were very
difficult to forge, and she was confident that she was the only mortal
who had come even close to doing so. It led to the parts of her
gym she had never taken anyone but her pokemon to see, and for good
reason, it was the business end of her non-League affairs. “Be
very careful to follow me at all times.” She said.
The hallways were a Spartan metal, with no
decoration other than its natural color of chrome. None of the
doors were marked, since she’d built this place herself, and wasn’t
about to forget where anything was. This gave her a distinct
advantage over anyone trying to move around in her private quarters
without her knowledge, and her current entourage was forced to stay
close behind, since she’d also run the whole thing through with a
mixture of hidden doors, curved passages, and doors that led back to
themselves. It was also a matter of course that she led them
around by one of the more circuitous routes before entering the room
she kept most of her analytical gear. The base of the hair was
scanned, and a mini disk was eventually spit out of a machine across
the room, which she took. Another room housed some of her
holographic simulators, which took the disk and brought up a 3-D image
of Duplica currently in the center of the room. The imager was
fed with the amount of time she wanted to add, and soon it replaced the
current Duplica with a teenage version. She walked around it, as
the others made similar arrangements to see the entire thing.
Turning around, she asked, “what do you think?”
“Nice” Misty said “you certainly have a future if you want it.”
Duplica giggled “why, thank you. I think I’ll stay the way I am
for now, its not fair to the rest of you, and I think I’m cuter as
is. Now, I’m afraid I can’t let you leave the normal way, since
I’ve got some things to do that require my immediate attention.”
The other four had barely enough time to register that before she
pulled a lever and the floor dropped out from under them. “Have a
nice day.”
When they hit the ground, Ash said quizzically, “Duplica really has a
lot of technology up there. I’m surprised she built all of that.”
Misty shook her head, “nothing about that girl surprises me anymore.”
Author's note: I will never describe much about the airship gym.
It's up to you, if Duplica has a flying ship, what do you think it'd
look like?