Can I try this?
Put the pieces of a saga together and make it good for the masses...?
Three weeks later...
"Sir, has the financial district called about our defense funding?"
"Negative. They're still pending their approval..."
"Aren't you worried about that threat, sir?"
"You two will do fine. It's the only door in and only door out. Just make sure the targets don't get in the base with every fiber of your body, you hear?"
"Yessir!"
Two grunts, both clad in retrograde armor saluted their passing higher class officer, who nodded sternly and walked into the building they were guarding. It's not the best form of watch, but since their armor has adapted well with taking bullets and Pokemon moves, they'll do until the Base can get the necessary funding.
Not their fault they always get robbed by some assassins.
"Hey", the guard on the left of the door suddenly started after several minutes of standing under a spotlight got boring,"I'm gonna go take a smoke break."
"Are you serious? What if I get attacked or killed?" his fellow argued, scratching an itch on his leg.
"You got on armor..." was the reply before the grunt walked away, leaving his partner to do the dirty work. When the grunt got a significant distance away from the light, the grunt snarled before reaching up to his face...
And taking off a mask.
"I really hate this thing..." The face of a teenager was left behind before the 'grunt' got shorter and less stocky, leaving a skinny male in overgrown clothes. Peeling them off, he cracked his aching bones before tightening the scarf around his neck.
"Let's see here..." From his pocket, the teen pulled out a box which-when he pressed the middle indentation-glowed a bit in the dark and showed a map of the infrastructure of the Base he just walked away from. Stolen, as he had not had this earlier.
He scrolled through each floor design, skipping past the vast armory they contained, the room where they contained their stolen loot and the command center where each Admin and Base Leader was seated amply for an ambush. These guys were stupid, figured the boy, as he finally touched his target.
"Hmm...The GPS room...located 640 meters below ground...third room to the leftmost corridor...fifth hallway down from the elevator..." As he plotted, he failed to notice the grunt looking around for him in his six. He looked closer at the map for a specific thing in the room he marked before he jumped when,
"Hey Tom, what're you doing over there?" The grunt had found him and was advancing slowly, as if he was getting suspicious. With a smooth move as if taking a hit of his cigar, the teen put the stuffy mask back on and turned back to his disguise. When his hand pulled away, he had a black cigar in hand.
"Smoking." With the grunt's 'voice' he responded.
"Why was your armor off? Someone coulda shot you, stabbed you or worse!"
"There's nothing out here but nature."
"Even nature can be deadly."
"Mother Nature can suck a huge dick." The 'grunt' took another hit of the cigar and puffed out a thick, grey cloud of smoke that blocked his partner's vision and made him cough.
"O-okay...Just walk with me to th-the door at least...[Cough]Don't feel like trying to get in trouble with how the Boss is."
"I hear ya." The grunt made sure his armor was on right before he threw the cigar away, walking with his 'friend' back to the front gate. What they failed to notice was the cigar burning out and turning into black ash. While they walked, the disguised boy pulled out a gun and silently cocked it. It was one of those Old Age pistols where you'd need gunpowder, but modeled with an actual clip.
"Hey John, can you look at this thing in my hand real quick?" Tom asked, pointing the weapon at his 'partner'.
"Look at wha-"
[BANG!]
When John's body hit the ground with a thump, his murderer sighed. "These grunts never cease to disappoint me with their amassing stupidity." Tom then proceeded to tear off the armor again, keeping the mask on as he walked back to the gate on his own.
Going off to the door within the grated doorway, he slipped in quietly. No sooner that he did, the alarm in the Base sounded. He knew that they would immediately be alarmed by the gunshot, so he had to move quickly before the search party got roused into work. Slipping into a door, the young man found a stairwell leading down. The elevators would be a no-go as he heard the repetitive dings of them reaching the main floor.
He jumped in-between the cases, scarf flapping above him as he kept his limbs from touching any part of the stairs. Should he at this momentum, he'd break something. With a tuck-and-roll, he landed at the bottom of the stairs and strafed off to the side to avoid being seen by possible onlookers. Hearing nothing, he looked around before proceeding.
The hallways were more geo-terrain than high tech like other Bases, so the satisfying lack of footfall noises both soothed and tensed Tom. His destination was a few meters ahead according to his map box and he'd soon have the infor-
[Bzzzzzzzzt!...Bzzzzzzzzt!] He jumped at the sound of his vibrating phone in his pocket, covering his mouth to avoid yelping. Grabbing the suspect item, he looked to see he had a text message from...
He opened it with a heavy heart:
Please come back...
Knowing very well this will never stop, he replied with:
I'm sorry, Kuri...I'm justified to my decision. I'm not coming back.
He didn't get an immediately reply like usual, so he traversed further into the breach. His target room was actually cracked, showing signs that its previous occupants left in a hurry because of the alarm-whose lights were still flashing-going off. Before he could step in however, the elevator some ways away dinged, making him grumble before hiding behind some cardboard boxes.
Yep, they'd never look there.
Tom waited for them to come around, as he expected them to. His prediction wasn't off by a longshot. "...idiot John got killed by some assassin, you say?"
"Yep. We don't make bullets like that and the Boss wasn't down there to tell anyone to clean up the mess he made. Had to be an assassin." The voices of he workers of the Base sounded like trouble. Only when Tom peaked out from a hole on the side of his hiding spot did he realize that it was only deep-voiced scientists heading back in the GPS Room. He sighed quietly to himself, thinking it was over.
The buzz-buzz of his phone changed that.
"You hear that Jim?" one of them said, looking around as they were right in front of the door.
"Sounded like it was coming from..." Tom quietly panicked now as he pulled out his phone, checking the message while putting his phone on silent mood.
Fine...Be that way Seje...
How many times do I have to tell her that I no longer go by that name? It died with my gift... He hated receiving texts from her as they were blatant reminders of a life he ran away from after recovering from a bad fight.
But his mind was drawn away from that as the scientists were shuffling the boxes he was under to look for a possible cause of the noise. The cardboard items thudded across the floor, making his heart beat adrenaline to his systems for yet another fight-or-flight situation. When only his box remained, perspiration leaked down his face and stained his shirt.
When the box was grabbed, he pulled out his pistol to fire it at them...
Only to feel stupefied when he was interrupted by-
"Oh wait, here it is." From the sounds of it, they seemed to have found an object that could have made vibrations from the boxes. Tom's box was left alone in the long run and the sound of the GPS Room's door closing made him relax. Slightly. He still needed to get in.
"Great..." Seeing that a new way in was needed, the teen climbed out from under the box and looked around the hallway. The door didn't have windows, so he couldn't look in for anything. Although, those vents above him were calling out to him...
"Like I said, grunts are stupid." Only little time had passed, but a chain of events happened as Tom looked around in the GPS Room.
One, the vent had been booby-trapped when he got above the room.
Two, the scientists also tried to kill him with guns of their own.
Three, he killed them. Both. In one shot. Seriously, you'd think they'd split up for advantages.
Putting his smoking barreled gun into its holster, he walked up to a giant computer. Dials, nodes, buttons, levers, switches, cranks and all sorts laden out for a keyboard booped and beeped at him as he looked for the right function.
"Uh...there." At random, he pressed a purple button and the bodies of the scientists suddenly disappeared from trap doors. Well that happened.
"Hmm...Maybe it's...this one?" A lever, colored blue on the handle, was pulled down without a second thought. The room was suddenly sprayed with smoke, making Tom cough violently until it went away with some hastily-deployed fans from another random lever.
"S-shit...[Cough]Let's try not doing that again..." Looking more carefully, he pressed the big red button. A digitalized hologram of a computer monitor spawned in his face, Tom sighing in relief at the sight before the keyboard followed. "Finally. Let's begin."
Cracking his knuckles, he began typing on the keyboard, filling the search bar with a name.
S-I-N-A-R-E-M-A-N|A-S-H-F-O-R-D
The computer buzzed, turning red on color as a message displayed. "Error. Subject terminated."
Good, less hassle for me. Now let's see for the others...Looking behind him to make sure the door was still being protected, he typed in another name.
K-O-R-A-R-U|K-I-N-O-M-O-T-O
Unlike last time, the monitor glowed green and displayed a global view of her location.
"Zoom." It got closer, homing in on the Almia region.
"Zoom." Going in, it displayed over a city.
"Zoom." Finally, it showed a figure hanging her feet off a building with someone behind her, clad in red armor as it rained on them.
"Hmm...It seems no matter what happens, they'll never stop being together...Good thing I didn't need to type in Chris's name-that shit's a mouthful." Tom commented, erasing the entry and getting rid of the live feed in the process. He went on to another.
S-I-N
Just like Sinareman, nothing but the red screen and message displayed for the teenager. "Hmm? Sin's AWOL too? What happened to him? I'll have to find out later..."
Then, he type in a name he's grown to really feel sickened of seeing.
K-U-R-I-M-O-C-H-O|K-I-N-O-M-O-T-O
The computer went green and once again, Tom was given an orbital view of where she was. Before he could ask to zoom in on it, however-
"Error: System Failure. Please try again later after system reboot."
"Wait, wh-?" The whole building shook from something rocking against it. It wasn't an explosion...more like a...blast...
Oh God, please don't tell me...Unable to use the computer to check, Tom pulled out his map cube to check what was going on upstai-
"Of course he would come and ruin everything I planned...This took a whole week to gather, dammit!" Said map cube was thrown to a wall and broke into pieces as the only live person in the room stalked to the stairs, throwing up the door to the GPS systems. It wouldn't matter if he snooped or not, but he wouldn't care at least down here. The sounds of explosions finally went off above him and Tom couldn't hold back an exasperated groan. No doubt who's up there is making quite the ruckus.
Ascension to the main floor was limited by the amount of detours he had to take, but he managed. Despite all the setbacks, he hid in the darkness and looked for an easy route to the main floor.
"Intruder alert! Intruder alert! GPS Room compromised! Available personnel report to GPS Room for investigation!" From the sounds of it, someone or something had checked down there finally and saw the blood he failed to clean. That won't matter now; he's long gone. Tom moved from his hiding spot and tried heading to the noise of combat. What he did not see was the invisible figure that just swiped at where he once stood...
Finding the commotion was easy; gunfire and random explosions can do that to you. Trying to find a well-covered spot to hide wasn't much so. A concrete divider became his temporary solitude as Tom ducked to it, hopefully remaining out of sight. Thankfully, the line of fire wasn't turned to him.
Peeking out, he was given the rundown of the situation. Everyone that had a gun in the building was busy trying to mow down a single target: a 19-year-old male. He was dodging and slicing at every bullet, making it look like child's play. Every once in a while, something shiny would fly out of his hands and one of the gunmen would go down with something lodged in his throat.
He's been improving his aim...Tom figured, getting back down after a stray bullet almost hit him in the head. He would return fire and lend a hand if: he cared or if he wanted to be caught and mowed down. Maybe he should go. The boy clearly had the upper hand with the lessening number of gunshots. Praying to a god he didn't know, Tom looked at his left hand, seeing a dim outline of a tattoo on his palm. He exhaled slowly and focused on it, hoping to drown out the noise behind him as he tried to call in on his dying power.
Strain appeared on his face, a vein throbbing on his forehand and sweat pouring like rain-or at least that's how he felt- down his eyes and chin as he tried to will his palm to glow. Around when his efforts were at their peak, the dimmest shine of light appeared on his hand and Tom struggled to keep it lit. It began glowing brighter, making his hiding spot a bit obvious as he tried to work out what he had.
Thrusting his hand forward, Tom was surprised to see that he did not teleport-like he was hoping. He instead caused a short-ranged blast of energy that made a loud crack against the wall in front of him.
"Dammit..." he cursed, seeing that his powers were really dying out to the last morsel. Maybe he should have left immediately he thought of it instead of announcing it to her. When he finally relaxed, he noticed that it was quiet around him and the gunshots were silenced. Had the young man finished while he was trying to focus?
"Well, well, well-" Maybe not. "-if it isn't Se-"
"Finish that deduction Hazako and I'l blow your brains out."
Tom got a scoff in return before he stood up to face his unfortunate speaker. What he saw made him think Darkrai or even Giratina was his idol in terms of dress. Black shirt, pants, shoes, shades that covered his eyes, hair, mask; everything about as ebony as a void. The only thing that stood out amongst the black was the tanned skin of his face. He even had the audacity to wear gloves. Lobeless, of course.
"I'm sure with how you are now Tom,the chances of you doing that are next to nil." Hazako countered, showing off a spare kunai he had in hand.
"What do you want?"
"I didn't want anything. I saw a light and decided to see where it'd lead. Wasn't expecting the traitor of the Guardians to be here."
"Bullshit. If I know her as much as I can, she sent you here to try and take me back."
For a split second, it looked like Tom had figured him out as Hazako seemed to fumble with his next statement, but it was only a glance. "No, she didn't. She wanted me to target this Base on my own because she's aware of just how much of a hero I am to the group."
"You are a nuisance."
"An awesome nuisance. Who, by the way, is actually blessed by My Lady's gift. Unlike you, traitor."
One thing hadn't changed from Tom though; he still seemed to be able to draw pistols almost a nano-second above 0. "I don't like repeating myself. I'm not a traitor."
Hazako chuckled at the sight of the weapon in Tom's hand, almost looking to just outright guffaw. "Dude, that thing won't even touch me. You forget, I'm a ninja. Ninjas don't get shot at point-blank. Or shot at all for that matter."
"Oh please. The only thing you're good for as a ninja is running and hiding from a fight." Tom suddenly found his neck in danger of being stabbed with the sharp point of a kunai.
"Trust me...I don't run away...unlike you, Seje."
"I keep telling you that's not my name anymore."
"Why not? Ashamed of what you ran away from?"
Trying to turn my words against me, are we? "I ashamed to have ever been cooperating with you ever since you became a part of the Guardians."
"Guardians of Awesomeness." Hazako reminded.
"They're just Guardians now. You ruined them. I saw Kora and Chris. They look miserable."
"They are on a mission to gather intel for Arceus so that we can prepare the Hall for any attacks."
Well that had Tom. At least they aren't just moping around. "What about Kuri? Sin? Adam, even?"
"You don't need to worry about them. All you need to know is that I've made the Guardians better without you and I don't really see why My Lady wants you back. We're better off without you anyway so-"
"Stop." Suddenly, a voice called out from behind them, at the door where the entrance to the Base was. At that point...
Was Kuri. In all of her emotionless beauty.
"I do believe that you've said enough Hazako."
"But-"
"It's enough." Her stern voice made him shrink away, the kunai being removed from Tom's esophagus. Then, she held out her palm to the other speaker. "Put down your gun."
"I'm afraid I still need it if pretty boy here tri-"
"Put. It. Down." Tom only stood there, turning away before he found the gun wrenched from his hand without warning and forcibly turned back to Kuri.
"That was rude of you."
"It was rude of you to look away when someone's clearly talking to you." she replied quickly. Her hand began to glow.
"I was done talking anyway. Nothing important going on. It's just you."
"Oh, it's just me? That's rich. I'll talk with you more when we're back in the Hall with you in protective custody."
"I'm not going back Kuri. I'll will not change my mind." He readied to turn away, but found his face being held to gaze at her.
"Did I say you had a choice? Willing or not, you're going back. You know too much and you owe too much to suddenly run away." Her eyes glowed and Tom suddenly found himself being pulled towards her against his will.
Fuck...he thought. How was he gonna escape this? He couldn't move his arms, but his legs are free. Not like it mattered. He looked down to his feet, seeing the pin of something near a dead Team Neo officer. Acting as if he resigned his fate, he looked back at Kuri with a stoic gaze. She merely humphed before pulling faster.
Finding that his rouse worked, he acted quickly, kicking the pin from the body and, seeing that it belonged to a tactical grenade, tossing it up to his hand. Before she could react, he tossed it to her with the pin off, watching as the room suddenly flashed in a strobe of light. Glad he was used to sudden shifts of brightness and that Kuri's focus was broken, Tom dashed off to his gun, scooping it up in an instant.
"Hey! He's getting away!" Hazako suddenly called, rushing to stop Tom from leaving. Right before he could grab him with a hooked claw attached to a chain, something crashed against his family jewels, making him double over in pain. "B-below the belt tactics...C-c-cowardly bullsh-shit..."
"It works." Tom replied before leaving the Base through a spare window. Escaping into a tree several meters from where he just left, he watched as the strobe finally ended.
All I have to do now is wa-
His thoughts were interrupted when the Base suddenly exploded outwards, sending its outer structure to the surrounding wood and trees. He covered his eyes as the dust reached him as well. After a while of being in the dark, Tom opened his eyes to see that there was nothing left of the Base from where it once proudly stood. The only remains were of the main floor, where Kuri and Hazako stood unharmed.
A third figure lifted out from the rubble, being protected by a shield of light. There was light dots flying above the figure's head that look like...
Bits...So the intruder was Adam...? That seemed to be true as the almost pale skin of his adopted sibling could not be mistaken. He went over to his companions and they began to talk. Tom then noticed a tablet in Adam's hand.
"Hmm..." He looked at it with thought before shrugging and dashed off into the darkness.
Kuri's face was not the impassive and stoic one Tom tried to stare down. It was one of remorse and forlorn. "I'm sorry My Lady, but...he got...away..."
The frustrated voice on the line was not at all amused at this. "Kuri, I don't care if he's unconscious on the cold, hard floor! I need him in this Hall now! I don't care what you do, just get him here!"
"Yes, My Lady." The buzz of the Comm. meant that the angry Alpha Pokemon had hung up. The Psychic sighed, holding back tears as her Lady's words hurt her a lot. Hazako stumbled over to her, having succumbed to the results of going all-out all at once.
"It'll b-be okay Kur...We'll get him back..." he told her, holding her arm as encouragement.
"I don't know at this point..."
At that point, though, Adam decided to add his two cents. "I have doubts that we can take him willingly. We'd have to do it by force...altogether."
"I know that, but those two won't help us take him back...They think he'll come back on his own..."
"Eh", Hazako interrupted, "I'll get him back. Woulda had him if Kuri didn't sho-"
"Finish that statement and I'll cut your dick off."
"...Noted..."
Well it looks like Kuri has officially become a badass. She almost killed m-
I mean Tom...Y-yeah Tom...
Tom has defunct from the Guardians, there's two new ones and the others are in disarray. Why does Arceus want him back so bad?
Is it really out of info...or something more...?
Find out in the next chapter of WGBM: Book 2-Fallen Heroes.
Moncheli!