DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN Pokémon NOR ANYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH IT! IF I DID, THE GUY WHO CAME UP WITH THE IDEA OF ASH KETCHUM WOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED ON THE SPOT! (GO RED/SATOSHI!)

A/N: Hello! This is my first attempt at making a fanfiction. I honestly have no idea what I am doing, I am just winging it after months of procrastinating the start of it. If you enjoy my story, please leave a review. If you don't, please tell me what I can do to make the story better. Without further ado, I shall let you enjoy (or not enjoy, I won't tell you how to live your life) the story!

Yellow's Sniper encampment, several hundred meters from target base Charlie Tango

The encampment was tinged luminescent green through her sniper's scope. She scanned the area for sentries that might alert the rest of the base to the approach of Blue's team. Her sight settled on the chest of a sentry who was taking a rest against the side of one of the watchtowers. She calculated the distance with a bit of mental math, then lifted the reticule so that the "800 meters" mark was resting on his sternum.

She brought her right hand up to her ear, activating the communicator that acted as her direct line back to the Refuge. A shiver ran down her arm as she brushed the camouflage netting that concealed her. She was lying in a small thicket of trees on a ridge overlooking the target, and the chances of anyone even looking there for snipers were low. Still, it paid to be careful.

"Yellow to Green. I am in position and ready to support our ground teams. I have line of fire on approximately 85% of the target base and my sights are calibrated." A moment of silence, and for a second she thought that Green wasn't going to answer. She swore under her breath and reached for the communicator again, but was cut off with a wince as static flowed through the line.

"Copy…Yellow…there seems to be some… -ference with the li-…" Yellow tapped the earpiece.

"Umm, Green? You there? Hello?"

"sorting it ou-…" The line went completely dead for a moment, then a woman's voice came over through the transmission. "This is Green. Yellow, we copy your status. Red and Blue's team are in position, we are only waiting for Silver's team to be ready. Will advise when they have reached the insertion point. Copy?"

"Copy. Yellow out." Yellow squinted through the sight again, double checking her lines of fire on the base. She could see all the way from the barracks on the far east side of the base to the supply depot in the northwest corner. When Blue's team busted the gate, she would begin putting as many rounds into targets as she could before they took cover. Her grip tightened on the handle of the sniper. This base was just another step on the journey. One day, Red would put down the criminal in charge of all of this. And she would be there, by his side.

Blue's Team, sixty meters from the north wall of Charlie Tango

Blue checked his weapons again. He carried with him two weapons, which he was able to use with a considerable amount of skill. One was a Desert Eagle- style handgun, with which he could put a .50 caliber hollow point bullet through the head of a moving target at 75 meters. The other was a Skorpian machine pistol, with a forty-round extended magazine for extended firefights. For this mission he also carried two pounds of C4 plastic explosive to breach the north gate when Red blew the main gate to the south on the other side of the base.

Red. At the thought of him, Blue shuddered. Once, Red had been a kind and loving person, able to make friends and hold conversation with the most talkative of people. Then that had happened. He supposed that it could be just the trauma from that. They all were affected from that. Anyone who wasn't affected by what happened that night had to be a twisted fucking sociopath. But what happened to Red was different. Everyone else had recovered to an extent, tried to put it behind them. But for Red… Red seemed to have never had recovered from what happened. If anything, he seemed to be getting worse. He was quiet now and rarely interacted with anyone. His room at the Refuge was usually empty, even during the night. On the rare occasion that someone did see him when he wasn't on a mission, he seemed to be fighting some kind of migraine. A few times, Blue had caught him seemingly talking to himself. Even Red's Pikachu didn't seem to know what afflicted him, and it had been with him through most of that night.

After seeing the carnage Red left when he was on a mission, most of the Refugees repeatedly stated their gratitude that he was fighting on the same side as him. Blue didn't share the sentiment. Yes, he was glad that Red was with them, but he felt that there was still too much they didn't know about Red's apparent condition. When Red was on a mission, he would never bring a weapon. Blue didn't know why. Most of the other Refugees had taken up "traditional" weapons after… that had happened. Red, however, refused to touch the weapons offered to him. Apparently, he was well-versed in hand-to-hand combat, something that Blue had never known about him before, although they had known each other for years. When technicians evaluated the battlefield after the fact, the ground was always littered with enemy corpses and hundreds of shell casings, but Red never had so much as a scratch on him.

The radio vibrated silently in his ear, set quieter than normal so as not to alert the guards that would probably be listening for anything louder than a soft thump. His voice was a whisper, relaying the information that he had gathered to Green.

"This is Blue. We're clear on the north side. What's the status of the other teams?"

"Copy that. Good work. Yellow is set up on the south ridge and is ready to engage the enemy. Silver and his team are ready to assault the fortress from the east from the slopes of the mountain and report that nobody spotted them on the way up."

Blue breathed a sigh of relief. Without Silver's team in place, the whole operation could go sideways. "What about Red? Any word from him?" There was a pause, then Green came back, sounding concerned.

"I haven't heard anything yet. It's possible that there's some interference preventing me from getting through, but… I think he may have just forgotten to check in or something." Blue gritted his teeth. Damn that Red! Couldn't he stick to a simple plan? Was he that damaged in the head?!

Blue forced the feeling of disgust down. That's not fair. He's still dependable. He's probably just ignoring us for some good reason… At least it had BETTER be a damn good reason… "Alright, keep your ears open. Tell me when he checks in."

"Roger that. Green out."

One of the things that concerned Blue was that Red was the one who had to "knock" on the front door. If he didn't get it done, the rest of the mission was almost surely doomed to fail.

The strategy was for him to destroy the front gates, and then lead a frontal attack on the enemy. Alone. After thirty seconds, the other teams were ordered to deploy into the fight. Normally, the plan for his and Silver's team was simple.

First, the teams would breach the outer walls of the target. Once inside, they would engage the remainder of the guards not engaged with Red at the front gate. Then, they would complete whatever their mission was, perhaps, for example, securing information about the location of some other bases of greater strategic importance to their foe. Lastly, all but five members of the teams would be extracted via armored vehicle. Those five would be tasked with finding Red. The one problem with whatever Red did when he fought was that he would always fall unconscious. When they found him, he would mumble something about being "out of energy." The doctors at the Refuge told them that he was probably simply exhausted after fighting so many guards. The five would secure him and carry him out of the base to a predetermined waiting place, where they would rendezvous with Yellow and make their way to where transportation waited to take them back to the Refuge.

This mission was slightly different from most missions, however. The leaders inside the Refuge wanted to gain insight on how Red did what he did. There was never any kind of injury on him. He never failed to breach the gate, but he never brought weapons, or even explosives. Because of that, the leaders felt that a different approach to this compound would be appropriate.

This was not a simple raid. The story told to the rank and file soldiers was that it was to secure valuable intel from a supercomputer deep inside the fortress. In reality, the supercomputer was not the target at all. While it undoubtedly held important intelligence, the leaders of the Refuge felt that learning the capabilities of Red's combat prowess was a more important data point to gain from this mission. This location was chosen specifically because the layout of the base would result in any assault on the base to be through a frontal entrance, which would cause a high likelihood of Red and Blue's team coming into contact.

Blue's radio crackled to life. "This is Green. Blue, do you copy? Red has reestablished contact and said he's going in in sixty seconds. Get your team ready. I have a bad feeling about this op…"

"Green, it's going to be alright. We'll get this mission done and get back to the Refuge, all according to the plan. If we just follow the plan, nothing will go wrong, right?"

"I know… Just be careful, alright? I… I don't think I could take it if you got hurt or…"

"Green, I know you've been through a lot of tough shit. Far more than you deserve to have been through in a thousand lifetimes. If me getting hurt will cause you pain, then I won't allow it to happen. That's a promise I won't break, Green."

"…Thanks, Blue… that means a lot to me… that you would make that promise…"

"Alright, we're about to run out of time here. I've got to go bust up some base or something, I'll have to call you back."

"Blue?"

"Yeah?"

"I-I… I l-love y-you…Blue…"

Blue's mind, which had been going over the plan of attack, ground to a halt. His heart skipped a few beats and he felt light-headed.

"Umm… I… I love you too, Green," He whispered so that his team wouldn't hear. His heart was pounding out of his chest, like he had just run a marathon.

"Blue… I know I already said this, but… Take care of yourself in there… Please don't get hurt…"

"Green, I made my promise and I intend to keep it." He checked his watch. "We're out of time. I've got to go. We'll talk more when I get back from the mission."

"Alright…. Green out."

Blue motioned to his squad-mates to ready their weapons. There was no sound as they racked rounds into the chambers of their guns with practiced ease. Gold caught his eye as he checked his own two weapons. The look on Gold's face made it clear he had heard the entire conversation.

"What's your deal?" Blue snapped.

"Nothing, nothing," Gold answered, throwing his hands up in mock innocence. "I heard nothing."

Blue glared at him and flipped him off. Gold chuckled and flipped him off as well. Blue turned away and began counting the seconds in his head. Five…four…three…two…one…

Several loud bangs ripped the night air like tissue paper. Seconds later, the sound of distant yelling erupted, followed by the harsh reports of automatic weapons. The team broke cover and rushed the north gate, moving silently. Even though Red was providing plenty of distraction up front, it wouldn't do to be noticed. The distant, pounding sound of a large caliber sniper rifle made him smile. That's Yellow for you. The shots were as if practiced with a metronome set far too fast to play music to, but he knew that Yellow never missed. Every shot would go through someone's chest or head. The team reached the door undetected.

Blue set the charges on the door. Ruby, the man from Hoenn who was tasked with carrying the detonators, motioned everyone to stand back twenty meters and turn away. The shaped explosives blasted the gates inward with a greater force than if a speeding eighteen wheeler had slammed into the massive steel walls.

Less than two seconds later, a similar explosion to the west of the facility destroyed the west gate. Silver's team was now inside the facility as well. Blue peeked around the corner of the destroyed wall. Several of the guards had been killed by the explosion, and by the way that the doors didn't quite touch the ground he could tell that at least three others had been crushed by the heavy gates.

A bullet ricocheted off of the hinge next to Blue's head. Well, someone had survived the explosion. A pity. Blue pulled his head back and pulled out a mirror to see around the corner. His assailant was a young man in his mid-twenties. The man was carrying an M4 carbine with a night-vision scope. His eye was pressed right up to it. He must be new at this whole night-fighting thing. Blue motioned to Sapphire, who pulled out a flash-bang from her vest pouch and tossed it towards the man, who was sitting behind a wall of sandbags.

Upon seeing the projectile, he quickly dove behind the cover to avoid blindness. Perhaps not THAT new, Blue thought. However, it gave Blue the opportunity that he needed. He broke from cover behind the half-destroyed wall and sprinted to the fortifications, leaping over them and landing behind the guard. The guard, to his credit, did not hesitate for even a second to bring his rifle to bear on Blue. Blue, to his credit, did not hesitate even for an instant to pull the trigger on his Desert Eagle. The guard's head disintegrated into a bloody mash and he slumped to the ground. Blue stuck his head over the fortification and motioned his squad forwards, past the security checkpoint and into the actual base.

Red, South side of the base, five minutes ago

It was almost time to destroy the gate. Red was crouched in a ditch less than sixty feet from the south wall and the main gate. Red checked his watch. Two minutes. He mentally reached inside himself until he found the great power inside of him.

Mewtwo? Are you awake? The mission is about to start, and I wouldn't want you to miss it.

Ugh… child, why do these "missions" have to occur in the middle of the night? I've only just began to regulate my sleep cycle to match yours, and this is simply throwing it off.

Oh, don't be such a baby. I'll make sure we have plenty of time to sleep when we get back.

Yeah, that's what you said the last time we did one of these…

…And did we?

…Yes…

Then we have no issue here. Come on, the fun's about to start! Let's get the ball rolling!

Agreed.

Red felt the psychic energy wrapping itself around him, inundating him with a power beyond normal humans. The psychic power enhanced every part of his being. His strength was greater than that of a Tyrannitar. He was more agile than a Weavile, and faster flat-out than a Rapidash. In addition, it cast about him a field of purple-hued energy that would block incoming projectiles and that he could manipulate to gain the advantage in a fight. Also, Mewtwo could sense things he could not and react through the field.

Red rose out of the ditch, a smile that could only be described as crazed on his face. In reality, he wasn't actually as crazed as his face made him seem. The psychic energy just tended to do that to his face. He didn't mind though- he imagined that it made the enemy scared. And scared enemies were easier to kill.

He raised his arms, and two masses of psychic energy shot out from his hands, colliding with the door. He pulled back one fist, and the energy pulled back with it. He struck again with the energy, placing a large dent in the front of the gate. He pulled back his other fist and struck it again.

At this point the entire base was awake. Alarms blared out warnings to the guards, who scrambled from their bunks to aid in the doomed defense of the base. Red, with his psychic energy-boosted senses, heard the muffled whumps of the door charges and the distant sound of Yellow picking off targets with her long rifle. He drew back both fists and slammed them into the door, causing a crack to appear in the steel. Red's crazed grin widened, and the psychic energy dissipated.

Red dropped into a runner's stance, purple energy coating his body. His whole body coiled like a spring. For just a second, time itself seemed to pause. Red shot forward in a ball of purple light. As Red impacted against the cracked steel door, it disintegrated beneath him as the incredible force coupled itself with the psychic energy, which was eating away at the very existence of the steel around the crack. The gate, which was large enough for two semi-tractor trailers stacked on top of each other to pass through, exploded inwards.

Before the gates even touched the ground, Red felt the impacts of bullets sparking against his "skin". The rounds shattered off of the psychic field around him, but Red knew that it wouldn't last forever- the shield had a limit to how much punishment it could take.

He surged to the right, moving faster than the eyes of the guards could comprehend. His fist shot out, and the combined force of the initial lunge and his punch sent the first guard flying. He landed ten feet away in a crumpled heap and did not move. Red's next blow snapped a guard's head back, knocking him out cold. His foot lashed out and connected with a guard's testicles, crushing the soft flesh. He grabbed the crippled soldier and thrust his knee into the man's head. With the first three down, he surged again using the psychic power lent to him by Mewtwo into the next duo of guards. He grabbed the two of them and crashed their heads together. They collapsed to the ground, unmoving. Four nearby guards out of Red's immediate reach opened fire with their G36 assault rifles, firing 7.62mm rounds at a rate of eight rounds per second. Red dove for the cover of a stack of ammunition storage containers as the protective shield weakened under the onslaught of lead.

He reached to his com link and opened a dedicated channel to Yellow. "Yellow, I'm having a bit of trouble here. Care to help out?"

"Anything for you, Red," came the playful reply. Yellow was the only person whom Red ever talked normally to. Nobody else understood him except her. She seemed to know what was in his very soul, and she was the only one who had ever seen how he fought, half a mile away through the scope of a sniper rifle. He hadn't told anyone except her what was inside of him.

There was a pause as Yellow re-adjusted her scope, then four shots rang out in less than two seconds. The group of four guards was ripped apart by the .50 caliber BMG rounds, each designed to be able to take out armored targets at extreme range. Their body armor, while advanced, was no match for such raw destructive power.

By that time his Psychic Shield had regenerated itself. "Thanks, they almost had me there." Red suddenly felt something strike the back of his shield. He whirled around to see the lifeless body of the first guard- or what was left of it- collapse to the ground, holding a small pump-action shotgun. What had hit his shield was the blood spatter as the man's head exploded.

"You missed one," Yellow said matter-of-factly over the com channel.

"What would I do without you?" Red said into the headset.

"Probably just be dead," came the reply. Red smiled inwardly (He couldn't smile outwardly anyways, as he was already grinning).

The last three guards were in cover behind a concrete wall, crouched to protect themselves from the deadly sniper fire from Yellow's position. Red cursed. They were dug in, and it wasn't going to be easy to take them down. To make matter worse, they stood between him and the objective, the main entrance to the base.

"Yellow, can you get shots on those three behind the barricade near the main entrance?"

"Negative, Red. Sorry, I can't see them. The top of the wall above the gate is between me and them. You'll have to take them yourself." Red looked around for a possible advantage. His eye caught the shotgun that the guard Yellow had dropped was carrying. It was a small device, no more than two feet long. The pump had a handle on a ninety degree angle to the rest of the gun, parallel to the pistol grip. It was designed for close-quarters combat. Perfect.

Red snatched the gun from the dead man's hands and racked a round into the chamber. He took off at a sprint towards the concrete barricade protecting the men. When he was six feet away he jumped towards the four-foot tall barrier, clearing it easily. At the height of his jump, directly over the three guards, he pointed the shotgun downwards. He discharged the weapon directly into the surprised face of the first guard. He landed and turned, racking another round into the chamber and blasting the second guard. He turned the weapon on the third man and racked another round in. Suddenly, he felt the weapon leave his hands. He watched it skid across the pavement, far out of reach. It took him a split second to realize that the man had kicked it out of his hands. He turned back to the man, angry-

He felt the man's fist collide with his face. The Psychic Shield absorbed the blow, but Red was shocked that he had been hit and stumbled back a pace. He lashed out with his fist, faster than the normal human eye can process. Instead of making contact, however, he watched incredulously as the man parried the blow with his forearm, deflecting Red's punch harmlessly into the concrete barrier. The rebar-reinforced two-foot thick concrete wall shattered under the force of the blow.

Red lashed out with his foot, trying to sweep the man's legs. The man jumped over his feet and lashed out with his own foot, connecting with Red's chest. The force of the kick sent Red flying backwards, but he landed on his feet. Red felt a strange rage well up inside of him. No human should be able to follow my movements, but this guy is blocking everything I throw at him! Red's grin turned into more of a grimace. I went through Hell, and this power is my "reward," if you can even call it a "reward". It's not fair that some guy can match my power without having gone through what I had to! Red shot forward again, launching a lightning fast salvo of punches at him. The man dodged the flurry of punches and grabbed his arm as it shot past him, then punched Red hard twice in the chest with his left fist. Red pulled away, the Psychic Shield entirely dissipated. Shit, this guy punches like a freight train! Red stepped in towards him, forcing him to engage in close combat. They fired off punches at lightning speed, their blows similar to what one would have seen from two dueling Hitmonchan, but the agility of the two meant that nothing found its mark. Finally, Red got fed up and lashed out with psychic energy, punching the man hard in the stomach with a purple fist. The man staggered backwards, and Red made full use of his predicament. He landed three blows in quick succession to the man's chest, then grabbed the man by the ears and forced his head down to where his knee was quickly rising to meet the man's face. The man's nose crunched and his eyes rolled back in his head. Red threw him to the ground. He stood there a moment, breathing hard. This was not supposed to happen. Nobody could oppose him for even a second before now. Not in close combat.

Red turned and began walking towards the entrance to the base. As he did so, he did not see that the man who had fought him had risen from the ground, a grenade in his hand. He stumbled forwards, fighting the concussion and the multiple fractured ribs that Red had given to him. As he did, he stumbled out of the cover offered by the top of the gate and into Yellow's line of fire. He primed the grenade and drew back his arm.

Yellow's Sniper encampment, several hundred meters from target base Charlie Tango

Yellow's eye caught movement. One of the men that Red had mentioned was following Red… with a grenade! She took aim through her scope, carefully adjusting for the wind and distance, and smoothly pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Confused, she checked her rifle. Was it jammed? No. The problem was much simpler than that. She had run out of ammunition! She grabbed another magazine and dropped the old one out of the rifle. She slapped the new one in and worked the action, drawing a new round into the chamber. She realigned the sights on her target, the panic rising in her throat. Red didn't see the man, and it was too late to tell him via com link- the man had already primed the grenade and was about to throw it. She smoothly pulled the trigger again. The firing hammer hit the center of the bullet perfectly, igniting the gunpowder and propelling the half-inch wide bullet at a rate of a thousand feet per second towards its target. She watched through her scope as the grenade left the man's hand, already traveling towards its target, Red. A half-second later, the bullet ripped through the man, causing him to spasm and collapse. "Shit," she thought, watching the grenade, "Shit Shit Shit-"

Inside the Southern Courtyard, twenty meters from the base entrance

Red sensed something behind him. He whirled about and saw a small round object flying towards him and he recognized it as a grenade. He lifted his hand and backhanded it out of the sky, sending it flying over a low wall to the left of the barracks building. He heard a muffled whump as it went off. That's strange. I would have thought that a grenade of that size would have been louder. He looked back to its origin, and saw the man from before in a mangled heap. He opened the com line to Yellow. "Nice shot," he told her. "It's a clean kill. You save my sorry ass again."

"Well, that's my job, isn't it?" Yellow sounded a little flustered.

Ten meters west of the barracks, seventy meters north of the Southern Courtyard, Blue's infiltration team, two minutes ago

Blue and his team moved silently towards the Southern Courtyard, where Red was apparently still keeping the enemy busy. Blue and his team had dispatched several teams of guards along the way, but they had not suffered any casualties. Blue's com link buzzed. It was Green. She was back to her businesslike self. Blue smirked. She knew how to keep her cool during a mission. It was one of the things he had long admired about her.

"Blue, come in. Yellow reports that Red is still in the Southern Courtyard. This is our chance to get intel on how he fights. You need to get to the courtyard as quickly as possible."

"Roger that, Green, I'll get it done." Blue switched off the com link before she could say anything else and motioned for his squad to increase pace. They half-jogged to the end of the building, where a low wall separated them from the courtyard.

Blue took a few steps back, then prepared to scale the wall by jumping and climbing over it. Just as he was about to start his run, an object came flying over the wall. Blue recognized it as s grenade. He caught a glimpse of the timer. 01.93. There wasn't enough time to grab it and throw it back. Time seemed to slow down. He dove onto the grenade, shielding his teammates. The blast threw him several meters. He landed face up, staring at the floodlights that gave illumination to the area. The stars are so bright tonight. He heard Green screaming into his ear, but the sound was a million miles away. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't make it back… His eyelids touched as darkness enveloped him.