My name is Gray, and I am a soldier.
As the job description puts it, I am a part of humanity's last stand against the creatures we once called friends - the Pokemon - now just monsters that are to be feared, reviled, and killed if sighted within a mile-far radius of any human populace.
Pretty much.
Thinking back on it now, my first outing with the Johto Defense Army's Goldenrod Unit very nearly could have been my last, but because of one particularly important detail, it would be wrong of me to begin my story anywhere else.
At the time I was still a cadet, and as part of my training a commanding officer was to oversee my unit while on a mission to collect invaluable resources for use back home. It was basic, everyday stuff for a JDA, but it would be our fifth time out on the field so it wasn't such a big deal. I guess.
Strangely enough, there was nothing foreboding or at all auspicious about that day, which I had come to dread in the weeks leading up to it. On the contrary, because civillians are not allowed to leave the cities I was deeply fascinated by the scenery which, before becoming a soldier, I had only caught glimpses of in stories told to me by adults, who once took basic things like freedom and the beauty of nature for granted.
"Crazy how a place like this can be so dangerous," one of my squadmates - Len, the class joker I guess you can call him - commented, and I thought he had a point: the 'fresh' aromas of the forest air; that of ripe berries and rich unfertilized soil far removed from the prevailing stench of Goldenrod City's severe smog, or the gentle sound of a narrow brook rushing over loose pebbles in the distance hardly seemed like the scene of a bloody battle between man and nature.
As usual with these missions, I wanted to doubt the truth of the world, but to do that would be to disregard everything I had been taught growing up.
Before I could get too engrossed in the sights and smells, our field commander suddenly held her hand up, calling for silence as we approached a small clearing.
"Put your visor down, Len, there are targets up ahead. Everyone, stay alert."
Massive and hulking, covered from head to toe in light brown fur but colored white and forming a tight ring at the center of its chest, we encountered an Ursaring that had climbed halfway up a tree to reach for a Combee hive.
"It's hide could be used to make coats for the upcoming winter, but not very good ones if it's all shot up."
After scanning over us for a bit, she signalled me out. I stepped forward with a sigh.
"Yeah?"
She narrowed her eyes at me.
"I mean, yeah ma'am?"
"I hear that you're the best sniper in the unit. If you can take this guy out in one shot I'll believe it."
I wanted to object outright because like any sane person I was not altogether comfortable with having a wild Ursaring be my first live target. However, she was right about me being the best shot in the class, so if anyone was going to do this, it had to be.
"Fine, I'll do it."
The rifle I brought with me is an old piece-of-shit model that I nevertheless swear by because it once belonged to my father, when he was a Sargeant of the Johto Alliance. Holding it brought back memories of when he would take me and my brother to the park and have shoot at tin cans, always from a little farther away than last time.
He would always promise us that one day we would understand why the blisters and ringing ears were worth it. So in a way, whether or not we would become a soldier was never a choice for me and my brother growing up, but holdin his rifle then - aiming it at the head of an enemy - I couldn't bring myself to do it.
"Remember, right between the ears. You've got one try, so make it count."
But what was my justification? It's something that had been weighing on my mind lately.
I had a perfect shot lined up at the back of its skull, but still I hesitated when a pair of Teddiursa rolling around at its feet caught my eye.
Are they the enemy too?
I asked if we should eliminate them as well, to which the commander responded by flashing a hand symbol. All tangos, roger. Even the defenseless children.
"On my mark," the commander started to say, but then fate shat all over everything.
"Get it off me! It's clawing at my eyes, get it off!"
To my left Len was suddenly screaming, clawing at a Spinarak that had fallen down from a branch to land squarely unto his unshielded face.
Alerted to the noise, the Ursaring turned its head and glared at me, then let out a roar that rippled through the treetops.
I fired a shot on impulse but it spiralled into mama bear's chest uselessly, only serving to make it angrier.
"What kind of flimsy shot was that, cadet? Are you trying to get us all killed?"
With a scoff the commander punches the Spinarak off of Len, whips out a pistol and shoots it until it's nothing more than a puddle of goo. As for Len, his face was scarred and bloody, the skin around his eyes seared pink from highly concentrated glandular acids.
"My eyes! I can't see anything!"
The commander, unfazed, points forward. "Now we're really up a creek. Everyone, move!"
The Ursaring charged at us, snarling as it flailed its clawed arms with killing intent.
"Everybody move! Split up and fire at it from all sides!"
"But what about Len?" I asked, but it was too late.
She yanked me out of the fuzzy torpedo's way not a second too soon, so close that I felt its warm breath and the displaced air almost knocked me off my feet as it thundered past me.
Being that he was still incapacitated by the Spinarak's attack, Len was not so lucky.
Really, really not so lucky.
The Ursaring slashed him from the shoulder down across his chest, tearing through the armored fabric as if it were made of paper. Then, while sponging the multitude of bullets being fired at it, Ursaring shoved Len with such force that he was sent hurdling into a tree, and to the ground he crumpled as limp as a forgotten marionette.
At that point I lost it, and without thinking joined the others in showering the burly bear's back in bullets.
We all continued firing until our cartridges ran out, so the barrage ended with a series of loud clicks and weighty exhalations, as we waited for the smoke to clear.
The Ursaring, needless to say, was completely dead, as it first fell on one knee then completely collapsed facefirst; the trees nearby decorated with smoldering bulletholes and awash in fresh blood. This was aa abrupt and repulsive departure from the peaceful serenity of before, but at least the two Teddiursa had fled the scene long ago.
Run, little bears. Run far, far away.
I made a move toward Len, who remained motionless with his head drooping, bleeding out profusely with his back still pinned against a tree.
"Len, are you-"
"Gray, to your left!"
With only a barely audible sliver of a growl for a warning, I felt something heavy clamp unto my arm.
When a Granbull that had snuck up on us during the chaotic battle clenched its jaws around my right forearm and started shaking, I knew that his was a death grip, and no amount of mere struggling would free me. Pretty pathetic.
I watched in horror as strings of my flesh uncoiled and splashes of red colored the writhing Pokemon's face, as its razor sharp teeth pierced my Figy fiber gauntlet with incredible ease.
I cried for help but the rest of the team did nothing, shyly obeying the commander's stern order to lower their rifles.
"Think fast, Private. Like you should have when I told you to take that thing down in one shot," she indicates the bullet-riddled dead Ursaring.
Suddenly it felt like I was being punished. The commander was just a shadow spectating off to the side amidst a sea of standard issue titanium helmets with visors, black fireproof jackets, and triple reinforced Scizorite boots. The makeup of those that were my friends and allies, so long as orders permitted it.
In thinking about the gear we were outfitted with, though, I was reminded of the combat knife tucked in a hilt under the right fold of my jacket.
As my vision was beginning to grow blurry, I made one final grab for it and what happened next took place across several heartbeats, although with the pain and my latent desperation, it seemed to last much longer.
There was the soft plunk of the knife as I plunged it into the Granbull's skull, followed by a surprised yelp right before its life left it, and the frantic air that followed as squadmates rushed to bat it over the head with their shock batons until its jaws finally unhinged. That is, all of them except for the commander, who remained standing at the side watching with her arms crossed, wearing a cold frown.
"Call in a med evac team," her voice echoed, "and two of you stay with him while the rest of us push forward. We're running out of daylight and still have nothing to show for it, people!"
Len was on the ground lying in a puddle of his own blood, and I had little doubt he was dead as a plank even though, I realized, much like this pretty forest, if I'd stayed a civillian I would have never been allowed to witness the aftermath of a monster attack.
Turning my head to assess my own damage, I instantly regretted it. Go figure that seeing my arm reduced to nothing more than a sickeningly shredded, twisted, half-eaten thing failed to raise my spirits.
Why did I have to question my orders? Because of me, Len is dead...
As the pair that was left behind laid me down in a tuft of dewy undergrowth and started spraying me down with Super Potions, the entire world began to darken and close in around me.
Losing blood...too much blood...
The vile odor of spilled gore overwhelmed me, and so did the surges of pain coming from the phantom remnants of my gnarled limb.
I should never have become a soldier...
No amount of medicine could help me now, as I lay there shaking, gasping, pleading internally to an arbitrary higher power that I might see my father, my mother, even my dickhead brother, my someone one last time, but my final wish did not come true.
Save me, please...
So it was that I died jaded, impaled with finality by the bitter stinger of divine indifference.
And to think, that was only just the beginning...