Chapter 3: Armor and Snow, White as Bone

Two of the men lay in the snow, their armor partially yanked off their bodies, one curled into a ball and the other howling in pain on his back as he cradled his broken arms on his stomach. A third figure crouched over them, searching the devices on their belts intently. With a sigh, he stood up, cradling a simple cell phone as he examines the smashed remains of their weapons. A few beeps ring through the icy air, a woman's voice comes through, cut off by Nicholas's:

"Can you track my position? Two Pokémon poachers are down at my mark, send Rangers. Poachers are neutralized for the moment," he barks, grimacing at his wounded jaw. Using some rope from the men's belts, he tied them to a tree, ignoring their pained protests.

"Sir, I,"

"Just do it!" he snarled, tossing the phone into the snow as he sprinted toward the vehicles the attackers arrived in, his body curling down to pluck his staff from the frost. With a grunt, his hand went to his ribs, his knee hitting the fresh snowfall. How...? That was...extreme, never met somebody that strong. Note to self, avoid her," he half-thought, half-mumbled, climbing atop one of the snowmobiles and gunning the engine, disappearing into the blowing snow as he followed what was left of the trail, ominous black clouds obscuring the mountains in the distance.


The trail soon was buried by the coming storm, but this proved no hindrance to the visibility of a massive grey structure in the valley ahead, being below the coming clouds. With a pair of binoculars pilfered from the vehicle's supplies, he observed the behemoth, the people around it dressed in the strange white armor numbering more than a dozen. "Too many to rush, and I'll never pass for one of their goons..." he muttered.

He ditches the vehicle, leaping down the steep slope and using the snow to keep his acceleration steady, a plume of the frozen rain concealing his body from prying eyes below. With a resounding thud, he hit the rock, his legs contracting and then springing forward with practiced ease, a blur of motion darting for a nearby boulder. "So...far...so good," he panted, peeking from around the rock to see two men guarding the entry to the massive thing, their bulky weapons at attention; he'd never get past them intact. Up close, he could also see a quartet of large ducted engines flanking the vehicle, as well as something else that chilled him far worse than the approaching blizzard: a symbol, emblazoned on the side, the black and white flag of the long-dead Cipher. Cipher, the plague of Orre for more than a decade, Cipher, the organization that would have brought even the League to its knees at its height.

How? he wondered, before fury replaced his bewilderment. That's why Lethe fled; she was used by them! he realized, his senses sharpening with the anger and plucking a route into the vehicle from his vision almost instantly: a side door, still open for maintenance, an unarmed and unarmored technician using it as he sat smoking a rather old-fashioned cigar. Perfect.

The poor soul never saw the kid coming, an elbow smashing his head into the armored plating of the massive airship, follow by a punch to the kidney that was enough to put him down. Nicholas dragged the man inside, ducking into a maintenance room to hide him. He left the door unlocked, not desiring necessarily to torture him, as he poked his head around the corner ahead, the airship a maze of steel hallways and darkened rooms. A dulled alarm sounded, the entire ship seeming to come alive around him as the entrance he used slammed shut automatically. "Yeah, yeah, I get it, can't turn back, danger ahead," he deadpanned, the sound fading quickly into the thrum of the engines nearby.

Refocusing, he began to move down the hallway, crouched and ready to pounce as his heart pounded inside his chest. Ahead, a few signs and a map, sparingly marked and clearly meant for the crew, adorned the otherwise-bare walls: "Asset Containment", "Armory", "Hangar"...The signs gave him pause: while Lethe, and other captured Pokémon, were probably in containment, getting himself killed wouldn't help, and the armory was bound to have armor. And a gun...maybe, he thought queasily, carefully moving toward the correct room.


He stood in the room in solely his shirt and pants after stripping off his outer clothes and stowing them in his travel pack, debating his options. As expected, spares for the plain white armor of the poachers- who appeared to at least be working for Cipher at the moment- were abundant, as were handguns, knives, and special weaponry, like those used on Lethe, he presumed were for subduing Pokémon.

But, one box continued to catch his eye, marked for arrival only a few days prior and labeled as restricted access. Inside, he had found a black suit, trimmer than the white armor but feeling much tougher in his hands; even the cloth of the suit could not be pierced by the knives he tried on them, and the paint on the plates refused to budge. Probably experimental armor, meant for the commanding officer I met earlier, he reasoned, pulling it out as he opted for survivability over blending in. To his surprise

The suit was a near-perfect fit, its fabric contracting flawlessly. Plates covered his chest, groin, shoulders, and limbs in pieces that shifted over each other smoothly, while a thick collar covered his neck without encumbering it. The entire suit, including the helmet now cradled in the gauntlets, refused to shine in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the room, a smooth charcoal finish leaving it sitting like a physical shadow. He shuddered; the armor was clearly designed for lethal, stealthy efficiency, like a monster from a nightmare crossed with a machine.

He slipped the form-fitting helmet over himself, a tactical display coming alive on the helmet's visor with vital signs, maps, radar, more information than he could process. He wished for it to leave- and it did. They...they did it? he realized, accidentally pulling up records he recognized: newspapers, dated years ago, efforts by researchers to map the mind to a machine remotely, to facilitate human-Pokémon communication. They failed...but Cipher must have made it work...Shaking off the shock, he called up a manual on the screen, skimming it before arriving at a portion summarizing enhancements over previous designs:

"The Mark IV Single-Operator Force Multiplication System, or SOFMS, is capable of remote transport, described by technicians as an upscale variant of Pokémon storage technology, allowing for field operators to blend into local populations more effectively. In addition, the System is equipped with first-generation shielding, based upon the energy barriers that have long been thought to be the source of Pokémon's incredible durability to energy attack. Tests indicate resistance to small-arms fire and kinetic impact, though heavier shielding was deemed unwieldy for suit usage due to excessive power consumption. It is recommended that, before deployment, suit operators review the full manu-"

Nicholas was cut off by a loud bang on the door, the computer replacing the manual with the original tactical interface as he reacted to the threat. Throwing his pack over his shoulder, he hefted the staff in his right hand and clipped a strangely-shaped pistol off the wall to his hip, eyeing the door warily. It opened, and he fired for where the legs would be-except no bullets flew, only a claw that snapped onto a very surprised grunt's leg. Shaking off his own shock, he smashes aside the grunt's submachine gun, driving the butt of the weapon under his helmet and cracking his jaw, the grunt being knocked up before being yanked to the ground by the cable. Scrambling for his sidearm, his last efforts are ended with Nicholas's boot smashing into the unarmored part of his knee joint, the gun sent flying from the spasms of the poacher's pain. Unfortunately, he was not silenced:

"Intruder in Sector Alpha-3, all decks, intrude-" he screamed down the hall and into his helmet, before being silenced as he was tossed into the armory behind its thick armored walls.

And in that moment, Nicholas's newly-acquired helmet showed movement-everywhere. "Dang it," he grumbled, stowing his new pistol and hefting the staff as he ran, glancing at the map as he passed it on the way to his goal. More grunts seemed to be everywhere, his staff stained from chips of paint and blood from smashed noses as he fought with a desperate fury, two of them around a corner forcing him now into a corner with raised fists, his staff behind them. "That all you got?" he growled, lunging with cupped hands and driving into their throats simultaneously, parting them without stopping as he gripped his staff and used their moment of distracted choking to flee, stopping in front of the door and slipping in at last with a sigh of relief.