Well, life tackled me down and basically mauled me. My apologies. Hopefully the longer chapter will partially redeem me, for any readers who're still sticking around.
Chapter 28: Casualties
Surveying the area around a small, single-story house, Shadrach held his right paw up. The gear of the other soldiers clanked slightly as they halted and pressed themselves into the shadows of the current building they hid against.
"That it?" Jul asked as he chambered a round in his rifle.
"Yeah." Shadrach eyed the rather plain, rectangular building right out in the open. He could envision the interior in his mind's eye from reviewing the floor plans over and over and over again. He owed it to his squadmembers, especially Din, to not have a single casualty in the operation. But despite its relative simpleness, there was still a high chance of someone getting injured.
"He's gonna pay for what he did to the Army," Levina said aggressively. "Just lead them and turn tail when we strike. What a coward."
Din looked out depressingly at the house. "Are we going to stack up-"
The crack of a gunshot caused them to take defensive measures. Three of them dropped on their stomachs; the other two knelt down and sighted their rifles in, ready to dispatch any threats that came their way.
None of their preparations were necessary. Hardly seconds after the first shot, several louder reports cracked in response to the first. The next thing they knew, rounds were cooking on both sides of a gunfight.
"What's going on?" Nuwai asked, not daring to move even a bit.
"Looks like we got some opfors at the entrance of the village," a voice said into their headsets. Shadrach immediately assumed them to be their Skarmory overwatch. This has to be good for them to break radio silence. "But hey, what, they're both wearing the same uniform, an-"
"Cut the chatter, Tack," a more senior voice chided. "There are about thirty tangos and eight pickup trucks, technicals with fifty cals in the back. From what we saw, one of the insurgents at the gate held up the trucks before he and the driver got into a confrontation of some sort. Next thing we know, another 'mon in the back of the truck shot the guard in the head. Now they're in the middle of a fight of some sort. Both of them are wearing the same uniform, and we don't have any infiltration missions currently underway in this area. Advising that you approach with caution."
The first Skarmory pitched in again. "Yeah, like what Overseer said, they're in some mighty pissing match, and we have no idea-"
"Quiet, Tack. But yes, we don't know whether these are insurgents or something else, or why they're killing their own troops right now. Keep careful. We'll keep you posted on their movements. Out."
Shadrach frowned as he tried to analyze the situation. Why would the opfor stage an attack on their own, especially in a nondescript place as this? Even though Tamsus was a rouge organization at best, its members were above backstabbing each other, as much as he hated to admit it. It could be the locals who had dressed up as insurgents, though the main issue with that was that it was those who had pulled up who had started the shooting. Then, the ones in the pickup trucks could possibly be an outside group fighting for the village back-
A great explosion arose from the opposite boundaries, flames of the fire licking the dark plume of smoke rising upwards. Shadrach felt the heat of it even though he was half a mile away.
"They're torching the buildings!" Tack exclaimed. "They're going from house to house and burning them down!"
Overseer made no attempt to temper his partner's commentary. "The arrived insurgents are destroying everything bit by bit. It looks like they're searching for someone." Shadrach heard the loud whistle of wind in the headset. "Arceus, if you're going to carry out this mission, do it now! We can't shift around the darkness forever! They're going to see us!"
The Umbreon grunted in response, clearly noticing the strain in his contact's voice. So apparently both sides had malign intent, meaning that he couldn't rely on either. The suggestion that they were "searching for someone" briefly reminded him of their target, but he dismissed the idea immediately. Why would they want to search for him, anyways?
"Shadrach." Levina pointed at the building. "Are we going to do it or not?"
"Give me a minute to think."
Levina's rebuttal was cut short by a spurt from the headset. "Shit, I think they saw us!"
"Shadrach, now or never!" the Ampharos said heatedly. She reached for the shotgun strapped on her back.
He shook his head in frustration. The time flew by too fast; he couldn't analyze or think or do anything, he noticed, but physically act on a decision. "Alright, let's move it," he said quietly, rushing out into the small space that distanced their shelter and target.
"Stack." Shadrach stopped short of the door, instead looking behind him at the three others who had came up behind him. Levina had stealthily moved to the other side of the door. Her shotgun was leveled at the rusted, discolored doorknob.
"Three," he said.
"Two."
"One."
The shotgun lurched back as the buckshot rounds reduced the wood around the doorknob to dust. Shadrach entered first, sweeping his rifle muzzle right to see if any threats were ready to complain about their entrance. There were none to be found, so he immediately trained his sights on the doorway leading into the next room.
Within ten seconds the Special Forces 'mon were already sneaking up on the next room. This one appeared to have someone in it; Shadrach saw the faint glow of what he assumed to be a computer screen.
"Flash bang," he whispered, "whenever." Nuwai pulled the pin from one of the long, thin grenades and immediately threw it into the next room, angling it off the the wall adjacent to the door in order to get it deep within the room.
Hardly a millisecond after the ringing explosion, Shadrach rushed into the next room, immediately sighting in to see a Nidoking behind a Protect barrier. He started to let the bullets fly after switching to automatic.
Nuwai decided to take the aggressive route. She flew in fast and hard, trying to use a Dragon Rush to break the barrier. The attack succeeded at first, blowing both the thin barrier and half the wall to the right to pieces, only for the Nidoking to readjust his position and form another one right after.
"Hold your fire!" Shadrach yelled, rushing at the Nidoking as the others ceased attacking. I need a pattern, he thought as they grew larger in his vision. In, out, in, out...
Now! As the Garchomp surged back and the Nidoking Protected again, Shadrach lunged forth at the barrier, shadowy shroud enveloping his entire body. The Quick Attack gave him the timing to slip right in front of the Nidoking before he Protected once more.
"Nuwai!" he roared as he pressed a blade to his throat. The dragon complied, surging down and landing straight on the Nidoking as Shadrach quickly moved back. Despite the poison-type's strength, Nuwai had the advantage of surprise, and was able to quickly force his arms behind his back.
The Nidoking offered little resistance to the rough treatment. Instead, he only turned his head to look up at those who had assaulted his home. "What business do you have with me?" he asked plainly.
"You know damn well what business you have with us," Levina said. She drew a long, rather hazardous-looking syringe from her pack. "To be honest, this is going to hurt the least, considering all that you've done to us."
"All that I've done to you?"
"Don't play dumb. You're responsible for the blood of everybody who died in Riyaq."
"Riyaq?"
She gave him a hard right punch. "Arceus, how dumb are you? I-"
"Levina, the injection," Shadrach reminded smartly.
"Oh." She looked at him a little sheepishly before giving her syringe a sharp stare. "Well, now..."
Before she could position her needle, a voice from the computer squawked. "Command, we're getting slaughtered out here!" someone yelled over the speaker. "They sent all special attackers! We can't hold for much longer, Lyall! Are there reinforcements?"
"Keep going," the Nidoking said to a microphone fixed to the table, much to everyone's surprise. His gaze was fixed on the screen, what Shadrach observed to actually be a large number of camera feeds. Some of them showed 'mon stuck in firefights; others were completely blacked out. All of them, though, indicated that the defense was obviously losing.
"They're too good! All of our Light Screeners are dead already! We're trying to flank their side right now! But I think that if we get that damn Typhlosion we'll be fine! He's the one tearing through us!"
The Nidoking, in a mighty show of force, broke easily from Nuwai's grip and seized the mic. "Wait! Don't attack him! Don't-"
"What the- why is he glowing white? He's glowing white, and now he's on fire, and he's charging, oh Arce-"
A deafening roar later, all that poured from the speaker was a static hiss. Shadrach looked outside a window to see a giant corona of light arise from the buildings half a mile away.
"Holy shit," Tack reported over the headset. "There was this 'mon down there who looked like a Ho-Oh from hell who just streaked down a path all bright and shit! He got like ten 'mon in that blast, Arceus knows how many civvies, everything's on fire, and-"
"We advise that you get the fuck out of there, Alpha Team. The defenders are not going to survive for much longer," his partner said more directly. "But we're not leaving until you are. We're trusting you with out lives here."
"I read you," Shadrach tersely said. Their safety wasn't the the main thing preoccupying his mind, though. What he had just heard was far more intriguing: an extremely powerful Typhlosion who supposedly ripped apart several defenders with some overpowered attack visible from that far away. He didn't doubt for a second that something like that could rip any of them to shreds in an instant.
Perhaps their safety should be a priority, after all.
He turned to look at the Nidoking. The poison-type suddenly shoved past them to the door. Nuwai made an attempt to arrest his movement, but seemed to restrain him with the force of an infant.
Shadrach and Levina exchanged glances before the former raised his rifle at the poison-type, who was almost out the door. "Halt."
"For what? For you to shoot me? Why don't you let me go and kill him? If you don't, I'll have no choice but to kill you first." He turned around to give them a hard stare.
The Umbreon tensed at the threat before gripping his rifle a bit harder. "Really."
"That Garchomp is strong, but I broke her hold on me like nothing. That megalomaniac of a Typhlosion gave me enough experimental drugs to stockpile a hospital or two," he said disgustedly. "Some of them work, like enhanced speed, but others? Mutations at best." He raised his lengthy tail to reveal two fins spreading from it, much like Nuwai's. The next moment, to Shadrach's utter disbelief, it extended and struck through the plaster wall right next to his head. "But I won't kill you. That is not my goal tonight."
The Umbreon stared at the tail right next to him, well aware that it could have punched his head out if it had moved a foot to the right. He hadn't even seen the damn thing...
"Wait," Levina said carefully as the purple tail withdrew. "If you're so damn powerful, why are you out there with them defending?"
He gave her a simple look. "If you knew that you were under the command of a mutated, deformed, hideous beast, would you still follow him? Would you still trust him with your life?"
"Point," she said, obviously not expecting a cogent response. Then: "You are Tamsus, right?" Arceus forbid if they hit the wrong target...
"No, no," he said in response. "I am Tamsus, or... well, I wish I no longer had the honor of bearing that tarnished name. They just feel that my service and duty are..." He smiled wryly. "Not required any longer."
"And they are attacking you why? What the hell's going on here?" the Ampharos protested. Shadrach gave her a quick nod. That's right. Keep him talking.
The Nidoking smirked. "They're attacking me because they don't like me anymore. They don't appreciate that I grew Tamsus from its infancy to the great institution it was years ago. They don't appreciate the leadership I supplied, the insight I gave. They've turned to someone else they think more 'worthy' of praise, someone-"
"So wait," Din said, shoving Shadrach aside. "You're responsible for Tamsus existing. You're responsible for killing everybody back in the Drakes. You killed them. You killed them all, everybody I know. And then you killed a few more in Riyaq, just for kicks! Why, I-"
Jul caught the Vaporeon as he lunged forward at the poison-type. "Din, control yourself," he said calmly, although his conflicted expression belied any possibility of actually being "calm."
"But-"
"Hold on. I don't want to put a Leaf Blade in your back."
"He killed them!" he exclaimed hysterically, throwing a fist into empty air. "He killed Talal! He killed Ward! I'm going to beat that motherfuck-"
The Leafeon looked at Levina. "Do you still have that tranquilizer?
Din stopped moving for a moment. He glared at his brother as he fell limp in his hold. "Fuck you guys. He's responsible. He killed our friends, and you're going to stop me from getting him? What the hell, Jul? The fuck is this shit, Levina? You're going to tranquilize your own squadmate but not your enemy?"
"There's a time and place for everything, Din," Shadrach said with a gesture of his paw. "Now is not the time for anger."
The Nidoking looked out the door for a minute. The horizon was no longer black, but tinted a faint yellow. He whipped his large, purple tail up and down, still leaving them all especially wary of him. "Now, if I could defend myself," he said with a slight chuckle, not turning back to face any of them. "I was not at Riyaq that night. A slight misinformation campaign, wouldn't you know it? Of course, no intelligence officer would have cared. No, my name has gone absent for far too long."
"Name?" the Umbreon asked guardedly.
The poison-type turned his head. "Wouldn't you know it. Would you believe, for example, that I am - well, was - second in command of Tamsus? I'm sure none of that information came up at all; I'd be surprised if anyone outside of your intelligence department knew of it."
"What the he- second in command?" Levina asked. "What fresh bullshit is this?" Shadrach simply narrowed his eyes, trying to remember if there had been anything ever brought up about a second-in-command of Tamsus. He thought hard, but no memories surfaced.
He shook his purple head sadly. "Yes, second in command. Before any of you were even military-ready, I was the one who your government sought to annihilate. I even felt a little proud to be in your nation's newspapers as the number one. But that Typhlosion, that Aiden... what a bastard."
It hit Shadrach then. That presentation the Luxray gave all the way back at FOB Archer how long ago? He had held up two cards, one of which was a Typhlosion, the other a-
"So you're him! The last two in the deck!"
He smiled in response. "Yes, the last two in the so-called deck. Isn't it so peculiar that Aiden is the only one you encountered? The only one the Halcyian Defense sought to target, until you accidentally ran into him? He was the one in the crosshairs, and yet he has done more to cripple us than actually help."
"Crosshairs? What crosshairs? We never had policy targeting you two." Shadrach immediately caught himself from going further. Shit, did I just really reveal that to a Tamsus insurgent?
"So special, and yet so naive. You will see, Umbreon, you will see." The Nidoking watched unperturbed as another explosion ripped farther out in the city. "I'm honestly surprised that they have not arrived yet, but that's fine. It's more time for talking."
"Some rather special units have had a bounty on Aiden for quite some time, and ignored little old me. A shame, I know, but there are reasons. Wouldn't you find it strange, for example, that in the space of three years, Tamsus lost what it took nearly two decades to occupy?"
Shadrach tensed, but said nothing. The fact that the Nidoking could kill any one of them at once was not something easily removed from his mind.
"You probably know that we were a very powerful force. I can see the veteran look in your eyes. You fought us when we were in our prime, and when Halcyia was actually a nation mobilized for war. We used to possess a quarter of the entire nation, even going as far as to institute our own government and economic system! We were going to teach the Halcyian government that they couldn't support minorities one day for their own agenda and dump them on the wayside the next! Do you know that's how they got all of that international aid decades ago? They portrayed us in the south as starving and poor, and as soon as they got the money, those politicians just spent it on themselves! I wonder, do you know this, or do your history books not teach that?" he asked. A tinge of anger colored his otherwise unemotional voice.
"I know nothing of the sort," the Umbreon replied. He didn't care too much for the discourse, more focused on trying to find a gap in the Nidoking's movements so he could attempt an attack on him.
"Of course they don't. Let the good deeds be heralded and the bad let go and lost. You wonder why you have a rebellion, an insurgency." The poison-type caught himself. "Well, not an insurgency until now. Twenty years ago, you could have called it a civil war. You privileged Halcyians had the technology and hardware, but we had the strategies and tactics."
He sighed and shook his head. "But Arceus, that all crumbled. Could you believe that one 'mon was responsible behind all of this? Aiden and his damn ambitions?"
Shadrach perked his ears at this.
"He was some young commander who rose up the ranks because he was good as what he is: a manipulative bastard. He apparently didn't like the way I was leading Tamsus, through superior strategy. No, he was a young bastard, a newfangled technologist. He wanted weapons that would rival theirs instead of outwitting them, the idiot. Unfortunately, many of our recruits were also young, so they bought into his argument. I held my water with the seniors and veterans, but they all eventually died, no thanks to Halcyia, and the brainwashed became our new insurgents."
"Alpha Team." Their headsets crackled to life. "The defense has been annihilated," Overseer said somberly. "They're going door to door now, torching every building they come across now. At the rate at which they're coming, there's three or four minutes left before we exfiltrate."
"Wait," Shadrach barked back at him, causing the Nidoking to halt. "What do you mean, exfiltrate? You're gong to abandon us?"
"Frankly speaking, if they get there, you all are dead. There's too many of them."
So we're stuck between a homicidal group of insurgents and a ranting maniac of a general. Great.
"They didn't give a damn about what atrocities he committed in the lab or how many of Arceus' laws he violated; all they were obsessed with was using superior firepower to 'win' back their rights. At that point, what rights could they even have? Aiden bastardized the government, making a dictatorship out of a direct democracy. We lost any citizens we could even had hoped of influencing."
"The only 'redeeming' quality I had with the insurgency was the fact that I was a founding member, so that was the only reason I was put on equal footing with Aiden. Of course, that meant my policy didn't have its fully effect. Aiden may have been good at manipulation, but his strategy was absolutely terrible. His little series of troop movements and attacks created the vacuum that allowed Halcyia to regain and strike out at us. Look at Riyaq. We lost that city because Aiden hadn't deployed an extra brigade there two days ago when he should have! A moron! An Arceus-damned moron! A blithering idiot!"
In his anger, the Nidoking burrowed his tail into the floor. As it drilled into the earth, Shadrach shot the others a look and flipped his rifle's safety off. All of them crouched to attack-
"All because of Shadow." The phrase caught Shadrach so surprisingly that he tripped into the ground when he leaned forward.
Not that it would have helped. Once the Nidoking saw Jul flanking to his left, the tail came up impossibly fast and belted the grass-type in the stomach. It dispatched Nuwai as well, striking her in the chest and sending her crashing into Din.
"Shadow," he repeated as if he had noticed none of what just happened. "The mystical weapon, the surefire path to success. Oh, what fools were they to buy into that! The poor, poor fools. When Shadow reaches its peak, they will have no idea what hit them. Hell, the world won't know what to do."
"Wait," Shadrach said, curiosity suddenly aroused by the subject. He had returned himself to a standing position, albeit after his face burning for what felt like forever. "What peak?"
The Nidoking's eyes flashed. "Do you really wish to know?" he asked solemnly.
Shadrach debated mentally. It wasn't part of the mission plans; it was a direct action, not intelligence, not to mention that they were hardly minutes away from being incinerated by hostiles. But an apparent defector was offering him what was obviously game-changing data, and he could not help but naturally be interested by the subject. His trustworthiness was questionable, but everything he had said up to now appeared to be the truth. Besides, he was being tracked down by his own organization, meaning that he has nothing to lose by releasing the information...
He nodded once.
The Nidoking sighed and walked back into the other room, path unobstructed by any of the Special Forces soldiers. He returned with a disc encased in a jet-black case. The casing read, "Ein File S."
"This is all the research I have performed regarding Shadow. Most of it was stealing Aiden's papers, I must admit; I understand little of what is contained in there. Well, that is, if I remembered it."
The Umbreon stared cryptically at him.
"As soon as I compiled the disc, I had a psychic-type friend (who is dead now, sadly; Aiden murdered him) wipe my mind of anything related to the subject. If he found the disc, it would be encrypted beyond hope; he would have simply given up. Back then, I was afraid of Aiden catching me and finding a way to terminate my position. Now, that is a naive thought, as I sit here waiting for my own men to capture me. Or that's what they hope, at least. I will give them a rude awakening."
"Hey, hold up," Levina said as Shadrach took the case from him. "If you got your mind wiped, that means that you don't remember the password."
"That would be correct."
"How the hell are we supposed to get the data off the disc?"
"Ah, that. Well, there is a little I remember that may help." He opened his mouth again, only to close it when a bright white light filled his door. An explosion followed as pieces of mortar and brick rained down on the ground before them.
"They're converging! Get outta there, dammit!" their headsets buzzed. "You're not gonna last!"
The poison-type bowed his head. "Well, friend, the time comes. As for the disc, there are hints." He smiled humorously, as if it was all a giant joke.
Then his countenance turned gravely serious. "You had best be leaving. Your mission objective is to capture me, and I am sorry to report that it is a failure. The next best thing you can do is get yourself out of this alive. Your Skarmory overwatch has the right idea."
Shadrach growled. "How did you know that?"
"It happens. Now, there's a back door that you can-"
He paused as the roar of several motors filled the air. A white pickup truck, paint tarnished by smears of dirt and blood, halted several feet before the door. A gunner pointed a heavy machine gun straight at them.
"Back door?" Din asked, crossing his arms.
"Lyall!" the gunner called. "It's best that you surrender!"
"For what?" he roared back. "For you to execute me? I'll die before that happens."
That was apparently all the answer the 'mon needed. He pulled back the charging handle on the machine gun and depressed the trigger.
Shadrach couldn't see much when he leaped to dodge, but what played out before was nothing short of astounding. He first saw the Nidoking glow a dim white before Protecting, appearing to put hardly an effort in blocking the rounds. Lyall then punched the ground with his fist, releasing a giant fissure that raced out at the pickup truck. White energy flared from the cracks, leading straight into its intended target. The truck's occupants had hardly a prayer before the attack consumed the vehicle whole, heat-flashing the paint clean off the body before consuming it in a tremendous explosion.
"The fuck is happening? The hell? Alpha Team, respond!"
"We're fine!" Shadrach said through gritted teeth. "Just get us intel on a LZ-"
"What are you waiting for? Go!" the poison-type roared as he demolished an entire wall with a Brick Break. The gunner in the truck behind it had hardly a moment to swerve the gun before a giant tail lashed out at the cab, immediately caving it in with a massive blow before jerking upwards to pierce the gunner's body. Shadrach felt droplets of blood pepper his face as the tail whipped back to a more normal length.
He gave the wall a single look before roaring, "Move, move!" He rounded the corner with his rifle at the ready. The primary objective now was to escape alive, and to do that, he needed to find the ATVs-
... which laid in a burning heap of metal and rubber, right next to a pickup truck. He could see that its driver, a Magmar, was obviously terrified, clutching the steering wheel as if his life depended on it. Shadrach suspected that it probably did.
Levina, having immediately analyzed the situation. darted to flank Shadrach's right. She shot three consecutive bursts of Thunder Wave at the truck, putting all of its passengers into instant paralysis. It took Shadrach a second to process what exactly she intended before following her closely.
She opened the truck's door and dragged the two motionless 'mon out, dumping them on the ground. Jul, who Shadrach hadn't seen before, kicked the machine gunner straight off and took the turret gun into his hands, performing all of the weapon checks in a matter of seconds before swiveling to find targets of opportunity. Din jumped onto the truck bed next to Jul as Shadrach quickly got into the passenger's seat. Nuwai extended her fins for full flight, directing a hurried gaze at Levina that asked, "When?"
"Hit it!" Shadrach yelled. They both ducked as a bullet pierced the rear window, spraying them with glass shards.
He immediately lurched back as Levina slammed her foot on the accelerator, going from zero to sixty in Arceus knows how fast. Jul brought the decades-old machine gun to life as he indiscriminately shot at anything that moved. The Garchomp trailed behind, hugging as closely to the ground as possible.
"Alright, we got your LZ. Start moving north as soon as you can. We'll follow and update as you go along."
"What?" Levina snapped back. "It's not like we have a motherfucking compass in here- oh, shit-"
Shadrach banged his head on the glass window as the Ampharos made a hard left. He saw that the Nidoking's attack from earlier had passed through where their truck had been a moment prior, releasing an earthshaking roar that left him deaf for several seconds. As the truck raced away into the sandy plains, the Umbreon turned to see another truck erupt in a bright orange fireball. A silhouetted figure jumped impossibly high out of the explosion, burning fire on its back glowing brightly as it immediately surged down at the Nidoking far below. Jul roared, unloading a full barrage of fifty cal rounds at the battlers.
"Stop, dammit," the Umbreon hissed to the back. The red tracers shone clearly in the night, and if the enemy watched them carefully enough, they could figure out where the truck was.
As the Nidoking unleashed an attack that Shadrach could see even from half a mile away, the shadow leaped upwards again and seemed to face them for a moment. The Umbreon was first puzzled, then shocked to see a fireball suddenly materialize from what he assumed was the silhouette's mouth and hurtle at them. He could see Nuwai quickly dart away from the rapidly accelerating attack.
"Levina! Turn right! Right!" he yelled.
The Ampharos was too busy to hear him, though. "You really want us to go that far!" she said exasperatedly over the mic. "I don't even know how much more we can get out of this shitcan!"
Shadrach reached over and ripped the headset off her head. "Levina!" he roared. "Right!"
"The fuck do you want?" she snarled in return. "I'm a little bu-"
The retort withered in her throat as something bright and yellow shone in the rearview mirror. She dropped her jaw for a moment before slamming the steering wheel all the way right, hoping that she would be able to avoid the impact.
The fireball exploded on the ground right behind the small, white pickup truck, lifting it straight off its hind wheels and sending it cartwheeling out into the desert. Shadrach saw stars as his head first impacted on the roof of the truck, then on the dashboard. The cacophony of shattering glass and screeching metal afforded him little opportunity to hear the condition of the other three, but as his vision temporarily blacked out, he suspected that it was not good.
After the seventh cartwheel, the truck seemed to stand perfectly on its fender, then groaned as it toppled backwards, lying upside down.
Shadrach let out an almighty groan and opened his eyes. Although piecing together what exactly happened was but a futile effort, the pain coursing throughout his body told him that would be wearing bruises all over his body for the next several weeks. He wouldn't be surprised if a few major bones were broken as well.
But those injuries became marginal as he turned to face Levina. She was unconscious, face smashed into the steering wheel whose air bag, Shadrach noticed, had not deployed as it should have. Blood streamed from her temple, and several gouges on her face, etched deeply from shattered glass, too let blood drip downwards.
The Umbreon's breathing constricted slightly. "Levina," he said.
The yellow body, streaked red, said nothing.
He grunted as he tried to force the passenger door ajar. No such luck. It was contorted in such a manner that even a Machamp would be hard-pressed to return it to its original form. He looked to the completely shattered front window, but his body was entrapped in the seat.
Shadrach sighed slightly. He was never one for strength or attacking, for that matter. Almost his entire service in his squad had been strategical or weapons-oriented; he didn't have the brunt of the attacks that Siria, Sirius, or Levina carried. Now he didn't have a choice but to force his way out, something that he didn't look forward to.
He tried to move the best he could in his heavily restricted seat. The last thing he wanted was for his Toxic to give him acrid burns. Ironically, the attack would injure him even though he was the one using it; only true poison-types were immune to their own attacks.
Feeling the slightly poisonous droplets coat his short, stubby claws, Shadrach swiped twice at where he suspected the door's locking mechanism to be. The metal instantly hissed on contact, giving off n bitter smell as the acid began to dissolve the lock. After a moment, he tried to nudge the door ajar, but it still held fast. He cursed and swiped now at the charred, blackened hinges of the door. Those too hissed and dissolved, but the door hardly budged.
He gave the Ampharos a look before scoring the top of the door. If he couldn't budge his way out, he would cut.
That seemed to do the trick. The door seemed to peel off the truck, kicking up dust as it fell to the sand. Shadrach weakly followed, clambering out onto the sandy ground.
He immediately wished he hadn't. His body felt like it was on fire; pain coursed through every nerve and culminated in his conscience, angrily telling him to give up and rest for a while. He ignored it, though, and grunted as he started to crawl to the other side of the truck. As he passed the flatbed of the truck, he noticed that both Din and Jul were absent. They were thrown off in the first two tumbles, he guessed. Who knew if they survived? They probably didn't.
He had reached the driver's door, which was miraculously intact. With no small amount of effort, he reached up and opened it.
The Umbreon couldn't help but scream as Levina's body tumbled on top of him. He thought he had felt pain before; he was utterly wrong. He could feel her breathing, though. That was good.
A figure flying overhead landed before the two. Nuwai stared at them, putting a claw to her mouth in astonishment.
"Nuwai," Shadrach rasped. "Take... take Levina... wait, are the others alive?"
She nodded once and pointed into the distance. "They're resting all the way over there."
"Can you take Levina there? I'll... I'll get there myself."
Shadrach began to crawl inch by inch as the Garchomp picked Levina up and flew back out. He wouldn't stand for it, to be rendered absolutely helpless in this state. For Arceus' sake, he was Special Forces, he could make it-
He coughed as something from above grabbed him off the ground. He turned to protest, but found none of the energy to do. All that lingered was a tremendous fatigue as Nuwai set him down besides three other injured soldiers. Din wore a set of minor cuts and bruises, looking far better than any of the others. He anxiously watched Jul, whose legs were bent at a very unnatural angle.
"Does anyone have a radio on them?" Shadrach asked, guessing that their Romeo Team had probably left for base as soon as they did. "We need to call..."
He sighed as all who were still conscious shook their heads. The Umbreon wasn't surprised, though; he'd be damned if anything electronic got through the collective hell they'd all just been put through. "So we're stuck in the middle of fucking hostile territory, two of us are unconscious... or worse, and we have no means of contacting anybody for an extract. Our only hope is for the Romeo Team to tell base that they lost sight of us, and rescue units won't get to us before dawn. I mean, Arceus, what a clusterfuck. This is great. Just fucking great!" He went into a fit of coughing, forgetting how dry and brittle his throat was.
Din handed him a canteen full of water. The Umbreon looked at the container, then at the Vaporeon.
"Did you fill this?"
"Yeah."
Shadrach looked back at canteen. By drinking this, he was by proxy drinking Din's spit...
"Fuck it," he said, nearly draining a fourth of the container with his first drink. He knew that as a battle-hardened SF soldier, he should be tolerant of drinking mud if it was absolutely necessary, but some obsessive, sanitary part of him wouldn't allow him to do so. Of course, his being intensively wounded made him care less about the small things in life, such as not using the word "fuck" twenty fucking times in a single fucking sentence.
After a refreshing (as much as he hated to admit it) drink, Shadrach immediately set out on analyzing their situation. They could expect to see something akin to an extract in a minimum of two hours, so they would need to secure a perimeter and defend themselves until then. The best way to do this would be to become shadows in the desert, completely invisible until they heard the vestiges of a helicopter's thunder or an aircraft's roar.
The burning pickup truck definitely wasn't a good way of starting off this strategy. Shadrach turned to Din, and was about to ask him to put it out when he heard a haunting sound: the low-pitched growl of an engine.
Turning towards the source, Shadrach saw not a pickup truck but instead a jeep, desert gold camouflage colors slightly illuminated by its powerful headlights. He immediately ruled that it was not a Halcyian Defense vehicle; their variants had closed roof, whereas this was open. He widened his eyes at the grave possibility that Tamsus was coming by to say hi...
... and went completely pale as he saw a crested head - a Lugia head - on the grill. He had to rub his eyes and blink to make sure he wasn't deceiving himself - if that was a Mirunas vehicle, then they had fucked up beyond redemption. If that really was a jeep Mirunas had deployed, that would mean that they had crossed the border in their escape from the village, violating numerous treaties Halcyia had with the belligerent nation. By entering the border as Halcyian Defense members, they had essentially declared war on Mirunas.
Shadrach's mind raced, thinking of any possible way to avert what was probably going to be one of the most disastrous political ordeals in recent history. He looked at himself - cut, scarred, and bleeding - then to the others, who were in no better shape. Innovative as he was supposed to be at planning to surmount the impossible, he saw no ray of hope, no sliver of light that would allow any of them out of this situation. He sighed and fell back on the sand, wondering how bad the food would taste in prison. Would they even give us food?
Apparently, the other conscious squadmembers had too seen the jeep. Nuwai, motivated more by determination than fear, leaped into the air, claws glowing blue. If the enemy was going to fuck with them, they were going to go through her first-
As the Garchomp weaved intricate patterns in the air to avoid the storm of bullets erupting from the back of the jeep, Din launched an Ice Beam at the wheels, hoping to disrupt their attack and halt their inevitable capture. The wheels appeared to lock up for a moment, but the forward momentum of the vehicle and Din's weakness shattered the hold the ice had on the jeep. The occupants did stop firing, though, until they had driven hardly ten feet from the Halcyian soldiers.
As the passenger door opened, a pair of worn boots hit the ground. Their owner, an old Houndoom, shifted his glasses to get a better look at those who had attracted his immediate attention. He frowned at the fatigues they wore and wondered at the battle damage afforded to them. They were definitely not Mirunas' soldiers, which meant...
With a wave of his paw, the other soldiers in the jeep surrounded the four Halcyians at gunpoint. None of them made an attempt to resist, all knowing that they had lost.
Nuwai thought differently, though. With nobody firing on her, she bared her teeth and began to angle downwards, unsheathing her claws in the process.
She hung in the air mid-flight when she saw the Houndoom prod Shadrach's head with a pistol. He looked upwards at the Garchomp and gave her an appraising look, as if daring her to continue the attack. She desisted, but remained aloft. He tapped the Umbreon's head again with the gun to signal his discontent.
Growling, she began her descent into the middle of the circle. Her face burned with shame; she had tried to thwart the enemy, only to fail and put even more stress on her allies. She saw the ground fast approaching, the Houndoom's curved horns, and then a sudden blue beam from the heavens that drilled a perfect one inch wide hole into the fire-type's cranium. The Garchomp jerked backwards in fright, not knowing what agent was responsible for the seemingly precise, perfect kill.
As the Mirunas soldiers quickly assumed defensive positions, another beam took a Camerupt in the chest, collapsing him without any resistance. The three remaining guards shot bewildered looks at each other before making a beeline for the jeep. They would much rather come out alive than hang around and figure out what was killing them.
None of them would emerge alive, though. As they ran, one lagged behind slightly. A completely dark figure dived from the sky, promptly breaking the Mirunas soldier's neck by hitting him in the back of the head at roughly the speed of a prop plane. The shadow then charged at one of the two left, who was working the passenger door of the jeep. The Flareon barely had the time to look up at the whistling sound before being clotheslined by a large black wing.
The last individual, a jittery Rapidash, started the ignition in the jeep. As he threw it into reverse, a blue beam, several times larger than the one that killed his comrades, pierced the hood with painstaking accuracy. The last thing the fire-type thought before being consumed by the explosion was how eerily perfect the circle the attack made was.
Stunned, the Halcyian soldiers didn't even try to make a move, knowing that whatever forces that dismantled the Mirunas squad could easily do the same to them. Shadrach warily watched the black figure approach them.
"Hey," the Staraptor said, flapping his wings once before folding them neatly into his back. "Are you Sergeant Shadrach?"
Name, rank, serial number only. "Shadrach Chase, Sergeant, HA234-"
"I don't need that info. C'mon, we're here to extract."
The Umbreon didn't trust the flying-type at all. For all he knew, this could all be a show of force from Mirunas. He repeated what he had said before.
The Staraptor groaned. "Oh, for the love of- Lorenzo, get down here!" he yelled upwards.
Straining his eyes, Shadrach saw a figure descend from what appeared to be above the clouds. The Dragonite zoomed downwards, hovering only inches from the ground as he looked at the two of them oddly. "Yes?"
"He's not trusting us."
"Oh?" Lorenzo chuckled. "If someone went up to you and called you by your name without telling you who or what they were, you would be suspicious too." He looked to the Umbreon, who merely returned a blank stare. "Hey, sorry about Maxwell; he's impulsive. I'm Major Lorenzo, Special Forces." He showed the patch on his arm to Shadrach. He eyed the fire-breathing Ho-Oh for a moment, searching for the various symbols that determined its legitimacy. For all he knew, the enemy could have simply reproduced a shoddy copy of it.
But it looked legitimate. Authenticity almost ascertained, Shadrach said with a hard face, "Marine."
The Dragonite blinked before breaking out in a grin. "My ass rides in Navy equipment."
Shadrach couldn't suppress a small smile as they began their "authentication" process. "Navy."
"Never again volunteer yourself!"
"Army."
"Ain't ready to be a marine yet, though I think we prove differently!" he said with a knowing wink.
Shadrach couldn't help but also smile. "So you're telling the truth," he said, relief evident in his voice.
"Don't blame you for being suspicious. But anyways, we need to get moving. Mirunas will probably come after us soon and whatnot."
Shadrach was perplexed. "Moving? Is there a helicopter picking us up? Wouldn't they notice?"
Lorenzo shook his head and thumbed his mic. "Freebird to Echo. We got the package."
The Umbreon looked oddly at him for a moment before noticing a disturbance in the air above him. Much to his surprise, a helicopter seemed to appear out of thin air, gentle white trails curving around its pitch-black hull. It was quiet, though, emitting a small hiss instead of the thunder associated with its rotors.
When it got closer, he saw that it was anything but a helicopter. Instead of having a large rotor affixed to the top or two rotors on the sides, as he had seen in tiltrotor aircraft made to be both helicopter and plane, it had two small pod-shaped engines pointed downwards, each pushing a small pulse of blue plasma out. Shadrach stared at it, half out of awe and half out of admiration.
"You like it?" Lorenzo asked, tilting his head upwards as well. "It's our baby, the Borealis. Premier active stealth technology, better than probably anything else on this planet so far. They let us borrow this for the mission, just this one. But no time for gawking," he said as the aircraft touched ground. Its back opened to reveal an interior outfitted for ten battle-hardened troops or, in their case, five casualties. "We need to get you guys out of here and cover our tracks."
A Sandslash popped out the back of the Borealis. "Yo, Lorenzo, what do we got?"
"Bury everything, Ross. Leave no traces."
The ground-type narrowed an eye. "Everything?" he asked, more out of confirmation than disbelief.
"Yeah. This is completely covert."
As the Sandslash wielded his claws, Lorenzo looked towards the two unconscious soldiers. Nodding to the Staraptor behind him once, they went to transport them into the waiting aircraft. and Nuwai, who had been previously unable to determine what exactly was happening, too assisted, helping Shadrach lift Levina into the fluorescent-lit hold of the Borealis. "They don't look too good," Maxwell said, pulling medical equipment from under a seat.
"We got attacked pretty badly," Shadrach said, sitting down. He relaxed slightly before tensing; he was in an aircraft that he nor anyone else he knew had ever seen before.
"Hey," he asked the Dragonite sitting next to him. "This Borealis... how it even possible? I haven't seen anything like it in the Halcyian inventory, even in the Air Wing. This thing is both invisible and silent, but it acts as a fast transport? Doesn't science make this sort of thing impossible?"
The dragon turned to the whirring of the closing cargo hold door. A dusty Sandslash went to sit on the seat besides Lorenzo, completely oblivious to all the sand he released everywhere. "Well," Lorenzo said after scooting further left, "The Borealis has a bunch of scientific jargon I don't understand, most of it involving 'plasma shielding' of some sort. Surprise, isn't it? It's been around for about a year, year and half."
"But this vehicle isn't even listed in the Special Forces specifications list." Shadrach frowned at Lorenzo and noticed his arm patch again. "And wait! There isn't even a 12th Special Forces Group!" His left paw reached instinctively for the pistol on his belt.
Lorenzo gave him a simple, even placating smile as the Borealis rocked slightly, propulsion engines firing up. "Do you know what HTR is?"
The Umbreon's jaw dropped slightly as all thoughts of defending himself vacated his mind. "Wait, what? HTR?" he asked disbelievingly.
However, Lorenzo had turned away already, conversing animatedly with the Sandslash next to him. Shadrach scowled at him before lying his head back in utter exhaustion. He could be worried about that later.
But what concerned him now was that the mission had definitely not gone as he had expected, something that majorly irked him. It's my fault, he thought, wanting to punch something. There are so many things I could have done to to have avoided failure...
Shadrach felt a stiff, thin square under his jacket, and wondered if it in fact was good that they had failed. The Nidoking, Lyall, had revealed much valuable intelligence, and they were a step closer to cracking what Shadow was thanks to the Ein File he had passed off.
He reached and opened the container. A single disc with the words "File S" written meticulously on top gleamed back at him. It would help... well, could, if they figured out the encryption key. Shadrach removed the disc from its cushioned container, revealing a piece of paper behind it. The parchment was worn; it felt brittle in his hands, as it it would break at any moment. He noticed that it had the same handwriting from the disc as he read it.
"'I am a legend," it began, "one older than civilization itself, and have seen war and peace tear nations asunder. I have betrayed and have been betrayed; my plumage wears the blood of many a battle. I used to live among mortals, but the vast light of a thousand suns terrified even the bravest of my brethren. Now, I make my abode in the mountains of Francis; isolated from all but two, a friend and a loved one. Who is this shadow of a Pokemon, one who dares not show his face to the world? Who is this broken down legend, a god fallen from grace? Who am I?'"
The Umbreon blinked, then read it again. And again. And then wished that Siria was sitting next to him. He was never good at anything but military history, and nobody came close to fitting what the passage detailed. Older than civilization itself? That had to be an exaggeration of epic proportions. A light of a thousand suns? That had no scientific basis.
Frustrated, Shadrach snapped the disc case shut and laid his head back again. He'd deal with it later, once he came into possession of a library's worth of history texts.
Siria gingerly cradled the cell phone in her hand. Apparently, the plan she had purchased three years ago still existed for that one week every year when she would return to civilian life. The plastic form factor of the phone was absolutely foreign to her, mostly because the equipment she handled in the military was made to be durable and functional, not appealing. To be completely honest with herself, though, the Latias knew that getting used to how a civilian phone feels was the least of her worries when (no, if; no guarantee I'll survive) she reintegrated into society.
The ringer continued to buzz as it had done for the past half-minute. She couldn't help but grin at the long wait; Alyssa was never one for punctuality or seriousness. Despite that and many more dissimilarities, though, they remained the best of friends even years after separation.
Her ear twitched as the receiver clicked. She opened her mouth to speak, but a high, unmistakably feminine voice interrupted her.
"Hi, there, this is Alyssa! Uh, if you're listening to this, you probably missed me. I'm probably doing, um... something, or can't get to the phone, you know, stuff like that. Anyways, leave a message at the beep and all that, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can! See ya!" Some frustrated rustling. "Wait, how do I turn this off...? Fiona, it's this button, right?" A loud tone. "No, wait, would it be this-"
The Latias couldn't help but smirk at her friend's frustration as the flat tone beeped into her ear. Leave it to her to be a genius at pretty much anything but even the simplest of technologies. "Hey Alyssa," she started, "I'm finally back from the south for a while, about four more days or so. Anyways, do you want to meet up somewhere and do stuff? Hopefully you're not busy now; I know you have finals in a couple weeks. Call me back if you can go. I'm a bit bored around here with nothing to do."
She paused for a moment, thinking of what else she could say. "Love you," she finished a bit teasingly before snapping the clamshell phone shut. She knew that she didn't need to say the trite phrases usually associated with reunions such as "Remember me?" or "I'm Siria" to help the Dragonite identify the caller. The two were far closer than that for formalities.
The Latias sighed and slipped the phone back into her pocket. She had woken up late again, much to her ire, but she couldn't do anything but scold herself not to do it again. She was the only one in the apartment; her father had departed to work and Sirius was out with his friends... doing... something. She smiled wryly and put a hand to her forehead, feeling immensely sorry for those who they imposed their paper-thin hookup lines on.
But what was she going to do today? Perhaps she'd take a walk in the neighborhood, see all that had changed within the past year. Yes, that happened to be a good plan. She resolved to carry out the mission as soon as she had consumed breakfast.
She wandered over to the kitchen and opened a cabinet to find an array of cereal boxes, some colored much brightly than others. She stared for a moment; in the military, there had only been one flavor of cereal: bland.
Closing her eyes, she randomly picked out a box with a mascot Chatot on the front. A minute later, she found herself sitting on the couch in front of the television, munching on an assortment of colored circles whose range of hues was probably dictated by a heroin-induced high. The news flickered by disinterestedly: an internal affairs investigation in the Treasury (yawn), a brief exclusive on an extremely popular teenage singer (why did he strike her as feminine?), some thirty-second blurbs on a range of antidepressant medications (as if we need more of those)...
Siria nearly choked on her cereal when she saw the next headline. Turning up the volume, she heard the Persian read, "And in a sharply worded statement this morning, Mirunas has issued another war warning directed at Halcyia in light of several recent operations, including the invasion of Riyaq and a purported attack on a village southeast of the city." As her mouth hung open, the screen shifted to a stock video of several soldiers, then to an angry Espeon unloading a verbose barrage of warlike rhetoric, then back to the reporter who had moved on to the next story.
Already moved on to the next story. Siria wanted to leap up from the couch and scream at the television, but she was a self-conscious Latias; she wouldn't do that-
"What do you mean, that's it?" she yelled, nearly slamming the bowl on the table before her. "You spent thirty seconds on that! Thirty seconds on possible war coming between us and the next nation over! Do you realize- do you even know-"
Fuming, she sat down and crossed her arms. If approached from a rational standpoint, it would make sense in a cruel, twisted way that Halcyia could brush off such a statement. The only reason possible was that Mirunas had called for war so many times that another one of their "warnings" found itself shunted in the last fifteen minutes behind even an interview with a (still strikingly feminine) Bidoof.
Hot anger was displaced by disappointment. She knew she shouldn't be quick to judgment, but what she had seen during the past few days, both in the civilian life and on the television, dissolved her belief that there were those back in civilization who cared or even understood what the military was doing for them.
She turned off the television and returned her bowl to the sink. As she went to dress out of her sleeping garments, a sudden knocking at the door got her attention. At first, they were placid, but in the time she made the distance to open the door the raps grew rapid and irregular.
"Who is it?" she asked.
A scowl. "It's Sirius! Hurry up!"
The first thought that came to mind was that he was probably being chased by some rather pissed-off girl... again. "Who is it that's after you? I'll give her money afterwards."
"Just open the damn door! No joke!"
Unaccustomed to the Latios' sharp tone, she immediately worked the lock and opened the door. Sirius walked through without saying hello, carrying an unconscious elder Latios in on his arms. Siria saw that her father's left arm had been severely burned even through the slowly reddening gauze. Sirius set him down on the couch and immediately began examining the arm.
"He got injured at the factory today. One of the machines exploded," he said, sensing his sister's question. "Now his left arm's messed up. Doctors say that he might not be able to use it anymore..." He snarled, almost as if he wanted to destroy something in anger.
Siria could only stand there and watch the Latios attend to his father. Even though she tried to be aloof and remain above pitying her father, of all 'mon, she couldn't help but feel an insidious sympathy worm its way into her heart. She could hardly comprehend what life must be like without an arm - how would she shoot a rifle, attack an enemy, work a remote control, drive a vehicle, or type a report?
What really got to her was that this happened to her father, a single father, at that. First he had lost her mother, next, his children, and now, a part of himself? The second point really stung her, seeing that it was only her that he had lost, not the two of them.
"So anyways, I'm going to be taking his place at work until we leave," Sirius said somberly. "If his arm doesn't get better, then he'll be out of a job, but our pay can keep him living here... I hope." He stepped out of the room without saying another word.
Siria stared at the retreating blue wings before looking back at her father. She looked at his blackened arm, the various scorch marks on his khaki uniform, and the cuts all over his face. What had happened was obviously not just a run-of-the-mill accident that he could recover from in a week. And Sirius was going to take over the job tomorrow?
The Latias then frowned deeply at not the thought of her brother being put into danger, but at a more implicit realization.
She would have to take care of her father until the week ended.