Dragons, a particularly vicious type of Pokémon. Monsters with thick scales that bullets barely pierced. They excelled at long range combat, so one day a madman thought, "What if we fight the up close"? This was the birth of the elites of the Pokémon hunters, The Dragon hunters.
Pokémon Hunters, By Professor Oak
Ash stood on the deck of the ship headed for Cinnabar Island, there they would meet up with some others who would hopefully help them to save Cerulean city. Ash saw Malone come up from the lower decks and immediately ran over to question him "Do we know for sure that these friends of yours are going to help us save Cerulean?" Malone staggered backwards obviously having just woke up. "No we don't" he replied. "Then why are we going there, we could just go to Cerulean ourselves and…" "And what" Ash stopped, he wanted to get there to help Misty sooner rather than later. "We won't be of any use by ourselves" Malone said. "Hey guys" Brock yelled "Ceruleans on TV" Ash rushed over hoping that the news wasn't too bad.
Malone walked over to the TV, he wasn't expecting anything good but at the very least he wanted to know that the town he was trying to save still had people in it to save. Malone sat there tuning out the voice of the news anchor simply waiting for the video footage from Cerulean to show that it was still there. Eventually the News people did switch over to the direct video footage and Malone was taken aback. The worst thing that could have happened had happened; the government was taking control of Cerulean. A couple of soldiers were in front of the camera talking about how they secured the area, but Malone wasn't listening, all he saw was Celadon restaged with new actors, but the ending was still the part that worried him.
"Hey guys we're pretty close to shore" the captain yelled over the intercom. Ash couldn't believe what he was seeing, they had completely sealed off Cerulean, no one goes in and no one comes out was the policy that the soldiers repeated for the television broadcasters. One of the on site reporters asked the key question; why was no one leaving? The Kanto army replied that while it was a tough call, they weren't going to lose this city and that they were going to use the civilians as bait to lure the Pokémon out. "If we evacuate then they may not come after us because they see us as a threat with no reward, After all they are water-dwellers so they probably will just leave." "Why is that a bad thing?" Ash questioned aloud, "Because that means that they can come back at any time to hurt someone else." Ash hated to admit it but he saw Malone's point, they either fought them all now, risking civilian lives or they fought later unprepared with a much lower chance for success. "Don't worry to much Ash" Brock said, "They are keeping them all inside the Gym, when the battle starts." "Yeah" Malone walked off, Ash stopped him, "We'll help them then." Malone stopped, "Malone, the reason me and Brock hired you was because we heard you were one of the best, They could use a few extra guns and people who know how to use them" Malone cheered up a little and felt selfish for wanting to be the sole liberator of Cerulean, "Yeah, lets go we're parked and we leave tomorrow at this same time, now we go and we look for some of my buds willing to take the ultimate risk" Ash stopped him "One last question" Malone turned "Why couldn't we call them or something" "Out of respect" "Respect?" "Yeah, Dragon Hunters prefer to talk to each other in person."
Dragon Hunters, the words echoed in Ash's mind as he tried to make sense of them. First of all, they knew that Malone was good, but no one mentioned him being a Dragon Hunter. Also these "friends" that he wanted to recruit were also Dragon Hunters. For a brief moment Ash allowed his hopes for success to soar, a team of Dragon Hunters! This was something that had never happened, most of the time people became Dragon hunters for the money and thus preferred working alone and would never risk such an operation as to attempt to protect Cerulean. Ash, Malone, and Brock all stepped out of the boat and onto Cinnabar Island. The dock was far from villages so they set out on foot to get to the main village. Along the way they were ambushed by a couple of vulpix. Brock held a pistol up but couldn't bear to put a bullet in the cute little fox Pokémon. Malone however simply whipped out his double barrel and shot the little ones dead. Malone grabbed Brock by the shirt held him up and said "Do Not Hesitate" he put him down and continued to walk when Ash stopped him, "Brock used to have a Vulpix" Ash said "Don't you have any sentimentality?" Malone sighed and continued to walk. "What if you had to kill a Pokémon that you used to raise?" Malone stopped cold "stop right there" he said softly "No" Ash continued, "I appreciate the fact that you are helping us, but I'm not impressed with the shoot first, talk later, macho bullshit" Malone stood stiff, unmoving. "Oak" Ash stopped, took a breath, and continued, "Oak said that you were part of the Elite Four" Malone nodded his head slightly, "Was it true" "Yes" "Then you raised a Pokémon" "Obviously" "What if you had to kill them" Malone didn't answer, "I asked a question" Ash shouted, "Ash calm down" Brock said quickly. Malone muttered something inaudible. "What?" Ash asked softer this time. "I did have to kill them," Malone repeated. Suddenly a group came out from the underbrush, the group were all pretty heavily armed and seemed to be Pokémon hunters. One of them, whom Ash assumed was the leader, came forth; on his hip he had the same type of bladed weapon, a machete, as Malone did. "Dragon Hunter" Ash whispered, he had never met another with the exception of Malone. "May your blade fly true" the mysterious newcomer spoke "And pierce the beasts heart" Malone continued, "Lest its fire burns you," they both said in unison. "Malone" the newcomer said simply, "Welcome to Cinnabar Island" he said as he hugged Malone. "It's good to see you Max" Malone responded. Malone turned around, "Ash, Brock, meet Maximillion Douchet, Dragon Hunter" Ash, and Brock bowed respectfully, "Now, Now there's no need for such formalities" Ash took a good look at Max, he was a skinny man, with dark black skin, his head was shaved and he wore a chest holster housing two pistols, and at his side on both sides were twin Machetes with red skinned hilts, and on the blades was the scratching of a Gyrados. "Come now all of you into the city" Max said motioning through the forest. "City?" remarked Ash, "Yes, we morphed the small village-like atmosphere of Cinnabar into a technological dream town". Ash and crew continued through the forest, but Ash simply couldn't shake what Malone had said, "I did have to kill them". Ash felt remorse for asking the question yet also he knew he had to inquire more about what Malone had been faced with in order to fully understand exactly what horrors Malone had faced.
Ash and the others stepped into the doors of Cinnabar city, a city hidden in the rocky wall of one of Cinnabar's caves, and looked upon the city. It was clear that the Pokémon Hunters ran it as their symbols were plastered everywhere, not to mention contact information for various hunters typed on pieces of paper and stuck to any clean surface. The buildings were relatively large, in fact it reminded Ash of the days before the Pokémon rebellion when places like Celadon still stood proud and tall. That wasn't to say the city didn't have its faults, despite the large buildings seemingly standing as either dedicated Barracks or Science Labs their were many homeless around the city, sleeping in collects of hammocks and cots spread across large areas like the central square. Ash bit his lip in disgust; the Hunters had lavish looking Barracks but so many people slept on cots without a roof or heat for cold nights. Ash looked upon many shivering children lying across their parent's chest to conserve cot space and looked back towards Malone and Max. Neither seemed to notice or care almost as if these people's health and welfare weren't the important thing! "So, Malone what do you think?" Max looked over to his friend who seemed lost in thought, "What's with the DMZ look?" Max looked puzzled but then looked from the cots back to Malone, "Oh, right, well we've had a lot of people hanging around after they heard that their were a bunch of Hunters here, and Dragon Hunters at that" Max put his hand on the hilt of the blade at his side looking proud "So we haven't been able to up production on housing just yet." Ash asked the question that he actually had since he had seen Malone's blades "So why use swords against Dragon type Pokémon instead of the guns?" Ash waited for the inevitable 'What are you stupid?' back handed response from Malone but Max piped in "The only thing we have that can easily pierce a Dragon's scales is a certain mineral we call Big-Ass-Diamonds" Ash and Malone chuckled "However these BAD's are not easy to come by, only found in certain caves that the mon have already claimed" Malone continued for him "So rather than make bullets out of them we made these blades, that's also why it takes so much training and testing to become a Dragon Hunter these things are damn hard to come by and even tougher to smelt and shape." Malone unsheathed his blade and handed it to Ash, Ash picked it up and was shocked at how light it felt, Malone motioned to the rock face next to him and Ash swung the blade landing it deep within the rock. "Wow" Brock exclaimed "It cut through the rock like nothing!" Ash was even more surprised he had barely put his effort into swinging the blade and it dug in that far, he took the blade out and handed it back to Malone, "Not bad at all". Suddenly a roar was heard outside but before any of them could question it an alarm was sounded. "Charizard, I repeat, Charizard" a voice over an intercom screamed the sound of worry echoing in his voice. "Damnit" Max exclaimed he started to run back but Malone grabbed his hands. "If I help you kill that thing will you help us in Cerulean?" Max smirked "That's it" "you help me kill a Charizard I'll run through Celadon naked with a piece of lettuce around my junk" The two friends laughed and unsheathed their blades running back towards the exit, Ash followed he didn't really know why he was charging into danger, maybe Malone was rubbing off on him.