[PART 1]
If there ever has been a reason Takanashi Taro went into the police force, it's the same reason that he hoped drove most would be officers - because he wanted to help people. Back when he was a little kid, he always tried to be good, stand up to bullies even when they were twice his size, and even managed to save a friend from an angry flock of Pidgeys once! Pure heroic idealism pumping through his veins, he graduated the police academy knowing that he'll make a difference in the world. Make it safer for everyone. Make himself, and everyone who knew him proud.
The Universe had other plans for him. Nasty, if mundane, plans.
Tiredly, he made an attempt to refocus on the report in front of him, trying his best to stay awake, alert and attentive after thirty-something hours of wakefulness. A valiant, if pitiful effort. Rough hand ruffling through his own greying, unkempt hair, he took another sip of dark, broody and gut-wrenching coffee that was his only lifeline in this entire shitstorm of a situation. It did make it slightly easier to comprehend things.
He knew that he was mostly here as a formality, but that stupid, naive, awful idealism turned deep, pure, unadulterated spite did not allow him to do anything but the very best, regardless of a situation. Honestly, that same spite was the only thing still keeping him in the force.
Arceus knows it couldn't be pride, respect OR the pay.
A phone rang to his right, turning his diluted attention across a desk buried in classified documents towards one of his suit-clad tormentors.
"Stevenson speaking. Yes. Got it. Keep me informed," a blond man in a dark suit shortly answered, finally done with wiping his sunglasses with a handkerchief and glancing in the opposite corner of the room, "Romanov, it's bulldozing its way in our direction. Unless Kyoto PD pulls a literal miracle out of their collective asses, it'll arrive in roughly ten minutes"
The other tormentor, a redheaded woman in an identical suit, scoffed. She clearly did not believe in such a thing ever happening "Good thing we've got a team of professionals to deal with that"
Ah, yes, the 'professionals', as she called them. Taro saw them on a few occasions he had to deal with such suits, and he was NOT a fan of a bunch of military tech-clad pompous assholes boasting both firearms AND six level 100s each.
Well, not each.
Some of them had a special ball carrying a mortifyingly powerful thing similar to the one approaching this shoddy checkpoint in roughly 9 minutes. The suits called them "level 101s". He preferred to call them "cryptids".
Mostly because the Pokemon League that hired these triple damned suits was doing everything it could (including stuff it SHOULDN'T) to keep these cryptid-whatevers out of public knowledge. Controlling news coverage and police reports, silencing witnesses, disposing of researches - you name it. Taro was only in the know because they needed a police contact to work with them in this region, and it'd be easier to bury one guy in NDAs than to bury guy after guy in the dirt every time there was a related case.
So, uh, yeah, maybe that was the second thing keeping him from retiring - if he did, he might turn up in a ditch, decomposing and half-eaten by feral Zigzagoons. It'd look like an accident too.
At estimated 7 minutes until the arrival, Romanov finished giving out orders to the mili-tech squad through her tablet, and switched it to project a giant holographic surveillance screen in front of an empty wall. The cameras that were littered across three kilometre radius were still only showing the 'professionals' getting into positions. No civilians and no stray Pokemon in sight due to earlier evacuation efforts.
"Don't you think ten members might be an overkill?" mused Stevenson, clearly bored with this situation.
"Better safe than sorry, I'm sure the League would understand, given this 101 tore through yet another Champion on its way out of the city," the woman shrugged. Oh, for Girantina's sake…
"And what if it's not enough?" Taro deadpanned, his hazy eyes finally concentrating on Romanov's sunglasses, "What if your 'professionals' fail?"
He did NOT want to think what would happen if the cryptid reached another settlement.
"If it proves too strong, they've got the orders to funnel it towards Mt. Hiei, detective," she almost definitely rolled her eyes, "To let the Ghost sort it out. That's exactly why we chose this checkpoint, in fact."
'If the mili-techs manage to funnel the cryptid at all', Taro could only think. It took him a lot of willpower not to say it out loud, nor to return the sentiment of rolling his eyes, while Stevenson answered the phone again, and barked some order into it.
Still, these two had more of a plan than the suits have concocted last time, and definitely more of a plan than Kyoto PD has managed to scramble together during this rampage. Maybe there was a-
ohshit
Roughly 5 minutes before the estimated arrival, one of the cameras picked a police helicopter spinning into the road at an odd angle, exploding on the impact - because of COURSE it did - and ensuring that nobody survived the crash.
Well, almost nobody.
Like a giant, horrible monstrosity emerging out of a stormy sea, a large figure crawled from beneath the aircraft's flaming carcass.
It's here.
[PART 2]
As cozy as that abandoned warehouse has been, it was NOT worth the hassle she was going through right now. Okay, so a roof over her head was good. A water source nearby was great. Some barely expired foodstuffs and feral vermin to snack on were amazing. What was neither of those things is that she's gotten sloppy. Complacent. Careless.
It was just her luck to mistake some human kid's runaway pet for a four-legged ultra rare steak (it DID taste good though). Just like it was her luck that she didn't notice the frightened child before it was too late to stop him from running away. The blue humans were notified almost immediately, and it was just her luck that they somehow knew who she was.
Rather than flee under the guise of the night like usual, she had to fight for each step out of the city, and then out of its premises. She made a lot of steps.
Now, let it not be said that she hated fighting. On the contrary, she LOVED fighting. She practically LIVED for fighting, at least before the humans started actively hunting her down at every opportunity. These days, rather than living to fight, she had to fight to live, and to be honest? It did not feel the same, even though she tried to have as much fun with it as possible.
Like right now.
With a joyous cascade of loud cracks, her foot went right through the bones of her four-armed opponent, rending said arms limp and useless, cracking a few ribs, and sending the poor thing into the merciful grasp of unconsciousness. She quickly grabbed the body, and flung it at a gruff-looking pink bipedal dog, both enemies crashing into a tree, cracking it in half, and getting pinned to the ground by its trunk. See, fun! (Well, for her. Less so for those guys)
Then a human that sent those two grabbed a steel weapon thingie off his hip, and started popping loud stings against her hide from behind a flashing car. Which was, frankly, both rude and annoying, so she ripped a light pole out of the ground, and sent it flying in his direction. It bonked the human in the head, crumpled the flashing car, and forcefully shredded its windows against his barely protected blue body. Yeah, he was down for the count, but oh, would you look at that, another flashing car just stopped by, with five more humans in similar blue clothes deciding to make themselves her problem.
This was getting nowhere. She had to lose her pursuers, and quick.
Luckily, she noticed one of them human flying spinning doohickeys that was still following her around in the sky. It wasn't doing much, but she figured she could use it to get away unimpeded. So she took a running start from the ground to the top of a car, and then jumped. Hard.
Her jump crushed the remains of a car into a barely recognisable pulp, and sent her straight to the flying spinny thing. She managed to barely miss one of its two grab handles though, so she had to quickly whip at it with her tail. Noting how the doohickey skewed to the side (was she almost too heavy for it?), she pulled herself in - only to be met with even more popping stings from the screaming humans within. Again, rude. She tossed most of them out.
Except for the one in the chair at the very front. Human doohickeys tend to not work without at least one human commanding them. So she grabbed human's popping weapon thingie, and crushed it in her claws. Then she's delicately put those same claws on the human's shoulder, presented her best toothy grin, and pointed in a direction away from the city.
Seems like the human's got the message, as the doohickey turned and carried them in that very direction, finally giving her a breather.
For about a minute.
Then, with a sound of someone piercing glass with a thin, sharp spike, the spinning doohickey began to spin wrong, nearly sending her tumbling out of it. Forcefully stumbling back, she grabbed the human by the shoulder, only to notice that something small poked straight through the human's skull, leaving a trail of blood, and clearly killing the poor thing.
She didn't have the time to guess how that happened, as the spinning doohickey crashed into the ground. Then, everything exploded
Ugh.
Feeling the lack of air far more, than the impact, the sound or the heat, she clawed her way out of the fiery trap, to be met by even more meddling humans, surrounding her on all sides. These were all in black, carrying bigger popping weapons, and surrounded by around a hundred Pokemon that looked way stronger than the ones with the blue humans. (Could the human colour be a correlation? Thought for later)
Right now, the humans began showering her with stings (those were slightly more annoying than ones from the small thingies), somehow managing not to hit any of the rapidly advancing Pokemon that were already sending wave after wave of attacks as well, forcing her to choose which ones to dodge, and which ones to try to shrug off.
Weaving between a nasty-looking flurry of icicles (she did NOT want to get hit by those) and a beam of light (that only scorched a few leaves off one unlucky bladearmed lizard that was barely in its radius), she stomped the ground. Hard. Hard enough for it to tremble, cracking and displacing at odd intervals, drowning the onslaught of the enemies that suddenly had to mind their own footing, as well as their allies. She THINKS that she saw a trio of conjoined ground-swimming rodents get trampled into rough paste by the stampede.
Not that she could make sure, since it would've been a shame not to use the moment to ram into the broken enemy formation, crushing, tearing, stomping and goring it.
[PART 3]
Taro looked in horror as the two metre purple monstrosity has already torn down through dozens of Pokemon sent by the 'professionals', shortly after scrambling the battlefield into an uneven mess that practically ensured that it didn't have to deal with more than 4 or 5 enemies at the same time. That, combined with the fact that it apparently HIJACKED A HELICOPTER? Meant that this was not a dumb, simple beast.
Rather, the beast was not only vicious, but also dangerously smart. Which, detective was fairly certain, was NOT included in its file. Let's see…
Name: [redacted]
Codename: Calamity of Inabayama
Species: Goodra
Height: 2m
Gender: Female
Weight: ?
Possesses a mutation that turns its hind horns into prehensile appendages. Most likely a result of [redacted]. Has higher strength, endurance or durability than a typical Goodra. Extremely vicious.
Went on its first rampage during the Championship of Inabayama Massacre of 27/09/2XXX, killing the reigning Champion Saito Tatsuoki, Ace trainer Sato Kenji, Elite Four member Takenaka Hanbei and [redacted]; injuring 23 people and killing or injuring 132 Pokemon, before fleeing from the scene. […]
The rest of the file included various other incidents of this cryptid being encountered, with several human and countless Pokemon deaths each time. Yep, not a WORD about it possessing the human-like intelligence that was evident on the footage. Good job, Pokemon League!
"Bloody hell…" squeaked Stevenson, as the footage had unmercifully shown the cryptid ripping off an arm of a Hariyama only to violently bludgeon a Voltorb with it. Honestly, if the detective wasn't so keenly aware of the pandemonium on the screens, he might've taken some joy in the suit's distress.
"We've lost half of our 101s. Time for plan B," growled Romanov, sending new orders through the tablet.
"Which is to divert it towards Mt. Hiei… How? Pretty sure your men don't scare it," Taro inquired. Yes, he was practically forced to cooperate with the suits, but he surely didn't plan to be their yes-man.
"It can't fight forever, and even the beast knows it," the blonde huffed, "We just need to throw more bodies at it, and present an opening for it to flee"
Ah, yeah. 'Bodies' perfectly described how much the League valued the lives of people it worked with. Or its own employees, to be honest. There was a reason Taro tended to think of them as 'suits', rather than by their names.
"We need to update its file, you know," the detective sighed, "It clearly possesses high intelligence"
"No need. Once it flees to Mt. Hiei, we won't see it again. Which means we can close the case," okay, so Stevenson was even more of an idiot than his predecessor. Good to know.
"Ah, the cavalry is here," deadpanned Romanov, as several dozens of police cars arrived from both directions of the road, people getting out and sending Pokemon to join the horrible, bloody fray. And despite the cryptid's absolutely terrifying ferocity, it quickly noticed the reinforcements, as well as a barely manned breach in the enemy ranks.
So it wasn't much of a surprise when it decided to use that chance to run into the forest surrounding Mt. Hiei. The forces have lost the cryptid in a few minutes, as it crossed what was widely known as the point of no return.
Lucky break, huh.
Now they just had to deal with the casualties, collateral and the PR nightmare of this rampage. And updating the Calamity's file.
If there's any fairness in the Universe, the Ghost of Mt. Hiei would deal with the monster for them.
[PART 4]
Bloody FINALLY. After hours of fighting and running, she had finally lost her pursuers in a forest by some mountain. Either she's lucky, or the place is dangerous (she was hoping for the former, as she was already feeling her, well, EVERYTHING). Regardless, she was going to use this opportunity to take a break and lick her wounds. Once she took a look around for water, food and shelter, of course. She could dig one up (a shelter, that is), but there might be someth-
"Where is your human, pet?"