-The Dragon King-
-Shock and Awe: Ch 8-
Mark tossed and turned in his bed. In his trashing he had kicked off all of his blankets, and he wasn't wearing a shirt, but he was sweating like he was being cooked alive.
He was asleep, but his mind was fully active in his dreams.
The world was ending.
He could see it so clearly. He could see the mountains of mangled corpses piled higher and higher into the sky. He could hear the screams and the begging of the dead and dying.
He could feel the ground squelch with every step he took, the dirt had turned into mud with the generations worth of blood that had sunk into the soil.
At first he thought it was just another nightmare. That it was any one of the countless memories that haunted him every time he closed his eyes for too long.
But this was… different. Something was off.
The constant pounding of artillery was nowhere to be found. Nor was the distant sound of echoing gunfire.
Instead in their place were Pokémon.
Thousands and thousands of pokemon tearing each other apart on a battlefield. They dragged each other down into an ever growing pool of blood that spilled over entire continents, then fell upon the humans in metal armor like a guillotine once their own pokemon were gone.
Cities vanished in a hundred different ways. Controlled thunderstorms wiping them off the map, massive plumes of fire turning them into ash, tsunamis washing them into the sea, the ground itself breaking open and swallowing everyone to their graves.
Death, death, death. Endless death. Nothing but death.
And at the center of the continent, a massive weapon made of crystal was being constructed to end the bloodshed by any means necessary, and bring back a dead love, even if it meant ending the world with it. It drank deeply and greedily from the endless oceans of blood, gorging itself on the lifeforce of the fallen.
Mark could only watch it all with horrified fascination, and a sense of awe.
This wasn't war. War was fought for a purpose, with objectives to reach for, and terms to enforce.
No, this was in the same kin as butchery. Men killing men simply to spill blood.
What was this?
IT WAS AN OPPORTUNITY
At the peak of the carnage, when the world burned, a spear of pure darkness was thrust upwards into the sky.
The spear buried itself into the heart of Heaven, and the world shrieked.
THE FINAL WAR BEGAN SMALL. IT WAS AN INSIGNIFICANT CONFLICT, BETWEEN TWO INSIGNIFICANT KINGS, STARTED BY THE DJINN'S MISCHIEF, THAT SPIRALED FURTHER OUT OF CONTROL THAN ANY OF US COULD HAVE FORESEEN. IT WAS A WHIRLPOOL OF CHAOS THAT SLOWLY DRAGGED THE ENTIRE WORLD INTO AN INESCAPABLE FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL.
WHEN MY FATHER STEPPED IN AND BROKE HIS OWN DECREE OF ISOLATION FROM THE MORTAL REALM, HE PROPOSED A NEW WORLD BUILT ON ORDER AND CHAINS. ETERNAL PHYSICAL PEACE FOR ETERNAL MENTAL ENSLAVEMENT.
IN THAT MOMENT I SAW HIM FOR WHAT HE TRULY WAS BEHIND HIS MASK, SOMETHING JUST AS FLAWED AND HATEFUL AS MYSELF.
YOUNG AND OVERCONFIDENT, I TOOK MY CHANCE.
The spear of darkness tugged the Heavens down to earth as all the shadows of the world lurched upwards to meet it.
The great emerald sky king was knocked aside like a toy, as the night reached for the sun.
A thousand arms of golden light struck downwards, and a thousand tendrils of the void struck back.
The great shadow of Gehenna crashed through the gates of his father's palace, and ripped the creator’s kingdom from its peak atop the eternal mountain.
The clash tore the heavens asunder for seven days and six nights. The whole world shuddered, and blood rained from the sky.
But when the moment came for the father to strike down his son, for the mother to slay her child… It hesitated.
The Renegade did not, and gouged his claws deeply and greedily into his maker's pale flesh.
But at his great moment of triumph, Space rippled, and he was thrown back and held down by his treacherous sibling.
It only took him a few seconds to break free, but that was all the time that was needed.
Judgement.
A fragment of creation itself swirled into a miniature star above Arceus’ head.
The light came down.
Marcus screamed as he lurched awake in his bed.
!
He sat there for a long while in the pitch darkness, gasping for air and trying to slowly calm down his racing heart.
“What in the world was that?”
He’d had strange dreams before- much stranger ones, if you count the times he was hopped up on medicine. But none of those had ever left him with such heavy weight in his stomach.
Mark looked over at his alarm clock, only to see it was barely past one in the morning.
But between nightmares and the entire thing with Hoopa being dropped on him yesterday, there was no way he was getting back to sleep. God. Just remembering all the jumbled nonsense that ghost had prattled on about was giving him a headache.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Mythical trickster shows up, yaps in circles about things that made no sense, acts like you’ve fallen right into his trap despite not doing anything, then leaves. Mark understood why everyone seemed to loathe Loki in the Greek mythology back on Earth. Was it Greek? Bah, who cares.
At least he got something out of all that nonsense.
Mark ran a thumb over the jaw bone fossil on his nightstand. He didn’t know what kind of Pokemon it would resurrect into, but the fossil Pokemon were usually pretty cool.
He scowled and threw off his blanket. Well he wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep after a dream like that, so he might as well get something done.
-The Dragon King-
Normal people weren’t up printing out maps, and measuring distances and drawing lines with a ruler, like an autistic 40k nerd, before the crack of dawn in the morning.
Luckily he didn't need to try to explain anything. Waking up in a cold sweat or screaming from a nightmare of his past wasn't super common, but it also wasn’t exactly an uncommon event. It happened one or three times a week, and Hellena knew to stay away until after he'd calmed down.
She'd tried to help at first, despite his warnings, and had gotten a fight or flight response boot to her gut, which he still felt a little bad about.
His hire-ons knew better than to question him, and Terra, the only one that would, hadn’t even noticed because apparently she slept like she was already dead.
“This is amateur work.” Mark grumbled as he flipped through the report made by Terra. “Not the report.” He clarified when Shelgon sent him a look. “I’m talking about the Pokemon Rangers. They have no idea how to do patrols or good watch duty.”
Noibat finished painting another little wooden marker (whittled by Bidoof1) and placed it onto the map.
“They don’t even try to mix up their timings, routes, and positions. They patrol the same routes, and change shifts at the same times every day and night.” Mark said as he pushed the marker into the spot where one of the Rangers always stood on lookout.
“There’s no early warning system here. They’re all in one line, they don’t have anyone pushed out far enough to give a warning. By the time they see the enemy, it's already too late for an effective reaction. There’s no supporting positions, or even overlapping fields of view. No fallback positions, no interior strongpoints, no reserve elements. Even the greenest commanders in the civil war knew to have multiple layers, so that any breach could be responded to, contained, and counterattacked.”
Mark crossed his arms and frowned down at the map. Honestly, it might not even really matter how much stronger the Rangers were than his troops. Good tactics meeting bad and lazy tactics was a force multiplier greater than what even a technological gap could guarantee- just ask the British who fought in the Zulu war.
It doesn’t matter if your opponent is using literal sticks and stones, if you set up camp without any defences, all of your highly trained men are just going to get their heads crushed into pulp by a native with a rock who has never even worn real pants, when the Zulu’s just walk into your camp.
Then, learning nothing from the British mistake, the Zulu commander got cocky and had his entire army crushed by the 20-or-something English lads who survived, because he decided to just… charge the gun line… in open terrain… Like a complete fucking retard.
Mark groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. He really needed more sleep if he was thinking about the fucking British.
“Shell?” Shelgon nudged Mark’s leg, looking up at him slightly worried.
“I’m fine, buddy. I just have a lot on my mind, that’s all.” Mark patted his right hand man on the head, before turning back to the map.
He had gotten very comfortable in his role as a Pokemon trainer, but this would always be where a part of his soul belonged.
Just him, an objective, and a plan to get him to it.
-The Dragon King-
“Alright, gather around folks, because I’m only going to go over this once. You’ve all been stretching your legs and making some decent pocket change here and there, but it’s time to step up like big boys, and get yourselves a real paycheck.”
Mark addressed all of Ironclad Solutions which he had gathered in his command tent.
He was standing in front of the table with the maps on it- all of which were now thoroughly covered in lines, notes, and had different wooden markers on them.
“A friend of mine has offered us really good rates for catching some overgrown green lizards. You might have heard on the radio, but a herd of Larvitar got pushed out of their caves thanks to flood waters, and are migrating in search of a new home. It is just a bunch of young low leveled Larvitar, no momma bears, or even second evolution stages to worry about. They’re weak, there’s a lot of them, they’re out in the open, and they’re worth good damn money.”
His troops nodded along, cruel smirks and greedy smiles blossoming on their faces as they caught on.
“This will be like shooting fish in a barrel. The only reason that they’re not all gone already, is that the local Rangers have decided their bleeding hippy hearts want to protect the wild Pokemon from being caught like wild Pokemon are supposed to be. Fortunately for us, they have no idea what they’re doing.”
Mark pointed to the red wooden pokeball pieces on the map, all standing on a line drawn around the valley that the Larvitar had been resting in for the last week.
“There are nine rangers assigned to this mission. Three are out on the field at any time, and they swap off their shift with the next team every 8 hours, breaking the 24 hour watch into three chunks. They stand watch here, here, and here. Every two hours they do a pre-pathed patrol in a circle around the clearing, until they return back to their original spots.”
He placed down three black pieces, shaped like off road jeeps.
“I have three vehicles that I have financed from our generous business partners. They were expensive, so don’t break them, but the check from this mission should easily pay the rest of them off and then some. We will be breaking into three squads, led by me, my second in command, and your Sergeant.”
He gestured to Terra and Hellena, who were standing to either side of him.
"Squad Iron, squad Ghost, and squad Lava. They change shifts at 0300 hours, we will get in position at 0130 for preparation and begin operations at 0200. It will be dark, the Rangers will be tired and complacent from seven hours of watching nothing happen, and we will have an entire hour to get the goods and get out before reinforcements arrive.”
He pushed one of the cars down the hill, directly towards the first Ranger marker.
“At ten minutes before 2, Squad Ghost will do a drive-by, hitting the first Ranger and whatever Pokemon they have out. Your goal isn’t to incapacitate them, in fact having them unconscious here is a liability, we want to draw them away.”
Mark pushed the car piece north, now with the red marker in tow, and hit the second marker right as the third marker’s patrol passed by.
“Be loud, be fast, blare your horn, be as big of a distraction as you can be. Don’t commit to battles you can’t win, do a fighting retreat, play dirty, I don’t care, your job is to hold their attention and to be so loud that they can’t hear the other Squads coming.”
“Sir!” Terra cut in with a sharp salute. “I have a request.”
“What?”
“Can I please lead the distraction attack?” She asked, practically vibrating from excitement. “I want to prove that I deserve my position!”
“Sure, knock yourself out.” Mark shrugged. “Squad Lava will be the diversion. Ghost will play the net.”
Mark swapped the car pieces, only remembering that they looked the exact same after he made a show of doing so.
“The noise will drive the Larvitar away from the fighting, southwards, right into our second push. At 0200 sharp, the net deploys. Squad Iron and Ghost swing up quietly with their lights off, Iron goes east, Ghost goes west, surrounding the herd, and closing the noose. You get in, you catch as many as you possibly can, and then you get out. At 0240, or whenever the Rangers catch on, we get back in the cars and gun it. Each squad goes a different direction to help lose the Rangers. Iron goes to point Alpha, Ghost goes to Bravo, Lava goes to Charlie, then we all meet at point Delta at 0300 sharp to retreat to camp. If a squad is not there by 0300, then we will assume you’ve been captured and will plan a rescue mission.”
Mark looked up at them.
“You do not want to see my kind of rescue mission. Do you understand?”
“”SIR YES SIR!””
“...Good. This is our first step to being something more than just some rabble for the world to play with.” Mark grinned. “Let’s do this.”
-The Dragon King-
Good to be able to write Mark in his natural environment. He’s not the brightest, but he’s competent when he knows what he’s doing.
A little shorter than usual but work is kicking my ass, and I wanted to get something out considering I had to work overtime on Sunday, and I've been politely informed that everyone will be working this next weekend and potentially the weekend after that as well.
Joy.
(Fuck this, I'm quitting after February. )
