-The Dragon King-

  -Shock and Awe: Ch 9-

  Under the cover of night three cars perched atop a hill overlooking a small valley. All three of the cars were on, their engines purring softly, but all lights were off.

  Automobiles were an unusual sight. They were expensive to build, expensive to maintain, required fuel, and needed to drive on roads and infrastructure that just didn’t exist outside the major cities. All of that while not being as fast or as maneuverable as a trained Pokemon could be.

  But that was the beauty of it. Here, where they were a luxury, there had never been any need for strict laws about them. No need for license plates, no need for identification.

  All three of the drivers stared down at their watches, which had been synced up perfectly beforehand.

  1:35

  1:40

  1:45

  1:50

  The first car roared to life as Terra floored the gas pedal, and shot off down the hill so fast that it went airborne for half a second.

  It was painted entirely black, and had tall suspension, large offroad wheels, and a rugged frame. There was a thick square front windshield, but other than that it was entirely open top, letting anyone inside it have a clear shot at anything they wanted to aim at.

  The poor Pokemon Ranger and her Tauros were startled by the sudden blare of the horn, and were blinded by the bright headlights of the jeep as it rushed at them.

  “Halt! You’re not allowed to be- AHGHHH!”

  Her attempts at diplomacy were rebuffed by a barrage of electrical attacks from the various Shinx that were hanging over the sides of the jeep as it flew by.

  Fortunately the Shinx were still just Shinx, none of them had evolved into something that most trainers would consider a "competitive" battle pokemon. The Ranger and her bull were roughed up, given a bad case of static, and lightly charred, but they were still in good enough condition to ride after the car as it blared its horn and drove off into the night.

  1:55

  Distant booms thundered through the darkness, and far off flashes of light briefly lit up the night as Lava Squad hit the other two Rangers head on and engaged.

  2:00

  The two other cars rolled off the hill much quieter than the first. They turned their lights on, but only on the daytime setting, and didn’t floor the gas. They drove forward, down the slope, and quietly picked up speed into the valley.

  The Larvitar in the north of the valley had been woken up by all the noise and the fighting, and were running south, waking up the other Larvitar as they went.

  2:03

  The cars broke off from one another, one going right and the other going left.

  Humans began dropping out of the cars every ten or so seconds, forming a wall, each wearing black clothes and with bandanas covering their faces. They all had a bag of Pokeballs, a Shinx to paralyze and restrain, and a single order: catch every Larvitar you see.

  It wasn’t quite as effective as the strategy would prove to be time and time again in the future, mainly on account of Larvitar being Ground typing, but it didn’t matter.

  Half asleep, panicking, young, running towards the net in a daze, and woefully underleveled to the point that they shouldn’t have even been aboveground yet, the Larvitar fell like stocks of wheat to a scythe as the men advanced.

  One of the cars swerved to a stop and Mark landed on the ground with a massive grin on his face.

  The Larvitar he had just dropped in front of screamed in terror and turned to run, but Shelgon landed on it like a gray meteor. He grabbed the rock lizard in his mouth, shook it like a dog until it passed out, and then threw it up towards Mark.

  A Pokeball hit it in the air, sucked it in, then locked shut without any resistance.

  “Easiest money I’ve made in my life!” Mark laughed as he grabbed the ball out of the air as it fell. “You already know the deal, Shellgon. Every one of these green moneyballs you catch me is another day that you get a full ribeye for dinner. Now, fetch!”

  2:12

  The noise up north flared in intensity for a brief few minutes, before dying off as Lava Squad was forced to cut their losses and make a fighting retreat to draw the Rangers further away.

  2:25

  Mark pinned a crying Larvitar under his boot, whacked it with his bat until it was unconscious, and then introduced it to its new forever home inside a pokeball.

  His good mood was cut short when Noibat swooped down from her scouting point in the sky and began cooing urgently at him.

  “Ah, shit, already?” Mark cursed as he checked his watch. “I thought we would have had more time. How many of the Rangers are on their way back?”

  Noibat held up two talons.

  “Double fuck! I would have tried stalling for time with one, but not two. That’s our que.”

  Mark pulled out his revolver, pointed it into the air, and fired off the blank he had preloaded just for this.

  BANG

  The crack of gunpowder going off seemed to ring even louder than it usually did in the darkness of the night. Everyone in a mile radius must have heard it, which was a good thing, because everyone had been told it was the signal to pull out early, and it would be troublesome if someone missed it.

  Shelgon met Mark halfway back to the car with another Larvitar, which was swiftly captured, and the two piled into the front seats.

  The car was still on, turning the engine off when you needed to make a quick getaway was both a rookie mistake, and just begging for the universe to give you trouble. So there was no tense movie scene where the main character turns the keys again and again while the engine stalled.

  The car took off the way it had come, and began picking up people at spots they had picked out beforehand on the map.

  Mark kept driving that direction, picking people up as fast as he could, until he ran into the other car and they both left together.

  Except… He, uh, wasn’t seeing the other car?

  He was picking up a lot more people than he had dropped off- to the point where even with several people standing, and people sitting in each other's laps, it was a tight squeeze to get more people in.

  “Where in the world is Hellena?” Mark cursed as he had to hunch over for a girl to climb over him and wedge her fat ass on the dashboard on the passenger side, because it was the only fucking place left.

  “I haven’t seen her since she dropped us off.” Said someone who had definitely not been in Mark’s squad.

  “Fan-fucking-tastic.” Mark scowled.

  But the universe decided to throw him a bone, and not a second later he saw the headlights of the other car turn on in the distance, but something was wrong.

  When the car drove over towards them it only had one person in it, and the driver wasn’t Hellena.

  -The Dragon King-

  Hellena stumbled back from the blow, tripped on her dress, and toppled back into the mud.

  Overhead a Murkrow expertly weaved out of the way of a Shadow Claw and hit Haunter with the same super effective Foul Play that had taken out Shedinja.

  An old man in a red and black Ranger uniform stepped closer to her, looming over her and cutting off her escape.

  “Resistance is futile.” He said through his beard and with cold eyes. “You’re only getting your Pokemon wounded for nothing. Come quietly, and no more harm will come to you.”

  “Do you even have the authority to arrest me?” Hellena asked with a raised eyebrow. “The Rangers are under a different branch of government from law enforcement. You're not exactly officer Jenny.”

  “I have the right to detain you for up to 48 hours, with good cause, and turn you over to the police who do have the authority to arrest you.”

  Hellena let out a long tired sigh and let herself sink further into the mud.

  Great. She was getting captured. Great. Now Mark would be pissed at her. Great.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Why had she even agreed to this borderline legal stuff anyway? Selling pokemon was one thing, selling to people who officially you didn’t know were with Team Rocket was another thing, but raiding a protected herd of highly rare pokemon that was under guard by Rangers was a different game entirely.

  Well, she knew why she had agreed. It was obvious. She had gone with whatever direction she was being dragged in, because she just hadn’t felt any disgust or reason to push back.

  …

  Felt.

  She should be angry right now, that she was being captured, maybe even scared for what might happen, but she just… wasn’t.

  She was annoyed, sure, but that was about it. She just couldn’t find any fire in her to light up in indignation or rage. Mark was practically overflowing with fire, with drive and passion. All she had was a pile of ash that could only offer a smouldering of heat at best.

  That fire had been stamped out of her a long time ago.

  She felt about as much emotion towards being captured by law enforcement, as she did towards the cold wet mud that she could feel seeping through her dress and soaking her back.

  “Done resisting?” The ranger asked.

  “I’ve been done resisting for years.” Hellena said dryly.

  “Good. Now come with me an-”

  THUD

  The world would never know what the Ranger was going to say, because a car hit him before he could say it. Just came out of nowhere, drifted in the mud, and slammed its doors into the guy at over thirty miles an hour.

  His Murkrow took great offense to this, and reared up for an attack, only for Shelgon to blast him with a Dragon Pulse, and for Noibat to crash into him a second later.

  “M-Mark?” Hella asked, bewildered as he crouched down beside her.

  In the twilight, with the lights of the headlights behind him, all of his scars and his blemishes were hidden. His face was a silhouette of his thick neck, his sharp chin, his glowing golden hair, and his bright red eyes that burned like embers- near identical to so many of the ghosts that she loved so much.

  Her heart skipped a beat, and she felt heat bloom on her cold dead cheeks as he scooped her out of the mud.

  “Are you okay?” The Dragon King asked with a deep gravely voice. She heard it all the time, but here, alone, so close to him, it was almost like his words were being raked softly over smoking coals.

  “I-I-I- You-” Hellena sputtered as warmth pooled in her chest.

  The dead pile of white ash and soot of her heart, that had long since cooled… it began to spark.

  “Y-Yes, I’m fine!” Hellena smiled with a blush, unable to look him in the eyes, and ran a hand through her hair only for it to get stuck in a tangle not even halfway through.

  “Good.”

  Mark grinned and whatever moment Hellena thought she was having was completely ruined when he threw her over his shoulder like a duffle bag, rushed over to the car, and hurled her over the door into the passenger seat.

  “Mark, I am going to kill you!” Hellena yowled from the floor under the dashboard, where she had landed upside down and backwards in the seat.

  “Nah, the Rangers are too soft for that, but I sure as Hell don’t want to know what they’ll do instead if they catch us.” Mark said as he dropped into the driver seat, having misheard her.

  Haunter floated down into the back seat of Ghost Squad’s car, while Shelgon (bless his soul) tried to help Hellena up, doing his part to take care of the valuable parts of the pack his trainer had become the head of.

  It was a bad time to do this, however, because the jeep lurched forward, causing Hellena to fall back down, and Shelgon’s eyes to go wide as he rolled backwards into the rear seats like a bowling ball.

  “Mark, you asshole!” When Hellena finally pulled herself up, her face was flushed in a rare display of unshielded emotion, and her eyes were pinpricks.

  “What? Why are you mad!? I just saved you!”

  “You can’t just give a girl a princess moment and then treat her like a sack of potatoes!”

  “What? What the Hell is a princess moment!?”

  “The fact you didn’t even mean to do it makes it all the worse! Why!? I haven’t been able to feel any emotion other than fear that intensely in years, and you just- UGH! Honestly, fuck you!”

  Hellena crossed her arms and rolled her eyes with a scowl, catching Mark off guard by how alive she was suddenly acting.

  “You are speaking complete gibberish. I just drove back and saved your ass, why are you mad!? That happened to me once, you know, and not only did I fork over part of my rations for the next week, every beer that legend of a man ordered went on my card until the day he died.”

  “Aaaand you don’t even get it. It’s not always about physical things. Ugh, you’re such a man.”

  “And you’re such a woman. Acting all prissy, while making no sense and refusing to explain.”

  “You wouldn’t need me to explain if there wasn’t a black hole between your ears instead of a brain.” She scoffed, tried to hide the bitter feeling clawing at her from the inside, which was so much worse than the cold numbness she had become accustomed to.

  “Hey-”

  BOOM!

  The car bounced as a fireball exploded next to it, raining small rocks and dirt down onto Mark and Hellena.

  Hellena looked back, having to hold her wall of purple hair out of the way so she could actually see, and she let out a colorful word that she had learned from Mark.

  Two of the Rangers were hot on their tail. One was on a Tauros, and the other was on a Rapidash.

  This was, as the professionals say: “not great.”

  Shelgon and Haunter poked up over the backseat and shot back with dragon fire and poison, which in turn caused the Rangers to return fire.

  Hellena yelped and ducked under a flamethrower, and gripped the seat like a lifeline as the car began to bounce, shake, and rattle like it would fall apart at any moment.

  “WHOOO! Warthog run!” Mark shouted as he floored the gas. “Just like Nevada, baby!”

  “Wait, Mark, let me buckle iiiIIIINNNNN! EEEEEKK!”

  -The Dragon King-

  …

  ..

  .

  Many years later

  The world was burning. All of Sinnoh was covered in endless dark smog that hung overhead and choked out the sun.

  A Steel fortress dominated the skyline. Standing tall, and built into the side of Mt Coronet, the gigantic military installation could be seen from almost anywhere in Sinnoh, and the missile silos and massive artillery guns could fire even further than that.

  It all served to remind Sinnoh of the new status quo.

  Across the world numerous Teams of criminals, activists, zealots, and scientists had risen up one by one.

  They had all failed and fled to Sinnoh, where the greatest success story of them all resided, and where they had been ruthlessly crushed under foot…or assimilated.

  The Sinnoh League that had once been the strongest of all regions, had been pushed back by a ruthless warlord that had carved out his own kingdom at its very heart.

  For the first time in many years, there was peace. The Pokemon had fallen silent, the guns stopped firing.

  An armistice, it was called, while the International League and the prideful Dragon King were both dragged to the negotiating table over the stalemate they had been in for almost a year.

  It was a cold peace- cold as the giant cannons on the castle Sinnoh’s new Lord roosts in. But it was peace.

  And Celebi hated it.

  How could anyone let this stand!? So much bloodshed, so much pain and suffering, and they were just going to let the evil go unpunished!?!?

  Something had to be done. And Celebi was going to be the one to do it.

  Her kind was very rare, but even among them she was unique. Where most of her kind was various shades of green, she was a beautiful light pink.

  Celebi was one of the oldest of her kind, and while she wasn’t the strongest, she was the most experienced at sailing the river of time.

  She had seen many things. Changed many things.

  But things were different now. When the war started Dialga herself had put an iron lock on the timestream. No one could sail the rivers of time without facing her wrath. Celebi couldn’t understand why Dialga had come out of isolation to become so protective of her domain, Celebi just knew that she had.

  Which was why she had to be careful about this.

  At the bottom of a ravine, at the edge of the continent, hidden under the veil of night and under a torrent of rain, Celebi fluttered down to a weak point in the time space continuum.

  She took a deep breath and punched through.

  The moment she splashed into the endless river of time, the iron claws of time’s warden clamped down on her. Had she been any other Celebi, she would have been caught on the spot, but she was special, and she had danced with Dialga before.

  As quickly as she was in, she was out, blinking into existence entire decades in the past.

  Sinnoh sprawled out beneath her. No ruins of war, or scars in the planet itself from the distortion word trying to rip into reality.

  It was beautiful.

  Then she blinked her eyes, and she was in a cave.

  Before she even got the chance to panic, the golden hoop snapped shut behind her, and a Shadow Claw came streaking down directly on the weak spot between her wings.

  Celebi screamed as the super effective Ghost TE clawed into her back, and a fully changed Hyperspace Hole bypassed the hasty barrier she threw up in defence, exploding hard enough to send her crashing to the ground.

  Her speed was such that she bounced like a bouncy ball off the hard rocky ground. She likely would have bounced several times more, but a spear of black tar shot out of an open ring portal and pinned her to the ground like an insect on a bugboard.

  “Oh no!” A fake and wildly insincere voice shouted from above her in concern. “This is terrible! She’s hurt! She’s hurt! She needs help! Can someone, anyone, do anything at all!?”

  The voice trailed off into a cold and hollow chuckle as Hoopa drifted down in front of her.

  “Unfortunately for you, no one can.” Hoopa grinned with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth. “What’s wrong? You looked surprised, but you really shouldn’t be. My entire gimmick is being able to make tunnels through space. Of course I can tell when one of your tunnels through time is about to rip open near me or my hoops.”

  Celebi thrashed against her restraints, letting out sounds that sounded similar to a small bell aggressively being shaken.

  “Of course I didn’t tell you I could, it’s called playing your cards close to your chest, and I’ve had to get very good at that.” Hoopa shrugged, understanding whatever language Celebi naturally spoke. “Usually you get to play the same trick on someone a few times before they wisen up, but sometimes I don’t even get to play it once before you temporally-sporadic types already know about it.”

  Another chorus of ringing bells.

  “Pfft, why would I bother to pretend to be nice to you.” He scoffed. “Just to put chips into the pot against someone who knows I’m going to bluff every hand? Hard pass.”

  Hoopa’s eyes darkened, and Celebi shrank back in terror as he advanced on her.

  “Now. You’re going to tell me eeeeverything~”

  …

  It was several hours before Celebi managed to push back with enough force to weaken her restraints for the half second she needed to slip back between the seconds of time, like she was never there.

  She splashed back into the river of time, bloody and exhausted. But she was completely unprepared for the metal claws that grabbed her like a doll, and whisked her away to stand trial at Temporal Tower.

  Celebi was gone.

  But that was fine. Hoopa had known he wouldn’t be able to hold her for long, not in his current state. He had gotten everything he could have possibly wanted from her and more.

  He let out a low chuckle, akin to the sound of a chain being tugged back and forth through a pile of nails, as he went over everything he had forced her to tell him.

  He already had his bets set, but now he knew exactly where he could go all in without any worry.

  All he had to do was chase off the pink bug a few more times if she ever came back, and then just sit back and let the cards fall in his favor.

  “Jaaackpooot~!”

  -End Chapter-

  Here, look, this is me writing Time Travel out of the plot of a setting where there’s like a dozen different ways to Time Travel. It’s such a lazy plot device for authors who write themselves into a corner.

  MASSIVE props to Steins Gate and Madoka Magika for using it creatively in non-lazy ways and being incredibly fucking awesome stories because of it. 11/10, go watch both of those shows. DO IT NOW!