-The Dragon King-
-Redline: Ch 5-
Oreburgh was under attack. Terrible crashes could be heard all through the city- a sound that was only matched by the thunderous roars of a mother wronged that shook the ground.
The Pokecenter and Gym followed the procedures for a wild Pokemon attack perfectly, opening their door to all trainers, and allowing them to take shelter from the storm.
The Pokemart on the other hand was not a government facility, despite being deep in bed with the League, and didn’t open its door for the public. Quite the contrary, actually, the doors slammed shut, locked, and were barred the moment the alarm was sounded.
Anyone who wanted to get inside would have to use gratuitous force to do so.
A gunshot blasted the lock apart, and let the back maintenance door be kicked open with a crash.
Mark barged in and immediately beelined to the service desk.
“I need Pokeballs.” He slammed his good arm on the desk. “Give me as many as you’ve got, it’s a matter of city-wide security.”
“Wh-What?” The poor clerk stared at him with wide confused eyes.
“Out of the way!” Mark pushed her to the side and vaulted over the countertop. “Let’s see here… Bingo!”
Mark grabbed the metal cabinet with the picture of an ultra ball on it and yanked on it, but it didn’t even budge.
“Is this a robbery?” The employee asked, aghast- she was the same one he, err, had a very professional and business-like meeting with out back.
“No, but it’s going to be if you don’t help me get this stupid thing open!” Mark threatened as he thrashed the handle with his good arm, causing the entire shelf to shake. “I’m going to hurl every single ball in this building at that stupid bear, until I catch it. Every second it’s stuck trying to break free, is a second it’s not tearing down buildings.”
“Oh! Uhm, I only have the keys for Pokeballs under 600 P. We’d need the manager to unlock the Ultraballs and Luxuryballs, and she left when the attack started!”
“Oh, fuck this shit!”
Mark scowled as he pulled the revolver from his belt and took aim at the metal lock.
BANG
The customers who’d been in the building when everything started, and were taking refuge in the shop, screamed as the bullet ricocheted into the ceiling and caused plaster and wood flakes to rain down.
“Please stop! That's not going to work! Those cabinets were made to withstand Pokemon attacks!”
“DAMNIT!” Mark cursed and kicked the (now dented where he had shot) stupid cabinet. “Fine, whatever, I don’t have time for this! Unlock the basic Pokeballs, I’ll just force the RNG for their shitty capture chance through sheer quantity.”
“How many do you need?”
“How many do you have?”
-The Dragon King-
Several of the Gym trainers had joined into the fight and were trying to help, but they weren’t doing much more than slowing the Ursaring down- as proven by the massive Onix that caught a Stone Edge with its face before toppling over backwards and crashing into a bunch of mining equipment, completely unconscious.
Roark could only watch the fight with ever growing anger. Anger at the situation. Anger at his city being torn apart. Anger at this near-Ace level Ursaring. And above it all, anger at himself.
This was the exact reason that he had been given Steelix in the first place.
Steelix, who was out of commission in the Pokemon center because of him.
“Damn it all!” Roark cursed as he scooped Cranidos’ head into his lap and returned his injured Pokemon.
“Piplup, Water Gun!”
“Ralts, use Disarming Voice to cover her.”
“This is Officer Jenny of Oreburgh, broadcasting on all channels! We have a wild Pokemon attack on our hands! We’re dealing with a rogue Ursaring! We need backup!”
They were slowly whittling it down, but the Ursaring only seemed to be getting angrier and more aggressive as time went on.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go!” Roark shouted as he stood back up and pulled off the last Pokeball from his best. But before he could send out Geodude, Ursaring roared back and a harsh light began gathering in her mouth.
“HYPER BEAM! GET DOWN!” Jenny cried out, and tackled Casey and Dawn to the ground.
The hairs on Roark’s neck stood on end, and his ears popped as a massive lance of energy ripped through the air where his head had been moments ago. The beam exploded as it crashed into the building behind them, blasting a massive chunk out of it, before sweeping left and washing over everything like a blinding wave of death.
In just a few seconds, what was a picturesque evening just a few hours ago, had turned into something out of a nightmare.
Buildings were in ruins and crumbling under their own weight into massive piles of rubble and glowing hot rebar. The treeline for the surrounding forest had been cut down and pushed back by several cars worth, with small fires rapidly spreading around the blast zone. And a ploom of smoke billowed into the sky, choking the stars that had started to emerge, while debris rained down around them.
Officer Jenny had evacuated everyone, no one was in those buildings. The police had been escorting all the civilians to the Pokecenter, no one was in those buildings. They weren’t fully collapsed so any survivors cou- no one was in those buildings.
But no matter how many times Roark told himself that, it did nothing to help the acidic revulsion that twisted in his gut and threatened to make him puke.
“C-CODE RED!” Jenny shouted into her radio, choking on her words. “ACE LEVEL POKEMON! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK BY AN ACE LEVEL POKEMON! SEND IMMEDIATE HELP!”
“Arceus help us.” Dawn whispered in horror.
With all who dared oppose her cowering or running away, Ursaring reared back and roared loud enough to shake the earth.
“Hey, fuckface Fazbear wannabe!”
All eyes turned to look as a particularly stupid dumbass climbed on top of one of the newly made rubble hills and dropped a metal drawer on the ground.
“Catch!”
Mark reared back and hurled a Pokeball like a fastball. It curved ever so slightly as it zipped through the air and smacked the bear in the back of the head.
The metal THUNK of the impact was quickly followed by a second thunk as it fell and bounced off the ground.
Slowly, the massive Ursaring turned around to face Mark with a furious expression- very much not in the stupid ball.
“SOMEONE OWNS YOU!?”
“An improper release!?” Jenny exclaimed in shock. “On a creature this powerful, that’s not just a crime, that’s a full blown felony!”
“Or she killed her trainer.” Helena whispered chillingly.
Uraring roared and charged Marcus on all fours, ignoring everyone else and barreling over everything in her way.
Mark cursed and kicked his stolen metal drawer over, spilling a fortune of Pokeballs down the hill of rubble, and buying himself valuable seconds as the bear crushed and slipped on them like marbles.
BANG
A bullet landed perfectly between the mother’s eyes, punching through her thick skin and digging into bone, but was unable to break through her thick skull. Perhaps a higher caliber would have been a killing shot, but even at point blank the (relatively) primitive revolver was just too weak.
BANG BANG
Mark pulled the trigger twice more as he jumped backwards and skidded down the rubble.
His broken arm fumbled at his belt, frantically pressing buttons of the Pokeballs he hadn’t used like a prop from a shitty spy movie, forgoing the whole “one fighter at a time” thing in favor of common sense.
Four oversized brown hamsters appeared at the base of the crumbled building in a flash of light.
“Bidoof army, surround the bear and spam status effect moves! Leer, Growl, I don’t know what you all specifically can use and I don’t fucking care as long as it works!”
Of the four rodents, Bidoof1 immediately turned and booked it in the other direction, while the others just looked up at him with stupid faces as he sprinted past them.
“RAOOOH!”
The Bidoof were forcibly broken out of their stupor as the Ursaring came flying down the hill, snapping one of them in half with a Crunch, sending another flying from a glancing impact, and continuing after Mark with laser focused attention.
The fifth and final Bidoof materialized in Mark’s arms, gripped firmly by the scruff of its neck.
“Use Headbutt!” Mark shouted as he swung and sent the Bidoof through the air, like a sack of potatoes.
“BWIIIEE!”
To Bidoof6’s credit, it did manage to activate Headbutt before he crashed into the massive bear’s forehead, but there wasn’t much a 30 pound rat could do to a hulking 400 something lb mamma running on overdrived maternal instinct and rage so resolute that the 1971 American federal reserve might have been tempted to peg the Dollar to it when they abandoned the gold standard.
Ursaring hit Bidoof6, and sent him splattering on a nearby wall. With the annoyance gone, she turned her attention back to Mark, only to find him missing.
She growled in frustration and rose back up to her full height on two legs, sniffing the air.
Idly, she could feel repeated Growls and Leers wash over her back, but she ignored them. This criminal had taken her cubs, and she would make him pay with every last drop of his blood.
BANG
Ursaring roared as a bullet punched into her chest, and she whirled towards Marcus, who was leaning out from behind a corner.
Energy began gathering in her mouth for a Hyper Beam that wouldn’t care about how fast he ran or what cover he hid behind, but was interrupted when a living wrecking ball slammed into the back of her knee with a Take Down that made her stumble and fall backwards.
“Nice! Now Dragon Breath! Smoke her!”
Boiling hot dragon fire washed over brown fur, but it was swatted away with a massive clawed hand, and Shelgon had to jump to the side to avoid getting Bidoof-ed.
Shelgon dodged the claws as best he could before taking an opening and blitzing in with a Take Down to try to sweep Ursaring’s legs out again. Unfortunately he didn’t account for the fact he was running towards the other side of the legs he had hit previously.
Ursaring kicked Shelgon like a soccer ball, and bounced him off a nearby lamp pole with enough force to bend it.
Shelgon groaned, struggling to rise as sparks of electricity danced around the bent pole from frayed wires. Its armored shell had absorbed most of the blow, but it was clearly shaken. Marcus cursed under his breath and snapped his fingers.
“Shelgon, you’re not done! Focus, and hit her again!”
The spherical dragon (spheragon?) growled, steadying itself on stubby legs. Its mouth glowed hot with blue energy, but instead of immediately letting it go, Shelgon held it back, trying to build up its power. The Dragon Energy grew and grew until it was a sparkling, swirling, orb of blue and violet energy that looked like it might explode if someone sneezed on it.
Ursaring roared, her chest heaving as her fury fueled a second attempt at gathering a Hyper Beam. The air around her mouth shimmered with deadly energy as her own attack charged.
“Don’t let her finish! NOW!”
Shelgon launched his very shoddy and very unstable imitation of Dragon Pulse like a cannon, the sparking blue blob screaming angrily as it streaked toward Ursaring’s chest. The bear-like Pokémon staggered back a step as the impact drove into her. Her glowing maw snapped shut, and there was a muffled CRACK as the light went out, and smoke seeped out of her nose.
She fixed Marcus with a murderous glare, blood dripping from between her teeth as her lips peeled back in a snarl.
“That is fucking terrifying. Keep her on the defensive, I don’t want that maw anywhere near us! She can’t retaliate if she’s overwhelmed!”
But Ursaring had other plans. With a ground-shaking roar, she slammed both fists into the earth. A violent tremor ripped through the street as cracks spider-webbed outward, catching Shelgon mid-charge and toppling it onto its side.
“Earthquake?! Oh, come on!” Marcus shouted, stumbling to keep his balance.
The street buckled, sending cars sliding into each other and upending chunks of asphalt. Shelgon floundered in the chaos, his heavy shell helping very little with the disorienting effects of the shaking ground.
With Shelgon off balance, Ursaring lunged, claws and teeth glowing, only to howl in rage as her prey disintegrated into red light right beneath her claws.
“Tactical retreat!” Mark shouted to all the Bidoofs still in earshot, as he sprinted off with Shelgon’s pokeball clenched tightly in his hand- fumbling to secure it to his belt.
“RAOOOOOH!”
A rapidly growing shadow over him was all the warning Mark had to throw himself to the side as a car crashed down where he had been, and tumbled down the road in a mangled wreck.
The veteran rolled as he hit the ground, trying to keep his momentum, but not succeeding very well.
Mark slammed his left fist into the ground, and used it to push himself up. He grunted at the lance of pain that shot out from his broken forearm, accepting the pain and almost relishing the way it grounded him in the moment.
The ground shook with heavy steps, and he was given a few seconds to panic between reaching for his gun or Shelgon’s pokeball, before Ursaring exploded out of the wall of the building she had charged through to get to him.
Adrenaline running high, brain cells running low, and indecision leaving him with nothing in his hand, while staring down certain death Mark panicked and did something stupid.
He let out a war cry, reared back, and punched the motherfucker right in her stupid fucking snout.
It bought him one second, one singular second of complete bewilderment from the terrifying monster, before he was torn into bloody ribbons of meat, but that was all that he needed for his backup plan to bail him out.
Two clawed purple hands grabbed him by the shoulders and swept him out from underneath the mountain of gnashing teeth.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“HAUHA AaHAUhaAUA HA HHAUuA!” Haunter laughed, because of course it did, at the look of unbridled fury on Usraring’s face as he snatched her kill literally right from under her nose. It cackled like a madman, sounding like nails on a chalkboard as it flew down the street and dropped Mark in an undignified heap.
“Do you see that?” Mark coughed. “That is exactly why I decided to let you travel with me.”
“Super sorry for not getting here sooner, but I’m glad I could help!” Helena tried to smile as best she could given the situation, and offered her hand. To put it bluntly, she looked like shit. Dust was all over her face, her eyeliner and dark purple lipstick were smeared, her dress was torn in several spots, and her hair… Well, actually her hair didn’t look much worse than it usually did.
Mark grabbed the offered hand and pulled himself up, making Helena tip forward and almost causing her to fall onto him.
“RAOOOH!”
Ursaring lunged forward into a charge, but was caught off balance as a beam of Ice TE struck her legs, and covered them with a layer of ice.
“Don’t worry, we’re here!” Dawn shouted as she ran over, Piplup balancing on her shoulder.
“What do you mean we, it’s just you!” Mark exclaimed. “We need more backup! There were more of you, where did they go? Where’s the Fairy dumbass? Where is literally anyone else?! There is one bear, and we have an entire city of people!”
“The Gym trainers have all been knocked out, and this is far too dangerous for normal trainers to help with, they would just be getting themselves killed.” Dawn explained, her eyes never leaving the Ursaring. “Casey and Officer Jenny are checking the collapsed buildings to make sure no stragglers got trapped. Roark is trying to reach as many people as he can, using his position as Gym Leader to skip through the game of telephone, and cut to the top of the League's emergency response force. Several Ace trainers are on their way here from Eterna city, they’ll be here soon.” A bead of sweat slowly ran down Dawn’s brow, her knuckles turning white from how tightly she was gripping Piplup’s Pokeball.
“How soon is soon? Soon now is a lot sooner than soon after we’re dead.” Mark hissed.
“Soon.” Dawn reaffirmed, more for herself than Mark.
The ice shattered as Ursaring finally broke free and began stalking towards the trio like a predator on the hunt.
Marcus scowled and rapidly looked around for something to get himself out of this mess- his eyes eventually settling on a ruined factory building. It had been blasted open by Ursaring’s Hyper Beam, and was teetering on the edge of collapse, but hadn’t toppled yet.
How fucking pathetic was this. An adult hiding behind a teenager because he couldn’t deal with the consequences of his own actions coming back to bite him.
“Helena, keep the kid alive, I’m solving our problem!”
“Mark, wait!”
Both the girls screamed at him as he pulled Dawn back and took off in a dead sprint.
Ursaring rushed to meet him, with claws glowing white-
BANG
The sixth and last shot in his crummy revolver dug into the bear’s jaw, causing her to close her eyes and finch, which let Mark duck under the flailing paws and speed past.
Ursaring naturally turned and gave chase, ignoring the girls even as Water Gun and Venoshock hit her in the back. Her fight was with Mark above everyone else, after all, and the two beelined for the edge of town.
The cracked asphalt groaned beneath his boots as Mark thundered through the city, every muscle in his battered body burning as he pushed himself to his limits. Behind him, the guttural growl of the mamma bear reverberated like rolling thunder, its massive paws crunching debris with terrifying force.
He glanced over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of the mountain of muscle and bloodied fur that was advancing on him like a bus filled to the brim with cinderblocks. Her bloodshot eyes locked onto him, and only him.
Mark's chest heaved as he darted into a narrow alley, his sharp mind already calculating his next move. The beast was faster, stronger, fighting it directly was a no-go, it would just be a repeat of earlier, and that had almost gotten him killed. But speed and strength could be a liability in the right environment.
"Come on, big guy." He muttered, skidding to a stop where he could get a good view of the crumbling factory. His eyes scanned the structure, looking over the fractured columns, and cracking walls. The whole thing was a jenga tower just waiting for someone to hit it with a hammer and tip it over.
Luckily he had a whole bulldozer.
The bear barreled into the alley, too large for the tight space but forcing its way through regardless. Concrete shattered as its claws raked the walls, sending chunks of brick raining down. Mark backed into the open street, drawing its attention further as he taunted it with a sharp whistle.
"That all you got?" He shouted, his voice hoarse but defiant.
The beast roared, surging forward like a freight train. Mark turned and sprinted toward the factory, weaving through the rubble with practiced precision. He could feel the tremors of the bear's pursuit shaking the ground beneath him.
Just as he reached the shadow of the building, he veered sharply to the left, narrowly avoiding a swipe from a set of claws that shattered the ground. The creature, blinded by rage and momentum, crashed into one of the remaining support columns with the force of a battering ram.
The column groaned under the impact, fractures spider webbing along its surface. Mark didn’t slow down. He darted through the broken remains of an interior wall and emerged on the far side of the building. From here, he had a clear view of the collapsing structure.
Ursaring looked at the pillar she had crashed into with far more intelligence than any animal on Earth would have had, and Mark was reminded that he was dealing with a Pokemon- these things could be smart at times. Smart enough, for example, to figure out his very obvious plan.
“Hey, Freddy fuckface! Man, you're slow!” Mark hollered, pulling her attention back to him. “I was expecting more from you. And if your cubs inherited your stats, I’m starting to think I might have overcharged the customers when I sold them off.”
Ursaring saw red.
Another column shattered into pieces as she barreled through it in a blind rage to get to Mark, followed by the groan of stressed steel beams. The entire building began to lean, bricks tumbling like dominoes in slow motion.
Mark didn’t stop to watch. He jumped out of a window and threw himself behind a half-toppled bus, just as the deafening crash of the building’s collapse shook the air. The roar of the bear was swallowed by the crash, and muffled into silence.
Coughing, Mark rose from his cover, his hand instinctively checking the sidearm holstered at his hip, even if it didn’t actually have any ammo. He squinted through the settling dust, his heart pounding as he scanned the rubble.
…
Nothing.
No sound, no movement, no nothing.
He let out a sigh of relief, and his shoulders relaxed.
“Marcus!”
Adrenaline flooded his system, and it was only because Dawn was a short teenager that his fist only knocked her beanie off her head instead of nailing her in the jaw.
“Watch it!”
“Don’t fucking sneak up on people like that!” Mark snapped, his chest heaving. “I almost took your head off.”
If he’d been holding his gun…
“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed.” Dawn sassed as she rolled her eyes and swiped her hat off the ground. “You should count your lucky stars, my head is worth at least twice the cost of the building you knocked over.”
“The Ursaring knocked it over, I was just running away. It was the one to hit the building with a Hyper Beam and then run into the support columns. I’m completely innocent.”
“Over here! They’re alive!” Officer Jenny waved at the two as she approached from down the street. Behind her were Casey, Roark, and a dozen or so police men, along with a ragged Helena who looked exhausted just trying to keep up with the group’s jog.
Dawn waved at the group, before cupping her mouth and shouting, “We got the Ursaring!”
“We?” Mark looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Who is this we? I think you mean I got the Ursaring.”
“You almost got yourself turned into bear chow because you tried to punch a rampaging wild Pokemon.”
“No, I succeeded in punching a rampaging wild Pokemon.”
“That’s even worse!”
“I dropped a building on it.”
“I thought the Ursaring dropped the building on itself? Weren’t you ‘completely innocent’?”
“Here, watch, we’ll get a professional opinion.”
Shelgon appeared in a burst of light, and Mark kneeled down in front of him.
“Who do you think deserves credit for beating the Ursaring? Her, or me?”
Shelgon looked between the two of them, thinking carefully before his eyes quirked smugly and he gestured to himself.
““Not an option!”” Both of the trainers said at the same time.
It was dumb banter over stupid and pointless things- good banter! Mark effortlessly fell back into mindless smack talk between the troops that helped them calm down and not have to think about the fight they’d just been in.
Dawn probably didn’t know the intellectual reason behind it, but with how easily she leaned into it, she clearly understood it subconsciously… or she just had a sass and attitude problem, that was also completely possible.
It was a nice distraction, until Helena silently grabbed the two, and slowly pulled them away from the factory rubble.
“Wha-”
“Shh!”
A low, guttural rumble rolled through the air. They all froze, their eyes snapping toward the pile of debris. It was subtle at first, just a faint tremor, like the earth itself was uneasy.
And then the rubble shifted.
Massive slabs of concrete, each weighing thousands of pounds, groaned as they were pushed aside. Twisted steel beams shrieked as they bent and gave way, snapping like brittle twigs. The pile of destruction heaved upward, and with a deafening crack, a boulder-sized chunk of debris was hurled aside.
From beneath the ruin, the Ursaring emerged.
Heaven hath no wrath like a mother scorned.
Her fur was matted with dust and streaked with blood, but the Pokemon seemed unfazed. The sheer force it displayed was almost surreal- her shoulders bulged with muscle as she lifted what had to be the weight of an entire building. Each motion sent more debris tumbling, the ground quaking beneath her efforts.
A fractured steel girder lay across her back, bending under her immense strength before snapping like a toy. The bear stood, shaking the rubble from her massive frame. Dust cascaded off her body in clouds, and her glowing red eyes locked onto the group, onto Mark, with primal, unrelenting fury.
The police immediately formed a defensive line, Jenny at the front, Pokeballs at the ready.
But before the Ursaring could take step forward, there was a whistle. A very faint, very subtle whistle.
Then in a span of half a second, that whistle turned into a shrill shriek as a barrage of golden stars screamed down from the sky and exploded as they slammed into the wild Pokemon.
A massive metal thing with an enormous wingspan blasted overhead, and for a moment Mark was convinced that the US air force had somehow come to save his ass for the hundredth time.
But while it was big enough to be a small jet, and sure as Hell metallic enough to be one, it wasn’t the airforce. In fact, it even wasn’t a plane at all, it was a bird.
“SKAR!”
Granted, it was a really big bird, but it was still just a bird.
Skarmory, the armored bird-shark-raptor-bullshit-thing that was now the most badass thing Mark had ever seen, banked hard to come around for another pass, and Mark was able to vaguely see the outlines of two people riding on its back.
“RAOOO-ACK!”
The Ursaring’s roar was cut off by another barrage of Swift stars that hammered her into the ground.
The Skarmory dive bombed, screaming like a Stuka as it cut through the air, before cutting up at the very last second, its massive metal talons cutting into the asphalt like butter and carving long gashes in the road as the steel bird slowly ground itself to a halt.
“Oh no. Nonono” Roark stumbled back, shaking his head in denial. “I am so dead.”
A pair of rugged leather boots made a heavy crunch as they landed on the rubble, and out from behind Skarmory’s wingspan stepped the last person Roark wanted to see.
The Gym leader of Canalave city, a man capable of giving some of the Elite Four a run for their money, Byron Stone. Roark’s father.
“Roark.” The mountaineer crossed his arms, which happened to be built like bricks, and looked down at his son in disappointment. “We need to talk. Alone.”
Byron’s appearance deserved much more fanfare than it got, but everyone more or less forgot he existed the moment the other person stepped off the bird.
“Hello.” Cynthia waved at them casually, like she wasn’t the Champion of the entire region just randomly popping in out of nowhere. “I happened to be in Eterna city, talking to Byron, when the call for help went out. Is everyone alright?”
No one responded, presumably too busy choking on air as they tried to remember how to breathe.
“C-Cynthia! You’re Cynthia!” Dawn blurted out dumbly.
“Yes, and you’re Dawn, right? I’ve heard lots of things about you from Professor Rowan.”
“A-All good things, I hope!”
“It’s been nothing but glowing praise. Honestly, I feel like I’m cheating by meeting you before you challenge me in the Champion room.” Cynthia smiled cheekily, either entirely oblivious (or entirely too aware) to how just a few words turned the usually prideful Dawn into a stammering, embarrassed mess.
Oh.
Oh this was about Dawn.
Mark let out the breath he had been holding.
This was a case of “game protagonist has plot-convenient things happen because game protagonist powers”. The League hadn’t somehow figured out he was from a different reality with nukes, and were here to arrest him. He wasn’t going to get hauled off to PokePrison today.
Cynthia was here for Dawn, probably because Rowan said something, and Byron was here for Roark. They weren’t even pretending to pay attention to anyone else.
“RAOOOH!”
Oh right. The bear.
Cynthia plucked a Pokeball from her belt and popped it open.
A white light spilled out in front of them, the energy congealing together back into a blob of solid matter that grew and grew and grew and grew and just kept growing, until (just when it seemed like Ursaring might be able to fully charge a Hyper Beam before whatever this was could even get out of its ball), the light shattered away to reveal a behemoth.
Cynthia had a Garchomp. Her team shuffled around in every game she popped up in, but she always had a Garchomp, it was kind of her thing.
This… Mark wasn’t even sure if he could call this thing a Garchomp- it definitely wasn’t the Garchomp he two shot with an Ice Beam on his DS!
Cynthia’s Garchomp was over ten feet tall, and covered with thick purple scales so dark that they almost looked black. It was massive, but somehow despite its size, and scales that looked like they could shrug off tank rounds, you couldn’t draw a line more than three inches without running into some knick or scar from an old battle.
Mark and Shelgon could only sit back and stare in terrified awe at the monster in front of them.
This was the Champion’s Ace. This was the Pokemon that had more stat points than most legendaries in the games.
Ursaring’s Hyper Beam, the same attack that had wrecked entire buildings, slammed into the pseudo-legendary with a tide of destruction.
Garchomp caught the attack with two raised fins, and shrugged it off like it was nothing. Then the Dragon looked over its shoulder to Cynthia, asking for permission.
“Go ahead.” The Champion smirked. “Show her what a real Hyper Beam looks like. Just make sure to aim for the forest.”
Garchomp took a breath, and every muscle in Marcus’ body tensed like a spring.
The ground shook before the sound arrived, a deep, bone-rattling tremor that made the soldier's instincts scream. Mark barely had time to instinctively throw himself to the ground, even though it wasn’t aimed anywhere near his direction.
A split second later: Chaos.
It started as a sudden, overwhelming heat- not enough to burn, but enough to feel like the air itself had caught fire. The soldier clamped his hands over his ears, but it was useless. The roar of the beam drowned out everything, a low, guttural scream that seemed to shake the planet itself. He felt the pressure in his chest, in his skull, the sound vibrating through him as if trying to shake him apart.
Above him, the Hyper Beam tore through the air, a column of light so vivid it burned into his retinas even with his eyes screwed shut. It was impossibly loud, impossibly bright- like staring into the birth of a star. The Champion’s prized Ace unleashed its fury with a force that made every conventional weapon Earth had ever produced seem insignificant in comparison.
For a moment, the world around him ceased to exist. The air thinned, yanked toward the vacuum trailing the beam’s passage. Mark gasped involuntarily, the oxygen feeling almost stripped from his lungs, his ears popping violently. The heat surged again, a second pulse that turned the dust around him into a swirling, choking fog.
Then, the aftershock hit.
A wave of superheated air rolled over him, throwing loose debris in all directions. He felt the impact through his armor, a physical thud that pressed him tighter against the dirt. The Hyper Beam screamed into the distance, leaving a trail of destruction so absolute that even the distant horizon seemed warped, glowing faintly with residual energy.
The soldier cracked open an eye and dared to look up. The beam’s wake was a storm of chaos: trees disintegrated into ash, the ground beneath its path scorched black, and the air rippled so harshly from the heat that it was almost like reality was struggling to keep up. He could see where the laser had carved through the forest and into a distant ridge, the rock glowing molten and sagging like wax under a flame.
The Ursaring was gone. Just… gone.
Cynthia laughed cheerfully as she walked up to the monster disguised as a Pokemon, and scratched it under the chin. “Aww, you wanted to show off for the kids, didn’t you?”
Garchomp let out a low rumble of appreciation and leaned down for more scritches.
-The Dragon King-
Ursaring slowly woke up to a world of pain.
Everything hurt. She couldn’t feel anything, but it all still managed to hurt.
“You’re a tough one, aren’t you? Not many can survive a hit from one of the Champion’s Pokemon.”
A woman emerged from the treeline, silver hair and a dark coat dancing in and out of Ursaring’s fading vision as it spun and multiplied.
“I should know, I sold the Riolu egg that eventually grew to be the mother of Cynthia’s Lucario. That Pokemon is the purebred culmination of two different championship winning Fighting bloodlines. That is a very dangerous Pokemon- a very valuable Pokemon, and I’ve had it sicced on me before. You’re special to survive something like that.”
Ursaring growled threateningly when the woman took a step too close.
“Shhhh, shhh, shh. Don’t be too loud.” Hunter J hushed and turned so that her left side was in full view of the mother bear, and in the crook of her arm was a small Teddiursa.
“You’ll wake the baby.”
Ursaring leapt- she didn’t know where she managed to pull the strength from, or how her tattered body even managed to physically get itself airborne, but she didn’t care. She had already failed to save three of her cubs, and she would rather die before losing her fourth.
A sapphire comet descended from the sky, crashing down through the forest canopy on the bear with an explosion of debris.
A massive blue dragon tipped its head back and roared in victory, easily pinning the Ursaring down with two legs.
“Good job, Salamence.”
J smiled mirthfully as she took a long step towards the desperately struggling bear- stopping so that all of Ursaring’s bites were just a breath shy of being able to reach her.
“I can’t let a rookie show me up while I’m in town.”
The machine on J’s arm let out a low whine, and Ursaring’s world went black as she was entombed in a stone prison.
-Chapter End-