Thirteen months ago, the tensions between the big nations of our world - Kanto, Johto, Hoenn and Sinnoh - finally broke out into open warfare when the Champion of Johto, the right honorable Sir Gold murdered his greatest rival, Red of Kanto, in cold blood and in open daylight.
Those of us who were there - and yes, I was there, at that great match that was supposed to finally settle this damnable border dispute once and for all - will never be able to forget it, how Red, kneeling next to the remains of his last shattered 'mon, never said a word even as Gold's entire surviving team charred the flesh from Red's bones.
Twenty minutes later, over four hundred trainers had died as both sides immediately went at it.
Have you ever seen what ghost-types do to trainers? I have seen men gouge their eyes out and drive pens into their brains to escape the horrors of Ghastlies and Haunters driving them mad.
I have seen men and women scream their throats raw and bloody at the touch of the mighty Gengar, their body burning from within at the poisonous touch of that monster.
We - Kanto, that is - prevailed that day, avenging Red. What remained of the man formerly known as Gold... so blinded were we by our frenzy that it would be hard to identify that carcass as human, much less mighty Gold himself.
The formal declaration of war was issued by both sides while we former spectators limped our way back, nursing our wounds - and those of our pokemon.
I learned a lot about emergency first aid and what passes for field surgery in those days.
I always had steady hands and a quick mind, and since our Nurse Joy was unavailable - sadly, a Beedrill had punctured one of her lungs before her attendant guardians could crush it - that was all it took to get me promoted into our medical field service.
A shitty job. What is the best way to tell a trainer that their lifelong companion and friend, their pocket monster, has died?
Trust me, there is no best way to do it.
Sinnoh and Hoenn joined the fray two days later - Hoenn and Johto against Sinnoh and Kanto, just as everyone had predicted.
But despite all the tension between our countries, nobody ever truly contemplated what it would be like to use pokemon in war, to use them to crush the enemy, to kill them, not just to subjugate them and knock them out.
And when you are dealing with creatures who burn with the sun's own heat, who embody the unyielding sea and wield it as a weapon, when you fight horrors from beyond mortal ken, trust me, that is the time when you find out whether or not you have it in you to kill the other guy before they kill you.
I never had to do too much of that, fortunately - always busy patching people up, cauterizing bleeding limb-stumps (gods, I'll never be able to look at a Scyther, any Scyther, without remembering the slashed-up quivering pieces of meat they sent to me after those damn Johto bastards airdropped the XVII "Slash and Grab" Company on us) and other, less pleasant takss.
But you might wonder "Has he ever killed anyone?" at this point and let me assure you that yes, I have. I was part of the assault team on Blackthorn, when those creepy fuckers in the PsiOps brigade used (or maybe "politely asked") their 'mons to teleport us into close proximity of the gym.
The fight was the fucking apocalypse come early. Their gym is super-hardened to damage, that's why the Air Force and their otherwise impeccable Charizard Air Group couldn't scratch them... but that hardening meant that all of the firepower our team unleashed on those damn dragon-using monsters of trainers - and theirs too - came bouncing right back at us.
Poor bastard never saw it coming - I shot him with a pistol, since my Blastoise was too busy fending off his team of freakish 'mons.
Yeah, I said freakish. I'm a Kanto patriot, man, I hate all those arse-ugly newfangled creatures they use in the other countries. Even the Sinnoh ones, allies or not.
I lost part of my left foot there, too, when a stray reflected Hyperbeam clipped me. Three centimeters to the left, and I would have been toast. Well, no, not toast, I would have been dead instead of short of half a foot and on fire.
Freaking convection.
The defenders of Blackthorn City held on tenaciously for three more days, of course, but it's little use to expect proper urban combat once the enemy is behind your defensive lines and employs both fire and water pokemon.
Do you know what forcing a Magmar and a Wartortle to work together produces?
A fucking lot of steam. We didn't burn the defenders out, we cooked them alive. We couldn't risk destroying their fortifications, after all.
But trust me, cooked human flesh is pretty damn annoying to clean off.
They immediately counterattacked - after all, if we managed to hang on to Blackthorne, we could effectively limit their abilities to strike back at us for the forseeable future.
So we hunkered down behind freshly erected and reinforced walls (the engineers even had a Golem roll into it a few times to make sure the wall could take it, bless their crafty little minds) and decided to wait it out. Suppressing the populace of the city was annoying - they are as intensely patriotic as any of us are, but after we strung up the sixth rebel trainer in a week right in front of the shop, they finally gave up immediate resistance.
The Siege of Blackthorn was the stuff of legends, I tell you, the goddamned stuff of legends. They poisoned our water supplies with Qwilfishes - damn those bloated things - and we retailiated by sending Grimers into their food storage.
Bless our water 'mons, bless them, really. We managed to recover quickly - we had fresh water again, even though even my stalwart Blastoise was mighty tired after four days of pumping out water to keep the entire army and populace in one piece.
But they? Oh, those assholes shouldn't have tried poisoning. Starvation does wonders for morale, and I mean wonders for OURS, as we watched 'em starve.
When we were finally relieved - and what a relief it was to see Trainer-General Honda and his Machamp Corps break through the siege lines! - we learned of the grim news - Pallet Town, home of our martyred hero Red, had fallen to a combined assault of the Johto-Hoenn Combined Amphibious Combat Korps.
And that's where we go in two days. I finally got my foot replaced, too, a shiny new prosthetic fit for the kind of hero they think I am.
I'm not going to argue the point when it gets me limbs lost in the service of Kanto replaced, you know.
But as far as we know, the damn Hoenn guys have brought half of their Engineer corps with them, and I'm so not looking forward to battling our way through their fortifications, especially since we won't be able to repeat our little 'port-and-murder trick this time.
But eh. We gotta do what we gotta do, and that is to drive off those damn Hoenn sonsabitches and their Johtonese friends out of Red's home.
Until later, journal of mine. Until later. They didn't manage to kill me until now, and they won't any time soon.
*Sigh*
Why do they even know to Shoot The Medic First?
--
Zeph, the stage is set.
Those of us who were there - and yes, I was there, at that great match that was supposed to finally settle this damnable border dispute once and for all - will never be able to forget it, how Red, kneeling next to the remains of his last shattered 'mon, never said a word even as Gold's entire surviving team charred the flesh from Red's bones.
Twenty minutes later, over four hundred trainers had died as both sides immediately went at it.
Have you ever seen what ghost-types do to trainers? I have seen men gouge their eyes out and drive pens into their brains to escape the horrors of Ghastlies and Haunters driving them mad.
I have seen men and women scream their throats raw and bloody at the touch of the mighty Gengar, their body burning from within at the poisonous touch of that monster.
We - Kanto, that is - prevailed that day, avenging Red. What remained of the man formerly known as Gold... so blinded were we by our frenzy that it would be hard to identify that carcass as human, much less mighty Gold himself.
The formal declaration of war was issued by both sides while we former spectators limped our way back, nursing our wounds - and those of our pokemon.
I learned a lot about emergency first aid and what passes for field surgery in those days.
I always had steady hands and a quick mind, and since our Nurse Joy was unavailable - sadly, a Beedrill had punctured one of her lungs before her attendant guardians could crush it - that was all it took to get me promoted into our medical field service.
A shitty job. What is the best way to tell a trainer that their lifelong companion and friend, their pocket monster, has died?
Trust me, there is no best way to do it.
Sinnoh and Hoenn joined the fray two days later - Hoenn and Johto against Sinnoh and Kanto, just as everyone had predicted.
But despite all the tension between our countries, nobody ever truly contemplated what it would be like to use pokemon in war, to use them to crush the enemy, to kill them, not just to subjugate them and knock them out.
And when you are dealing with creatures who burn with the sun's own heat, who embody the unyielding sea and wield it as a weapon, when you fight horrors from beyond mortal ken, trust me, that is the time when you find out whether or not you have it in you to kill the other guy before they kill you.
I never had to do too much of that, fortunately - always busy patching people up, cauterizing bleeding limb-stumps (gods, I'll never be able to look at a Scyther, any Scyther, without remembering the slashed-up quivering pieces of meat they sent to me after those damn Johto bastards airdropped the XVII "Slash and Grab" Company on us) and other, less pleasant takss.
But you might wonder "Has he ever killed anyone?" at this point and let me assure you that yes, I have. I was part of the assault team on Blackthorn, when those creepy fuckers in the PsiOps brigade used (or maybe "politely asked") their 'mons to teleport us into close proximity of the gym.
The fight was the fucking apocalypse come early. Their gym is super-hardened to damage, that's why the Air Force and their otherwise impeccable Charizard Air Group couldn't scratch them... but that hardening meant that all of the firepower our team unleashed on those damn dragon-using monsters of trainers - and theirs too - came bouncing right back at us.
Poor bastard never saw it coming - I shot him with a pistol, since my Blastoise was too busy fending off his team of freakish 'mons.
Yeah, I said freakish. I'm a Kanto patriot, man, I hate all those arse-ugly newfangled creatures they use in the other countries. Even the Sinnoh ones, allies or not.
I lost part of my left foot there, too, when a stray reflected Hyperbeam clipped me. Three centimeters to the left, and I would have been toast. Well, no, not toast, I would have been dead instead of short of half a foot and on fire.
Freaking convection.
The defenders of Blackthorn City held on tenaciously for three more days, of course, but it's little use to expect proper urban combat once the enemy is behind your defensive lines and employs both fire and water pokemon.
Do you know what forcing a Magmar and a Wartortle to work together produces?
A fucking lot of steam. We didn't burn the defenders out, we cooked them alive. We couldn't risk destroying their fortifications, after all.
But trust me, cooked human flesh is pretty damn annoying to clean off.
They immediately counterattacked - after all, if we managed to hang on to Blackthorne, we could effectively limit their abilities to strike back at us for the forseeable future.
So we hunkered down behind freshly erected and reinforced walls (the engineers even had a Golem roll into it a few times to make sure the wall could take it, bless their crafty little minds) and decided to wait it out. Suppressing the populace of the city was annoying - they are as intensely patriotic as any of us are, but after we strung up the sixth rebel trainer in a week right in front of the shop, they finally gave up immediate resistance.
The Siege of Blackthorn was the stuff of legends, I tell you, the goddamned stuff of legends. They poisoned our water supplies with Qwilfishes - damn those bloated things - and we retailiated by sending Grimers into their food storage.
Bless our water 'mons, bless them, really. We managed to recover quickly - we had fresh water again, even though even my stalwart Blastoise was mighty tired after four days of pumping out water to keep the entire army and populace in one piece.
But they? Oh, those assholes shouldn't have tried poisoning. Starvation does wonders for morale, and I mean wonders for OURS, as we watched 'em starve.
When we were finally relieved - and what a relief it was to see Trainer-General Honda and his Machamp Corps break through the siege lines! - we learned of the grim news - Pallet Town, home of our martyred hero Red, had fallen to a combined assault of the Johto-Hoenn Combined Amphibious Combat Korps.
And that's where we go in two days. I finally got my foot replaced, too, a shiny new prosthetic fit for the kind of hero they think I am.
I'm not going to argue the point when it gets me limbs lost in the service of Kanto replaced, you know.
But as far as we know, the damn Hoenn guys have brought half of their Engineer corps with them, and I'm so not looking forward to battling our way through their fortifications, especially since we won't be able to repeat our little 'port-and-murder trick this time.
But eh. We gotta do what we gotta do, and that is to drive off those damn Hoenn sonsabitches and their Johtonese friends out of Red's home.
Until later, journal of mine. Until later. They didn't manage to kill me until now, and they won't any time soon.
*Sigh*
Why do they even know to Shoot The Medic First?
--
Zeph, the stage is set.
