[Pokémon] The Trial of Juno Saga [PG-13]

All I kept thinking about was this Divine Prophecy. What did it really say about me? And the more I thought about it, the more I realized they had to have predicted it. I had only been Juno for a few weeks now. There was no way this whole prophecy could have been written and spread like this in the few weeks I've been this way.

"Sever..." Chancellor Sinis the Zangoose questioned the proud Cubone.

"Yes, sir?" He asked, looking up curiously at the white and red mongoose.

"You mentioned something about Juno rescuing Storm Riders from Black Bay?" Sinis asked, looking directly at Sever in the eyes. "How did you find out about this?"

Sever had looked at me for a moment, and I just took a slight and curious glance at him back. He looked somewhat worried, and then he looked back at Sinis.

"That was... my Storm Rider squad had been captured and thrown into Black Bay Prison, sir," Sever told Sinis, ashamed to admit they had been captured in the first place. "It was Juno who rescued us in the first place."

"Juno rescued you?" Kamax the Vigoroth asked Sever, a little surprised that I was the one who bailed him out.

"Yes, sir… that's right..." Sever replied, seeming somewhat embarrassed. "I... I mean we were outnumbered when trying to..."

"Alright, enough of the excuses," Kamax interrupted him.

Sever remained silent after that while the white-furred monkey in the highly decorated Silver Rebellion military uniform looked at him questioningly.

In the meantime, I hadn't forgotten that I still needed to find Alex, wherever he was. If he wasn't at the Black Bay Prison, then where was he? Was he even in this world?

"One of my other companions is missing," I told them all, knowing I still had a problem on my hands. "Since he wasn't at the Black Bay Prison, do you know of another place where he would be held?"

They had all looked at me strangely, and then Sinis had put his hands at his side.

"No, there is no other prison…" Sinis replied with a dark expression.

There was hesitation and silence. From the way Sinis was looking, I could tell he was hiding something. And then, Kamax looked at me with a forlorn expression.

"Sinis, you know that's not true..." Sever spoke up, feeling it wasn't right to keep secrets. "Just because Macomb is an impregnable fortress and a maximum security facility never made it stop existing."

"Sever, we will not speak of that place," Jamac told him seriously, not even wanting to talk about it.

"But if Juno is looking for his companion, there isn't any place left. He would have to be there..." Kamax told Jamac, looking off to the side as his thoughts seemed to be distracted.

"Do you know how many lives were lost trying to take that hellhole!?" Kamax shouted. "Count yourself lucky you didn't wind up in there yourself!"

I was sincerely hoping Alex wasn't actually there in Macomb, but it was very possible if the Crimson Stars had a central prison for all their detained prisoners of war. And I figured it was no laughing matter when it came to how well-defended it probably was.

"Macomb isn't just a fortress and a prison either," Kamax reminded him as he turned his back to the Cubone. "It's a weapons factory, foundry, steel mill, military camp, and a torture chamber where they use prisoners like you for weapons and drug testing. Every one of our soldiers that have been there has only been used to advance the one thing that Crimson Stars know how to do best. Kill other Pokémon."

I couldn't afford to let Alex die in a place like that, but attacking it sounded like suicide. If it was a military camp, then the moment they spotted us, they could unleash an army of Wind Strikers and whatever other military monstrosities the Crimson Stars possessed. If Alex was really there, I knew I probably didn't have much time. And in the meantime, I wasn't sure how many Silver Rebellion soldiers were there, but every passing minute was one of them getting killed in likely some of the most brutal ways possible.

If I really was special and capable of things no other Pikachu was, I had to forget about not being formally trained as a soldier and just focus on doing the right thing. Inside, my heart just told me not to worry about being inexperienced. My head, on the other hand, was thinking if I really wanted to avoid Zander and escape from this war-torn world, there were probably better solutions than getting myself killed. In the end, I just didn't feel right if I didn't at least try. And with a high potential of Alex being there, it was beginning to feel like the decision had already been made.

"I want to shut it down," I told the others, figuring a place like Macomb had to stop existing. "If what you're saying is true, then this is a matter of fact."

"Just what we need..." Sinis told me doubtfully, crossing his arms again as he was looking at me straight in the eye. "This would make for the seventh black ops strike to hit Status Black to that place. May I inform you that in Macomb, there are acres and acres of factories, warehouses, weapons production lines, and jail cells. These maniacs are constantly developing weapons there. They will attack you with everything they've got fresh off the block."

I nodded, understanding what he was saying. Still, leaving all those soldiers, and potentially Alex, to just be used as meat puppets for weapons and drug testing was just sick and twisted.

"Prepare me however you think would be best," I told Sinis, figuring I wanted to at least know everything about this place and how best to use Silver Rebellion weaponry. "But if I just stay here doing nothing, what good am I to any of you?"

"Hey, I'm in," Blazewing smiled, liking my sense of having the guts to go in there. "Living to be old, tired, and cranky is overrated anyway. And Bingo is lame."

I had looked to Blitz the Pachirisu, and I knew he wasn't going to like any of this. I looked at him closely.

"Blitz, if you don't want to be a part of this, I understand," I told him, assuring him I wouldn't think less of him for not wanting to be a part of this mayhem.

"It does sound scary, but..." Blitz stated, getting a bit fidgety again, "...if we don't do this, no one ever will. I don't want everyone locked up there to die because we never even wanted to try."

Blitz sure had a lot of guts. No, he definitely wasn't the wimp I remembered from Scottville Middle School. For a moment, it felt strange to take the plunge into fully supporting this Silver Rebellion faction, but there was something about it that just kept urging me on to do it. They welcomed us in, we had a temporary home here, and it seemed like the better side to fight for in this war. I had a feeling there was going to be a time I was going to need their help in return, and I highly doubted they would do me a favor if I just turned their backs on them.

Meanwhile, Blitz and I really weren't the way we used to be. It seemed that the whole incident with the Quista necklace changed both of us. Sure, I was stuck as his fantasy Pikachu and Zander had turned him into a plushy, electric squirrel, but it ran deeper than that. He seemed to have started to realize his potential and making taking on a whole new name and identity seemed to give him a fresh start. That, and he was trying to push away his fear and doubt. Not a whole lot of other people would have agreed to go along with this whole idea.

"If this mission fails and you all end up dead, I'm throwing this 'Divine Prophecy' into the nearest bonfire," Kamax spoke, really disliking this whole idea, but deciding to go with it anyway. "If you all want to put it to the test, fine, but you will be examined and trained before you throw yourselves to the mercy of that hellhole."

I nodded, knowing he was just being very stern and serious about his warning and still felt Macomb was too dangerous of a mission to risk. Having failed six prior missions against Macomb, I could understand why part of him seemed to think this was just another suicide mission to a lost cause.


After all the formalities had concluded, Kamax found it essential that our skills should be measured and that we at least got basic training. As much as I wasn't looking forward to the true, hardcore life of a soldier, I knew it would be stupid to risk this kind of mission without the minimum training needed.

Otherwise, with no preparation, we would definitely be getting a bit too ahead of ourselves...

We were given basic gray and white Silver Rebellion combat uniforms, and ironically, it was like they were made to be a perfect reflection of that metallic statue they had in the Central Spire ground floor. From what I heard, there were many that wanted to witness us in training, but they were told everything would be done behind closed doors. Seeing Blazewing and myself in combat Storm Rider uniforms was a bit unsettling.

But, nonetheless, all three of us had been formally admitted into the Silver Rebellion army under the Storm Rider aerial Division. Since we were a special case, we had a Captain Nidoqueen named Halen in charge of personal training. While she wasn't a Storm Rider herself due to the fact she was huge and could never ride a Pidgeot, she was still more than capable of training prospective Storm Riders.

Meanwhile, Halen herself was intimidating and definitely the no-nonsense type. As a battle-hardened Nidoqueen, her large, bipedal pale blue and cream-colored rhino-like body looked like it had seen plenty of injuries. She looked even more serious while she was wearing a full combat armor as well, along with carrying a heavy machine gun.

We had been trained hard for weeks, running, climbing, crawling, and learning to best use our own natural attacks and use Silver Rebellion weaponry. As we quickly learned, Halen was a deadly serious, didn't take crap from no one trainer, but while our bodies cried from exhaustion, she pushed harder. To her, she obviously didn't think any kind of Divine Prophecy merited giving us any kind of special treatment. If there was any kind of doubt we still weren't used to our new Pokémon bodies, Blitz and I were totally forced out of that for good as we were pushed hard to use this physical form in every way possible.

I wasn't sure what kinds of missions it took to become a Captain, but I could imagine they had to be extremely difficult if this was the kind of Pokémon soldier that the process produced. Meanwhile, despite being some prophesized warrior, we started from the very bottom at the "Recruit" rank training to become "Cadets." From there, promotions went to Ensign, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, General, and then the position of High General at the very top was reserved for one Pokémon only.

The way rank badges worked was Recruits had a blank metal square. Cadets then had a large silver ring placed in the center of the square. The next five ranks from Ensign to Major entailed placing one smaller metal ring laid above the large one, which at the Major rank would link to become a full circle of smaller rings overlaid on top of the large one. At the General rank, the whole metal square was replaced by a six-pointed metallic star mounted below the ring formation. And at the High General rank, the six-pointed star was replaced with a ten-pointed one. I couldn't help but look at my own blank, metal square badge and wonder just how far this whole prophecy was going to take it.

As the weeks went by, I was worried about Alex, but the physical exercises were enough to push my mind off of it. Meanwhile, all three of us were trained on how to use Silver Rebellion firearms. Both Randy and I were handed a small submachine gun called a Firefang. It wasn't anything special to look at, as it was mostly a crude, metallic machine-pistol that was made for smaller Pokémon to use to supplement their own attacks when faced with enemies that were resistant to their standard attacks. The guns were still shaped similar to what we were used to, but the trigger was a flat bar and magazines were typically drum-shaped for higher bullet capacity.

Meanwhile, Blazewing had to undergo the same range training, given the same kind of heavy, double-drummed machine gun called a Flamelance. There was definitely no way I'd be able to hold it, but it seemed to fit her just perfectly. Like the Firefang, it was also a dirty and dark-colored machine gun made of crude metal. Usually, because the Silver Rebellion used Pidgeot mount to fly, there wasn't any gun training for mounts, but Blazewing could now be the exception.

"How am I supposed to listen to music and shoot this thing at the same time!?" Blazewing asked, looking bewildered after she had tested it on one of the many firing ranges. "It's so loud!"

"Heh, ya better git used to it, miss," Halen grinned, knowing she used the same exact same gun. "It's a sound you're gonna be hearin' a lot."

"Guess I'm just going to need to imagine they hired a really loud percussionist during the recording," Blazewing replied, flashing a small but smug grin.

Well, there was one good thing about being on the Silver Rebellion side. At least we wouldn't be on the receiving end of one of these things...

As the weeks carried on with more unusual military training for Pokémon, I was getting concerned about Alex and I was losing sleep over it. I understood the training was necessary, but they still felt going in there without preparation was suicide, even despite the urgency.

I was really beginning to wonder if we'd ever see him again.

In the meantime, we were worked hard. Running, shooting, climbing, and even swimming were part of this harsh training. Running for miles was something I always hated, but now I had to do it on this tiny track. And one mile for a human is like five miles for a Pikachu and a Pachirisu. Both of us were showing improvement with using Firefangs will Blazewing seemed perfectly comfortable with the Flamelance. We had to learn how to climb rock walls, metal fences, and removed a type of barbed wire, which looked like circular pizza cutter blades on a string.

Blitz and I were also trained on how to use Torchclaws, the rifle variant that were usually reserved for bigger Pokémon. They made us learn how to use them as heavy, mounted weapons in case our own Firefangs were broken, jammed, lost, or simply ran out of ammunition.

Being a part of this Silver Rebellion wasn't easy…

While I was trained to ride Blazewing and work alongside her, Blitz had to raise his own mount from Pidgey to Pidgeotto to Pidgeot. Usually, it took Pokémon trainers a bit of time to accomplish that, but the Silver Rebellion had mount training worked down to a science. It was grueling, tough, and even dirty at times, but I figured if they all used the same mount, coming up with the perfect regimen must have been a lot easier.

Besides the various ranks of Storm Rider squads we were about to enter, there were many other weapons and machines of war that the Silver Rebellion used. While the aerial division were referred to as Storm Riders, the armored ground division was referred to as the Thunder Battalion and ground infantry were referred to as Thunder Runners. When it came to armored vehicles, they had their own style of warfare.

One of them was a heavy metal tank, called the Colossus. These tanks were even bigger than ones used by humans, completely clad in heavy, metal armor, and painted a white and silver, traditional Silver Rebellion colors. On the front there was one, giant chrome cannon, as well as two smaller ones on the side and a caliber rifle on the top by the square metal hatch. There were also four small, rectangular ventilation holes for infantry to fire from. I had never been inside one, but a fellow Patrat who used to reload the cannons told me it gets awfully hot in there.

And then, a really cool device I was trained to use was the Land Splitter. They looked like mini dragsters with a machine gun, and boy, were they fast. Again, covered with light armor and protected the driver with a cage like structure. Like before, I was trained with these only just in case I was dismounted and needed to use them. Learning how to fly and fight at the same time were my main training areas. From what I could tell, the Silver Rebellion didn't have planes, so they used flying Pokémon mounts instead. And since they were experts on how to breed, care for, and raise Pidgeys, Pidgeottos, and Pidgeots from the moment they were born to the moment they were made combat-ready, they stuck with what worked for them. It was rare to see a Silver Rebellion Storm Rider soldier use something besides a Pidgeot.

It had been nearly two months since Blitz, Blazewing, and I had been in Kivistal now. We had spent those many days training our butts off, and we were pretty experienced now. I could only hope that Alex was still alive after all this time, but I still had no clear indication. I hated to leave him in that dark prison of Macomb for so long, but I had no choice. I couldn't come walking to their front door and ask to have him, and we weren't combat ready to take on a strike that had already claimed so many Silver Rebellion lives.

We were also trained to know how to react to the weapons and machines of the Crimson Stars. Apparently, they use all caliber weapons of varying sizes. The small, sub-machine guns they reserved for smaller Pokémon were called Scabs. I wasn't sure what metal these were made from, but it was made from a strange black and maroon-tinged metal and seemed to have a very jagged look to it. Unlike Silver Rebellion rifles, to fire a Crimson Star firearm, you had to press a black, metallic button in the place where a trigger would have gone. Also, their ammo magazines were block or box-shaped.

The next step up were Leadhammers, the Crimson Star equivalent to the Torchclaws. The chances of us having to use one of these were low, but we were trained on them anyway. Lastly, Sluggers were the big, heavy machine guns that bigger, heavier Pokémon would use. Only Blazewing would ever be able to use one of these. For Blitz and I, it was simply impossible.

When it came to Crimson Stars troops themselves, Wind Strikers were Pokémon flying Skarmories, as Sever had explained earlier. Just like the Storm Riders, only Pokémon who stood upright and had hands could fly them. Halen told me that since Wind Strikers are actually quite small and lightweight, they are designed for quick maneuverability. However, if they got shot just a few times, it was usually fatal. All the time, the rider was dismounted and could do nothing but plummet hundreds of feet in the air toward the harsh terrain. Unfortunately, this wasn't too far off from what a fellow Storm Rider like me could go through.

Somehow, the Silver Rebellion managed to get their hands on a Crimson Stars Talon, which looked like a three rider motorcycle, probably either through stealing it or finding it left behind from a previous battle. The first cab, which was in the middle, was the largest, with two smaller ones on its side. It was jet black, with violet windows on each of the cabs. The riders fired their own caliber Leadhammer rifle, while the center rider fried two at the same time. On the back was an anti-air gun called a Skythrasher for a forth rider who would be on the back, only there they were fully exposed. Honestly, I didn't see this as an effective fighting tool, but Halen told me they were very vicious and very fast. I wasn't about to doubt her word.

A third nightmare of the Crimson Stars were the Versatile Armored Transports, or VAT's for short. Halen had shown us only a model of it, and they looked like moving buildings nearly two stories tall with four giant metal wheels and a body like a trapezoid. I had no idea how I would even go about stopping that thing. Halen told me a Storm Rider had to go under the whole machine and tear apart as much of the pipes, pumps, and other machinery under the VAT. The only other way of stopping it was to use the environment to have it get pushed into a ditch or trench. Both cases looked quite risky with all those gun emplacements all over the whole thing. But she told me that was the only way to do it.

"VAT's are constantly being manufactured at Macomb," Halen warned us, letting the two of us know to expect them there. "You have only one advantage, and that is they won't be loaded with any Crimson Star troops once you get there. You would be better off to destroy their manufacturing facilities before you try and get the prisoners out."

"Wow…" Blitz replied in sarcastic disbelief. "Can't wait…"

This sure wasn't going to be easy. Halen showed me more weapons that the Crimson Stars used, all designed to fire ammunition. I just grimaced at all of them, not wanting to imagine what would happen if I got shot by one. Not to mention the fact that they were really loud as well in the test firing range…

"Well, that's about it," Halen told the two of us, feeling confident about what we've been exposed to during this training session. "They've wanted us dead for eons now, and they've come pretty close to it. Already, many of our cities, such as Cyphex, The Bend, and Ashmarch are been torn to pieces. We've lost thousands of good soldiers out there. Each day, we keep losing our forces and it hasn't been getting that much better. We're down to only two major cities left, Symarix and Kalen."

Kalen was a supply city, the Silver Rebellion's equivalent of Macomb, only Kalen wasn't even half the size. It was true though, the Silver Rebellion was fighting a very losing war against these guys. If it kept up at this pace, I could expect Symarix to be completely overrun in very little time.

"Sure doesn't look pretty," I told Halen and Blitz, seeing how easily things were getting desperate…

"Well, there are some who think you're here to fix all that," Halen told me, obviously referring to the whole Divine Prophecy. "I'd say you make a decent soldier, but I don't see all that much of a difference. I'd say you're upper 80th percentile, but you're definitely no one-man army."

I couldn't argue against that. I was honestly happy she felt confident I was good enough to be a soldier in the first place and took me from being totally inexperienced to at least being somewhat prepared to deal with combat at its most ruthless level. And it was different now. Pokémon wouldn't just be fighting each other, they would be killing each other on the same hideous scale that humans used. It was a disturbing thought, but as time had shown again and again, words and negotiation only go so far.

A month later, after more rigorous training, they finally believed we were ready.

I had heard only a small squad was going to be deployed to attack Macomb, myself included. They told me it was all they could afford to send. I had seen albums of pictures that showed the horror after each terrible conflict. I had even seen it myself with my own two eyes, the city near Black Bay prison was torn to sheds, a graveyard of buildings and society. I can easily expect something similar if I laid my eyes on The Bend or Cyphex. Further and further the Silver Rebellion was being pushed back, and here they were making their last stand against an enemy that couldn't even respect itself.

Tomorrow, we would be flying to Macomb. Randy and I as well as four other Storm Riders were going to have to take on that entire facility all by ourselves, hoping to use stealth instead of a front-on invasion. Instead of going with a head-on assault, we were going to try and sneak our way in, disable as much as we could at the facility, release its prisoners, and try to get out alive. Just the sound of it already made my heart twist in anxiety.

Already, an enormous amount of expectation was placed on me even though Halen tried to explain that I was simply a soldier like any other. Given my past experience and expectations, they had promoted me to Ensign, though there were many that felt I was a special case. In truth, I didn't want them to think I suddenly became a miracle worker here…

Blitz had been making every effort to improve his skills. Even though he had a rough start, as time went by he got drastically better. Even his Pidgeot mount was now ready, and he was confident he could handle this delicate mission.

We had no idea how big Macomb really was, or what kind of force they really had, but from what we had heard, it sounded like a lot. I was hoping it would be quickly in and quickly out, but I had no idea where to head to first, since the Silver Rebellion had no layout of the facility to go by. The only thing I could go by was the architecture of the buildings. That was it. Every scouting mission against this place had failed, and the lack of intel really showed. We were definitely going to need to know how to improve solutions.

Regardless, Randy and I tried not to show fear, even though deep inside we were nearly scared to death about this. There was no other way to get Alex out of there if this is where he was really being held. We needed his support as soon as possible, and any Silver Rebellion prisoners were greatly needed to join the ranks of soldiers already prepped for combat. We needed to take apart Macomb's assembly lines and production facilities if we wanted to cripple the Crimson Stars' war effort. Of course that was far easily said than done.

We had trouble sleeping that night, just trying to think about how we were going to handle this. I could only hope that I would be back in these barracks by tomorrow's end…

It was only going to be the five of us, and that was it. It was what they called a "surgical strike" as opposed to an all out assault, simply because Kamax didn't want to even think about trying that kind of tactic again. Somehow, we were going to have to make our way in and keep it quiet as long as possible. Macomb was large and well fortified, but it wasn't invincible. The mission was going to be extremely difficult, but not impossible, even though it almost seemed that way every time I seriously considered what we were going to do here and what every Pokémon here said we would be up against. Meanwhile, I was to be the leader of this small squad, and Blitz was going to be my gunner, sitting on the back of Blazewing's back, just watching our rear just in case something happened. Apparently, they didn't feel his own Pidgeot was trained enough.

The second Storm Rider in my squad was a battle-scarred Croconaw by the name of Stevex. Despite his usual ill attitude, he was feeling somewhat optimistic about the mission. He had told me he had been a Storm Rider for three years, and this was going to be the toughest challenge he had ever faced. He was armed with a Torchclaw, since water wasn't going to hurt a Skarmory very much.

The third in my squad went by the name of Rackal, an Electabuzz with a proficiency in explosives, computers, and booby traps. Calm and collective, he always believed more in being prepared than wishing for good luck. If we were going to get through this mission, we were going to need an engineer, and Rackal was just the one to fill that role.

Fourth in line was Lahanas, a Monferno with a bad attitude. The aggressive fire monkey hated the Crimson Stars more than scum, and he wasn't going to let anything get in his way of destroying them. He wasn't so sure about me being a squad leader, but he wasn't going to ask questions and he made it clear he wanted nothing to do with the role itself if someone absolutely had to take it.

And last but not least was Vice, a Weavile with a will to kill. Vice was swift to strike and didn't ask questions first. He reminded me of my own Weavile that I lost months ago, although there were some obvious differences. Even though most Storm Riders didn't give their Pidgeot a name, Vice called his mount Storm Gale. I couldn't help but say there was certainly something more vicious about his Pidgeot than the rest of them. Storm Gale was a true force of nature whose feathers were wild, rough, and the look in her eyes could pierce the souls of whoever they gazed upon. Her crest was also more jagged and helped contribute toward her intimidating appearance.

When we had all assembled, Kamax the High General Vigoroth had approached us, and all six of us had saluted him like we were instructed to do so in the presence of a high-ranking officer. He then looked over the six of us, and stared at all of us in the eye, me especially.

"I'll have you know this mission is going off the books," Kamax began, knowing very few were aware this was even going on. "All soldiers that were involved in the six previous assaults on Macomb were all killed in a variety of ways I'd rather not go into. I don't need to remind anyone that the whole lot of you could end up the same way. The only reason why this is happening in the first place is because one of you specifically requested it and the rest of you had expressed some interest in joining the next attack thinking you're better than everyone else. So here you have it, everyone should be happy now."

I could tell from his speech that he disliked this whole idea, but I didn't want to surrender Alex to the Crimson Stars, if he was even still alive. If I was really going to save the Silver Rebellion, I had to know it was actually possible. Otherwise, it was probably best they give up the whole Divine Prophecy now rather than later while they still had some hope and time.

I was hoping Alex was still there, along with many other Silver Rebellion members. And the longer we took to get there, the risk of losing more soldiers was also escalating. We couldn't allow that to happen any longer. If that place really was the torture chamber they had said it was, it was going to be a gruesome sight to behold and I had to steel myself against whatever would ruin us from the things we would see.

"Good luck to all of you," Kamax told us, keeping an upright posture and stern look in his eyes. "With no doubt you will need it."

"Good luck is for the unprepared," Rackal replied to Kamax with a firm voice.

"Better to die in combat than grow old, tired, and sick," Lahanas grinned, patting his Torchclaw rifle admirably. "Better get some medals ready for me, General. Ha, ha!"

If we made it through this, I'd buy the whole lot for him.


When it was time to depart and embark toward Macomb, all of us were outfitted with an almost excessive amount of combat gear. Blazewing, Blitz, and I looked like we were ready for all hell to break loose. We were nearly covered with Silver Rebellion armor and equipment while clutching our Firefang submachine guns and Blazewing had more Flamelance ammo on her to take a whole town out.
"Wow, welcome to the jungle," Blazewing muttered, nearly laughing at the inanity as she looked at us all geared up and ready to go. "Look at us! Who wants to try taking down a tank with their teeth!?"

"If I get shot, will I actually know about it?" Blitz asked, patting the heavy armor he was wearing.

"That's a thought I don't care if we never get to find out," I replied to him, feeling a bit hot with all this armor.

After the four of my comrades had mounted upon their Pidgeots, Blitz and I strapped ourselves onto Blazewing's back so we didn't have to worry about falling off. That was a good thing, since there was going to be a whole lot more we were going to have to worry about…

"Hold onto your butts," Blazewing told us as she took off.

It hadn't been long before we took to the skies and soared far above the broken land below us leaving Symarix behind. Blitz had been right behind me, holding his Firefang very steadily, all while trying to ensure his massive Pachirisu tail wasn't too much in the way. Right now, a fluffy squirrel tail being a little pesky was the least of my concern. Meanwhile, besides me were the four other Storm Riders that were on my side. The sky above us slowly grew toward a pale red, indicating the cold night had come. At least now we would have the darkness to cloak our passage into Macomb.

"Heh, the one with the least kills treats everyone else out to dinner," Lahanas snickered. "Been waiting for this for ages!"

"I'm game," Stevex grinned. "Sure hope the loser has a fat wallet! Ha!"

"These guys are idiots," Blazewing whispered to Blitz and I. "I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and crap a better line than that."

Further and further we flew toward the great machine city of Macomb. No doubt this would be one of the most difficult tasks I would have to undertake. We had four possible targets: the assembly lines, the missile silos, the weapon stockpiles and the prisons. First, if we were to do anything here, we needed to disarm the missile silos before they were launched as a result of the attack, if they suspected there was any kind of threat. Next came the weapon stockpiles and then the prisons. Finally, the assembly lines had to be shut down, but for now they posed no immediate threat. It was a suicide mission's ultimate wishlist. If we managed to accomplish even just half of one of those, it was a good and lucky day.

Miles and miles of broken terrain had passed below us as we carried on and then the six of us had set eyes on the black machine city of Macomb in the distance, just waiting for us. I couldn't believe my eyes at the sight of it…

The whole city itself was devoted to industry, with large factories and towering smokestacks spewing out clouds of dark smoke. Warehouses were also scattered everywhere, as well as large shipping juggernaut-sized trucks and other massive vehicles. However, I looked around but I saw no sign of anything that looked like a prison. All the buildings were a dark, coal black, and a metal wall that towered fifty feet surrounded the city.

"Macomb…" Rackal said softly, looking at the machine city, "If we disable their transports, they will be unable to ship their supplies."

"Just the transports?" Lahanas snickered. "I want to see that whole lot up in flames! Ha!"

I'm sure we all wished for that, but there was that fine line between wishful thinking and reality.

But then, I had caught sight of something within the city. Tiny red lights were now flashing in various places. At first I thought it was fire, but then I realized the lights were pulsing systematically and suddenly flames just didn't make sense. I then felt an eerie chill. That was no fire…

"Damn it, they know we're here," I told them coldly. "Their alarms have gone off."

"Impossible," Lahanas cut me off. "There's no way. This early? We haven't even reached the perimeter yet! How could they see us from this location?"

But shortly after he spoke, I saw a small group of V shaped objects emerge from the red-tinted sky. They were coming closer, and at a very fast rate.

"Wind Strikers in the distance…" I told the four of them. "Come on, let's try to get out of sight!"

"Is this how the Gold Rider fights!?" Lahanas asked with a cynical laugh, looking at me with doubt. "I'm surprised at you, Juno! I thought you had a spirit to fight inside you!"

"Uh huh," Blazewing told him. "Listen, Dinky, we're fighters, not psychopaths. I don't know what your problem is, but I bet it's hard to pronounce."

This guy had to be kidding me. This was supposed to be a covert strike, and already the whole situation had been compromised, leaving me to think it might just be time to turn around and try another day. Did he really think he could take all these guys out by himself? I was no war expert, but it was common sense that being out in the open like this was a death wish under these kinds of conditions.

"I don't have a spirit to commit suicide," I reminded him, breaking away from his location. "We're highly out-gunned and outnumbered! Let's find some cover and get out of sight!"

"No one's ever stopped Lahanas." He told me as he referred to himself in third person, pulling out his Torchclaw assault rifle.

I couldn't believe what this guy was doing. He obviously wasn't thinking straight and it was going to potentially get us all killed.

"Lahanas, stop!" I shouted to him. "If you fire your rifle, your muzzle flash will give away our location!"

But he refused to listen. Instead, he took aim at the incoming Wind Strikers, and suddenly, his Torchclaw roared to life as a pulsing blast of fire appeared at the end of his rifle as it blasted bullets toward the incoming Skarmories and their riders. I had no choice but to break away from him, ushering Blazewing to abandon the formation as I knew I certainly didn't want to be near him when they returned fire, which I knew was going to be inevitable. There was nothing I could do to stop him, but the only solution I saw was to let him draw the attention to himself while the rest of us sped away to safety.

"You dumbass!" Blazewing shouted at Lahanas as we quickly fled. "What are you trying to get us all killed for!?"

And then, I had watched in horror as I saw white flashes appear on the Skarmories as they returned fire. Without a doubt, they were shooting back at Lahanas. I could imagine with all those Wind Strikers attacking him, a rain of bullets must have been cutting through the air all around him. I had quickly turned to Lahanas, expecting the worst.

And then, to my shock, his Pidgeot had been struck twice in the chest, causing the massive bird to screech loudly in pain. Lahanas struggled with his mount to keep her alive, only soon after, she was struck viciously with five more bullets and didn't even have the life left in her to scream. And to make it even worse, Lahanas had been struck twice himself, once in the chest and a second time in the face. Lahanas fell off his Pidgeot, and the both of them tumbled toward the ground, with his rifle not too far behind. Then, they disappeared into the darkness, and that was the last I saw of him…

"Oh, god…" Stevex gasped, watching Lahanas die right in front of him.

"Come on!" I shouted to the rest of my team, heading toward my left, "Let's get the hell out of here! Head for those warehouses!"

The remaining four of us had swiftly flown toward the black warehouses, where we were hoping they didn't see the rest of us in the dark. We flew faster and faster, and for a moment, I knew the Wind Strikers had caught sight of us. It wasn't long before they opened fire again, breaking the tension with another hammering of gunfire.

"Watch it!"

Suddenly I saw Stevex the Croconaw and his Pidgeot fly toward the ground faster that we did. I then realized why. Both of them had been shot multiple times, and they totally lost control. Stevex and his Pidgeot hit the ground extremely hard, and the body of the water crocodile and his avian mount tumbled around on the hard dirt. I shook my head in dismay. There was no way they could have survived that fall.

The remaining three of us headed quickly past the metal wall and headed downward toward the ground. I couldn't believe it. Already two of my squad members had been killed, the base was on full alert, and we haven't even gotten started yet. And I could tell the Wind Strikers weren't very far behind…

I had been the first to descend toward the ground and land softly on the rocky, slate gray-colored terrain. Soon after, Vice and Rackal and their Pidgeot mounts headed toward the ground. As the large, crested birds approached the dirt, they flapped their wings harder to ensure a safe landing for their riders. Vice and Rackal had dismounted and told their Pidgeots to hide in a safe place, using an empty shipping container to keep themselves safe and out of sight. Blitz remained right behind me, anxiously looking in all directions for anyone that might suddenly try to ambush us.

Everywhere around us, there were large, rectangular shipping containers in large piles with row after row of warehouses. For now, things seemed quiet here, but that could change quickly if they figured out where we were. Rackal and Vice got their Pidgeots to hide in one of the containers.

"That damn idiot!" Rackal exclaimed in bitterness. "What the hell was he thinking? Lahanas could have gotten us all killed!"

"Well, he's dead now," Vice replied to Rackal as he gripped his Torchclaw caliber rifle tightly in his claws. "Forget about them. Hopefully these sons of biches think Lahanas and Stevex were the only ones attacking."

Around us, I could hear the faint sound of alarms. I couldn't believe it. How were we supposed to do this with the entire base on full alert? And I didn't even know where the missile silos were. If we waited any longer, we were going to be too late. Even retreating would be risky, and I knew Kamax would never forgive nor forget such an embarrassing failure.

"Well, Juno…" Vice said firmly, looking solidly into my eyes, "…it's your call, squad leader. I hope you know what you're doing."

As if I needed even more pressure and stress right now. Still, I knew panicking or crying like a baby wasn't going to do anything. I felt like I still knew barely anything about Kivistal, and here I was trying to take on one of the most impossible missions the Silver Rebellion has had to deal with.

"I'll keep a watch on these two birds," Blazewing volunteered. "If something were to happen to them, well, there's no way I could fit all four of you on my back. Unless I'd like my spine to look like a pretzel."

I nodded, figuring these two Pidgeots were almost defenseless without riders.

I then looked behind me, and saw the two metal doors of the warehouse. Hanging above was a chain with a lock around it.

"Do you think you can cut that lock open?" I asked Vice, looking upward at the lock.

"Oh, give me a break," Vice replied, nearly laughing. "That? That's nothing…"

He had leapt up, and with a furious swipe of his claw, the chain was sliced in half with a metal shrieking sound, and the two halves of the chain fell to the sides and lay limply handing by the door.

"Let's see what's inside." I told them, grabbed the metal door and pushing it to the side. "In the meantime, maybe it'll get those alarms to die down."

But it was too big for me to move on my own. Then, Rackal and Vice had helped me push the door open. Soon enough, the large metal doors loudly rattled along the metal tracks and crashed when they hit the end. It made much more noise than I thought.

"Guys... contact at 12 o' clock...!" Blitz exclaimed nervously.

And then I heard a shout in the distance. I could see in the distance a group of silhouettes heading right for us from between an alleyway of warehouses.

"Get your butt inside!" I shouted to them, making my way in.

"Just perfect," Vice grumbled as he rushed into the warehouse. "Don't mind me asking, my valiant and prestigious squad leader, but why did we open this again?"

I didn't have time to answer that as we quickly made our way into the warehouse, which was loaded with hundreds of wooden crates and metal boxes. I was hoping to stay hidden long enough to get the base's guard down, but obviously luck wasn't on my side today. We quickly made our way around a pile of crates and stood behind them, weapons drawn. Vice stood firmly crouched behind a small pile of boxes with his caliber rifle ready and pointed at the opening, just waiting to ambush anyone that came through there. Meanwhile, Rackal and Blitz stood side by side, both hiding with our weapons drawn and ready to fire.

"Well, if isn't it a beautiful day in the neighborhood," Vice commented sarcastically. "How the hell are we supposed to get out of here?"

"Simple," I said to the three of them. "We kill everyone who knows we're here."

I then heard chatter from behind the warehouse door, and soon enough, two Pokémon soon came into view. We soon saw the black and great wolf-like Mightyena, followed by a patrolling Gabite armed with what looked like a Leadhammer. The blue and red shark-like bipedal dragon was looking around, trying to see if he could find us. I held up my paw, giving the signal to hold fire. I didn't want anyone shooting unless we really had to, because if we did, it was going to make a whole lot of noise and make it obvious Lahanas and Stevex weren't working alone.

"Come on..." Vice whispered, thinking we might as well attack, "they already know we're in here."

I could tell the Mightyena was trying to sniff us out, and then, soon enough, they were joined by a muscular Conkeldurr armed with a large Slugger machine gun. We just kept watching the three of them, but if they entered the warehouse, I had no choice but to have everyone open fire.

"She smells somethin'," the Gabite told the Conkeldurr. "Rebel flesh, probably."

"Scouts reported seeing five or six potential targets," The Conkeldurr told him. "We were able to confirm a few kills, but we're not sure we got all of them."

As they were distracted by their conversation, the Mightyena moved into the warehouse. I knew she had detected us, and it was too late.

"I don't think we-"

Right then and there, I gave the signal. Almost immediately, the warehouse was filled with the violent, thrashing hammering of gunfire. With the four of us shooting first, the Gabite and the Conkeldurr didn't have much time to look up before they were suddenly pummeled by a storm of gunfire.

My Firefang submachine gun shook in my hands, but I was able to keep it braced against the crate I was firing from. The Mightyena didn't even get the chance to bark before she was violently gunned down.

The Gabite quickly tired to return fire, but his chest, face, and shoulder were hit repeatedly as he was out in the open with no cover. The Conkeldurr, however, was able to take bullet after bullet and still grin off the pain with a demonic sneer.

I quickly needed to reload, ripping out the first Firefang magazine, tossing it aside, and then loading in a fresh one. The Conkeldurr returned fire using the heavy Slugger machine gun, and immediately the four of us took cover as the heavy bullets nearly tore and pierced everything in the warehouse. Metallic shards, dust, and debris went flying everywhere as the heavy barrage of bullets tore through everything.

"Ha, ha!" the heavy, tan-skinned Conkeldurr laughed in between suppressing fire rounds. "Eat lead and die, you rebel bastards! Your puny weapons can't harm me!"

He opened fire again, and I knew all that damn noise was going to summon the entire base down here. A nearby metal crate was reduced to a misshapen lump of metal while half the warehouse wall was ripped apart.

As much as I wanted to zap him with a Thunderbolt, any kind of electric attack was going to create a spark and easily reveal our position with the flash of light. And with that kind of gun, he didn't even need to be a sharpshooter. He could spray the general area and it would be enough.

Vice opened fire, taking an opportunity to attack while the Conkeldurr was looking at the other side of the warehouse. Many of the bullets dug their way into the muscular Pokémon's shoulder, and then I took action.

"Drop him!" I shouted.

All four of us opened fire, stuffing his already bullet-lacerated body with even more ammunition. Even with both of his eyes shot out, he tried to lift the heavy machine gun and hope firing randomly would do the trick. And then, just as he lifted the gun to fire, his skull was broken open from too much damage. He let out an angry howl before he collapsed on top of his heavy machine gun.

I couldn't believe it. I was already running horribly low on ammunition and we had accomplished absolutely nothing during our time here. I only had what was left in my current magazine and one more mag in reserve, and that was it for the entire mission.

"I think we found them!"

The sudden appearance of a shouting Dewott and a Wartortle made me snap to attention.

"You most certainly did." Vice laughed as he pulled the trigger on his rifle.

Vice and I opened fired upon the blue otter Dewott and Wartortle, blasting them with heavy and loud gunfire. The water turtle's shell was instantly cracked and broken in multiple places while jagged, grizzly holes were torn through the Dewott's flesh, forcing them to the ground as they helplessly dropped their weapons. I could already tell more were going to start rushing in here like crazy.

We waited patiently, hungrily grasping our firearms in a rush of carnage and just waiting for something to move in the doorway. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a black Grumpig had poked his head out from the right side of the doorway, whipped out another Leadhammer rifle, and began firing at us before we could even respond. I crouched down as fast as I could as bullets splintered the wooden crates around us. When the gunfire stopped, I peeked one more time, and I saw nothing.

"Get some god-forsaken reinforcements over here!" The purple and black pig shouted angrily.

Then, I saw him come out once more, firing furiously. I had aimed my rifle right at him, when suddenly a sharp blast of electricity blasted out and struck the Grumpig in the face, striking him with enough voltage to paralyze him. Once the blast of glowing blast of white and blue electricity had ceased, the Grumpig lay on the ground, twitching just before Vice followed through with a Dark Pulse attack, launching a dark, shadowy wave of night-black fury upon the fallen Grumpig. The attack was hideously agonizing to the squealing pig soldier before Vice finished him off with the few last shots of his Torchclaw.

"I'm out!" Vice shouted, throwing aside his empty firearm. "I sure hope the rest of you-"

And he was instantly cut off when we had to open fire on yet another Crimson Stars soldier, a Patrat that was within seconds of shooting Vice in the middle of talking. The small, chipmunk-like Pokémon took two shots to the stomach and then one right in the forehead before stumbling backward and collapsing on his back, instantly bleeding out.

Vice quickly backed off and took to cover again.

"I sure hope to god we don't have to kill half of Macomb before we can get the hell out of here!" Vice complained, hating where this was going.

I threw my empty Firefang submachine gun aside, now completely out of ammo. When I turned to Blitz and Rackal, I could see Blitz had run out a while ago and Rackal was already on his last mag.

"Let's grab their stuff and get out of here, before they bring in something even worse," I told the others, knowing this could become a deathtrap if we remained here with all these dead bodies. "Grab what you can, and let's run."

They nodded, and we were quick to head out of cover and grab whatever fallen soldier's weapon we could. Blitz managed to grab the Patrat's Scab submachine gun, Rackal picked up the Grumpig's Leadhammer, Vice got the Leadhammer from the Dewott, and I had to settle using the Leadhammer from the Gabite. To me, this thing was like a heavy machine gun for my size, but it was better than nothing. I took as many spare mags as I could.

I peeked outside, trying to see if the coast was clear. For now, things seemed to quiet down, but that didn't mean there wasn't a patrol heading down this way.

"Let's get out of here," I told the three of them. "We've got to find those missile silos before they decide to launch…"

"Okay, man," Vice replied, getting set to leave. "Let's blow this joint."

The four of us moved past the door and beyond the pile of bodies back into the outside. I was the first to look out left and right to see if anyone was waiting for us. But something seemed strange. I could have sworn there were more Crimson Stars soldiers approaching us when we headed for the warehouse…

I then realized they were likely waiting at the end of the warehouse, ready to ambush us. I then decided to use one of my other weapons. Inferno grenades. I was just about to grab the one around my belt when…

"You sure about that, man?" Vice asked me, looking at me with a peculiar look in his eyes.

"Yeah, I know they light up the place like there's no tomorrow," I replied to Vice. "But chances are they're waiting behind the warehouse to ambush us."

"Well…whatever," Vice replied. "But don't be surprised if this whole district starts going up in flames.

"Good," I told him. "This whole place going up in flames would make a nice distraction."

He was quiet, and so I reached for the Inferno grenade, and pulled it off. Once I had pulled out the tiny latch that triggered the timer, I threw the grenade furiously ahead of me, and it landed right at the intersection. After I heard a few muffled screams, I heard a loud explosion, and everything was instantly bathed with a fiery orange and red glow. When I had turned to look ahead, I saw the intersection was covered with raging flames that relentlessly consumed everything in their path. Whatever had been waiting there was likely burnt to a crisp…

"I sure hope there's something nice and explosive in that warehouse you just set on fire," Vice grinned wickedly.

We had turned around, since heading forward was going to be impossible. We kept as low as we could, using the massive fire as a distraction to divert attention away from us. Enemy soldiers were flocking toward it, trying to douse the flames and save their precious weapon stockpiles and ammo dumps as we passed warehouse by warehouse undetected. Meanwhile, I figured they probably thought we were close to where the carnage was and were focusing our attack entirely around there.

While trying to keep a low profile, sneaking around warehouses, we heard something explode, and after looking at the fiery chaos, it looked like some kind of ammo stockpile hold was causing the ammunition to get set off from the fire. Explosions that big... I figured they had to be either tank shells or small missiles going off.

Still, now I was in a predicament. I had never seen a missile silo in my life, so I wasn't completely sure where to find it. But, I knew enough where they would be in the back of the complex, kept away from the front.

After we passed the district, we came across two large metal floors in the ground. They were tan-colored to match the color of the dirt so they would be nicely hidden, camouflaged to make it look like they were never there. There was absolutely no one around, which seemed pretty strange to me.

"I think…" Rackal said in disbelief, "…these are the missile silos. There should be a way to get underground somewhere around here."

My instinct told me to look for something that wasn't just another warehouse, and soon I had found what I had been looking for. It was a small metal building, with a thicker coat of metal around it.

"I think it's over there," I pointed to the building. "It's way too small to be supply storage."

"Yeah, I think Juno is right," Rackal replied, seeing the building I was pointing to. "That should be the elevator."

We had made our way over to the small metal building, keeping low and under cover, even though it seemed unnecessary. Did the Crimson Stars think we were already dead? It seemed awfully weird for no one to be around. Still, I looked back for a moment to see how the fire was eating up the warehouses. Another one of them suddenly exploded several times over, spreading the fire even further. I figured the tank shells and other explosives that were kept in there were going off, making the situation even worse and even dangerous for even water Pokémon to try and douse the flames. From all the noise and explosions, they probably thought we were still there and that's where all the fighting was when really it was just their ammo dumps going off in the fires.

Once we had arrived at the single metal door that was the building's entrance, we saw the door required a security access code to be entered into a keypad besides the door handle.

"Oh, great," Blitz muttered with sarcasm. "What the hell do we do now?"

Rackal had taken his hand, slapped it right on the keypad, and directed a tremendous blast of electricity right into it. The keypad was instantly fried, and after Rackal put the hand down, he slammed the keypad with his fist, breaking it into pieces. Suddenly, the metal door slid open, and we just stared at Rackal with a look of shock on our faces.

"Geez, man," Vice remarked in surprise, backing away a bit. "No need to lose your cool."

"Come on!" Rackal exclaimed. "We don't have all night to do this…"

And then, the four of us entered the dark, metal building. I could only hope we were going to get out of this dark chamber alive…

There was barely any light in that room. Everything was completely clad in metal, and the only other thing in the room was a metal elevator. It certainly wasn't anything fancy. The door was comprised of three metal beams with caution tape and several black grates, all of which had taken abuse through the many years of service. I had made my way over to the control panel and pressed the button to call the elevator. I didn't know why but something was certainly making me feel sick at that moment. It just seemed too quiet around here…

Soon enough, we saw the metal elevator rise through the grates, and when it had arrived at the top floor, the metal beams had slid into the ceiling and floor while the grates had been pulled to the sides. Inside was a very dark metal elevator, dimly lit by only a single, tiny light on the ceiling.

"Sure hope we know what we're doing here," Blitz muttered.

"It's a god-forsaken missile silo, what do you expect?" Rackal asked him, growing annoyed. "We're just here to disable the missiles so they don't decide to launch them rather than let them go to waste."

We had walked over to the elevator and stepped inside. Once we were all in, I pressed the black button on the side to head downward. Suddenly, the metal beams slid back down again, and the grates were pulled in front of us. Then, everything in front of us moved upward as the elevator moved downward, deeper into the ground below.

It felt like we had descended nearly a mile underground before we finally arrived at the bottom floor. Similar to the floor above, sliding metal beams made up the door. Once the beams and grates had been moved aside, we peered into another dark room, this time completely made of concrete. We had stepped out of the elevator, and looked around.

"Since there are two silo doors, there have to be two missiles," Rackal had told us. "We need to place two explosive charges on the missiles themselves, as well as any fuel rooms we find. We don't know if they're going to launch them or not, but I know that if they knew there was a significant risk in losing them, they'd rather fire them off randomly and hope to hit something that belonged to the Silver Rebellion than to let them get destroyed. "

Suddenly, we heard a noise in the distance. We quickly turned around and looked down a long concrete hallway, with a Nuzleaf and a Fraxure starting right at us with weapons drawn. They both glared at us.

"Silver Rebellion…" The Nuzleaf hissed at us. "I think the four of you fools just stepped a little too far into our hole."

"Drop your weapons!" The Fraxure shouted angrily in a low voice as he pointed his large Vulcan rifle right at us, "Or you'll find another way to kiss the floor!!"

"I've got a better idea," Vice smiled with an insidious grin. "How about you get out of our way, and we might just spare your lives!"

The Fraxure growled at us, pointing the huge Vulcan rifle right at Vice. Meanwhile, the Nuzleaf was armed with what looked like a smaller machine pistol, almost like an Uzi. Both of them looked at Vice with contempt.

"I hope you've enjoyed your life here, you worthless, little Weavile," The Nuzleaf hissed with amusement. "You enter the Abyss today!!"

And then, they opened fire on Vice. I felt for sure he was going to be killed unless I took action now. I had to concentrate, this time very hard. Suddenly, everything around me slowed to a crawl. The incoming bullets had very slowly approached Vice, and he moved back, just barely able to get out of the way in time.

I had stormed my way toward the Fraxure and the Nuzleaf, with my cheeks flaring with electricity. Vice just barely managed to get back up on his feet, having to drop his weapon in order to dodge the incoming carnage. He then leapt toward the Nuzleaf, and slashed viciously at his face. Meanwhile, I had jumped toward the Fraxure, latched on to his chest, and released all of my stored electricity all directed into Fraxure's abdomen. His body began to twitch and convulse with throbbing pain as the thunderbolt surged into him, just before he slowly collapsed to the ground. While he fell, he almost looked like he had drowned underwater, and was sinking to the bottom of the sea, all in slow motion. When the Fraxure had completely collapsed to the ground, I had gotten off of him and turned to see Vice, cutting Nuzleaf into shreds. By now, Nuzleaf was long gone…

I had stopped my concentration, and everything returned to normal speed. Meanwhile, Vice had looked toward me, and then looked around him.

"Boy, that was fun," Vice replied, crossing his arms with his soiled claws sticking out. "And you… you sure move fast for even a Pikachu. You almost make me jealous. Almost."

"Yeah, I know," Rackal replied, looking at me in particular. "I barely even had the chance to blink and Juno was tearing even that Fraxure apart."

I didn't say anything. I just looked into Vice's eyes for a moment, and then looked away.

"Not surprised some think you really are the Gold Rider," Rackal told me, still amazed. "That didn't look like anything you were trained on."

"Come on," I told them, not really in the mood to hear that whole prophecy story they had going on. "Let's just do our job and get out of here, before anyone else sees us…"

They had agreed, and we had made our way down the dark, concrete tunnels. Once we had arrived at a metal, steel security door, we pressed a button on the side and the door opened. We had come to a small control room. There were computer consoles everywhere, as well as two glass windows on the left and right. When I looked through the windows, I could see both missiles, still docked in the silo. But I didn't see any way Rackal could attach an explosive to the missile itself. There was no way for us to enter the chamber ourselves.

"Oh, damn…" Rackal sighed in anxiety as he looked around, "this isn't the system that I thought it was…"

"What does that mean?" Blitz asked as the white, electric squirrel clutched his Scab anxiously, looking up at Rackal.

"It means we're going to have to destroy these missiles some other way…"

I had looked at the consoles, and then at the rockets, and couldn't think of what to do. Normally, we could set an explosive charge for ten minutes and get the heck out of there, but we couldn't get anywhere near the rockets. We'd risk only destroying the control room.

"Well, what do we do?" Blitz asked, looking around, "The rocket is like two hundred feet away from the window. Even if we break it and tried tossing the bombs through there, they'd probably land in the wrong place…"

"There's only one way we can get rid of them now," Rackal told the three of us. "We need to launch them so they crash right into the silo door. Once they hit the door, chances are good they'll explode and everything here will be destroyed, along with the missiles themselves. Problem is, the longest amount of time that the launch can be set for is five minutes."

Vice had looked away for a moment. He seemed pretty tense about something.

"You know, five minutes isn't a whole lot of time for us to rush out of here," Vice complained. "Once that countdown starts, we'd better run like hell if we hope to get away from that explosion. Keep in mind those silo doors aren't going to hold in that explosion very well. They'll kill the rocket, but after that, those silos are going to blow up like a freaking volcano."

"We will make it out it time," Rackal told us, trying to assure we'd be okay. "Once we reach the surface, we run as far as we can from the two silo doors. That's all. We have no idea how much carnage is going to spit out of those silo holes once the explosion happens, but our own guarantee of safety is to get away from them as far as possible."

"Okay, but I hope you know what you're doing…" Vice told him, rolling his eyes.

Rackal had made his way over to the console, and began pressing a series of buttons. I had never seen a system like this in my life, so I had no clue myself how to use it…

"Manual system override…" Rackal said to himself as he hacked away at the buttons, "Administrator launch protocol… reconfigure…"

And then, some red lights turned on all around us. Along with them came on a female electronic voice:

LANUCH IN T-MINUS 300 SECONDS

"Come on!" Rackal shouted, turning around. "It's set to go! We have to get out of here!"

We immediately turned around and ran out of the control room with my heart racing incredibly fast. I was leading with Vice right beside me, with Blitz right behind us and Rackal in the back. We ran furiously down the hallway when suddenly we had heard an alarm go off, and more flashing red lights turned on around the concrete hallway.

UNAUTHORIZED LAUNCH SEQUENCE DETECTED. INITIATING SILO LOCKDOWN.

We had seen the two open steel doors in front of us, and quickly Vice and I had passed through them with Blitz directly behind us. The three of us had made it through, but then as we turned around and saw Rackal just feet away from the door, the two metal doors furiously slammed shut all of a sudden, trapping Rackal inside…

"Damn it, damn it, damn it." Vice spat bitterly, immediately trying to pry the two doors open to free Rackal. "Come on, come on, open for crying out loud."

The doors were quite thick and heavy. Despite Vice's claws and aggression, it seemed like there wasn't much he could do on his own to pry the doors open.

"Damn it, those things aren't going to open…!" Vice muttered, realizing the strength of the doors was well out of his league. "I can't even get them to budge."

I headed over to the black button that opened the door and pressed it furiously, but it wasn't doing anything at all. Everything was totally locked down, and once again, the loud speaker came on…

LAUNCH IN T-MINUS 200 SECONDS

"How do we get this damn thing open!?" Blitz shouted furiously, pounding at the metal doors.

"That's the problem…" Vice told us anxiously. "It was a backup security measure that activated when the system detected an unauthorized launch code. The Crimsons Stars love to pull this asinine bullcrap. There's nothing we can do. Rackal is a goner…"

No… there had to be some way to get him out of there. I tried focusing my mind but even that couldn't help. Despite all of Juno's powers, any kind of telekinesis wasn't on the list. The doors were far too heavy and the control panel simply wasn't working…

"No, this cannot be happening!" I shouted as I pounded the black button harder and harder. "There's got to be something we can do to get him out of there!"

"Come on!" Vice shouted to the two of us, "If we stay here any longer we're going to fry in here as well. We don't have any more time!!"

We couldn't help but leave Rackal behind, even though it made me so sick to leave him trapped in there to die. We turned around and followed Vice down the concrete hallways. Meanwhile, I couldn't believe I had lost another member of my team. We had made it to the elevator, and pressed the call button, which thankfully still worked. Immediately, the doors opened, we dashed inside, and pressed the button. The doors shut tightly and the elevator began to climb upward, the last travel it would ever make…

LAUNCH IN T-MINUS 100 SECONDS

We had made it to the top floor, and we furiously headed for the metal door. Once we were outside, we ran as far away from that silo as we could, since the whole thing was about to explode. As we kept on running, I had seen that the Crimson Stars were unable to douse the fire that was quickly consuming the warehouses one by one. But meanwhile, we were running in an open field, completely without cover. But even at that moment, that wasn't what was bothering me…

Suddenly, moments later, the ground shook like a massive earthquake had taken place. I had turned around for just a moment and saw the two silo doors blast off with a massive gush of fire and flames following it. One of the metal doors had fallen back toward the ground and slammed into an already burning warehouse, just to assist in the destruction. Despite the fact we were doing a massive amount of damage to Macomb, I still felt so sick at that moment…

I'm sorry, Rackal…

It was left down to just the three of us. The missiles were gone and a fire in the warehouse district was now out of control and was shooting off stray ammunition to the point where it was dangerous for anyone to try and put it out.

As we took refuge in a small stone alcoves near one of the factory compounds, I couldn't believe what had happened with Rackal. After losing Lahanas, Stevex, and now him, things were looking dismal. As far as the damage that was done to Macomb, I wasn't even sure if burning down those warehouses and destroying the missiles would be enough or if this was just a financial inconvenience for things that were easily replaceable. For now, though, at least it would be a few years before they got the missile bunker working again. At least that might prevent the Silver Rebellion from getting nuked.

"Damn..." Blitz muttered, looking at the fires from the ruined missile silos and the warehouse district inferno. "Are we going to get out of this alive?"

I didn't even know anymore. I could imagine the base was on full alert, but it was hard to tell where the Crimson Stars had their priorities. Were the assets more valuable than finding the intruders? Maybe they thought all of us were killed in the missile bunker?

"Well…" Vice sighed with cynicism, still annoyed about Rackal's death as he looked over to me, "After cheating death at least twenty times by now, at least half of us are still alive. So, squad leader, where to?"

I needed to think quickly. I was hoping the Crimson Stars thought whoever was responsible for the disaster was dead. They had no sure way of knowing given the fires would have burned away the bodies of anyone responsible, but until they put the flames out, they had no real way of knowing. In the meantime, I knew there was a reason why we came here in the first place.

"Let's head over to the prison," I told him, knowing any released prisoner could also mean reinforcements. "Chances are if we keep running down in this direction, we'll find it. We could use a few escapees to help us, if they're in fighting condition."

Vice had looked to me with a curious eye.

"What makes you so sure they're down there?" Vice asked, looking at me curiously.

"They wouldn't place a prison so close to a weapons stockpile," I told him logically. "Believe me, they would keep them away from that kind of thing as much as possible."

"Hmm…" Vice replied, looking down in thought. "Makes sense. After you, Pikachu."

We then grabbed our gear and tried to keep out of sight. The heavy Leadhammer gun I was carrying was a hard thing to lug around everywhere, but it was better than nothing. Truthfully, if we came across anything, I figured relying on electricity was a much better option unless I had to shoot something.

As we tried to rely on stealth to get around and stay out of open areas, we had passed by the assembly plants, and then it had all made sense. The prison had to be nearby. No doubt they were forcing the prisoners to work at the assembly plants as slave labor to help build their machines and weapons. Otherwise they were useless to the Crimson Stars. Since it was the night hours, I could only expect the prisoners to be in their cells by now, probably sleeping.

We were now in the heart of Macomb, which contained the largest and darkest of the buildings. Large factories and containment areas surrounded us as we continuously moved through the streets, trying to be as silent and covert as possible. All of the buildings had windows with a grid made up of panes of glass. Inside, I couldn't see anything, but we knew to stay away from any windows that had light glowing inside of them. It seemed unlikely the fires would reach this area, but there really was no way of telling for sure.

The more assembly plants we passed, the longer I knew it would take to dismantle all of them, and it would probably take uninterrupted weeks to do it. As we passed into the new district, I could see the development of machines, Talons mostly. And then, I got a view of what a VAT looked like. I had easily mistaken it for a small metal building factory until I realized it had wheels.

And lots and lots of guns sticking out of it…

It seemed like these were close to completion. Nonetheless, we continued our way around the last bunch of assembly plants before we came across a metal, linked fence with jagged razor wire wrapped around the top. In the distance, we saw an enormous building, with only little black squares as its windows. Around it was a large open space, leaving the building in the middle. All around, search lights were moving around, always looking for anyone that was trying to escape. It seemed pretty hopeless for anyone locked in there. Even if they made it past the massive exterior wall by some miraculous chance, the outside environment would kill them without a mount or method of transportation.

I had looked above and saw the same barbed wire we had been trained to remove. All around the wire were circular blades shaped like pizza cutters. I knew for a fact anyone trying to crawl thorough that would be cut to ribbons and would easily bleed to death.

"Well, I think we made it," Blitz said, recognizing the building was the prison. "Now how do we get through the fence and make our way toward the building?"

I looked along the fence but I saw no possible opening or end to the wire. And truthfully, it would be a serious waste of time and risk to run along the fence looking for an opened, which would probably be guarded anyway.

"Must you always doubt my power, Blitz?" Vice asked Blitz, giving him an evil stare. "This is nothing. I've dealt with this many times before."

"Uh..." Blitz warned him, looking into his eyes. "That's exactly what Lahanas thought before he opened fire on those Wind Strikers…"

"Yeah, no…" Vice replied. "What he did was just plain stupid. I'm not like that at all."

Vice the told the two of us to step aside, and when we did, he slashed away at the fence. But, he had tried over and over again, but not a single cut was made in the links. Then, after some aggravation, he finally gave up…

"Okay…" Vice hissed, just barely keeping his cool. "I guess we'll need to find another way around."

"Yeah," Blitz replied, figuring they would reinforce the fence. "But these Crimson Stars aren't going to let us through the front gate. Is there any way we can pretend we're them…?"

Vice had turned toward Blitz, and he looked like he was about to laugh. I had looked at him too, and Blitz couldn't understand what was going on.

"Blitz, you're a genius," Vice smiled, patting the little Pachirisu on the back. "We already have their guns. Now we just need some of their badges and uniforms."

"Badges?" Blitz asked.

"Yup," Vice told him with a dark grin. "It helps them bypass security measures and its proof that they belong to the Crimson Stars."

There had to be some around here. I had looked left and right, and suddenly I saw two guards walking along the perimeter of the fence. I was surprised they hadn't seen us yet.

"Hide!" I told them, "Someone's coming!"

We had dashed behind the assembly plant ten feet away from us, and just waited patiently, taking refuge behind a small, black metallic containment shed used to hold maintenance equipment. After two minutes of hiding in the dark, I took a peek and saw they had started walking down us and I saw it was an Aipom and a Combusken, both in Crimson Stars uniforms. I had heard the purple money Aipom giggling about something, and suddenly the Combusken stopped and the fiery, feather-headed fowl Pokémon glared at the Aipom with a look of contempt.

"Just what the hell is so funny?" He asked with an annoyed stare. "Half the god-damn base is up in flames, we're out having to do overtime for a perimeter patrol, and you're laughing about it!?"

We waited silently as the Aipom just kept on laughing. Suddenly, he tried to break out of it.

"Do you know who has the worst job here, out of everyone?" The Aipom asked, struggling not to burst out laughing.

"Hands down, it's the prisoners," The Combusken replied. "There's no worse fate than to be a slave, slugging it out all day, every day. Not to mention the whipping."

Still, the Aipom shook his head, indicating that he was wrong. Still, he just keep only giggling as we kept waiting silently…

"Yeah, you may think that…" The Aipom snickered, "but it's really Ved. Now that's the worst job ever!"

"Ved? You mean that ugly Sawk guy who takes care of the Skarmories?" The Combusken asked with surprise.

"Yep!" The Aipom laughed, "No wonder he swears all the time. He gets bitten at least six times a day and then... think of the cleaning, the feeding, and... ha, ha, the poop cleaning!"

The Aipom was laughing hysterically, but the Combusken still didn't get it, looking at the purple, grinning monkey like he had lost his sanity.

"You're an idiot," the Combusken stared down at him

They were distracted by the rather stupid conversation, but I knew we were too close to the prison to even think about using our guns or Pokémon powers that would create noise or light. We were going to need a more silent method of killing them.

I then looked to the storage shed, thinking there were a few tools here that could be repurposed to be weapons. I wasn't sure what even half of these were used for exactly, but anything with a blunt or sharp edge was a viable weapon. I found one tool that seemed to be bladed and looked to be some kind of wire or pipe-cutting tool. There was also an obvious sledgehammer tool with a rubber-like grip, a metal bin of spare metal pipes, and other tools. When I thought about it a little more thoroughly, I realized we needed something that wouldn't draw blood either. If the uniforms were bloodstained in any way, it was going to cause suspicion.

"Silently," I whispered to Vice and Blitz. "No guns, no powers, nothing that would draw blood. Nothing that makes light or noise."

"Are you crazy...-" Vice nearly interjected with disagreement about the demanding expectation before quickly realizing why I was doing it this way.

Vice quickly hushed, grabbed a chain with triangular-shaped links from the storage shed, and just nodded. I could tell he was going to use it to try and choke at least one of them to death like a garrote, which was likely one of the best methods he could use for this situation. It would be even better if they never got the chance to scream or shout.

I quickly grabbed a metal pipe, knowing the first strike I was going to make was to hit them either in the lungs to wind them, or if possible, go for the neck so they couldn't call out and alert anyone else.

We waited for them to draw closer. The Aipom carried on, laughing about something nonsensical yet again.

"Vice, take the Aipom and choke him with the chain," I whispered to them. "Blitz, we're both going for that Combusken's neck."

The fighting fowl's neck was a much easier to strike target than the Aipom's, who barely had a trachea to begin with. I was just hoping this would work. Once they started come very close, we needed to move. They were within just steps of noticing us, so it was do or die at this point.

"Go!" I commanded them.

At that moment, we broke out of hiding, and acted quickly.

Vice was quick to leap out of the shadows and sling the triangle-linked chain around the Aipom's neck before he even had a chance to realize what was going on. Quickly, Vice had the purple monkey's windpipe squeezed shut just as Blitz and I ambushed the distracted Combusken.

I swung hard and fast, putting all the power I could into slamming the Combusken's neck as powerfully as I could. I wasn't sure what I hit, but I definitely heard something snap like deadwood. The fiery fowl tried to gasp for breath like he was choking just seconds before Blitz leapt in, striking the area between the Combusken's neck and jaw with the metallic pipe he had picked up also. Unable to get breath into his lungs, the Combusken had to drop his Leadhammer rifle before collapsing. At that moment, I was able to strike the Combusken one last time in the back of the head, landing the killing blow with a severe strike of blunt force trauma.

I turned to see Vice, choking the last moments of life out of the Aipom. The purple monkey had only enough breath to make one last whimper before he died and his eyes went blank with a vacant, lifeless stare. Once Vice was convinced he was dead, he released his grasp, kicked the dead Aipom's body to the ground, and tossed the chain aside.

"Oh, that felt good," Vice replied. "Nothing beats death in the dark."

I wasn't too crazy about it. This war had really gotten ugly, but this wasn't something words were going to fix now.

After that, I got to work on removing the strangled Aipom's Crimson Stars uniform while Vice got to work on removing the uniform off of the Combusken. After taking off the gray and white Silver Rebellion uniform, I tried to put on the Aipom's, starting with the feet. It was a pretty tight fit and I felt like I was almost too fat to wear it, but I eventually squirmed my way into it. Meanwhile, Vice seemed to have no problem at all with the Combusken's uniform.

From what I could tell, the Crimson Stars had their own emblems also. The one the Aipom had been wearing was shaped like a shield and had three red stars on it against a silver background. I pulled it off and realized it was attached by means of some sticky adhesive strip. I then placed it back. As for weaponry, I took the Aipom's Scab submachine gun. Once we had what we needed, we dragged the dead bodies of the Combusken and the Aipom into the storage shed and shut the door to hide them.

"What about me?" Blitz asked, realizing we didn't have a third Crimson Stars uniform for him.

"Ha, we'll just pretend you're our prisoner!" Vice told him. "Easy money. We'll just pretend you're the last survivor of the firefight, you ran out of ammo, and we captured you to be tortured so you spill all the details during an interrogation! I'm sure these jackasses do it all the time!"

Blitz swallowed hard, and looked a little anxious…

"Okay…" Blitz responded. "As long as... those things don't actually happen.

We decided to wrap Blitz in the chain that Vice had used to choke the Aipom, binding his hands and then wrapping the chain around his waist. Vice's plan was a decent one, and it was really the only option we had right now.

We began walking toward the front gate, which was pretty heavily guarded. I wasn't sure how long or if they'd notice the Aipom and the Combusken were missing, but we had no choice. By the gate, there was a Bagon and a Golduck both armed with Leadhammer rifles, just glaring at Blitz. We had approached them, and we tried as much as possible to act like guards.

"Say hello to one of the asshats that was involved in the attack!" Vice proudly told them, nudging Blitz a bit roughly with his elbow, causing the sheepish electric squirrel to wince from the blow and stumble a bit. "We killed two of his friends before this little bastard ran out of ammo."

"Heh, really?" The Bagon asked in a gruff tone. "Must have been one of those maggots that set the whole base on full alert and set fire to the warehouses. Stupid rebellion sons of bitches. I swear, I'll make this little one bleed until he confesses to everything." He then turned to look Blitz dead in the eyes. "You hear that, you useless fleshbag!? I'll gut you into a god-forsaken meat-puppet and won't even let you die right away!"

"Any free detention cells?" I asked him quickly, trying to act in the same, heinous attitude the rest of them tended to have. "We need to get back on patrol, just in case there's another prick out there. And I'm sick of dealing with this little wretch. He smells like the bastard child of a gasoline can and the rotting asshole of a roadkill Raticate."

He then tossed me a single key, and I caught it with my free hand, the one that wasn't holding the Scab submachine gun. I looked it over, seeing it had the same kind of resemblance to the metal bar-coded keys from Black Bay prison. I then looked up at the Bagon.

"Cell 385 on the third floor should make sure the little grub doesn't get out," The Bagon snickered. "Don't beat him too much, I'm sure the boss will want to take care of that himself."

"Him?" I responded to the Bagon. "I don't even want his stink on my hands."

"Now go on and get out of here," The Bagon ordered us.

We then continued walking along the long, cobbled stone path toward the double, brown metal doors. Once I had grabbed the metal handle, it was cold to the touch. I pulled it open, shoved the door aside, and then looked in.

When we looked in, we saw the floors, the ceiling, and the walls were made up of crude, dirty metal. Rust was everywhere in patches, and it looked a lot like the prison from Black Bay, only it was much, much larger. I heard a faint clanking and wailing sound in the distance, but another than that, the rooms were dead silent and very dark.

"Juno... you..." Blitz whispered, looking a little distraught, "you didn't mean I...?"

"Of course not," I told him with a smirk. "We're just acting."

We had walked down the dark, metal hallways, and as I looked into each of the cells, I saw various Silver Rebellion soldiers lying weak and tormented on their rickety, metal beds. Each one of them appeared to be overworked and abused with injuries and malnourishment. I couldn't help but think Alex was going to appear to be the same way. Problem was, I had no idea on what kind of Pokémon he was turned into. And going around and asking each Pokémon if they were once human seemed like insanity. I was going to have to find another way. I figured it would just make more sense if we freed them all first and sorted that issue out once we got back home. And hopefully one of these Pokémon really was Alex. I hated to think he could have been killed here before we arrived, but it was a possibility.

When we had reached the end of the hallway, we came across more hallways left and right as well as an elevator and a door leading to a flight of stairs leading upward. Everything was filthy, paint was chipped and peeling, and rust was in blotches everywhere.

"I'd feel much safer with the stairs," I told Vice, looking at the rusty doors of the elevator.

"I'll second that," Vice responded, heading over to the door. "That thing looks like it could drop any second."

We then opened the creaky metal doors and headed up the flight of metal stairs, which looked even worse than the dirty floor. Plus it didn't have any handrails, so anyone who wasn't careful could go tumbling down to the first floor.

We climbed our way to the third floor, but I had looked up and realized there were at least three more floors above us. How were we supposed to release everyone here without anyone knowing? This could take hours.

As we opened the metal door to the third floor, we came across another hallway to our right and a solitary window to our left, with a metal grate over it. A flicking red light above us had lit the hallways with a flashing glow that was both eerie and alarming at the same time.

As we passed each cell, I saw there was a tiny metal plaque by the door handle. We had come across another intersection of hallways, and I didn't know what direction to take. Suddenly, we had seen another guard, another angry, Simisear had been patrolling around on the third floor. The beige and red fire monkey looked especially aggressive and angry, and he looked even worse wearing Crimson Stars armor. As soon as he noticed us, his look of disgust got even worse.

"What the hell are you doing here!?" The Simisear asked, looking at the three of us with a angry stare as he clutched his Leadhammer rifle. "This floor's for high-profile convicts only, and he sure as hell doesn't look like one! Are you bumbling idiots lost!?"

I didn't have a real, logical answer because the truth, which would obviously get us killed. We really were lost and I didn't think the floors of this prison had special designations. I didn't have a way to explain it either, but I tried my best to lie and improvise.

"Sorry, man," I told him casually, trying to weasel my way out of it. "We're recent Jasandax transfers. What floor's standard detention?"

"Who's your reporting overseer!?" The irritated Bagon barked at us again. "I want to know your contingent code right now!"

"That would be-"

And before I even had the change to make up a name and a bunch of numbers, Vice had opened fire, squeezing the trigger of his Leadhammer rifle, pounding the Simisear with piercing bullets as the rifle roared to life while its flashing muzzle fire lit up the whole hallway. The fire monkey didn't even have a moment to respond before each consecutive shot sent him stumbling backwards before collapsing on his back in a bloody mess, dropping his own Leadhammer on the ground in the process. Both Blitz and I didn't expect it at all and we jumped before looking at him doubtfully.

"Are you daft!?" I impulsively shouted at Vice. "The whole damn prison probably heard that!"

"Whatever," Vice shrugged. "He was already onto us. Let's release some of these guys and get them loaded up. We're gonna need a lot of helpers."

I just nodded, and got ready for even more havoc. Hopefully what happened at Black Bay was enough experience to pull this off correctly...

Unlike my previous assumptions, the prison hadn't been very well guarded, or at least the night watches were very minimal. Still, there was more than enough to cause commotion. Already Vice had taken quite a big risk by shooting down one of the guards. Still, I could guess there weren't that many guards running around, or at least most of them were outside. While these guys were armed, they probably didn't expect us to get this far into the prison. In fact, they were probably thinking no one would make it this far into Macomb…

"So what's your plan of action, Juno?" Vice asked me, looking at me curiously. "We don't have a whole lot of time before someone finds out we're here and locks down the whole prison…"

"We need to create a diversion that ultimately leads to a prison break," I told Vice and Blitz.

Vice looked at me with shock. He shook his head in disbelief.

"You're kidding, right?" Vice asked me with his eyes wide open. "These guys have been here for years. As soon as they hear this place has been taken over, they're going to take advantage of this as soon as they can and run the hell outta here."

"If they've been here for years…" I reminded him, "Then they probably have a very good idea of what its defenses are like and know they'll be shot down almost immediately unless they arm themselves."

Blitz just looked at me curiously and Vice looked away in frustration.

"Look, once we get rid of the guards, we unlock all the cells and tell everyone to head to the upper floors," I told them both, thinking it all out.

"Guess again, not all of these prisoners are Silver Rebellion troops," Vice told me again. "You think they're all going to listen to you!? Some of these guys really do deserve to be locked up, you know."

"They'll still fight if they want to survive and get out of Macomb with their heart still beating," I told him, knowing that much. "And knowing how they've been put into slave labor here, I doubt they'll pass up an opportunity to pay the Crimson Stars back for all those days of abuse."

Vice nodded, but he also shrugged as well, thinking it was a reckless plan, but it was at least something.

"Maybe I should go and send for help," Blitz told the both of us.

"Pft, yeah right," Vice nearly laughed. "Kamax told us we were on our own for this one, remember? Plus by the time you head over there, even if you manage to convince them to send reinforcements, by the time you all get organized and ferry your butts all the way down here, all of us will probably be long dead by then. Besides, you don't even have a Pidgeot! How do you expect to get down there, flapping your arms like a birdie to fly away!?"

"I was thinking I could... use Rackal's Pidgeot..." Blitz told him a bit sheepishly.

"Are you nuts!?" Vice exclaimed again. "She'd only obey her master, and there's not even enough left of him to bury his remains in a lunch box! My god, you two really didn't think this one out, did you!?"

I was getting tired and impatient. It was true, I didn't exactly have the seniority or veteran status of any other Silver Rebellion Pokémon here. I barely even felt like a Silver Rebellion soldier to begin with. Still, I didn't want to spend a lifetime arguing this thing out, and we were running against time as is.

"Listen, pal," I scolded him. "I'm still squad leader here, so at least try to cooperate. I hate this place as much as you do. So let's just take a stab at it. Blitz will try to find the switch that opens the cells. You and I will try to find the armory to get everyone a weapon. If we pull this off right, we should be able to get almost everyone out of here alive using the Crimson Stars's own vehicles."

"You've really lost it, haven't-"

"I know, I know," I told him quickly, making it clear I hadn't lost my mind. "I'm not an idiot. I don't plan on driving right into Syarmix using vehicles the Silver Rebellion is going to think are enemies. We would get out and simply head out on foot after parking them a mile outside of the city."

Vice just rolled his eyes, but decided to go along with it.

Then, I decided to get down to business. I wanted to finally get out of here. I was hating this place already.

"Blitz, you see if you can find the switch to open up the cells," I told the electric squirrel, hoping he'd be able to handle it on his own. "Vice and I will take care of the guards and find the armory."

"Well, we made it this far," Vice shrugged. "Let's roll the dice and see if we can cheat death again."

"I'm on it, Juno." Blitz replied, nodding with a little smile.

"And once you're done," I told him, "we'll meet on the roof."

Blitz then picked up the fallen Simisear's Leadhammer rifle and wiped off the blood with the sleeve of his uniform. After that, he headed downstairs while Vice and I headed upward.

"Let's go, we don't have any time to waste," I told Vice, knowing there was only a matter of time before reinforcements had arrived.

Vice and I had headed up the stairs, after we were convinced the third floor was empty. We had arrived on the forth and the halls were completely empty, which was highly unusual. Nonetheless, we made our way to the fifth floor and I had realized there was only one more floor above us, making six floors in total. Once we had opened the door to the fifth floor, the rusty, metal door hit the back wall and sent a harsh slamming sound throughout the halls. At first, we thought the floor was empty until a massive, hulking Tyrantrum turned around the corner and was holding two Sluggers in his massive hands. The dark red and white tyrannosaurus was massive, and fully equipped with Crimsons Stars combat armor. He looked at the two of us and just smiled.

"Well, well," He growled with a low, amused voice, "I don't remember the two of you shrimps ever being assigned guard duty."

"That's because we're not guards!" Vice shouted with laughter. "Up yours and have a bullet breakfast!"

It was almost interesting to see that when presented with an opportunity for combat, Vice totally lost his mind, but when it came to discussing tactics and plans, he thought I was the one that was crazy...

I was honestly hoping I wouldn't have to work with him again...

The Tyrantrum readied his two Slugger machine guns and pointed them right at the two of us. With his strength, he could fire both and still have very little recoil in each hand. He then pulled both triggers, and then fire had rushed out from the end of the barrels, and he sprayed the hallway with ammunition and carnage. I took a deep breath and knew I absolutely had to focus or both of us were beyond dead.

I then focused and concentrated hard and then bullets slowed to a crawl. Vice had pulled out his Leadhammer rifle while I opened fire with my Scab submachine gun. I knew it would do nothing against the armor, so I had to concentrate and use all of my skills, training, and power for this one.

While I could now move significantly faster than the bullets from the Tyrantrum's rifles, that didn't mean our bullets were faster. The two of us had opened fire, and I felt the Scab submachine gun shake violently as ammunition had blasted out from the end of the barrel. The whole hallway was full of bullets, and it wasn't very easy to dodge the ones that the Tyrantrum had fired upon us. Meanwhile, the large and relatively easy to hit Tyrantrum had been struck several times, digging holes in his armor. However, that didn't stop him from shooting.

I managed to take out his left eye before jumping up, leaping off of the rightmost wall, and then hurled myself in the air to attack his other side. All the while, I tried to glide between the bullets spiraling through the air. As soon as I reached his right side, I then aimed and blasted out his other eye, permanently rendering him blind.

He stopped firing, howled, and leaned over. He used the last of his ammunition to fire randomly before both machine guns simply clicked and ran out of ammo. I skipped off of the other wall, and quickly jumped on his back. He tried for a moment to swat me with his arms, but I took the Scab, pointed it down at his head, and just fired, breaking through his skull and taking out his brain in a furious hailstorm of bullets.

He soon collapsed into a ruined heap, blinded and almost fully lobotomized by bullets. Just before he hit the ground, I leapt off.

When I saw Vice, I had see he had been struck three times. Twice in his crest and another time in the shoulder. His shoulder was bleeding, but he simply gritted off the pain. But for a moment, it was like that wasn't what was really bothering him.

"Pft, you show off!" Vice complained, grasping his bleeding shoulder. "That big bastard was mine!"

"Are you okay!?" I shouted at him, looking at the crimson blood matting around his shoulder. "You're bleeding!"

"Oh shut up, you act like I haven't been hurt before," Vice spat. "It's nothing more than a flesh wound. Probably will scar nicely anyway. Would have been a better story if you hadn't stolen the kill!"

Stolen the kill. Seriously. That Trantrum nearly killed us and he was concerned about bragging rights.

"Come on," Vice replied to me. "We have to keep moving. If you really want to arm all these guys, we've got to get to that armory."

I could certainly agree with that…

We had moved our way through the cold, metal prison, shooting down two more guards. From the looks of it, this place's alarms were already going, but it seemed like with all the other havoc going on outside, obviously the guards couldn't be in two places at once.

We had already caused a commotion among the prisoners, wondering who we were really and if all this mayhem meant their days of freedom might soon be upon them. We kept silent until Blitz had found the switch to unlock all the prison doors. Only then did we tell them we were part of the Silver Rebellion, but we told them to remain in their cells while we called for backup. Regardless, Vice and I quickly ripped off our Crimson Stars uniforms so we weren't mistaken for one of them and were shot because of it. From the looks of it, most of these prisoners were stripped naked or were only wearing rugged and torn clothing.

Despite trying to keep things under control, a lot of the prisoners refused to stay in their cells, and some of them were already arming themselves with the few guns the prison guards had been carrying. I figured if there were any guards left in here, they were quickly getting overwhelmed.

We had met up with Blitz again on the first floor.

"Everyone's out of control!" The frantic electric squirrel exclaimed. "I mean, I know they're eager to leave, but-"

"Oh, let 'em go wild," Vice replied. "We need to head to the roof to I can call Storm Gale and Juno can call Blazewing. After that, we find a few of those VATS, load these prisoners up, and then get the hell out of here."

"Did you guys find the armory?" Blitz asked, seeing most of the prisoners weren't armed at all.

"No, we didn't," I shrugged, figuring with how huge this place was, we could be running around for days before we found anything. "Like Vice said, let's just find a few VATS that seem to be in at least some working condition. There's got to be at least a few around."

Never mind hoping I'd know how to drive the blasted thing. I figured if I could at least just get it to move, everything else was trivial.

We then headed upward, and we made our way up to the top floor. After that, we looked for the entrance to the roof, since the stairwell and the elevator didn't reach all the way up. After looking everywhere for a second staircase, we found the only one, which was behind a rusty metal door with a tiny plaque labeled "Maintenance." I grabbed the doorknob and it was locked. I wasn't very surprised. Vice had looked it over and just shrugged.

"Oh, what the hell is the point?" Vice remarked, readying his sharp claws.

He slashed furiously at the metal door knob, sending a loud and hideous screeching sound into the air. I put my hands on my ears to neutralize the terrible sound as I winced from the pain of the noise while Blitz just cringed. When it was over, I put my hands down and looked to see a twisted metal lock on the floor, with deep cuts into it. I looked at the door and saw Vice had ripped out the lock, knob and all. Now it was just another normal metal door with a gaping hole in it.

"Locks only keep out honest people," Vice said casually, grabbing the ruined door and throwing it open. "Come on, let's get out of here."

"Man, glad I was on the receiving end of that," Blitz replied, looking at the knob with disbelief. "I don't think I would have much of a head left after that…"

We headed through the doorway and came across a spiral staircase with rickety metal stairs. We made our way upward and into another small room with a metal door. The tiny metal room was especially dirty, and looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years. Regardless, we quickly made our way for the door, and opened it. We then made our way onto the metal roof, and we could see the red and black sky with its occasional lightning flares above us.

I looked around, still noticing that the warehouses were in flames, but it was starting to die down a bit. However, the damage to Macomb had been brutal and with so much of their factory and warehouse lines destroyed, it was definitely going to have a notable impact on their war effort. I figured the Crimson Stars put all their eggs in one heavily and well-defended basket and thought it was all secure.

Vice had called for his Pidgeot, letting loose a loud whistle that despite the distance, could be heard thanks to the keen level of hearing most Pidgeots had. After a few moments, Vice's Pidgeot had arrived, landing swiftly on the roof. Once her clawed talons had come into contact with the metallic roofing, the brown and beige Pidgeot with its long yellow and pink crest had looked toward Vice, her trainer.

I was about to call in Blazewing when suddenly we were interrupted. Above in the sky, we saw four Wind Strikers and what appeared to be their leader, a green and vicious looking Scyther riding on a Flygon. That was new. Usually these guys would always ride Skarmories, so what was this guy doing.

Vice had stepped back and shook his head.

"Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT…!" Vice panicked in fear. "It can't be him… Not now… Why the hell did he have to show up!?"

"Who the hell is that?" I asked Vice, never before seeing him in so much fear.

He just shook his head, backing away. His reaction was definitely making me unnerved now.

"That's Vorox and Tychal," Vice told Blitz and I. "Vorox has killed nearly a thousand Silver Rebellion troops, lead missions that torched five of our cities, and has earned all seventeen ranks of the Crimson Stars…"

Blitz had looked up at the Scyther with a fearful look in his eyes. I couldn't believe it either, but I could tell from the Scyther's gaze that nothing could ever bring him fear. As he drew closer, my heart was racing faster.

"You mean he's the…?" Blitz asked in fear.

"Yeah…" Vice replied, swallowing hard, "…the leader of the Wind Strikers…"

I felt like I was going to be sick. For a minute, I thought we were actually gaining a foothold on the situation and were actually pulling this mission off, albeit in an unorganized and unorthodox way, and then the Crimson Stars send this guy in.

The four Wind Strikers and their leader Vorox were the only force that could stop us now. And having heard from Vice that Vorox nearly killed a thousand of our troops wasn't exactly the morale-boosting comment we needed to start fighting back.

There really was no running from this guy. He had us exposed on the rooftop, and I was sure trying to head back into the prison was just going to get everyone killed, and that was only going to give him the pleasure of adding five hundred more kills to his name.

"Vice, who the hell is this guy!?" Blitz shouted in fear, looking at his intimating state before looking frantically back to Vice.

"He's known as the Jade Sword, a ruthless and cunning warlord, maybe one of the best elites of the Crimson Stars," Vice told Blitz, a situation that was beginning to make even Vice anxious. "Now I think I know what happened. They must have evacuated everyone and sent Vorox to kill the attackers out of vengeance."

Yeah, I nodded, realizing that would make sense. They were not the kind that would let someone do something like this and get away with it.

"Believe it or not," Vice shook his head, "whoever kills him will be advanced five ranks in the Silver Rebellion Army and will be given the Serious Decoration of Honor. That's how badly… we need this guy dead. It's a joke, though. This jackass is an unstoppable machine of death."

Even still, we badly needed to get the other prisoners out of here. I began to think that it would just be better if Vice and Blitz worked on that. Maybe... just maybe I could at least hold off Vorox and his squad from killing the others.

"Blitz, go with Vice and get the prisoners out of here," I told the two of them. "Take Storm Gale and just go. I'll try... to deal with this guy."

"You're freaking out of your mind, Juno!" Vice exclaimed. "He's going to murder you in a one on one fight! Do you seriously want to just end up like all the others!?"

"I'm... not like the others..." I told him, forcing my racing heart to calm down. "Just go! We're not going to get another window of opportunity here!"

Blitz just nodded, and was the first to secure himself onto Storm Gale the best he could. He was then followed by Vice, who simply looked back at me as the last, precious seconds were counting down. After that, Storm Gale had spread her wings, and the massive Pidgeot jumped into the air, flapping her wings to ascend higher and higher into the air. There wasn't enough time for even a goodbye or even a good luck. They headed back toward the factories, hoping there might be a leftover VAT or armored transport.

"After them!" Vorox shouted to his team. "Kill those two and do it now!"

Suddenly, the four Wind Strikers flew furiously toward Blitz, Vice and Storm Gale, and readied their rifles. I gritted my teeth, focused on the four Wind Strikers and aimed my Scab submachine gun at them. If we didn't stop them now, all three of them were going to die a screaming death and there wouldn't be anything we could do to stop it.

"Come and get it!" Blitz shouted, returning fire from behind Storm Gale's back.

While Vice guided Storm Gale's flying, Blitz quickly tried to provide as much support fire as he could, knowing this had become a do or die situation. I then pulled the trigger hard, and the submachine gun roared to life. I aimed for the one directly behind Blitz and Storm Gale, and I aimed right for the Skarmory's abdomen. The ammunition rounds blasted loudly from my Scab and tore their way into the Skarmory, sending the first Skarmory and its Buizel rider spiraling toward the ground. I didn't even wince when I realized both of them would be screaming all the way until the hard ground snapped every bone in their body.

I focused my concentration again, slowing time down as the situation had become direly critical. With the first rider down, I immediately shifted to the second. The second rider was a Lombre, already with his aim on Storm Gale. I concentrated on my aim and again pulled the trigger, blasting the Skarmory with an intense amount of ammunition. I heard the Skarmory scream in agony as it completely lost control of its flight. The Lombre was instantly thrown off of the Skarmory's back only being able to fire his rifle just as his aim had been thrown into chaos from the death of his mount. There was nothing that could save the two of them now.

Almost savagely, I ripped out the expended magazine of the Scab and wrestled in another one. Blitz was returning fire, but with Storm Gale's frantic flying, his aim wasn't its best and the bullets were flying in a spray. However, it was keeping the Crimson Stars riders from getting too close.

The third and forth Wind Strikers were riding close together, having only watched their two companions get shot down. I was also running out of time, realizing they were drawing closer. Both riders, a Breloom and a Frogadier, were only thirty feet away from Storm Gale, both with their weapons drawn. If I didn't stop them now, they were going to kill Blitz and the others for sure…

I first aimed for the Breloom, focusing my aim on his back. I then fired the Scab submachine gun, and I saw the bullets had struck him viciously, tearing in and out holes. Meanwhile, Blitz had shot the Breloom's Skarmory, resulting in both of them tumbling to the ground lifelessly. Moments later, the Frogadier found himself alone, with no one to help him.

I watched in horror as he already had his aim on Storm Gale before I had my aim on him. He had fired three times before I had fired upon him, shooting him in the back of the head and sending his lifeless body forward, which tumbled right off the Skarmory. I then aimed for the Frogadier's Skarmory itself, and fired ruthlessly upon him, using the last of the Scab's ammunition. When all four Wind Strikers were taken down, I had frantically looked for Storm Gale and her riders. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw all of them were okay, never hit once by the Frogadier's attack. They were flying safely in the distance, heading right for the warehouses. I watched both of them disappear in the distance, and sighed in relief that they were going to make it. If Vorox himself tried to pursue, he would be exposing his back to us and would make an easy target.

I then turned around and looked right at Vorox. He had glared viciously at me, totally in disbelief at what we had just done. Meanwhile, the burning, red eyes of his Flygon named Tychal stared at me with a harsh gaze. Vorox already knew Macomb would be under fire with the prisoners already pulling off a successful jailbreak and were likely helping themselves to the weapons and leftover armaments. Meanwhile, the amount of damage we had done to Macomb was something the Crimson Stars wouldn't recover from any time soon. Within less than an hour, the whole industrial city would be destroyed, just like what they had done to the many cities of the Silver Rebellion. However, there was still no certainty that this would turn the tables in our favor.

"That's impossible, those were four of my best and fastest fliers!" Vorox growled angrily. "How was a normal, everyday Pikachu like you able to kill them so quickly!?"

There was silence. I hadn't established any kind of whistle signal or sign with Blazewing the Latias, but somehow, I could feel a connection to her that had only grown more and more as time went on. I then decided to call her by her real name, knowing if she could hear my voice, she would know it was me. I had called out to her using the name "Blazewing," and before long, she had flown from the darkness of the skies to my side, joining me before looking up at Vorox the malevolent Scyther and his vicious Flygon mount. It was then that the avian red and white dragon had made her appearance.

"I'm no ordinary Pikachu," I told Vorox with a short breath of confidence. "My name is Juno, and this is Blazewing."

And for one dark moment, Vorox had been a bit surprised and seemed to recognize I was in fact Juno, the one from the legends that the Silver Rebellion felt so strongly about. With how much of a massacre he made of them, I was sure he had to have heard about it in one way or another. Regardless, he gazed upon me with the look that I had arrived earlier than he had expected. I could see in his harsh stare that he had only expected me to come when Symarix was crumbling before him, when the last city of the Silver Rebellion was doomed to fall and there wasn't any hope in the world to save it.

"You... you're the one from that stupid fairy tale of theirs!" Vorox laughed mockingly. "Idiocy! Killing you two is going to be special! And to think some of them believe you're their last source of hope! Imagine their faces when I use your severed heads as trophies!"

"Yeah... you and all the others," I nodded, knowing this was an obvious pattern. "You're all the same."

"Who's the bug?" Blazewing asked me, wondering who Vorox the Scyther was.

"He's a Crimson Stars Wind Striker commander," I told her, remembering what Vice told me before. "Apparently, he's killed at least a thousand Silver Rebellion soldiers."

He had laughed, just as a flash of lightning had lit up the dark and twisted sky above him. He had shown me his two gigantic sickle arms and the blood red sky was reflected in them. I could tell he had used those two sickles many times before to kill one Pokémon after another.

"I'm far more of a legend than you are!" Vorox laughed. "You're both nothing but a fairy tale lies! Nonetheless, what a gorgeous day it is to kill yet another hope and dream of the pathetic Silver Rebellion!"

"We're fighting this jackass?" Blazewing asked, taking a peek at him. "Oh, please tell me we are."

"We definitely are," I told her. "We're no lie."

Despite how much he wanted to be my nemesis, I had a feeling that there would be far worse than even him in the near future…

I had picked up the Scab submachine gun and then I jumped on Blazewing's back, quickly strapping myself in with the leather straps that had been tied around her. Once I had secured myself on her back, Blazewing had leapt into the air, and once we had flown above the ground, we turned around to face Vorox and Tychal, our adversaries.

I was not going to let this psychotic maniac stand in our way. We came here to save these prisoners, and he was not going to add even more heads to the death toll he had already went too far with. This guy had a long overdue appointment with the devil and it was about time someone arrange the meeting.

I stared strongly into the eyes of my enemy, and at the same time, he glared into mine. A bitter rush of hate and anger had filled the trenches dug within our hearts, and now it had all come down to this gruesome conflict. He wasn't going to let us go and there was no way I could let him live, so I knew blood was going to be spilled and one of us was going to die. As a harsh and violent wind had blown past us, a flash of lightning had lit the sky. Somehow, at that moment, I felt far more like Juno than the human I used to be…

Leader or not, the very idea that Vorox had killed that many Pokémon made this a very simple need for capital punishment that was long overdue.

With that, our gruesome clash had initiated…

Tychal, the mantis-like dragon had extended his wings, and then burst toward us in full speed. I tried to concentrate on his flight pattern, but even with all my focus and concentration, Tychal was still flying at an excessive speed, faster than I had expected. I watched in anxiety as Vorox readied his sharp scythe, and prepared to slash upon us viciously. If he ended this in one fell swoop, it would probably be one of the most demoralizing things that have ever happened to the Silver Rebellion during this whole war.

I had no time to attack, and instead just wanted to evade as soon as possible. These guys were definitely not the same as their Wind Striker compatriots. I beckoned for Blazewing to ascend upward, and she had surged into the air, just as Vorox had sliced the air next to us. Moments later, Vorox and Tychal had flown past us, and now Blazewing and I were above the two of them, glaring at the two again.

I had felt a hot, burning sensation in my side, and when I had gone to look, I grimaced at the sight. Vorox had cut my side, and a small trickle of blood was running down. The sticky blood was quickly soaking my yellow fur. I was really beginning to regret ripping off that armor, but it was far too late to think about that now.

The wound wasn't wasn't fatal, but if we had been any slower or he managed to swing in further, that cut would have been a whole lot deeper… and much more life-threatening. Thankfully, the cut was no worse than being struck with a large razor blade, but I could tell it didn't take much for him to inflict vicious lacerations and even slice off appendages.

And as I turned around, I saw Vorox, licking the blood at end of his scythe. The sight of it was simply nauseating…

"My, I never knew the blood of the Gold Rider was so tasty!" Vorox sneered with glee. "I need more… much more…"

"What kind of deranged hellhole bug are you!?" Blazewing gawked in disbelief. "You're a sick, screwed-up mental case, you know that!? You know what, don't even bother checking the lost and found, I don't think you're going to find your soul there."

And he just laughed hysterically at that. Already, I could see how much of an effect the bloody slaughter of Silver Rebellion troops had on his grotesque, blood-drunk mind. In the end, I looked into Vorox's eyes and he had gone from warrior, to warlord, to just plain butcher.

I then pointed my submachine gun at the Jade Sword, but I aimed for Tychal instead. I then focused and pulled the trigger, and my Scab spat fire and carnage as the metal gun shook with recoil from the blasts. Regardless, Tychal was extremely fast and was able to foresee where I would be shooting him from given the angles I had my gun facing. I tried to follow his flight pattern and lead the shots so he would run right into the bullets, but he still managed to catch on and dodge the attack. Then, he curved around and headed right toward us, and Vorox prepared to attack again. I was hoping the closer he was, the easier it would be for me to shoot him, but that wasn't the case…

This was definitely not working out nearly the way I thought it would be...

Blazewing and I had dashed away at the last second, and Vorox had swiftly sliced the air furiously. We had flown from the two and dashed away as far as we could, at least several hundred feet away from Vorox and Tychal. When we had stopped, I could hear Blazewing gasp, and it didn't take me long to figure out what was wrong.

Like me, she had been cut in the side, and it was bleeding as well. Her cut had been even worse than mine, and I could see the forking rivers of blood trickling down her body before dripping down upon the ground below. Twice we had attempted to hit him, and both times it only ended with us just barely avoiding having a lethal laceration inflicted on us. Any slower and we probably would be left bleeding to death.

"Damn it, we've got to find a way to kill this asshat!" Blazewing shouted, getting angry now. "I swear, his grave's gonna be a cesspool for sure!"

And then, Vorox had seen the cut in Blazewing and had only laughed. My anger was only growing worse.

"Don't blame me if you suffer for long!" Vorox laughed. "I honestly was going to make this simple and quick, but if you'd rather insist on bleeding out painfully and slowly, I can enjoy that too!"

Again, I had aimed my Scab at the two, this time I was going to shoot at Vorox, knowing it wasn't him who was controlling Tychal's flight pattern. Vorox and Tychal were fighting as two minds. I then realized what his weakness was, something I had overlooked this entire time.

Tychal knew nothing of how Vorox was going to attack, and I was going to use that as my weapon. Again I had opened fire, but I got only three shots out of it before the Scab had stopped firing, and all that came out of it was a click. For a moment, I was shocked when the Scab magazine ejected from the gun and I realized I was out of ammunition completely. Wincing a bit from the frustration, I had taken the metal submachine gun, and threw it aside before it tumbled to the ground below. Still, I figured I didn't need it anymore and it certainly wasn't helping anyway.

Vorox was grinning when he realized my Scab was empty and I had tossed it away, thinking he had gained yet another advantage in a battle he was already reigning triumphant in. Tychal had flown toward us furiously, and Vorox had prepared to swing his scythe again, thinking I didn't stand a chance and this time he would get more than just a flesh wound out of the next strike. As I saw him closing in, I concentrated and my red cheeks flared brightly with electricity. Tiny bolts of thunder had surrounded them as Vorox prepared to swipe the air. Now, Tychal could not predict my method of attack, for he could not see me clearly from his angle.

Vorox's scythe was in feet of preparing to strike, and then I focused my charged electricity not on Vorox, but on the scythe itself. This time, I unleashed one of Juno's home-brewed special electric attacks, Stormbreaker Thunder, the same thing I used against Blitz's Groudon. I sent a thrusting surge of thunder for the joint in his arm, and when the intense voltage had hit it, the power was enough to burn and cut right through his mantis-like chassis, and effectively slice off the scythe itself.

Suddenly, the intensely sharp scythe had spiraled off his arm only inches in front of my face, but thankfully it had missed, or else it would have easily sliced through and through and would have been an instant kill. Instead, the severed arm fell toward the rooftop of the prison, landing with a sharp metallic clang as if a heavy sword had fallen upon the rooftop. Now, Vorox had one less weapon to use against me, and was crippled for life. In all his years of killing, obviously no one had managed to pull this off before.

"My ARM!!!" Vorox shouted in anger and shock, suddenly realizing his left arm was reduced to a burnt and bloody stump. "Damn you, you miserable rodent! Today, you lose your head for that!"

Suddenly, it seemed like it was no longer a butcher's fun and games anymore.

"Still think it's a lie?" I asked him.

He just snarled, and in his rage, he pushed back into the fight.

"Burn them, Tychal!" He shouted in fury. "I want to see fire consume their souls!"

And then, I got a sickening feeling as Tychal closely watched every single one of our moves. As Vorox and Tychal fought as one, I needed to make the same approach but not make the same mistake. Focusing on Blazewing, I was establish a connection, one that I had never felt before. As I concentrated hard and shut my eyes for a moment, I was able to focus and see what Blazewing was seeing, as if I was her…

Draconic Stormbreaker Attack…

Extreme. That was all I could use to describe the speed that she was moving and the fierce, relentless nature of the imagined assault I had sent to Blazewing's mind. The air was blasting past us to the point of burning, and we homed in on our enemy. The raging, bitter fire that was blasting from Tychal's mouth had no chance of hitting us from the excessive speed we were traveling. With the claw of Blazewing sharp and ready, I prepared to bury it into Tychal, and deliver as much pain and suffering to him as I could. Faster and faster I traveled toward him, and when we were suddenly close enough, the claw of Blazewing had thrust its way into the green underside of Tychal, and tore with such fury and anger to the point of incinerating the savagely-open cut with fire and blazing embers. Within seconds it was over with, and the two of us had pulled upward, and I opened my own eyes again.

It should have been impossible. It shouldn't have happened anywhere but in dreams, but yet... we pulled something miraculous off.

"Holy... that was..." Blazewing remarked, taken back a bit.

Tychal had let loose a horrible shriek, beating the flaming cut with his wing and still attempting to keep afloat in the air. When the fire was extinguished, I could see the vicious tear in Tychal's underside, bleeding very badly and nearly coating his green underside with a slick cover of sticky, crimson blood.

And in pure, uncontrollable rage, Vorox ordered Tychal to attack again. Tychal, using his anger, pain, and fury to fuel his vengeance with his last bit of strength flew toward us in a frenzy, desperately desiring to tear the two of us into ribbons.

Again, I had shut my eyes again, and Blazewing flew with a blazing fury toward Tychal. To do this right... we had to do it again. It was working, but we couldn't hold back now.

Dragon Shadowfury Attack...

Seconds later, we had arrived at Tychal's under side, and with Blazewing's sharp claws ready, she tore another macabre and gaping gash into Tychal, blasting his skin with raging fire and slicing his flesh with claws as sharp as surgical knives and as relentless as a chainsaw. The Flygon's blood was sprayed in all directions like a rake ripping into a water balloon.

It made me wonder... was Vorox ready to start believing?

We had flown right past them, and I had watched as Vorox screamed desperately as Tychal spiraled toward the metal roof top, unable to control his flight. Moments later, Tychal slammed into the roof of the prison, violently snapped his neck against the metallic roofing with a violent cracking sound that was as loud as crushed deadwood, and was forced into rolling over several times before stopping and lying on his stomach in a bloody, twisted heap. After vomiting a grizzly amount of blood, Tychal lay lifeless, with his wings folded over and his head lying motionless as a pool of warm, crimson blood had quickly begun to surround it.

I had signaled Blazewing to head toward the roof, and we flew swiftly toward it. When we had arrived, I leapt off of Blazewing, and looked at Tychal's dead body. I had wondered if Vorox had been crushed by the force and weight of Tychal's corpse, but then I saw something rise up, and I realized Vorox wasn't dead…

Meanwhile, both Blazewing and I were still losing blood. It seemed that no one was walking away from this fight without some kind of wound or scar to relive the fury and anguish every time they looked upon it.

Vorox had jumped off of Tychal's body, and landed on the metal floor of the prison, still armed with his left scythe. It was certainly more than enough to kill both of us. I've never seen a Pokémon look so angry and so drenched with bitter, relentless hate.

"You…" Vorox savagely growled in a murderous tone, "...you SWINE! You killed him! That... now you die... die... DIIIEEE!!!!!"

Then, in blinded, uncontrollable fury, Vorox rushed toward me with all the anger and hatred in the world, blasting toward me with extreme speed, holding his left scythe in the air and ready to send it swiftly ripping into my body. I had no time for an electrical attack, and he knew that. There were only seconds before he would get the chance to bury his scythe into my flesh.

I had stepped back for a moment, and I felt my foot step on something firm and hard. When I looked down to see what it was, I saw it was Vorox's severed left scythe.

And in those critical last seconds, I bent down and picked up the scythe, and held it firmly in my hand. I then put my foot firmly on the ground, arched my hand back and vigorously threw it forward, aiming right for Vorox. The sharp scythe had violently spiraled through the sky, slicing the air as it spiraled toward its target.

Suddenly, the sharp scythe had buried itself right into Vorox's head. It had sliced right through his nose and was now half-buried in his head with the bladed end jutting right out of the back of his skull, a complete through-and-through. Even in death, he still ran toward me with his hatred, but every step his body made had become twisted as the last signals from his mutilated brain transmitted to the rest of his body. At the last moment, his body tripped and fell to the ground, crashing violently before lying face down before us in a lifeless heap. Even in those last seconds, it seemed like his deadened scythe arm tried one last time to strike me, only to just barely miss as I quickly dodged Vorox's tumbling body.

Vorox, the leader of the Wind Strikers… was dead, now laying in a pool of his own green blood alongside his dead dragon.

He never believed we were real. He never believed we had the power of dreams within us.

I was not going to make that same mistake again.

It was over, and I was finally glad at last there was one less nightmare we had to face. Despite our victory over Vorox and Tychal, he had injured us pretty badly. Still, at least we were still breathing, while the two of them were clearly dead.

That was when Vice and Blitz had arrived again, riding on Storm Gale's back. When the massive and rough-looking Pidgeot landed with her talons clanging on the metallic roof, she just looked surprised as the signs of carnage. And then, when Vice dismounted, he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"No way... no way... holy...!" Vice muttered in total disbelief, "He's... you seriously just killed Vorox!?!?"

"Well, he sure ain't breathing from my angle," Blazewing remarked. "I dunno about you, but I don't think a giant scythe sticking in one's head really helps the cerebral cortex chug along."

"Oh damn..." Vice muttered again. "Oh damn... that Divine Prophecy thing... is that really true!? I thought it was crap before, but this... this right here might just make me a believer."

Blitz was just as shocked, looking at me like I somehow managed to turn myself into a Pikachu commando. I didn't boast or puff myself up about it, though. A little bit of bad luck or horrible timing would have been fatal for Blazewing or myself. Fighting this guy was no laughing matter either. He was practically still fighting even when dead.

"Holy cow, look at them..." The electric squirrel commented, side-stepping away from the pools of blood to avoid getting it on his white fur or on his giant tail. "Sure don't need to bother checking for a pulse with these two."

I still couldn't help but look at the cut Vorox had inflicted on me. It was still bleeding badly and a large patch of yellow fur had soaked up quite a bit of blood. I wasn't exactly sure if there was anything that could be used to patch it up, but I was beginning to worry if I was bleeding out. After blinking twice, I was feeling somewhat lightheaded and woozy, not sure if it was the result of seeing my own blood splattered all over the place.

"Yeah, that sure as hell ain't pretty," Vice told me, noticing the laceration I kept looking at. "Sit down, quit fussing around or else you're going to keep opening it up. We'll find someone to patch you up and get you out of here."

"Just... leave the rest to us," Blitz nodded. "We'll take care of the prisoners and transports. We already found a few that should be good."

I nodded, sighed, and decided to sit down and remain still while Vice and Blitz went back downstairs to take care of everything else. It was just Blazewing and I again, but for now, it seemed the Crimson Stars had given up on Macomb. They never were able to control the flames that ultimately destroyed almost the entire compound, and I could see in their haste and hubris, they didn't think such a fire would ever be started.

In the meantime, I felt so tired. After so much running, shooting, shouting, it was easy to just want to lay down and...

"Hey, no napping!" Blazewing told me, giving me a nudge with her clawed hand to wake me up. "Napping with a cut like that and you'll be waking up on a fluffy white cloud with a golden harp!"

That actually sounded... somewhat pleasant in a way after all I had been through, but she was right. I tried to force myself not to drift off like that again.

"Okay, I get it..." I nodded, sitting up to avoid dozing off. "But how are you holding up?"

Blazewing checked herself and it seemed like her cut wasn't slowing her down as much. But in a way, with considerations to body size, the cut I had was much worse than hers.

"Ah, it'll heal," She shrugged with a smile. "Yours will too, just hang in there."

I smiled as I looked back into her eyes.

In the meantime, there was something else that Vice said that was somewhat pecking at my mind. I wasn't sure if Blazewing was thinking the same thing, but had a chance to reflect on it, but I figured I'd ask.

"Hey, Blazewing," I told her, trying to get my mind off the pain for a while, "have you actually had a chance to read this "Divine Prophecy" thing they mentioned?"

She looked at me curiously, and I could tell she knew what I was getting at. With Vorox being dead and the Macomb mission seeming like it was almost a success against insane odds, it made me wonder... was it really coming true?

"I can't say I've actually read it," Blazewing shrugged. "But yeah, now that you mention it, it's got me wondering too."

However, before we got the chance to really talk about it, Vice had come back, accompanied by an Aromatisse. The puffy, pink and purple-colored bird-like fairy Pokémon was still in her prisoner uniform, consisting of a dirty, dark-yellow jumpsuit that had obviously seen better days. Meanwhile, she had been carrying a small, dirty-white pouch of first aid supplies she had probably fetched out of a nearby medical supply closet.

"Hey, her name's Saraxa," Vice told us, introducing us to the Aromatisse. "She seems to know-"

"No way...!" Saraxa gasped, suddenly shocked about Vorox's crumpled dead body before her. "This dead Scyther... is this...?!"

"Yeah, that's Vorox!" Vice laughed, mocking the dead Wind Striker commander. "What's left of him anyway. Juno and Blazewing actually finally managed to kill that prick and his damn Flygon."

She then looked at me and Blazewing very curiously, blinking twice.

"But..." Vice quickly added, "I can't say they were able to pull it off without a scratch. There's where you come in."

"They're... they're REAL!?" Saraxa exclaimed in surprise.

I then remembered these prisoners had yet to hear of our arrival. Saraxa still seemed very surprised, but I had to show her the gash that Vorox had inflicted. She stepped closer to get a better look at it, sizing up the wound with her black and ruby-colored eyes. She got a look at it from varying angles.

"Oh, Juno..." Saraxa told me sympathetically, quickly grabbing her medical supplies. "I... well, that's a pretty nasty gash, and I can honestly say you weren't too far off from needing a transfusion. But, even so, it's definitely not the worst kind of thing Vorox has ever inflicted on someone. Yeah, you two are done for the day. I definitely don't recommend doing anything until this heals."

I let out a tired sigh. I recognized some of the basic medical supplies like the bandages, but there were some ointments and sprays that I was unfamiliar with. After applying two series of spray ointments and healing creams, both of which stung painfully when applied, she wrapped everything in bandages, which was almost enough to cover my entire chest.

"Hey, you'll be fine," Saraxa assured me. "I just... can't believe it's really you! Juno and Blazewing, alive and real! And you killed Vorox!"

She then went ahead and helped Blazewing get patched up also. She seemed to be an expert at this, and when she was done binding the wounds with bandages, she seemed quite proud of her work.

"Thanks a million," I told her with a tired smile.

"Oh, it's an honor, General Juno!" She smiled with a firm Silver Rebellion salute.

"Hey, I'm only an Ensign at the moment," I told her with a light chuckle. "But thanks."

Shortly after, Blitz had soon arrived. I still felt the urge to want to help, but I didn't think that would do my cut any favors.

"They're ready to go," Blitz told the rest of us. "We finally managed to find enough VATs and transports to get everyone a ride. Juno, do you think... you can walk?"

"Yeah... I don't recommend he does that," Saraxa told him. "I can't suture him up until we get home and trying to get him to a transport would probably rip open his cut again. If Blazewing is okay with it, he'd be better off riding her."

"Ah yeah, I'm fine with that," Blazewing smiled with a wink. "Let's go, this place is history."

Carefully and gingerly, I climbed on Blazewing's back, strapped myself into her harness, and sighed. I wasn't sure if Jamac and Kamax would consider this improvised mess a success, but it at least didn't feel like a failure.

"Okay, see you back at base," I told the others with a smirk. "I think we've spent enough time here."

"Uh, yeah," Vice muttered, looking at the smoldering husks of what once were many factories and warehouses. "Seriously, don't bring me on a mission like this again. I usually don't get worried like that."

Blazewing soon took off, and as we left the rooftop, I looked down below to see the prisoners were being loaded onto the VATs and other armored transports that they had managed to acquire. Some of them were unequipped with weapons while others were in an unfinished state, but they could at least run. Only two of them looked like they were complete, just without the paint.

From above, I got a good view of how absolutely ruined Macomb was. It was no wonder why they had evacuated everyone out. Blazewing had to fly low because of all the smoke rising from the burnt building husks, rubble, and ruins. Only a few buildings remained standing, but everything was damaged in at least one way or another. I could tell the Crimson Stars never learned to not put all their eggs in one basket, but it seems like that's exactly what they did with this place.

"Man, what a mess," I told Blazewing, really not realizing just how much damage that fire had done to everything. "I honestly didn't think that a few inferno grenades would start something that would make it look like the whole place had been bombed."

"I dunno about you, but it looks so much better this way!" Blazewing laughed cheerfully. "Before, it was just a cesspool of ugly factories and warehouses, military bases and all that other junk. Now, it's a nice clean slate, open to infinite possibilities!"

"Somehow I don't think the Crimson Stars are going to think of it like that," I chucked along with her.

As we glided out of Macomb, the transports soon followed, rolling over and crushing whatever twisted remains of Macomb were left that got in their way. The VATs and what seemed like other armored personnel carrier prototypes were huge, metal behemoth trucks with tiny slits for windows to prevent entry of attacks but to allow at least some circulation. They also seemed pretty unstoppable, tearing through building remains like there was nothing to it. I wasn't sure if the Silver Rebellion would reverse engineer these things, but either way, they would definitely be of some use.

Once everyone was out of the city and loaded up, we began the journey back, leaving behind Macomb as nothing but a vast, ruined landscape of collapsed buildings that still had traces of fires scattered throughout the city, but by now, they were dying down having run out of fuel.

As we slowly lead the armored convoy through the wastelands, I had remembered about Alex. I was wondering if he really was part of this group, and if he was, what Pokémon he had become. I tried to see things from his perspective, but I could only imagine what he might be thinking. If he really was down there, he probably had no idea who Juno really was. Even so, he hadn't even seen Symarix yet!

I didn't know how I was going to try and go about finding Alex without looking like I was insane. Maybe... even if I didn't ever find out, it would be okay in the end.

Blazewing and I had plenty of casual conversations on the way home as the carriers traveled along the rugged, dusty, and arid wastelands. We couldn't fly nearly as fast due to the slow nature of the VATs and other armored carriers, but it did give us time to catch our breath. Here, the two of us were, completely out of ammo, my armor was gone, the both of us got cut up, but we survived, destroyed Macomb, and rescued the last of the prisoners. While there were casualties, I highly doubted anyone could ever expect an attack on this place to go without shedding a single drop of blood.

"Man, I wish these things could hurry up," Blazewing told me, noticing that once again, her hasty flying had to result in her stopping for a moment for them to catch up. "I'm not getting any younger here!"

"Tough, yes," I told her, looking at the heavy armor of these vehicles that looked like they could take tank shells and just keep on rolling. "Menacing, yes. Huge... definitely yes. But yeah, they're not much faster than a sleepy Snorlax."

After what felt like many hours and us nearly running out of things to talk about, we had arrived back at Symarix. It was a pretty welcome sight to see after what we had been through. For me, it was still hard to call the gleaming, metallic city truly "home," but for now, it was definitely the closest haven of comfort we had in Kivistal.

It wasn't long until we had arrived at the gated entrance, and the guards there instantly recognized me. They hadn't seen the transports yet as we had flown ahead to make sure they didn't start firing upon them thinking it was some kind of Crimson Stars attack.

Once we had landed, they instantly approached us. A Lucario dressed in Silver Rebellion body armor was accompanied by a Floatzel and a Pancham wearing the same gray and white armor, custom-fitted for their size.

"Juno?" The Lucario head guard asked me from besides the controls to open the gate. "You're back!? What happened? Where is everyone else?"

As I dismounted from Blazewing as she was hovering just a few inches above the dusty, arid ground, I looked up to the black and blue wolf Pokémon.

"We have a few... 'borrowed' transports coming in with prisoners from Macomb," I told the Lucario. "Give the word out not to open fire on them."

"Macomb?" he asked, looking shocked. "You went there and lived!?"

"Lived?" Blazewing asked, nearly laughing. "No, we totally got killed and decided to just come back from the dead. Yeah, the place is toast."

The Lucario nodded, a little bit bashful he asked such a question, but he understood what she was saying. He then gave the hand signal to send the message for the defense sentries to hold fire. As I looked behind me, I saw a small dust cloud kicking up from the distance, knowing they would be here soon.

Just one thing was on my mind that whole time as I saw the transports rolling in...

...I knew the Crimson Stars would seek brutal revenge for this.

Blazewing and I had gotten swift and considerable medical treatment to address the wounds. I wasn't too crazy about what passed for a suture around Symarix, but it did its job, even though it was excessively painful and these Pokémon weren't too aware of many anesthetics. I knew it would take months to heal, but I couldn't complain considering the deadly alternative.

When asked about how I got the laceration in the first place, I simply told them it was from Vorox, easily forgetting he was one of the prime enemies of the Silver Rebellion. At first, they weren't sure if I was telling the truth when I told them we really did kill him and Tychal, but I didn't know they had actually brought back his dead body to prove it. To say the least, they were deadly serious about how much they despised the Wind Striker commander.

When news of that quickly got around, I wasn't surprised when I heard there was debate when it came to honoring the five rank advancement promise that was offered to anyone that killed the Wind Striker commander. Apparently some thought it was just a rumor, a joke, or something totally made in jest while others argued considering how much of a problem it had been to stop Vorox's insatiable killing spree, we deserved the promotion. There was only one major issue. With us being the rank of Ensign, it would make us Generals. I was beginning to see the irony of Saraxa calling me that upon meeting us.

Blazewing and I were still recovering, but at least the wounds were healing and we didn't need to wear nearly as many bandages. In the end, it was up to Kamax and Jamac as to whether they wanted to promote us or not. After a few weeks of healing and plenty of controversy, Blazewing and I had presented ourselves before Kamax and Jamac in the royal Emperor's Throne Room with a fresh set of white and gray armor, again, made to look like the statue downstairs. It had been a while since I was last in the tower throne room before Jamac, and I couldn't help but think how much had changed in so short a time.

Since the issue couldn't be decided within the military jurisdiction, they had to take the matter all the way to the top. Sever was eager to volunteer to help defend my case and encourage Jamac and Kamax to favor the promotion. I knew he probably wasn't the best debater out there, but I didn't have the heart to say no.

Meanwhile, a crowd of elite soldiers and other high officials had gathered in the throne room to discuss the situation and serve as witnesses. They came in all Pokémon shapes and sizes, from the small to the gargantuan.
It all started with a preliminary hearing to discuss the situation at hand. Oddly enough, it felt more like I was on the stand for being convicted of a crime, not for a promotion. It was... strange how the Silver Rebellion handled matters like this. It almost felt like I was supposed to feel guilty over something.

It had gone on for about fifteen minutes before Sever pointed back to the field report that Vice and I had been required to journalize that accounted for each action we had taken.

"How are we even discussing this?" Sever the Cubone asked before everyone. "Juno and Blazewing killed Vorox and Tychal! We have proof and witnesses who can confirm they were the ones!"

"That's not the issue," Kamax muttered, looking disinterested in the Cubone's claims. "We acknowledge Vorox is dead, but the five-level promotion was never an official instatement. Besides, it would make both of them Generals. That's simply out of the question as they lack the years of experience, leadership, and seniority."

I sighed, knowing in a way, he was right. Going from Ensign to General was just extreme, and if I only got promoted to Lieutenant from all this, I could at least be happy with that. Still, with Kamax being Head General, it really couldn't be argued with. I figured the offer had to be too good to be true the first time I heard it from Vice. The crowd of soldiers that were gathered in the throne room were murmuring and whispering amongst themselves, but I figured this wasn't going to go anywhere.

"On top of all that, Juno led a successful strike on Macomb!" One of the soldiers from the crowd called out. "Scouts confirmed the place was practically wiped off the map!"

"Again, Juno didn't follow protocol," Kamax argued. "According to his own report and his squad member, Vice, his squad took three casualties, showed signs of being disorganized, and his methods of freeing those prisoners was very anarchic. I read the report and was disgusted after reading he wore Crimson Stars armor to trick them to get into the prison. I wouldn't even trust a Lieutenant who did those kinds of shenanigans!"

Give me a break. I just looked down, shut my eyes, and tried to drown out the nonsense, knowing handling that in any other kind of fashion would have been suicide. Considering what we were up against, we were lucky to have survived that. Besides, I hardly saw those three causalities as my fault. Sure, I would have liked for Lahanas, Stevex, and Rackal to have survived, but what happened to them could have happened under even the best squad leader's command.

"But it worked!" Sever exclaimed. "The Crimson Stars weren't prepared for it, and in general, it was a successful mission. What more could you want!?"

"I'll be the judge of that," Jamac the Excadrill replied as looked into the Cubone's eyes, giving him a glare that told him he should stand down. "I've heard both sides of the story and this has frankly gone on long enough. Juno will not be granted any promotion or the Serious Declaration of Honor. These debates are over, and this decree is final."

I was just about to roll my eyes with a defeated sigh and a shrug when the soldiers in the throne room were livid about the final verdict. Many of them shouted and were up in arms, but they were forced out by the high guards, and even Sever was ordered to leave. He looked incredibly depressed and disappointed, and on his way toward the doors, he looked at me with a look of shame as if he felt he had completely failed me. I knew it wasn't his fault, though, and there were definitely no hard feelings between him and I.

When they were gone, I figured it was probably time we left this place also. I knew when I wasn't welcome.

"Hey, for the record," Blazewing spoke up, "exactly how were we supposed to handle that mission according to protocol, hmm? I must have missed the part where we were supposed to do a curtsey before politely knocking at the gates."

"Juno, tell your loutish mount to watch her tongue," The Vigoroth argued with an angry scowl. "Otherwise I'm sure Jamac's next decree will be to rip it out, and I would certainly support that notion."

"Why you!" Blazewing shouted before I stopped her.

"Let's just go," I told her, quickly patting her on the side to get her attention before I turned my back on the two of them. "We'll find another way around this."

They weren't worth it, and us losing our cool about it could make us lose everything. I could tell ugly politics had sunken in deep here also, and I figured the sooner we were out of that throne room, the better. Once we were out of here, then we could start discussing our options. I put my yellow paw on the ornate door handle, threw the door open, and Blazewing and I just stepped out and into the hallway.

We almost began our walk out of there when I suddenly heard the most unlikely person speak up, and I could hear him only faintly behind the door.

"Jamac, I trust you'll handle this matter with discretion," Sinis the Zangoose spoke up.

We stopped for a moment, and decided to eavesdrop on the conversation, staying close to the door to hear every word we could. I couldn't help but blink twice at the sudden revelation. It was strange. Sinis had been completely silent, sitting in the rear, and hadn't said anything the entire meeting long, and only now was he speaking up.

"What do you mean?" I heard Jamac's voice question him.

"It's time for you to decide if you want to keep Juno within the Silver Rebellion, or denounce the entire Divine Prophecy, order it to be destroyed, and exile the two of them," Sinis told him, making his voice very clear. "You cannot continue to have him revered as a prophesized hero among the people, but refuse any trace of a recompense for his efforts. The public will not stand for it that much longer as they have made it clear they value the prospect of Macomb's destruction, Vorox's assassination, and the liberation of the Macomb prisoners over battle and standard formality. You need to choose, and better you do it now."

He definitely sounded extremely neutral about this whole thing. But I figured that's what his purpose was for when it came to advising Jamac about his choices. Without a doubt, Sinis was definitely very hard to read. I would have liked to know what he personally felt, but I wouldn't get far asking him directly.

"I will discuss the matter with my Generals and tactical advisors," Kamax replied. "Once we arrive at a decision, we can then formulate a plan."

"Fine," Jamac agreed. "I want a response before the end of the day."

That didn't give us a whole lot of time. Still, I didn't think we were going to get anything more out of staying here. I quickly looked up to Blazewing, and figured we'd better get out of here before they realized we had been listening in.

"Let's go," I whispered to her.

She nodded, and we quickly headed for the elevator, trying to avoid getting caught. Once we made it to the elevator cab, I quickly pressed the button, and as soon as the doors opened, we headed inside. At least now it was just the two of us and no one could overhear us.

"They have got to be kidding," Blazewing muttered, looking up. "And here I was thinking we'd be getting a parade with all the confetti we could ever dream of in our faces. Instead, I get half my butt sliced open and now I got that white gorilla creep honking on that he wants to start cutting tongues out."

"We're definitely getting exiled," I told her, knowing Jamac and Kamax didn't seem like the type to change their minds. "I'm beginning to wonder if we should save them the trouble and just slip out the back before they realize we're gone."

"Huh, thought you'd never ask," Blazewing sighed. "With those clowns in power, I don't really feel like fighting anyway."

I realized that when I mentioned "considering the options," this was on her mind. To be honest, I wasn't sure what Kamax and Jamac expected of us. As the elevator sank lower and lower, I began to wonder... were Blazewing and I just tools or weapons for them to use? Or was this just a matter that they didn't believe in the Divine Prophecy? Either way, with them in power, we would be doing nothing but risk getting ourselves killed if we stayed here. Maybe I was right when my original hunches felt like this place would never feel like home.

As we headed toward the exit, it was impossible to not take a glance at the statue of Blazewing and myself. Was it really just a fairytale? I didn't know what to think about it anymore, but I figured if they didn't want us here, there was no reason for us to stay and risk our lives over and over again for Pokémon that didn't appreciate it in the slightest.

"We need to find Blitz and Alex before we go," I told Blazewing, knowing finding Blitz the Pachirisu wouldn't be too hard, but finding Alex was a whole other story.

"Alex..." Blazewing muttered as the elevator arrived at the last stop. "We're not even sure if he's here, do we?"

"Nope," I sighed as we got off the elevator. "But if he is, he's a Pokémon now, and we have no clue which one."

That was going to cost us time to find him. I had a few leads on how to find him, such as finding a Pokémon that was totally and utterly lost at his surroundings. I wasn't sure about his name, however. For some reason, Pokémon here just didn't understand traditional human-sounding names. Maybe that would lead us to him?

As we walked out of the spire building, I tried to think solutions, but my train of thought was suddenly derailed when as luck would have it, we were suddenly approached by Blitz. Well, at least finding him had been extremely easy. The white electric squirrel looked a little downcast when he saw the two of us.

"You don't need to tell me," Blitz muttered solemnly. "I already heard you didn't get the promotion."

"Oh, it gets even better than that!" Blazewing replied cynically. "We're getting handed a free, one way ticket out of Symarix. Wanna come?"

"Wait... are they... they're banishing you out of the city?" Blitz asked with shock.

"It's very likely," I nodded at that. "Blitz, we need to go before they upgrade that sentence to an execution, but there's one slight issue. I'm not sure if Alex is here as was part of the Macomb prisoners we rescued."

Blitz's expression seemed to change, and he looked a lot more hopeful.

"I'm pretty sure I found him while you were dealing with all that junk," Blitz smiled, looking like he was happy to be of help. "I checked up on the prisoners to see how they were all doing. Most of them admitted to being members of the Silver Rebellion, so that already cut down the numbers a lot. That left only a handful of others, so I tried to see which one of them was the most confused out of the bunch. Some of the other prisoners told me he had been acting really weird, and that's when I had a talk with him."

And that was when he looked up optimistically, looking especially perky for a Pachirisu.

"Long story short," Blitz smiled, "Alex is now a Zorua. He got a little shaken up during his time in Macomb, but he's fine now."

What a relief! The whole time, I wasn't sure if he was dead, still missing, or was lost somewhere else.

"Where is he?" I asked, wondering where he had been staying.

"He's been at a small refugee camp," Blitz told me. "Poor guy. He's broke, has no clue what's going on, and has no idea how he became a Pokémon. Some of the Silver Rebellion soldiers are trying to find his family or help him get his bearings back. They really have no idea what's going on."

Still, even so, we needed to get him out of here. I wasn't sure where we were going to go or run away to, but hanging around here was becoming a crisis that was getting further out of control.

We maybe only had a few hours to get Alex and quietly get out of here. Blazewing and I weren't exactly crazy about us being the subject of so much controversy either. We had the support of some, but if we didn't have the support of the Silver Rebellion's own leaders, there wasn't much we could do besides go vigilante, and I highly doubted that would win us the war against the Crimson Stars.

With Blitz leading the way, we finally arrived at the refugee camp, which mostly consisted of worn tents, old sheds, and other temporary buildings with relief aid in the form of food, medical personnel, and sleeping areas. I looked around, but didn't quite see any Zoruas.

As we entered the camp, a few of the Pokémon there recognized me and either expressed their thanks, saluted, and some just stood there blankly, not sure what to say. With all that was going on, I couldn't blame them. Things had changed in a strange way.

Eventually, after working our way past a few crowds, tents, supply crates, and transport vehicles, we came across one medical tent, which seemed to be for those suffering from mental trauma. Inside, there was a Servine, a Hawlucha, and the Zorua. The Servine was sitting on the rickety metal cot as the grassy snake was shaking her head, looking like she was suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder as she was mumbling things to herself. The Hawlucha was sleeping on another cot, although the colorful fighting bird didn't look like it was having a pleasant dream at all and kept twitching, tossing, and turning. And then there was the Zorua, staring off into space as I imagined the dark, shadowy-colored fox was contemplating everything that had happened recently.

I approached him carefully, keeping in mind that to him, I was just another Pikachu.

"Are you..." I started asking the dark fox, "...Alex?"

I managed to get his attention, but I figured it wouldn't be too surprising if he had shared his human name with other Pokémon around here and discovered it was an unusual circumstance.

"I..." he replied, probably dizzy from all the thoughts racing in his head.

"Hey, just come with us for a minute," I told him, trying to assure him with a warm smile.

He nodded, and we made our way to a quiet area of the refugee camp away from all the other activity. It was a small area behind all the tents where they were just storing a few pieces of furniture. Alex seemed to recognize Blitz as a Pachirisu, having revealed himself as Randy from before. From what I could see, he was learning to walk on all fours alright. For a minute, I thought he would be having trouble trying to relearn how to walk.

"I... I really have no clue what's going on here," the exhausted Zorua told us. "I... you gotta believe me, I don't think I belong here."

"Dude, relax," I told him, trying to assure him things were fine. "I'm Juno, the Latias is Blazewing, and the Pachirisu is Blitz. Though you might remember us more as... Jake and Randy."

And that shocked the daylights out of him. As he jumped back in surprise with his eyes wide open, I just nodded to myself, knowing that was definitely proof this Zorua was Alex after all.

"Holy crap, guys...!" Alex exclaimed. "I swear... I seriously swear I was having a nightmare. And Jake, seriously, you're Juno!? There's a hell of a lot of Pokémon around here that talk about you."

"It's got to be our little secret," I told him, not sure what exactly would happen if they found out I was once human. "And listen, but... we need to scrap your human name."

Alex seemed to have already figured out there was something wrong with human names the hard way, but at least he could pass it off as just being drugged the same way Blitz did. Still, when it came to deciding on a name, he was drawing a blank.

"I gotcha, but..." Alex shrugged, not knowing what to go with, "I... whatever, just pick something for me, as long as it's not lame. You know more about what Pokémon name themselves here than I do."

I had a few ideas, but I just decided to go with one of the quicker ones that came to mind.

"Axzen sound okay with you?" I asked him, wondering what he thought of it. "I figured it sounded badass enough to match your style."

"Yeah, I can roll with that," he nodded, looking up with a dark smile. "Axzen the Zorua. Not bad, not bad."

I wasn't even sure if it was possible to catch him up on everything that happened. Still, as "Axzen" seemed to get his bearings, I knew we were already going to need to pull him out of here.

"Well, we got bad news," Blazewing sighed, bringing us to the next issue. "Turns out, the fat cats on top think we're a problem."

"Wait... what, you!?" Axzen exclaimed, looking shocked. "You kidding, you guys saved the lives of almost everyone here! Who the hell has a cactus so far up their ass to the point where they're making you a target!?"

I sighed, looked down, and shook my head. There was a lot behind this that I didn't understand, and I wasn't sure how to fully explain it, but I figured to try and give it my best shot possible.

"Emperor Jamac the Excadrill and his Head General Kamax the Vigoroth seem like they were expecting a totally different prophesized hero from that whole Divine Prophecy legend they have here," I told Axzen. "Despite having brought down Macomb and saved these Pokémon, they feel our methods are rowdy and unorganized. They talk like we don't know what we're really doing."

"That's bullcrap!" Axzen shouted with anger. "That's just a front to keep you under their control! It's a stupid government ploy trying to make you their killing machine or something!"

Was it? Now that he mentioned it, he did make me wonder if there was some sort of agreement between Jamac and Kamax to make sure I didn't rise too high, too quickly. Either they didn't really believe the prophecy, or they figured keeping me as a pawn to leverage for whatever they wanted was the best way to profit from it.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Blazewing agreed, rolling her eyes at the stupidity we've had to deal with. "We're thinking of blowing this popsicle stand before they get cheeky enough to start making false accusations up."

"Hey, I'm fine with that," Axzen nodded. "This place sucks anyway. Where're we heading?"

"Dunno," I shrugged. "Anywhere but here, I guess. We'll figure something out, but I'm not crazy about this war. I think both sides have problems."

We then headed back into the refugee camp, which seemed to have been quieting down as the daylight hours were fading. I figured the cover of the night might give us an easy means to quietly head out of here before anyone came looking for us. From what I could tell, Axzen had gotten adjusted to walking on all fours as a Zorua now. For the most part, it seemed like all three of us had simply gotten used to the idea of being Pokémon now. We didn't even know if we would ever be human once again, but for the time being, we could live with it.

We walked right into the main, open square that was usually used for the refugees to socialize and get a breath of fresh air. It was mainly the four of us now as everyone else had gone to sleep or went elsewhere as the red sun was almost gone and dusk had rolled in.

And then all of a sudden, we were surrounded. They had been waiting and watching the entire time, taking cover in some of the vacant tents, supply containers, and whatever else they could hide behind. I must have counted at least eight or nine Symarix guards suddenly appear from behind where they were hiding. And they were armed.

"Juno, Blazewing..." One of them, a stern and resolute Magmortar, spoke to us. "By decree of High General Kamax, you two are under arrest for impersonation and treason. Don't move, or this is only going to get worse."

"Wait... what!?" Blazewing exclaimed in disbelief. "Seriously, guys, and I thought my jokes were bad. Call me crazy, but I didn't ever picture Kamax as being the type to clown around with something like this."

"This isn't a joke," the Magmortar told her seriously. "Jamac and Kamax have come to the conclusion that you aren't the real Juno and Blazewing, and that you're impersonating them to take advantage of the Divine Prophecy. Whoever you two really are, we don't trust you and believe there is an ulterior motive you are keeping to yourselves."

THAT was the conclusion they were jumping to? I really just wanted to go to a corner and weep that there were some Pokémon out there that could make that kind of idiotic assumption. Here we were, a Pikachu and a Latias that were capable of taking down a massive military base and nearly avoid death. What more proof did they need? Did they really expect yet another Pikachu and Latias with the same names to come along and do it even better than we did? I really didn't get it.

"Uh..." Blitz muttered, tapping his chin with his white paw, "exactly how do you want them to prove it to you?"

"I swear, this city is full of idiots," Axzen spat. "Silver Rebellion... Crimsons Stars... maybe you all should just die in a fire."

I hadn't taken my Firefang submachine gun and neither did Blitz. I honestly didn't even think I'd need it. There were far too many to fight anyway, and it wouldn't be pretty at all. Besides the Magmortar, there was a fully armored Ursaring, a Nidoking, and a Garchomp. Even with all the guns we needed, it would still be a very brutal and risky fight and we would look beyond guilty if we fought like that.

I looked down, sighed, and shrugged, figuring there wasn't much choice but to give it up. I figured we might be safe when the citizens found out about this and hopefully threatened to riot. Either that, or someone would be pushed to come to their senses.

"Just follow orders and don't make a scene," The Magmortar muttered sternly. "Do that and no one gets hurt."

"No one gets hurt!?" Blazewing exclaimed, looking like she was ready for a fight.

I lightly put my yellow paw on her, urging her just to stand down.

"Let's not be the guilty ones here," I told her, hoping this was just a stupid misunderstanding that would be cleared out. "If we fight back, it'll make Kamax look right for arresting us. They can't possibly hope to keep the public under control with this."

"Well... fine," Blazewing sighed, looking bleak. "I'm looking forward to the trial. Should definitely be amusing."

With a groan, I allowed the soldiers to put shackles and chains on my wrists and ankles. I couldn't help but smirk a bit though. Blazewing was right, the trial couldn't possibly hope to win. Kamax may have shoehorned in an excuse to not give a promotion, but to arrest us? That was definitely far beyond crossing the line.

I was surprised they apprehended Blitz and Axzen, however. I really didn't know what kind of charges they were going to be throwing on the two of them.

"Uhh..." Blitz muttered, not knowing why he was being arrested, "what exactly did I do?"

"Orders were to arrest all known accomplices," the Ursaring told him with a gruff voice. "That includes you, Pachirisu."

He simply shrugged and went along with it. Axzen wasn't at all happy about it either, but it seemed like he understood what we meant about the trial being a complete shutout. Once they had all four of us bound in chains and shackles, we were led out of the refugee camp.

There weren't too many Pokémon outside, but the few that had noticed us were genuinely shocked. However, before long, once we were out of the camp, we were pushed into the back of a large, heavily armored military transport vehicle. Unfortunately, not too many Pokémon were going to see what had happened on our way to the prison, but I was confident word would spread around quickly and do its damage.

Once we were inside the cold, metallic interior, they shut the heavy metal doors behind us, and drove us off. There were no windows, so we couldn't exactly see where we were going.

"Well, ain't this swell," Axzen grumbled, shaking the chains attached to his wrists. "Who did you two piss off to go from town heroes to enemies of the state?"

"I'll take 'Things I Also Wish I Knew' for $500!" Blazewing laughed sarcastically. "No, really. One minute, everyone seems happy we toasted Macomb, then suddenly we're denied promotions by the big shots on top, and then this crap happens. I swear, we were going to scram out of here the second we picked you up."

"Kamax and Jamac think the prophecy may be false," I told him, figuring this was the real reason. "Either that, or deep inside, they're afraid of it."

"Why do this, though?" Blitz questioned. "Whether they believe the prophecy or not, can't they see you two are trying to help them?"

I just shook my head, really wondering myself. Did they think Blazewing and I would betray them when they got their guard down? What motive would that be for?

After only a few minutes of riding through town in a vehicle that felt like it was quickly turning into an oven, I kept trying to figure out what went wrong. But, before I really got a chance to really think it over, the ride was over sooner than I expected and the heavy, metal vehicle came to a stop. I wasn't sure how exactly the court system worked here, but I figured whatever they had, it was going to make Kamax and Jamac look especially corrupt.

Or at least I hoped it would...

When the heavy metal door finally opened, we were quick to want to get out of that stifling oven of a transport. Hopefully when it came to the trial, I had someone else besides Sever. His heart was in the right place, but he seemed to lack the experience and charisma to appeal to anyone higher up.

As we were marched forward, I saw they had taken us to some kind of prison. It was a somewhat intimidating black, metal building with tiny windows. I figured it was just a holding cell for now until it came time for the trial. Still, I kept looking down, honestly depressed as my long, black-tipped ears limply rested at the back of my head as I nearly had to drag my thunderbolt tail along the ground. This was just plain shameful and depressing, and I didn't even have the words for it anymore.

I had seen the Symarix prison before, but never thought I would have to step inside, and never once thought I'd be doing it as a prisoner. I couldn't believe I would be spending time with captive Crimson Stars soldiers, but I didn't have a choice. The gatekeeper, a suddenly very shocked and distressed Slowking, had looked us over, but I didn't look up at him. I was too ashamed to even look at anyone but the ground before me.

"You have got to be kidding me…" He remarked in complete bewilderment, "This is Juno and Blazewing for crying out loud! Do you fools even know what you're doing!?"

"High General Kamax has ordered us to arrest them on the grounds of treason." the Magmortar told him. "Superior's orders."

"High General Kamax!?" The Slowking gatekeeper shouted in fright as his eyes went wide, knowing all too well what that meant. "That means they don't even get a trial! What did they even do!?"

My heart sank like a rock and Blazewing couldn't help but just gasp as the sound of it. I went from being depressed to suddenly gripped with shock.

"That's... that can't be!" I exclaimed, actually struggling to talk. "There's... there's got to be some kind of examination about this whole thing, doesn't there?"

"Not if it's under superior orders," the Magmortar snapped at me. "The Emperor and the High General can imprison and pardon whoever they wish. Without trial."

Without trial. So there really was no system of checks and balances. It essentially meant they were above the law and were totally unstoppable. This was just unreal.

"Well, ain't that a damn, fine, steaming pile of crap," Axzen muttered. "You bastards are just as corrupt as the Crimson Stars."

The guards that escorted us looked very, very enraged at that comment, but I said nothing. He was totally right and I just turned away, not even wanting to look at the guards anymore. I just couldn't even dig for the right words to say just how disgusted I was, but any words wouldn't have helped anyway.

"There has got to be some mistake," The Slowking gatekeeper replied. "Never in a million years did I think High General Kamax would be sending Symarix's greatest heroes to prison!"

But there was silence. Still, I didn't look up. I was too ashamed at the moment. My breathing was becoming harder, my heart was racing, and I was totally wrapped in an agonizing squeeze of stress and depression.

"I'm deeply sorry, Juno…" The Slowking replied with the sound of dismay in his voice. "But if this order is from Kamax, there's nothing I can do about it…"

Moments later, we were led into the building, which wasn't as bad as the prison in Macomb, but there was one big difference between this one and the one I had seen there...

I never thought we would be forced into a cell by our own comrades...

I didn't have the words for how I felt.

I was confused, lost, and thrown back at the beginning again where I felt out of place and without direction, only now it was worse. I didn't know who I was anymore and was beginning to wonder if it was impossible to just go back to the way things used to be.

Blazewing and I shared a cell while Blitz and Axzen shared another, but we couldn't even see or hear the Zorua and the Pachirisu. Our cell was made of reinforced metal with only one barred window and two rickety beds, very similar to what I had been presented with at the Black Bay prison, only it seemed smaller this time. Like some of the other jails I had seen, this had a single metal door with another barred window. Unlike human prisons, the little that I actually remembered about them, these had no way to look into the hallway. There were only metallic walls on all four sides of the cell. As for the window, when I used it to look outside, we only had a view of the outside wasteland, but at least we could see the sun. And while it was still red, dark, and eerie in the evening, it was a light.

We had to accept it as our new home.

We had been stripped out of our uniforms, as if everything that had happened before never really mattered. Maybe it was for the best, because I didn't feel like part of the Silver Rebellion anymore anyway.

It started off simple. To pass the time and get our minds off of thing, Blazewing and I did physical exercises. Conversations started off about how corrupted Kamax and Jamac were, but after a while, it was no longer about them. We made up stories. We tried to laugh, tried conversational games, and talked about whatever we could to prevent ourselves from slipping away into madness. I don't know how we did it, but we kept hope alive and kept our friendship close. Sometimes we tried acting, dancing, and there was enough room for Blazewing to float and pretend we were flying to faraway places far beyond the confines of that cold, metal cell.

I often wrote on the metal walls with a screw found from one of the cots. At first, the writing on the walls started off as simple graffiti, starting with my name. and as time when on, turned into poems and short stories, sketches, and then into full-blown art using only scratches, groves, and hashes on the metallic surfaces of the walls. All done with a single screw. It helped keep my mind off of waiting, thinking to myself, and drowning in the "what ifs." Blazewing often added her own personalization, and we tried our best to turn what should have been torture into play. It seemed childish, but then again, with both of us born of dreams, we were unlike anything else in existence.

"We can never go back, can we...?" I asked myself as I etched another scratched drawing of myself.

"Nah, you don't want to go there," Blazewing told me, trying to provide comfort. "Because then you'd have to do everything over again. We got this far, that's gotta count for something."

It was then that I realized that trying to dodge one life lesson forced you into another. Even so, I tried to remember the family I left behind, but now I couldn't even remember their faces. Everything about mom, dad, and my sister Vicky had become a blur, to the point where they seemed so far away that it felt like I had only imagined them ages ago. Despite that, I wanted to go back to that place and forget that anything with "Juno" or "Kivistal" even happened. Still, even if that were possible, I would have difficulty in trying to adjust to what had happened. There were many times I wished I have never gotten myself in this mess. I couldn't help but think of all the alternative choices I could have made prior to this and how they might have changed things. Questions of why I had even bothered Randy in the first place, and why I had decided to become Juno in his dream world kept bothering me as I hoped and begged for different outcomes. And what was this Divine Prophecy? Was it real?

I could have sworn a few months had passed, and I could only guess what had been happening during the time we had been locked up in here. I could have sworn someone... anyone... should have tried to help us. After having rescued so many Pokémon from prison, was there no one that could help us now? During one of those nights, when Blazewing had already fallen asleep, I had looked out the window and wondered if we really had been forgotten. I began to think Jamac and Kamax had destroyed everything that related to the Divine Prophecy and the two of us, trying to ensure no one ever spoke of it again.

We weren't sure how many days had passed. There were days when it felt like my last moments of sanity depended on Blazewing, and there were days when I felt like I was the last one in the world who could coax her and still keep her hopes alive. I had no idea what we would do without each other.

I wasn't even sure if we lived, aged, and died like normal Pokémon do. But the truth was even dreams can bleed and feel pain. Both physical... and emotional.

And then one day, we had gotten a hideous shock. We had been sitting there, half asleep, without words to say when suddenly we had heard an explosion, and then rounds and rounds of gunfire. I heard shouting and screaming from outside, yet still couldn't see anything with the window facing the wrong direction. More shots were fired, blasting loudly all around us.

"What is... all that noise?" Blazewing asked as she was suddenly waking up.

Then, I had realized something…

"Symarix is... under attack," I muttered, not sure what to think of it.

And yet, there was absolutely nothing we could do but listen. While the two of us and Blitz and Axzen were probably safe in this prison, I wasn't sure about the others. There were many innocent Pokémon out there in the streets, and I could only imagine what was going on.

It went on for hours. Pounding machine gun fire, an explosion off in the distance, and then a rumble. There would be silence for a moment, and then it would happen again in different orders.

It took several days for the carnage to finally stop, but Blazewing and I often talked about it. We could only imagine and speculate what happened, but for now, things had gotten quiet. I figured that could be either a good thing or a bad thing, but as far as I could tell, we weren't close to the main fighting. If we had really been taken over, the whole prison would have been raided to release the captive Crimson Stars soldiers inside.

Even if Symarix happened to survive this time, I knew that eventually the city would fall. It would be attacked again and again until the Silver Rebellion was completely annihilated. I could just imagine seeing the door of my cell finally opening, only to reveal a Crimson Stars soldier that would gun us down seconds later. I didn't want to think about how much of a waste it would be.

Things had become almost too quiet. There were times when Blazewing tried to assure me things would be okay, but I wasn't so sure anymore.

And then one day, the impossible happened. I never thought in a million years that it would come to this, but it had. Things had seemed unusually quiet, but it wasn't far too out of the ordinary.

We had heard a metal clanging sound in our cell door, and with a click, the door was unlocked, and it was finally opened after all these many, many months. I wasn't sure if it was a guard or something worse like a Crimson Stars soldier. What appeared before us was definitely a much bigger surprise.

There before us, appearing in the doorway seemed to be a female Pikachu, wearing a white robe with yellow bands on the rims of the sleeves and the base. The robe seemed a little roughed-up and rugged. Only her yellow, red-cheeked face and her paws, feet, and notched thunderbolt-tail were visible. She was holding a book, one that had a leather cover and seemed a little battered. The hood of her robe seemed to hide her face a bit, but I see despite all that had happened, she still wore a small, smug grin, which brightened to a full on smile when she saw us.

"Yes!" She cheered, looking very happy and bright and she threw back the hood to get a better view. "Wow, you guys are still alive, thank goodness!"

"Who... might you be?" I asked her, wondering if she was here to help us.

"My name's Sita!" She smiled, proudly introducing herself. "Ah, it's an honor to finally meet you! I'm one of the White Oracles, the ones who foresaw you coming! The others..." she sighed, "that jerk Jamac doesn't believe in the Divine Prophecy anymore... so much so that he's been putting us White Oracles to death."

"Are you kidding!?" Blazewing gasped. "Boy, he's sure raking it in on my hatred high score."

Jamac had gone much too far. Still, Sita's presence intrigued me. How did she make it this far to unlock the door? It made me wonder what else these White Oracles were capable of.

"Listen," Sita told us, giving the book she held a light pat. "you're gonna want to check this out. I think I might be one of the last White Oracles left. And this might be one of the few copies of the Divine Prophecy left after they burned a ton of the others. They might have gotten the others, but I'm a fox when it comes to slipping through the cracks!"

We were both taken back. After years worth of time, were we finally going to get the chance to read it?

"Why are they trying to destroy the prophecy?" I asked her. "And why are they trying to kill you and your friends?"

"Jamac and Kamax had it all wrong," Sita told us, shaking her head. "Gosh, they're just psychos on a power trip. They expected you both to be immortal gods that can just end wars at the snap of a finger. Since they don't have a clue how these kinda things work, yeah, they just snapped and thought it was all fake."

Unbelievable. In that case, wouldn't it make sense for us to rule the Silver Rebellion? Even if that was the case, I highly doubted Jamac would just give up the throne to me instead.

"Anyway, Sinis felt it was time to turn the tables," Sita told us. "Me rescuing you guys is part of a bigger diversion. Sinis wants to put Jamac and Kamax out to pastures. Yeah, the hard way. And that includes all of Kamax's loyal Generals, the High Guard, and anyone else without a spine or a brain who still thinks Jamac and Kamax are respectable bosses. He's hoping you two might be interested in that."

Sinis? I wasn't expecting that, but I figured even as serious and as objective as he was, eventually a guy like him would have to snap and realize that out of self-preservation, after you factor everything in, something had to be done to put the problem away.

"When do we start?" I asked her, rubbing my paws in anticipation with a steadfast smile.

"You bet I'm in!" Blazewing grinned with a dark smile. "As long as we don't have to clean up the grizzly mess that's to come."

"Ah, awesome!" Sita cheered with a bright smile. "I was hoping you guys would say that! It's not going to be pretty, though. They've got guards posted everywhere. In fact... Sinis had to rely on careful timing and inside help to make sure he had all of Jamac and Kamax's Generals, High Guards, Subcommanders, and important goons all in one spot. Gotta clean up the whole mess in one bang, or at least give it the best try possible. Sinis is calling it Operation Apex. There's a lot of complicated stuff involved, but even I don't know all the gritty details."

I could already see how deep this had gone. I wasn't sure how much support this Operation Apex had, but I was hoping it was a lot, because from the way Sita made it sound, we were going to have to do a lot of damage to Jamac's highest regime... all in one, swift strike. It was the only way to give us a second chance.

"First things first," Sita told me with a smile. "Jamac and Kamax would burn me at the stake for showing you guys this, but... ah whatever, they'd try to kill me regardless."

She then handed the battered book to me, and found where she wanted me to start reading. It was a pretty big book and there wasn't time to read all of it, but I found the small, metallic marker she used to indicate where I should start reading. I looked at the words, and began to read aloud.

"There will be a time when all hope has faded. There will be a time when fire rushes from the sky and pain and desperation will be closer to your heart than ever. When it seems at the moment that everything is lost and destroyed at the hands of your enemies and your merciless oppressors, there will be one last source of hope that you can rely on.

He will be like the rest of you, a Pikachu no different in appearance from the ones in your ranks. He will fight with you, and risk his life for you to ensure your victory. And he will come at your most dire time of need. He will arrive on a bird as red as blood and as white as lightning. When the skies turn into fire and the land is burnt into ash, he will come. When you have endured the restless masses, the battles, and the nightmares, he will arrive. When the night seems endless and all hope has faded, he will come, and he will go by the name of Juno.

He will lead your people into their darkest battles, but you shall have no fear, for your victory is ensured by his presence. Never once will he betray you, and he will be by your side until you have established a new order.

You will fight on the harshest, twisted fields and with fire and storm thunder you will bring down the enemy. Though courage and determination you will prevail.

And to prove his loyalty to you, he will destroy the worst of your foes. He will fight until the bitter end. The battle will claim his life, but it shall be the same for the oppressors. And when the last of the enemy's blood has been shed, a new light will be revealed."

"Claim my life?" I asked, still looking anxiously at the words as I couldn't help but let the book tremble in my hands.

Sita looked down, and despite her optimistic attitude, seemed to have a tough time talking about it. She then gave me a light nod, knowing it was a hard thing for me to accept and understand.

"You're sure about this?" Blazewing asked, looking a little distraught. "I mean, I know everyone's gotta go at some point, but..."

"I know..." Sita replied, trying hard to smile and be optimistic about it. "Yeah, it's one thing to go into a fight and try and dodge it, and something totally different when you know you're a goner going in. And now... you know why people weren't too crazy about showing it to you."

As hard as it was to digest, I had to admire Sita for her honesty and her passion to show me something deep that so many had tried to keep buried from me. I wasn't going to question the authenticity of these predictions. They knew who I was the moment we came into this world. And these White Oracles paid with their lives to protect it.

But so many thoughts came racing to me. How would it happen? And was there... was there something after death? I really didn't want to die, but... I could make myself ready.

"It..." I spoke, finding it a struggle to accept but decided to anyway, "it's... okay. We'll do it."

"Yeah," Blazewing nodded, trying to smile though I knew it was tugging hard at her too. "Nothing to lose, baby. We'll be on fire."

"Wow, you've... really got a lot of guts to say that," Sita told me with a smile and a gentle, friendly pat on the shoulder. "Juno and Blazewing, these Pokémon... they're gonna remember you forever if you do this. No joke."

Forever. I wasn't sure if that would be true, but... if I had to go one way, I'd rather be it like this. I'd rather have it happen doing something truly awesome and admirable. I could grow old and die in a deathbed, pass away forgotten and alone, or let it be like this.

This was how our names would live forever.

Sita's power was quite remarkable. She definitely had some kind of clairvoyance ability, hence how it managed to help her keep out of sight. It almost seemed like she was some kind of magician or wizard, casting divination and clairvoyance spells with her hands, creating soft, white glows in the process.

Rescuing Axzen and Blitz wasn't too difficult either. I wasn't even sure which prison cell was theirs, but after a little farseeing on Sita's behalf, she managed to find the exact cell. She even knew which of the keys on the ring was the exact one.

"Man, you're a handy one with those magic tricks," Blazewing smiled, impressed with Sita's White Oracle abilities.

"Yeah, I kind of abuse them," Sita giggled as she put the key in the lock. "Helps me figure out what happened to the other sock when only one comes out of the washing machine."

After unlocking the crude, metal cell door and swinging it open, I saw Blitz and Axzen for the first time in many, many months. They were totally shocked, but incredibly thankful.

"Oh my god, tell me you're here to finally bust us out of this craphole," Axzen gawked as the smoky-colored fox admired seeing the outside hall for the first time in a long time.

"Uh huh," Sita smiled. "Hey, the name's Sita by the way."

"Can I just call you 'lovely?'" Blitz asked with an admirable smile.

"Your friends are hilarious, Juno," Sita smiled, winking at me. "But we'd better scramble. Sinis has been plotting this thing out for a long time, and we really only have one shot at it."

As we headed out of the prison, Blitz couldn't help but want to know more.

"Sinis?" Blitz asked as we quietly and carefully headed down the metallic halls and started down a poorly-lit, metal stairwell. "The grumpy Zangoose?"

"He's a serious and stubborn guy, but he knows when things have gone rotten," Sita told him as we made our way down the rickety, metal stairs. "Long story short, today is Operation Apex day. Overthrown the corrupted Silver Rebellion government, or at least give it our best shot."

"You're an Oracle though," Blazewing told her as she floated overhead. "Can't you foresee if the operation is successful?"

"We can only see bits and pieces of the future," Sita told her as she descended down the stairs, wishing it was more than just that. "And an Oracle needs to be in a comatose state to get those kinds of visions. When we had the whole guild working at it, we were able to get enough pieces of the puzzle, hence how the Divine Prophecy was written. Now that it's pretty much just me who's left without a whole lot of time for vision naps, it's kind of limited. And I'm good at it, but... yeah, there were guys who were better at soothsaying and divination than me."

Without any trouble, we managed to get out of the prison with relative ease. Once we stepped outside, we were shocked.

Symarix had definitely been attacked. And from the looks of things, repairs were slow. Main of the metallic buildings now had blast marks, and a few of them had been completely blasted out and reduced to burnt, metallic husks. Somehow, the city had survived the attack, but from the looks of things, just barely. I had a bad feeling about it. If the Crimson Stars were able to pull off that kind of damage on the Silver Rebellion capital, they already had a good idea of how the city's defenses were like, and the next time around, they could be more prepared. If something wasn't done soon, the city would fall, and I didn't want to see what the Crimson Stars would do with an entire city of Pokémon to abuse.

I could help but wonder about Sinis's plan and who else was involved. I only had a slice of the details from what Sita told me, but from the sounds of it, it was a intricate undertaking that he had planned, and I was hoping it would work. For the time being, it was probably best to lie low and not appear openly in public. I was pretty sure if news got around that the two of us had been freed from prison, it would cause quite a bit of suspicion.

"Where should we hide?" I asked Sita, knowing we needed to take cover to allow Sinis carry out Apex. "I don't know all the steps that are involved in Sinis's plans, but I highly doubt us getting spotted by Jamac's cronies will help it along."

"We got you guys covered," Sita told us as she ushered us around a hidden alleyway not too far away from the prison. "Blaze, I know you're good with cloaking yourself, right?"

Blazewing nodded, and in only a few seconds, managed to turn herself almost completely invisible by reflecting her down so it wouldn't absorb light. It was almost impossible to see her, and only a very, very faint outline of her could be seen if she stayed still.

"I charge five hundred Poké an hour to haunt houses," Blazewing giggled.

"Sheesh, you sure ain't cheap!" Sita laughed.

Well, at least we had her covered well. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, though. Even though a Pikachu was a pretty common Pokémon, Jamac and Kamax would likely still recognize me. There were, after all, a few differences between Juno and an everyday Pikachu. Every time I looked in a mirror, I couldn't help but feel myself as Juno, born out of dreams, did seem noticeably more heroic and charismatic.

Before I got to think about it more, that was when we were approached by a Dragonite, dressed in a gray and white Silver Rebellion military uniform. He seemed a bit more steadfast for a Dragonite, as the orange and cream-colored dragon with the rounded belly and small bat wings definitely looked like he had seen some pretty grizzly things in his age. Besides the heavy Flamelance machine gun he also carried, he seemed to be carrying with him a black duffle bag of sorts.

"Ah, right on time," Sita smiled.

"Name's Vexcel," The Dragonite quickly introduced himself to the rest of us in a firm and determined voice. "I take it you've been briefed on Apex?"

"Bits and pieces," I told him. "I don't know all the details, but I know what the goal is."

"Good, because there's a lot going on at the moment behind the scenes, but I'll give you the rundown," Vexcel informed me. "For the last few months, the Apex operation has been seeking to overthrow Jamac and his cronies, as you know. Poor leadership, locking you up for no justifiable reason, political corruption, and military crimes are the core reasons behind this. Sinis, as the Chancellor, and two of Kamax's Generals, one being myself, the other being Tamant the Pangoro, has been double-agents, performing recon on everything Apex needs to know about Jamac, Kamax, and their operations. We've seen enough of their sick bureaucratic antics, even though we've been concealing our hatred of it for quite a while now. Today happens to be Honor Consignment Day. Kamax is getting yet another undeserved Serious Declaration of Honor Star and is naming two new Generals out of the High Guard. Everyone we need eliminated will be there at the ceremony."

The irony couldn't have been deeper, and the thought of Kamax giving himself awards was just stupid at the same time. Still, between horrible leadership, destroying the White Oracles, locking me up, and doing god-knows what else to these people, it had to end, or it was going to end up killing us all.

"So, he imprisons us for killing Vorox, and he's rewarding himself for killing innocent White Oracles," I muttered, casting a glance at Sita and wondering why they'd be after Pokémon like her that meant no harm.

"They've done way more than just that," Vexcel growled at the thought of it. "He's been sending Pokémon that don't agree with him on suicide missions and denying them evac or reinforcements. Defecting means facing treason charges, which include execution. He's also killed civilians recklessly and doesn't even listen to terms of surrender. And Jamac... he's lost his mind when it comes to the sheer, political and propaganda nightmare he's unleashed."

I nodded, not crazy at all to be hearing this, but I wasn't surprised either. In fact, I was beginning to think Blazewing and I had been lucky that they hadn't decided to just drag us out of prison to be executed for whatever stupid made up reason.

"We needed this crap ended months ago," I agreed with the Dragonite.

"Amen to that, but timing was the only thing holding us back," Vexcel agreed with a nod. "The entire chain of command that Jamac and Kamax have needs to be uprooted all at once. Kamax has far too much pride in himself to not show off to anyone with a name for themselves how great he thinks he is."

"I want in, but it's impossible," I told Vexcel, knowing I wanted to help but couldn't because I'd be recognized. "If anyone sees us out of prison, they'll suspect something's up and they'll likely be alerted. Blazewing can cloak herself, but I'm out of luck."

"You're going in disguise," Vexcel told me, sliding the black duffle bag to me. "At least until we're about to pull the trigger."

I nodded, figuring that was probably the best approach. I approached the duffle bag, separated the line of buttons, and then discovered it was seemingly stuffed with what looked to be a whole lot of beige-colored cotton. To say the least, I was pretty confused.

"The heck...?" I asked Vexcel, wondering what exactly this disguise entailed. "What kind of disguise is this?"

"They want you going as a Whimsicott," Vexcel me in the suspicious tone of voice that definitely make it clear this wasn't his idea. "It'll conceal your identity, and it allows us to hide the explosive charges."

"Explosives?" I asked, blinking twice.

What kind of crazy plan was this? Everyone else seemed a little surprised, save for Sita, who seemed like she had already been aware of this.

"Yeah, sounds crazy, doesn't it?" Sita told me, almost laughing. "Believe it or not, Sinis hates that place. He thinks it's gaudy and he believes political leaders shouldn't be plastered with ritzy crapola. Hey, I just like a good boom every now and then, you know?"

I saw where Sinis was going with this. It was in stark contrast to what Jamac and Kamax had done. Maybe it was extreme, but it was a vivid and very memorable approach that the public would admire him for humbling himself before them since of just taking the throne on for himself. Truthfully, the more I thought about it, the more I felt it was a good idea. Sometimes, when things got so bad, filthy, and corrupted, you had to gut it all out, clear it away, and just start over.

I decided to dig out everything in the bag. Seriously, there was a ridiculous amount of cotton fluff in there and it felt like there was no end to it, but it was convincingly close to a Whimsicott. Attached to it was a brown jumpsuit that served as the body while the green curled horns were simply made of some hard synthetic material. I shrugged and figured I'd try it out and strap it on. It wasn't too hard to get into and it effectively hid my Pikachu ears and tail very effectively. Still, the amount of cotton fluff behind me made it absolutely impossible to see what was going on to my rear and most of my sides.

"This... feels ridiculous," I sighed, trying to keep the cotton fluff on my chin from unintentionally going into my mouth. "Who's idea was this anyway?"

"It's only for a short while," Vexcel assured me. "We also need to you wear the uniform on top of that. We need Kamax to think we're just attending his ceremony."

I nodded, and figured they prepared for that too. I strapped on the extra uniform in the bag, and while it felt a little cumbersome and warmer than I would have liked, it did the job. As for the explosive charges, they were using three of them, each of them looking like black bricks. Vexcel managed to stuff them pretty deep inside the gigantic cotton ball that was strapped to my head and back, and after that, I figured we were all set.

"What about the rest of us?" Blitz asked Vexcel, wondering if he was going to have a part in this also.

"Depends," Vexcel told him. "Jamac and Kamax may recognize you if you appear in the throne room, which can compromise the situation. However, if you take a position on one of the rooftop buildings surrounding the spire, we can give you a sniper rifle to ensure none of them escape."

"Hell yes, we're doing that!" Axzen agreed, grinning at the thought of that. "The view of the explosion from there will be awesome!"

Well, I figured there was a good reason he became a Zorua.

"Now remember," Sita told me, almost giggling, "Almost every Whimsicott is mischievous, impish, and naughty. You've got to be like that too if you want people to believe it!"

I never was much for any serious level of acting, but I figured I could play along with this. I took a curious look at Sita, squirting for a moment, and tried to put on a look of concern.

"Hold on, is your mouth bleeding?" I asked her, looking worried at it.

Sita was a bit surprised, but she run her small yellow finger around the inside of her mouth, but it didn't come up with anything besides wet spit.

"Did I miss it?" She asked, wondering what I was seeing that she couldn't. "Where do you see it?"

"Here, let me take a closer look," I told her, stepping closer as she kept her mouth open as I pretended to be examining her tongue and teeth..

I then took a handful of the cotton fluff, and just stuffed it in her mouth and stepped back. I then tried to hold back laughing, but utterly failed. She looked absolutely comical and ridiculous with a big wad of fluff in her mouth like that. It didn't take her long at all to realize she had been completely fooled.

"Oh, you stinker!" Sita exclaimed, quickly spitting it out.

"Ah, that's golden," Blitz snickered. "Well played, sir, well played."

Everyone else couldn't help but chuckle either. Even Vexcel the overly serious Dragonite couldn't help but smirk and eventually snicker at it.

"Good, keep that kind of nonsense up," Vexcel told me. "They'll never suspect the real you. But don't even think of doing that kind of thing to me."

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it," I told him in a sweetly cynical voice.

He then gave me that evil eye look.

Great story so far! Just wondering if you know any other good Pokemon fan-fiction stories. It must fulfill the following criteria:

Clean: bad language is fine, but no lemon scenes

Good: some spelling and grammar mistakes are okay, but an engaging plot is desired

Romance: it's okay, but let's focus mainly on the plot

That's about it. Thanks for reading this!