"Shikyo,” A distinctly male voice sounded out into the darkness with the barest of whispers, the speaker being a white-haired teen that looked to be in the final stages of puberty. He possessed a sharp, elf-like, almost avian face that was partially illuminated by the bright moonlight that managed filtered through the leaves, his pale skin and ice-blue eyes shining with reflected light.
“Yes Tundra,” another obviously male voice, a silky smooth aristocratic voice rung out in response, the owner being an ebony haired young man, an aristocratic, slightly reptilian face and deep purple eyes, his rectangular purple-tinted spectacles resting on the bridge of his nose.
“I’m going back to camp, stay safe,” Tundra said as he climbed down from the tree he was in, nodding at the female who stood there, a small smile gracing her lips before he walked off, wandering easily through the dense forest. After five to fifteen minutes of this brisk pace he arrived at a small clearing within which sat two tents and a small portable heatless lamp.
Pulling a backpack out of his tent, he pulled a journal out of it, as well as a silver ball point pen. A chill breeze blew through the clearing, making him wrap the jacket he was wearing tighter around himself in an attempt to alleviate the slight chill it brought. He brought the lamp closer to him, and though the dim white light barely allowed him to see the blank page, he ignored it, instead placing his pen on the page and paused before he started writing in a neat, curvy scrawl.
‘Tundra Churchell is my name, and being a Hunter for Johto is my game, as well as working with my brother.”
He nibbled on the edge of the pen, unsure of what to write before he started again.
“We’re on our first mission after completing training, and the training was… tough. Heh… I suppose we were probably meant to be hunters, though it’s not like we had a choice. Father always did say that this would make us into men he would be proud of. I don’t get why he has us doing this… but he’s never steered us down the wrong direction before.’
A soft noise off to the side caught his attention, the sound of breaking twigs, and he instinctively rolled to the side and into a crouching position. It was well for him that he had, as a large boulder sailed through the air and into the camp, crushing both the lamp and his tent. Staying crouched; he reached into his jacket and pulled out a pistol, finger ready on the trigger and a pokeball in his hand. A flash of red light as he thumbed the release switch signaled the release of the ‘girl inside from captivity. The ball went back into his pocket as he shook his head, and reached up to tug the goggles that rested there down over his eyes, pressing a button on the side to activate their night-vision feature.
“Master, what’s going on,” the tall avian pokegirl asked while resting on her haunches, her eyes flickering around the clearing.
“There’s someone here, and it may be our target… so I want you to take to the sky and set off the signal for Shikyo, I’ll be fine by myself for a bit,” he said. His finger clicked the hammer back, readying a bullet in the barrel, as his eyes looked through the HUD of his goggles, ‘Hmm… I should change it to a heat vision display.’ He nodded to himself and pressed a button on the side of the goggles, noticing three heat signatures and then felt the sudden rush of air as the Pidgeota took to the sky, a burst of fire spraying out of the trees from one of the figures. The flying pokegirl flew out of the way of the fireball, continued up into the sky, and circled around, before sailing off to the east. He crouched and backed slowly towards a tree, before ducking under a nearby bush.
He thanked the darkness brought on by the lantern being broken, and the cloud cover that had hidden the full moon above, the pitch darkness allowing him to sneak away relatively undetected. Just as he had slid into the bush, a large rotund man in a frayed costume cape with fake velvet and faux fur stepped into the clearing his, plastic crown a dull gold, the paint chipping off and some of the fake gems missing from their places. Two pokegirls flanked his sides, their eyes full of rage and fury, large metal collars on their necks.
“Who dares enter the realm of King Samuel,” the man bellowed as he glanced around the clearing wildly, the cloud cover on the moon partially gone, allowing thin streamers of moonlight to fill the area.
“Hmm… that’s a Charmelon and a Gravelgal,” he whispered mainly to himself from his position, before he took aim and shot at the man’s hand, which had been holding a pokeball, the bullet ruining his hand and forcing him to drop the ‘ball. The pokéball hit the ground and rolled away as the man held his hand, wincing. “Whore use a fucking flamethrower on that bush,” he shouted to the Charmelons, who released a burst of flames at Tundra’s previous position.
The white-haired male had moved stealthily to another bush, aimed at the Charmelon’s shoulder, and fired another bullet, watching it sail and hit her square in the shoulder to burst into shards of ice. Samuel ducked behind the Gravelgal to avoid the sharp fragments of ice that showered the area, and the Charmelons cried out in pain as her shoulder was encased in solid ice.
“Damn... thought that would work,” was all the Hunter managed to say before he had to dart to the side, rustling the bushes as a stream of fire followed his position before he jumped into the clearing, pausing and ducking under a large boulder that sailed over his head.
“The hell! What are you trying to do? Kill me?” he shouted with a grin, as he cocked his gun again and smirked, “Adana ani hur!”
The barrel of the gun glowed slightly before he shot twice, once at the Gravelgal and once at the Charmelons, the girls being so deep into their fury that they did not notice the bullets striking them until it was too late, and they had been slowed to human norms.
He rolled as another boulder landed in his spot, and did a back flip to avoid a fireball to the face. Reaching into his jacket, Tundra released a very near-human ‘girl from a pokéball, and she smiled softly at her Master before the second boulder paused in the air and sailed straight into the Charmelon’s chest, pushing her to the ground and knocking her cold. Tundra smirked and looked behind him as a seed burst against the chest of the Gravelgal, vines entangling her, and sapping her of her strength.
“Took you damn long enough,” He said to Shikyo, as he shot at the tree next to the man who slowly had begun to back away out of the clearing, making him pause in fright. He looked over at the two tamers, and the aristocratic one in the tie, vest, and slacks combo with an labcoat smiled at him, as his eyes gleamed in the moonlight.
“Hello Mr. Flaken.” Shikyo said as he sauntered over to the man, “My, my, my… Johto has quite a rap sheet on you.”
His silky voice continued as he looked the man square in the eyes, “Eight counts of rape, six counts of forced thresholding, in the possession of illegally modified pokeballs, various counts of small time theft. Tut… tut. By Johto laws, I, Churchell Shikyo, shall be your judge and your executioner. How do you plead?” Shikyo said as he called over the Cardian who had helped Tundra clean up the camp. “Restrain him for me please.” She nodded as she glowed slightly, vines growing out of the tree trunk and wrapping around Samuel’s hands, holding him to the tree. Shikyo lightly pecked her on the forehead and proceeded to clean out any of his supplies, depositing the pokeballs into an inside pocket of his coat.
“So, are you going to speak up? At all?” Shikyo said tilting his head slightly, some of his long hair covering his face partially, “Speak man speak!” he all but shouted as his eyes glowed softly, before he pushed the glasses back onto his face. Samuel whimpered, and stuttered, “Let me go or I’ll blow us all up!”
A small sneer crossed over Shikyo’s face before he growled softly at the man, who grinned wide, “That’s right! You don’t have the detonator! I do, either let me go or all of us die!”
“Akiho, release him.” He said softly, his eyes watching Samuel as the man gripped his wrists and rubbed them before he started to run off.
A small smile graced Shikyo’s face as waved at his brother, “I’ll be back bird brain.” Tundra waved back, eating a small bar of granola as he balled the two pokegirls and started packing up camp. “Don’t hurt him badly.” Tundra said offhandedly.
“I make no promises,” Shikyo said in a singsong voice offset by a sadistic grin as he followed the criminal deeper into the woods, his infernal plant girl soon following after him.
“I suggest you stop.”
Samuel looked up with a shocked face and his body quivering in fright at hearing the silken snake-like voice from before, his movements panicky as he stood up and started to run before a vine tripped him, causing him to fall to the ground, scrambling and crawling along the packed earth, “Why... are you running Mr. Flaken? Do you fear the retribution the Johto government would wreak upon you? Why… I would, yes, I most certainly would.”
“Where are you, you demon!! How dare you try to intimidate King Samuel like this! Show yourself to me!” he shouted in a false show of bravado.
“Why, I’m hurt Mr. Flaken, I am the farthest thing from a demon. I am in fact nothing but a simple aristocrat. How about you show some courtesy and just turn yourself in as that makes it so much simpler. I would really hate to have to kill you.”
“I will not turn myself into a government I don’t believe in! Kill me then you DEMON!!” he shouted as he pulled a gun out of his belt and looked around frantically, pressing his large body against a tree.
A vine slinked its way around his leg and held him steadfast to a tree, more vines wrapping themselves around his body, glowing slightly. Shikyo stepped out from behind the tree, “Well, I’m sorry you have that view… Good bye Mr. Flaken.”
Shikyo plucked the gun from his hand, watching the man as he started to shrivel and pale, before two vines thrust themselves through his chest making his blood spray in a fine mist, getting some blood on Shikyo’s coat, glasses and face.
“Mission accomplished, I suppose.”
Shikyo sighed softly as he cleaned a speck of blood off his glasses with a handkerchief, glaring at the man, well what use to be a man before him, who was now a dried out and decayed husk, with vines moving throughout his body, sapping his remaining life energy, “Are you content, Akiho?”
The girl who was sealing blood into vials and depositing them into her pack nodded, the petals in her hair and the flower growing on her back illuminated by the moonlight. He smiled softly and walked a bit away from her and the husk of the dead man, pulling out a headset. “You know Master… they won’t like that you killed the target and Tundra will be disappointed.”
“I know, they’ll deal with it, he resisted arrest and attempted to detonate two exploding collars, as well as wanting to be killed and pulling a gun out to protect himself. If that doesn’t save my ass, then I’ll accept whatever punishment the upper branches of the Hunter’s Guild see fit to give me.”
He clicked the headset on, “Tundra, I got him, he resisted arrest so I had to off him.” A sigh could be heard on the microphone. “I don’t want to know what you and Akiho did; do you at least have evidence of his capture?”
Shikyo rolled his eyes, not that his brother could see, “Yeah, I have his rotten little cape and his, plastic crown, will that work?”
“Yeah, Hurry back, we’ve been ready to go for a while now, Snowman out.”
“That was rather rude of him… come on Akiho, we have to go, plus I can feel ferals breathing down our backs.” He shivered as he pulled the girl to her feet, and walked with her back to the clearing where his brother was waiting.
“Well, that was a somewhat dull mission… training was harsher.” Tundra said as he and Shikyo walked out of the woods and onto the route towards the town, stretching his muscles, “You know Lt. Marshall won’t like that we killed the target on our first mission.”
Shikyo glanced at his white-haired twin, before smirking, “You are joking right? I did the killing; you went all fancy gun man and shot his pokegirls. You didn’t get your hands dirty.”
Tundra rolled with the verbal barb and retorted, “At least I didn’t ruin my clothes.”
Shikyo paused and gapped, “You are more of an ass then you realize.”
“Maybe but I learned from the best.” Tundra said with a wide grin as he started running down the trail, the sun rising over the horizon, as if signifying the start of a new day and a fresh beginning.