Welcome to another exciting installment of Spacemon, the tale of a Pokemon TRPG campaign! This is a spinoff of the sci-fi space epic played using the Pokemon Tabletop United (PTU) system, this time GMed by yours truly. You can get caught up on the entire Spacemon saga here!
Dust shook free from the ceiling with each step Kasey’s Tyrantrum took down the dimly lit corridor of the abandoned station. Kasey herself sat mounted on the Pokemon’s back, gun drawn in case they ran into any H.A.L.O. mercs.
“You sure this place isn’t empty?” Gaster asked as he walked alongside the Tyrantrum with Ace and Taraka.
“My intel says there’s an enclave of Helios goons operating here,” Kasey said, glancing down at her crewmate.
“Maybe they packed up and left,” Taraka suggested.
“I doubt that,” Kasey told the monk.
Over the past few weeks, the Maverick’s crew had been tracking down the remnants of the Helios Corporation’s Advanced Logistical Operations division— or H.A.L.O., as it was commonly referred to— chasing leads that would hopefully help them to locate the research the company had seized from Kasey while she was still under their employment. As a result of that search, the four members of the ship’s crew currently found themselves aboard an old Helios deep space research station. The facility had been decommissioned and abandoned several years ago, but a tip Kasey had received from one of her contacts— a person she trusted with her life— suggested that members of the rogue Helios division were currently using it as a base.
“Where are they, then?” Gaster asked.
“They’re crawling around here somewhere,” Kasey said. “This is a big station, but there’s only so many places they can hide. We’ll find them.”
As if on cue, a pair of H.A.L.O. mercs appears from around a corner several meters down the corridor. Likely drawn by the sound of the Tyrantrum’s heavy footfalls, the two men already had their weapons drawn.
“See, what did I tell you?” Kasey said to her crewmates. “Baroness, charge!” she then commanded, spurring her Tyrantrum forward. With a fierce growl, the Despot Pokemon broke into a run, barrelling down the corridor toward the mercenaries. The two men couldn’t even aim their guns before Baroness was upon them.
“Dragon Tail!”
Using her powerful tail, the Tyrantrum slammed one of the mercs against the wall with enough force to completely knock the wind out of him. As the man slumped to the floor, Kasey shot him full of stun rounds. The other merc reached for his Pokeballs, but he never got the chance to send anything out.
“Sirius, use Thunder Wave!” Taraka’s voice sounded from behind. A jolt of electricity soon followed as the monk’s Togekiss flew in. The mercenary grunted as his body seized up from the attack.
“Alright, buddy,” Kasey said, aiming her pistol at the stunned H.A.L.O. mercenary. “Where are the rest of your pals hiding out on this station?”
The man swallowed hard as Baroness snarled at him. “Alright. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“Francisca, use Hydro Pump!” Gaster barked as electricity arced across the room from his tesla coil rifle, striking one of the several H.A.L.O. mercenaries shooting back at him and his crewmates. As the merc stumbled back from the shock, Gaster’s Milotic blasted him with a pressurized jet of water, sending him flying backwards into the wall.
Gaster shifted focus to his next target only for a charging Ace to take the merc out with a slash of his laser sword. The android then quickly turned around and raised his energy shield, deflecting an incoming volley of shots. Gaster traced the path of the laser fire to its source, then squeezed the trigger, dropping yet another H.A.L.O. mercenary.
Sweeping his rifle across the room to find the nearest hostiles, Gaster caught sight of Kasey and Taraka dealing with some mercs of their own. The monk was hanging back, commanding his Togekiss and providing the protection of psionic barriers to the combat-trained scientist and her Tyrantrum in the front. Mounted on her Pokemon’s back, Kasey was firing off shot after shot at the mercenaries while the apex predator ripped into them with tooth and claw.
Gaster finished his sweep of the room and then, having spotted no other targets to shoot, he aimed at one of the men his crewmates were fighting. “Francisca, use Water Pulse!” the former smuggler commanded his Milotic as he squeezed the trigger. The merc was zapped with electricity, then blasted with water, causing him to stumble in a daze … right into Kasey’s Tyrantrum.
“Baroness, Crunch!” the scientist ordered the Despot Pokemon. Snapping her powerful jaws on the merc, Baroness finished the man off.
Now, only two remained. Charging into the fray, Ace slashed through one with his sword. Taraka then commanded his Pokemon to strike, “Sirius, use Dazzling Gleam!” A cone of brilliant light shone out from the Togekiss, enveloping both men completely. When Gaster’s vision cleared, only one man was left standing. At least that was the case until the former smuggler dropped him with a dead-eye shot.
“That’s the last of them,” Gaster said as he lowered his rifle.
“Seems like it,” Kasey agreed before dismounting her Pokemon. The thud of her boots rang out in the now-silent room as her feet hit the metal floor. With a confident stride, she approached a nearby computer terminal. “Now, let’s see what they’ve got here.”
Captain Cyrus Drake of the UAS Maverick stood waiting just outside the docking tube, gun in hand, ready to protect his ship in the event that any H.A.L.O. mercenaries found their way to this part of the station. The rest of the capable fighters on his crew had gone with Kasey to track down leads on her old research— and were likely already beating the crap out of the mercs on the station— leaving him as the ship’s single defender until they returned. The captain wasn’t worried, though. In fact, the four members of Cyrus’s crew soon returned.
“There you are,” the captain said, seeing the group appear from around a corner. “Any luck?”
“Well, my research isn’t here,” Kasey informed him.
“We beat up a lot of mercs, though,” Taraka said.
“And we got a new lead,” Kasey continued. “I think this one might actually lead us to what we’re looking for.”
“Well that’s good news,” Cyrus said.
“Damn right,” Kasey said, walking past the captain toward the docking tube.
“So where are we headed next?” Cyrus asked as he fell in behind the rest of his crew as they began to make their way down the docking tube.
“Manitou,” Gaster said, glancing back at the captain. “Sector 31. There’s another old Helios facility on the third moon, apparently.”
“That’s not too far,” Cyrus replied. “Should only take a couple of days to get there from here.”
“Good,” Kasey said. She leaned against the side of the airlock, waiting for the others to file in. “I can’t wait to get my hands on my old research again.”
“I’ll bet,” Cyrus said as the airlock doors slid shut. “As soon as we’re aboard I’ll have Anya set a course for Manitou and we’ll be on our way. You’ll have your research back before you know it.”
As the Maverick flew through warp space toward its next destination, Kasey sat at her work table in the ship’s workshop, meticulously cleaning her pistol. She wanted to ensure that it was in perfect working order for the next mission. She was so close now to reclaiming her research on shards from the clutches of the H.A.L.O. organization, closer than she’d ever been, and there was no way she was going to fail for some dumb reason like her gun jamming.
Kasey was so focused on the task at hand that she practically jumped when the sound of a knock against the metallic wall of the ship disturbed the silence in the room. Glancing up, she saw Cyrus standing in the doorway.
“Woah there,” the captain said. “It’s only me. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Sorry,” Kasey said with a chuckle. “I was so caught up in what I was doing that I didn’t see you come in.”
Cyrus laughed. “No worries.”
“Anyway, what’s up?” Kasey asked as she set her gun down on the table.
“Well, I reached out to Roland after our last conversation,” the captain explained.
“And?” Kasey asked, perking up. She was quite interested to hear what Cyrus had to say about his friend who researched shards.
“And I just heard back from him,” Cyrus said. “He’s quite interested in speaking with an expert on shards.”
“An expert, huh?” Kasey said. “I’m flattered.”
“Well shards are your field of study, no?”
Kasey nodded. “Among other things, yes. Thanks for the compliment.”
“Don’t mention it,” the captain said. “Anyway, Roland’s game for setting up a meeting. Once we get you your research back, we’ll head to Araimia so you two can compare notes.”
“That sounds fantastic!” Kasey said excitedly. “Thanks for doing this, Captain.”
Cyrus smiled. “It’s the least I can do after the help you’ve been to this crew.”
“Hey, I was only repaying you for your hospitality after rescuing me … not that I wasn’t happy to help you guys out, of course!”
The captain let out a loud laugh. “Well I’ll let you get back to it,” he then said. “We’ll be arriving in the Hadrian system soon.” With that, Cyrus departed, leaving Kasey to her business.
A smile on her face, the young scientist picked her pistol up off the table and resumed the process of cleaning it. Things were really starting to look up for her.
The crew of the UAS Maverick gathered behind Anya in the cockpit as the ship approached the planet Manitou in Outer Rim Sector 31. Out the front viewport, the large blue gas giant loomed against the light of Hadrian, the system’s sun. Reducing the thrust of the engines, the pilot guided the ship toward the third of Manitou’s six moons.
“Been a while since I’ve been back here,” Gaster commented as he leaned against the back of the copilot’s seat.
“Oh, are you familiar with this planet then?” Ace inquired.
“I guess you could say that,” the former smuggler replied. “Let’s just say there’s a lot of people on Manitou’s fifth moon that require the services of a smuggler.”
“And by that he means it’s full of criminals,” Anya interjected.
“I see,” Ace said.
“I mean … that’s not exactly how I’d put it, but … yeah,” Gaster said. “Anyway, I’m not sure what to expect on the moon we’re going to other than the fact that it’s another ball of rock with no atmosphere like the rest of Manitou’s moons, so we’re probably dealing with a station we’ll have to dock with.”
“That won’t be much of a problem,” Kasey said. “I can get us in just like the last one. H.A.L.O.’s in too much disarray to have bothered beefing up security or changed their docking protocols.”
“Looks like a hangar,” Anya said as a readout of a station on the moon appeared on the viewscreen. She pointed out a hangar on the screen which the scanners indicated had standard energy shielding that kept the atmosphere in but allowed ships to pass in and out.
“Even better,” Cyrus said, examining the readout. “We can just fly right in and mess their whole day up before they even know what hit them.”
“You got it, Captain,” Anya said with a nod. She tightened her grip on the controls and leveled the ship out as it neared the surface of the moon, steering toward the open hangar entrance. “Here we go!”
Kasey stood pressed up against the wall of the Maverick’s cargo hold with her crewmates as the cargo ramp slowly descended. From this position of cover, she peered out into the hangar to assess the situation. She held up four fingers for the others to see, one for each of the H.A.L.O. mercenaries cautiously approaching with weapons raised.
Cyrus nodded in acknowledgement, then motioned to the Pokeballs on his belt. Kasey got the idea and reached for one of her own Pokeballs. Tightly gripping the ball containing her Fraxure, she stepped out, then tossed it down the ramp.
“Huntress, Dragon Claw!” Kasey commanded as her dragon Pokemon emerged. As the rest of the Maverick crew sent out their own Pokemon, Huntress rushed one of the four mercs. With razor-sharp claws, the Fraxure ripped into the man, taking him down instantly.
Quickly responding to the threat, the remaining three mercenaries each sent out a Pokemon: a Crobat, a Muk, and a Poliwrath. Electricity soon arced through the air as Gaster fired on the Crobat with his tesla coil rifle. Despite its speed, the Crobat wasn’t fast enough to evade and ended up on the receiving end of a painful dose of electricity
“Jimothy, use Sand Tomb on that Muk!” the former smuggler then commanded his Krookodile. Unleashing a tornado of sand, the Intimidation Pokemon engulfed the Muk with the attack, trapping it in a vortex.
“Sludge Bomb!” the Muk’s trainer responded. The sand swirling around the poison Pokemon, however, prevented it from landing its attack. The ball of sludge it spewed out fell short of hitting Jimothy.
Meanwhile, Taraka and Ace had their Pokemon go after the Poliwrath. The fighting frog only managed to get off a single attack, a Bubble Beam directed at Cyrus’s Talonflame, before it was struck by a two-pronged super effective strike! A Fairy Wind from Taraka’s Togekiss on the left and a Psycho Cut from Ace’s Gallade on the right brought the Pokemon down.
“Peregrine, hit that Crobat with Flame Charge!” Cyrus then commanded his Talonflame. The fiery bird pursued the poisonous bat through the air, rapidly closing the distance between them. Once in range, the Talonflame struck with burning talons, dealing a nasty injury to the Crobat. One more shot from Gaster’s rifle brought it down.
With two Pokemon down and the Muk occupied, Kasey shifted focus to the remaining mercenaries. “Huntress, Dragon Claw again!” she ordered her Fraxure. The dragon Pokemon charged another of the mercs, but this one proved to be a bit more durable and survived the attack. Unfortunately for him, Kasey also had a gun. A few well-placed shots brought him down.
“Now, help the others with that Muk! Dragon Claw!’
While Kasey had been shooting the mercenary, the Muk had broken free from the sandy vortex and was giving the surrounding Pokemon some real trouble. Not seeming to slow down from the barrage of attacks hitting it, the Muk was dishing out some powerful strikes of its own. Even Huntress’s attack seemed to do little against the Sludge Pokemon.
“Sludge Wave!” the Muk’s trainer baraked out in response. A wave of sludge erupted out from the poison Pokemon in all directions, dealing a lot of damage to the surrounding Pokemon.
The powerful attack easily knocked out Taraka’s Togekiss and came close to taking the others down too. Huntress grunted in pain, but she fought through it. Letting out a fierce growl, the Fraxure began to glow and her form started to change, growing in size. Huntress stomped her foot down as she completed her evolution into a Haxorus, then she brought her head down on the Muk, slashing through it with the new axe-like blades on the sides of her jaw.
With the final Pokemon taken out, Huntress turned her fierce gaze upon the two remaining mercenaries. Both men threw their hands up, letting their weapons fall to the floor. Kasey aimed her pistol and slowly approached.
Cyrus did the same, walking up beside her. “It’s good to see you boys have the sense to know when you’re beat,” the captain said. “Tell us where to find what we’re looking for and you might just make it out of here.”
Kasey could here surprised shouts through the door as her Haxorus slowly pried it open. With one final grunt of effort, Huntress forced the door open, revealing the mercs on the other side. Immediately, gunfire poured out of the lab at the Maverick crew and their Pokemon. Huntress let out a ferocious roar, then charged in. Unloading her pistol clip at the H.A.L.O. mercenaries, Kasey followed the Haxorus into the room with Gaster and Taraka just behind her.
With Ace and the captain back in the hangar defending the ship, the three members of the Maverick’s crew were outnumbered this time, facing off with six mercenaries, each with a Pokemon out already. It was going to be a tough fight for sure.
“Huntress, Slash!” Kasey commanded her Haxorus, which was sandwiched between a Houndoom and a Mightyena. Brandishing her claws, Huntress maneuvered around the two canine Pokemon, then charged through them, giving each a nasty gash.
“Flicky, use Rock Slide!” Taraka followed up with an order of his own. With the Haxorus safely out of the way now, the monk’s Flygon shot a barrage of rocks at the two injured mercenary Pokemon. The Mightyena managed to withstand the hit, but the same could not be said for the Houndoom; fire types were quite susceptible to rock type attacks after all.
Moving for cover, Kasey fired off a few more shots, landing a direct hit on the shoulder of one of the mercs. As she slid behind a metal crate, Gaster’s Milotic slithered into the room. The H.A.L.O. mercenaries began to focus fire on the large serpentine Pokemon, but Taraka’s psionic barrier mitigated the damage and the healing veil of water surrounding her completely restored her.
“Francisca, use Blizzard!” Gaster commanded his Pokemon. The former smuggler’s Milotic let loose a frigid blast of ice and snow at the mercenaries, freezing two of them in place!
“Come on you worthless twats!” one of the mercs barked at the others. He was a large man who appeared to be the leader. “Quit stumbling around and shoot them! We’ve got them outnumbered!”
Hefting up a large gun, the mercenary leader took aim at Huntress and fired. Kasey watched as a powerful beam of energy shot out of the gun and struck her Haxorus, doing some serious damage. It was a beam that looked quite familiar. It’s just like the cannon they put on that android! Kasey realized, recalling the fight against Helios’s rogue creation. This gun was one of the shard-based weapons the H.A.L.O. division had been developing. Her research had to be here; she could feel it. All they needed to do was make it through this fight.
“I’ve got you!” Taraka called out as he charged into the fray. Deflecting gunshots away with a psionic barrier, the monk ran to Kasey’s Haxorus to provide healing. With a pulse of psionic energy, Huntress was back in fighting shape.
“Alright, Huntress, Slash again!” Kasey commanded the Pokemon from cover. With another roar, the Haxorus made her attack, slashing through the Mightyena, knocking it out, then through another of the mercenaries’ Pokemon, a Cacturne.
“Flicky, use Dragon Rush!” Taraka then ordered his Flygon. Coming at the Cacturne from the other side, the desert dragon slammed into it, knocking it back into Huntress’s waiting claws. The Haxorus wasted no time in ripping into the Scarecrow Pokemon, taking it down quickly.
Meanwhile, Gaster was focusing on another Pokemon. Specifically, a Staraptor. “Francisca, use Frost Breath!” the former smuggler commanded his Miltoic as he shot the avian Pokemon with his tesla coil rifle. Heeding his command, the Milotic blasted the Staraptor with her icy breath, racking up one more knockout for the Maverick crew.
At this point, the only Pokemon left were a Conkeldurr and a Crawdaunt, but there were still six mercs to deal with— even if two were still frozen. Leaning out from cover, Kasey laid down some suppressing fire, forcing the mercs back into cover themselves as they tried to move toward their frozen comrades to break them free. She then needed to duck herself, narrowly avoiding a shot from the leader’s beam weapon.
“I’ve got an idea!” Kasey heard Taraka shout from somewhere in the room. “Flicky, use Earthquake!” the monk then commanded his Pokemon. Kasey peeked out from cover again to see Taraka’s Flygon fly up, then slam down onto the ground, shooting out a shockwave in all directions. The blast tore through everything around it, destroying lab equipment, knocking the mercs off their feet, and rendering the two frozen combatants unconscious altogether.
“Nice work!” Kasey called out to her crewmate before focusing her attention on her own Pokemon. “Huntress, cleanup duty! Dragon Claw!” Rushing to one of the mercs that now lay on the ground, the Haxorus took him out of the fight with a swipe of her deadly claws.
“You too, Francisca!” Gaster gave an order of his own. “Use another Blizzard!” With another blast of ice and snow, the former smuggler’s Milotic further evened the odds, knocking out another two H.A.L.O. mercenaries. Now it was the Maverick crew who had the numerical advantage.
“Goddamnit!” the mercenary leader cursed. “Take out that damn Milotic! Rebar, use Hammer Arm!” The Conkeldurr rushed forward and slammed Gaster’s Pokemon with one of its powerful arms. Despite the type advantage the attack had against the ice variant Milotic, it didn’t seem to do much to her. Kasey had a feeling Gaster’s Pokemon would be fully replenished by her healing veil in no time.
“Flicky, use Dragon Rush!”
“Huntress, Dragon Claw!”
With the Conkeldurr in close proximity, Kasey and Taraka both commanded their Pokemon to attack it. Converging on the Muscular Pokemon, the two dragons unleashed their attacks. Already damaged from the Earthquake, the Conkeldurr couldn’t stand up to the combined assault.
“Fuck!” the merc leader howled. He then raised his gun to fire, but he didn’t get the chance. Gaster downed him with his tesla coil rifle before the weapon finished charging.
Turning to the sole remaining mercenary, Kasey pointed her pistol directly at him. “We’ve got you beat, pal!” she shouted. “I suggest you give up while you still can!”
The merc glanced at his Crawdaunt, then gazed around the room at his fallen companions. After a moment of hesitation, he looked back to Kasey and put his hands up. “I surrender!”
“Smart move.”
“I’ll watch him,” Gaster said, approaching the merc with his rifle trained on him. “You find your research.”
Kasey nodded. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Holstering her pistol, Kasey approached the computer terminal in the now partially destroyed lab. Conveniently, whoever had last accessed it hadn’t bothered to log out. Amateurs, the scientist thought as she began browsing through the files on the network. After only a few minutes, she found what she was looking for. All her old research data on shards and how to harness their energy was here … along with a shipload of data on what Helios had been using her research for. Kasey’s eyes went wide with excitement. This was everything she wanted and more.
“I found it!”
Notes: Picking up where the last chapter left off, this one sees Kasey fighting her way to getting her research back with the help of her crewmates as she said she would at the end of that chapter. Going into this second part of this three-part arc of non-session material, I knew I wanted to include a lot more action since the first part didn’t have any. I also thought it would be fun to show Kasey’s Fraxure finally evolving. There was also some downtime on the ship to break things up. I continued the thread of plot started during Kasey’s conversation with Cyrus in the previous chapter with another conversation between the two which will lead nicely into the final part that will tie off Kasey’s story.
That does it for this chapter. As always the Spacemon gang and I will be monitoring the comments to foster discussion and answer any questions. Feel free to give feedback and critiques of the writing so I can improve it for the future, or just leave a comment with what you think about what went down in this chapter or what you think might happen next! You can also revisit past chapters, check out the rest of the Spacemon saga, join the Spacemon Discord server, or like our Facebook page to stay updated on all things Spacemon! Click here for the next exciting installment of Spacemon: Frontier!
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