Welcome to another exciting installment of Spacemon, the tale of a Pokemon TRPG campaign! It is a sci-fi space epic played using the Pokemon Tabletop United (PTU) system and GMed by fellow TAY author DragonStorm247. You can get caught up on the entire Spacemon saga here!
The UAS Helix flew past the majestic purplish-blue gas giant Arda as it entered the Togan System in Sinai Sector 13. The frigate’s engines propelled it through space toward the mid-orbit planet Vandia, which slowly faded into view. A brilliant orange and purple light seems to radiate off the planet as the Helix approaches the terrestrial world.
The crew had come to this world in search of the gym leader Gilgamesh. Each of them had reasons of their own for seeking him out, except of course, for H, who was content to work on his own projects as the rest of the crew searched for the elusive monk. On a tip from Arlon, they had traveled here, to Gilgamesh’s last known location.
Due to her developing clairvoyant psionic abilities, Morgan was experiencing an ever-growing feeling of uneasiness as they approached the planet. She couldn’t quite explain it, but she had a dreadful feeling that something was watching the Helix.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Morgan said to her fellow crewmates on the bridge, Dmitri and Shane.
“So do I,” said Dmitri. “I feel … something.”
Suddenly, the ship started to rumble as it was hit with laser fire.
“Oh God, what was that!?” Shane shouted as he flailed his arms around the ship’s controls, trying to dodge out of the way of the incoming fire. Due to his inexperience as a pilot, he failed, and the Helix was hit again and sent tumbling towards the planet.
“Shane, what are you doing up there?! I have very delicate subjects I’m working on!” H’s voice shouted over the comms. “Fly straight!”
“I’m trying! We’re being—”
“Don’t care!”
“Huh …” Shane sighed. “Where’s Arlon when you need him?”
As Shane wrestled with the controls, Morgan jumped into action. She checked the radar and noted that it detected a very low profile ship flying behind the Helix. It wasn’t broadcasting any sort of call sign whatsoever, which was quite unsettling. Meanwhile, Dmitri manned one of the weapons stations, activating the guns in preparation to fire back at their pursuers.
“H, get to guns, Goddamn it!” Shane shouted over the comms as he attempted to pull the Helix out of its spiral.
“Fine,” H replied. “I’m on my way.”
In the meantime, Shane managed to get the ship back under a bit more control and back on track toward Vandia. “I’m not a combat pilot!” he shouted. “We need to land!”
“Good idea,” Morgan agreed. With the ship leveled out, she managed to get a better look at the sensor readout on the hostile ship. It appeared to be a small freighter with guns mounted on it. The ship was black and completely unmarked, although it appears to be a bit damaged.
As the ship closed in, Dmitri took aim and fired on it, but the shots went wide.
It was at this moment that H stumbled onto the bridge, his feet magnetized to the floor to keep himself from being thrown about by the turbulence. He looked quite annoyed as he took a seat at the other set of gun controls.
As the two gunners fired on their attackers, Morgan attempted to hack into the ship’s systems. She found it surprisingly easy; the ship’s computer architecture didn’t seem to be very well maintained at all. Now that she had access, she attempted to open up a comms channel so that she could figure out what was going on.
“There goes one of their engines,” Dmitri announced
In the meantime, Dmitri and H’s focused fire sliced one of the hostile ship’s engines right off! It still maintained its course, though, flying directly at the Helix despite losing an engine and venting atmosphere. It fired a volley of shots in response, but they completely missed and flew off toward the planet’s surface.
Successfully breaking into the ship’s comms systems, Morgan brought the open channel up on the viewscreen. Surprisingly, there didn’t appear to be anyone on the hostile ship’s bridge to respond.
“Hello!?” Morgan shouted at whoever might have been listening on the other end. “What. The. Fuck?!”
Looking more closely, while there wasn’t anyone at the comm station or the captain’s chair, Morgan was able to see a few people standing around. They appeared very ragged, worn down, and empty— almost like zombies.
“Uh, guys, this is kinda weird,” Morgan told her crewmates. “I don’t think these people are okay.”
“Well, they’re still shooting at us,” Dmitri replied.
“Which engine fell off!?” Shane asked.
“Right!” H yells.
“Their right or your right?!”
“Their right!”
With this information, Shane made an attempt to steer towards the port side and evade their pursuers as they would have a tougher time turning that way, having lost their main starboard engine. He managed to make the maneuver, but the Helix was hit by more laser fire in the process, knocking out the shields.
The Helix’s gunners quickly returned fire. H landed a shot with the plasma beam right where the starboard engine used to be. Dmitri’s shot went flying past the ship and hit the severed engine in a satisfying explosion that rocked the ship. The “zombie” ship attempted to fire back, but missed once again. Dmitri’s next shot hit the port engine and it started sputtering a bit. H then slashed across the bridge with the plasma beam and destroyed it!
The hostile ship’s remaining engines flared up and it looked like the ship was going to attempt to ram the surface of the planet! H fired another shot with the plasma beam and sliced through the back half of the ship. Fuel and coolant started leaking out. Dmitri aimed for the leakage, and landed a shot with the photon laser cannons, igniting the fuel and blowing the remains of the ship to smithereens! Unfortunately, the force of the explosion destabilized the Helix and sent it tumbling toward the surface of Vandia once again.
It was just another boring day for Alex as she neared Khirpai, a small city on the planet Vandia. Another day scouring the streets for scrap metal and Pokeball parts, anything that might be useful or make the young teenager some money.
Maybe today I’ll find something useful, the girl thought as she reached the farms on the outskirts of town. She vaulted a nearby fence, taking a shortcut across a cabbage field to get to her destination faster. Suddenly, the ground exploded into giant dust clouds as a volley of laser fire came hurtling down from the sky.
“What the hell?” she asked aloud as she looked up towards the clouds. A space battle! Here!? she thought, seeing bright flashes of light amongst the gray and purple masses. Although it wasn’t quite as exciting as what she had seen in the movies, this was still the most interesting thing to have happened to her in years!
As she watched with excitement in her eyes, a ship broke through the atmosphere, tumbling and turning, upside down relative to the planet. It righted itself at the last moment, just before hitting the ground. It tore through the cabbage field and smashed through the fence, stopping just a few feet from the girl. A single word escaped her mouth as she stared in wonder at what she had just witnessed.
“Cool …”
The crew of the Helix breathed a collective sigh of relief as the ship ground to halt, safely landing on the planet with only some hull damage. Looking out the front viewport, Shane saw that they had landed in a farm on the outskirts of a city. The large buildings loomed way off in the distance.
“The Genesect!” H exclaimed before running off to check up on the Genesect specimens that he had been keeping in cold storage.
Letting him go, Shane disembarked with the rest of the crew to investigate the damage to the ship. Walking around the outside of the ship, he noted that there appeared to be quite a bit of damage to the hull along the port side. As the group neared the front of the ship, Shane spotted a singular girl standing and staring in awe.
She appeared to be a young teenager, maybe around sixteen, of Sinai descent, but a quick look at her features suggested that she had some Alliance or Genevan blood in her. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail and messy bangs hung down over her big brown eyes. Her tight jeans, loose fitting top, and elbow-high fingerless gloves looked very dirty and covered with several small rips and tears.
Shane gave her a brief glance, but soon returned his focus to surveying the damage. Morgan, however, seemed more interested.
“Hey, who are you?” Morgan asked the girl.
“Who are you?” she responded. “You fell from the sky!” There was a brief moment of silence, then the girl turned to Shane. “Why is your hair blue?” she asked.
Shane sighed and continued to ignore her.
“Have you never seen a ship before?” Morgan asked, sounding annoyed.
“Not one that exploded and crashed in front of my face!”
“Yeah, well it wasn’t exactly planned,” Morgan told the girl.
Suddenly, H emerged from the ship and the girl seemed very confused by his appearance. “Why … why isn’t he wearing any pants?” she asked. The crew had grown used to their strange crewmate’s appearance and no one really had an answer to give. “No seriously, like, why isn’t he wearing pants?” she asked again.
“That’s not really any of your business,” Morgan told her, her eyes narrowing in annoyance.
The girl ignored her and turned back to Shane. “What’s up with your arm?” she asked, getting all up in his face. “It’s all, like, glowy and shit.”
“It’s not really any of your business,” Morgan said again, sounding a bit more annoyed now.
“You almost crashed a ship into me!” the girl shouted, pointing a finger right in her face. “Bullshit it’s not my business!”
“Well we’d like to be going now if—”
“Going where? I don’t think you’re going anywhere with this piece of shit.”
“You said you’d never …” Morgan started.
“Never what?”
“Do you have a ship?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re just a kid. Just shut up.”
“C’mon guys, let’s just go to the city and get some parts to fix our ship,” Shane said to the crew, trying to calm the tensions.
“No seriously, I have a ship,” the girl insisted. “Well, half a ship anyway. It crashed over there and I found it.” She pointed off into the distance. “The point is I have lots of scrap. I can help you.”
“I would really rather not trust this child,” Morgan said.
“Who are you calling a child!?” the girl demanded. “Blue over there doesn’t look any older than I am!”
“Didn’t you hear me say it’s none of your business?” Morgan snapped.
“What’s your problem? I’m trying to be nice here!”
“Oh, no one really knows,” H told the girl.
“She’s always like this,” Dmitri chimed in
“So she was born with a stick up her ass?” the girl asked.
“Alright, that does it!” Morgan yelled angrily.
“You’re gonna regret saying that,” Shane warned the girl, knowing what was about to come.
Using her psionic abilities, Morgan blasted the annoying girl with psychic energy, sending her flying back into the side of the crashed ship.
“Ow! What the fuck was that!?” the teenager screamed at her attacker, a pained tone in her voice. “Why did you do that to me!?” She lunged at Morgan, and tried to punch her in the face.
Morgan quickly stepped to the side, and the girl’s fist collided with her shoulder. She then reaches for one of her Pokeballs. In response, the girl grabbed four Pokeballs off her belt, two in each hand, and prepared to throw them.
“Guess what, I have a Pokeball too,” said H.
“H, don’t get involved,” Shane warned him. He then stepped between the two hot-headed girls and tried to break up the situation before it got any worse. Shane grabbed the teenage girl with his marked hand, and she got a very confused look on her face as a sensation of dry wetness radiated out from the mark. She tried to squirm free as he pulled her away.
Suddenly, H ripped a piece of broken panelling off the ship and lifted it up in the air. “STOP IT! WE’RE BUSY AT THE MOMENT! OR I’LL HIT YOU WITH THIS!” he shouted angrily.
“She started it,” the girl jabbed at Morgan as she ripped her arm out of Shane’s grasp.
“GUYS, CAN WE JUST STOP!?” Shane yelled at everyone.
“But I have this piece of side paneling; what am I going to do with it now?” H asked.
“Go build another of your Goddamn augmentations or whatever,” Shane told him.
“It’s useless now,” H said, throwing the panel aside.
“Shouldn’t you go back to your parents or something?” Morgan asked the girl. She seemed to have calmed down a bit..
“What parents?” the girl asked.
“Uh … parents. Like normal kids have.”
“I … don’t have parents …” the girl said, the expression on her face suddenly turning quite sad.
“Well that’s wonderful!” said H.
“Where do you live?” Morgan asked, a hint of guilt in her voice.
“In a crashed ship,” the girl answered. “I told you that.”
“Look, we really don’t have time for this. We just want to get our ship fixed so we’re gonna go to the city and do that,” Morgan explained. She then turned and walked off toward the city with Dmitri and H close behind.
As his crewmates left to find a place to purchase some scrap metal to repair the Helix, Shane decided to stay behind to keep an eye on the ship. He looked around for a moment and noticed that the local girl seemed to have disappeared. He shrugged, then resumed checking the damage to the ship.
It definitely wasn’t too bad of a crash, all things considered. The damage to the ship was mostly superficial. Whatever scrap material Morgan, Dmitri, and H found would definitely be enough to get the ship spaceworthy again.
Who does that girl think she is? Alex thought as she ran along, following after the crew from the crashed ship as they headed into town to get supplies. I was just trying to be helpful and all that bitch did was yell at me and call me a child! But these people are my best chance to get off this damn planet.
Alex followed them into town, sneaking along on the rooftops as she was prone to do. She saw them go into the local scrap dealer’s shop and soon grew bored waiting for them. Alex made her way back to the crashed ship to go see what the blue-haired guy was up to. He seemed like the most interesting one of the bunch anyway.
“Hi!” she said excitedly as she approached the blue-haired guy. He looked at her, and then back at the ship. He then turned and walked back onto the ship.
“Why are you here anyway?” Alex asked as she followed him inside. What’s this guy’s deal? she thought. Why isn’t he saying anything? “Hey! I’m talkin’ to you! What are you doing here? Why is your friend such a jerk? What’s up with the guy with no pants? Are you even listening to me?”
Alex followed the guy right up to a room, which he then entered, shutting the door in her face.
“Fine! I didn’t want to talk to you anyway!” Alex yelled sarcastically through the door before running off to explore the ship. She poked her head through a few doorways, but nothing seemed interesting. That was until she came across a heavy security door with lots of warnings on it.
“That looks interesting,” she said to herself before moving on.
Alex continued to poke around until she came across what appeared to be a Pokeball workshop of some kind, which caught her eye since she was quite knowledgeable when it came to Pokeballs.
“Oooooh!” she squealed in delight as she started rummaging through the Pokeballs scattered throughout the room from the crash. Her excitement soon dissipated when she found the designs to be subpar by her standards. “Lame. Boring. Amateurish,” she said as she tossed aside the Pokeballs after examining them.
Eventually the blue-haired guy entered the room, out of breath. Alex got the impression that he had spent a great deal of time trying to locate her. “Okay, as much as I don’t want to answer your questions, I really don’t want you wandering around the ship,” he told Alex.
“But I wasn’t wandering. I was in here,” Alex pointed out.
“I wouldn’t touch some of those if I were you,” he told the girl, noticing the Pokeballs in her hands. “H has… a problem…”
“Who’s H?”
“You know, the weird guy in the lab coat.”
“Oh, you mean the guy with no pants?”
“Yeah … Anyway, some of those are kind of dangerous.”
“Nah. These are kind of amateurish.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know the half of it.”
“I know right? What was he thinking? These aren’t hack-proof or zombie-proof!”
“Zombie-proof?” the blue-haired guy asked, sounding a bit weirded out.
“Yes,” Alex told him. “Y’know, for when you need to protect your Pokemon from the zombie Pokemon!”
The blue-haired guy stared back with a blank expression. He then sighed and handed Alex a Pokeball. “Here. Open this.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Alex looked at the ball for a moment before chucking it at the wall. It exploded and string shot went everywhere.
“Boring! I could make that in my sleep.”
“That is one of the milder effects of these. You really shouldn’t be messing around with them.”
“Oh, I’ve made things far more dangerous than that before.”
“Like what?”
“Like this one,” Alex said. She pulled a Pokeball of her own design out of her bag, then threw it at the wall. A blast of electricity burst out from the ball upon impact, sending sparks flying everywhere.
“I see your point, but still, you shouldn’t be messing around with these.”
“But I do it all the time.”
“Really …” the blue-haired guy said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We just met you and I’d rather not share our entire personal lives with you.”
Suddenly, they warped out of the room and appeared in a different one.
“Woah, what the fuck just happened!?” Alex shouted in surprise, stumbling back a bit.
“It’s a long story,” the guy said before walking out of the room.
“Wait! You need to tell me what that was!” Alex shouted as she followed him out of the room and off the ship.
Notes: Welcome back! It’s great to get back to this campaign. It was a big session so I’ve broken it down into multiple chapters that will be coming out this week. In this part we return to the action with space combat. Arlon’s gone and now they don’t have a good pilot!
And now you have your first look at my new character. Man, the other characters aren’t making joining the party easy.
Update 10/10/21: After coming off of revamping Chapter 0, updating this one was easy. For the most part, it was just the usual process of converting to past tense and making sure the character perspectives were consistent. It was mostly just the opening scene and the scene just after the crash that needed perspectives ironed out. Morgan made the most sense for the former and Shane for the latter based on how it was originally written. There were also a couple added descriptions and bits of dialogue here and there to smooth everything out. I also took some cues from the first chapter of Blueshift, which is of course based on this chapter. I took some of the improvements from there such as clarifications of who was speaking in the dialogue and brought them over here, leaving out the parts that don’t make sense here, of course. It’s funny because when I get to touching up Blueshift, I might reference this revised chapter for further improvements to that chapter.
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!
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