The Army didn't fret with the details of something as simple and routine as an armed raid. No intelligence given beforehand, no cover of night, no concrete plan of action. It was short and simple and to the point: Kill the enemy. So they rode out in the clear day under the blue, southern Hoeannic sky in their CRRCs, hugging the rims as the wheelman led them south to one of the floating wooden cities that had made itself a bother to the trade ships in the region's waters.

The helicopter had hot dropped them into the ocean just outside the visual range of the floating wooden town of pirates loaded for bear. Of course no bears had been present, but there had been two animals with them nonetheless. The two Zodiacs were light vehicles, their skin durable, but the men that rode them in like horses didn't want to rely on their Kevlar and armor plates deflecting the bullets as the hardened rubber would've.

The handler ordered the Pokémon to put up the metaphysical wall around them, the sting in the air and the energy that pricked their skins were signs that they were protected by the psychic energy. The drops of water that splashed up in front of their watercraft were vaporized as they hit the invisible psychic wall. The sting of the energy was only rivaled by the rush of blood in the heads of the eighteen men that were riding the waves towards battle.

"The Espeon's going to carry us all the way in LT?" One of the privates that held on the side of the boats had yelled to beat out the sound of the water. The Pokémon in question were belly flat on the zodiacs, eyes and gems glowing the surreal pink that gave off their energy.

"Have a little faith Covey!" 2nd Lieutenant Mikita Noelle yelled back as he directed the motor of the CRRC he was in command of. The Captain and he had split the squad up, nine men to each officer, a total of twenty soldiers rushing in toward the approaching pirate establishment. Personally Mikita thought it was a few men too many, but he wasn't going to detest if it all went south. The grey and black gear they wore had all been dampened by the ocean, the beads of moisture forming on the plastic of their rifles constantly being wiped off over fear of their grip on the foregaurds and triggers slipping.

Mikita's ballistic face mask came down as the spouts of smoke that the floating town gave off were seen hundreds of meters away, his beanie covering his forehead as the goggles were slapped down with his unoccupied hand.

Towns like these were often formed by pirates, refugees, raiders and of the like in almost all the oceans. The problem with dealing with them is that once a town was swept up more people would occupy them in the deceased's place. Scuttling them had become a very difficult procedure, so instead they were used as bait, training areas, or legitimate settlements. Of course the United Nations Government Army did not raid these numerous floating camps and towns without a legitimate reason.

The outpost before them was one that had sprouted up in one fortnight, a medium floating facility that recently raided a cargo vessel coming out of Oblivia. The supplies were hardly of interest; instead it was rather just an excuse to eradicate the pirates in the area.

The smoke got blacker, more defined, as it floated above the floating buildings that they approached with their speeding Zodiacs.

"First time Corporal Haven?" Mikita used his foot to touch the tense corporal, chiding him, his apparent fear of water getting to him as he focused on the depths below them instead of the floating town hundreds of meters out and closing.

"Just keeping watch for Sharpedo." Haven shouldered his AR, leveling it with the water's surface, forcing away his hydrophobia through his teeth.

As the field medic Mikita had already recognized this beforehand and given him a capsule of pills that would've helped his stomach, but he knew Haven was fussy when it came to his treatments and field shots. Mikita's shotgun was wiped clean of water momentarily as it lay at his side as if it had instead been a paddle, his other free hand making a circle with his index and thumb in the air. It was a wilco to the Captain's orders, his hand flat and sideways, pointing the opposite direction to where his zodiac had been steering.

The Captain ordered a split up of the group and Mikita obliged by heading the other way.

In his head the Captain told him the procedure, the familiarity of the scenario running through his head. 'Split up, cut their forces in half, meet me in the middle.'

Of course all plans, even ones thrown together seconds before engagement, always fell apart upon enemy contact.

Mikita yanked the stick left, the hundreds of meters closing between the raiding group and the pirate camp closing as he broke off. Even above the roar of the engine and the crashes of the waves, the constant purring of the Espeon stayed strong. Of course Mikita's meal plan helped sustain the longevity of their Espeon's protecting abilities, the high calories given translated into boosted psychic power.

The rest of the ride was rode out in silence, Mikita's men tense, hands and backs taut against whatever they had been holding on to. For some it was their rifles or pistols, some the rubber of the Zodiac and the strings connected to the boat. The Pokémon handler's hand was safely placed on the back of the Espeon, calming it. Mikita didn't need to be medically trained to know he had been sick, not feeling anything in his stomach or a storm in his head as they progressed toward the thin line between dealing death and receiving it. The twenty four year old knew the feeling before battle well; too well. The thrill of the Pokémon battles he once directed had paled in comparison to the thrill of a firefight, and it was a high he wasn't able to escape. He grinned behind his ballistic mask, the blood colored cross dead center of the black denoting his role in the squad, the silver bar on his right shoulder the mark of a Vermillion graduate. The education of being a medic and the education of being an officer had paid off again and again.

"Another day on the job tovariches." The lieutenant called out, the final word an echo of his ancestors three hundred years ago.

"U-rah!" His squad responded in a rallying shout. The Designated Marksmen had raised his M110's optics as he surveyed the target.

"We've got positive contact! Estimate two dot half minutes out."

"Heads down, load up." Mikita briskly ordered.

The nine men and one Pokémon that were under his command had hit the deck, heads tucked in as the last two hundred meters closed. They never had the element of surprise, the shouts of the pirates now above the sound of the watercraft. Subtlety was never the Army's forte however. The first gun shots were fired in their general direction by the pirates, the sounds of missed rounds skipping on the waves around them drowned out by the zaps of the bullets that hit the Espeon's wall.

Mikita subdued his flinching as he passed into the final one hundred meters. One gloved hand around the control of the engine, one around the grip of his Mossberg. Tanned skinned pirates ran into a firing line on the floating platforms that Mikita was intent to ram into, the rest scurrying off in order to grab their belongings or weapons.

The Espeon felt each bullet hit its shield, holding the shield with all its might. The men tapped down their kits, floatation devices on their belts checked as the sound of Kalashnikovs filled the air.

"Eighty meters!" They couldn't fire through the Espeon's guard, but weapons from the Army squad rose in instinctual reaction anyway. The bullets that hit the shield fizzled up and were tossed asides.

"Fifty!" Mikita cried out, legs primed to hop out and dive into either a wooden platform if he was lucky, or into the water.

"Thirty!" A bullet had broken through and ricocheted into the zodiac, digging into the reinforced structure above the waterline fortunately. Some prayed to the Lord and his Pokémon Arceus, some to prophets and deities which he only knew because some his patients were religiously bound to not have some treatments, but Mikita prayed that the water hadn't lodged itself in his shotgun in any harmful way.

"Ten!" They saw the whites of each other's eyes, the scars each side bore and the red, white, and blue patch that was the UNGA's calling card. The Espeon was about to give out, but its handlers grabbed it as it had and clung it to his chest. In those last seconds as the zodiac was about to collide into the wooden platform everyone had made their move. The tribals in the path of the heavy boat dove out of the way as the soldiers dove out. Some rolled out onto the platform, some stayed with the boat as it crashed onto the floating wooden platform that served as a dock apparently, but only the insane had dove into the water before the zodiac had hit. Being kept afloat by only the floatation devices on their rigs, they had ended up underneath the platform as the rest had taken up the top.

Mikita was one of the insane, he hitting the water likes a torpedo, a rifleman and the Pokémon handler with his Espeon following their lieutenant in as the rest tumbled atop them.

The soldiers that hit the water had taken the landing the best, their rifles raised up towards the floor as those who landed on the platform stumbled and recomposed from the impact. It was easy enough to tell friend from foe as their shadows shifted above them, beams of light punching through the wooden floor.

The sound of his shotgun being pumped above the water made the pirate above him jump, but he jumped again as the floor underneath him was blown out along with a piece of his thigh. The water and the platform was not at all a stable surface to shoot on, but it was point blank. The rifleman and the Pokémon handler opened fire with their M4 and HiPower, the pirates dancing as the floor beneath them was shot up. No bullets came down in retaliation as the part of the team that was on the platform finally got together and started their sweep.

The twelve gauge shotgun had blown holes large enough for ever the fully outfitted soldiers to crawl through, but it was ladies first as the Espeon was passed to Mikita, raising the creature out onto the platform as the team secured the immediate area.

"Officer on deck…" Mikita joked with the formal language as he grasped the hand of one of his soldiers that offered it through the hole. Sparse gunfire erupted around them. Hardly any of the pirates had the stones to actually combat UNGA soldiers, those who did so resisted because they wanted death or were fool hardy.

He scrambled up on deck and fell into his squad. All nine had survived, some bruised over the impact, but alive nonetheless. The handler came out and immediately placed himself in front of his Pokémon, intent of safeguarding the creature that he called his own.

The salt water washed off his goggles enough to view the situation. The town ebbed on the waves, people taking off on boats and canoes out into the oceans to get away from the raiding party. Those who stayed were the pirates that had been hardened enough to kill the cargo ship crew.

It was all flat, little cover asides from the wooden houses built up. Wood wasn't a good cover material anyhow, but that could cut both ways as Mikita knows from the hundreds of firefights underneath his belt.

Several metal boats had been docked, some welded together to make some sort of town hall or center. That was as good a target as any.

The 360 degree FOV that the squad had created stared down the immediate area around them. They reloaded and refitted, some of the squad taking potshots at those who actively resisted.

"Groups of three. Split up; converge on that hulk of that ship in ten. Haven, Crowe, with me." The rest of the squad acted independent after the order, the rest splitting off and going their own path through the town. Haven took point, Crowe, the Pokémon handler, took the rear with his Espeon. The Pokémon was still recharging, but Mikita cupped its mouth and sent a diamond shaped pill down into its system. The Pokémon was revived in that moment just as Mikita and Haven laid up against the walls adjacent a wooden door, covered by the remaining two of the group.

The muzzle fire of the shotgun had nearly singed Haven as Mikita shot out the lock, however Haven hadn't missed the well-practiced procedure as his right leg came under and kicked in the door with a wooden thud. The door flew open and Mikita followed up with his shotgun raised through the door, Haven's hand on his back and following his officer through the breach.

The barrel of Haven's M4 was at the edge of Mikita's vision, but he was otherwise occupied with the spear that was coming toward him. In the dark of the cabin all he saw was the glow of the pirate's eyes through the red rag that surrounded his head. Mikita's gauntlets forced the rusty spear away as the shotgun was thrusted into the pirate's gut.

Haven pushed ahead as Mikita forced the pirate onto the ground, clearing the house with a series of yells and gun shots.

"We have any room for prisoners on the Chinook?" Haven asked as he waited for his officer to finish his business with the pirate, rifle pointed out a window at a particularly menacing shack that was on the way to the floating town's center. A magnificent bang went off in his ears and the relatively spooked soldier panicked, ducking his head down and gripping his weapons tight against his chest as his breath hitched.

With a crisp racking of his shotgun, Mikita answered his question.

His answer was a hole blown through the floor and the pirate's stomach.

"Jesus Christ LT." Haven's eyes were wide and he felt his knees buckle. The gore was never something the corporal had been used to, but Mikita on the other hand, it was something he had chosen and taken into his heart as a field medic. It wasn't an amputation he had just done however as he ejected a used shell and inserted a new one via the loading gate. The lieutenant knelt down and closed the painful face of the pirate he had blown out, hands patting down pockets and his clothing afterwards.

Crowe had come into the cabin, eyes still scanning their six.

"Espy here doesn't agree with me you know," Crowe had stated, pistol pointed out of the cabin as he glanced back to the scavenging officer. The Espeon purred aggressively, tail flicking angrily at Mikita.

"On what?" He muffled through his ballistic mask, holding up a folded piece of paper, not sure if the Espeon was commentating on the scavenging or the kill.

"That little display there." Crowe answered in his Australian tinged accent.

"She doesn't outrank me Crowe." The blood flowed into the ocean, the Remoraid already coming around the town in wait for the Sharpedo that would've answered the smell of the crimson. He held the paper up to the light, unfolding it, quickly glancing over it, before pushing the slip into his chest piece for safekeeping. It was an interesting piece. A humanitarian leaflet was fairly out of place on a pirate establishment.

A ripple of gunfire erupted and hit the side of the cabin they were in, Haven stumbling back as the burst was aimed at him. It interrupted Mikita's routine of patting down the bodies of the deceased, granted he had chosen a less than opportune time to do so, but now was the time to fight.

With a quick ejection of the buckshot in exchange for a slug, he yelled out and got to the little cover the cabin provided, ordering his men.

"Return fire!"