Desert Sands: Apocalypse Riders

[Snowfire]

Hey everybody! If you've stuck with us this far, you're finally here! Let the games begin...

Background(Please read before posting)

Spoiler

Once a year, there is a festival for the few remaining towns on Earth. Many people make their way out, for a chance to meet those other than the ones they see everyday. This is where the Apocalypse Riders met.

The various members were at the fire pit at night, discussing issues in their respective towns. There weren't many similarities, save for one thing: The Riders.

The Riders were a horrible plague for those who suffered from the various gangs. "Evil spawn," as a few of the bitter old men would say. They would burn down towns, steal the few remaining, yet so precious, Pokemon, and kill humans for sport.

It was with this conversation that the group of individuals decided they would put an end to the Riders, by becoming Riders themselves. Off into the deserts they would go, defeating and disbanding the gangs, to make life better for the people left alive after the apocalypse.

Lana Alnar

The night was dark, loud with music, and bright with multiple stars. The large campfire flickered in front of me, the bright red embers flying up into the night sky. I sat on the long log, a person I barely met next to me, the same for the others sitting around the campfire, like I was. Ninetails sat at my feet, gazing intently into the blaze before him, perhaps wondering if he could steal the secret of strong fire from it.

My canvas sack was slung over half of my back, carrying spices and herbs that I could only get once a year from the Festival of the Moon. Although the party was all the way back where the tents and crowds were, dancing to music, I felt the need to get away from all of it. From the looks of it, so did the other people sitting around the campfire with me, trying to stay warm despite the cold desert night.

We were trying to relate to each other in some way, shape, or form, and were pretty unsuccessful, until we got onto the topic of the Rider epidemic. God, I hated those gangs. And I suppose I was the only one.

Over heated discussion, we got the idea to become a gang. Unite for a common cause, to stop the Riders, disband them. Oh yeah, it sounded great. The Apocalypse Riders, we would call ourselves. To vanquish corruption. We, after all, all had riding Pokemon. We had the supplies, and we definitely had the drive. We could take the Rider kingdom if we wanted to.

There was just one problem. How would we do it? We lived in totally different areas.

"Um, one thing guys," I said, voicing my exact thoughts, "Like, how are we going to get together and do all of this? I mean, really, how? We live in totally different areas. Even the Rider gangs live close to each other."

 

[Sushi-X]

Trouble flicked a lopsided grin. "Simple kid, we just don't. There is advantages in living far apart, I mean sure that its harder to group up but if a gang burns down one village there is about 20 more to go am-I-right." He said. "Plus I actually live with these guys, I mean it will be simple. The day after initiation I will destroy them from the inside out. And I'll have their tattoo on my arm so other gangs won't attack me on sight hopefully." Price then said grinning at his pokemon "That is IF they see me."

 

[Agent Gryphon]

Claire stared at the fire herself, just watching it burn pretty much she had to see the rest of the world. She was pretty quiet at the meeting, her Cacturne stood behind her leaning against a tree, hardly noticeable aside from the light from the fire showing his outline and the two yellow eyes glowing from his face. Both had suffered enough losses and both wanted it to stop.

She looked up at the person speaking not saying anything for a moment. "We will just have to figure a way. As for me it doesn't matter where I am, I don't really have that much of a home left, just a cottage with nobody but my Pokemon" Claire responded softly.

 

[Sushi-X]

"Dude my home is inside a rider village. Now thats uneasy because you have to later take them down and plus I have to wait before I get the right .......... supplies." Jon said tossing around a knife carelessly. Listening to the music Jon almost forgot how messed up his life was but Jon didn't really believe he had a bad life. If he did it would give him no motivation to go on and he would eventually end up with all the other sun-baked corpses.

 

[Jragonair]

Ricky listened to the conversation but didn't speak. He was more interested in the light from the fire and how different it was from sunlight. To most, fire would be the life taker and sunlight, the life giver. But for Ricky that was untrue. The fire warmed him in a different way than the sun ever could, and it's soft light didn't burn his skin like sunlight did. Ricky had taken his coat of, even though the desert was chilling at these late hours, and basked in the warm firelight. It was so nice, to let his pale skin enjoy the soft light. It tickled, but it didn't hurt.

From his pocket, Ricky pulled two things- a charcoal black ball and an oversized pistol. He tossed the ball out into the sand, and in a flash of smoke, the lumbering black firedragon was released, hovering in the air with soft wingbeats like a muted drum. Szell turned his head to the sky, and looked back to Ricky for approval. Ricky nodded, and the Charizard took off. In a few wingbeats it was off. Szell soared the skies and thought about things. He thought about why he and Ricky were still alive while the rest of the world had nearly died. He thought about how many people were suffering, how stupid of humanity it was, to still have avarice and hatred in a situation where love and cooperation would be a true friend. He thought a lot, about Ricky, or how is fellow trained Pokemon were doing, so far away now in Mt. Silver. He was sure that Skar, bless her, was taking care of everything so well. But he missed home, he missed the beauty of the world. Here, this desert, was ugly to him. There was no beauty in these sands. Szell swooped around and landed next to Ricky. He nudged at Ricky, and Ricky tossed him a little snack.

Ricky shined his pistol and it gleamed with the firelight. It was so beautiful, truly a masterpeice, but it had taken life before. How could something so pretty be so decieving. Ricky liked the fact that he wasn't beautiful, that he had been born with this skin condition. He could hide the fact that he was a good person with his looks and show his true colours only when needed. The pistol was of a set of two. The other had been melted to oblivion in a fire like this, and that is really why he liked fire. Fire reminded him of AD, fire reminded him that in this world, a friendship unbreakable still existed. Ricky looked up from the fire.

"If the people rise up against these gangs with us, we will have more than enough support to rid the world of these riders. I would think our goal is to win the hearts of the people, not just exterminate the riders. We should bring them justice, but not become them and simply kill them of."

 

[JakkuEbansu]

"...We give them a choice. Genocide should not be decided here, it should be decided in the heart of battle"
Jakku sat at the edge of the fire, his Dragonite curled around him.
"How do we know how many people are like Trouble in the riders?"

 

[-Gray-]

"My entire town was destroyed by the Riders," Cole muttered bitterly. "And I was the only survivor. Living far apart isn't a problem for me, as I have no home."

Cole had managed to grab a few different foods and learned a few recipes in the Festival, and had them all stuffed in his backpack. His Arcanine lay at his feet, looking around coldly at these people and Pokemon that he didn't know.

"I say we target the smaller gangs first, disband them quick enough," Cole started. "That should get the larger ones in more of a panic, leaving them open to surprise attacks, especially from the air."

 

[Sushi-X]

Trouble stared at the firelight intensely which was uncharacteristic of him.
He then looked up and saw that somebody had asked him a question. "We can't worry about that, and for all I know I'm the only one undercover so lets cut this short and decide we'll just keep kicking ass as usual."Trouble said. "If we worry about every little thing eventually we will just go crazy like most of the riders."

"I mean what can we do? Even if we form some kind of union with all the survivors there is just too many crazy riders out there." Trouble said with a bit of defeat in his voice.

 

[Snowfire]

Lana Alnar

"But see, that's the thing," I said, my voice carrying out the words perhaps a little too quickly. I was kind of excited at the idea of disbanding the Riders.

"We can get together, we can do it together, if not all right now. We just need a strategy. I mean, Trouble's already in a village. What else do we have?

"My mom has ranch in my town. Moonset. It attracts a bunch of Riders, some hard-core, others born into it. That could give us something. We could maybe let them steal one Pokemon, like a Rapidash, we have a mean one, but secretly put a tracking device in it. You know, that way, we could know where it always is, until the gang finds out. Anyone got any other connections or possibilities?"

I looked around at the group sitting near the fire. We all looked so different. We all acted so different. We all had different lives. Yet still, we had this one common relation. That had to say something.

There was some yelling from the party going on behind us. Fun, I thought. We never got any of that in Moonset. And even if the people did party, it was secretly, in their homes. People there considered it bad to celebrate when there was so much to do about the town, so much to work on. I suppose that's why people really let loose at the Festival of the Moon. They bottles it up inside all year, then just released it. I was never one of those people, if you can't tell by the way I got away from the crowd.

 

[Sushi-X]

Trouble played with a knife in his fingers as he watched another dude polish his gun. He always preferred knives to guns because guns jam and need ammo often. A good knife never fails. "If you think we can do it I will stick with you to the end. But I'm just saying it sounds like suicide. The only reason they took me in is because they shot up my parents and kept me as some kind of sick trophy. Chances of one of you coming in armed with pokemon or especially a gun is slim to none." Price said a little frustrated at the hopelessness. He then grabbed a drink and took a long swig. He seriously doubted anybody would care he was drinking since they should have better things to ponder.

 

[JakkuEbansu]

"My town was destroyed too. Why'd ya think I'm here?"
Jakku lit a cigarette to drown the memories.
"I'm just saying, maybe there's a better way..
I say we each aim, in groups of 2 or 3, for a small gang each, taking em by surprise in bunches at a time. There may be many Riders, but if we gather enough of the land behind us,we can defeat them."

 

[Sushi-X]

"Or we can end up like that misguided fellow there." Trouble said pointing at a skeleton. "Even then its worth a try I imagine." Trouble admitted as he looked closer at the skeleton. It seemed happy at least. Trouble really didn't know how a corpse could be happy but I seemed to like its current position. "Anyways how will we take them down. I mean its not like you can just barge into a raider town loaded to the teeth without meeting resistance immediately. At the gang I'm staying at I heard some nasty rumors that some of the gangs recovered some old war weapons. The craziest ones are about these machines that fly." Price said remembering all the half crazed scouts return with incredulous stories.

 

[JakkuEbansu]

"...WEAPONS TRADERS!"
Everyone looked at Jakku oddly, so he continued.
"We could disguise as traders selling weapons, enter the camps to trade, and would therefore be right in the middle of the camp when the time came! It would even explain why we're all armed to the teeth!"

 

[Sushi-X]

Trouble laughed and said "You know, that might be the first good idea I heard all night. But pretty soon we will build a rep so that heist will probably only work for 1 or 2 gangs at the most."
Trouble then grabbed his knife and sliced open a cactus. Tasted and smelled like crap but it was liquid none the less. Crinkling up his nose from the distasteful drink Trouble said "But you know we are going to need some big guns for sale if we want to go INSIDE their base. With little pistols for sale they will probably just shoot you and then take the stuff you were selling. No we need something intimidating yet interesting and deadly looking"

 

[JakkuEbansu]

"How about we go raid one of the ruins of the old cities? If we found an old military base or something, we'd have TONS!"
Jakku was warming to his own idea, having a tendency to blurt out half-formed thoughts.

 

[Sushi-X]

"Ya cause EVERY city nowadays has not already been raided a million times by raiders. You had a good idea but you kinda just killed it. I mean find me a untouched old city and I'll find you a flying unicorn that breaths lightning." Trouble said bitterly. He hated to be so rude to a companion but that was an outlandishly stupid suggestion. He had been raiding his whole life with the gang and he can honestly say 99.9% of the stuff was already raided. The other small percent only had useless stuff like stoves that require precious electricity or guns with no barrel or even a sword with no blade. No,no his knife was truly a rare beauty and he had no idea how many times he got mugged and had to fend off crazed raiders for the dog gone thing.

He stared off in the distance. He wondered how many people were killed by this knife. He wondered how many widows it made. How many families it separated. How many lives it took before its thirst was quenched. This knife was a beauty though it had been tainted by the corrupt use of its masters. No that was wrong. The knife was beautiful but deadly in the wrong and right hands alike.

 

[-Gray-]

"What we should do is completely obliterate the most remote Rider camp we can find," Cole started. "If we all do it together, we should be able to raid it and get some decent weapons. Then we just make sure none of the Riders from the camp live to tell the tale, and go trick the Riders. After we destroy each camp, we'll get more and more weapons and Pokemon until we can completely obliterate the Riders."

 

[JakkuEbansu]

"...I love you guyss...."
Jakku had been drinking rum whilst listening to the others speak. Worryingly, he was now making more sense.
"(hic) Yeah... divide and conquer..."
Dragonite looked at Jakku, concerned, and knocked the rum bottle out of his hand with her tail, breaking it.

 

[Sushi-X]

"You know that might work. In fact I've been hearing of a pretty remote raider camp that hasn't been communicating lately. We could raid that one and make it look just in case if they checked on it another rival gang did it." Trouble said with a thoughtful grin. He was then beginning to laugh how the other person couldn't hold his drink. "You okay there?" Trouble said with a laugh. "Anyways now we know how to do this, anything else we should worry about?"

 

[JakkuEbansu]

"Th...e demons.... coming... out the speakers...."
Jakku had now found two more bottles of rum.
Dragonite knew when to give up, so went back to sleep.