91: Chapter 91 The Final Offensive on the Quartz Plateau, Kuroshio Lands

Off the coast of the Indigo Plateau, the fog hung low.

As the first Black Flag landing craft pushed out from the fog, the Alliance coastal gunners all tightened their grip on their triggers.

The fleet was too heavy.

The bows were hung with charred flagpoles from Cinnabar Island, the flags snapping loudly in the sea breeze. On the decks, rows of Blastoise lay in iron troughs, their cannons reinforced with steel hoops, with medics holding medical kits standing nearby. Charizard crouched on the rear decks, their wings soaked by rain, sparks rolling from their nostrils. Venusaur were secured to transport platforms with thick hemp ropes, their vines wrapped around crates of wooden stakes, iron plates, and medical supplies.

This force did not look like a traditional Trainer legion.

It was more like a dismantled Cinnabar Island, bringing with it volcanoes, factories, porridge kitchens, wounded soldiers, and hatred, all bearing down on the Indigo Plateau.

Inside the coastal battery, a young Alliance soldier's Adam's apple bobbed. His fingers rested on the firing button, his palms slick with sweat. Beside him, the veteran gunnery sergeant stared at the Black Flag in the fog, his face turning pale.

"Wait until they get within three hundred meters."

"Sergeant, there are too many ships."

"Wait."

A dull horn sounded from the fog.

The three cargo ships at the very front suddenly turned broadside, thick steel plates flipping up one by one to block the landing craft. The next instant, the Alliance coastal artillery fired in unison.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Shells slammed into the cargo ships, tearing through steel plates and setting the holds ablaze. The first cargo ship listed immediately, and over a dozen Cinnabar sailors were jolted into the sea. The lights on the hospital ships flared, and life ropes were thrown out in rows, but the front-line fleet continued to push forward.

Lynn stood on the flagship deck, rainwater streaming down his black cloak.

He watched the burning old ship, his face devoid of even a ripple of emotion.

"Record the names."

The secretary behind him immediately lowered his head, writing down the ship number, captain, casualty count, and family addresses in the soaked ledger.

"Double the pension. The captain's son enters the Volcano Academy, and his wife is transferred to the port granary."

"Yes."

The third old ship fared even worse.

It was originally an ore carrier nearing scrap in the Cinnabar shipyard, its hull patched with over thirty sheets of iron. Before setting sail, the old captain had carved his name beside the helm and tucked a yellowed photograph from home into the gap of the control console.

When the shells fell, the control console was blown away first.

The old captain, half his face covered in blood, still pushed the helm to its limit. The ore carrier crashed sideways into the reef, its hull scraped open in a long line of fire, forcibly creating a gap in front of the Gyarados swarm. Before the ship sank, the sailors on deck threw out rope ladders, and a dozen landing soldiers leaped onto the shallows, stepping across the sinking gunwale.

On the hospital ship, the recorder wrote down names while weeping.

Every time she finished writing a name, she stamped a red seal beside it. That red seal represented ration coupons, medical expenses, family resettlement, and school enrollment for children. In the past, the Alliance only gave them pension slips; Cinnabar, at least, wrote every deceased person into the ledger.

This ledger was wrapped in oilcloth and pressed beside Lynn.

When the artillery fire roared over, Lynn reached out to press down on the oilcloth, protecting the ledger first.

The second round of artillery fell.

A landing craft was overturned, and a dozen Clone Blastoise rolled out of their iron troughs, crashing into the seawater. They hadn't fully learned to follow orders, so upon hitting the sea, they instinctively opened their cannons and sprayed water columns toward the shore. The water columns missed their mark, but they cleared a path through the caltrops on the shallows.

Lynn raised his hand.

"Follow the gap."

The drums sounded.

The Venusaur transport platform was pushed to the bow. Vines whipped out in sheets, wrapping around sea mines and iron nets, dragging them forcibly to the sides. The first batch of vines was blown apart, green sap splattering onto the deck, the Venusaur trembling all over their shells from the pain. The handlers gritted their teeth, injected painkillers into the sides of their necks, and kept patting their heads.

"Pull again!"

The vines extended a second time.

The sea mines were dragged beneath the coastal guns and detonated, causing a corner of the battery's front edge to collapse. The Cinnabar fleet seized this moment, and thirty small boats detached from the mother ships simultaneously, swarming toward the shallows like a group of black beetles.

The Alliance released their Gyarados.

Over a dozen blue giants emerged from behind the reefs, their tails raising walls of water as they crashed directly into the small boats. The two leading boats capsized, and the soldiers struggled in the water. As the Gyarados opened their mouths to bite down, the bone dragon beside the flagship soared into the sky, its white bone wings brushing through the rain curtain as its hooked claws dug into the Gyarados' spines.

Blood stained the coastal waters red.

Lynn still hadn't deployed Mewtwo.

The Cinnabar officers all knew that Mewtwo was just beyond the clouds in the rear. If Lynn gave the word, the coastal guns, the Gyarados, the batteries, and the entire coastline could be leveled with a single palm.

But Lynn remained silent.

He wanted the Indigo Plateau to see clearly, and he wanted Cinnabar to see for itself: the Black Flag could only have made it this far by relying on this group of people who had crawled out of corpse pits, mines, porridge kitchens, factories, and prison cells.

"Second squad, land."

The second squad lacked a roster of Trainers; it consisted only of a group of workers, wounded soldiers, and Clone Pokémon handlers with red cloth wrapped around their arms. They jumped into the sea carrying door panels and iron ladders, rushing forward even with water up to their chests. One worker was mowed down by machine-gun fire, but before he died, he pushed the iron ladder forward half a meter. The men behind him stepped on his back and propped the ladder against the outer wall of the battery.

The Alliance soldiers on shore began to panic.

They had assumed Cinnabar would crush them with powerful Pokémon, but they never expected that those charging in the very front would be a group of people lacking even decent armor.

These people feared death.

There was fear on every one of their faces.

But behind them was Cinnabar Island, where their wounded, children, granaries, and newly built houses were. If the Alliance pushed back, they would lose even the half-bag of rice they had just received.

So they crawled.

They crawled up the iron ladders, crawled across shell craters, and crawled into the battery's blind spots.

When the first Cinnabar worker climbed into the battery, he was shot through the chest by an Alliance soldier. He lunged forward to grab the soldier's leg, using his last breath to bite onto the bootlace. The second man followed, climbing in and smashing a steel hammer onto the Alliance soldier's knee.

A close-quarters melee erupted inside the battery.

Blastoise came ashore through the gap, their cannons blasting open iron doors at close range. Venusaur vines dragged the gun mounts, causing the barrels to slowly deviate from the sea. Porygon-Z hid in a dilapidated communication vehicle, plugging wires into the battery's control box; the screen first showed static, then the gun barrels slowly turned toward the Alliance's rear.

The veteran gunnery sergeant lunged for the manual switch.

Lynn's shadow slid across the ground.

A black claw extended from beneath his feet and gave a gentle tug. The veteran gunnery sergeant fell, his forehead striking the edge of the iron platform, blood streaming past his eye.

He was still alive.

Gengar pinned his shadow and dragged him to the corner.

"Keep him alive," Lynn said. "People who can repair cannons are worth more than corpses."

On the hillside behind the second battery, the Alliance supervisor squad also drew their guns.

A few defenders tried to retreat, but they were gunned down by their own side after taking only three steps. The supervisor captain held up a loudspeaker, his voice shrill against the rain: "Take one step back, and your entire family will be purged!"

These words reached the battery, and the eyes of the remaining gunners turned red.

They began to fire shells indiscriminately at the coastal waters, even if it meant hitting their own Gyarados. The sea was blasted into white waves, and the Cinnabar boats rolled in the surf. A young soldier carrying a communication box was knocked into the water; just as he surfaced, the Charizard beside him reached out a claw to scoop him up, though its own wing was slashed by shrapnel.

The young soldier climbed back onto the boat, clutching the communication box, his lips purple. The first thing he did was hand the headset to the squad leader in front.

"The line is still open."

The leader took the headset and roared at the coastal battery: "First Battery, fire at the hillside behind the second battery! Don't hit the muzzle, hit the supervisor squad behind it!"

The First Battery, which had just been captured, let out a roar.

Shells soared over the heads of the Cinnabar soldiers and slammed into the rear slope of the second battery. The supervisor squad's loudspeaker was snapped in two, and a string of bodies rolled down the hillside. The artillery fire from the second battery suddenly turned chaotic.

The first battery had changed hands.

A Cinnabar flag-bearer rushed onto the ruined wall, planting the Black Flag into the cracked concrete. No sooner had the flagpole been steadied than the second battery in the distance opened fire, the shell slamming beside the flag-bearer and blowing away half his body.

The flagpole fell.

A female medic, her face covered in dust, rushed over, kneeling on one knee with her medical kit on her back to replant the flagpole into the shell crater. Pressing her hand against her blown-open shoulder, she gripped the flagpole with her other hand and screamed:

"The battery is still here! Those still alive, move forward!"

This cry was carried back to the fleet by the sea breeze.

On the landing craft in the rear, the recruits who had been trembling raised their heads and began to roar along with her.

The black tide surged onto the shallows for the second time.

The Alliance's second battery prepared to fire in unison, but the underground drainage outlet exploded first. Three squads of Cinnabar divers emerged from the sewage, covered in filth, dragging explosive packs. They bypassed the frontal firepower and stuffed the packs into the ammunition depot's ventilation shaft.

Flames shot into the sky from inside the battery.

Debris fell like rain.

Lynn stepped onto the soaked sand, his boots crushing shell casings. The mechanical brace on his left leg clicked, leaving deep imprints in the mud with every step.

The Alliance prisoners on the shore were pressed into a line.

Some cried, some cursed, and some still tried to grab guns.

Lynn swept his gaze over them.

"Those who can repair cannons, stand on the left; those who can carry ammunition, stand on the right; the rest, carry the wounded. Anyone who resists, feed them to the sea right here."

Several Alliance soldiers looked at each other and slowly climbed up.

After a path was cleared on the beachhead, the Cinnabar logistics ships dared to approach.

Stretcher teams rushed off the ships, first carrying the Cinnabar wounded, and then the surviving Alliance gunners. Someone, dissatisfied, cursed, "Why should we save them?" The female medic raised her hand and slapped him, knocking half his face askew.

"Those who can repair cannons stay, those who know the terrain stay, and those who know the location of the medicine depot stay. Do you want more people on the front lines to die?"

The man lowered his head, shouldered a comatose gunner, and walked away.

Lynn watched this scene, his face still cold. He needed hatred, but he also needed living people. Corpses could establish authority, but living people could repair cannons, carry grain, and lead the way. At this point in the war, killing alone could no longer push open the mountain gates.

The first batch of wooden stakes was driven into the wet soil of the beachhead.

Workers tied ropes to the stakes, pulling out a temporary path. Blastoise dragged ammunition crates ashore, and Charizard moved soaked gunpowder boxes to the fires to dry. Venusaur lay on the shore, their vines still oozing sap, as the handlers applied ointment layer by layer, their fingers stained green by the plant fluid.

This beachhead position had been bought, bit by bit, with old ships, broken vines, severed fingers, and cannon fodder.

The final stretch of open ground before the mountain gate soon became a pile of wounded.

A veteran Cinnabar soldier sat by an ammunition crate, holding his severed leg, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his mouth. Seeing a recruit staring at his leg and trembling, he reached out and shoved the cigarette into the recruit's mouth.

"If you're scared, bite down on it, but don't lose your gun."

The recruit's lips were pale; he bit down on the cigarette and ran toward the mountain gate with the second wave. Halfway there, machine-gun fire swept down from the mountaintop; he dove into the mud as the two people beside him were shot through the back. He shook violently, but in the end, he threw the rope in his hand, hooking it onto a collapsed iron stake ahead.

A dozen people grabbed that rope and crawled across the line of fire.

Lynn saw this and raised his hand, pointing at the recruit.

"If he survives, promote him to squad leader. If he dies, grant him the pension of a squad leader."

The secretary immediately added a note.

The people on the battlefield heard these words, and their eyes changed. Cinnabar's military merit was measured in rice bowls, medicine bottles, and houses that could keep out the rain.

A horn sounded from the distant mountain pass.

The entrance to Victory Road closed, heavy iron doors slamming shut, and rows of searchlights lit up on both sides of the mountain. Lance had surrendered the coast, but he had set the real blade within the mountains.

Lynn looked up at that black mountain road leading to the heart of the Indigo Plateau.

The coast was merely the threshold.

The real millstone was inside the mountains.

He reached out and pulled up the Black Flag stuck in the shell crater, handing it back to the female medic beside him.

"Hold this place."

The female medic's shoulder was still bleeding, her teeth chattering.

"Until when?"

Lynn looked at the mountain gate, his voice very low.

"Until the Indigo Plateau changes its flag."

The batteries were turned, the first batch of prisoners was driven to carry ammunition, and the Blastoise formed a line, firing at the iron gates of Victory Road.

Amidst the roar, the Black Flag stood firm on the coastline once more.

Cinnabar had officially set foot on the Indigo Plateau.