(RPJ)Chapter 172:Red flag (Patreon)

The poacher in question was battling a herd of Phampy line pokemon with a team of three pokemon at the ace level when I found him. I didn't slow down at all from my sprint but instead transitioned into a flying kick straight to his knee caps from behind. With a satisfying "CRACK!" both of his legs snapped in unnatural angles and he screamed as he went down. I didn't even need to help the Phampy as the mans screams distracted his pokemon enough to turn the tide of the battle and cause them to get killed by the angry elephant pokemon.-

"I am with the league and came to catch these poachers. Do any of you know where any other poachers may have gone?" I asked the herd and like five of them pointed their trunks in a direction and I grabbed the now tied up poacher thanks to Hades and took off in the direction indicated. As it turned out though the herd wasn't pointing me towards another poacher but rather the territory of a family of Natu that they had believed would be targets of the poachers.-

It was a good piece of information since Natu and their evolved form Xatu were coveted psychic type pokemon that innately had future sight. Unfortunately there was no poachers there but the family did point me in another direction that might have some. This time the information was good as there was the last two poachers tag teaming a group of Chansey happily chatting about the big payday this job was going to get them. I casually dropped the poacher I was carrying and grabbed the keystone from my pocket and threw the angry ghost attached to it right in the middle of the poachers and their pokemon.-

Hades was not a fan of this an took out it's irritation out on the pokemon and their trainers viciously. "Remember we need the poachers alive , the rest are yours to do whatever you want with though!" I called out and Hades hissed but left the poachers be after some "mild" torture. I tied them up and put them over my shoulder before grabbing the one I dropped previously and Hades to return to the safari building to drop them off. I was not surprised to find some rangers there dealing with the poachers my pokemon had already brought back. -

What I was surprised about was that Vulcan was keeping the rangers away from a red haired man with a missing leg and wrathful glare leveled at my pokemon. 'Must be the leader and he looks pissed. His days is only going to get worse from here though.' I thought as I skidded to a stop kicking up dust before tossing the poachers to the rangers. "This should be the last of them and after I have a bit of a chat with the leader over there you can take him as well. Should only take me a moment to get him to spill his secrets." I said casually.-

One of the younger rangers looked like they wanted to confront me but an older one stopped them with a serious expression. I dipped my head in acknowledgement at that and walked over to the red haired poacher leader. "I'm going to be blunt here because I like to be efficient about things. You have two options here , first you tell me everything that you know and you'll merely get away with the loss of a leg and prison time."-

"Second is that you are stubborn and I torture you until you tell me everything you know before forcing you to spend the rest of your days having a bag attached to your gut for you to piss and shit and needing to drink your meals through a straw without any limbs at all. Your call." I said calmly as I made eye contact with the man. "And they call us monsters!" the man spat scornfully but started to talk about everything he knew , shipping channels , handler names , clients , the whole deal. I wasted no time at all taking out some paper and a pen to write it all down from my bag and once the man was done talking I tossed him to the rangers.-

I was a man of my word and as I said he got away with the loss of a leg and prison time. The rangers took my account of things and I said I wanted to see if I could find a rare variant in the zone originally but felt the actual workers tied up with my aura. One thing led to another and here we are. I have to admit that the rangers were real professional about the whole thing and tried really hard not to let their personal thoughts cloud the truth of the matter.-

I got a little smeared for my brutal treatment of the poachers but otherwise perfectly unbiased reports were taken. I also made a copy of all the information i got from the leader of the poachers and handed it over to the rangers. The looks on all their faces other than the older ranger was priceless as they were dumbfounded by just how much information the guy had given up. "I have to ask what did you tell this bastard to get him to sell out his people like this?" the younger ranger asked curiously while the older one sighed but didn't move to stop them.-

I told the guy exactly what i said to the leader of the poachers and the ranger paled and backed away in horror. I left with my team after that while the older ranger looked to be imparting some words of experience to the young one that was mentally scarred by the imagery I had painted for him. That first part of the chain quest was marked complete with a perfect ending earning me the next chain in the line and some exp tickets and a new ability ticket.-

[Chain Quest conditions established!

Description: You have taken down the poachers that had tried to illegally harvest the safari zone for rare pokemon! However in the process you have learned of an even larger web of illicit goods in the region , Take it down!

Objectives: Capture or aid in the capture of handlers 0/10 , Capture or aid in the capture of the regional kingpins 0/3 , Destroy supply depots 0/38(optional) , Keep the collateral damage to the innocents below twenty percent(optional)

Rewards: 2x skill tickets , 5x exp tickets , ?x item tickets(optional)(based on amount destroyed) , 1x evolution token(optional)]

I noticed a BIG red flag in this quest immediately in the form of the final optional reward being an evolution token. The system itself had already told me that the things only appear as a reward when the system believes the difficulty was next to impossible to pull off. Like in the case of the Heatran getting killed rather than us needed to flee for our lives like we were supposed to. Was it possible to kill the thing? Definitely. Was it probable? Not enough to be worth considering.