TEEN: some rise by sin

[Flaze]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter four: Gaia}

Well I have to say the comedy was actually top notch here. I like the fact that our nameless protagonist has added a new Pokemon to her party, though I did laugh my ass off when I read Icarus's reasoning as to why it allowed a Caterpie in the team but not a Pidgey, and I like Gaia...she's really deep and knows what she's talking about *shot*

Not much to say since it was a short chapter, except I do hope the story moves a bit more in the next one, they've been in the forest for about three chapters after all.

Also here are my notes point by point in regards to how I judged this fic in the awards and why I think it deserved best dark

Before I give out my rankings for this I wanna clear up the fact that I’m only going to be judging the story based on what’s known now, I won’t point out things that should be done since the story is only 3 chapters and one prologue long as of right now so there’s too many missing spaces for me to give it a more critical judgment.

Plot 8/10: While the story is just starting we can make a pretty good idea of what the plot is going to be about, kintsugi does a great work of introducing an interesting and basic plot that can actually get you interested and wondering how it’ll evolve. There’s still not much known about what’s going to happen or how it will but it’s one of those plots that leaves you expecting impatiently.

Setting 9/10: Set in a post-apocalyptic Johto I think that the setting is what really stands out from this story. It isn’t the first time I read a setting like this but it’s much more than just that, kintsugi exposes on how things turned out to be like that in a way that makes it interesting and engaging and all the things that she adds to it makes it unique in turn. It’s a setting that, much like its plot, leaves you guessing and expecting more to come from it.

Characterization 9/10: So far we only have one core character and we don’t even know his name…and yet it works, we are able to dwell into his mind and his thoughts as he faces these ordeals, and while we don’t know his name we get to learn what his personality is and it’s very interesting and intriguing. He’s a flawed character as well as a fish out of water, someone that doesn’t think of himself as special and is happy that way suddenly being special is a very interesting concept and I want to see how he deals with all of this.

Style 9/10: kintsugi’s style is very fitting and it helps get the story across pretty well, it’s rare to see a first person fic, by that I mean there aren’t that many and there aren’t many that are done really well. So far this has been done pretty well and it’s thanks to her own writing style.

Grammar 8/10: While her story is pretty clean there are a couple of mistakes here and there in some chapters, but they manage to not detract you from the story as a whole.

Overall I think this story has a lot of places to go, it’s just starting and it started on a good note and there’s a lot of things that could happen, though what will happen is something that is still unrevealed.

So I’ll give this story a 82 out of 100, again based on what’s currently being offered rather than what is missing.

 

[kintsugi]

Responses!

Spoiler

A quiet chapter, this is a first for you @kintsugi eh? You're getting better, I'm sure of it. Still very coy about where this is all going, and as usual I don't see that as a weakness. I can see that you're thinking about practical matters - the coming winter, for example - and I'll be curious to see how the rest of Johto is coping without electricity.

A rare moment of well, very nearly warmth at the end of this chapter. It's a nice change, I rather liked this line

The first. The foundation. The roots of the earth.

I'm hoping this means a little more attachment ... it would be sweet if that little Caterpie became a firm companion. Don't pander to me, mind

Oh, yes, and I did have A Song of Ice and Fire in mind when I referenced Commander Mormont's raven (Dead! Dead, dead! Corn)

Heh, quiet chapters? I'd never! We'll be seeing the effects of the apocalypse shortly, though.

And, no worries, Gaia's going to stick around for a while. I have a soft spot for those early-route 'mons, and she'll... well. No spoilers, eh?

[really long evaluation that I did read but if I replied it would take, like, forty months]

Bwahaha, I think I already said this, but thank you so much for the feedback. One of my largest flaws is pacing, so hopefully by the time summer comes around, I'll actually have some plot for you to go off of.

I can't thank you guys enough for reading and giving comments, though. Seriously. :>

___________________________________________________________________________​

chapter iii. all that glitters​

___________________________________________________________________________​

"Sentret, sentret, pidgey!"

My murkrow could talk.

As soon as I'd realized that, now that I wasn't terrified for my life, I wanted nothing more than to make him shut up. More on that in a second. As we trudged through the endless forest, I was slowly beginning to understand the seemingly-simple concept that life without electricity sucked.

You'd think that, for a nation whose power grid could be taken down so easily, we'd have put together some precautions for the magnetic apocalypse. As far as I knew, we didn't have any: there'd been tornado drills back in the flatlands of Goldenrod, but I'd never taken any classes on, say, how to navigate if your compass thought that literally every direction was both magnetic north and south, simultaneously. My pokédex was broken, which took my map with it, and I didn't have so much as a radio to call for help. Not that I was really going to call for help with the murkrow still hanging around. Pokéballs were a moot point, too, but that was more of an afterthought.

It was hardly afternoon, but I was already getting cold. At night, it would be colder, and darker, and I didn't exactly know how to deal with that.

I made a mental note to self to obtain a fire-type pokémon as fast as possible, which would be—

"Pidgey, sentret, pidgey, pidgey!"

—seeing as the stupid bird was taking the liberty of listing every pokémon he saw from his perch on my back, and apparently there was a whopping total of two species of pokémon out here, it might be a while. Add to that the fact that the stupid thing seemed liable to murder things he didn't like, and it was quite possible that I would spend my time freezing to death.

"Sentret, pidgey!"

"Piiii," Gaia offered unhelpfully from my other shoulder.

As it turned out, in addition to making me terrified for my life, marking me as an enemy of the government, long walks on the beach, and ripping out the throats of unsuspecting pidgey, the murkrow enjoyed pissing me off.

But the only thing more chilling than the bird's incessant chatter—"Boss, sentret, pidgey, sentret! Pidgey, pidgey!"—would be the silence. And there was plenty of silence to be had. Even the pokémon in the depths of the route between New Bark Town and whatever town lay ahead were silent. It was like they all knew that something terrible had happened this day, something that required their own silence out of fear. The only sounds were the occasional shuffling of talons from the branches above our heads and the dry crunch of my own feet on the loamy earth of the route. Every pokémon, it seemed, knew to hold its breath to see how the world would react to this horrible event, while above us, the sky flashed incessantly with the aurora borealis.

"Pidgey, pidgey, sentret, pidgey!"

Every pokémon except mine. The murkrow was quite pleased with his ability to talk, which I assume he had taken for granted until he discovered that it annoyed me to no end, and he dug his talons into my shoulder and proceeded to caw out as much obnoxious, inane information as he could. Which mostly consisted of him calling out every species he saw. Every time he saw it. We quickly settled into a routine: I would try to punch him off my shoulder and then prepare to defend myself in case he lunged for my eyes; he would nimbly dodge my attack and shut up for five steps; he would begin cheerfully spouting rubbish; I would try to punch him. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes, Gaia would chime in with something unintelligible.

"Sentret, pidgey. Pidgeotto, oooh! Sentret, sentret!"

This was nice, though. A routine was good. Settling into a routine meant that I didn't have to think about what had actually happened today, which probably amounted to my being exiled from society, at the very least. At the very worst, society wouldn't be around to exile me, because Johto's power grid had crashed and everything was slowly devolving into chaos.

I sighed. "Do you see anything else?" I asked. It was a purely rhetorical question; maybe I could get him to start a conversation that didn't sound like he was mashing the pronunciation button of a pokédex.

"Team Rocket," he replied nonchalantly.

I tensed instantly, fingers curling into fists as I felt adrenaline start pumping into my legs at a million miles per hour. I could probably run into the forest before their psychics caught sight of me; otherwise, trying to run from a police force that could teleport would mean instant death. If I made it into the undergrowth, I could probably try to stay hidden until they—

"Hah!" my murkrow crowed, spreading his wings wide and flapping around so he could better project his reedy voice into my face. "Kidding!"

—I was midway through charting out the least-painful trajectory through a nearby bush when his words sunk in. My eyes warily narrowed, and I let my gaze dart through the dark trees, wondering if there was anyone lurking behind the branches.

My murkrow, however, made a harsh croaking sound that could pass for a laugh. "Look on face absolutely priceless!"

I grit my teeth to keep myself from cursing violently, and then I released the breath I hadn't known I'd been holding. "Don't do that," I said tightly.

The murkrow returned to his perch on my shoulder, and I could feel his talons sinking into the threadbare fabric of my backpack strap. "Why?"

"Piiii," the caterpie answered sagely.

"Um, yeah." I had no idea how to answer that.

There was an awkward silence.

"She say you should be less violent," the murkrow translated.

I decided to take his words at face value and mentally filed away the fact that my caterpie thought that loud words constituted actual battling. Gods help us when we had to battle if that was true. "Look. Team Rocket is actually a threat. We got lucky." I tried to be patient. Really, I did. But the organization-government-dictatorship that ran my country wanted me dead, the electrical infrastructure was in shambles, and I was trying to explain politics and strategy to a talking bird that had been hunted to exctinction.

Yeah, today was a little weird, but I was learning to cope.

The murkrow pumped out his chest a little, baring the tufts of black feathers beneath his neck. "We protect Boss," he said proudly. "Why fear? We not afraid of men in coats."

"Pi," Gaia supplemented, helpful as ever.

I was trying to explain politics and strategy to a talking bird that was supposed to be extinct, I told myself. Nothing to see here. "Look, we just need to avoid them. They don't like us because you're—" what the heck was I even supposed to say? "—they just don't like you because of the kind of pokémon you are, I guess, and they're going to kill us for that if they can."

"Bird? Forest full of bird. Caterpie will be like bird one day. Killing all bird bad planning."

No, it would've been perfectly fine if he'd been a flying-type. I felt a flash of pity for my murkrow: he probably hadn't seen another dark-type pokémon before, and he certainly didn't know why people might fear him. "You're what they call a dark-type. They don't like dark-types."

"Still not afraid of men in coats," he repeated, as if I were missing something crucial.

"Well, I—Boss is afraid of the men in coats," I snapped back. "And they don't like you because you're a dark-type, and they don't like me because you're my starter, which means that we're apparently really close to one another, so we're going to avoid them." Hopefully that would keep it simple enough.

Miraculously, it worked, because there was a moment's pause before—

"Sentret, sentret, pidgey!"

Damn. I probably should've seen that one coming.

Speaking of things I didn't see—

The gust of energy that knocked the murkrow off my backpack moved too fast for me to track. I spun around, eyes widening and adrenaline making me fully awake, but the murkrow caught himself before he slammed into a tree and managed to right himself with a few flaps of his inky wings, squawking indignantly all the while before landing back on my shoulder.

"Nice shot, Dante."

I hadn't said that, and neither had my murkrow.

I whirled back around to see a trainer about my age with dark red hair that reached nearly to his shoulders—I vaguely wondered if he'd had a nice time sleeping with that in the dirt. Other than the fact that he had a pokémon, though, I wouldn't have pegged him for a trainer. His clothing, still in miraculously-pristine condition despite the dirt, looked like he was dressed for a job interview. He wore a white, expensive-looking blazer and an arrogant smirk that suited his pinched face far too well. I decided then, perhaps too prematurely, that I hated him, shortly after I realized that, holy crap, there was a trainer in the forest and he'd attacked my pokémon.

But what was most threatening was the pokémon hovering next to him, floating of its own accord with what I knew was telekinesis. The creature was short, about the size of a small child, but it sat in a meditating pose and kept its eyes tightly shut. Its tail, golden-brown, lashed through the air and was the only sign that it was conscious at all. Pointy triangular ears twitched occasionally, and if I hadn't known better, I would have thought it was sleeping or dumb.

But I did know better. Abra lived in the grass outside of Goldenrod where I grew up, and were devastatingly powerful when well trained, and were a traditional staple of Team Rocket.

"Um. Hi?" I tried to keep the fear I felt out of my voice. This was a big forest, and I'd purposefully strayed from the path. I couldn't be easy to stumble upon out here, but there was always a chance. I tried to shift my stance so that my murkrow-shoulder was facing away from him, and my caterpie-shoulder was a lot more prominent. "Can I help you?"

The way he raised one eyebrow, almost in disbelief, told me I shouldn't have bothered. The boy smirked, one hand stroking the abra beside him like a Bond villain might stroke a persian. "Well, you know how the saying goes. When two trainers make eye contact, they have to battle." And with that, he looked me squarely in the eyes, his dark brown gaze locking with my own. "In case I haven't made it immensely obvious, please stop backing away from me so we can battle."

I decided then and there that 'hate' was not an adequate term to express my feelings for this trainer. "The whole of Johto is in crisis mode and you try to jump me so we can battle?"

"Yeah. Something like that." He sounded like he meant it, too, speaking with a careless authority that came from years of getting his way.

I didn't have time for this. I had a rebellion to not-start and a villainous team to avoid, and I wanted to get to Cherrygrove before nightfall so I didn't end up freezing to death without proper supplies. "That's cute. I'll be leaving now."

"Dante, if you would be so kind."

The abra moved faster than conscious thought, or at least faster than my conscious thought, and I found myself staring at its squinted eyes even as I tried to walk away from the trainer and his psychic rat. Teleportation. Of course. Just like the xatu. {My trainer asks you to stop. I ask you not to refuse.}

"Mine declines," my murkrow growled before I could speak. Perhaps he sensed my unease. His talons flexed unconsciously, and I could tell that he was prepared to dig into the abra's throat, if it came to it. He seemed content to trade banter with the abra, though, although whether he was doing it to help me avoid a fight or for a closer shot at the golden pokémon remained up in the air. "We pass now."

The boy seemed to be calculating his options, although I had no idea for what. "It won't take too long," the trainer scoffed at last, lazily examining his fingers. "Dante can crush your petty little pokémon in an instant, and then I can be on my way."

Ass. I wanted to punch him, but there was something afoot here, something deeper. The arrogance suited him well, but it seemed like a façade, almost. But why?

On second thought, I didn't particularly want to find out. "Thanks for the offer," I said. I had to actively resist the urge to roll my eyes, and even then, it was close. "But we'll be leaving now. You know. Gotta get to town before the armageddon strikes again."

This time the trainer himself moved to impede my path, throwing out a gloved hand and slamming it into my shoulder. I staggered back in surprise as he said, "Look. I don't want to waste time. If you don't send out a pokémon soon, preferably the murkrow, Dante here will pop your head like a zit."

The abra hovered into my face again, eyes glowing menacingly, and I wondered if he'd actually meant it. Pokémon on human violence was rare, and trainers were forbidden to attack other trainers with their pokémon, but we were in the middle of a forest devoid of any witnesses, I had an illegal pokémon, and the rest of Johto was too busy with the magnetic apocalypse to care, anyways.

Actually, shit, he knew what a murkrow was? This was probably a bad sign.

"I don't believe you," I retorted, eyebrows creasing into a frown. He wouldn't dare. I turned to leave—

And found the abra in my face again. Teleportation. Damn.

"Shall we try this again?" he asked, and I realized about then how screwed we were. Engaging this kid would be the stupidest thing I'd done all day, probably. And this was after I'd attacked Ariana with a murkrow and then believed him when he promised not to slash my throat. But my head had a happy and welcome place on my neck with all of its internal fluids, well, internal and not splattered across a tree. And besides. Dark-types beat psychic-types. Bug-types beat psychic-types. I had a legitimate shot at this.

Best to do it in style, then.

"And if I refuse?" I probably shouldn't have asked, but I was feeling daring and he was starting to piss me off. Starting was a lie, actually; he'd pissed me off quite a while ago. "Settling disputes with battles is a bit of an outdated notion, don't you think?" I didn't have time for this. I wanted to reach Cherrgrove in the next few days, and I needed to reach Goldenrod as soon as possible. My mother—

"Then I report back to Proton that I've found their fugitive with the murkrow starter, the Rockets come and take you back to Goldenrod, and I watch you hang on this evening's news while reading a nice book." Pause. "Well, I guess the broadcasting network is down, but the point still stands."

"Report directly to Proton?" I repeated numbly. "Why would you—oh." The red hair. The expensive clothing. The perfect psychic-type pokémon. The entitlement. The violence. "You're Giovanni's kid." And then, because I couldn't help it. "Oh, shit."

Of course he'd have an abra as his first pokémon. They evolved into nigh-unstoppable psychics, and the heir of Team Rocket would, naturally, get no less. I assumed that he'd been stuck with an abra only because the Lugia wasn't a legal starter.

He did a mock bow, his dark red hair falling into his eyes, but I could see hatred burning there, and contempt. I didn't know for whom or what. "Codename Silver, the one and only." Most of the higher ranks claimed to operate under codenames, although I preferred to pretend that their parents were stupid enough to name their kids stupid things like 'Proton' or 'Petrel.' Or here, 'Silver.'

I didn't care what they were called; I didn't want to see any of them and I didn't want them seeing me. I took a step backwards. This was bad. I'd been hoping to evade Team Rocket at least until nightfall. I wanted to get a trainer card up at Cherrygrove, preferably one that listed Gaia as my starter; with the records down, they'd have no choice but to believe me, especially if I managed to convince my murkrow to keep his mouth shut while I was registering. But if Silver knew who and where I was, it would only take a matter of time before the rest of Team Rocket found me as well. "Why are you battling me?" I asked. Stalling for time, really. Half of my mind was searching for a way to keep him quiet. Bribery wouldn't work; he was too rich for that and I too poor. The forest stretched on for miles, from what I could see, and I couldn't outrun his abra if it could teleport. "Are you trying to capture me?"

Silver laughed humorlessly. "You think I care? You think I'm going to go blabbing back to the Executives about the little trainer on the road with her pathetic bird?"

"I'd gotten that gist from the whole 'I'll report directly back to Proton if you don't do what I want' speech, yeah."

The smile faded from his face, and I caught a glimpse of that hatred again. "I don't run around for them like a pet. They're a bunch of idiots, and they don't know what you look like or where you are," he snarled. His voice had suddenly turned harsh. "And all I had to do to find out was follow you, but they botched that one up. You don't threaten us, anyways. The xatu thought you were special, and the second you got your starter, Johto went to hell. I believe in fate. I want to see why. If you win, I'll let you go, but it goes without saying that I don't expect much."

This was going to be a normal day. That's the promise I'd made.

Oops.

On my wrist, my murkrow was bristling and ready for a fight. That wasn't really anything new, but I nodded curtly at him. This conversation was over, and if I wasn't going to be allowed to leave until we pounded him and his stupid abra into the ground, then so be it. "Um, he's all yours." Quickly, before anything else got out of hand, I added, "The abra, not the boy."

Clearly glad to get fighting at last, the murkrow leapt off my arm and took to the air in a flash of black feathers, cawing angrily. The joking drawl, the casual naming of the native pokémon to piss me off, the lazy flapping was all gone now, replaced with a beady crimson glare fit to kill beneath the feathered protrusions that formed his little top hat. It was almost cute, and then I remembered that this was still a murkrow, after all, and they travelled in flocks called murders for a reason.

Across from us, Silver nudged his abra with a nod of his head, and the golden pokémon levitated forward as well, its eyes pressed firmly shut. They said that looking into an abra's eyes could cause insanity, and I didn't want to find that out.

I opened my mouth to shout out an attack when I realized I didn't know what moves my murkrow knew. I'd figured out some of the local pokémon around Goldenrod, of course, but murkrow weren't native to anywhere, let alone my backyard. I'd ask him, but that would look dumb. I'd use my pokédex, but it didn't work. This whole 'no technology' thing wasn't working out too well. We had to start somewhere, though. "Peck it like you did with the pidgey."

If he ripped out the abra's throat, some voice said in the back of my mind, even better.

Thankfully, the murkrow seemed to know what I was talking about. He drew his wings close to his body and dive-bombed the abra, golden beak glinting in the sunlight.

Silver raised an eyebrow. "Confusion, standard resist protocol."

What was he playing at? He of all people would know that abra's psychic attacks wouldn't have any effect on murkrow. I frowned, wondering if perhaps I had overestimated his skills, before his abra nodded, spread its hands out, and levitated the rocks around it with a flash of blue energy.

"Look out for the rocks!" I shouted, and the murkrow barely swerved out of the way as the rocks around him rose into the air and began hurling themselves at him, almost of their own accord. I flinched. Dark-type or not, getting hit with a large boulder would still hurt. I was impressed against my will. Silver didn't seem to be unnerved that I was using a pokémon absolutely immune to his starter's attacks of choice, and he'd revealed a battle plan in the first few moments of our skirmish.

And I had no idea how to fight back.

Think. Act. Now. "Swerve around. Get behind it!"

Instead, he began engaging the abra head-on, darting in and out of its range, flitting close to it before pulling out quickly and flying in from a different angle. Every time, he had to pull up short or avoid taking a rock to the face. He was faster than the abra, but barely; each time, the rocks and dust flying around crept a little closer to the bird before he managed to get out, and he narrowly dodged a crushing death with every pass.

Granted, even though he'd disobeyed me, it was a pretty successful decision on his part. My murkrow got the first hit off, a fleeting peck that was hardly more than a brush before he had to retreat again. The murkrow cackled victoriously. "Slow, slow, slow!"

Silver didn't seem amused. "Shock wave," he said, his voice cool.

I stifled a curse. Not only was his first pokémon an abra, but it was an abra that had already been taught special moves. It could do more than sleep, it could do more than teleport, and now it could do more than use psychic-type attacks. All of this from a starter that had been given out yesterday morning from a xatu that was supposed to distribute pokémon that were tame and completely untrained so that everyone could get an equal footing.

Yet I got the murkrow and the heir of Team Rocket got the electricity-wielding abra. Silver's abra, I noted distractedly, also didn't seem to annoy him to no end by, say, listing names of wild pokémon or pestering Gaia all the time.

The abra spread its paws apart, and a web of crackling blue electricity formed in the air around it. It pointed a stubby paw towards my murkrow and released the fizzling lightning, arcs of blue light splitting from the fistful of energy that it held in its palm.

This was no time for complaining. "Dodge!"

To his credit, the murkrow actually tried to listen to me this time—maybe I'd actually made a good command as a trainer—, folding his wings and dropping like a stone in a steep dive, but the lightning followed him, painting the air and the surrounded forest a washed-out blue. The murkrow squawked in pain as the shockwave hit his tail feathers and then coursed through his body, and I found myself wincing as he hit the dusty ground with a thud.

I bit back a curse. "You okay?" I asked tentatively. He lay on the ground in a limp heap of tangled feathers. "Hey, are you okay?" One crimson eye cracked open.

It occurred to me that my murkrow wasn't okay.

We couldn't lose this. We couldn't. I had no effing clue what Silver was going to do if we lost.

"One more should finish the job," Silver said. "Dante, quickly."

I couldn't lose this battle now. I couldn't. I was not coming this far and fleeing Team Rocket only to get beaten by some upstart, arrogant heir to their organization who had effortlessly pounded us into a pulp and if we didn't make it out alive he was going to kill us or worse. "Hey. Get up." I couldn't keep the pleading note out of my voice. "Please."

The abra prepared another orb of electricity between its two paws and aimed at its downed target. Now that my murkrow wasn't flapping around like a bat out of hell, the abra had a much easier target.

Silver looked up from a careful examination of his fingers. "Don't take me the wrong way, but I was definitely expecting more out of you." I didn't bother responding to him. "I mean, if the xatu actually chose you to do whatever it thought you would, I'd have hoped it would be smart enough to choose someone competent enough—"

"—he didn't choose me," I growled, teeth gritted. I wasn't going to do anything stupid to get myself killed.

"Well, he's dead now, so I hope you're proud."

He looked up, those dark brown eyes of his glinting and his face unreadable. Triumph, maybe, but there was an edge of sadness as well. Why was he telling me this? "Did you know that that xatu belonged to one of the trainers who took down the old government? He took out two of the old Elite Four by himself, fought the Zapdos alone to a draw, and helped combat the Lugia. One almost had to wonder why he turned against us by doing something as stupid as helping you. Archer thought you were going to be tough shit to trick the xatu into doing this." Silver looked away. "Two elites, the Zapdos, and the Lugia apparently don't pack the punch of a shotgun at close range, you know?"

I felt the blood drain from my face.

"We'll probably have to shoot the murkrow as well."

But they hadn't killed us yet. The cold was back. Fine. If they were going to gloat, I was going to take advantage of it, but I didn't know if there was any advantage to take at this point. Options. My fingers curled into fists, but my eyes were wandering around, trying to take stock of what I had in my arsenal.

{It is nothing personal.}

Damned psychic. He wasn't laying a finger on my pokémon. I mean, I hardly trusted him either, but— "Get up!"

The murkrow cracked open his other crimson eye, looking weakly at me. His wings were splayed across the ground, and I realized with horror that he wasn't going to make it out in time. I was going to lose, and my murkrow was going to die. I could get Gaia to attack while the abra was distracted and maybe she could try to surprise him, but I doubted she was strong enough to—

Then the stupid bird winked at me. Moments before the electricity hit him, the murkrow propped himself up on his wings and pushed himself airborne, a trail of dust behind him as he skimmed across the ground in a flash of yellow and black.

{What.}

The little blighter tricked me.

Then he was whizzing past me alongside the smell of burnt feathers, the electricity not too far behind him, and I realized that we weren't quite free yet. He couldn't outrun the shock wave attack forever, and I was sure that despite his brash appearance and jaunty smile, he definitely wouldn't enjoy taking another hit.

Before I could start giving a command that would've been absolutely unhelpful, the murkrow executed a tight backward loop, arcing gracefully behind the abra. The steely glint had returned to his eyes, and it was clear that he'd planned something without my telling him to. He was eclipsed by the sitting abra's figure, which was turning to meet him but all too slowly. For a moment, the dark bird was completely hidden by the abra's golden fur, and then I saw his face and beak sprouting out of the psychic-type's chest.

He did not just—

Tendrils of darkness trailed away from the murkrow's tail feathers as the rest of him emerged smoothly from the abra's brown chest plates. The abra itself looked at its chest in confusion as the murkrow slipped out of its abdomen like an apparition, leaving flesh and skin completely intact. It tried to swat at the murkrow, but its paws were too slow, and then its eyes widened, almost comically, from small slits to slightly less-small slits in pain.

The shock wave was still locked on, but unlike my murkrow, it lacked the ability and motivation to pass through solid objects. The electricity hit the abra squarely in the back, and this time the blue, fizzling energy made the abra cry in pain rather than my murkrow. Not letting up for a moment, the bird swerved back and latched on to the golden pokémon's face, pecking at it until the stunned abra finally lost the energy to stay floating upright.

I blinked. I'd won?

"Hey," I said, snapping back to reality. "Off. You won."

Chattering sourly, the murkrow disentangled himself from the abra's face and returned to my shoulder.

Silver scowled. "Faint Attack. Cheap." He glared at his abra, now unconscious, and pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and threw it at me. "You win. Catch."

I caught it and slipped it into my pocket without counting it, too shocked to even consider doing so. I'd heard that trainers used to give each victor money, but that was a tactic as ancient as the old government—no one outside of the gym league had that kind of money to spare any more. No one, it seemed, besides the Rockets and their spawn.

I filed the name of the new attack in the back of my mind in case I needed it again. "Yes, well, it worked, and, uh, it was totally on purpose. Now leave us alone." I balled my hands into fists. Without a pokémon to help him, Silver couldn't exactly turn us in. If I wanted to get away, now was the chance. "I'm leaving now."

I wanted to do something to defuse this, or maybe just punch him in the face for killing the xatu, but all semblance of neutrality would be lost the moment I laid a finger on his pristine white clothing.

Then again, all semblance of neutrality had probably been lost the moment I'd told my bird to go after Ariana.

Still not my best plan, in hindsight.

Silver took a half step toward his fallen abra, and then pried its mouth opened and shoved his hand into its mouth.

What was he doing?

"Piiii!" Gaia cried out in warning. She'd been so quiet I'd forgotten she was there; sometime during the battle, she must've slipped from my shoulder to stand by my feet. My gaze was already tracking away from her toward Silver's downed abra, which awoke with a jolt, and in a movement so fast it must've been practiced, wrapped its paw around Silver's leg and teleported the two of them away.

My murkrow unsteadily took to the air, cawing defiantly.

Shit. We had to go.

I turned around to run, but no sooner had I processed what had happened when Silver appeared at my back in a flash of blue light and kicked Gaia away from us. I had maybe half a moment to think before Silver reached grabbed the base of my ponytail from the small of my back and pulled, yanking my neck back so I could feel a touch of cold steel on my throat. "But settling disputes with battles is a bit of an outdated notion, don't you think?"

___________________________________________________________________________​

previous || next​

 

[Flaze]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter five: argentum}

Well this chapter really was kind of a game changer. I didn't expect to see Silver, though I guess I shouldn't be surprised now should I? he seems really interesting though and a bit different from the games. I really loved the protagonist's narration in her head in this chapter, especially the splattered to a tree running gag, it was really funny.

I do wonder what will happen now, the way I see it either Icarus and our main character will grow closer or Icarus will get splattered to a tree...or maybe Abra will be his lunch.

 

[AceTrainer14]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter five: argentum}

This may be a bit late, considering you have posted a few chapters since then and I have not had time to read, but here are my thoughts from the latest awards round.

A lot of my judgement was based on the potential that this story has and not necessarily the current chapters, purely as you are still quite early in the story but even in the first few chapters you manage to paint a very interesting picture of this dystopian Johto that is quite captivating. Your world is very unique as well as your style of writing and the your use of characters, and it is clear you have put a lot of thought into making this a very real and interesting world. Spelling and grammar was decent, but the occasional jarring error so watch out for those when proofreading, though I know how hard it is to find mistakes sometimes. The plot so far is interesting, but like I said, there will need to be a few more chapters before it is properly laid out and I can see how things are going. With terms of the thought patterns of our main character, she thought about the same things several times in those few chapters, which made things a bit repetitive, so I would recommend finding new chains of thought for her to travel down on rather than have her re-think about the same things constantly. Also, I am not sure if the magnetic field/aurora borealis things are going to be important later on, but they did feel a bit random/'get out of plothole-jail free', so maybe expand those elements more so they don't feel quite so out of place. But this is a great story, hopefully by the time of the next Awards in a few months there will be more to work on: there is a lot of potential here, your story is very imaginative, but I would suggest bringing your bigger picture in sooner/crafting your big plot so we can see what you are working with I can happily expand on these at any point.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter five: argentum}

I think I should say now, that you do first person narration rather well, @kintsugi. Your writing is definitely getting smoother with time - if that's down to the extra time it took to write a post, so much the better. I've got to be honest, I didn't expect the Protagonist to keep my attention, but she(?) does, so well done, you. Might have already mentioned this, but don't be afraid to have a little more warmth in. It'll give the dark moments more meaning, and give your story a more adult voice

 

[Life]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter five: argentum}

I finished all the chapters a few days ago, and figured it would be nice of me to post a response.

I really like your setting, and I personally think that's the best element in this story. Even though I haven't read a lot of fan fiction, yours is the only one I've seen so far that portrays a dictatorship and a very unqiue way of how Johto is run. I thought that the way trainers received their first Pokémon was neat, and certainly original.

As for your characters, I like them all, especially Icarus. Even though the rest of the world portrays him as a blood-thirsty, murder-machine, he's hysterical. On the flip-side, Gaia is completely opposite from Icarcus, but the combination of the two work really well. Your unnamed protagonist intrigues me, and I'm quite curious to see how she is going to handle her destiny.

I think someone mentioned this before, but I'll put it in here anyways: my only suggestion is your pacing. It's a bit slow for my taste; by chapter five, she really hasn't gotten too far. Although, she did catch a Caterpie.

Overall I really love this story. I'm interested to see where you'll take it next!

 

[kintsugi]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter six: all that glitters}

Spoiler

Well this chapter really was kind of a game changer. I didn't expect to see Silver, though I guess I shouldn't be surprised now should I? he seems really interesting though and a bit different from the games. I really loved the protagonist's narration in her head in this chapter, especially the splattered to a tree running gag, it was really funny.

I do wonder what will happen now, the way I see it either Icarus and our main character will grow closer or Icarus will get splattered to a tree...or maybe Abra will be his lunch.

Kekekekeke. You'll see.

This may be a bit late, considering you have posted a few chapters since then and I have not had time to read, but here are my thoughts from the latest awards round.

A lot of my judgement was based on the potential that this story has and not necessarily the current chapters, purely as you are still quite early in the story but even in the first few chapters you manage to paint a very interesting picture of this dystopian Johto that is quite captivating. Your world is very unique as well as your style of writing and the your use of characters, and it is clear you have put a lot of thought into making this a very real and interesting world. Spelling and grammar was decent, but the occasional jarring error so watch out for those when proofreading, though I know how hard it is to find mistakes sometimes. The plot so far is interesting, but like I said, there will need to be a few more chapters before it is properly laid out and I can see how things are going. With terms of the thought patterns of our main character, she thought about the same things several times in those few chapters, which made things a bit repetitive, so I would recommend finding new chains of thought for her to travel down on rather than have her re-think about the same things constantly. Also, I am not sure if the magnetic field/aurora borealis things are going to be important later on, but they did feel a bit random/'get out of plothole-jail free', so maybe expand those elements more so they don't feel quite so out of place. But this is a great story, hopefully by the time of the next Awards in a few months there will be more to work on: there is a lot of potential here, your story is very imaginative, but I would suggest bringing your bigger picture in sooner/crafting your big plot so we can see what you are working with I can happily expand on these at any point.

Any feedback is always appreciated, no matter when it is received. (On that note, to minimize the amount of times I end up mentioning you, thanks for the favorite/follow on ff.net. I'll return the favor as soon as I can ^^)
Granted, I'm not sure how closely you're following (and no need to feel obligated if you're not; I understand how tie constraints work), but hopefully the plot has picked up a bit in the more recent chapters. In addition, no need to worry--the magnetic apocalypse becomes one of the central plotty bits of this story, and it gets hideously important by the end.

I think I should say now, that you do first person narration rather well, @kintsugi. Your writing is definitely getting smoother with time - if that's down to the extra time it took to write a post, so much the better. I've got to be honest, I didn't expect the Protagonist to keep my attention, but she(?) does, so well done, you. Might have already mentioned this, but don't be afraid to have a little more warmth in. It'll give the dark moments more meaning, and give your story a more adult voice

Bwahaha, thanks. I hope I don't disappoint.

I finished all the chapters a few days ago, and figured it would be nice of me to post a response.

I really like your setting, and I personally think that's the best element in this story. Even though I haven't read a lot of fan fiction, yours is the only one I've seen so far that portrays a dictatorship and a very unqiue way of how Johto is run. I thought that the way trainers received their first Pokémon was neat, and certainly original.

As for your characters, I like them all, especially Icarus. Even though the rest of the world portrays him as a blood-thirsty, murder-machine, he's hysterical. On the flip-side, Gaia is completely opposite from Icarcus, but the combination of the two work really well. Your unnamed protagonist intrigues me, and I'm quite curious to see how she is going to handle her destiny.

I think someone mentioned this before, but I'll put it in here anyways: my only suggestion is your pacing. It's a bit slow for my taste; by chapter five, she really hasn't gotten too far. Although, she did catch a Caterpie.

Overall I really love this story. I'm interested to see where you'll take it next!

Welcome!
God, I'm so bad at answering reviews, lol. /random
Anyway, I'm glad that you've enjoyed so far. The pacing has kind of been an issue for me, and I'm trying to work on that, but I'm glad you liked the rest. ^^

On that note, I ended up redoing chapters one and two to match with the latest chapters (posted on ff.net). Nothing really changes plotwise, but I figured I should note it somewhere la la la.

Anyhow, thank you guys so much for your feedback. Hopefully the plot'll get rolling soon, eh?

There used to be a new chapter here, and then I did compressing/editing and it got folded into other chapters. Hurray.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter six: all that glitters}

A battle, okaay! I liked the way it played out. Not quite the anime call attack/talk for a very long time/"Pokémon! No! but still with some structure there as well. I love how you're not glamourising Silver at all (No Leather Pants for you, har har, tropes), and for that matter, that he's not as good as he thinks he is.

This:

but that was a tactic as ancient as the old government

looks a little odd to me - I'd use "convention" or "tradition" rather than tactic. Beyond that I really would be nitpicking if I were to point out more errors - this is a good chapter and I enjoyed it

 

[Flaze]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter six: all that glitters}

Well I actually think that battle was pretty well done, it really showed off Icarus's talent for murdering things to death. I thought that you had a good handle of the description needed to write a good battle in this chapter and that's actually good, especially since writing battles can be one of the toughest aspects of writing a Pokemon fic. I didn't expect Silver to pull out a Revive after he gave her the money, but I'm glad that you decided to pull out all the stops and not go with that predictable outcome in the end.Things have taken a turn for the worse for Ely (yes I'm calling her Ely cause I gotta call her something) so I'm definitely curious as to how she's gonna get out of there without losing all her hair.

 

[kintsugi]

___________________________________________________________________________​

chapter iv. an eye for an eye​

___________________________________________________________________________​

All I'd ever wanted was to make some money as a trainer and this was where I ended up.

The asshole had revives. I'd seen them in the Goldenrod department store before, but they were always kept locked up in pristine glass cases with laser-triggered alarms and pressure-sensitive plates because they were freaking expensive. Apparently they contained enough raw adrenaline to kill a reasonably healthy adult, but pokémon could ingest them and recover from fainted status within seconds. With most of Silph in shambles after the Saffron base collapsed, the supply had become even more scarce.

And of course the people I was facing had so many that they could give them away to children. Honestly, the smart thing would've just been to call it quits right there and surrender.

{Do not move,} the abra calmly advised us before blasting my murkrow out of the sky with another shockwave.

"Fucker!" I managed to spit. I normally didn't curse like that—my mother would hate it—, but there was the pressing matter of Codename Silver had pulled the jump on me and my pokémon was spasming on the ground, screeching. I moved my hands up to try to force him off of me, lashing out with my feet as I did so—and froze as he pressed the knife a little closer to my throat.

"Bad choice," Silver continued, his breath scarily warm and close on my neck in contrast to the cold metal beside it. I could feel a little blood dripping from the scratch he'd pressed the blade too close to my neck.

My mind went a little dead there, numbed by fear.

I lived in the nicer side of Goldenrod—we didn't have the money to live in the up-scale area and I'd never carried anything worth being mugged over, but I knew to stay out of the crime-ridden areas like the Underground. I'd never thought that I'd find myself in a situation like this. That was for the people in the movies, really, or the idiots like the boy who had tried to challenge the Rockets years ago.

The abra casually floated over to my downed murkrow, who was struggling to recover from the numbing electricity and regain his footing. {Ceaes your struggles or I will continue to shock you,} the abra explained casually.

"Don't touch him!" I shouted. This time, I wasn't able to keep the raw fear out of my voice.

The abra, of course, ignored me and instead released a small pulse of blue electricity from its palm. The shockwave hit the murkrow and enveloped him in sparks that spent spasms down his wingtips, but instead of crying out, the murkrow kept his beak clamped firmly shut and glared up in abject defiance even as the numbing electricity racked his fragile body. He refused, or had lost the strength, to move, even as the shocks became too intense for him and he had to sink to the ground, glaring daggers all the while.

"Calm down," Silver shouted, the noise deafening in my ears.

"Easy for you to say!" I shouted back. "Stay the hell away from us!"

"I just need to remove your murkrow," the heir to Team Rocket was yelling in my ear, struggling with his non-knife hand to get a better grip on my collar. He was saying more, but I couldn't hear him through the blood and fear roaring in my ears.

My world smelled like burned feathers.

"Get out of here!" I cried in frustration to my murkrow. He had to get out. I wasn't going to be Johto's savior—and let's face it, I never would be— but he could go out and find some other, better trainer to overthrow the assholes that called themselves Team Rocket. Or he could get out to live his own life. But my murkrow really did care enough to die for me, and I had no idea why.

"Piii."

Gaia launched herself into the air and latched on to the abra's head, pivoting around to fire off a web of sticky silk aimed at Silver with enough precision to hit him in the face and knocked him away from me, the knife falling from his hand. The abra raised its paws to launch a psychic wave at its newest attacker, but Gaia threw herself up with no small difficulty to clamp down with tiny mandibles on its ears, hard, throwing off its concentration for a moment.

I disentangled myself from Silver and ran over to the murkrow, who was still breathing feebly, although his feathers were charred and had lost their sheen.

It occurred to me then that everything I was and ever would be was inextricably linked to my starter.

Silver managed to peel the webbing off of his face, spluttering indignantly as he freed himself. His abra bucked wildly, trying to dislodge my caterpie, high-pitched keening sounds erupting from its mouth as it did so. "Teleport!" he shouted. "Watch out for the murkrow!"

The abra obliged, and teleported a few feet behind its original position. Lacking a firm base, Gaia fell to the ground, bewildered, only to find the abra looming behind her, bleeding freely from one ear and looking furious.

"Confusion!"

Gaia and I didn't have much time to blink before the abra waved a paw in a pushing motion and threw her into the nearest tree trunk, which she hit with a thud. My feeling of elation quickly turned to dread.

"Confusion." Silver had pulled himself to his feet and was calmly brushing himself off, the strain slipping from his voice.

Gaia collided with the tree again before she could even regain her footing, and the abra floated up to her and casually bashed her into the trunk repeatedly, sending chunks of bark from the ground and dislodging a few berries from the upper branches. The abra had already caught her with its psychic powers, and she wouldn't be fast or strong enough to escape it.

I was too slow. There was nothing we could do.

That inexplicable cold I'd felt the day before returned then. No, it told me. There is always something. I felt a surge of revulsion and then quelled it down. We had to think through this rationally if we wanted to get out.

"Piiii." Gaia, hovering in midair where the abra held her, calmly fixed her opponent with an expression that might have been distaste, if not hatred—then again, she wasn't exactly the most belligerent of pokémon, and her face was primarily eyes, so I couldn't really tell.

{Do not think that you frighten me with idle threats,} the abra said with a sniff of distaste, raising its paw again. {And do not flatter her. The foolish girl will not make you stronger. You make you stronger, and there is no need to give her credit she does not deserve.} The abra tilted its head, studying the caterpie, and then it added, {Your trainer and her murkrow have no chance of escape, and neither will you, should you choose to join them. You should flee while you still have the chance; we will be lenient. You were taken against your will.}

"Pii."

{Ah. I see. If that is your answer, then—}

"String shot. Aim for its head, and then behind it when it goes down. Perforate the tree." The voice that was coming out of my mouth was too cold to be mine, but it wasn't Silver's and it wasn't my murkrow's.

"Piii!" she shrieked back in protest. She had said she was a self-proclaimed pacifist, but we didn't have time for that. That was irrelevant to survival.

"Gaia." Dangerously calm, even in the face of impending doom. I didn't have a choice. We didn't have a choice. "Now."

Silver had uncrossed his arms and was staring at me now with a mixture of shock and horror, as if I'd done something unexpected. His abra, however, still looked at us with pity, and that was something that could be exploited. The psychic began, {You don't have to listen to—}

Gaia cut the abra off by spitting another blob of silk at its head. The abra's entire body snapped backward with the force of the collision, and then it collided into the tree trunk behind it, sliding to the ground. There was a crack as something inside of the trunk shattered. Excellent. It began to get up, but Gaia was already in action. Another chunk of stringy silk erupted from her mouth, this one hard and compact, like a bullet. And another. And another.

And promptly pummeled the trunk of the tree behind the abra, missing it entirely.

{You missed,} the abra said dryly, vaporizing the first string shot attack from its face in a flash of blue. Behind it, the tree was peppered with little bits of webbing, some of them so deep in the trunk that they weren't even visible. Bits of bark were scattered on the ground. {You can't even move enough to adjust your aim to compensate for my new position.} It sounded shocked.

"Confusion."

"Cattt," Gaia remarked, but then tilted her body upward with herculean effort to aim upward through the psychic hold.

{Move out of the way? Why would I—}

Checkmate. "Tether yourself to one of the upper branches," I said curtly. "And brace yourself."

Gaia fired. Unlike the other shots, she maintained a steady string connecting herself to the tree. She was exhausted. It didn't look very strong, but it was good enough. It had to be.

The awareness spread across Silver's face just a fraction too slowly. His brow furrowed, and then his mouth opened to call off the order, but—

The abra moved too fast for all of us. It blasted Gaia back with a pulse of energy, and she flew backwards into the forest, bits of silk trailing behind her as distance ate up the slack—

And the tree went with her.

There was a groan before the trunk pitched inward, the heart nearly blasted in two from the steady barrage of projectile silk it had received. The branches shook as they hit the ground, obscuring the abra from sight. The sharp crack of shattering wood registered in my ears a second too late, and then it stayed there incessantly.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Silver shouted, glancing between me and the tree that covered his abra, struggling to climb through the undergrowth to reach his fallen pokémon.

"Piii," Gaia murmured. I expected pride, but she only looked at me with immense concern.

I caught Silver's movement in the corner of my eye and whirled around as he reached to the ground to pick up his knife where it had fallen. I couldn't let him do that. Alarm flooded through my veins. "Touch the knife and I'll have the murkrow bury his beak in your forehead." With the abra gone, I finally had the upper hand. My voice didn't sound like my own, and there was a steely edge buried in it that I didn't recognize, but when I saw the glint of metal in his hands, my voice only got harder. I'd only seen this in movies, but that didn't mean I knew how to avoid getting stabbed or shot. "Hands in the air. Now."

He froze and slowly raised his hands and interlaced his fingers behind his head with a tired air, as if he'd done this before. I saw him look toward the tree covering his abra again. The knife lay on the ground by his foot, and I wondered if he still had any plans to turn this to his favor. Most likely.

I pointed to the knife. "Slide it over to me." As he moved with one hand to pick up the metal object again, I flinched. "No. Use your foot." I'd read about this part in books, but it was so much scarier in real life. I had to sound like I was willing to kill him, though. I had to sound committed. It wasn't really hard; I could just draw from my feelings five minutes ago.

"Aren't you clever," Silver drawled, but I could see a trace of fear in his eyes that mirrored my own. At least he thought I was serious, and at least I'd foiled part of his plan. When I raised my eyebrows insistently and the murkrow wearily caught on to my plan and ruffled his charred feathers, trying to sound murderous, he rolled his eyes and kicked it towards me.

The object skidded towards me in a flash of silver and hit my foot. I glanced down at it, reluctant to tear my gaze from Silver in case he tried anything, so I left it there. I didn't even know what he'd wanted to do with it, and I didn't want to.

"Kill?" the murkrow asked, sounding curious and fascinated. He seemed to have recovered enough to return to thoughts of death and destruction, but I could still hear the exhaustion creeping into his voice.

"No. Shut up." The murkrow's whimsical squabbling wasn't helping my threatening image, but this whole situation wasn't helping my non-threatening image, either. I wasn't sure which one was worse.

"Maim?" he tried hopefully.

"Hands at your sides," I said, voice suddenly shaking. The invincible feeling had faded as quickly as it had come. My face burned. I motioned with my head toward Silver. "Gaia, tie him up."

My caterpie shot me a confused look but obediently shot another web of silk toward Silver, binding his arms to his torso. She looked at me, apparently sensing my intentions, and let loose a doleful "Catt…" from my shoulder. I ignored her.

I didn't know what to do after this. I didn't want to kill him, for so many reasons. I didn't have the heart, first of all. He was the heir to Team Rocket, second of all, and killing him would be the only thing stupider than what I was doing right now. And, third of all, I didn't have a good weapon and I didn't want the murkrow to have to disembowel someone. Fourth…

I was actually contemplating killing him. Not out of hatred, even though every word that came out of his mouth had only made me dislike him a little more and he'd just tried to slit my throat, but out of… I didn't even know. Survival, really. If he lived, I would be in danger. He would run back to Team Rocket and blab. And he had ordered his abra to kill my murkrow while he held a knife to my neck and…

I shuddered. The most logical response was to make sure that he couldn't come back after me again.

I couldn't believe I was actually considering any of this. "Kneel." I pointed with my foot.

He did.

I wondered how the xatu had died, and why.

And I knew it hadn't been for this.

"Count to five hundred," I snapped. "I'm heading out. Don't move until then." It occurred to me that it would be stupid to let him see where I was going, but there was precisely one road through the forest, and we were both on it. "If I see you following me, I will not hold back." Yes, I definitely would, but he didn't need to know that.

I turned to leave. The murkrow lingered for a moment, clearly said to have his prey removed from him, and I glared back. "You can't have him."

The fifth reason I didn't want to kill Silver really should've been the first one to come to mind. Because I was a normal person who believed that lives shouldn't be taken in vain. The most logical response might've been to kill him, but there was no way in hell that I ever could.

The murkrow fluttered limply onto my backpack, tired even from that small exertion, and I scooped up Gaia in my arms, who, for all of her heroism, seemed exhausted as well.

We were barely walking away from this fight alive. But we were walking, and we were alive.

I didn't turn around, but Silver moved his head so he could see my retreating figure, nervous and afraid, my murkrow squabbling at me in protest, my caterpie barely conscious. "You're just going to leave me?" the red-haired trainer asked in disbelief.

"Maim!" the murkrow suggested again. "Kill!"

"Piii," Gaia whispered mournfully, and although I couldn't understand her, I knew she was fairly morally opposed to my becoming a murderer.

My cheeks burned, but I didn't want to let him see my face. If he did, he would see just how scared I truly was. "Shut up!" I shouted, but there was a hitch in my voice and we could both hear it. "I was going to escort you back to town with my pokémon and help you carry your stupid abra, but if I see you near us, you're a goner." That didn't matter too much, either. He probably had enough revives to wake up his abra in no time, anyway.

I chanced a glance behind me. He was still kneeling in the dirt, pristine clothing splattered in silk rope, but the fire in his eyes had returned. Then he opened his mouth and laughed, mirthlessly, the sound echoing in the empty treetops. "You can't be serious."

Maybe I was. I didn't care. I kept walking.

"The xatu picked wrong, then, if he vested all of his hopes in a stupid, naïve girl who won't even—"

I tuned him out, suddenly caught by thoughts of the tired silver wings, the rheumy eyes, the ancient voice of the xatu that had screwed me over. I hadn't known him for long, but he'd tried his genuine best to help me. And he would never be felt or seen or heard by anyone again, because of—

Not because of Team Rocket. Because of me.

I grabbed Silver's knife from where he'd slid it on the ground and hefted it in my hand. The metal was cool to the touch, and the blade flicked out violently as my fingers curled around the handle. A switchblade. Fairly long, very sharp. The handle was worn with use. I could use this.

"Piii!" my replacement-starter shrieked violently from my arms, while on my back, my real starter cackled maniacally.

I ignored them both and strode towards Silver, the metal of the switchblade pressing hard into my hand and my two pokémon created a cacophony of protest and encouragement. There was true fear in his eyes now, and I stood in front of him, icy calm and composed for once. "I'm a sucker for karma. And that means I should kill you for what you and your friends did to that xatu, let alone all that you did to me."

"But what," he asked, a slight tremor in his voice, and I realized that both of us were trying to hide our fear and failing, "you're just going to threaten me with that and then walk away? Or are you actually going to kill me? What kind of message are you trying to send across, anyway?"

"You know how the saying goes. An eye for an eye." I lashed out with the knife and caught him on the cheek, right beneath the eye. He flinched but didn't turn away, even as blood began welling up and streaking down his cheek.

"Killll!" Of course the murkrow would be angry.

"Piiiii." And of course Gaia wouldn't understand.

But as I remembered her anger and how she'd held it back and managed to defeat the abra without killing it even as it laughed in her face, I knew. She understood quite well. She was trying to get me to be a good person in a world where good people got screwed over and heroes got publicly dismembered.

I'd just maimed a person. My cheeks suddenly felt like they were on fire, and I resisted the urge to vomit. "And then the world goes blind," I finished in a shaking voice before throwing the knife to the ground. "There's your stupid message, and here's your stupid knife. Now you stay the hell away from me."

I took a shaky step back and let the knife fall. It buried itself in the ground, point down, but the thud echoed dimly in my ears. With a shuddering breath, I found myself doing the only thing that seemed logical at the time, the only thing I'd really ever done.

I ran.

___________________________________________________________________________​

previous || next​

 

[Beth Pavell]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter seven: eye for an eye}

Hah! Of all pokémon, in some rise by sin of all stories, Caterpie saves the day. Screw it. I'm buying it. I'm totally buying it.

But being serious for a moment, it's good to see Unnamed's logic melting a bit. Her choices in this chapter aren't entirely logical from a chilly survivalist perspective, and that's good to see. A slightly warmer heart beneath this setting, you might say. I'm wondering whether Silver - and his Abra - will learn a lesson from this experience about arrogance but we'll see.

“Podddd.” And of course Gaia wouldn’t understand.

Did you just try to sneak an evolution past me?

 

[Flaze]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter seven: eye for an eye}

GO GAIA GO!

Or at least that's what I screamed while I was reading that chapter. That Caterpie is so courageous, I actually loved that since Caterpie tend to be treated as just useless Pokemon most of the time, I liked the trick you pulled off with string shot an attack that is also passed off as useless. Overall I think this chapter offered a lot in regards to character development for Unamed since she had to decide whether to kill Silver or not and at the end of the day while it's easier to do so it would also mean that she's basically standing on the same level as TR.

I don't have much else to say aside from the fact that this chapter was just awesome xD so I'll just leave it at that for today.

 

[Legacy]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter seven: eye for an eye}

The prose and voice of the narrator is amazing to read. Graceful and witty while adding the right amount of description to details about the world around us. Also, it's a small detail, but I love the design of your chapter headings with the lines and no-caps titles.

All-in-all, really enjoyed reading so far.

 

[Caitlin]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter seven: eye for an eye}

So, here's my thoughts on the story so far:

Interesting start. I quite like the strange twist of Team Rocket completely owning the place like some sort of Orwellian utopia, I don't think I've ever seen that attempted before. Reminds me of the Mirror Universe in Star Trek which definitely appeals to me, but that's me being nerdy. You've done well describing the setting, as well. The words and tone you've chosen paint a grim, black and white picture in my mind, while the protagonist represents color and hope. My only complaint was in Silver's characterization, at least from the parts I read for the Awards judging; He seemed to lack a lot of depth and originality. Being a bad guy just for the sake of it. Maybe I interpreted him incorrectly, but that's what I saw.

Thumbs up from me.

 

[Midorikawa]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter seven: eye for an eye}

I loved this. It was a unique twist on the journey world and for the most part the characters are unique. The non-stating of the protagonist makes it very interesting and I actually was reading it with them as a guy until I caught hints of them being a girl. Their thoughts are entertaining, and the resisting and plans they make seems very realistic. Icarus is adorable. His personality is unique for a protagonist pokemon, and he is always entertaining, and he provides so much to the plot. The setting is described just enough to give a gloomy feel to the gloomy world, but not too much to where it bogs the story down with description. The only true complaint I have is Silver. He lacks an original personality and while at first I thought he wouldn't be trying to turn her in and stuff, he soon became contradictory to that, and a boring old bad guy that could have just as well have been a grunt.

All in all I really liked it, and feel free to mention me whenever you get the next chapter up.

 

[AetherX]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter seven: eye for an eye}

This is way overdue, sorry about that!

PLOT: So you start by telling us how the story's going to end... in theory. That's the beautiful thing about first person POV, just because the narrator says it, doesn't mean it's exactly true. How much of this depressing summation is exaggeration or speculation, though, and how much is truth? Has this stuff really happened, or is it just "inevitable"? It's an interesting way to begin a story and I think it fits the mood perfectly. I like what you're trying to turn this world into, and you've done a great job of separating it from any existing canon. That said, I'm wondering how much of the little mysteries you've hinted at can be answered by canon.

I'm not a huge fan of stories that are dark for the sake of being dark, but you manage to avoid falling into that trap by adding humor here and there. Even if it is angsty sarcasm humor, I dig it (that's my kind of humor). I also like the way you've added a dystopian feel to it all. All I'm skeptical about is the solar flare thing. I'll be okay with it for a little while, but eventually TR needs to get the electricity back up and running, it only makes sense. I might be overreacting, but I get frustrated when people misinterpret the whole EMP thing. It would fry computers and transformers and stuff, but you can still fix it. The laws of physics (and therefore electricity) remain unchanged.

In all honesty though, the plot hasn't gone far enough for me to really critique it. I mean, stuff has happened and the premise is set, but the main character has yet to be sent upon some kind of quest. There's no real objective yet beyond DON'T DIE. Good stuff so far, though.

CHARACTERS: We haven't actually gotten far enough to really develop characters so there isn't a lot to say. Nameless is believable and relatable, with plenty of depth for how little we've seen of her. The only other character that has really come up is Silver. He's a good antagonist, but so far he's falling into the Ocelot/Viral failure-rival stereotype (dunno if you've played MGS3 or watched Gurren Lagann, but it's a thing that I've noticed). There's nothing really wrong with that since it makes for an effective character, but I kind of want to see something different since the rest of your story is pretty much the definition of something different.

WRITING: I'm going to start with the disclaimer that I usually put at the end: You're an awesome writer. You could continue writing the way you are now and hear no complaints from me. Unfortunately, as a reviewer I feel obligated to be a little more helpful than that.

To start, I like how you're doing first person. You've got a distinctive voice not just in dialogue, but even narration. My only problem with this is that it seems to be interfering with something kind of important: description. I am a huge environmental description evangelist. You have almost no environmental description. This hasn't been that big of a deal so far since none of your scenes have depended on environmental factors, but it might become an issue in the future. See, when you don't describe anything usually, but then describe something that will be important, it's incredibly obvious that it will be important.

For example, say your character Sir Jingles is running away from the hordes of darkness and decides to hide in the attic of an abandoned building. You want your readers to think that he'll be safe, but actually the stairs will collapse as he attempts to climb them so his enemies will find him and his eyes will be eaten by giant beetles.

Scenario #1: You never really describe environmental stuff unless it's important in the story.

Sir Jingles sprinted into the building and looked around. To his right was a set of rotting wooden stairs leading up to the attic. He immediately began to climb them.

Reader's thought process: Hmm author-person never describes stuff unless it's important. Those rotting stairs will probably collapse.

Scenario #2: You never describe anything, even when it is relevant.

Sir Jingles sprinted into the building and looked around. To his right was a set of stairs leading up to the attic. He immediately began to climb them, but suddenly they collapsed! The swarm of evil bugs outside heard the resulting din and ran in to eat his eyeballs.

Reader's thought process: This makes no sense, I imagined the stairs as metal! Author-person is a poopy face.

Scenario #3: You always describe stuff.

Sir Jingles sprinted into the building and looked around. To his right was a set of rotting wooden stairs leading up to the attic. He immediately began to climb them, but suddenly they collapsed! The swarm of evil bugs outside heard the resulting din and ran in to eat his eyeballs.

Reader's thought process: Wow that was so unexpected! Author-person's description is so detailed all the time I didn't see that coming! Author-person is so smart and witty and charming and I'm sure they are also physically attractive!


Bad example, I know, but I hope you get what I'm saying. Another thing, unless Nameless has ADD, I'm not sure what happened to this paragraph:

I lived in the nicer side of Goldenrod—we didn’t have the money to live in the up-scale area, of course, but I knew to stay out of the crime-ridden areas like the Underground. I’d heard rumors, of course, but I’d never thought that I’d find myself in a situation like this. That was for the people in the movies, really, or the idiots like that girl and her butterfree who had tried to challenge the Rockets fifteen years ago and oh my Arceus we were all going to die here, weren’t we.

I know you were going for the whole panicked confusion thing, but why did Nameless bring up her childhood in Goldenrod? I kind of see where you're going, but the connection to having a knife at her throat is never actually made. My main point is that it can be tough juggling voice and good writing, and you do a decent job, but there's always room for improvement.

P.S. Read Pavell's academy article on description for world building it will help.

OVERALL: The real question is... is the Green Lanturn a combination of GL and Aquaman? That would be sweet. ANYWAY, I love the story so far and I can't wait for more!

Review Extravaganza 3/50 ffs I am so behind on this

 

[kintsugi]

Responses!

Spoiler

Hah! Of all pokémon, in some rise by sin of all stories, Caterpie saves the day. Screw it. I'm buying it. I'm totally buying it.

But being serious for a moment, it's good to see Unnamed's logic melting a bit. Her choices in this chapter aren't entirely logical from a chilly survivalist perspective, and that's good to see. A slightly warmer heart beneath this setting, you might say. I'm wondering whether Silver - and his Abra - will learn a lesson from this experience about arrogance but we'll see.

“Podddd.” And of course Gaia wouldn’t understand.

Did you just try to sneak an evolution past me?

Silver's definitely going to get some development in the distant future, but alas, for now he's going to be off doing nefarious unicorn-plots or something until he comes up again in [spoilerland]. But yes, he has development planned, pinky promise.

The bit regarding "Poddd" was a remaining fragment from one of my earlier drafts wherein Gaia evolved during the battle, but I ended up changing that. I thought I caught all of the "Poddds," lol, but it's just a typo.

GO GAIA GO!

Or at least that's what I screamed while I was reading that chapter. That Caterpie is so courageous, I actually loved that since Caterpie tend to be treated as just useless Pokemon most of the time, I liked the trick you pulled off with string shot an attack that is also passed off as useless. Overall I think this chapter offered a lot in regards to character development for Unamed since she had to decide whether to kill Silver or not and at the end of the day while it's easier to do so it would also mean that she's basically standing on the same level as TR.

I don't have much else to say aside from the fact that this chapter was just awesome xD so I'll just leave it at that for today.

Bwahahaha, glad you enjoyed. No spoilers, but Gaia's going to be doing a lot more eventually xD

The prose and voice of the narrator is amazing to read. Graceful and witty while adding the right amount of description to details about the world around us. Also, it's a small detail, but I love the design of your chapter headings with the lines and no-caps titles.

All-in-all, really enjoyed reading so far.

Hi, minor fangirl moment, but when I saw that you reviwed my story two months ago my god I'm so bad at updating regularly I squeed a little. So glad you enjoyed!

So, here's my thoughts on the story so far:

Interesting start. I quite like the strange twist of Team Rocket completely owning the place like some sort of Orwellian utopia, I don't think I've ever seen that attempted before. Reminds me of the Mirror Universe in Star Trek which definitely appeals to me, but that's me being nerdy. You've done well describing the setting, as well. The words and tone you've chosen paint a grim, black and white picture in my mind, while the protagonist represents color and hope. My only complaint was in Silver's characterization, at least from the parts I read for the Awards judging; He seemed to lack a lot of depth and originality. Being a bad guy just for the sake of it. Maybe I interpreted him incorrectly, but that's what I saw.

Thumbs up from me.

I loved this. It was a unique twist on the journey world and for the most part the characters are unique. The non-stating of the protagonist makes it very interesting and I actually was reading it with them as a guy until I caught hints of them being a girl. Their thoughts are entertaining, and the resisting and plans they make seems very realistic. Icarus is adorable. His personality is unique for a protagonist pokemon, and he is always entertaining, and he provides so much to the plot. The setting is described just enough to give a gloomy feel to the gloomy world, but not too much to where it bogs the story down with description. The only true complaint I have is Silver. He lacks an original personality and while at first I thought he wouldn't be trying to turn her in and stuff, he soon became contradictory to that, and a boring old bad guy that could have just as well have been a grunt.

All in all I really liked it, and feel free to mention me whenever you get the next chapter up.

And then I already praised @AetherX; for his gorgeously wonderful review, but I can stand to do it again, and now I want to do a Green Lanturn/Laironman/Crobatman crossover, dammit.
I'm glad you enjoyed so far. I don't follow Star Trek very vigorously/haven't heard of the Mirror Universe, but I definitely agree with you in regards to Silver's characterization--almost by necessity, he's a bit flat here because that's how the narrator sees him: she chooses to villainize him even though his motives really aren't that bad and his biggest crime thus far is being a bit of an ass. My hope is that I can flesh out his and the rest of the antagonists with future encounters, especially as Proty finds out that she's not exactly the best judge of character.

pinky promise, I didn't try to nominate Silver for Antagonist last Awards, but that's a long-dead point by now, heh

___________________________________________________________________________​

interlude i. icarus​

___________________________________________________________________________​

I'd been running for at least three miles before I could feel like my heart wasn't trying to rip its way out of my chest, and at that point it had degraded to my heart actually trying to rip its way out of my chest, which I figured was a side effect of running three miles. I slowed to a halt. Back in cross country, running had been mindless, a good way to get away from the situation without thinking about it, but without the distraction of physical exertion, it was hard to ignore what had just happened.

Last week, I had been a normal kid working two shifts at the Goldenrod Café four blocks from my house, and the most traumatizing thing that really happened was when people didn't tip. I'd learned what I could from the trainer books before I started my journey, but I hadn't planned on making anything of it. I ran for the school's cross country team, and I was pretty average there too. And now, through some cruel twist of fate, the world was ending, and I was running for… a lot of reasons, honestly. I imagined the two apocalypses—my personal one, which involved Team Rocket hunting down me and my murkrow and Gaia and happily slaughtering us all; and the actual one, which involved society slowly grinding to a halt with the power grid down.

But I had to move on from this. We had to survive, and if I let myself get bogged down in the past, there would be no point in trying to make it to the future. Right?

I was a pokémon trainer now. That was another fact, another blip that added to my tiny, personal apocalypse. Besides the murkrow that marked me as a killer, I was being trusted with lives. Living, breathing, actual lives. I'd never really thought about it before. My family had never been able to afford to keep a pet around, and now I was going to try to raise a feral companion that I needed to convince to trust me to the ends of the earth and back.

"Thanks for everything out there," I said to Gaia, wheezing.

"Caaat." She looked up at me with those doleful round eyes, glassy and reflective in the dying sunlight filtering through the trees, and I could almost sense what she was saying anyway.

"I wasn't actually thinking about killing him," I lied.

"Piiii."

I didn't know if that meant she believed me or not.

The murkrow had protested my cowardice for about half a mile and then had fallen silent, talons digging into the strap of my backpack as he closed his eyes and, for once, stopped talking. A pity he'd chosen now to finally shut his beak when I needed his distractions more than ever, and another pity that it took almost being killed to shut him up.

And a third pity that, given that Gaia's means of communication involved saying two syllables with slightly different inflections and my pokédex translator was out of commission. The obnoxious bird that was my starter was the only one who could translate for us, which meant I had no idea what my caterpie was saying. She kept staring at me, though, and I think she could pick up that I was lying. "But thank you for reminding me."

"Cattt." Then, she fell silent, and I decided then that my pokémon took pleasure in talking when I needed to think and thinking when I needed to talk.

Which left me alone with myself, which wasn't comforting in the slightest. The thoughts swirled around like a cocktail in the back of my mind, pounding there like a heartbeat, leaving me more confused than ever. The xatu had given me a murkrow. The xatu was dead. The Rockets were looking for me. They didn't know who I was, but they were closing in. Codename Silver, heir to Team Rocket, had tried to kill me.

And I'd almost killed him in return. Not in the heat of the moment. I'd thought about it. I'd actually considered it.

I'd spent most of my teenage life wondering how people in the comic books could get around to killing people if they had to, and it turned out that, when stressed and feeling threatened, I ended up erring toward the side of murder. Some Crobatman I would ever be.

In hindsight, I'd been undeniably stupid. I'd wanted to lie low. Throwing a temper tantrum, if I could describe it like that, and cutting up a kid's face was idiotic. I didn't even have words to express how stupid I'd acted back there. If I'd wanted to hide, that was by far the worst possible way to do it.

Maybe, said the cold, calculating part of me that I was really, really starting to dislike, I hadn't ever wanted to hide in the first place.

Think of the positives. Think of what I had. I had a sleeping bag and a broken flashlight to make camp. I had a few matches in my bag (I'd packed them 'for emergencies,' when the flashlight wouldn't do or when it got cold), but there was no way I was making a fire with Silver running around in the forest like this.

And that was really all I had.

I threw my pack down by a tree at random. They all looked the same to me, so I really had no idea, but this one seemed solid. When I sank down to sit at its base, I found myself basically surrounded on either side by bushes, which was nice.

It was then, clutching at a caterpie who I'd literally ordered to get thrown into a tree for me, with a murkrow on my back who had tried to slash my throat when we'd first met, standing in the middle of a forest that would, ultimately, offer me no protection against the forces I'd incited, that I realized how everything in my life was falling apart faster than I could put it back together.

I rifled through my pack, already painfully aware of the obvious—I had maybe three cereal bars and some fruit snacks, but I'd mostly been packing with the intention to buy food in Cherrygrove. The outpost towns tended to have better stuff to carry while camping than the department store back in Goldenrod. The survival classes I'd taken before I'd left had given me the theory of scavenging, yes, but now I was going to put it into practice or literally die trying.

I had absolutely no idea when we were going to get there, though, so this measly snack bar might have to last for a while. I unwrapped it slowly.

"Piiiiii."

Damn. "Fine," I sighed, and broke off a piece to toss to her, aware of several conflicting pieces of information: namely, that I had a duty to her as a trainer, and also that I had a duty to my stomach, which was growling in protest.

She inched over to it with a cheerful cry of, "Piiiiiii," and in seconds, it was gone.

I looked down at my hand and realized that the rest was gone as well. Confused for a moment, I looked around, and then a joyful squawk from the branches, accompanied by a shower of crumbs on my head, gave me all the answers I needed.

Stupid bird.

This was the stupid bird that meant I would never live a normal life again. Would my Gift flip dark because of him? I remembered watching a glassblower and his magmar dipping their hands in fire together at a stall in Goldenrod to lift a vase out of a kiln. Shared adaptation from years of working together. They'd both learned to brave the flames. If the murkrow trained together long enough, would we really end up so similar?

I'd already almost killed someone today. Long enough was never going to be long enough.

Even as I tried to settle down in my sleeping back and let my raging thoughts and empty stomach rock me gently to sleep, I noticed that both of my pokémon were still staring at me. What was I supposed to say? I'd told Gaia to basically get herself killed so that we could get out. I'd used her as a glorified counterweight for a homemade trebuchet. There had been a part of my mind running at the time that had seen this as the best possible plan, disregarded her life, and executed it.

I sat back up and looked at the murkrow, who had hopped through the bushes to stand by my arm.

"Why in the world are either of you still here?"

The caterpie looked at me quietly, antennae waving. "Piii."

I looked at the murkrow, eyes narrowed. "Translation?"

He shuffled his wings uncomfortably, pausing to pick at some imaginary speck of dirt in his feathers with his beak. "She says she tell you on her own time." He paused, tilting his head to one side. "I vote we let her."

Was that fear in his eyes? Why would he—

It all clicked at once, and I felt my body freeze in place as the realization struck.

I scared them. I scared them both. I'd yelled at my pokémon, bullied them until they'd done what I'd asked, shouted commands with so much anger in my voice that they'd ignored their own safety and actually listened. It had literally been a day and I'd already gotten to the point where my pokémon were too afraid to tell me how they felt.

How did they see me?

More importantly: what had I done?

I'd been able to distract myself during the day, when I could rely on things like running from the Executives or taking down Silver as diversions rather than facing the truth. But the façade came crashing down there as the realizations came sweeping in all at once. I was sitting alone in a deserted forest, freezing and alone and desperately hoping that no one else would show up, because that meant so much worse. Johto was collapsing around us, and what was left was going to start coming after me because, because—

That was the truth that hurt the most to realize, I think. That somehow, the all-knowing psychic had decided that I was something that hadn't been seen in Johto in years. Something so terrible that we'd taken systematic strides to eradicate it from the face of our country, knowing full well the consequences. The xatu had decided that my starter should be dark.

No, there was more to it than that.

Dylan Tucker was my lab partner in sixth grade physical science. He came to school every day wearing the uniform (khakis and a black polo) and the widest smile I'd ever seen. He was a good-natured kid with sandy-blonde hair, warm eyes, and a brilliant mind that could crack any puzzle you put in front of him. Despite all of that, and despite being in the phase of life where most people were pre-teen shits, he never bragged or pushed people into lockers or did any of that stuff. Simply put, he was a bright kid, and everyone knew it.

When he left for his journey at the age of twelve, he got a chinchou. Bright kid, bright future, bright pokémon. Last I'd heard, his Gift had developed to the point that he could literally light up a room with a snap of his fingers, and his lanturn had all but swept the floor with Pryce. One badge left until the League.

Then there were less obvious things, like Jenna Davis, a mousy, brown-haired girl who kept her nose buried in a book, got a porygon when she was eleven, and ended up strategizing her way to the Semis in the Indio League last year. Or Cole Johnson, whom everyone thought was a perfectly normal (albeit quiet) kid who ended up taking the misdreavus the xatu had given him and literally driving anyone he passed on the street insane with her. Something about how concentrated doses of the thing's song induced hallucinations, but the gist was that the kid was royally messed up in the head, something all of us hadn't picked up on in our twelve years of knowing him. But the xatu had seen through him in five seconds and given him a pokémon that was equally psychotic.

And that left me. I wasn't bright enough to light up someone's day, or calculating enough to sweep through Clair without breaking a sweat, or even cruel enough to peel the wings off of ledyba during gym period. No. The xatu had looked at my past and my future and decided that who I was now, who I would become, was best described by a pokémon that, in flocks, enjoyed dropping small children from large heights to see if they screamed on the way down.

Somehow, the rest of it—Johto's collapse, the Rockets—didn't seem that important to me in comparison.

Two things dawned on me at that moment: first, that I'd forgotten to breathe, and second, Gaia had curled herself firmly in my lap and was nudging insistently at my hand.

"Piiii."

"I don't understand you," I choked out. Holy shit. Was I crying?

"Pi."

"She says you be okay," the bird offered sullenly from his perch.

I shook my head. "It's not going to be okay. It's never going to be okay. How in the world are things supposed to be okay when—"

"Pii."

My caterpie had spent all of her life up until now sheltering under some leaf to avoid getting picked apart by pidgey. She didn't get it. She didn't know what we were up against, what was coming for us, what I… what I was. "Gaia, the xatu marked me and—"

"Pii," she repeated firmly, rearing up to look at me.

In her eyes I saw the same rigid determination that had let her stare down Silver's abra and win. She had seen a superior foe and risen to meet it, and somehow we'd all made it out okay. It had all been okay.

"But—" I began.

"Piii." And this time, the edge slipped into her voice. I knew what she wanted from me. She wanted me to be as brave as she had, or at least to take the courage from her and let it spark some great, big, metaphorical torch in me, and I'd lead us all through this and we'd do great things together but she didn't get it. I wasn't even sixteen; I wasn't ready for this shit. And she and my murkrow and the xatu and even Silver and the Rockets were all expecting me to do these incredible or terrible things, and I was just me and I couldn't do this stuff. I couldn't.

The bird and the bug were both looking at me expectantly.

"Her name is Gaia. And... and your name is Icarus," I said at last, sighing heavily as I tangled my fingers in the murkrow's matted feathers and rested my chin on my knees.

Whatever they'd been expecting from me, it hadn't been that.

"Name mean little," the bird said at last.

He was smart, but he didn't understand everything. I could deal with that. But whether I liked it or not, he was part of my team now.

Silver had seen me.

Silver had seen me do the unthinkable.

Silver had seen me do the unthinkable, and now there was no going back.

No matter what I wanted to pretend, this murkrow and I weren't that different. The xatu wasn't wrong. It would've been easier to abandon the murkrow, to leave him and my so-called fate and this apocalypse far behind me. But I hadn't.

Because if I was going to abandon my real starter to the elements and pretend that Gaia was my pokémon, it'd be like abandoning my actions. It'd be like damning his behavior while tolerating my own, equally shitty decisions. And that wasn't really an option. I couldn't replace him. These were the cards I was given, and if I didn't like my hand, I was going to have to deal with it somehow.

"Your name is Icarus," I repeated, turning my head to gaze at the bird, who had landed back on my shoulder, tiny rivulets of blood caked on his talons from his scuffle with the abra and the pidgey. When the murkrow—my murkrow—cocked his head to one side in confusion, I continued, "And that name means—that name is my promise that I won't abandon you."

That wasn't the start of it. I could feel myself standing on the edge of a cliff, teetering on the edge of destruction. After this, there would be no turning back. No matter what I did now, nothing would be the same.

I paused, weighing my options. There would be no turning back from this. But he hadn't killed the pidgey. He hadn't killed the abra. He hadn't killed Silver. Three times, the so-called harbinger of death and destruction hadn't followed true to his name because I'd asked him nicely to stop.

Maybe the two of us weren't as bad as we thought.

"Your name is Icarus, and I give you this name along with my word that you'll always be my pokémon."

His beady eyes narrowed.

There was a long silence.

"I see." My murkrow tightened his claws into my shoulder. "Very well." He paused again and then, unmistakably, dipped his head into a bow. "Boss."

I rolled over, trying to figure out the most comfortable way to position myself that involved the least amount of knobbly roots in my back. Icarus settled down by my head and tucked his head beneath one wing before emerging to preen his matted feathers. Beside us, Gaia began to make her nest in a pile of leaf litter.

Above, the aurora was still going, flashes of green that threw the stars out of focus, a reminder that this whole apocalypse was still real, was still happening.

And so we settled down for our first night of many.

___________________________________________________________________________​

previous || next​

 

[Legacy]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter eight: a penny for the old guy}

Glad to see this story continued. Wow. Just a very well done chapter, and a joy to read. You are clearly an incredibly talented writer judging by your graceful word usage throughout the prose.

I love the feeling of impending doom that you plant in the back of the reader's mind. The whole power grid failure and unique TR threat are really formidable conflicts for our hero. Really ups the ante and heightens the power of every relevant event that occurs.

The details are really what get me. Phrases like "TR would have my guts for scarves", the man having a "practiced eye," etc. Just the little things that you add to your writing that all adds up to make it a fantastic read.

He only nitpick I'd have is:

Of course. The pokémon center was the center of the town, the metaphorical heart. When there was a crisis, like there was now, the people flocked to it in droves. Like they did now.

Maybe a little redundant there, but like I said this was so good that I'm reduced to nitpicking.

If you couldn't tell, I like this story, and I am very interested to read more.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter eight: a penny for the old guy}

Good, very good. I was wondering how you would tackle other people, and in this chapter you've got a good balance between the inclination to be defensive and basic humanity. Something that a lot of people miss about humans is that in times of crisis we don't usually fall on each other like mad dogs - we reform societies, we have a much greater inclination to help each other out. I get a sense of that in this chapter, so seriously, well done.

Somewhere along the line you've improved with your writing style. Writing from Unnamed's perspective has paid off - there's not that much more description of Cherrygrove Town than in your average run-out-of-the-door journeyfic but for the most part the atmosphere makes up for it. I would counsel not to try and paper over the cracks with atmosphere - if you're going to spend any amount of time in a town then you'll need something more to bring it to life

Laugh out loud moment with the shotgun, you pitched that just right

 

[Flaze]

Re: {some rise by sin} {chapter eight: a penny for the old guy}

I just can't find words to describe how I enjoyed this chapter. While it didn't have the tension and drive that the last few chapters had I thought that it made up with it with its wit, plus it was a good chapter to just relax in a way...not like you can do much relaxing in a fic taking place in a world overrun by an evil organization where there is no electricity.

I have to agree with Pavell, I'm glad you didn't show the world as completely overtaken by people who no longer give a shit about society, frankly I think in that sort of situation you'd have to be a maniac to just give up all your morality just like that, rather I feel most people would be scared, something that was portrayed pretty well here. That being said I liked how you portrayed Bates, the scene with the shotgun was really funny and to see him warmed up to Unnamed was pretty nice.

It's kind of sad she couldn't keep all those things xD it would've made the story a lot quicker, I'm not sure I just think that actually giving her that extra push by letting her have all those extra things would've been interesting, cause in this type of story the protagonist usually ends up carrying practically nothin (as is the case now) plus I just think she deserved a break.

I hope she finds Gaia though, the poor Caterpie better not die or I'll kill you.