TEEN: some rise by sin

[diamondpearl876]

The answer came without preface, and suddenly I felt the weight of the past fifteen minutes landing on me.

I feel bad for the protagonist here. We all have the potential to become something awful and inhumane, and naturally, seeing the truth of that in herself is terrifying.

But I was also smart, smarter than her, smarter than blind rage and the primordial desire to keep living. And most of all, I understood how my allies worked.

I mean, I wouldn't say that the protagonist's the smartest character in all this after some of the decisions she's made thus far in the fic, but... the confidence is something she very much needs in a situation like this. XD I think I'd also disagree about the allies bit. Sure, she knows them more than the enemy, but she doesn't have that much experience under her belt at this point.

{And, honestly, I don’t think you can explain.}

I'd be surprised if any human could. I don't blame the protagonist for her confusion one bit in all this.

Which ideally, would never happen. “I need screens on Iris, the kind you keep using to block his wind blades—”

{Air Slash,} the abra said in a level voice. {And Light Screen.}

They're wasting a ton of time strategizing, not because of the strategizing itself, but because of the random corrective remarks made by Dante and some of the more wittier comments like the one Silver makes. They all could've been killed just in the short time Dante mentions the two attacks above, really.

The gym leader stumbled in response while the ghost within shrieked wildly, but another cannon-like blast of wind sent Icarus spiraling to the ground. “Reeling shadowsss of indignant birdsss.”

I'm enjoying Falkner's random creepy ass dialogue, however. He's totally in a position to spend time saying things like this. XD

“I ssssshould give you the badge for thissss,” the gym leader said quietly, and, true to form, the corpse of Falkner lurched forward and patted his pocket before throwing a tiny lump of metal in my direction. The winged badge skidded to a halt near my feet. “You’ve done sssso well.”

Well, this was a messed up gym battle. Poor Gaia. But the emotions and dialogue were well written here, in my opinion. While the action's been the focal point this chapter, I think the emotions shine through more.

I opened my mouth to answer, prepared to be furious at the bastard that had nearly killed Gaia, prideful over the monster I’d never expected to vanquish, uncaring in the face of what as nothing more than a shell, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “I'm sorry,” I whispered instead. “I don't know.”

See, there's still some good in you, nameless protagonist! This part was well written, too, and again, I feel sorry for her.

“The darkness drops, but now I know,” Silver said from behind my shoulder.

Silver was surprisingly not present much in this chapter... It was kind of awkward when he did talk, because I forgot he was even there anymore. I think more dialogue from him would've slowed things down more, but still. He might've taken a more active role in commanding Dante, thus creating more obstacles in this fight because, I'm sure, the two would've ended up arguing. If anything, I'd consider replacing some of the dialogue with this particular obstacle if your goal was to not make the chapter 100% action-heavy.

 

[Beth Pavell]

I'm afraid I'm a little bit unclear on this--could you elaborate what you mean with the tone stuff? I always love your crit, but I don't quite understand this one.

I suspect, given your response to the old elephant, that that particular comment is a bit redundant now. But anyway, how can I rephrase it ... the tone, or theme, of the story felt disconnected. The initial arc up until about Cherrygrove seems to be quite specifically a "survival" arc, what with TUPpy being forced into trying to think in very chilly, practical terms just in order to get to the next town and avoid arrest. The whole Silver incident backs this up with him being painted very much as the psychopath who's dangerous on about three levels.

Then with the Violet arc - and to an extent with Bates - it's like the theme is "everyone's got problems", and all that business with Silver in Sprout Tower supports that. Read together it looks like you decided on these themes separately and stuck with them, but, for all those reasons I've gone into regarding Silver, they contradicted one another.

Given your point about TUPpy and the first-person viewpoint, this particular criticism might not be all that useful. I suspect I'm probably the pickiest of your readers in this regard - quite probably most people would just say, well, the narrative carries the day anyway so I'm not going to quibble over it. I rather wish I could be more helpful in this, to be honest, but I don't much like using first-person myself because of problems like this. I think perhaps, given the kind of world you've set up, there's room for the idea that TUPpy doesn't have the luxury of this kind of doubt - she either has to learn to be ruthless or she dies, which is not an unrealistically gloomy response for this kind of situation

 

[kintsugi]

I think I'd also disagree about the allies bit. Sure, she knows them more than the enemy, but she doesn't have that much experience under her belt at this point.

Hmmmmm. What I was trying to convey here is that other-Nara really exhibits zero fucks about her allies, and present-Nara understands that, but yeah, these few paragraphs were rushed.

They're wasting a ton of time strategizing, not because of the strategizing itself, but because of the random corrective remarks made by Dante and some of the more wittier comments like the one Silver makes. They all could've been killed just in the short time Dante mentions the two attacks above, really.

I definitely won't call my battle pacing really great, but in this case, I wouldn't say it's entirely Dante's snark: if you're trying to set up a military attack and your ally is like "shoot them with the gun" and you're like "do you mean the pistol or the sniper rifle or the MK-16 or what."
The rest of the comments, though, I'll look into cutting. Probably even this one.

I'm enjoying Falkner's random creepy ass dialogue, however. He's totally in a position to spend time saying things like this. XD

I have nothing to say here, but this comment made me laugh so hard lol.

Silver was surprisingly not present much in this chapter... It was kind of awkward when he did talk, because I forgot he was even there anymore. I think more dialogue from him would've slowed things down more, but still. He might've taken a more active role in commanding Dante, thus creating more obstacles in this fight because, I'm sure, the two would've ended up arguing. If anything, I'd consider replacing some of the dialogue with this particular obstacle if your goal was to not make the chapter 100% action-heavy.

YEAH. I HATED HIM TALKING THERE TOO, which is why I edited that out like... a week ago, haha. I think you may have had an old copy by accident.

Definitely didn't think about the idea of having him shouting conflicting commands--that's a really good idea. Current idea is just that he passes out quietly from bloodloss because I have too many characters juggling right now, but I actually might steal this from you. <3

I suspect, given your response to the old elephant, that that particular comment is a bit redundant now. But anyway, how can I rephrase it ... the tone, or theme, of the story felt disconnected. The initial arc up until about Cherrygrove seems to be quite specifically a "survival" arc, what with TUPpy being forced into trying to think in very chilly, practical terms just in order to get to the next town and avoid arrest. The whole Silver incident backs this up with him being painted very much as the psychopath who's dangerous on about three levels.

Then with the Violet arc - and to an extent with Bates - it's like the theme is "everyone's got problems", and all that business with Silver in Sprout Tower supports that. Read together it looks like you decided on these themes separately and stuck with them, but, for all those reasons I've gone into regarding Silver, they contradicted one another.

Given your point about TUPpy and the first-person viewpoint, this particular criticism might not be all that useful. I suspect I'm probably the pickiest of your readers in this regard - quite probably most people would just say, well, the narrative carries the day anyway so I'm not going to quibble over it. I rather wish I could be more helpful in this, to be honest, but I don't much like using first-person myself because of problems like this. I think perhaps, given the kind of world you've set up, there's room for the idea that TUPpy doesn't have the luxury of this kind of doubt - she either has to learn to be ruthless or she dies, which is not an unrealistically gloomy response for this kind of situation

Hmmm. I guess this is some worldview disagreement, but I do appreciate your commentary on Silver--it shaped a lot of how the interlude turned out, at the very least.

My final note on this--in an ideal possible, I think survival is not mutually exclusive with accepting that everyone has problems. Nara doesn't live in an ideal world, and she's dumb as rocks and optimistic all the same. In this case, she's been called out pretty hard on it, but, yeah, unreliable narrators fuck up writing pretty hard.

 

[diamondpearl876]

YEAH. I HATED HIM TALKING THERE TOO, which is why I edited that out like... a week ago, haha. I think you may have had an old copy by accident.

Definitely didn't think about the idea of having him shouting conflicting commands--that's a really good idea. Current idea is just that he passes out quietly from bloodloss because I have too many characters juggling right now, but I actually might steal this from you. <3

Ah, okay. I tend to copy/paste chapters I need to catch up on in a document to transfer to my Kindle for reading. So I miss edits sometimes.

At any rate, go ahead and steal the idea. XD

 

[Arkadelphiak]

HmMMMMMmmMMMMmmm

Well, it's been a few months, but my thirst for SRBS is as strong as ever. This is personal taste, but when are we gonna get some Team Rocket action? They've been in the background for a LONG time. I feel like they haven't really earned all that monologuing about their evil exploits, so to say. Sure, Momofuku Ando told us that they're evil, but can we plz see some evil in action? We've heard about their exploits, yet we've only gotten "attack Ariana's face" and "Silvery angst." Sorry if that comes off as negative!

Nonetheless, I'm glad to see that the Sprout Tower part is moving onward. I feel like the most recent chapter was a little short compared to all the build-up, but ultimately ended on a solid note. Now, all Princess Leia (#toosoon) needs to do is kick Silver down the stairs, blame it on her evil-insides, and splat, 1/5 Team Rocket members gone. How's that for a plot hole, Ely? And hip-hip-hooray for Gaia!

 

[AetherX]

Awards review time! I know I haven't commented in some time, but I assure you I've been keeping up.

I read through a lot of the fic again to get a handle on the things you've changed. It's definitely better than I remember. Good job on keeping up to date with edits. That's not easy to do, but it results in a much higher quality story. Anyway, my thoughts on the plot have not changed much. There’s a great amount of originality here and the tone is a very interesting one. My main complaint is that so far the plot has not progressed so much as slowly grown more complicated. I suppose in a way that's kind of the same thing, but I'm still shaky on Captain Planet's goals and motivations. The downside of a reliable narrator, I guess. I think you already know how I feel about that.

The characters in general are fine. I’m not sure I understand the choice to keep the protagonist’s background so shrouded in mystery as it would be much appreciated to give her a bit more depth. That's begun to happen more in recent chapters and has been helped along in the edits. I think your strengths manifest primarily in solid portrayals of the characters more so than development or depth. Here's some character specific feedback for the characters that were nominated:

Gaia (more like GAY-a ayy lmao)

This little metapie has a surprising amount of depth for such a simple character. She has a past and reasons for being the way she is. That’s pretty damn good for a Pokémon. A Caterpie caught early on with abandonment issues is a bit of a mixed bag of originality, I suppose. On the development side she's about on par with other Pokemon characters. She’s learned to trust out intrepid protagonist. I suppose. Sort of.

DROP THE Bates

He's a sort of one-off mentor character from what we've seen so far. We see the usual fare of hints at a dark past. Good stuff, but nothing hugely exceptional. His level of trust of Samurai Jack goes up and down. I guess there’s a tiny bit of development, but he barely gets established in the first place before he’s left behind.

He fits some archetypes, but they aren’t the kind you usually see in Pokémon fics. The survival aspect of this fic is what makes it cool, and he's a really interesting archetype to stick in here. I like the impact that he has on Captain Needa.
He forces some development from her, but she’s pretty stubborn in the first place so I’m not sure how much impact it will have in the long run. He’s an enjoyable character overall, mostly because he’s a relatively nice guy in an otherwise hostile setting.

Silverware-s nice clothes

In a first person story with a very self-involved protagonist, it’s honestly hard to derive depth from other characters. Depth exists, but it’s hard to tell what the deal is when the character is purposefully secretive. He brings out some interesting aspects of the main character, which is great. He’s snide, but he’s not as much of an asshole-for-no-reason-whatsoever as his game counterpart. He's developed about as much as Kellyanne Conway has. He goes from attacking her to not attacking her which I guess counts as development.

On to style!

The sarcastic protagonist is a pretty standard choice when it comes to first person narrators and you do it pretty well. It's not the most original thing, but it fits the style and it's certainly entertaining. The prose can get a bit ramble-y when dealing with exposition, but at the same time that exposition is often necessary and rarely uninteresting. Exposition is always a YMMV thing, and this fic is no exception. As a fan of explaining all the things, I like it.

I have mixed feelings on the setting and the way it's portrayed. The post-Magnarok Johto has had a lot of effort put into trying to have it make sense and be cool and original. The effort is helpful, as there are an increasing number of worldbuilding bits that are playing into the story. Again, your edits have helped considerably. The meta-setting is great (that is, Johto as a whole), but I'm not sold on the setting description in a scene. We've been stuck in the same rather boring tower for several chapters now, which doesn't exactly do a good job of highlighting descriptive prose, unfortunately. I suppose it's a symptom of the style (first-person narration in particular), but I think a bit more effort could be put into making the world feel more real.

Overall, still one of my favorite fics in the Workshop. Keep doing the thing you do.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Six months ago I intended to do a proper re-read. Now whatever happened to that.

Actually, since chapters VII and VIII are that different I'm going to talk about them separately now while the memory is still fresh. First of all, according to my notes there are a few cryptic sentences/technical errors: Indigo misspelled in Interlude 1, “perked me attention at lot more than the number of buildings” in VI, and “that's odd. I always differently.” in VII

As far as action's concerned I see you've resisted the temptation to fill it full of exposition, introspection and narration. Bringing in the froslass was a smart idea. By herself Froslass simply plays to your strengths in tightening up what was something of a non-sequitur chapter before. Atlas doesn't quite work in the new version - inevitably the tone is off for the entry of Doug, which I'm not that bothered about. I think his dialogue misses a certain something. Oh, speaking of which, is the chronology of TUPpy's hair right? I seem to recall she hadn't actually dyed it till she left Cherrygrove proper.

I'm uncertain about Froslass' cryptic comments to TUPpy. I can't quite decide whether it distracts from the predatory, albeit creepy nature of the attack. I suppose it may be building to something later, but as of now I'm leaning towards feeling that it doesn't really add much.

I like Bates' pragmatic attitude. It's not often you see humans willing to play kill-or-be-killed in pokémon fanfiction, which is frankly bizarre given how many of them try and portray pokémon as realistic in a red-in-tooth-and-claw sense. Naturally I'm kind of doubtful about his comments on wild pokémon battles in that light, but then he did exclude predation from that, so ... in any case he's a valuable antidote to TUPpy's usual rationalisations.

 

[Misfit Angel]

Here's my judging review. Sorry it took so long.

Plot:

• I like it, I really do. I've seen the "Team Rocket has taken over!" schtick maybe a dozen times, but this is the only story I've found so far that's actually tried to make it more compelling than "they're evil dicks".
• I can't tell if I'm supposed to hate them or love them for what they've done. They've done terrible stuff to get into and cement their power, but they then turned around and made things a lot better than they ever were afterward.

Setting:

• Grim, dark and bleak, with a tinge of hope. I like it.
• One thing that stuck out to me, in the first chapter, was the reference to Jesus and crucifixions. Seemed a little jarring to hear a real world reference in there, but I can see why you made it.
• I really like the idea of the magnetic power grid. Interesting take on how things like that work.
• However, it did feel like the setting wasn't utilized as much as it could have. It's described well enough, but it felt more tell than show and I often found myself lost in literary limbo where I was reading the description but it wasn't forming a picture in my head all that much. Maybe that's a problem on my end.

Characterization:

• Maybe it's a consequence of the first person narrative, but the unnamed protagonist really started to grind my gears after awhile with the seemingly endless internal monologue even in quick, fight or flight situations. In rapid fire situations where I need a response NOW, I do indeed think a lot in that moment but I probably understand only 10% of it. The protagonist here seems to go on essay-length thought binges even in situations where they might need a snappy response.
• That said, I found it very hard to connect with or even pin down who the protagonist was despite knowing their every thought. It took quite a bit of time for the character to warm on me.

Style:

• This is written with a very consistent writing style that doesn't meander too much.
• I don't see much written in the first person, and little of that is done as well as this!
• I'm not the biggest fan of how telepathy is written. The lack of quotation marks around it, substituted with a 'non-standard' character instead, distracts me from when it's actually taking place. I could look the other way if it were italicized or made more obvious that it's not just more description. But this is more of a personal gripe, so... you do you.
• One thing I've noticed, at least in the earlier chapters, is that words and phrases are often repeated much too close to each other. A prime example is 'melted butter' used in sentences back to back.
• However, the amount of description that isn't just fluff in this story is staggering and impressive at the same time!

Technical:
(note: this is probably my weakest section, since I so very often miss easy to spot errors in spelling/wording, bear with me please)

• I haven't noticed any spelling mistakes or inappropriately placed homophones.
• Sentence structure can be a bit run-on-y at times, but it's certainly improved in the later chapters.

Overall:

• I found this story enjoyable, if a little rough around the edges. The setting in particular is my favorite bit. I don't see many people step away from the comfort of established apocalypse settings and try something 'new' in that regard, but that was done well in this case.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Ok, so I'm finally caught up to where I was before I intended to do the re-read - i.e: Chapter seventeen.

In short, much better balance between TUPpy's own issues and the blatant truth of the matter. I can see there's been a lot of editing there - sure, TUPpy still has a habit of thinking of Silver as someone she's wronged, but we don't have to listen to that all the time and she manages to remember as often that Silver is a mercurial thug.

I'm pretty sure previous versions didn't spell out Silver's own lack of choice in being involved in Team Rocket, which does give some genuine shades of grey to his own behaviour. Still quick to forget that whatever he thinks TUPpy is harbouring, she's been given no choice in doing anything since the xatu handed over Icarus. I suppose he can be forgiven - or at least excused - for not trying basic decency as a defence against the dark arts. I couldn't help but think during his interlude (And this isn't a complaint), that he's lucky the Rockets command the fear they do. Bates could have so easily made him disappear.

I still love Chapter ten. Damnit, your Violet City is better than mine

 

[Beth Pavell]

Ok, for the final two chapters that, at long last, bring me up to date.

Technical Accuracy/Style
Two minor typos. I expect your auto-check is to blame for the Faulkner in Seventeen. And in Sixteen, that's antenna, singular.

I'll get to the action in Plot, but I found you overusing the construction "too-x", particularly in Seventeen.

Mind, you, this:

She circled me quickly, and I could feel her piercing blue gaze poring over every inch of my body, scrutinizing. What did she see in my mud-stained jeans, or the tattered, green bomber jacket bates had given me to stave off the cold? Did she notice the dirt beneath my fingernails, or the still-healing scratches from when I’d been slammed into the ground by the froslass, or the way that my face was already starting to grow gaunt because I was trying to split my meager rations among four extra mouths?

Or could she only see the darkness, the kind that was visible to everyone but me, that had marked me for Icarus?

“You’re reading my mind,” I said at last. I felt her touch withdraw hastily, and the questions stopped curling on the edges of my consciousness from where she’d been drawing them to the surface.

Was damn clever, and I wish I'd thought of it

Plot
I'll start with the problems. I think I've said before that action scenes aren't your strong suit, and I think the battle in Seventeen shows this. In short, I found myself getting bored. It reminds me of something I learnt during my roleplaying days, especially as a player in someone else's Pathfinder campaign: don't let the battle become repetitive. If you find it is, then either find a way to bring an ending closer or rewrite the boss as an easier fight. It might well make perfect sense for it to be a sweat and tears matter of attrition, but your players won't thank you for it when they spend an extra hour rolling dice.

I think there's some definite crossover with the pokémon battle narrative. Especially in a battle like this, where everyone's supposed to be on a knife-edge of life and death, it's so easy to lose the tension when the reader starts wondering just when the turning point is supposed to be coming.

That all being said, with the revised, tidied, and generally improved arc I found myself enjoying these chapters a lot more than I had. I can see why you built the tree-drop up as something gastly ghastly in light of the end of this arc, but honestly, it's better this way. It works this way. Actually, the way you treat the background of the apocalypse, with the way people essentially get on with it, etc, is something you can afford to bring forward into the main story. Just show the reader how it is, let them make up their mind about where the dick moves are.

Characters
I'm going to come right out and say it - I love Celebi, and I want to write about her interacting with my characters. I can't fault her. She's a bit like Eostre of American Gods, albeit one that doesn't need to care about people. She puts the whole importance of this story, of TUPpy, the Rockets and everything, into perspective. I love the idea that legendary-fuelled regimes have been set up before and failed. I love that she's the first being to interact with TUPpy who does so in a frankly ordinary way (Ironically, given the plot that leads to it)

Final Thoughts

said the fairy in a voice that sounded too bored for the deity that, legends said, had once directed the trees of Ilex Forest to strangle Team Rocket as they marched on Azalea.

I think I'm going to propose to my kouhai

 

[kintsugi]

responses!

Spoiler

but when are we gonna get some Team Rocket action? They've been in the background for a LONG time. I feel like they haven't really earned all that monologuing about their evil exploits, so to say. Sure, Momofuku Ando told us that they're evil, but can we plz see some evil in action?

azalea
everywhere
azalea

I read through a lot of the fic again to get a handle on the things you've changed. It's definitely better than I remember. Good job on keeping up to date with edits. That's not easy to do, but it results in a much higher quality story.

holy shit someone actually noticed! makes it all worth, tbh <3

My main complaint is that so far the plot has not progressed so much as slowly grown more complicated. I suppose in a way that's kind of the same thing, but I'm still shaky on Captain Planet's goals and motivations.

pinky promise I had the title of this chapter set a long time ago

DROP THE Bates
He's a sort of one-off mentor character from what we've seen so far. We see the usual fare of hints at a dark past. Good stuff, but nothing hugely exceptional. His level of trust of Samurai Jack goes up and down. I guess there’s a tiny bit of development, but he barely gets established in the first place before he’s left behind.

never stop being awesome
OH BUT HE IS COMING BACK.

It's not the most original thing, but it fits the style and it's certainly entertaining. The prose can get a bit ramble-y when dealing with exposition, but at the same time that exposition is often necessary and rarely uninteresting. Exposition is always a YMMV thing, and this fic is no exception. As a fan of explaining all the things, I like it.

I, uh, have read and re-read this and still can't figure out -- is the style something you like, or no?

The meta-setting is great (that is, Johto as a whole), but I'm not sold on the setting description in a scene. We've been stuck in the same rather boring tower for several chapters now, which doesn't exactly do a good job of highlighting descriptive prose, unfortunately. I suppose it's a symptom of the style (first-person narration in particular), but I think a bit more effort could be put into making the world feel more real.

Describing rooms has always been a weakpoint for me, which is unfortunate given how often my characters are indoors. I'll work on this eventually.

Overall, still one of my favorite fics in the Workshop. Keep doing the thing you do.

thx u. this actually means a lot to me

Here's my judging review. Sorry it took so long.

yo holy hell don't apologize for this review; it was amazing and full of so much good advice

I like it, I really do. I've seen the "Team Rocket has taken over!" schtick maybe a dozen times, but this is the only story I've found so far that's actually tried to make it more compelling than "they're evil dicks". I can't tell if I'm supposed to hate them or love them for what they've done. They've done terrible stuff to get into and cement their power, but they then turned around and made things a lot better than they ever were afterward.

Yay! This was one of my frustrations with YA -- dystopias being assholes just for being assholes, when there are so many real world examples of people being assholes while also doing good things .-.

One thing that stuck out to me, in the first chapter, was the reference to Jesus and crucifixions. Seemed a little jarring to hear a real world reference in there, but I can see why you made it.

This is actually a remnant from a much older time when I didn't have the lore fully fleshed-out. I'll probably remove it; on a re-read, I'm not the hugest fan either.

However, it did feel like the setting wasn't utilized as much as it could have. It's described well enough, but it felt more tell than show and I often found myself lost in literary limbo where I was reading the description but it wasn't forming a picture in my head all that much. Maybe that's a problem on my end. / Maybe it's a consequence of the first person narrative, but the unnamed protagonist really started to grind my gears after awhile with the seemingly endless internal monologue even in quick, fight or flight situations. In rapid fire situations where I need a response NOW, I do indeed think a lot in that moment but I probably understand only 10% of it. The protagonist here seems to go on essay-length thought binges even in situations where they might need a snappy response.

I'm not the biggest fan of how telepathy is written. The lack of quotation marks around it, substituted with a 'non-standard' character instead, distracts me from when it's actually taking place. I could look the other way if it were italicized or made more obvious that it's not just more description. But this is more of a personal gripe, so... you do you.

...I think I'm going to keep it this way. If only because I personally can't see italics as telepathy, don't like bold in prose, and I don't know what other conventions are left.

I found this story enjoyable, if a little rough around the edges. The setting in particular is my favorite bit. I don't see many people step away from the comfort of established apocalypse settings and try something 'new' in that regard, but that was done well in this case.

Sorry for getting back to you so late! Thanks for picking this up for judging -- I know it's a bit of a clusterfuck in places, so all of this feedback was really useful for me.

QUOTE="Beth Pavell, post: 6110201, member: 33222"]Six months ago I intended to do a proper re-read. Now whatever happened to that.

holy hell. thanks for keeping up with this

throwing in a general note that I've read the typos you've pointed out + will address them. Faulkner/Falkner is actually hardwired from years of being a high school student in America, and the rest are just me being stupid.

Bringing in the froslass was a smart idea. By herself Froslass simply plays to your strengths in tightening up what was something of a non-sequitur chapter before. Atlas doesn't quite work in the new version - inevitably the tone is off for the entry of Doug, which I'm not that bothered about. I think his dialogue misses a certain something. Oh, speaking of which, is the chronology of TUPpy's hair right? I seem to recall she hadn't actually dyed it till she left Cherrygrove proper.

Eyyy, good to know that having an antagonist during that scene helped tighten everything. you're totally right about the hair thing, though.

I'm uncertain about Froslass' cryptic comments to TUPpy. I can't quite decide whether it distracts from the predatory, albeit creepy nature of the attack. I suppose it may be building to something later, but as of now I'm leaning towards feeling that it doesn't really add much.

very badly-handled foreshadowing

I like Bates' pragmatic attitude. It's not often you see humans willing to play kill-or-be-killed in pokémon fanfiction, which is frankly bizarre given how many of them try and portray pokémon as realistic in a red-in-tooth-and-claw sense. Naturally I'm kind of doubtful about his comments on wild pokémon battles in that light, but then he did exclude predation from that, so ... in any case he's a valuable antidote to TUPpy's usual rationalisations.

hurrah, glad that point worked out as planned too

I'm pretty sure previous versions didn't spell out Silver's own lack of choice in being involved in Team Rocket, which does give some genuine shades of grey to his own behaviour. Still quick to forget that whatever he thinks TUPpy is harbouring, she's been given no choice in doing anything since the xatu handed over Icarus. I suppose he can be forgiven - or at least excused - for not trying basic decency as a defence against the dark arts. I couldn't help but think during his interlude (And this isn't a complaint), that he's lucky the Rockets command the fear they do. Bates could have so easily made him disappear.

I don't keep chronological drafts, so let's just call it that.

The rest of it is kinda a setting issue -- I want to convey that the Rockets purged dark-types so well that, by the time Nara is around, no one remembers what they are outside of hazy specters. But then I also want to imply that there was a really huge reason why such a complete purge was necessary, and it was because they were dangerous and terrifying.

I'll start with the problems. I think I've said before that action scenes aren't your strong suit, and I think the battle in Seventeen shows this. In short, I found myself getting bored. It reminds me of something I learnt during my roleplaying days, especially as a player in someone else's Pathfinder campaign: don't let the battle become repetitive. If you find it is, then either find a way to bring an ending closer or rewrite the boss as an easier fight. It might well make perfect sense for it to be a sweat and tears matter of attrition, but your players won't thank you for it when they spend an extra hour rolling dice.

Yeaaaah, the battle was the part of the chapter I wasn't totally on board with, and I ended up releasing it unpolished because I had no idea how to fix it. OH WELL. live and learn.

I still love Chapter ten. Damnit, your Violet City is better than mine

Was damn clever, and I wish I'd thought of it

I'm going to come right out and say it - I love Celebi, and I want to write about her interacting with my characters. I can't fault her. She's a bit like Eostre of American Gods, albeit one that doesn't need to care about people. She puts the whole importance of this story, of TUPpy, the Rockets and everything, into perspective. I love the idea that legendary-fuelled regimes have been set up before and failed. I love that she's the first being to interact with TUPpy who does so in a frankly ordinary way (Ironically, given the plot that leads to it)

I think I'm going to propose to my kouhai

senpai noticed me :O

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interlude iv. motives​

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rousseau

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{Ma chérie, what is the word you humans use to describe it? Déjà vu?}

From the distance, the Tower almost looked peaceful. The ashen cloud of debris had finally settled, and if I didn’t squint too hard, I couldn’t see that the edges were jagged, sheared off by some incalculable force. But I wasn’t from around here, and the skyline wasn’t burned into my memory, and the fact that Violet’s tallest building was now no higher than the rest didn’t mean much to me, even though I could feel the entire city mourning.

We weren’t dumb enough to get close. The gym and the Tower alike were cordoned off and swarming with Rockets. When we’d staggered to the bottom, Silver muttered something about how I shouldn’t go far, I told him to shut up and get medical attention before he actually bled out, and now I was milling through the streets with Rousseau, trying to lose myself in the crowds and ignore the fact that I could see Dante hovering in the corner of my vision no matter where we went. I sighed and pushed my hands further in my pockets. I’d hoped we could shake them. This wasn’t ideal.

Luckily, Silver could only track one of us at a time. Probably. So my pokémon were hanging low in the forest—I’d told them to stay away, but it wasn’t like Icarus ever listened—and I was stuck with a morose gastly who had no home and a penchant for Kalosian, because he didn’t count as mine anyhow.

“Sure,” I muttered darkly, flipping the hood of my jacket up and barely registering what Rousseau had said. I had been hoping to escape in the chaos, maybe run down and just camp it out in the wilderness near Azalea for a few months, but I had the sinking feeling that Dante wouldn’t let me get far.

His smile still painted firmly on his face, Rousseau said in a quiet voice like it was the punchline of a joke, {You know, ma chérie, I watched you die.}

“You what?”

{You didn’t see it. You were unconscious. Gaia refused to drop a building on Falkner, he seemed to take it a little personally, so he threw you into a wall. You got knocked out then. You might’ve even been dead from that; I forget how fragile your kind can be,} he remarked off-handedly.

“I got up.” I’d never been able to have existential conversations with Brigid, but perhaps all ghosts didn’t have an understanding of life any more. Rousseau had a point: why care about something you could never lose?

{Except instead you got up. You knew how to take on Falkner, you had a plan, and you vanquished him. You lived. Your red-headed friend, too, and he still hasn’t called in the Executives because he’s afraid they’ll find you, when he still owes you his life.}

“Now you’re just being stupid,” I muttered, casting a furtive look over my shoulder to see Dante bobbing behind us, apparently engrossed with a pebble on the ground. “He’s trailing us right now, I promise. Once he’s gotten his leg healed up, they’ll hunt us down, and we’re just standing here doing nothing.”

{I thought maybe I’d just had a nightmare. Maybe I was remembering something from my previous life, and what I was seeing had nothing to do with you. But then I looked at your eyes. You saw something. You had the eyes of a ghost.}

“I’m not possessed,” I lied firmly. But I’d seen the way my eyes had flashed too, before I’d stopped myself, before I’d been able to rewrite it.

{I don’t think you are. Even with what I remember seeing of you.} Rousseau’s leer faltered for a moment, just one, just enough for me to remember that it wasn’t permanently attached to his face. {I saw you twice. Once, you were cold and inhuman, but you were not a ghost. You did not attack out of provocation or boredom or vengeance, as the ghosts do. We need not lash out in self-defense because there is no self to defend. The intent to kill in your eyes was something wholly else. Something wholly human.}

A twisted knot formed at the bottom of my stomach. He wasn’t supposed to remember this. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

{Sometimes I don’t, either. Because you cannot have been in two places at once, and this version of you is a dream. But there’s a moment that every ghost knows, when they remember dying and they can’t quite place how, and then they have this understanding that no matter what happened they’re here now and they’ve just got to make do with it—}

“Rousseau. I’m fine. The Tower was making us all see things.”

{You have the eyes of someone who remembers their own death.} Rousseau floated in front of my path. {Maybe you didn’t see it, but I did,} he said firmly, blank eyes piercing through me. {You died, ma chérie. Your red-headed friend went soon after. The rubble rained down on Violet, countless more perished, and finally the Executives were able to get a teleport in to clean up, but they were too late.}

He was saying it with so much certainty. “What are you saying?” I whispered, hunching my shoulders and waving away a street vendor, who seemed to think we’d taken undue interest in his collection of useless electronics.

{I shouldn’t know this. I shouldn’t remember this.} The gastly should’ve sounded distressed, but he kept his voice perfectly level. {No one else seems aware of it. But I remember feeling the Tower shudder and then flinch, and we were all back where we started, except we weren’t. Déjà vu.}

I was morbidly curious against my will. “You know about the first time we tried?”

{It comes in flashes. You became cold, and then you died.} The gastly sighed, and then he flashed his fangs at me again. {Falkner rained destruction on you, and then the Executives rained destruction on Falkner. I watched. And then I exited the rubble and drifted to the Dragon’s Den because I felt compelled to be there, but I waited out my days in silence. In another world, I have a conversation like this one with the Forest Queen at the heart of the shrine, and it ends when she realizes what I am, what I can do, and she turns me to dust.}

She what—

{I do not pretend to understand the affairs of the Forest Queen. Do you trust her, ma chérie?}

“She saved my life, Rousseau,” I said quietly, unsure of how to place this.

{And I saved yours, and you saved Silver’s, or at least you did so once,} the little gastly shot back with his smile, casting a meaningful glare toward Dante. {But that doesn’t mean he’s blind to what you really are.}

___________________________________________________________________________​

dante

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“So how do we want to handle this?” I said aloud to myself, the ranger station between Violet City and Route 32 looming ahead of me. “I know Silver told me not to go far, but what will you do if I try it?”

The abra pretended not to hear me.

I sighed. “Dante, I know I haven’t exactly been giving you the best examples of it, but I’m not stupid. I know you’re there.”

Nothing. I set my jaw and began walking toward the outpost grimly.

{Ma chérie,} Rousseau began hesitantly, and then more urgently: {He’s—}

With a flash, the abra appeared in front of us, his face contorted into a fierce scowl as he completed the teleportation. {You were told not to go far.}

“And? I’m getting my pokémon and getting the hell out of Violet.” I paused, folding my arms and hoping that Rousseau looked more intimidating than I did. “What are you going to do about it?”

{My master is in your debt, but do not take that privilege lightly.} The air around the abra’s left paw began to shimmer with latent energy.

Gaia darted between us. {We were allies when we had a common enemy,} she said in a firm, even voice.

Rousseau bobbed up and down in affirmation. {I see no reason why that needs to end here.}

Dante batted her aside without a second thought, snarling and turning to Rousseau. {Do not think that your involvement has gone unnoticed, undead. One good performance does not undo what we have seen of the world.}

And that applied to me as well, of course. But— “He’s not wrong, Dante,” I said softly. “We don’t have to be enemies now that we’re back on the ground.”

{Then stop disobeying my master’s commands.}

Last week, I might’ve given him that point. This week: “That’s not how alliances work.” I tried to keep my voice hard, like there was no room for argument, like I wasn’t trying to tell the protégé of a dictator that unilateral chains of command weren’t the right thing for everyday relationships. “It goes both ways.”

{You cannot even forge a simple bond with your starter,} the abra replied with a scoff. {Do not condescend to tell me how to relate to someone.}

“You don’t know a thing about me and Icarus,” I spat back, although in hindsight, it was probably a good thing that he didn’t.

{We know enough. The ghost still clings to you.}

I folded my arms across my chest, feeling my heartbeat in the tips of my ears. Yelling wouldn’t do me any good here. “I don’t want to pick a fight here,” I said, as if Rousseau and Gaia (and me, I guess) could actually take him. “Especially not in front of so many people. But I will, if I have to.”

{Why are you so insistent in being impertinent?} the abra hissed back. I could almost see Silver’s annoyance etched in his face. {Just listen for once.}

“For once?” Maybe I was right from the beginning, and no one had ever refused them, so this was all news. “I let you push me around the Tower because we both thought I was a monster.” I didn’t have to tell them what I’d seen, what I knew: that I actually was a monster. They’d forgotten, and I was never going to let it happen again. “That isn’t the case anymore. I’m just a girl and her bird. Surely you have bigger problems.”

{Just a girl and her bird couldn’t have taken on Falkner,} Dante challenged.

I took another step toward him, anger and adrenaline pushing me further than anything else ever would’ve. “There’s just no winning with you guys. Either I’m a monster because of some circumstantial evidence that you threw together, or I’m dead because I wasn’t strong enough to take out Falkner, or I’m still bad because I managed to scrape a hard-fought win. How many hoops will you make me jump through until you just leave me alone?”

I could lie like this all day. Silver wasn’t around to call me out on it, and even if he had been, there was still the fact that—

{It’s not like that.}

“Then let us go. I’ll stick around outside of Violet until Silver recovers if he really wants to talk, and I’ll be easy enough to find, but stop following us.”

I watched his gaze flick between Gaia and Rousseau and me, between the beauty and the monster and the ghost, between the ones who had saved Silver’s life.

{How can we trust you?}

I folded my arms. This was the problem with psychics. You didn’t know if you’d actually convinced them of something, or if they’d realized a more beneficial path that just happened to look like you were winning. “You trusted me with your lives at the top of the Tower.”

{We don’t trust you with yours.}

“Too bad it was always mine to begin with,” I shot back, and, though every bone in my body screamed against it, I shouldered past him and began walking away from Violet City.

It wasn’t until we’d reached the output that it finally sunk in that he hadn’t tried to stop us.

___________________________________________________________________________​

gaia

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“Don’t idolize me,” I muttered darkly as I pretended to look interested in the plaque outside of the Ruins of Alph. The Unown, it said, were psychics of legend, said to possess enormous power and the ability to seal away knowledge of the future.

Yeah. There was no way in hell I was going inside of that exhibit.

{I don’t,} said my butterfree, leaving me wondering just how much she knew. {We are only mortal, after all.} She perched serenely on my head, flapping her wings a little to keep her weight from crushing my neck, and it was only then that I realized I would never hold her in my arms again. {You make your mistakes, as do I. But in the end, in the dark, we both protect each other. That is what our team does.}

She didn’t remember how the girl had callously commanded Dante to fry her just to delay my death by a few seconds. Of course she wouldn’t. But I could. “You aren’t mad at me?”

Gaia paused, and I felt her sink deeper onto me as her wingbeats slowed. {Why would I be?}

“Falkner wasn't wrong. I captured you just to save my own skin.”

{Perhaps.}

“It wasn’t for you.” No more lies. Not to my not-starter.

{I know.}

“I almost got you killed. Many times.”

{True.}

“Then—”

{You lied to me. You hurt me. But that does not mean for a moment that I loved you any less.}

I hadn’t cried after Silver, or over Bates, or with Falkner. I’d grit my teeth through the froslass and turned my chin up to the apocalypse. But hearing Gaia tell me something as simple as that hit like a punch in the gut. “I don’t understand,” I whispered thickly.

{For a long time, I didn’t either.}

Her weight sank heavily into my shoulders, and I felt her wings brush against me as she flared them to steady herself.

{There’s an interesting quirk in the biology of my species,} Gaia mused. {Only butterfree are capable of producing offspring. The irony, of course, is that very few of the young grow strong enough to reach adulthood. It is as the ghost in the Tower said—our weakness makes it so that many of us end up abandoned before we can grow strong.} Had her voice always been this somber, or was that a byproduct of evolution? {But now that I have reached this form, I find that I already have a family to look out for, and I will do whatever it takes to protect them.}

My knuckles whitened on the edge of the brass plaque of the exhibit, obscuring the raised text beneath. “I will never deserve you.”

{Sometimes,} the butterfree said serenely, {we are given things we do not deserve, and sometimes we deserve things we are not given. That is the way of the world.}

I could feel the docent’s eyes fixated on me—after all, who took their butterfree to a museum for a nice chat on the same day that a national monument collapsed for unknown reasons? It was time to leave; knowing me, the longer we stayed, the more likely it was that a swarm of the Unown would appear and somehow ruin things even more. “But still.”

{I am quite glad to have finally found you, trainer, despite it all. Maybe it is more accurate to say that we do not deserve each other.}

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iris

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In the grasslands, with just the sentret and the houndour, things were different.

{So why can you make fire?}

Atlas tilted his head to one side, brown eyes going wide and unfocused in confusion. {What do you mean?}

Iris’s tail flicked in annoyance as she struggled to remain patient. {In my clan, those who can create fire are considered the best of warriors. The elite. They are the ones who were gifted the power of light and warmth, and they receive the mantle of being our greatest protectors. There is no higher honor.}

Atlas, who had been happily rubbing the coal-black fur of his back into the grass, looked up blankly.

{Did you hear anything I just said or did you stop paying attention three words in?}

The houndour whined guiltily and refused to meet her eyes.

Iris threw her paws into the air in frustration. {This is what I mean!} she shouted, claws sheathing and unsheathing involuntarily even as Atlas cowered away from her. {I’ve been training day and night for as long as I can remember trying to be good enough, and I’ve always told myself that it’s okay, only the greatest of warriors can possibly tame this raw force of nature, that I’ll get it if I just keep working harder, getting stronger, becoming better. And, and, and…} She had to stop talking for a moment, shallow breaths consuming her words. Half a moment more, and the sentret composed herself, a frigid sort of anger slipping into her voice. {And then whatever gods there are hand me you and the girl, and everything I thought I knew gets turned on its head. And she serves the Forest Queen, as do I, and I was commanded to trust her, so I shall obey. She took my clan from me, but you… you took my future. I will never be her elite.}

Atlas’s tail stopped thumping. {Think of happy thoughts.}

{Do what.} In response, the sentret’s voice dropped into a dangerously low octave.

{I think of things that make me happy, like unexpected snacks or a funny smell beneath a tree or someone like the tall old man from the forest finding me and saying hello, i am very glad to meet you and protect you and the Master from the nasty ice monster. These are things that are happy. These are things that are to be protected. These are the reasons I can make fire.} Atlas inched back on his haunches and pointed his nose into the sky. He paused for a moment. {I hold these thoughts inside of me, and then I am filled with warmth.} He snorted, and a small ember escaped his lips, the smoke curling around his nostrils. {And this is how I make the flame.}

Iris deflated.

{But—} she began in a small voice.

Atlas nudged her sharply with his wet nose. {There is no doubt in fire,} he said, his voice surprisingly firm. {I must be absolutely sure that what I want to protect is something that must be protected by me, or else there will be no spark.}

The sentret took a step back, disgusted at first by the hondour’s intrusion of her space, but she did not retreat any further. Her left paw curled into a tight fist. She glared firmly at it, the intensity in her brown eyes so brilliant I was certain it would ignite instantly.

The moments ticked by. Nothing happened.

The houndour’s ears flicked back. {What was your thought?}

Iris turned away, panting heavily, but she glared straight at me. {My real clan,} she said curtly, and then leapt away into the underbrush, leaving me and Rousseau hiding behind the tree and feeling like we had trespassed on something precious.

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icarus

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“Badge, bitch!”

“Excuse me?”

Icarus cackled gleefully before a disc of metal about the size of my thumb hit me in the face and he repeated his exclamation.

“Why would you do that?” I asked, fishing around in the folds of my jacket to see what he’d thrown. When I turned the metal over, I couldn’t help but freeze. “Where did you get this?” In my hands was an honest-to-gods Zephyr Badge. I could recognize the wing-shaped insignia stamped into the metal, and I could practically feel the faint power humming off of it.

“Dead-man threw before throwing Gaia,” Icarus said, clacking his beak and then snatching the badge out of my hands again. “Shiny.” He clamped down on the badge as if experimenting with the feel of the metal in his beak. “We keep?”

“Don’t do that,” I snapped, grabbing the badge back despite Icarus’s protests. “That’s mine. Boss’s. Don’t touch.”

Like Gaia’s evolution, I felt like this was supposed to be one of those momentous times. I’d gotten my first badge against incredible odds.

But all I could think about was how this badge had been given out by a man who had genuinely cared about the people around him. Despite whatever people said about the Rockets and their peons, Falkner had taken it upon himself to test the mettle of fledgling trainers and see if they were ready to leave the nest. This was a token that was meant to be earned with respect, not one something to be thrown by a spiteful ghost wearing the husk of a man.

“Boss sad,” Icarus said astutely.

“Yes, Ic,” I murmured, running my fingers through his silky feathers while turning the badge over in my other hand. “Boss is sad.”

“Why?” My murkrow tilted his head to one side, making half an effort to peck the badge out of my hands again before stopping. “We win.”

If I showed him weakness, how would he react? The textbooks had said that predators like these weren’t to be trusted; to train them correctly, you commanded from the top and never saw them as equals. Anything less was an invitation for a new alpha. But the textbooks had also said so many things that were wrong about us so far—“Boss didn’t like winning this one,” I said.

“Gaia was fine,” the bird said, a strange fierceness in his voice.

“Boss wanted to make sure everyone in the Tower was fine.”

“Everyone important fine, too.”

Maybe he truly only saw things in black and white, just like the world only saw him in light and dark. Maybe he wouldn’t understand what it meant to win and feel bad, because the fight was all he’d ever known. Maybe he needed a team who was more ready than we were. “Boss wanted to save Falkner.”

“Falkner dead long ago. Ghost bragged. Boss never had time.”

Or maybe he was smarter than I was. “Boss wanted to save Falkner anyway.”

“Boss looks after murder. Boss cannot save everyone.”

“Ic, that’s not how that works. That’s not how I work.” I leaned against the tree and sighed, turning the badge over in my fingers again. I would never be worthy of this; would never be flying; would always be dark. But I was still me. “I will never turn my back on people who need me.”

“Boss cannot save everyone.”

“Ic—”

My murkrow flapped in front of my face and then landed on my shoulders, plucking the badge out of my hand. “Bystander died. Is sad. Boss cannot save everyone. Is sad. Everyone will not save Boss. Is sad. But sad not your fault.”

I hadn’t expected any of this. Not the apocalypse, or the Dark-ness, or the Rockets or the or the frosslass or the Gym Leader or anything else, but above all I hadn’t expected my pokémon to look after me. Not my starters, not like this, not when I was still learning what it meant to depend on another.

Icarus nudged his head reassuringly against my open palm. “Boss sad,” he said for the second time, and for the second time that day, I let myself cry.

“No, Ic. Not quite.”

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atlas

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“Who’s a good boy? Who’s a big, strong boy who totally showed that thing who’s boss?”

Atlas was beside himself with glee, twisting himself into frantic knots on his back as I rubbed his belly. It was hard to believe that this was the same pokémon that had nearly burned down Sprout Tower yesterday, but—

The houndour stopped for a moment and cocked his head upward. One ear flopped comedically onto the ground. {Hello!} he greeted cheerfully, his stumpy tail still tracing out a substantial arc on the grass.

“Ah. It’s you.” I tried to think about the least awkward form of greeting and came up with nothing. “I’m, uh, glad to see that you’re okay.”

Silver tore his gaze away from Atlas to look at me and ask incredulously, “You give belly rubs to a houndour? Where even did you find one of those?”

“We nearly got killed by a froslass.” I paused. “He’s mine, and I totally have him under control.” Best not to say anything more specific in case it could be interpreted as a lie. Silver had adopted that tone of voice that suggested that I’d said something horrible again, so I tried to change the subject. “Um. Are houndour rare or something?”

{They’re dark-types,} Dante said, while his trainer struggled to comprehend my idiocy. I figured this must be a pretty common occurrence for them by now.

“No, he’s a fire-type.” I laughed nervously, waiting for someone else to get in on the joke, but no one did. “I’ve literally watched him breathe fire for so long now. You can’t fool me.”

“Your murkrow is a flying-type and a dark-type. Your metapod evolved yesterday, and now she’s a bug-type and a flying-type,” Silver said with exaggerated patience. “Surely the idea of having two types isn’t foreign to you.”

Ah. Well, shit. “I mean, he never did anything dark. He’s, uh, really adorable, actually.” If I could convince him to stop chewing on my shoelaces at night, he’d make an excellent pillow. He also treated my every move with constant and unadulterated admiration, which was something I’d never really had before. “I caught him so he could light fires.”

“You do know that when he evolves into a houndoom, his bites could literally cause never-healing burning sensations that have been described as hellfire.”

Atlas seemed to have finally picked up that we were talking about him, and I heard him whine a little and nudge his head back under his head so I would keep petting him. {I love you!} he supplemented unhelpfully.

I filed that information away for later. I’d let him teeth a little on my fingers, but there was no way in hell that was going to continue in the future, then. “I didn’t know that, no.” Pause. I cringed a little in advance for what I was going to say next, and I asked sheepishly: “He evolves into a houndoom? I read about those in the books. They aren’t very friendly, are they?”

Silver threw his hands into the air out of exasperation. “How can you not tell that houndour evolves into houndoom? How did you even make it this far?”

The conversation had gone on quite a while since he’d last insulted my intelligence, so I figured it was a fair enough jab, but I wasn’t going to let him keep verbally beating me up like this. “Does staryu evolve into staraptor? Does crobat evolve into croagunk? I mean, shit. What about torchic, tornadus, torkoal, and torterra? Only two of those things are even remotely biologically similar in the sense that they sort of have shells, and one breathes fire and the other makes mountains. One is a flightless bird and the other is the literal epitome of flight. Pokémon Anatomy was literally my worst class in high school, I feel like they were named by fifty different people with different naming schemes, and the dark-types aren’t even in most textbooks anymore.” I glanced at Gaia for support and got nothing. “I was freezing, and this adorable, fire-starting puppy literally lands in my lap and wanted to play.”

Silver only stared. “We need to talk.”

“About what?” I asked, raising my hands defensively. Hadn’t I done enough to prove to him that I wasn’t a destructive little shit? “Oh, sorry, is this about how Dante’s been keeping tabs on us ever since we reached the bottom of the Tower, how we destroyed Sprout Tower, or how I saved everyone’s life and I’m still being treated like a criminal to you guys?”

“Not here,” he said, looking around as if the trees had ears. “There are too many people around. Meet me on the bridge in three hours.” He hunched his shoulders and limped away, favoring his left leg.

___________________________________________________________________________​

silver

___________________________________________________________________________​

Against my better judgment, I went anyway.

I didn’t like it. At all. It wasn’t until I was on the bridge when I realized how stupid I was for ever showing up, and I realized this might actually be this mistake that finally cost me my life.

I could try to slip under the guardrails of the bridge and plummet away, hoping that, at this distance, the water would only leave me with a few broken bones instead of flattening me. I couldn’t fight without any pokémon. Running didn’t even begin to qualify as an option, given how slow I was and how fast Dante could be, and—

“I didn’t think you’d actually come out here.” Silver said, in a tone that seemed to say I didn’t think you’d be that stupid rather than I didn’t think you’d be this honorable.

“Yeah, well. Some people never learn.”

He didn’t take the opportunity to insult me, for once. Maybe curiosity wouldn’t kill the kadabra.

“So.” Silver sighed and ran a hand through his red hair, distracted. “In the Tower. On your floor.” He paused for a long moment, but I didn’t break the silence. “And everywhere else, really. I did some awful things to you.” Another pause. “And I suppose forcing you up the Tower was hardly fair either, even given the circumstances.”

He paused again, and I figured that this was my turn in the conversation to say something sappy or cheerful about how it all worked out in the end and we came out stronger because of it, but—

No. He wasn’t wrong at all. He’d done some terrible things to get us to the top, and he’d actually hurt me most of all. I hadn’t had much time to think about it in the heat of the moment, but now that we were sitting on the bridge of Route 32, legs trailing above the waters, I finally had the time to realize that he was right. I hadn’t exactly been the bastion of good behavior either, and his actions would’ve made a lot more sense if I’d actually been a ghost, but that wasn’t an excuse. “Yeah,” I said dryly. “Hardly. That’s a start.” I absent-mindedly wondered if dropping into the river was even an option, or if Dante would just snag me with a Psychic before I made it ten feet. “You’re kind of a dick, you know?”

He pursed his lips. “I just think we got off on the wrong foot, that’s all. I’m sorry.” He said it with the forced, choked air of a child.

Before the Tower, I might’ve let him get away with saying that. I might’ve felt bad for someone who looked like they were apologizing for the first time in their life. I might’ve backed down and admitted that we’d both done some stupid things to get to this point, but I was still high on the adrenaline. I’d taken down an undead gym leader. I’d travelled through time. Compared to this, Silver was child’s play. “The very first thing that you did when you saw me was try to throw Icarus into a tree.” I narrowed my eyes, trying to gauge the distance between us and the river. At this distance, it wouldn’t quite feel like concrete, but it definitely wouldn’t be pleasant. Worth?

He raised one eyebrow. “Actually, the very first thing I did when I saw you was watch you command Icarus to attack Ariana.”

My response was a little slowed by the realization that Dante could do line-of-sight teleportation, and there wasn’t a good way to obscure his vision, jump off the bridge, and land safely before he got to me. “Ariana, one of the Executives of Team Rocket, who—”

“—was unarmed and didn’t have a pokémon available to defend herself. You knew the consequences.”

This time, I raised an eyebrow, while wondering how many broken limbs I could get away with if I needed to swim to safety directly afterward.

“Okay,” Silver amended hastily. “She didn’t have a pokémon available to defend herself, but she was definitely armed, and the consequences might’ve been a little unclear.”

“She was pointing a gun at me.” The answer to the ‘broken limbs’ question was somewhere between ‘zero’ and ‘the number I’d get by jumping off a bridge.’ I sighed, leaning back on my arms and gazing upward. It was honestly a nice day outside, too nice for conversations like this. The aurora was almost invisible in the bright, noonday sky. It was almost possible to pretend that the world wasn’t ending. Almost. “What was I supposed to do, Silver? Let them take me into custody?” If this was an actual trap, there were probably Rockets on either end of the bridge and in the river already, so I’d lost my chance to run several hours ago.

No, I’d never had a chance to begin with. I could see that now.

“You aren’t running now,” Silver said. “Or should I expect Icarus to attack me out of nowhere while you make a daring getaway?”

“I’m not stupid. I know Dante’s range. He would incapacitate me before I get to my feet, and even if I did, you can outrun me at this distance,” I said listlessly. There was no fire in my response because there was no room for it. “Assuming I’d survive my next best option, jumping into the river, Dante would probably stop me with a Psychic before I got too far. Even if the fall didn’t kill me, he could Teleport to the bottom and snag me back before I managed to drift away.”

My response was too fast for me to pass it off as a joke. Silver looked at me curiously. “Have you actually been considering that?”

“It may have crossed my mind once.” Saying it out loud, when no ambush had occurred, did make me feel a little stupid, but not that much. There was still time. “Or twice.” I shifted my weight. “Maybe a lot more than that.” This was why I was no good at talking to lie-detectors.

The horrified look on Silver’s face told me more than enough. “Do we really scare you that much? We don’t murder teenagers.”

My temper flared up. The one thing I’d never been able to understand was how naïve he was. “You execute your criminals on public television. I don’t know if I’ve legally done anything wrong outside of the Ariana incident, but I’m sure that’s more than enough,” I muttered. “You bragged about how Team Rocket shot the Xatu for just giving me a murkrow. What would you do to me for earning one?” I sighed, wondering if he could look past me long enough to see the dark bags under my eyes, or the way I hadn’t been able to hold my shoulders upright for a week and a half now.

Or if he knew that I could see the same reflected back in him. We’d started off afraid of each other, and that had made us unable to understand. And then things had escalated, until I was shouting his greatest fear to him at the top of a ghost-infested tower, and he was forcibly unleashing whatever hidden dark side lurked within me in the name of keeping us all alive, and we were both justifying our awful actions with even more awful reasons.

“When you asked me what was going to happen after the Tower, I told you it depended on what I found at the top,” Silver said at last, sighing heavily.

“And what did you find?” I didn’t look back at him. Instead, I kept my gaze trained skyward, where I could see the blotchy outline of Icarus wheeling back and forth, his silhouette barely visible against the sun. If it came to it… I wanted my last thoughts to be of the sky. Of watching Icarus and the rest of my pokémon escaping without me to pull them down.

Silver’s voice was strange. “Why did you bother saving me?”

So that was really it. That was why he hadn’t done anything yet.

In his eyes, I should’ve left him up there. His blood would’ve been on Falkner’s hands, not mine. The only person who knew who I was, the person who was currently so terrifying that I was debating jumping into a river rather than letting him arrest me, would’ve been neatly tucked away, a forgotten corpse lost in a random act of tragedy. He’d given me a chance to escape, and I hadn’t taken it, and now the fallout was probably going to kill me, and for the life of him he couldn’t understand why.

Remorse for dropping a tree on his pokémon? Pre-meditated attempt at forcing him to owe me? Ruse so I could gain his trust?

“It was the right thing to do,” I said firmly, closing my eyes, but I could still sense his curious gaze trained on me. I sighed and looked at him for the first time in our entire conversation. His expression was mixed between surprise and suspicion, but most of all, he looked tired. “Icarus and I aren’t evil,” I said, my voice hard. “We want to stay alive, and that’s it, but don’t we all?”

He didn’t mention the fact that most people didn’t have a mysterious dark side that resorted to extreme levels of violence when threatened. Maybe my dramatic, vague statements had been enough to distract him, or my actions at the top had been ‘enough’, somehow. Maybe he didn’t want to acknowledge what I could do when pushed too far. Maybe he didn’t want to acknowledge how far he’d pushed me.

Instead, he said, “Did you recognize the man you saw on my floor?”

I didn’t answer him. What he hadn’t realized, and what I hadn’t considered until now, when the dust finally settled, was that what I thought I’d seen in his room—an illusion of myself—was actually me, except from the then-future. Yet somehow my guess at his fear, completely founded on falsehoods, had still been right enough for him to recognize it.

Maybe there was a something with this future-telling business after all.

“Executive Archer is the first person who I realized was unrepentantly evil,” Silver said when I didn’t say anything else. “Not in the sense that he goes out of his way to cause harm to anyone, but because he never goes out of his way to prevent it. If he marks an enemy, they will be destroyed. He does not see sides because the only side that matters is his own. He has no sense of collateral. He has no understanding that anything else in the world matters but his goals. He is well aware of this deficiency, and still he stays the course. And, most frightening of all, he has the skills, charisma, and power to capitalize upon this.”

I halfway guessed at what he was trying to say: I wasn’t a threat. I lacked skill, charisma, and power in such great amounts that it was actually hard to tell what I was missing the most of. I certainly wasn’t the fear that kept him up at night. “And I don’t.”

Silver’s response was immediate. “Not at all.”

I shrugged nonchalantly. He wasn’t wrong. “Well, at least you’re honest.”

“One of us has to be.” He stood up, adjusting the sleeves of his jacket without meeting my eye. “Dante and I are heading west, back to HQ in Goldenrod. Go wherever you want. If you keep the houndour, make sure you keep him hidden. Your murkrow, too. Keep your head down, and I think things will blow over in a few weeks. Team Rocket has bigger problems than a girl and her bird. I, for one, won’t tell them what you look like or where you’re going.” He ran a hand through his hair and then looked back at me with the ghost of a smile on his lips. “I doubt you and I will cross paths again, but if we do, let’s just say that I owe you one.”

The questions must’ve been written on my face, because Silver sighed heavily and picked the easiest one for him to answer: “What I fear most of all is that one day, I’ll walk into my father’s office and see Archer there instead of an empty chair. Because that’ll mean that my father has failed. That’ll mean that our organization has failed. That’ll mean that I failed to protect Johto from a monster that we let grow in our backyard until it was too powerful to put down.”

That night, in the river that I hadn’t had to jump into, I dyed my hair red.

___________________________________________________________________________​

motives: final

___________________________________________________________________________​

“What did they end up saying about the Tower?”

“Destroyed, mostly.

“I’d rather not make a habit out of destroying national landmarks.”

“About that…”

“At least the Bellsprout stands tall. It’s seen worse than this and I think it still will, yet.”

“It’s dying, Silver. It was dying before you arrived.”

“…you aren’t from the Violet Sector, are you? You aren’t from Team Rocket at all. What are you trying to do here?”

“Trust me. I know these kinds of things.”

“If you’re after me, you’re woefully unprepared. My Gift is lie-detection. Stop screwing around. Who are you?”

“Okay, fine, you know what? I’ll bite. No, it’s really not. You tell people that so they’ll tell you the truth, but that’s just a bluff. ”

“That’s a stretch.”

“And that’s a lie. I don’t need a Gift to figure that one out. At the top of the Tower, that girl told you a massive lie and you didn’t doubt her for an instant. And she’s managed to get away with a lot of smaller things and you haven’t even blinked. But you don’t like to think of what people don’t do; you prefer to see what they actually do, so let’s look at that instead. You took an Air Slash to the leg yesterday and you’re walking just fine now. That girl cut up your face back on the way to Cherrygrove, and the cut was gone before you rolled into town the next day. Your abra—”

“That’s enough.” Pause. “Who are you?”

“You know already. The center cannot hold.”

Pause. “Holy shit, you—”

___________________________________________________________________________
​

prev || next​

 

[Beth Pavell]

senpai noticed me :O

Cute of you to play along

Technical Accuracy/Style
Just one comment on this one - old habits die hard eh?

Well, two. Not so sure about "gossamer" for butterfly wings. Butterfly wings are quite substantial as far as insect wings go - yes, alright, assuming butterfree have similar wings to butterflies - so, to me at least, "gossamer" seems a little out of place.

Story/Characters
In this case they might as well be one and the same, so I'm going to fold them together. Well, I like this new TUPpy. As much because I like to see arrogant self-centred bullies get knocked down a couple of pegs. I mean, this is the funny thing, fundamentally TUPp's no brighter or stronger than she was the moment she opened the door of Sprout Tower. The difference is she's much less prepared to take a verbal beating even if she can't do anything about the abra.

it occurs to me that Silver, in his own way, is as dumb as TUPpy. He's had a slightly better education and is a better trainer in, probably, every aspect, but he doesn't really think things through and in terms of emotional intelligence there are brighter eight year olds.

He does not see sides because the only side that matters is his own. He has no sense of collateral. He has no understanding that anything else in the world matters but his goals.

Yes, good start on the empathy thing there, boy. Now take what you've just said and apply it to the situation at hand.

Final Thoughts

{Sometimes,} the butterfree said serenely, {we are given things we do not deserve, and sometimes we deserve things we are not given. That is the way of the world.}

"Many that lie deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?"

Gaia is the brightest character in this story

 

[Arkadelphiak]

Alrighty, let me start with the technicalities. Firstly, ctrl+f "Faulkner" and you'll see all the spots where you typed "Faulkner" instead of Falkner, the ripperoni'd Gym Leader. You may have already corrected them, but that's a reminder just in case.

The gastly sighed, and then he flashed his fangs at me again. {Falkner rained destruction on you, and then the Admins rained destruction on Falkner.

This may be a matter of style (and I may have commented on this before, fml) but the Rocket quartet is known as the Executives (unless you specifically want to call them Admins). Either works!

___________________________________________________________________________​

dante

___________________________________________________________________________​

I felt like these breaks, while structurally useful, had confusing titles. Han Solo was ultimately the main focus (excluding the Atlas/Iris scene and the Silver/Un-undead Falkner[???] scene at the end. And did you mean to put the lines on the right margin, or is that {edgy srbs style}?

With a flash, the abra appeared in front of us, his face contorted into a fierce scowl as he completed the teleportation. {You were told not to go far.}

Okay, I just wanted to mention that aggressive teleportation is such a wonderful thing. It makes a not-so-strong-'mon like Dante into a surprisingly dexterous foe.

I tried to keep my voice hard, like there was no room for argument, like I wasn’t trying to tell the protégé of a dictator that unilateral chains of command weren’t the right thing for everyday relationships.

I lol'd. Was Giovanni the dictator at one point, then he vanished?

I could almost see Silver’s annoyance etched in his face. {Just listen for once.}

Minor detail about Dante, but it speaks volumes. Emulation, man.

“Don’t idolize me,” I muttered darkly as I pretended to look interested in the plaque outside of the Ruins of Alph. The Unown, it said, were psychics of legend, said to possess enormous power and the ability to seal away knowledge of the future.

LOLYES

My knuckles whitened on the edge of the brass plaque of the exhibit, obscuring the raised text beneath. “I will never deserve you.”

This made me awwww. It was veering into overly cheesy dialogue, but this was a great fix. Good dialogue.

The houndour whined guiltily refused to meet her eyes.

This sentence doesn't make sense.

She took my clan from me, but you… you took my future. I will never be her elite.

The last sentence is sort of confusing?

“Badge, bitch!”

10/10 BEST LINE OF THE CHAPTER

“Ic, that’s not how that works. That’s not how I work.” I leaned against the tree and sighed, turning the badge over in my fingers again. I would never be worthy of this; would never be flying; would always be dark. But I was still me. “I will never turn my back on people who need me.”

Is this a semi-subtle reference to Flying in the Dark? And "I would never be worthy of this; would never be flying; would always be dark" was a bit confusing.

Silver threw his hands into the air out of exasperation. “How can you not tell that houndour evolves into houndoom? How did you even make it this far?”

The conversation had gone on quite a while since he’d last insulted my intelligence, so I figured it was a fair enough jab, but I wasn’t going to let him keep verbally beating me up like this. “Does staryu evolve into staraptor? Does crobat evolve into croagunk? I mean, shit. What about torchic, tornadus, torkoal, and torterra? Only two of those things are even remotely biologically similar in the sense that they sort of have shells, and one breathes fire and the other makes mountains. One is a flightless bird and the other is the literal epitome of flight. Pokémon Anatomy was literally my worst class in high school, I feel like they were named by fifty different people with different naming schemes, and the dark-types aren’t even in most textbooks anymore.” I glanced at Gaia for support and got nothing. “I was freezing, and this adorable, fire-starting puppy literally lands in my lap and wanted to play.”

ya wat a normie
However, I've gotta say that the paragraph on "lemme education you, bitch" was a little overboard. And I think one could argue that since "tornadus" stems from "tornado," it might not work in context with the others with "tor" (ex. "torch"). Even "torchic" might fail to work, since "torterra" came in question, and that "tor" stems from "tortoise."

“Oh, sorry, is this about how Dante’s been keeping tabs on us ever since we reached the bottom of the Tower, how we destroyed Sprout Tower, or how I saved everyone’s life and I’m still being treated like a criminal to you guys?”

"I'm still being treated like a criminal to you guys" is a bit of an odd way to word it.

“Ariana, one of the Admins of Team Rocket, who—”

Once again, minor nitpick, but Executive (unless you're specifically ignoring this).

This time, I raised an eyebrow, while wondering how many broken limbs I could get away with if I needed to swim to safety directly afterward.

“Okay,” Silver amended hastily. “She didn’t have a pokémon available to defend herself, but she was definitely armed, and the consequences might’ve been a little unclear.”

“She was pointing a gun at me.” The answer to the ‘broken limbs’ question was somewhere between ‘zero’ and ‘less than the number I’d get by jumping off a bridge.’

MATH QUESTION. So, the question is, "how many broken limbs I could get away with" and the answer is, "somewhere between ‘zero’ and ‘less than the number I’d get by jumping off a bridge"? Is General Grievous saying that: 0 < actual_broken_bones < less_than_jump_off_bridge_bones, even though the fall would surely cripple her? Or is she saying that it'd be better than jumping off a bridge into, say, concrete?

The horrified look on Silver’s face told me more than enough. “Do we really scare you that much? We don’t murder teenagers.”

W R O N G

“Admin Archer is the first person who I realized was unrepentantly evil,” Silver said when I didn’t say anything else. “Not in the sense that he goes out of his way to cause harm to anyone, but because he never goes out of his way to prevent it. If he marks an enemy, they will be destroyed. He does not see sides because the only side that matters is his own. He has no sense of collateral. He has no understanding that anything else in the world matters but his goals. He is well aware of this deficiency, and still he stays the course. And, most frightening of all, he has the skills, charisma, and power to capitalize upon this.”

MY BOI ARCHER :')

The questions must’ve been written on my face, because Silver sighed heavily and picked the easiest one for him to answer: “What I fear most of all is that one day, I’ll walk into my father’s office and see Archer there instead of an empty chair. Because that’ll mean that my father has failed. That’ll mean that our organization has failed. That’ll mean that I failed to protect Johto from a monster that we let grow in our backyard until it was too powerful to put down.”

Sorry, Ely, I'm rooting for the Executives.

“It’s seen worse than this and I think it still will, yet.”

This is somewhat of a confusing sentence (it "still will seen more"?), but it's clear that it's meant to be mysterious. Meh.

In conclusion . . . good chapter, Ely.

 

[diamondpearl876]

But I wasn’t from around here, and the skyline wasn’t burned into my memory, and the fact that Violet’s tallest building was now no higher than the rest didn’t mean much to me, even though I could feel the entire city mourning.

Really like this description for the opening. It's really telling of the protag's character that she doesn't care about the chaos that just happened in terms of how Violet's residents feel about it. She still cares, but only in regards to how it applies to her. I prefer the characterization "shown" here rather than "told" through her saying "I'm a monster" or anything blatant to that effect.

{You cannot even forge a simple bond with your starter,} the abra replied with a scoff. {Do not condescend to tell me how to relate to someone.}

wow, rekt much? i lol'd

I could feel the docent’s eyes fixated on me—after all, who took their butterfree to a museum for a nice chat on the same day that a national monument collapsed for unknown reasons?

I like the irony here, but I think I'd have liked to see a tad bit more detail regarding the setting. It's a tricky balance with emotional scenes like these, I know, but yeah, I didn't get a super clear picture of the setting here.

She took my clan from me, but you… you took my future. I will never be her elite.}

Atlas’s tail stopped thumping. {Think of happy thoughts.}

{Do what.} In response, the sentret’s voice dropped into a dangerously low octave.

Iris deadpanning is hilarious. But really, Atlas's little speech about the flame and positive thoughts is super adorable. It could've easily been made cheesy dialogue like Gaia/Nara's conversation (I agree with Ark on that point), but it was conveyed in a unique way true to Atlas's character.

“Ic, that’s not how that works. That’s not how I work.” I leaned against the tree and sighed, turning the badge over in my fingers again. I would never be worthy of this; would never be flying; would always be dark. But I was still me. “I will never turn my back on people who need me.”

Heh, Ark asked what I was thinking, too: flying in the dark? But yeah, more likely it's a reference to both of Icarus's typings. Nara would rather relate to the flying-type than the dark-type aspect, as hinted at in her conversation with Silver as well. I can't say I blame her, given the circumstances.

Ah. Well, shit. “I mean, he never did anything dark. He’s, uh, really adorable, actually.” If I could convince him to stop chewing on my shoelaces at night, he’d make an excellent pillow. He also treated my every move with constant and unadulterated admiration, which was something I’d never really had before. “I caught him so he could light fires.”

Heh... Nara's a bad liar, obviously, but this is still really adorable dialogue.

“You do know that when he evolves into a houndoom, his bites could literally cause never-healing burning sensations that have been described as hellfire.”

Is this an homage to houndoom's pokedex entry I see here? I kind of thought I was the only one who really used pokedex entries as a reference, but this seems to be the second homage I read today...

“I’m not stupid. I know Dante’s range. He would incapacitate me before I get to my feet, and even if I did, you can outrun me at this distance,” I said listlessly.

Even with his injuries?

“That’s enough.” Pause. “Who are you?”

“You know already. The center cannot hold.”

Pause. “Holy shit, you—”

So... Falkner's not actually dead? Did I read that right? how 2 even read?

Anyway, obviously I'm a fan of the switching POV technique, and I actually disagree with Ark that it was confusing. The focus was definitely on the character depicted in the left margin for each section, even if it wasn't completely obvious. Iris and Atlas were seemingly the focus in Iris's, but it was ultimately Iris that was being taught the lesson in the end; Atlas was just the messenger. With Atlas's section, Atlas's presence wasn't the focus, but whatever, because Atlas is a happy-go-lucky character whose focus probably would've destroyed the melancholic tone you managed very well throughout the sections. I thought the focus on Atlas being a dark-type but not acting like a dark-type but might act like a dark-type someday was appropriate.

This is probably my favorite part of the fic so far, emotion-wise. I don't know where everyone's headed next, but... plz post soon?

 

[Flaze]

Okay, so after months and months I finally caught up with this damn excuse for a fic seriously will you ever finish it or are you just messing around now?

But mean jokes aside, the last two chapters have actually been the best ones. The final chapter against Falkner was the best battle you've written in my opinion, your battles tend to be a bit...subdued, like you're trying to stay realistic. That's good, but it also makes it harder for it to really become engaging, especially since Nara tends to gloss over events.

But the final round against Falkner was stellar, aside from good, easy to imagine movements you also made use of some interesting tactics and touched into Nara's emotions on the while thing, while also tying it with her inner conflict. Not just that, but while Gaia's evolution was cliched really, it was well done and a really badass moment to imagine.

Then going to the interlude (seriously what's with people writing interludes that are basically just chapters?) I think it showcases your writing at its best. The level of character writing and nuance in it was really great, even though we were seeing it all from Nara's perspective i was able to see that each character featured was dealing with their own grief from what had happened, Silver's and Nara's talk on the bridge in particular was a standout for me. However, that still doesn't beat Icarus' and Gaia's side of the chapter where we got to see Nara at her most vulnerable, seeing that Icarus actually respects her even when she discards the bravado was also cute.

That's what I like about your writing, you're able to really get into their heads and make us empathize, you don't have to implement fancy tricks or make the prose more complicated than it is.

 

[kintsugi]

hey. it's been a year. a lot of stuff happened. let's roll.

review responses below. it's been a long while and I'm really sorry for not responding directly; the thought process was that I'd just tack them on the next chapter so as to not clutter up the thread but OOPS. hit the ground running and hope for the best; thank you all for sticking with me <3

Spoiler

Just one comment on this one - old habits die hard eh?

Fixed the "gossamer" thing, but you listed that as the second one. Idk if you still remmber what the first one was but I can't find it from your comment haha.

In this case they might as well be one and the same, so I'm going to fold them together. Well, I like this new TUPpy. As much because I like to see arrogant self-centred bullies get knocked down a couple of pegs. I mean, this is the funny thing, fundamentally TUPp's no brighter or stronger than she was the moment she opened the door of Sprout Tower. The difference is she's much less prepared to take a verbal beating even if she can't do anything about the abra.

Thank you! A lot of this character shift is actually from the comments you kept sending me in the Tower chapters, so I'm glad that you like the resulting growth.

it occurs to me that Silver, in his own way, is as dumb as TUPpy. He's had a slightly better education and is a better trainer in, probably, every aspect, but he doesn't really think things through and in terms of emotional intelligence there are brighter eight year olds.

hue hue hue isolated loner children of whom greatness is expected deconstruction

Gaia is the brightest character in this story

<3

Alrighty, let me start with the technicalities. Firstly, ctrl+f "Faulkner" and you'll see all the spots where you typed "Faulkner" instead of Falkner, the ripperoni'd Gym Leader. You may have already corrected them, but that's a reminder just in case.

Fixed at some point; idr when. Thanks!

This may be a matter of style (and I may have commented on this before, fml) but the Rocket quartet is known as the Executives (unless you specifically want to call them Admins). Either works!

Y I K E Did some research; this looks like a Johto vs Kanto thing; my b. It should be Executive + I've updated this chapter and a few earlier ones.

I felt like these breaks, while structurally useful, had confusing titles. Han Solo was ultimately the main focus (excluding the Atlas/Iris scene and the Silver/Un-undead Falkner[???] scene at the end. And did you mean to put the lines on the right margin, or is that {edgy srbs style}?

edgy style, heh. I tried to balance first-person narration here: these are all convos framed around Nara, but the emotional revelation/focus of each section is meant to be the one at the top of the chapter. Do you feel like that wasn't accomplished either?

then he vanished?

when everyone needed him most

This sentence doesn't make sense.

gottem; fixed

The last sentence is sort of confusing?

This is meant to tie back into the fire thing -- like she mentions, in her clan, the warriors who wield fire are the Best of the Best. And in this new team, which is her replacement clan, Atlas (who she thinks is a dumbfuq) is officially the Best of the Best already. He's the one Nara calls when the fight gets rough and the things gotta burn.

10/10 BEST LINE OF THE CHAPTER

thx for the inspiration

Is this a semi-subtle reference to Flying in the Dark? And "I would never be worthy of this; would never be flying; would always be dark" was a bit confusing.

Nah, it's more about how she's been trying to fake that Gaia is her flying-type starter, but recent events are leading her to believe that that isn't possible.

However, I've gotta say that the paragraph on "lemme education you, bitch" was a little overboard. And I think one could argue that since "tornadus" stems from "tornado," it might not work in context with the others with "tor" (ex. "torch"). Even "torchic" might fail to work, since "torterra" came in question, and that "tor" stems from "tortoise."

That was kind of Nara's point, actually -- Silver is grilling her because she doesn't see that houndoom and houndour are related because they have the same name, but there are so many pokemon that have similar sounding names that are completely unrelated. Does that make sense?

"I'm still being treated like a criminal to you guys" is a bit of an odd way to word it.

effs yeah

MATH QUESTION. So, the question is, "how many broken limbs I could get away with" and the answer is, "somewhere between ‘zero’ and ‘less than the number I’d get by jumping off a bridge"? Is General Grievous saying that: 0 < actual_broken_bones < less_than_jump_off_bridge_bones, even though the fall would surely cripple her? Or is she saying that it'd be better than jumping off a bridge into, say, concrete?

yeah it should just be "between" and "zero" and "the number of bones I'd get jumping off a bridge" rip.

In conclusion . . . good chapter

THANKS MOM

Really like this description for the opening. It's really telling of the protag's character that she doesn't care about the chaos that just happened in terms of how Violet's residents feel about it. She still cares, but only in regards to how it applies to her. I prefer the characterization "shown" here rather than "told" through her saying "I'm a monster" or anything blatant to that effect.

hi just wanted to chime in here that, again, a lot of the diverging character arc here was based off of the feedback that y'all gave me in some of the earlier chapters ty ty

I like the irony here, but I think I'd have liked to see a tad bit more detail regarding the setting. It's a tricky balance with emotional scenes like these, I know, but yeah, I didn't get a super clear picture of the setting here.

I will continue to work on writing more descriptive settings until they actually get better, fuq

Heh... Nara's a bad liar, obviously, but this is still really adorable dialogue.

Oh heh, I didn't meant to make it sound like she's lying. She really had no idea, but idk if I conveyed that well.

Is this an homage to houndoom's pokedex entry I see here? I kind of thought I was the only one who really used pokedex entries as a reference, but this seems to be the second homage I read today...

could I NOT use hellfire bites??

Even with his injuries?

he heals fast. That's his schtick that Silver mentioned in the Tower, but given that that happened almost two years ago irl, I'm taking a solid L here

So... Falkner's not actually dead? Did I read that right? how 2 even read?

S P O I L E R

Anyway, obviously I'm a fan of the switching POV technique

<3 ty for all you do

This is probably my favorite part of the fic so far, emotion-wise. I don't know where everyone's headed next, but... plz post soon?

FUCK

Okay, so after months and months I finally caught up with this damn excuse for a fic seriously will you ever finish it or are you just messing around now?

hnnnnnnnnnnnnnngh

But mean jokes aside, the last two chapters have actually been the best ones. The final chapter against Falkner was the best battle you've written in my opinion, your battles tend to be a bit...subdued, like you're trying to stay realistic. That's good, but it also makes it harder for it to really become engaging, especially since Nara tends to gloss over events.

<3 <3 ty ty

Then going to the interlude (seriously what's with people writing interludes that are basically just chapters?)

tbh it's longer than a chapter

That's what I like about your writing, you're able to really get into their heads and make us empathize, you don't have to implement fancy tricks or make the prose more complicated than it is.

thank you for everything you do too <3

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chapter xvii. imago dei​

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It was times like these that reminded me why I was glad to be a trainer.

I hadn’t actually been on a real journey to know the difference, but something told me that I hadn’t exactly taken the traditional path. Maybe Johto had a really great food scene, and I could just go around exploring that quietly while making a platonic relationship with someone who didn’t end up threatening to kill me at least once. Maybe I could just go around feeling like it wasn’t all the same old iterations, an utterly unpredictable projected illusion of survival, or me and Icarus flying in the dark. Honestly, the possibilities seemed endless.

The alternative was coming to terms with the fact that I’d used one of Johto’s oldest landmarks as cannon fodder to kill one of Johto’s most respected gym leaders. Which, no, even if he’d technically already been dead before all of that, really wasn’t something I wanted to think about.

Hell. Even just saying it like that. There hadn’t been time to let it sink in during the chaos that had followed, but now that I had a few days in the wilderness with nothing but my thoughts, it was all coming back with the subtlety of a lead brick. I’d exploded Sprout Tower, met a goddess, and killed Falkner. The son of Giovanni had helped. I questionably was still possessed by a ghost, but everyone who had any memory of that timeline no longer existed (had never existed?) except the actual ghost because time travel, and—

{Child of the city, are you sure your houndour does not wish to join us? The waters are gorgeous today, by the blessing of the Forest Queen, and the school would be more than happy to carry another.}

Right. Right. Don’t think of the wild stuff. I had a cute puppy and I was also not going to internalize Silver’s warnings that houndoom had never-healing hellfire bites. I squinted over at Atlas, who loped alongside us, nimbly navigating around outcroppings of boulder. His tongue lolled out of his mouth, but occasionally he would veer in the complete wrong direction to check out a particularly interesting-smelling rock. “Oh boy.” I watched him skid to a halt because talking and running simultaneously were too much for him. His inky fur shrank away in the darkness as we sped past him. “I do not like swimming.”

Honestly, I was pretty sure that he’d run forever if I let him, and even more sure that he’d jump in the water if I told him it would make me happy. “I don’t think he’d like the water very much,” I admitted. “But your offer is very kind,” I added hastily.

{Very well.}

See, it was here, toes skimming the surface of the water as they dangled off the edge of the rubbery, blue skin of a cheerful lanturn that had expressed absolutely no intention of killing me, that I figured maybe I was doing something right. “So you normally give rides to trainers like this?” I called down over the rippling water. This was actually incredible; as it turned out, my pokémon could move really, really fast when I wasn’t there to hold them back. Gaia and Rousseau zoomed by overhead, and even higher in the recesses of the cave, Icarus was skulking around somewhere.

{Our school takes pleasure in lending our strength to the children of the cities,} the lanturn that called herself Ria replied cheerfully, the golden glow from the orb on her head brightening in synch with her words. Iris, who had at first resolutely clambered onto her back while muttering something about not being outdone by a human, now looked quite uncomfortable as the waves rocked her back and forth and her striped tail bounced up and down in the breeze. {We know that it is difficult for the young to find their way through the dark, even moreso in times like these.}

She hadn’t been entirely wrong there. Union Cave wasn’t the most hospitable of paths to Goldenrod, but there was no way I was following Silver through the eastern trails. That being said, I’d almost regretted my decision upon hiking to the cave and discovering that, like most natural accumulations of rock, the interior was quite dark. Night-hiking was a thing, but night-hiking through a cave I’d never seen, and spending what would amount to literal days without sun, had been a little off-putting. And climbing it, with days of switchbacks and the peak trails still littered with unattended mudslides from the summer rains, almost seemed worse.

I’d only stood there for half a minute before an entire school of lanturn had surfaced, ball-lightning sending shocks of distorted light up through the waves, their chorus of humming translated by Rousseau’s telepathic field into a dozen offers of help. Between the blinking lights and the sudden clamor of noise, I almost thought I was back in Goldenrod, trying to hail a taxi.

And honestly, with the wind blowing in my hair and the gorgeous sprawl of the cave clipping by, a collection of stalactites miles long that would’ve taken days to cross blurring behind us, this was far nicer. There was a strange beauty in the way that the granite reflected the flashes of the lanturn’s light. Part of me almost wanted to spend a few days exploring the far reaches of the caves—there was the occasional rumble in the distance that could’ve been anything, like an onix or even a lapras—but part of me had accepted the grim inevitably that, as soon as I stepped off the path, I would run into the zombified time-travelling future-heir to Team Rocket riding on the back of the Articuno. Or something.

Beneath me, the lanturn named Lex hummed in harmony. {It is our highest honor to help Bugsy by assisting the young.} His tail beat out a rapidfire rhythm as he surged like a ship through the waves, the yellow markings around his face matching the permanent smile that he seemed to wear—and unlike Rousseau’s, this one seemed entirely genuine. {He guards the city, and we do what we can to guide and protect the cave.}

{You work with Bugsy?} I could hear the edge of wonder in Gaia’s voice as she flew overhead, reveling in the newfound strength of her wings. She’d spent the first day after her evolution recovering, but after that I’d barely seen her touch the ground since. {What is he like?}

{Bugsy is the true savior of our town, daughter of the wind,} Ria replied without a moment of hesitation. {He and his partner Syrio are fearless and brilliant and strong. Our school holds nothing but the highest respect for him.}

Gaia dipped a little lower so that she could fly between the two lanturn, her wings barely needing to beat as she drafted between the two of them. {My colony is from the east, by Cherrygrove, and even we know the legends of Azalea’s Heart,} she murmured solemnly. {I never thought I would one day have the honor to meet him in the flesh.}

{He will be honored to meet with you, too,} said Lex, humming contentedly. {Of all those I have met on my travels, Bugsy is by far one of the best. Why, when I was but a chinchou and I was having difficulties producing electricity like the rest of my clutch, he spent the day teaching me how to find the spark.} The light on his head dimmed and flashed as if to prove his point.

Ria trilled in agreement.

He was one of those genuinely brilliant people, I think, or at least that was what I could guess. He wasn’t very popular in the history books given his status as ‘technically a war criminal’, but even the passing mentions couldn’t cover up the fact that he was one of the most skilled strategists in Johto. He and his scyther were the perfect combination of rapidfire unpredictability and ruthless strength.

{I heard he single-handedly led the defense of Ilex Forest when the Rockets invaded,} Iris said, her ears pricking up as she took sudden interest in our conversation. {He and his team held the line for weeks longer than anyone ever expected him to.}

Rousseau, too, took this as his cue to speak up. {I heard that between him and his starter, they’ve killed over a dozen people, and at least fifty pokémon.}

Ria’s cheerful chirp of agreement petered off pretty much instantly.

I really shouldn’t have expected everyone to get along on this boat.

There was a long pause. A really long pause. Long enough that, even with my expert skills in pretending to be fascinated with the rock formations that we bulleted past, I still felt pretty awkward.

{Both of those things are true, yes,} Ria said at last.

I tried not to let anyone see my face, and for the first time on this trip, I was incredibly grateful for the way that the lanturn-driven shadows made it impossible to see anything for more than half a second at a time. Bugsy was a killer; of course he was; it really wasn’t anything unexpected. There were people in Goldenrod who still petitioned for his public execution. Everyone from that generation had been in a war. Bates wasn’t the only one who’d been through hell. The only thing that continued to surprise me was how young they’d all been: Bugsy would’ve been in his early twenties at the latest when it all started.

{The Rockets took a lot from us.} It was hard to tell from this angle, but Lex seemed to be swimming with more gusto than before, bodily throwing himself into every breaking wave. {It’s hard for the young to understand exactly how much.}

{The atrocities were brutal on both sides, and Bugsy was forgiven for his war crimes and allowed to continue leading Azalea toward a path of reconciliation,} Ria said firmly, almost repeating the mantra from memory. I’d heard that phrase so many times on the news, with the exact same wording. {This was the only treaty that prevented those from Azalea from rebelling until we were exterminated. It has given us tentative peace.}

I almost said it. Almost. I wanted to just flat-up tell them that supporting the Rockets was the least of my troubles, and they didn’t have to mince words around me of all people. I wanted to let them know that, flying high above us was the murkrow that was the current root of everyone’s problems, at least a little, that I was the last person in this entire country who was going to give their leader shit for messing with Team Rocket.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

I’d learned something in the Tower, something sinister, something that you can’t keep hidden once you’ve actually unearthed it: secrets were a currency. I was broke in this apocalypse, with my shambly squad as my only real assets, and I simply couldn’t afford to trust everyone like I’d been doing. Bates had gotten the benefit of the doubt, and that had turned out okay; Silver had gotten the benefit of the doubt and we’d all nearly died. By all logic, Silver should’ve arrested me that day on the bridge, but I couldn’t hope that the next person I opened up to would have so much emotional baggage that they’d be too weighed down to take me out.

I looked up at the roof of the cave, where I could dimly see the outline of Icarus’s black wings flapping silently to keep up with us. He’d been uncharacteristically docile when I’d asked him to follow from afar. Maybe he was starting to realize it too, the aura of dread that was descending on us day by day as our options dwindled.

I told myself it was for him that I held my tongue and let Lex and Ria think we were average trainers with average thoughts about Team Rocket. It let me feel better about the lies I was starting to tell, even if it didn’t take my mind off of the conversations I found myself wishing we’d had.

Did Bugsy know how much his loss would mean?

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“I’ve been waiting for you. Come on, there isn’t much time.”

“Excuse me?”

I really had to stop walking into things with the hope that I wouldn’t, say, run into self-appointed nemeses or shotguns or, in this case, a random stranger standing sternly across from the entrance of Union Cave. The man in front of us looked more like a park ranger than a Rocket, which was nice for my immediate survival. I was mentally running through the list of rules I remembered for catch-and-release; maybe hitching a voluntary ride on a lanturn qualified under poaching for some reason? Was it breeding season? Was this really how I ended up going down, though? For the training equivalent of a parking ticket?

“Atlas, stay in the cave,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. He was still twenty feet from us; maybe he couldn’t see what I was saying yet. I heard a sharp whine of disapproval that cut off immediately as I gestured with my open palm. “Stay, Atlas.” Thank the gods we’d at least practiced that one a lot and that he was extremely food-motivated.

“You’re the murkrow girl.”

“Excuse me?”

No, scratch that, I was going down for all the reasons I’d been expecting at this point. I’d had a nice few hours of thinking I wasn’t going to die because of Icarus, and that was a good vacation, but it was time to return to reality.

“Yeah, I don’t really have time for the innocent act, so if you could just speed through that, I’d be greatly obliged,” the man was saying, gently stroking the base of Ria’s light stalk. He whispered something to them that I couldn’t catch, and then he stood up from his crouch and didn’t look back as both of the lanturn vanished beneath the waves. “Look, Route 33 isn’t the best place for talking. Lotta eyes that’ll probably pick you up accidentally. And it’s going to rain soon. Are you coming or not?”

I went with the tried and true: “Excuse me?”

“Where’s your murkrow?”

“What’s a murkrow?”

He sighed and folded his arms. Huh. I recognized that pose, actually, the way that his jaw set a little before he—“Seriously, if you don’t shut up with the wounded stantler act, Syrio’s going to cut you in half. I might be fast enough to stop him, but I really don’t feel like it.”

There was a schnick sound from the underbrush, and when I blinked again, I could see the gleaming white blades and angled green face staring at us, sharp like a knife, blades so deadly at the end that they seemed to cut the air around them. Four translucent wings sliced through the air, but they weren’t like Gaia’s at all—these tapered off to deadly points.

I knew what I was looking at. That was a scyther, and—“You’re Bugsy.”

He didn’t look like a killer, or like the kind soul who had coached a young chinchou into finding his spark. He looked like a sleep-deprived, lanky grad student who should’ve been alternating dollar drip coffee and free beer mooched from a stolen keg. He had a pair of khakis and a green polo that looked like they belonged to a junior scout, and a pair of bags under his eyes that looked like they belonged to the lead scientist of Silph the week after the Master Ball had failed to contain the Lugia. He held a crowbar in one hand and used the other to massage his temple wearily, locks of purple hair falling around his fingers. “Look, we were expecting you three days ago, and after Violet went dark, no one knew what to think. Let’s get you inside before anyone sees.”

I couldn’t help but feel like everyone here knew something I didn’t. Bugsy was a pardoned war criminal. He’d once led a rebellion against Team Rocket and was now working for them. “Are you arresting me or not?”

“Where’s your murkrow?” Bugsy sighed, and I got the all-too-familiar feeling that he was making a point of looking more patient than he felt. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got Syrio with me. You don’t have to play it stupid right now; they won’t know.”

Oh. That was cute. He thought I was playing. It was almost refreshing to have someone misjudge my grasp of a situation this badly in the opposite direction. “Um, actually, clearly, they will.” Maybe he’d even trip up and tell me who they were, and I’d be able to pick up some stuff.

Bugsy’s face hardened, and suddenly the scyther was at my neck, razor-sharp scythes on either side of my neck. I was acutely aware of just how much the muscles of my neck actually throbbed now that I could see them pressing stubbornly on the blades that were going to cut my throat. “You are the murkrow girl, right?” He hadn’t even moved.

Gaia responded on my behalf with a blast of psychic energy that sent the mantis skidding back. Six-inch claws dug into the gravel as the scyther screeched to a halt, eyes narrowed to shards of amber. I tensed, but I launched straight into my next-best attempt at de-escalation: “Gaia, stand down.” If he was dumb enough to think I was smart, maybe he’d be dumb enough to think we were strong, and that this threat held any water.

But Bugsy was studying us with a chessmaster’s precision, one hand drumming patterns into the starched fabric of his khakis. His eyes darted across the path to where we were standing, taking in me and my team in an instant. Knuckles whitened around the haft of the crowbar. His lips curled into a smirk that was too small to be a bluff. Falkner was a blind wave of force, all the might of a hurricane spiraling off aimlessly into the ocean. But one glance told me this was a different matter altogether: this was the man who’d held down a warfront for weeks using nothing but a forest and some bugs to fight the Lugia. I knew with sinking finality that even at five-versus-one odds, he’d have that scyther back at my throat in under a minute.

“Trust me when I say you don’t want to try this,” he said calmly.

I knew I didn’t want to try it, but what choice did we have? If I got taken in to custody by a gym leader, morally gray or not, it would only be a matter of time before the Rockets found me.

I straightened my back. Next option. I would keep checking through them until something worked, or until I died. Whichever came first. I could bluff my way out of this without starting a fight against Johto’s best strategist. I had to. “I-Imago dei.”

He raised an eyebrow. The scyther stood like stone, legs still bent in a deadly crouch. “Your pronunciation is terrible. That phrase is almost entirely phonetic and engraved on every League poster. And you still managed to mess it up.”

“But you know what I mean.” I wondered what my teachers would’ve told me—this was the most literal answer to the question “when is learning Latin going to help me in the real world?” It seemed like this was the price I paid for staring off into space instead. But Azalea’s motto was one of those few buzzwords I’d managed to hold on to. Like a teenage fashion trend, they had one schtick that they slapped on everything, even the names of their landmarks. Image of God. My friend Whitney had tried to tell me that most people interpreted the words wrong, and there was something weird about tenses or conjugations that made it more than just that—

“Do you?” Busgy’s eyes narrowed. And then: “Things fall apart.”

I don’t know what made me say it, but I did, and I think it might’ve saved my life. “The center cannot hold.”

The scyther straightened up and took a step back, apparently satisfied. I couldn’t begin wondering why.

{Why are you waiting for us?} Rousseau asked. He’d been taking an unusually large berth around Bugsy; I couldn’t help but think back to his comments in Union Cave. It was hard to reconcile all the rumors: the brilliant strategist, the defeated rebel, the kind-hearted mentor, the cold-blooded killer.

“I wasn’t.”

Two could play at that game. “I don’t have a murkrow. The butterfree is my starter.”

Icarus, of course, took this as his cue to come flapping in with a triumphant, “Boss tells truth!”

Little shit.

One eyebrow raised disparagingly. I felt his chessmaster’s gaze turn to the two of us—my unkempt, hastily dyed hair; Icarus’s bloodred gaze socketed in a fledgling’s face that was far too small to intimidate. “Pardon the cliché, but I’m the only one who can help you now,” Bugsy said, with so much conviction that I almost believed he believed himself. “If you don’t come with me, Syrio won’t be the one killing you, I can tell you that much.”

This is how I ended up walking into Azalea with a scyther at my back.

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[Flaze]

Oh look, the dead do come back to life after all. I'm kind of glad and also surprised that compared to your last chapters this one is actually surprisingly short, but hey, I guess you're just trying to get back into the swing of things with this story. Even if it's short you still manage to cover some important ground for the upcoming arc so at least we've got that to look forward to.

Maybe Johto had a really great food scene, and I could just go around exploring that quietly while making a platonic relationship with someone who didn’t end up threatening to kill me at least once. Maybe I could just go around feeling like it wasn’t all the same old iterations, an utterly unpredictable projected illusion of survival, or me and Icarus flying in the dark. Honestly, the possibilities seemed endless.

I spotted every single one of those references and hate the fact there weren't more and that I didn't get a shitty reference.

bodily

Did you mean boldly?

“Atlas, stay in the cave,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. He was still twenty feet from us; maybe he couldn’t see what I was saying yet. I heard a sharp whine of disapproval that cut off immediately as I gestured with my open palm. “Stay, Atlas.” Thank the gods we’d at least practiced that one a lot and that he was extremely food-motivated.

Oh, well at least Atlas is finally getting the hang of some tricks, I wonder when he'll be able to play dead.

Two could play at that game. “I don’t have a murkrow. The butterfree is my starter.”

Icarus, of course, took this as his cue to come flapping in with a triumphant, “Boss tells truth!”

Little shit.

Icarus is still best birb.

I gotta say, I think this is the first story I've seen where Bugsy gets so much attention, he tends to be a smudge in every Johto story with most of them tending to keep him as a down to earth experienced trainer, that is otherwise just really dully and unremarkable when compared to every other gymleader shown, even the games kind of ignore him so it's interesting to see him being treated as such a renowned trainer and strategist here. The other thing that jumped at me is how much you aged him up, especially considering that one of Bugsy's gimmicks is how young he looks (and how short he is).

Description-wise there's two things I can comment on, at first it's a bit hard to tell where the characters are exactly, maybe I just didn't read right but when I first started I thought they were in the forest by a lake or something, then I thought they were just resting by a lake in a cave before realizing that they were actually traveling on Lanturns. Also, I kind of forgot what a Lanturn was for a moment...I ended up confusing it with a lampent and had soooo many questions.

But yeah, the issue with figuring out the description mostly comes up in the early parts, especially when it comes to what Atlas is doing and what Union Cave is actually like. I mean, are they traveling through a large river that goes through the cave? it's the cave just a large body of water? I'm leaning towards the former considering some of the mentions you give us, if only cause it's the only way I could see Atlas being able to move around without issue.

The other issue to bring up in that regard is that we're constantly reminded about the situation Nara is in. I'll give you a pass on this since this is the first chapter in over a year (thank you very much) and readers need a catch up, but it's just something for you to keep in mind.

Character-wise I do think you're doing pretty well when it comes to showing us how aware Nara's becoming of what's going on around her, but it was also nice to see some Pokemon that didn't try to kill her for no reason, like those Lanturns were even kind of cute. Worldbuilding continues to come in scatterings but I actually don't mind that.

Anyways, glad to have this story back and I hope it doesn't just disappear again, keep it up, gurl.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Thank you! A lot of this character shift is actually from the comments you kept sending me in the Tower chapters, so I'm glad that you like the resulting growth.

I'm glad my persistent complaints were actually useful. Anyway, I'll get the scrappy quotey bits out of the way first.

Idk if you still remmber what the first one was but I can't find it from your comment haha.

That would be the misspelling of Falkner as Faulkner, but since Ark's picked up on it the point's somewhat moot.

Maybe Johto had a really great food scene, and I could just go around exploring that quietly while making a platonic relationship with someone who didn’t end up threatening to kill me at least once. Maybe I could just go around feeling like it wasn’t all the same old iterations, an utterly unpredictable projected illusion of survival, or me and Icarus flying in the dark.

haha I get two clauses fuck you fellow journeyfic authors

He hadn’t been entirely wrong there.

She?

his partner Syrio

The First Bug of Azalea. You might have made a bit of a misstep, there. Much as I enjoy the reference I wonder whether I'll be able to take the scyther seriously now.

took sudden interesting in

Interest.

all the might of a hurricane spiraling off aimlessly into the ocean

Thought I'd just bring this up, but I do like the unusual language you use here and there. And no-one ever calls you loquacious for it, damn you.

Like a teenage fashion trend, they had one schtick that they slapped on everything, even the names of their landmarks

That made me giggle, because it is so reminiscent of the way you tend to make everything so neat and tidy as a teenager. It underpins every silly "meaningful" name and every pseudo-Sorting ceremony. I'm pretty sure I did it too, if I ever dared to read my oldest writing.

Now onto the stuff that actually matters. First things first, I like the indulgence in some upbeat travelling - I've harped on about it before, but it's the good moments that ought to remind you of why you should give a damn about the world in the first place. To an extent that's what's missing from A Song of Ice and Fire, and from Breaking Bad.

And on that note I think it's worth pointing out how much I really do like Gaia. Not just because she's fundamentally nice and starts off very much the underdog and is the persistent warm heart of the story. She's unusual for one of your characters. In a way Bugsy reminds me of this all the more - there are moments to his speech that sound very familiar, with the casual threats and the tired, matter-of-fact tone. Whereas Gaia doesn't have a sarcastic cell in her chitin, takes the joys of life as they come, and seems determined not to let cynicism rule her thinking.

All that being said, Bugsy does indeed tend to get the short shrift in fanfic - I tried to make him at least a formidable opponent, but let's face it, in The Long Walk he's still there for all of a few battles. And I like that you're treating him seriously as a Gym Leader.

 

[Persephone]

Review for the last two years:

This is all a fine story, really. I enjoyed reading it and I thought that it was one of the best fics currently active on the forum. So while this review might lean to the concritical, just know that it doesn't exactly reflect my feelings as a reader.

What the story has going for it most:

-Silver as either a horrifically cruel person, a self-centered asshole who doesn't consider anyone else, a scared kid or all three
-Possession plotline was fun
-Celebi was adorbs and I loved her
-There were no grammar errors to calmly point out.

What I kept coming back to when thinking what could've made it better:

-Time travel is confusing, but time travel will literally always be confusing so there's nothing I can do to help you.

So, more importantly;

My interest in Nara's starting to draw down. Don't get me wrong, she's a fun enough character and I think she has her quirks but. When she's not in mortal danger or dealing with someone more interesting, I can lose interest in the story. And I think that's because she's never /quite/ been humanized. Outside of her floor (more on that in a second), the most we really know about her (or that I remember about her at this point, at least) is that she's kind of sarcastic and has horrible luck.

I think you've been doing better at this, and I'm not saying you have to give her name, but I think knowing more little details (past friends, hobbies, random likes and dislikes, how she's getting food after the end of the world and what she thinks about it) would make me care more about her. And since it's a first person story where it seems there won't be a stable human supporting cast, I'd really make drawing people's emotional investment to her a high priority at this point.

As for her floor, there's a sort of a double-edged sword with going into the abusive parents backstory to round her out. To start with, it's... not particularly uncommon (Pixie/Skysong, Avis, Sai, Alaska (if we count severe neglect), Evelina Joy (if we're counting emotional/social abuse, etc.)) So, it's not really a particularly unique backstory in and of itself without more little details to support it. But it also can provide an emotional core if PTSD and whatnot are handled well, so there's that.

I'm tired. Might tell you more in chat later.

 

[Beth Pavell]

And I think that's because she's never /quite/ been humanized.

This is an interesting point ... and I could see some argument for saying that TUPpy's humanisation ought to be ambiguous, given developments in the Violet arc. But I at least agree with Athena in that it wouldn't be a bad idea for us to see more of what TUPpy was before the business with the Xatu, for basically the same reason that Gaia is a good idea. Her world has been turned upside down, but Athena's right, we don't really know much about what that world was