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MATURE: saffron gods

kintsugi

the warmth of summer in the songs you write
Joined
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warnings: lots of explicit curse words, albeit in a non-english language

SAFFRON GODS

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0. and the dreamers are bull trapped in porcelain
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Welcome to Saffron City. People are going to tell you all sorts of things about this place, so I’ll tell you one more: don’t listen. We’re all liars.

It’s the only way you can rest easy. Believing in something else is just a better way of lying to yourself. The elites in their ivory towers feed the lie to themselves as early as they can—getting their kids to believe that a kind and benevolent delibird will come to their house once per year and give out presents. And then that belief blossoms into something even stranger, more sinister: the idea that the good and bad always get what they deserve. It’s their belief in a just world that lets them rest easy at night, the same way that the puercos sleep with eyes weighed down by bribes, the same way that the populace dreams of a brighter future because they saw one of their own managed to claw into the gilding and become the Champion.

Down here, down in the barrios, we don’t have time for that shit. Maybe the gringos worship their fatass snowbird and his gift of inequality, maybe they pretend to love their sacred trio with their gifts to Kanto of searing wrath, galvanizing secrets, and frigid indifference, but we know better. We learn the rules early, and we learn them right. Gods don’t give you jackshit. They take, and sometimes they take everything.

If the gods ever give you something, it comes at a price. That’s something you gotta learn young if you want to make it out alive: whoever, wherever they are, the gods only have one type of currency, the same kind everyone has. The saffron price.

If you want something, you’re gonna have to bleed.

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from your garbage rose the rulers of the restless
⁂​

“When they’re staring at you down the barrel of a gun, the puercos are gonna make you into whatever they want you to be, Ani. That’s how it goes for barrios like us. But that just means you have to make yourself into who you want to be before they do.”

⁂​

He’s staring at how her lopsided huntress’s gait is written in her ankles—the way that her toes curl in and her heels never fully touch the ground—when he starts to ask the question that will burn down his whole world. “You don’t walk like a barrio,” Ani says, and then bites his lip. This isn’t the kind of question that has a right answer; he doesn’t know why he even asks. But here he is, standing over a pool of gasoline with the match already slipping from his fingers. “And no one would ever have to know that you looked like one, either. So why do you…”

“Why do I run with the Rockets if I could pass for a gringo?” Des finishes wryly for him. “You could too, you know. Your daddy isn’t a Jenny, but at least he’s a puerco, and he gave you a good first name.” The sickly yellow glow of the street lamp casts a halo on her dark curls as she wraps one hand lazily around the lamppost, tossing her switchblade into a lazy circle in the air with the other. She tilts her head to one side and leans left so that she’s making a lopsided triangle: her and her knife meeting sharply against the wrought iron pillar. “And no one would ever know that you’re a quimera. Yours isn’t flashy, like mine, but your little quirk lets you see people for who they truly are.” She turns to look at Ani, and for half a second she’s wearing a different face, but nothing she does will hide to him that it’s still her, even as she blinks her widely innocent crystal-blue eyes, purses ruby lips framed by luxurious blonde curls that tumble down a perfect hourglass figure. The moment passes, and she’s back in the only skin he’s ever known her belonging in, brown eyes and brown hair and brown skin marking them as barrios. Cheekbones sharp enough to cut steel make a frame for her bitter, wolfish smile. “But why? Same reason as you, I guess.”

Ani tries to meet her gaze—that’s the one thing that’s the same no matter whose face she wears, but its sharp enough to cut straight through his chest every single time.

She doesn’t answer him, not right away. That’s always how it is with her, a series of nesting dolls that go down so deep it’s hard to tell which one is the real Des any more. “When I was ten, my parents managed to get me into one of those preppy elementary schools. The kind where they give you monogrammed pencil cases and a plaid skirt and a ticket to Cinnabar Tech if you pay the entry fee every year. To this day, I don’t even know how they managed it.”

He smirks. Des is a naked blade covered in a gilded sheath. Her? In a prep school? “You must’ve hated it.”

She isn’t looking at him, which is a blessing, when she says, “I fucking loved it. I loved it so much. On my first day of school, I had a plaid skirt and a new face. My knees were shaking, but I walked past the puerco at the gates and I smiled at him with my sweet little eyes like all the other girls there, and he smiled back. It was the first time a puerco ever smiled at me. On my first day, I sat next to this girl named Meredith, and she had a set of colored pens. Each one had this big, beautiful curly letter on it in inlaid gold. I still remember the font. M-E-R-E-D-I-T-H.” Des lets one finger trace the name in the air against the graffiti tag of the brick wall across from them before her hand drops listlessly back against her side. “And on the first day of school, the teacher tells us to bring out our pens, and I didn’t have any. I didn’t know we were supposed to, and besides, I couldn’t have afforded one. So Meredith lets me borrow one of hers.” She can’t help but laugh in disbelief, even then. “Me, right? A barrio. And this heiress not only looked at me, but she let me touch her shit. I looked down halfway through the class and saw that the one she gave me was the latter ‘D’. For Desdemona. I took it as a sign from the gods.”

She pauses. One hand is frozen, twined deep into the spiral of her hair. “It sounds so stupid when I say it now. I was so proud of stealing that stupid pen. I was gonna show her what it meant to have gilding, that she couldn’t hide from the barrios forever, no matter who she thought she was. Maybe she wouldn’t face the same shit I did, but I could hurt her back, you know?” Her laugh is mirthless; there’s no pity for her younger self here. “The next day, Meredith had a brand new set of pens, and this one was big enough to have her last name too. Probably cost more than what my parents made in a week. She never suspected me. Because I wasn’t Des to anyone; I was Mona. I wore a white buttondown and blue eyes. When my mama figured out, she was furious. She beat me so hard I almost didn’t think I could make the color go away.”

Ani’s eyes flicker in recognition, but he doesn’t say anything. That’s the trick with Des, he knows. She changes skins so many times it’s hard to know if you’re talking to the real one.

And maybe Des knows it to, because her voice loses some of its lofty cadence. She drops an octave. “And with her chancla she drove home the fact that I’d been too naïve to understand before. The world wouldn’t make me into a monster if it didn’t know how. So from that day on, I played my part. I wrote my gringo name at the top of every paper. When fall rolled around and it was time to celebrate día de los muertos, I dressed up for Halloween. When my friends laughed at the barrios, I laughed along. I got to forget who I was. One of them even said I was beautiful.” She trails off, the hints of wistful longing entering the creases by her eyes as her gaze focuses on something far, far away.

She lets the sentence hang long enough for Ani to fill it in himself. Whatever happened back then, she’s here now, walking him through initiation for the Rockets. His grip on the crowbar, just a little, while she’s looking around the corner for their target.

“March rolled around. The Silph meltdown revolts. I watched on the flatscreen in our gameroom as the news was cutting across footage of burning buildings. I heard the girls whispering around me but I couldn’t speak. My entire apartment complex was on fire, and I was just watching.” She doesn’t have to finish that thought; they’re both used to the reality of it. The Silph tragedy is just another blip in the history books now. “And I was standing in the middle of the room, knees shaking with shock under my plaid skirt, when one of the bitches started laughing. She said all the protestors were probably quimeras already from all the chemicals they were pumping through, and it was better that they got put down before they could breed. And the other girls were snickering too, wrapped up so deep in their own reality that they didn’t notice my perfect, white smile turning back into Des and my quimeric, barrio face. And then they all screamed. My friends. They loved Mona, but they were terrified of me.

Ani reaches out for her; the five feet of pavement between them suddenly feels like an impossible gap to bridge. “I’m sorry.”

“Shit like ‘sorry’ only matters if there’s nothing you can do. I took care of it.” Her hair shifts until it covers her face, hiding everything from him except the upward curl of her lips. The hand closest to him tightens into a fist around the switchblade. “I—”

A truck turns the corner and starts slugging toward them. Des pushes herself up off the lamppost and gestures to Ani with her wrist, keeping the motion low and tucked in to her waist. Her features don’t change, but her face still does, and suddenly he can’t recognize her behind the wall of iron she’s built around her lips. “Is your meowth ready?”

Ani nods. Tries not to get tangled up on how close he thought he’d been to the girl behind her mask, before the ditto DNA that defined and untwined her pushed him far away. He whistles, and Lobera leaps down from the roof and threads around his ankles, her tail flicking with anticipation. Pokémon don’t have divisions the way humans do, but with her silky brown fur hiding inch long claws, she’s a distinctly barrio meowth. She’s got the same lean frame as Ani, but she walks with Des’s gait.

Time to shine.

Lobera looks up at him questioningly, and he nods. “Follow her,” he whispers quietly, and keeps his head lowered as he stands by the lamppost, the dull glint of the baseball bat hidden in his sweatshirt. On a street like this, he’s just dirt beneath the fingernails, mold in the cracks. Invisible.

But Des isn’t. She runs up to the truck, bombshell blonde, ready to explode. The letters on the side of the truck that spell SILPH CO. are visible as the hunk of metal splutters to a chugging halt. Crocodile tears are already in Des’s eyes. “Please help me!” she shouts to the driver. “I lost my parents in the shopping district and I don’t have my phone and I don’t know where I am! You have to take me home!”

The elite speak a different language. Des had tried explaining it to him, once, but it was hard to understand unless you were there in person. It isn’t about the way they hardened their r’s or muted their hands, even if that’s part of it. They don’t ever make requests. They make demands.

And the world buys it. The truck driver rolls down his window. “Miss, this isn’t a bus. I can’t take passengers; I have to get this cargo to Silph as quickly as possible.”

Ani can’t quite see it from here; he’s already flanking around the other side of the truck, but he knows what happens next. Des’s lip quivers, blue eyes filling with tears. And the driver’s gaze softens just long enough for Lobera to clamber through the open window and sink her claws into his face. He yells in pain.

That’s his cue. Ani sprints the last five steps so that he’s standing behind the truck, staring at the padlock holding the garage-like rear door shut. Just like they practiced. He swings the crowbar at the hinges and they explode off in a thunderclap of metal. He clambers up onto the tail bumper and heaves the door upward and open, all sound eclipsed briefly by the stormy sound of grating steel. Ani tosses the crowbar aside and vaults in, hauling the bag behind him so they can—

“It’s empty!” he shouts, fear clouding his senses for the first time. “Des, it’s empty!” His gaze jumps over the dimly-lit cargo hold. There aren’t even straps or shelves that would’ve indicated that the truck had already dropped off its precious cargo. Ani takes a shaky step backwards, and then turns to run out the back. “It’s a fucking setup! We gotta—”

He turns around and finds himself face-to-face with a pair of blue uniforms and the flickering black and orange stripes of an arcanine.

“—get out of here,” Ani finishes quietly.

⁂​

“Are you my lawyer?”

The man looks like he’s in his mid-thirties and walks with the air of a librarian in his seventies. There’s a cardigan wrapped around his shoulders and the wiry glint of spectacles in his mousy brown hair. Between the nervous tilt of his shoulders and the steely gleam of his blue eyes, he’s a conundrum that Ani can’t quite fully place. The man smiles nervously as he shuts the door with a resounding clang; no amount of crinkled slacks or mud-stained loafers that this stranger puts on will let Ani forget who’s on what side. “I’m afraid not.”

“I told the police outside—” It’s important to use his gringo vocabulary here so that no one gets the ‘wrong’ idea “—that I’m only talking to a lawyer.”

“There isn’t one yet.”

“Then I want my phone call.”

Another smile. Gods, this guy acts like he’s that old fart with the paintings and the happy little clouds. “Maybe I can offer you some advice.”

“I don’t want your advice. I want a lawyer.”

“I’m not the one handcuffed to a Saffron PD table. I think you need all the help you can get.”

Ani straightens his back and let the sides of his hands hit up against the cold metal of the tabletop. There’s an audible clink as the edge of the handcuffs hits steel. “I’m listening,” he says, and that’s it. Anything he says can and will be used against him.

“You’re the only suspect that’s been apprehended. The dashcam has records of two female accomplices, but we’ve been unable to find either of them.”

Two?

Oh. Des. And then Des, again.

“We saw a meowth, too.”

Ani’s eyes flicker a little, and the man leans in. Observant bastard. Just who the hell is this guy?

“There’s no pokémon registered to you, though.”

No shit, old man, Ani wants to say. Why do you think we were trying to hit a pokéball truck? Welcome to the biggest lie to ever grow in Kanto, and now the roots are in so deep that Ani’d never be able to pull out all the weeds: that somehow, the League is a meritocracy. That they all get equal footing now. That it doesn’t cost more than he’ll make in a month to buy even one pokéball for Lobera, let alone six for a team.

The man sighs. Runs a distracted hand through his hair, and for a brief moment, when his palm is almost over his face, the creases around his forehead tighten and his eyes narrow with predatory focus. And then it’s gone again when he says: “Look, kid. They want to keep you in here until you give up some info on your accomplices. They might just end up pinning this on you altogether. Which is a shame because I don’t think you have any criminal record yet.”

Ani tries not to go through the thought process either. He can’t panic, not here, not yet; there’s too much hinging on him remaining focused here. The Rockets aren’t exactly going to help him bribe his way out of here; he’s alone. A single wave stranded on the shore.

“Listen to me.” The man leans in, conspiratorially close. “I’m a psychic-quimera. Low-level telepathy and hypnosis. Tell me what I need to know, I’ll talk to the guards, and I can—”

“No, you aren’t.”

Eyebrows straighten and then fall again. The man’s impressed against his will. “The null zone that’s up here should, in theory, suppress all quimeric and pokémon activity, standard containment procedure. But you don’t seem—”

Eyes forward, cold. Don’t avoid eye contact even if that might feel easier. “I don’t need freak DNA to pick out a bad liar.”

The man takes a step back. The ripples of his interest sink beneath the surface of his face again, seamlessly, like a gyarados submerging to stalk prey. “You’re right. Statistically, a quimera of my age is near-impossible. Silph didn’t start pumping their mutagens into the water until twenty years ago.” He cracks into a boyish grin. “Although some of my colleagues say I look the part.”

He laughs at his own joke, but Ani doesn’t: only an idiot would mistake the youthful gleam in that man’s eyes for naiveté. The man might have idiotic colleagues, but that doesn’t mean Ani has to shoulder the same dumb choices.

“Ironic, right?” For a moment, the man really is talking to himself, that gleam in his eyes turning to a distant horizon. “Silph thinks they can save a few bucks by dumping their excess chemicals in the parts of town that are too poor to protest, and instead they make the children of the barrios into their own worst nightmare. I like to think that even if there is a karma in the world, even if there are no gods.”

When Ani was a kid, still young enough to believe in gods, he prayed to the same Five that all the lost children of Saffron did. The gringos kept the people they didn’t like out of their churches and their gods, so the barrio kids made their own: Lobera, the legendary blade that would kill all the wicked. Nuberu, whose toxic seeds were responsible for all of mankind’s woes. Mari, elusive siren of the seas, upon whose back you could traverse any storm and whose song could heal all wounds. Antillia, lady of war, who appeared with her club and thick fists to protect all children caught in the crossfire of violence, if you only called her true name. Numantia, flying relic, symbol of their lifeblood in the face of a quashed culture.

Lobera’s always been his favorite, but he’s grown up a long time since that smudge-faced boy who used to hope Antillia would save him when gangs started fighting outside of his house. Ani knows better now. Sometimes the gods don’t come for you. Sometimes you come for them. And there’s always a price. Saffron always finds a way.

“You’re awfully quiet.”

“I want my lawyer.”

“You haven’t even heard my offer yet.”

Ani raises one eyebrow expectantly. He didn’t come here to listen to the old man blither on about how elites saw the world. But they’ve migrated from advice to offers. “I’m listening.”

The man takes a few steps away from the table. Does he always pace by habit, or is this just another ploy to demonstrate how he’s still the one who isn’t chained to a table here, how he can call all the shots? There isn’t time to pretend to guess. The spectacles on his forehead stare to the one-way mirror on the side of the room, but the corners of the man’s eyes are still pinned on Ani. “The way you answered my question earlier suggests you’re just the kind of quimera I’m looking for.”

“I’m not quimeric.”

“Sure, you’re not. And I didn’t arrange for a fake Silph delivery for the exact time and place for you and any of your delinquent friends to find it.”

The old man plays chess well. Ani closes his mouth before it lands him any deeper.

“So you aren’t quimeric and I haven’t been scouting your area for the past few months,” the man continues serenely, hands tucked behind his back. “We can agree on falsehoods if you’d like. It’ll be better in the long-term if we have the same story.”

He pauses, as if for dramatic effect, but Ani doesn’t jump at the obvious bait. He keeps his hands relaxed and open on the table, keeps the nervous tapping out of his legs.

Long-term?

“You may have heard of Lance.” The man pauses to take his glasses off his head and rub them on the corner of his sleeve.

He’s trying to draw out the conversation, Ani realizes. He wants Ani to fill in the gaps for him, to give him some sort of foothold for whatever the hell is coming up.

And with nothing left to lose, Ani gives it to him. “The Dragon Master.”

“Don’t feel the need to be polite. I know you’ve got a better name for him.”

“Barabbas of the barrios,” Ani mutters.

“So we agree. Lying about giving a man a team of dragons that he didn’t even train himself and propelling him to the top of the League doesn’t inherently disprove the inequalities that still exist in today’s society, even if he’s well-accepted by the masses. Even if we’d backed him from a purely financial standpoint, he’d never be able to fund the equipment or medical costs necessary to raise on dragon, let alone six. He’d be stuck with rattata and koffing like everyone else, and then the League would never have had its hero.”

Ani casts a nervous glance to the sheet of mirrored glass to his right, to the camera in the corner. Gringos might get to say those things and walk away, but there’s no way in hell that he can. But the old man’s up to something. Something big. And he’s full enough of himself that maybe, just maybe, there’s a better chance of going along with his plans than Ani will have alone. It’s not like the courts are going to be welcoming.

He nods, almost imperceptibly.

“Of course, that’s the cynic’s approach. Lance still has his fans, true, but the more that gets revealed about him, the less a hero for the downtrodden becomes.” It’s a neutral response that doesn’t take Ani’s agreement into account, likely for his benefit. Gravity seems to intensify when the man, for the first time in their entire conversation, turns to fix Ani with a steely gaze. “That,” he says, “is why I got you.”

Ani’s almost winded by the impact. “Me?”

The man’s important. He’s got plans. Ani’s got plans too, but he’s not important—and every rule he’s ever known tells him that this should put the two of them far, far away.

“The truck you assaulted was my property, and the police have agreed to give me discretion in how my attackers are handled. If I leave this room unsatisfied, the police will throw you into their prison pipeline. When you get out, if you get out, they’ll follow you until you’ve jumped through enough hoops to prove yourself clean, or you’ve left enough evidence that you can be locked up forever. Whichever comes first. I’ve seen infant pidgey ensnared in victreebel that had better odds. This is what they want.” His back straightens, and in the harsh fluorescent light around them, he casts the biggest shadow Ani will ever see in his entire life. “And what I want is this. You will leave here with no record. You will say that you managed to steal a pokéball from me. You will capture whatever starter pokémon you can find—the meowth accompanying you looks like a healthy contender, but I will allow you to choose what your signature fighter will be.” His smile turns grim. “I will check in on you periodically to make sure that you are still a worthwhile investment. And then, you will train, collect your badges, and you will overthrow Lance to give Kanto the underdog hero it thinks its wants.”

There’s a long, pregnant pause.

“You’re him,” Ani says quietly, the words feeling like lead weight against his tongue. “You’re Professor Oak.”

Another glimpse of steel beneath the serene surface of his eyes. “The one and only.”

“You’re setting me up to overthrow the Champion. The Champion that you installed.”

“The one and only.”

Motherfucker’s got a sense of humor. Ani’ll give him that much. “Why me?”

“Why you indeed?” Oak throws his hands into the air and shrugs. “Frankly, it doesn’t matter. I picked you at first because your little quimeric talent looked like it’d be useful for a different pet project of mine, but rest assured I can hand you back to the police and replace you within a day. Saffron’s a large city.”

He’d be stupid. Ani would be so, so stupid to turn down this offer. The courts would rip him to pieces like a pack of wolves.

But at the same time he can hear Des’s voice threading through his ears, finishing the story that she’d almost given him before the truck had interrupted them and sent their lives spinning out of control.

“I took care of it. I burned them back. I showed them that they don’t get to fuck with us just because we’re barrios. Just because we die on the news every day doesn’t mean we can’t fight back. And they laughed, Ani, they laughed hard, until my fists spread their smiles all over the walls.”

She’ll never forgive him if he does this. The Rockets will never take him back if he goes through with this; they aren’t really big on self-motivation.

But the Rockets were doomed from the start. They flail around like a headless arbok, venom coursing through their veins but no bite. There’s no leadership around them, nothing to fear. They’re a system of disorganized anger, an outlet for unrest that has no real source and no real target. He’d been interested in the Rockets because it seemed like an obvious way to overthrow this shitty system, but now he can see—the quickest way to the top will be from within, and it’s about to be fed to him on a silver spoon.

Oak’s got goals. He’s got lots of goals. Ani can read the thirst in his eyes as clear as day. And if the old man’s got something to prove, that means he’s got a gap in his armor, and Ani can run with that chink to the Indigo League and back by the time anyone else notices.

I’m sorry, Des, he thinks quietly, shutting the picture of her and her outrage out of his mind. But he already knows. Shit like ‘sorry’ only matters if there’s nothing you can do.

But Ani intends to do quite a lot.

He stands up for the first time, barely even coming up to Oak’s shoulders. It doesn’t matter. He tilts his neck up defiantly. “I accept your proposal.”

Oak grins, the kind of shit-eating grin that Ani can’t wait to wipe away. Des taught him well. “Excellent.” He holds out a hand for Ani to shake. “Now. I never fully introduced myself. I’m Professor Samuel Oak.”

It’s not like Oak couldn’t have gotten that information from the police records anyway. Nothing left to lose. “I go by Ani.” The old man’s got hands smoother than a baby compared to Ani’s calloused palms.

Ani matches Oak’s smile with one of his own. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and they’re outfitting him before the slaughter. If they think kicking him while he’s down is going to earn them any favors once he rules the world, he may as well be to be polite about it. Rockets, League, Oak, Silph, barrios. The field’s suddenly quadrupled in size, but he’s ready to take them all, Lobera by his side.

“Is that your full name?”

Ani’s always hated his old man for giving him this name. It’s a constant reminder that he’s too gringo for the barrios, too barrio for the gringos. But now’s the time for him to be both.

“Giovanni. Giovanni Campo, sir. Thank you for this opportunity. I promise I’ll take Kanto by storm.”


critical author’s note

april fool’s motherfuckers.
 
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I would give a full and proper review, but it would violate flaming rules.

I calmly pointed out errors via PM. I refuse to say anything else.
 
I don't quite know what to make of this - I think that's probably my fault for not having read about half of the source material for this. I did quite like the subtle poking at would-be edginess. You could quite easily get away with posting this as serious on ff.net and watch the shower of praise come in
 
Here for the Review Game. Oddly enough, this is the second Pokémon fic I've looked at within a week that focuses on a poor Hispanics.

Know that a majority of this was written before I looked at that spoiler, so you're getting what you're getting. I'm not going back to analyze what's shitpost and what isn't after writing the whole thing already.

General

The way of writing is pretty unique, especially in the beginning. Generally I like it when people experiment. It's brave and inspirational. It's usually rewarding and refreshing for the artist themselves as well. However, the line in my opinion is drawn at when it gets too hard to understand. This fic's prose aaaaalmost comes to that line in a couple of places, but in the end, I did manage to make sense of it all, so good on you for staying on the right side.

Description

The description was very vivid and colorful, which I personally value a lot. For the metaphors, there were some I liked, but some just literally look like random words put together. They likely mean something to you, but don't say anything to me, so can't really call them genius or tacky given I just don't know what they even meant.

Ideas

The quimeras - shapeshifty ditto-human splices - damn, cool concept. Also nice to see a variant meowth. Variants open up so many possibilities, and they feel criminally underused in pokefics - at least the ones I've read so far.

Specific Comments

I looked down halfway through the class and saw that the one she gave me was the latter ‘D’. For Desdemona.

*letter, right?

When fall rolled around and it was time to celebrate día de los muertos, I dressed up for Halloween.

I've been told that Hispanics call it día de muertos, with no los? The los coming from the re-translation of "day of the dead" back to Spanish.

This, and the woman keeps referring to herself as gringo, when I expected the feminine, gringa.

Of course, if you're Hispanic or otherwise close to the culture (can't know, can't see your country from your profile given it's restricted), I'll definitely take your word over mine. I'm Finnish and have lived in Finland all my life, I've probably learned most of my knowledge of Hispanic cultures via comments on meme pages.

That’s his cue. Ani sprints the last five steps so that he’s standing behind the truck, staring at the padlock holding the garage-like rear door shut. Just like they practiced. He swings the bat at the hinges and they explode off in a storm of metal. He clambers up onto the tail bumper and heaves the door upward and open, all sound eclipsed briefly by the stormy sound of grating steel.

Ehhh... I'm no bat expert, but aluminum's a pretty flimsy metal. I'm not sure if it can really compete against steel that well.

Gods, this guy acts like he’s that old fart with the paintings and the happy little clouds.

Wow I hate him now I hope he dies.

“Barabbas of the barrios,” Ani mutters.

This with the previous one... this just brings up a whole bunch of questions about which real life people / religions exist in the pokemon world and which don't, a slippery slope no one should have to fall down. But while I can see Bob Ross or someone very similar existing in the pokeworld... how does a Biblical figure exist, and how is he known enough to become someone's metaphorical nickname?

When you get out, they will continue to play meowth and rattata

They flail around like a headless arbok, venom coursing through their veins but no bite.

Hmm... terms like like puerco, wolf in sheep's clothing and crocodile tears are already used, so putting in Pokémon just sometimes seems kind of unbalanced.

Summary

Solid fic, memes or no memes. So much so that I kind of feel extremely insecure for not seeing the meme before the reveal. But then again, that's nothing new for me.
 
Know that a majority of this was written before I looked at that spoiler, so you're getting what you're getting. I'm not going back to analyze what's shitpost and what isn't after writing the whole thing already.
Absolutely no worries. I want to clarify something that I should've put in the author's note -- the idea of me juggling a third, partially over-edgy darkfic at once is the shitpost. The loving jabs at some of the writing tropes that a lot of author's here, myself included, is a shitpost. But the actual plot, structure, and style of the story are pretty much on-the-nose for something I would've written if I had the time and energy to devote to a third fic of this size, so your commentary here, especially on style/idea presentation/description, is still incredibly useful even if I won't be applying it in future chapters of this specific work.

However, the line in my opinion is drawn at when it gets too hard to understand. This fic's prose aaaaalmost comes to that line in a couple of places, but in the end, I did manage to make sense of it all, so good on you for staying on the right side.
For the metaphors, there were some I liked, but some just literally look like random words put together. They likely mean something to you, but don't say anything to me, so can't really call them genius or tacky given I just don't know what they even meant.
I'm actually getting this concern about how things don't make sense more as I start branching out as far as prose goes, so I'd love to see which specific places started to trip you up? I wasn't trying to intentionally shitpost away style here, so the style is basically what my current writing looks like -- if it's hard to read, I'd like to fix it still!

Fixed the letter typo

I've been told that Hispanics call it día de muertos, with no los? The los coming from the re-translation of "day of the dead" back to Spanish.
This one is semi-intentional -- it's dia de muertos in in Mexico (and presumably other Spanish-speaking countries), but in the United States, members of the Hispanic community refer to it as dia de los muertos, probably because of the re-translation that you mentioned. Saffron here is based on communities in the US, so I stuck with that one.

This, and the woman keeps referring to herself as gringo, when I expected the feminine, gringa.
I fixed the first one, but the other gringo are gringo because they're adjectives referring to masculine nouns -- her gringo name is gringo because it's from nombre gringo, and Ani's gringo vocabulary is from vocabulario gringo, and the other references are usually to the plural concept, which is traditionally the masculine one. If there's one that I missed, let me know!

Ehhh... I'm no bat expert, but aluminum's a pretty flimsy metal. I'm not sure if it can really compete against steel that well.
dis fair. updated to crowbar. thank you!

This with the previous one... this just brings up a whole bunch of questions about which real life people / religions exist in the pokemon world and which don't, a slippery slope no one should have to fall down. But while I can see Bob Ross or someone very similar existing in the pokeworld... how does a Biblical figure exist, and how is he known enough to become someone's metaphorical nickname?
The miracle/resurrection story doesn't hold up well in the pokeworld given how relatively unimpressive those are in a world where universal clerics exist, but in this backstory there was a similar legend. I... actually put a lot more thought into the backstory of this story than I should have -- I think we may both have lost track of what was shitpost and what was reality here. The canon mythos that I had setup here is below, if you care to read it!:
The saffron gods aspect is multifaceted -- there's the barrio culture of gods, mentioned in this chapter, which are based on a few of the more powerful/rare gen I pokemon (kabuto, lapras, kangaskhan, aerodactyl) and have roots more in folklore/desire to reconnect with a displaced culture rather than absolute faith in a higher power, since the original immigrants didn't have a pantheon in the sense that the Kantonese do. A non-trivial portion of the Kantonese hardcore worship the legendary bird trio, in some cases to the point of fanaticism. Similar to the current US political scene, while there exists separation of church and state, there's a lot of hazy overlap when a lot of powerful political entities also happen to share a similar set of beliefs. This would come to a head when Ani/Giovanni, who doesn't believe in the existence of gods and wants to destroy the system, chooses to take over Team Rocket's resources and create a god of his own via the engineering of Mewtwo.

In the past, probably a thousand years prior, the Kantonese and their bird trio worship would've been the dominant culture. Also integral to Kantonese culture was an almost feudalistic approach to pokemon training -- before pokeballs, knights who were brave enough to face pokemon head-on and earn their trust would pledge their services to lords. As pokemon and human relations improved, knighthood became more common, but alliances between specific knight families and pokemon clans were strictly regulated, and the ability to fight alongside a pokemon was mostly dependent on if your parents had done the same. (Unrelated, but: the introduction of technology was meant to be a great equalizer here, as pokeballs theoretically meant that anyone could train, and the lord/knight system went away with time in favor of less obtuse monarchies). There were three major lord houses, each of whom claimed to be servants to one of the bird trio hey look it's Pokemon Go, and small scale inter-house drama often occurred between the sworn knights of each house.

There wasn't a water-to-wine Jesus figure who spoke of an entirely new religion, but there was a Jesús who claimed to have the favor of a mythical pink pokemon who sought to dismantle the inequality inherently caused by the feudal system. He led a large-scale rebellion among the underclass, stirred up a lot of pots, and eventually was captured and publicly tried. Barabbas in this story plays a similar role -- when faced with pardoning Jesús and the destruction of the idea of only three gods/three lords, the general population chose peace and stasis by supporting Barabbas, who claimed that the feudal system could be accessible for anyone who tried hard enough. This would later be recognized as a universally shit-tier decision, but it turns out rebellions are hard.

In the present day, it's largely accepted that the legend probably did happen, even if it might've been exaggerated. Lance is comparable to Barabbas, and it was probably way too bold of me to try to incorporate all of that backstory into a single throwaway line, but if I did this as a real fic, I would've teased this out in much later chapters. Hope this makes some sense!

Hmm... terms like like puerco, wolf in sheep's clothing and crocodile tears are already used, so putting in Pokémon just sometimes seems kind of unbalanced.
yeah I entirely agree here with the cat and mouse one. fixed it! I wanted to keep the arbok one because I think it's a fun parallel to how the future Team Rocket would end up developing under Ani's rule, but...

So much so that I kind of feel extremely insecure for not seeing the meme before the reveal. But then again, that's nothing new for me.
Please don't feel insecure! I put a lot of work into making this a more believable run, and I actually am a fan of most of the ideas/concepts presented here even if I meant them as a joke. I'm definitely still taking your critiques into account even if I can only edit this chapter + apply the style stuff to my other work. Thank you for taking the time to review!
 
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so in true día de muertos fashion, kindly enjoy this fic that was dressed up as a joke deadfic that is actually a pretty major part of my writing spiritual journey and is/for the most part always has been actually actually the prequel to some rise by sin. what is dead may never die.
originally the idea here was to post chapter 2 on April Fool's and do regular updates from there but I was so irregular that I missed even that.

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shibboleth
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“I’m looking for a, uh, Desdemona?”

“Who’s asking?” An elderly woman peers wearily back from the shadow of the doorway, sunlight cracking across the wrinkles on her face. Messy black curls are held back in a loose bun that only does a token effort of keeping her hair from mixing with the bright colors of an overlarge shirt. Bags pull heavy at the skin beneath her eyes.

There’s a pause. Samuel Oak traded away his anonymity long, long ago, so there’s a frown across his face as he has to wonder if he’s being met with ignorance, or if it’s actually suspicion. There’s a pause—something’s about to be decided behind the scenes here, depending on how he answers—and he finally says in what he hopes is a gentle voice, “I’m Professor Oak. I’ve heard from some of my associates that Desdemona is very talented and I was hoping to ask her a few questions.” His eyes slide past her, to the single picture frame that graces the entry hall, a faded recollection of a beaming couple and six unruly children. Even in the old greys of the picture, the mother’s face looks just as old as it is now.

The house behind her is quiet.

“She’s not been here for a while,” the woman says stiffly, at last. “She wanted to make it big in the city like the gringos do. Desdemona hasn’t got any more time for us now.” Her shoulder shifts, and she turns to shut the door.

“Wait,” Oak says, and she stops her movement right before he gets the door shut on his face. She’s looking at him expectantly, one bony hand on his wrist to disentangle it from the doorframe, and he manages to clear his throat and ask, “Do you know where she might be?”

She disentangles herself from him and barely keeps her lip from curling in disgust. Her back is suddenly ramrod straight, an iron rod unflinching alongside the unbridled pride in her voice. “If I knew—” she enunciates each word, carefully making the foreign syllables clear on her lips “—don’t you think I would’ve already found her?”

« ⋆ »​

“Any luck, Professor?”

“No,” Oak grumbles.

Jake raises and eyebrow as Oak throws his coat onto the couch by the door with a sigh of disgust. Normally the professor is a little more collected than this. Oak normally keeps his temper pretty well, so Jake’s learned to be nervous when the man gets into a bad mood. Best to placate him early and such; one thing he’s learned from being the professor’s personal assistant for three years is that Oak is much more tolerable in a good mood. “Will’s making good progress.”

“Oh?”

“It looks like he’ll be challenging the Vermillion Gym shortly.”

“I see.” Oak doesn’t seem very impressed. Jake doesn’t really blame him; legend has it that Oak was a formidable trainer in his own right, back in the glory days. That’s the problem with geniuses: good is never good enough.

Jacob Anderson stares awkwardly at his computer screen. That was the only scrap of good news he had for today, and he was honestly hoping it’d garner him some more positive feelings than what he’d gotten. Oak must’ve gotten a really bad time with that last investigation.

“The girl. Desdemona. Do we have any other information on her? A sighting, a surname? The house ended up being a bust; there’s just an old lady there and it doesn’t seem like she’s all there.”

Jake jerks back to reality. His fingers are flying across his laptop before he’s even aware of it, taking him down the filepaths that he knows by heart. Of all their leads, Des’s folder is the smallest. “You mean the ghost? She shows up a few times on some cameras; I’ve got records of her crossing between Celadon a few times. She matches the case profile though. I’m sure it’s her. I can run the facial recognition patterns a few more times, and—”

Oak waves his hand dismissively. “I don’t need any of the old stuff. Has anything happened since last week?”

“Last week?”

“Since the Silph sting. With that kid, Ani. Giovanni.”

Jake squints at the data he’s got sprawled out before him; sorts it again by date just in case. It’s not often that Oak is just wrong about these sorts of things, and it’s even rarer that Jake’s allowed to be right, so it’s best to double-triple-check. “Nothing. Last we’ve got on her is some security camera footage of her outside of a random casino in Celadon, and that was almost a month ago. I can check the archives downtown if you’d like.”

“No need.” Another dismissive wave of his hand. Jake flinches back. Whatever happened to him this morning must’ve really pissed off the old man. “We’ll root her out somehow. Keep running the facematch software; something’s bound to turn up.”

Oh. Jake perks up. He’s got something else, no matter how small, to offer up. “In other news, I gave that Giovanni kid his pokéball today, like you asked.”

Oak’s already putting on his coat, but something about Jake’s statement makes the old man stop. “And?”

The kid’s face had made it seem like he’d rather the pokéball than accept it from Jake. Will at least looked the part of a bold trainer; this one had the sullen glower of a teenage model at Pidgeot Topic. “I don’t know what you see in him.”

“Potential,” Oak says cryptically, after a long silence. He’s paused halfway through putting his arm in the sleeve of his coat, his back to Jake, so it’s hard to read his face.

Jake never understood people like this. They seemed to be running circles ten stories up from him, stymied deep in plans he’d never hope to untangle. If he could call the shots, he’d never think that someone like Giovanni Campo had a snowball’s chance in Mt. Ember of taking down the League. But then again, Jake doesn’t call the shots, and Oak does, and somehow the old man has a habit of making everything fall perfectly into place.

“Any idea where he’s headed?”

“Kid walked in and out of here like staying for more than three minutes would give him pokérus. I reminded him you wanted him to start in Vermillion, but I don’t know if he’ll listen. He’ll show up on the network soon enough; I’ll check the archives tomorrow morning, first thing.”

Oak resumes putting on his jacket as if nothing happened. “Of course. Update me when you’ve got something worth sharing. I’ve got a call with Professor Elm in three minutes.”

And with that, he sweeps out the door again, letting it slam shut behind him.

Jake flinches back; the sound echoes in his ears for longer than he’d like, and he catches himself staring at Oak’s receding figure through the lab’s windows before he gets back to work.

“Just keep running the facematch software, he says,” he repeats to himself in a falsetto voice. “It’ll be easy, he says.” He grumbles the rest of his gripes under his breath instead; it’s not worth Oak coming back and overhearing anything unseemly. His eyes return to the screen again. “Desdemona,” he murmurs, brow furrowing as he stares at the grainy figure of a dark-haired teenager lounging by a streetlamp. “Where are you now?”

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“Good evening, Jake. You’re out late. Need some more server footage?”

Jake hurries in with the same sense of purpose he’s usually got; one of his hands is already typing away on his thigh like it’s a keyboard. The other is wrapped tightly around a bulky workstation laptop that looks like it weighs almost more than him, the poor beanpole. He seems more nervous than usual; his eyes are darting all around the room. “Yes please, Mrs. Miyatake. I’ve got to pull some data. Shouldn’t take me more than thirty minutes, honest.”

He flashes his credentials, probably just for show—everyone knows Sara’s got a good handle on pretty much anyone who enters Saffron’s security archives by this point—and waits at the turnstyle until his ID turns up positive. “Please, Jake, I thought we’ve been over this. No one calls me that except in writing.” She laughs and makes a lazy gesture towards the gold-lettered nameplate on her desk. “It’s Sara,” she’s saying, swiveling out of her chair so that she can follow him. It’s a pain, bureaucratic things like this, but the League’s always been very secretive about who and when anyone can access the security servers. Even Oak’s own personal assistants.

Jake looks at her with a bit of surprise and almost trips over his feet when he realizes she’s walking behind him. Sara scolds herself mentally. She’s always had an unfortunate habit of walking too close to people. “I didn’t mean to bother you, Sara,” he says. “I can just come back when—”

She waves a hand dismissively through the air. “Don’t you worry about that; it’s my job.” Well, technically, it’s Marianne’s job now, but she’s on sick leave for the time being, saddling Sara with the downright thrilling task of handling all the server access. “Just in case you’ve forgotten, they’re restricting data pulls to twenty minutes, now. Don’t want to stress the network out too much.”

“Right. Of course.”

They walk through the clandestine halls in silence for a bit, which only serves to make Marianne even more aware of the way her heels click against the tile floor. “Anything in particular you’re after, Jake?”

Jake’s trailing behind her, but she can almost hear the shrug in his voice. “You know the old man. Gets strange ideas in his head; he’s having me gather a bunch of stuff.”

“More camera footage?” she asks sympathetically.

Jake sighs. “Yup.”

“Fourth time this week.”

Another resigned sigh. “Yup.”

Sara taps her own ID on the door outside of the server room. Counts to two point five as it processes in the system and the maglock on the door clicks open. The door swings wider than it looks, and she has to push Jake out of the way before it almost runs him over. Poor kid must be even more sleep-deprived than usual.

The server room runs a few degrees hotter than the rest of the building, on account of all the machinery in there. It’s downright stifling, with rows and rows of beeping machines stacked up to the ceiling, but Sara can’t really complain—you don’t get the largest security feed archive in the region without a drawback.

Jake takes a moment to take it all in—he’s always got that wide-eyed look of awe when he sees this room; Sara reckons he’s probably the type to geek out over the newest computers or pokéballs, or anything with a circuit board, really—and then he walks on over to the terminal. He hovers for a moment, as if trying to remember what he was looking for, and then his hands start flying over the keyboard.

Sara takes the opportunity to check her newsfeed. Jake’s a good kid; he can handle himself. She glances up every now and then when she sees the screen flashes up more frequently—there’s a picture of a girl with dark, close-cropped hair hunched over next to a green, dinosaur-like pokémon that she doesn’t recognize; closely after that is a meowth and a fresh-eyed boy who’s got a weird mix of features that don’t quite look native but don’t look foreign, either; and then a short, square-shouldered kid shouting commands at what looks like a vulpix—but for the most part, she likes to leave Jake to his own devices. Oak never likes too many probes into his own “personal” projects. Whatever he’s planning, Sara isn’t about to get too far into his case. The League just simply isn’t worth that.

Ah. One of her newsites is telling her that there’s a travelling circus in Vermillion. That’s always nice. She might bring her mother out to that…

Her own phone alarm jerks her out of her reverie. It’s been twenty minutes already. Stupid higher-ups and their stupid rules. “Time’s up, Jake.” Sara looks up just in time to see the image of a teenage girl with dark ringlets vanish off of the screen. He quickly stands up and unplugs his laptop from the workstation.

“Found what you were looking for?”

He rolls his eyes, but keeps his tone light. “You know the old man,” he says. “Never quite satisfied with what I’m bringing in. This might keep him occupied for a bit, though.”

“Glad to hear it,” Sara says, putting her phone back in her pocket. “You can always come back tomorrow if you need it.”

He flashes her a smile as he scoops his own laptop back into his arms. “You know, I just might.”

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“Aren’t you a little old to be going out on a pokémon journey, Miss—”

“Miyatake,” the woman says smoothly. Her tone says working class, but her outfit says new money. Actually, scratch that. Marco looks at her clothes appraisingly. They aren’t all quite in fashion; some of those brands went out of vogue a few years back. She’s probably buying thrift, waiting for the white-collars to grow tired of their shit so she can fawn over their scraps.

Just what he needs at the end of the day. Another entitled penny-counter drifting in and trying to get his supplies for cheap. That’s the only reason a non-barrio ever ventures into his shop these days. “My stuff tends to appeal to younger crowds. Hostel stays and the like. Most of it’s used. If you don’t know how to patch a tent whole you might not want this.”

“It’s for a friend,” she says, tilting her chin up defiantly. There’s an almost fearsome glint in her eyes that melts back into a reserved smile, one that seems more natural on a face like hers.

Nice. Dumb bitch buys used, potentially-stolen gifts for her friends. That’s closer to the attitude he was expecting from her type, actually.

She’s still standing, looking at him expectantly. “Mind if I look around?” she says at last. He could almost swear that she’s slowing the words down for him.

He grunts non-comittally, which of course she takes as a yes. The gold of her belt clinks a little as she strolls through the aisles, clearly not concerned that it’s almost closing time.

Marco busies himself adjusting the inventory of what he’s got behind the counter. At least with a bougie customer like this, he doesn’t have to deal with the threat of her trying to shoplift.

In fact, he’s halfway through sorting through the newest potion shipment and checking for dents or tears in the packaging—dumbfucks at the factory were starting to get lazier with that—when he realizes that she’s actually being exceptionally quiet. Most of the customers like her would be raining a barrage of questions, bartering the price or something.

He glances up stealthily, and is surprised to see her staring straight back at him, as if trying to memorize every detail of his face.

That’s a new one. “Can I help you?” he asks slowly. Slows his words down the same way she did for him; that’ll show her.

“Do you sell pokéballs?” the woman replies archly, as if she hadn’t just been doing something incredibly odd.

Marco smirks. Man, she really can’t be from around here. “You’re gonna have to go to one of the shops downtown,” he says. Bites back the sarcastic remark that’s already forming in the back of his throat—if he could afford to stock pokéballs here, he wouldn’t have his stupid pokémart somewhere where he needed to have bars on all the windows.

“I see,” she replies, but now she’s talking to his shirt. Then, she shrugs. Tosses her hair over her shoulder. “Good evening, then.”

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“I’m back.”

Domino looks up from a stack of papers. One blonde eyebrow raises just in time to herald the heavy thunk of a backpack hitting the floor. “Shit, Des. You’ve been busy.”

“Long day.” Her long-legged gait slowly restoring itself as she reverts from the shopkeep’s heavyset body back into her own, Des snags herself a payapa from the fruit basket on the shelf. “Did you want anything from the store? I forgot to ask.”

Domino shakes her head in disbelief. “You stole all this today?”

“The clerk there was a prick.”

“Are you sure you got his face right?” Des is starting to develop a nasty habit of rushing jobs like these, and that was where errors started to come into their already-precarious equation.

“Yeah, I basically spent the entire time staring at it. Ugly fucker. Guessed on the shoe size, but that’s trivial enough.” Des’s tone leaves little room for argument, and she waves one hand dismissively. “Don’t worry. I wore his face when I was doing the actual lifting, and I made sure to case his place wearing someone else’s face, and I’ve never been seen talking to that face before… well, to make a very long story short, the chain of events is extensive, but I’m pretty sure no one can pin this back on us.” She pauses, weighs the question in her mouth for a moment. “Anyway. Do you mind if I crash for a night? I think you were right; my place is compromised.”

“Futon’s all yours. There’s a fresh batch straight from Celadon if you want any,” Domino says, jerking her head toward the cardboard box beside her. “I heard Erika’s new shit gets you high as a kite.”

Des tilts her head for a second, the last of the shopkeeper’s short hair washing back into the darkness of her own as she does so. When she blinks back at Domino, it’s with her own eyes once more. “I’m good,” she says at last, fingertips deftly skinning the payapa and quartering it. “Gotta process some stuff first.”

“Mmm. Stuff?”

“Oak’s definitely behind the ambush.”

They both pause at that one. Des surprises her with the whiplash confidence she managed to work into a statement so absurd, but as soon as the words are out, she’s fixing Domino with a glare that’s begging for challenge, not expecting it.

And Domino gives it, because— “Oak,” Domino says. The dubiousness slips into her voice even as she tries to reign it in. “Professor Oak. The head of the Indigo League. Tried to set up you and Ani.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Maybe Domino’s not the only one who’s been sampling Erika’s shit. “Des, no offense, but you’re not important enough for that. No one is.”

“I know, but listen. I know what I saw.”

She’s playing coy again, not giving the full story. The lack of details usually means she’s actually telling the truth; Des has always been weird like that. “Do you think he was cracking down on Team Rocket?” Domino’s leaning forward now, the payload next to her utterly forgotten. “That’s pretty bold of him, attacking us openly in the streets like that.” One finger’s twining absently in bleached parts of her hair. “You and Ani made it out okay, more because you were there, but we can’t keep getting lucky like that.” Have they been moving too fast?

“That’s the weird thing.” Des is by the barred window now, bare toes curling in the filthy carpet of their shared apartment. “I don’t think he cared about that. We weren’t the only people he was after. The other kid doesn’t look like our type at all; he’s definitely not one of ours and I don’t think anyone would get behind recruiting him. Oak was hitting us for something else.”

“Who was the other kid?”

Des shrugs. “Some gringo trying to do the gym challenge. He’s our age, but that’s the only similarity I could find. Oak’s keeping super close tabs on him, though. Basically checks in on him every day, which is great for us because it turns out he’s in Vermillion right now.”

Domino’s gaze strays to the huge backpack that Des has deposited on their floor. She does the math a few seconds later. “You aren’t planning on going after him, are you?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“You don’t have a pokémon.”

One hand, the one that isn’t resting on the windowsill, reflexively curls into a fist. “I can handle myself.”

Des.” Domino’s voice lowers. She cocks her head for a moment—no doubt listening through the paper-thin walls to see if the neighbors are back yet or not—and then continues in a hushed voice. “Look. All of this reeks. Ani comes out of nowhere, all-star recruit who whizzes through every test we could possibly ask of him, and then fucking Oak is after him and some random gringo trainer? I vote we don’t fuck with this, Des. It’s bigger than all of us, an it’s gonna suck you in too. And neither of you seem even remotely afraid that you both almost got arrested? Let Ani finish his recruitment, fine, but I’m not putting him out on any high-profile hits for a while, and I don’t want you running halfway across Kanto cleaning up his dirty past for him. Let him handle himself and see where the chips fall.”

Des’s breath hitches in her throat; she takes the moment to look through the faded blue of the wave-patterned curtains as if she’s checking for anyone nearby. “He can handle himself too.”

“Then let him, Des,” Domino presses, leaning back into the sofa. “You’re rubbing off too much on him, you know? Yesterday he came in to drop off a shipment and I swear he had that same deadpan look that you did. It’s okay to be afraid sometimes, you know? You don’t have to always hide behind a mask. You both almost got busted by the puercos. If either of you got caught, that shit would’ve put you away for life. A little caution never hurt anyone.”

Des doesn’t answer her question. “You ever seen a green pokémon that wasn’t a caterpie or a bellsprout in these parts? Looks pre-historic, a little.”

“Venusaur?”

Des shakes her head quickly. “Biped, not quadruped.”

Domino can’t help it; her gaze is straying back toward the box they’ve got from Erika. Des purses her lips. It’s bad form to sample product, but Domino always says that when Des goes off on tangents like it’s much easier to be stoned. “My cousin saw a grovle once.”

“Is that the lizard one from Hoenn?” Des catches her nod out of the corner of her eye, and frowns. “It didn’t really look like a grass type.”

Domino sighs in exasperation. “What didn’t look like a grass-type?”

Too late. She’s switching directions again. “Oak’s got tabs out on four of us, I think. Us, that gringo kid, and then this complete rando who I’ve never seen before. She’s definitely not from the barrios. Her entire team looks foreign.”

“And?”

Des mulls over her next words carefully. Her mouth tightens and she’s got the air of someone threading their way through broken glass, the same face that she and Domino usually only use on gringos. They’ll be bound to notice eventually, and if that collapses, there’ll be hell to pay. “I think Oak’s trying to mess with the League challenge somehow.”

And?

“Give me a chance to check it out. Let Ani earn his stripes with a mission a little further from home—you already said he can’t show his face in Saffron for a while, so have him lay low while poking around Vermillion. Treat it like it’s a secret mission for him.” She’s like a caterpie who only just got stuck in the web, shaking carefully to see if this isn’t a lie she’s wrapped up too far in. That’s always the tricky part. “I’ll trail him from afar. See if he pulls any weird shit if he thinks he’s solo.”

Domino hopes that the disdain for this entire situation is written deep into the scowl on her face. “I don’t really like this. League stuff is way over our heads.”

“We were gonna get noticed eventually, Dom,” Des replies in a low voice. “It was only a matter of time. Getting bigger means bigger problems.”

There’s a weighty silence. In the ten years Domino has known her, Des was never one to make rushed decisions.

At last, she says, “You sure you’ll be okay?”

Des braves a weak little smile. Glances at the travelling backpack loaded by the door. “You know I always am.”

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Jake raises and eyebrow

Typo.

The kid’s face had made it seem like he’d rather the pokéball than accept it from Jake.

Missing word, I think.

serves to make Marianne even more aware

Should that be Sara?

Anyway, I read this out of completionism, but it's been so long since I read chapter one that even I'm lost. But then according to my previous review I had a similar reaction the first time round. For the sake of saying something I did find myself unexpectedly giving the shopkeeper a bit of slack. Let's face it, after a trying days I've had some unfair comments in my head for customers, so why should Marco be any different
 
Here I am to return the favor and check out the little shitpost that code. I may not understand the source material, but here I am nonetheless. The implications of a Hispanic population in Saffron City is also an interesting concept. Also religious worldbuilding? Sign me up!

Btw might want to add a content warning for mentions of physical abuse. It didn't trigger anything for me personally though, don't worry.
I looked down halfway through the class and saw that the one she gave me was the *letter ‘D’.

Each one had this big, beautiful curly letter on it in inlaid gold.
At first I thought it was supposed to be "letter", but then I realized that all of the singular letters on the pencils spell out a word.
bombshell blonde, ready to explode.
This bombshell/explode thing. Good stuff.

Side note, and forgive me for my ignorance, but when the narration says Des has blue eyes/blonde hair/etc., is that more in a metaphorical sense of what Ani sees, or is it literal, as in Des wears contacts/wigs/etc. to fit in?
Don’t avoid eye contact even if that might feel easier.
Damn it, I suck at eye contact with strangers and sometimes family.
The man takes a step back. The ripples of his interest sink beneath the surface of his face again, seamlessly, like a gyarados submerging to stalk prey. “You’re right. Statistically, a quimera of my age is near-impossible. Silph didn’t start pumping their mutagens into the water until twenty years ago.” He cracks into a boyish grin. “Although some of my colleagues say I look the part.”
“Silph thinks they can save a few bucks by dumping their excess chemicals in the parts of town that are too poor to protest, and instead they make the children of the barrios into their own worst nightmare. I like to think that even if there is a karma in the world, even if there are no gods.”
Is this the shitposty part?
When Ani was a kid, still young enough to believe in gods, he prayed to the same Five that all the lost children of Saffron did. The gringos kept the people they didn’t like out of their churches and their gods, so the barrio kids made their own: Lobera, the legendary blade that would kill all the wicked. Nuberu, whose toxic seeds were responsible for all of mankind’s woes. Mari, elusive siren of the seas, upon whose back you could traverse any storm and whose song could heal all wounds. Antillia, lady of war, who appeared with her club and thick fists to protect all children caught in the crossfire of violence, if you only called her true name. Numantia, flying relic, symbol of their lifeblood in the face of a quashed culture.
EYES GROW WIDE
“You may have heard of Lance.” The man pauses to take his glasses off his head and rub them on the corner of his sleeve.

He’s trying to draw out the conversation, Ani realizes. He wants Ani to fill in the gaps for him, to give him some sort of foothold for whatever the hell is coming up.

And with nothing left to lose, Ani gives it to him. “The Dragon Master.”

“Don’t feel the need to be polite. I know you’ve got a better name for him.”

“Barabbas of the barrios,” Ani mutters.
Oh wow oh wow
“So we agree. Lying about giving a man a team of dragons that he didn’t even train himself and propelling him to the top of the League doesn’t inherently disprove the inequalities that still exist in today’s society, even if he’s well-accepted by the masses. Even if we’d backed him from a purely financial standpoint, he’d never be able to fund the equipment or medical costs necessary to raise on dragon, let alone six. He’d be stuck with rattata and koffing like everyone else, and then the League would never have had its hero.”
Wait was Lance a barrio?
Kanto the underdog hero it thinks *it wants.”

There’s a long, pregnant pause.
Pregnant has always felt like a weird descriptive word to me. That's just a personal thing, though. It works here.
“You’re him,” Ani says quietly, the words feeling like lead weight against his tongue. “You’re Professor Oak.”
what
“Is that your full name?”

Ani’s always hated his old man for giving him this name. It’s a constant reminder that he’s too gringo for the barrios, too barrio for the gringos. But now’s the time for him to be both.

“Giovanni. Giovanni Campo, sir. Thank you for this opportunity. I promise I’ll take Kanto by storm.”
Mothertrucker—
 
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