8.4 KiB
Pokemon: The Origin of Species, Chapter 10
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Author: u/DaystarEld Pokémon Professor*
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URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9794740/10/Pokemon-The-Origin-of-Species
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Score: 29
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Created: 2014-07-27T21:16:09
Post:
Comments:
u/Timewinders [+11] (2 hours later)
One thing I like about this story is how much of an ordeal it is to catch and train pokemon compared to in the games. It really adds to the realism.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (4 hours later)
Thanks, glad you're enjoying it :)
u/noggin-scratcher [+8] I am a happy tree (4 hours later)
I like this series a lot... somehow, despite all the odds, making Pokemon make sense. Not shying away from the "10 year olds getting into fights with wild animals that have superpowers is kinda dangerous" thing either.
u/DaystarEld [+5] Pokémon Professor (7 hours later)
Yeah, it always bothered me how lightly the games and show took the concept of "go fight giant monsters kids! What could go wrong?"
u/eaglejarl [+2] (14 hours later)
Well, if you want to go all the way with it:
Pokemon: A game where very young children go into dangerous wilderness with no adult supervision or protection. There, they capture wild animals and keep them trapped in tiny ball-shaped cages until the animals develop Stockholm Syndrome and come to love their captors...at which point, the kids put them in the equivalent of dogfights.
And yet, despite my snark above, I am really enjoying this story and have been waiting eagerly for the next update. I love the rational spin you put on something that (by my understanding anyway) is organized more around Rule of Cool than Rule of Logic.
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (21 hours later)
It's even worse in the anime, where they're sentient creatures fully capable of realizing how hopeless their situation is o_O
Glad you're enjoying the story though! I have to fight the instinct to let Rule of Cool sneak in every so often XD
u/DaystarEld [+6] Pokémon Professor (33 seconds later)
Hey all, welcome back!
This chapter was a lot of fun to write, so I hope you enjoy it. I'm very glad the recent Pokemon games changed the whole "poison hurts pokemon in their pokeballs" thing, because while it created many tense moments of gameplay, it never really made any sense. If they could die to poison while in a pokeball, why wouldn't they be able to die to burns? Or bleed out? That would have been a headache to try to rationalize.
Thanks for reading, and all feedback appreciated!
u/MadScientist14159 [+5] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (49 minutes later)
Sooo...
Mean Look?
It's not exactly a psychic attack, but sudden disorientation and paralysing fear that takes several minutes to completely shake off would fit with "enemy pokémon cannot leave battle".
EDIT: Spinarak doesn't learn Mean Look. Scary Face also fits, though, and Spinarak can learn Scary Face.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (an hour later)
Mayhaps...
u/InfernoVulpix [+4] (6 hours later)
I just checked Spinarak's level up movesets, and noticed that it learned Night Shade relatively early, whereas Psychic is a move only learned at level 40, at which it should be far, far too strong for Red to battle, even taking into consideration the way levels don't seem to be an actual thing in this story. Psybeam is learned through breeding, so it's possible Spinarak had that, but it's not likely as Psybeam would likely involve a beam of some sort. Additionally, the description for Night Shade matches the effects shown in the story, so it seems logical that Spinarak used Night Shade there.
Night Shade is a Ghost type move, although in the games it is a 'fixed damage' move, and thus type doesn't come into play. However, I'm assuming that you're assuming that that effect is illogical, and thus gave it a different effect, either regular Ghost type damage or Ghost type frightening with no damage.
So Red was hit by a Ghost attack. From the way you talked about it, I'd put a 65-75% chance that Red is going to develop Psychic powers during the course of the story, with the substantial chance otherwise being due to how Red took the tests (although from a story flow stance, the fact that it said the tests weren't 100% only makes it more likely) and how the main character developing Psychic powers during the story seems a bit cheap (Psychic abilities being part of the character prior to introduction would be part of the setting, as it were, but to develop them during the course of the plot with no inclination towards this path from before the plot feels like a watered-down version of the type of plot where an average ordinary person gets dragged into an extraordinary conflict due to sheer dumb luck). I'd say there's about a 5% chance it's the option that Red is extraordinarily susceptible to mental attacks, and a 20-30% chance it's just him not knowing what mental attacks feel like.
I also see that there's a wide variety of diversity in the forest. Up until now we've mainly focused on Kanto natives like Ratata and Pidgey, but now we have Spinarak and Shroomish in the forest too. It's possible this was intentional from the people in the story, to introduce new species as Red mentioned was done with Butterfree, but it's also possible that you're just making Kanto more varied than it normally is due to the fact that other regions like Johto and Sinnoh get that diversity from their games, whereas Kanto didn't.
And then there's the scene you left us on. A dozen Beedrill (VERY unlikely they can fight them off, even if Charmander fully lets loose his fire abilities), with incentive to stay in the area (the flowers), and a natural instinct to attack trespassers and possible predators. I'd say that there's three ways the plot can go from here.
- They decide not to interfere due to the danger, and help out when the rangers arive.
- They make a distraction for the Beedrill, giving them the risky opportunity to rescue the body.
- They attempt to sneak past the attention of the Beedrill and get the body. I see 3 being next to impossible to pull off, and 1 seems to be not as likely either, or else Leaf wouldn't have insisted Red and Blue come meet her so quickly. It's decently likely Blue will want to engage in combat, but it's just as possible Blue will not wish to fight such odds. I think that option 2, that they distract the Beedrill, is most likely, with the other options coming close behind (something like 40%:30%:20%), and I'll leave some room for an option I never thought of and/or plot twists.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (6 hours later)
Not wanting to spoil anything, I won't respond to most of this, but as for the pokemon diversity, I'm basing the nativity of pokemon mostly off FireRed/LeafGreen, as they contain the most recent incarnation of Kanto. I may mess with it further, but definitely don't plan on sticking primarily to the original Kanto 150 for the various locations :)
u/CitrusJ [+3] (an hour later)
Great chapter!
u/DaystarEld [+4] Pokémon Professor (an hour later)
Thanks, glad you liked it :)
u/liamash3 [+3] Mizu (7 hours later)
That bit with the branch was funny. The "however I fall, this will hurt" reaction :) Also loved the interactions between Red's pokemon and him. I find it heartwarming how sweet and caring they are to their trainer, despite one having only been caught recently (the rattatta). Also, after this chapter, I'm now of the opinion all wild pokemon are dangerous, and not just the bigger ones. The scenes with Rattatta really showed how much damage the little guy/girl* could do.
*Can't recall the rattatta's gender.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (17 hours later)
Well, the "sweet and caring" might be seen as mental subjugation from the pokeballs >.> But it's genuine in the sense that the virtual experiences that bring about such affection is real to them :)
u/Vermilion22 [+2] (2 days later)
They are all dangerous, but there's dangerous and then there's DANGEROUS. Can you imagine a Rhyperior migrating from a mountain to another?
u/None [+1] (14 hours later)
The Rattata is a girl.