Lost Evolution

[Blitzy]

Wow, that's one huge chapter list. I wonder how I'm gonna get through that ^ ^; Either way, the title kind of lured me since it's all epic and stuff :3

There was no hope. She was the last.

Especial this. It's so very dramatic and it got me hooked right away. Now, since we don't get any information as to who she is (or rather, what she is) I'll bold parts that I think may be hints.

Glancing behind her, she saw the forested island which she had grown up on fading into the distance.

So I'm guessing a forest-type Pokémon... Grass or Bug-type, maybe?

They had spared her, for she was a child, so much like Their own children in so many ways. Yet she differed completely from Them now.

The sentence confuses me, but perhaps because I don't know her situation :/ I'm guessing a split evolution then, but I'm having a hard time finding a Flying type in there...

With her mate, the penultimate one, dead, she was alone.

Another dramatic sentence :3 Kind of makes me emphasize with the main character.

The great plain of water looked closer now. Her wings were tiring; she was losing height. For the last ever time in her life she marvelled at how exhilarating it was to fly, rushing through the air with no regard for gravity, no limits. The freedom, the incredible feeling of going anywhere she wished, of not being tethered to the ground.

This is a very nice paragraph. You really have a way with words, almost poetic, it really makes me envy you for your skill :3

Her power of flight was failing, a power gained upon evolution for her kind.

Odd, so only this species can fly? I'm going to check Bulbapedia later, because none comes to mind at the moment xD I thought it could've been Tropius in the beginning but it doesn't look like it now.

With the last of her strength, she powered herself downwards through the water’s surface, sending up a spray of white frothing foam. For a moment that spot was stirred into a frenzy, the liquid bubbling and thrashing about. Then the ripples subsided, leaving the ocean calm, flat and empty once more.

You made your main character die in the prologue? That's an odd, yet original, way to go at it. At least the death felt painless, peaceful almost. I hope it's not the end of this character yet, but I guess I'll figure it out later.


Now then, I think it's a wonderful, original way to start off and you leave us with heaps of questions. Most important, of course, "Who is she?" and "Who are They?". I hope to find me some answers myself, though I was never that good at reading between the lines (so far, I've got nothing on who she might be :/). Either way, consider me a reviewer ;3

Small message I wanted to leave as well; I've recently posted the first chapter of my own fic and I was hoping if you could give it a try. If you don't feel like it, don't feel obligated (though I'll be impatiently waiting anyway >3)

I'll combine my future reviews, since I wouldn't make any progress otherwise xD

[Punk Lion]

I just read your first chapter today and I have every intention of coming back to finish this story. If you have a PM list I'd love to be on it. Can't wait to get the time to read more.

[elyvorg]

Blitzy - Whee, another person who's been enticed in by the prologue despite the thirty chapters they'll have to read to catch up! Welcome to the fic, and I hope you enjoy reading through it. :3 I'm also pleased to see that it was the title that managed to catch your attention - that's one of the few things from the beginning of this fic that I'm still completely satisfied with and would never change.

It's an odd feeling but quite a fun one to see you being all in the dark and wondering who "she" is during the prologue, because her identity is pretty much revealed in about Chapter 2, which was obviously such a long time ago for me, and my readers have all known it ever since then, so it's unusual for me to see a reader who still doesn't know. xP As for me supposedly killing off the main character in the prologue - well, prologues are often fairly separate from the main story, so who says "she" was ever the main character? =P It may not completely be the end of her, either. Well, it sort of is, and it sort of isn't. You'll see. I'm being vague here, but I get the feeling I might be saying a little too much for someone who's still at your point in the fic, so I'll shut up now and just wait for you to read more.

On the subject of you reading more - I love that you picked out individual lines to comment on in the prologue, and I totally wouldn't mind if you did it again, but while you're reading just be aware that I wrote all those earlier chapters ages ago. I've improved a lot since then, to the point that I don't see a lot of things in the older chapters as being particularly good writing any more, so bear in mind that if you see anything that you think is badly written, I most likely completely agree with you.

Well, either way, I hope you still enjoy the fic, and again, thanks for reading. :3

Punk Lion - Whoa, another one? This is getting pretty insane - you're the second new reader this evening and the third in two weeks who's willing to tackle the mass of existing chapters. :O I don't know where you people are coming from, but you're all awesome. Enjoy the fic, and I hope you'll have lots of comments to give me once you've caught up. I'll put you on the PM list in the meantime.

[Dragonfree]

and that coupled with the fact that she was the lost evolution of his own species

:O Title drop!

He lit one of his blades, illuminating their surroundings; Foliano noticed that the shrub he and Kabutops were stood next to looked oddly like someone had hacked and slashed at it for whatever reason.

Chekhov's Shrub strikes again!

I love the way you've been describing secret bases, by the way. It's one of those game elements that make no sense and you get it to somehow work while faithfully keeping to that sense of alien freakiness.

Huh, Carrie can't understand Archopy? Makes sense, since she can only understand Grovyle, but it still threw me off for a moment because with all the talk about talking to Archopy and all, I somehow didn't realize this would be a problem until now.

I love Theo here, being all frustrated that nobody's telling him what's going on. x3

She took off her bag and dropped it by the base’s entrance, giving it a strangely stern look

She's thinking about the Master Ball, isn't she? :3 I love these little details.

Aww, Velotus is going to be a translator. I don't know how much you meant to convey of his change of character with this particular little detail, but it does say a lot. :3

I really like how you chose Foliano for this POV. It makes all sorts of things possible, from these innocent-looking observations about Velotus and Carrie looking at her bag to the fact it's easy to write him as tuning out the translating that's going on (even while you make sure we don't completely forget about it), which wouldn't be so easy if you were writing this from Carrie or Velotus's POV. Plus that we just don't see much of Foliano - in fact, isn't this the first POV he's gotten in the fic so far?

She fixed him with a cold, haunted stare. “You do not want to know what is in my memories, human.”

Awww. D: Poor Archopy!

Kabutops is adorable. Just want that out there.

Awwwwww Archopy's friend! D: How does he know he's going to be a Sceptile when he doesn't know his father and his mother is an Archopy, though? I mean, if she told him his father was a Sceptile, it sounds almost like you're going out of your way to not tell us that, and it ends up confusingly coming off as if it's supposed to be a mystery but not being treated that way by the characters. I'm also confused by his reference to his father when he's about to kill Archopy's mate. Are you saying he found his Sceptile father? How on earth did he know it was his father? I mean, surely his mother can't have identified him for him, if the father was one of Them and she was an Archopy. I'm not sure how much of this is intentionally mysterious and supposed to be revealed later and how much I'm just missing.

I can't help wondering why Archopy is telling them so many technically irrelevant details, though - they just asked her about why bringing her species back wouldn't work, and surely she doesn't want to delve into more painful foreign memories than she needs to to answer the question. All she'd have needed to tell them was that some of the Sceptile had concluded they were superior and nature wanted the Archopy wiped out and that then they'd banded together to systematically murder them, really, and then the conclusion that it would surely happen again. It doesn't seem like she needed to talk about her friend or her mate in particular at all, and therefore I'm afraid this section feels kind of infodumpish - it really feels like something for the benefit of the reader more than something she would actually tell them here. Perhaps it would work out better if you had them ask some more specific questions at some point that would reveal the extra information, or she could just think about it in her POV (assuming here, of course, that it won't be of direct significance that Carrie and company know about it).

Foliano's reaction to Archopy's initial refusal is also a little underwhelming - it feels like you just wanted to get to Carrie's reaction instead of spending time on him. It would be nice to spend a little more time on his thoughts than just this "Oh, well, if she doesn't want it" we get.

“You won’t know unless you try,” Carrie was saying. “Don’t you want to give your kind a second chance to live?”

The "was saying" seems odd to me, since it seems to imply she's sort of in the middle of saying it already, while we just saw her saying something else; it's the kind of wording I'd at least only use if the narrating character sort of comes into the middle of a conversation. I'd reword it if I were you.

I can't help not quite seeing Archopy's logic in refusing if it doesn't concern her that she'd have to go back to MemorCorp and she does want her species to repopulate the earth, in principle. I'd always assumed if you went the Archopy-says-no route (which you probably would since you said the fic would be around forty chapters) it would be because she didn't give a damn about how many of her species were around and just wanted to be left alone after all the trauma she's been through. However, if all that's stopping her is the thought that maybe Sceptile are evil and will try to wipe them out again (despite that there are humans - who, she's just had explained to her, are in many ways more powerful than any Pokémon - who desperately want them to live and will be protecting them), it really doesn't seem like a very reasonable decision, especially when you've just been telling us that telling them about it has distanced her from the memories and she's not quite as personally immersed in the horror of the ancient Archopy's life anymore. It would work out better if you had her not distanced from them in this way, if she was still shuddering at the very thought of something like it possibly happening again, but you're setting it up as if her final conclusion is a lot more logical than it honestly is.

The description of Archopy being sucked into the ball was nice; you can really feel her struggle and how she associates it with being caught by Aiden.

...asdfgjkh I love Theo and he reminding me so, so much of the Mew Hunter right now. Holy crap. I think you broke my brain a little. @_@

Why didn't he do anything earlier, though? I mean, if he didn't want to take Archopy to MemorCorp, surely he shouldn't have waited this long - what if Archopy had said yes? I can't quite think of a reason he'd have made his move just now, but that might be because my brain is still broken.

Well. That's a Wham Episode stamp for you. You and your cliffhangers! Curse them! ;_;

[Sinnohdragon]

*ensue speechlessness*

Theo how could you?

Well i certainly never saw that coming, and i think its utterly brilliant. And even though he's essentially betraying Carrie you can still understand how he thinks, because you've made it so we can empathise with him and his Pokémon by having him as such a dominant protagonist for so long. Wow.

[SlowCrow]

Hey, new chapter in not that much time! For the...uh...tree or so regulars here, this is a refreshing rate of new chapters, even though it's almost been a whole month since the last chapter was posted! Maybe it's the posts made on the 1st, 5th, and 11th that made the topic seem a bit more active than it really was and hence the whole "that was fast" vibe I'm getting. And maybe that's the same reason that you've managed to reel in three more readers. :D

But now I'm speaking too fast in too little space, let's pad out my opinion some more!

    Spoiler:- Lawl at Blitzy's location:

Show Spoiler

 

Haha! Got you good, elyvorg! (And in the off chance that you are not elyvorg: got you better, Person X!)

You thought that this was going to be the review of the next chapter, didn't you? But it is indeed not; for I'm not some cheap coloring book with only single-sided pages to color! No! I instead chose to reply to a reply outside of a PM! And do not worry, my review will come after this very brief detour of wax rubbing glee.

So now that you’ve opened my eyes to this concept, I’ll be able to keep it in mind in the future and hopefully be able to do less of this. Thanks.

(Okay, yeah, so I’m not actually going to bother fixing the paragraphs in question in this chapter even though that’s not the only problem they had (see Dragonfree’s review) because I’m lazy and I don’t tend to like rewriting big chunks like this except for special cases *coughChapter26cough*. ^^; )

This is odd, considering how much I'm oblivious to connecting the dots on subtle details like that and how much I'm wrong when I finally do notice and interpret such details (i.e, next quote I brought up in my review and the one mentioning the gassy bump shortly thereafter). Also sort of odd that I was thisclose to not reviewing at all until I noticed that particular word. This type of reply is new to me.

And yet I feel strangely neutral about this. o_o

I thought rubbing against legs was more of a cat thing? Well, either way, the point is that I wasn’t trying to portray Crescent as some kind of domesticated pet here; it just sort of happened while I was writing this and seemed like what he’d do. So.

You know about my experience with cats, so you should guess that I don't really get that treatment from them. >_>

Also, my initial problem with the whole domesticated pet thing was that Crescent seemed a bit more human in thought in previous portrayals, enough so that he would have a bit more complex greeting than a dog's cat's seemingly automatized glee when it sees its owner after a long period of time. That and the fact that Crescent was stabbed a total of twice in the past few days, both on his flank. I expected him for his muscle memory to subconsciously kick in and trigger some sort of a nervous twinge or hesitance before he decided to rub against Carrie's leg or something. :\

Is a writer of Pokémon fanfiction not allowed to be creative with how Pokémon attacks work now? Am I not even allowed to do so when it’s the Pokémon using the move that’s suddenly decided to get creative with it?

<snubbly> Yes. Inconsistencies tend to crop up when you get creative, which is a no-go. Stamping out the problem now is the first step of achieving a comprehensive reading environment for the readers, and will save some trouble for everybody involved. A readership that is able to follow is a readership that will be happy. Are we clear Ms. Vorg? :<

</snubbliness>

In all seriousness, it was supposed to be a very blatant part of the running joke where I call out your portrayal of moves for no discernible reason. It seems like I should have used a more sarcastic smiley. @_@

This amused the hell out of me and struck me as the best possible phrase to use when attacking a Sceptile with a Fire attack. I then promptly felt bad for momentarily going back to my old, prejudiced, Sceptile-ridiculing mindset. Thanks for that. xP

Actually, the original phrase I was going to use was going to be:

Naughty little boys and girls get lumps of coal for Christmas. You die.

But I felt that it didn't really have enough context to have the desired effect and was a bit too dark in tone, so I instead opted to blatantly mention Sceptile's Christmas tree tail and make a remark that is usually associated with said holiday's decorations for a more lighthearted effect. I still like my first version of it, though. :V

Though admittedly this is unclear and I should probably find a better way to word it, but I did want to include the fact that the attack was Bug type in the narration somewhere so that the readers know it must have hurt like hell for Velotus (it was Fury Cutter, for the record).

You should really really find a way to clarify that more than that subtle hyphen; at least fit the word "attack" in there somehow (even though I know how much you are disposed to not making changes in already posted chapters). *_*

They’re capable of being engulfed by a huge great stream of flames and still getting up straight away once it’s over for a counterattack. They can be trapped in a spinning vortex of fire for two to five turns and yet clearly remain able to hear and carry out their trainer’s commands.

So I guess that getting their attack stat halved doesn't coun't for anything in the department for excruciating pain? I mean, having your body hurt so much that you could only operate at half of your physical potencial has to mean something after all. :(

And I don't think we should delve into how Pokemon are able to hear their trainer's commands at all times in the games, seeing how freaking impossible it could be sometimes (Uproar and Dive come to mind). Yeah, Pokemon are hardy, but there's still that grey area that is a Pokemon's reaction to a new type of threat, something that really doesn't play into the games.

Hm. I did try to make the Sceptile’s little speech as malicious as I could, but seeing that, maybe I could have had more fun with it than I did.

Oh, you could have all sorts of fun with a revenge ridden psychopath's taunts; it's a source of infinite amusement!

And really now, how good could that quote have been compared to your original one; mine was a bit too over the top to have possibly have gotten the intended effect, yours worked without being too wordy. A negative ration between fun and effectiveness, perhaps?

I’m sorry, but... that really was a complete coincidence. I only remember vaguely what that scene in Bug III was like, and I certainly don’t remember details such as being pinned down and charged attacks and assists coming out of nowhere. I wrote this scene this way simply because that’s the way it came out, I’m afraid. :/

And you say that like I wouldn't be impressed with how I managed to actually implant my ideas into somebody else's subconscious mind and have them completely unaware of my influence as they reiterate said idea to the T!

Percent control of elyvorg: 43%

And one day I will get that left arm of yours, elyvorg. One day. >:)

I wasn’t even planning for him to laugh like that while I was writing the chapter; he just sort of did. xP

I'm just wondering if your slowly growing scales from how in character your getting with Velotus. God help us all if you experience anything approaching the epiphany Butterfree had when writing FoaL; you might just go off the deep end and we'd have to resort to getting a Sceptile doll to keep you in check. That and constantly insist that you come down from your tree for dinner. D:

since Carrie can understand her Grovyle, they’re used to talking to her if they want to share their thoughts on something, but because she can’t understand Empathy and Crescent, those two are more used to keeping quiet and not bothering to try and communicate complex ideas to her because they know it’ll be pointless (the only exceptions being if it’s something important, in which case a Grovyle will translate, but there isn’t much point making one of them translate just for idle chatter).

It may be me just overcomplicate things in my head again, but I see a logical flaw in what you're saying here.

    Spoiler:- Might wanna brace yourself for this one...:

Show Spoiler

 
Okay, so Carrie speaks to her Grovyle in what is probably English, and her Grovyle understand perfectly. Carrie is also able to speak to Empathy and Crescent with the same level of effectiveness. Simple so far, right? Things get complicated when you consider how Carrie's Grovyle can speak to any other given Pokemon, no matter what the species or how ancient they are, and understand them just fine; suggesting that all Pokemon, both wild and domesticated, speak only one language. This is supported by the fact that there do not seem to be any barriers formed by the different sentence structures or dialects that would be caused by the presence of other languages or variants.

Now you might be tempted at this point to say that all Pokemon speak their own super localized language as their primary language and also speak a second, universally understood language, but there's this nagging detail that keeps showing up that says otherwise. For example, when Carrie's Grovyle "translate" what other Pokemon are saying or when she overhears a conversation between one of her Grovyle and another Pokemon, she can still understand what she hears from her Grovyle's one sided conversation. This would be impossible since her Grovyle would have to speaking Pokenese (lame, I know, but bear with me), the language that all other Pokemon speak but Carrie herself doesn't understand, meaning that the whole A-B conversation would be mindless babble to her.

And here's where we go for a loop of sorts with this logical line which sums up to this: Carrie cannot possibly understand only her Grovyle. Suppose that each individual Pokemon evolution line from a certain area spoke one language (the Wurmple, Silcoon, Cascoon, etc. from Petalburg Woods speaking Petalburg Wurmple, for example) and eventually learned the universal language as they grow older since it's inherently more complex since it applies to EVERY other Pokemon in existence. Now, for Pokes taken out of this cycle (such as those that are captured for training), they pretty much have to learn the universal language as their first and only language. That would mean that Foliano would only know Pokenese since he was born from an egg; Ivyx would only remember a small fraction of Petalburg Treeko, knowing more of Pokenese at this point; and Velotus would actually be the only Grovyle out of the three to speak both his native language and Pokenese. And since Carrie is only able to understand her Grovyle by listening to their conversations, she would have learned the language they spoke the most for the longest period of time. Seeing how the only language they ALL know is Pokenese, that means Carrie would know have to know Pokenese and, by extension, understand all Pokemon.

So, no matter if you say that there are multiple languages or just one, both lines of thinking come to the same conclusion: Carrie should understand ALL Pokemon and not just her Grovyle. An interesting note about the multi-language theory is that Velotus would actually be the only one to speak Treeko-line-ese and, by extension, be the only one to be able to speak to Archopy (assuming Pokemon languages don't slowly change over time).

Of course, there is a very very easy fix for this, which is simply making sure that Carrie cannot understand her Grovyle when they are translating or talking to other Pokemon, as well as assuming that all Treeko learn their language naturally from birth...somehow.

Yeah, I'll try not to come back to this subject too much in my later posts. Now if you'll excuse me. *Pushes wheelbarrow of dead kittens off to the side*
 

It’s less the cat being too lazy to meow and more the cat being smug enough to like flaunting the fact that he can pull off such a mental nudge with enough delicacy and precision to not cause a seizure. =P

This brings us back to the whole "too animal-like" argument we apparently have going on here. I mean, if a cat has the capacity to be smug of all things when it comes to interacting with other beings, surely it must be aware that there exist other ways of greeting humans than simple physical contact. I mean, Carrie's Grovyle obviously have the same level of human-like thought as both Crescent and Empathy, and they don't really prefer hugging all too much at all. Not being able to communicate verbally doesn't mean that they don't still have a personality and intellect hiding somewhere under those random syllables, elyvorg. :[

About as varied as the facial expression range of a lizard in the same universe. Because these are Pokémon. They’re going to be more expressive than their real-world animal counterparts.

Hey, no they aren't! >:o

Any creature's range of facial expressions rely purely on the importance and practicality of social interaction, and since Pokes are mostly designed on animals, they'd share the same facial range of their respective counterparts. So what it Pokes could make a bit of noise that serves as a language? Animals trade off a lot of things for the adaptations they receive, and humans have traded a LOT in the way of natural defenses in order to have higher brain function and vocal range; Pokes only took a somewhat limited higher brain function and a very limited vocal range in exchange for insane amounts of power. Asking for the luxury of the facial expressions humans have would be too much at that point, really, since every other muscle in their body is devoted to sustaining their crazy abilities. All they really have to work with at this point is eyebrow manipulation.

First you want this fic’s Pokémon to be more like real world creatures (such as when they’re ON FIRE), now you want them to be less like real world creatures. There’s no pleasing you, is there? =P

I was referring to Sceptile actually being able to walk upright after fainting, not simply waking up. But like you said, it really doesn't matter. >_>

I feel I should mention that this literally made me laugh out loud. Even if it was a reference to something (which I get the vague kind of impression that it might have been), I didn’t get the reference and it still amused me. So clearly your snarking powers of amusement haven’t completely faded! :O

Actually, this was another of my quips that had two versions: the first version simply going to the punchline, while this one (the second) had a somewhat hastily put together set up in order to make this joke seem less lowbrow. Since the key words were starred out, I thought that the joke wouldn't really go over too well; it still did regardless. :P

Tee hee. It is amusing how utterly unaware of his perceived creepiness Velotus is. (also I totally never realised just how stalkerish that line of his sounded until now and xDDDD)

And I could only wait to see what'll happen next time him and Archopy speak next chapter.

Uh. Things that glow can, uh, totally reflect light at the same time, yes! 8D; And I left it like that because I liked the unintentional symbolism of that line. Or something.

There's a difference between glossiness and glowiness, elyvorg, and I believe that you crossed the somewhere around "sparkly".


And that's that about that reply. And seeing how much stuff is waiting to just fall out of the sky and ruin Carrie and co's plans (the Master Ball, Vennesa, Sceptile, Andrew, and Memorcorp. in general), I'm sure something really really really bad is going to happen, but not exactly sure of the magnitude. There's only one way to find out: on with the review of chapter 30! :D

– both of them had been fairly indifferent about meeting her anyway, having no relation to her species and, by extension, the plot –

Now elyvorg, the fact that those two are minor characters doesn't mean that you can just go and take cheap shots at them whenever you please; it's very unbecoming of you. :<

To his credit, the fading aches of several stinging slashes still lingered on Foliano’s body – it had by no means been a one-sided fight.

I'm just wondering how Kabutops even managed to get close enough to Foliano to do damage since Foliano could use Grass Knot to keep him at bay and both 4x super-effective Leaf Blade AND super-effective Thunderpunch if Kabutops managed to get past that. And here I thought the ancient water type would be the rusty one. o_o

Compared to the meeting that they were heading towards, everything else felt somehow small and insignificant.

It's still a small and insignificant event, Foliano (in the context of stuff that happened to Hoenn, of course). And how could you possibly say that your son's traumatizing experience with kidnapping (as well as Ivyx's disappearance) is a small thing in comparison? I mean, if Archopy goes ahead and decides to agree to go back to MemorCorp to bring back her species, they wouldn't think twice about not including this whole incident to the public; making you small and significant.

. . .She’d always been more excitable than him.

A pang of disappointment hit Foliano when he thought of how Raptola wasn’t here to share this with them despite his childlike glee at setting eyes on the pretty flying thing that was Archopy.

Hey, a reference to a line in one of the earlier chapters! But didn't Raptola say this to Carrie, who should remember this line since he was on her shoulder at the time?

And I'm hoping that that transition was between those two lines was fueled more by the similarity between two energetic Grovyle than anything else. >_>

Foliano saw the realisation dawn on Carrie’s face after a moment of puzzled frowning. “It’s a Secret Base?” At these words, he got it, too, vaguely remembering her telling him about them several years ago. “Must be an old one,” Carrie mused, crouching down to peer more closely at the entrance, which was barely more than a large, grassy bump in the earth. “It looks half-collapsed – this kind’s usually way bigger. I suppose that’s why no-one noticed it.”

I think Foliano's POV would work better for this small segment if it was put on hold when Velotus stopped the group and started back up again when he entered since forcing Foliano's perspective into a paragraph where Carrie's doing all the action makes this a bit awkward.

Trying not to be too disoriented by the impossibility of the space he found himself in, lit by an odd, ambient light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, Foliano looked towards the opposite corner and laid eyes on Archopy.

Strange, the emphasis seems to be sort of misplaced here. First off, the room's description, while amusing in the way of lampshading game mechanics, seems to be the center of attention instead of Archopy. Then there's the fact that everybody else that had to have been in front of Foliano (or rather, in his way and line of sight) suddenly being ignored by the description. All that plus Foliano not exactly sounding too amazed or excited about actually seeing Archopy (his mind doesn't even "flinch" and ask itself if that's really Archopy). This sort of makes it a bit anticlimactic after all that excitement outside the entrance. :\

“Square-dwellers,” she breathed.

This made me chuckle. It's a pretty ridiculous term, after all. :D

Part of Foliano observed that Archopy’s voice sounded both strangely birdlike and like the only kind of voice she could possibly have had;. . .

Eh? I didn't know that Pokes could actually detect accents. That and what you meant there.

“What are they talking about?” asked Theo, sounding utterly lost.

If you haven't guessed, Theo, you've been bumped all the way down to footnote and have no relevance here whatsoever. Think of it as the House of Representatives; you only have as much power as you do population, and since there are three of Carrie's Pokes to your one, she has more saying power. Go politics! \o/

Carrie had evidently been able to figure out the gist of what was going on from Velotus’ half of the conversation.

Uh. I'm not going to say anything here except say how impossible this is and just point to my overthoughts in the above reply. @_@

Archopy regarded the girl with suspicion. “Why should I trust you?”

How do you even understand Squaredweller allegedly English? You were only born three or so days ago in a lab! O_o

She took off her bag and dropped it by the base’s entrance, giving it a strangely stern look, before coming to sit cross-legged behind Foliano and Ivyx.

No~! You fool!

At this point, I'm guessing that the bag will get swiped during the conversation and for a certain somebody to get Masterball'd. It's imminent. I'm betting money on this as a fact. @_@

“They’ve lived all over this world for as long as any living Pokémon remembers,” said Ivyx, the wording somehow familiar to Foliano.

Ah yes, the mandatory "Welcome to the World of Pokémon" speech. Who knew that Prof. Birch would get quoted in this scene out of all places? XP

“Well, no,” Ivyx admitted. “My mother was always a wild Pokémon – she never really understood. But she had the basic idea. She was just a little…”

“Anti-human?” suggested Carrie.

Yes, Ivyx, your mother was very much a racist; a preachy one from the sounds of it. I'm just wondering how you even managed to suppress those intolerant ideals when you were first captured. :P

Having the words repeated by Velotus and then Carrie lowered their impact somewhat, but Theo still flinched when they reached the language he understood.

Behind them, Foliano heard Velotus sigh and complain about having to translate someone else.

It's this sort of redundancy that brings together how awkward this whole translating thing, and this situation in general, really is. I bet a few guys in the group feel sort of empty, or at least somewhat uncomfortable, with this whole experience at this point.

She fixed him with a cold, haunted stare. “You do not want to know what is in my memories, human.”

Wow, Archopy really does not like Theo at all judging from this. I think she likes Velotus more at this point. xD

Velotus had been poking her impatiently. He muttered something to her under his breath.

Carrie’s head snapped back towards Archopy. “Wait, what do you mean, it wouldn’t work?”

Y'know, I would be making more quips about this whole scenario, but this scene is awkward enough so I don't (and can't) really have much to say. Quotes like these demonstrate why.

Taking a deep breath, she began to describe the life of the wild Archopy who had been the last witness to the murder of her kind.

Hmm, yes, interesting. Now can you describe your diet? Preferably your breakfast and your preference to Verti-Bran, if you please. </ignorant MemorCorp researcher>


And after reading all three parts of Archopy's story, I'm sort of confused about some things. The first part was supposed to establish the reason as to why it would be a bad idea for the Archopy species to come back again. Then the second part...picks up at some unspecified point in her narrative and goes on to tell her entire life story? And then she decides that she's not going to go ahead with the plan because she still cares about the Archopy species' plight even though she feels detached from it all? Huh? Even after reading it again, I can't help but see something off with what's wrong in this whole process.

Now the first part is supposed to be the abridged version of a probably lengthy story, telling how Foliano's reaction was the first thing the reader sees after Archopy prepares to speak. From this, the readers don't learn too much new information because it's obviously meant for Carrie and co's benifit, which is perfectly fine. The problem is what the information was; elaboration on as to who "They" are and what "They" did. Looking at this info from the perspective of somebody who's looking for an answer, this would sound like unrelated drivel that dances around the question asked, especially after the whole lived-together-in-wonderful-harmony-for-so-long bit that Archopy decides to open up her story with. The way she does so makes the whole incident feels so...isolated. And just the way how the Sceptile's conclusions about of their offspring's inability to become Archopy is told makes the whole thing feel so situational as well. The fact that she goes out of her way to say that most of the Sceptile didn't even participate in the murders makes her story's (and her answer's) purpose really vague to anybody who doesn't already know the situation.

It would be like asking an avid biker why he/she isn't riding on a day he/she usually would and having 'em tell you a story about the increasing deer population of the neighborhood. Your probable responses: "What does that have to do with anything?" or "So...you have a problem with deer?". Notice how Carrie and co do nothing of the sort, they're not even slightly confused, they're just quiet. How is this a natural reaction? How could have you possibly figured out your biker friend recently lost their bike to a passerby truck as they tried to avoid a pack of deer and how are Carrie and crew supposed to figure out that Archopy fears that the whole incident may happen again if her species is revived? They don't; they just sit through a double-length monologue and find out in the very end. That's. Just. INSANE. To top it off, Archopy suddenly decides to pour her heart out to complete strangers without so much as a word from Carrie and crew. And what she says is downright disturbing; friends apologizing while they murder your one and only love and borderline dismemberment (complete with mood swings from the storyteller) is not something you'd want nor expect to hear when you ask somebody a question involving their motives. And Foliano's reaction to all of this madness? Mild disappointment! :D

*Ehm*

As you've probably gathered, my problems with this are that Archopy doesn't elaborate as to the reason why she's telling her story until the end and that Carrie and crew needing to be talking a bit more to Archopy before and during each part of her narrative because it feels very unnatural at this point. That and needing to give Archopy a reason to actually open up to Carrie and crew, who she still distrusts.

But we're not done yet. We still have part three of her POV left.

OK. So she basically says that, even though she is the living avatar of what's left of her species, exists soley through the will of the almost all-powerful humans (which are now trying to reclaim her), is emotionally detached from the Archopy of the past and can therefore can make a decision not based solely off emotion or fear, is in an insanely different world than she was before, and knows how humans could actually control Sceptile this time 'round, Archopy still manages to refuse the offer. How is this logically possible? She should be saying yes to this offer; all that she is supposed to know points to this! The only real scenario which she can say "no" is if she has a reason to suspect that humans actually make Pokémon their slaves, only satisfied in making their lives a living hell and gaining more and more types of slaves (which they, obviously, do not). I'm just at a loss here. @_@

Still doesn't make the next part any less brilliant, though. :)

    Spoiler:- ACTUALLY contains spoilers. Who knew?:

Show Spoiler

 

Carrie watched the Master Ball wobble for the last time and then ping still. It was done. Despite her wishes otherwise, Archopy was going back to MemorCorp.

At this point, I thought that Carrie had a sudden change of heart and shifted full-gear into insensitive b**** mode right here. This was a development I didn't see coming until...

At least, she would have been, had it not been for one small problem.

Carrie had not thrown that ball.

I was, for some weird reason, relieved that Carrie didn't throw that ball at this point (mostly due that Carrie would have crossed her Moral Event Horizon here and we'd have to put up with her for the rest of the fic). I was expecting Andrew, or Venessa, or Aiden to have thrown that ball. Instead...

With slow, hesitant steps, Theo walked forward and picked it up.

You blew my mind in a way I haven't experienced for a long time.

It didn't come completely out of left field as to lessen the impact, and it makes the reader wonder how obvious this move was going to be and why they didn't see it coming (as did Carrie), strengthening that impact. I'm still getting facial twitches just from this.

She stared at him. A dumbfounded spluttering noise escaped her as she stood up to get closer to his eye level so that she could stare at him even more.

Carrie’s mouth flapped open and closed a few times before she managed to find words. “Wait, what?”

And I think you did a great job at emulating the reader's probable reaction through Carrie here. I just hope that future readers won't come across this and get spoiled and then miss out on all the fun. D:

“Not the whole time,” Theo replied quickly, defensively, as if he hoped that would magically make this forgivable. “I was going to, to start with – why else did you think I was out looking for her in Petalburg Woods? But then you managed to convince me with your let’s-just-talk-to-her-and-warn-her-about-the-human-world stuff.” He half-laughed. “Like that was going to help. It was only when we were in Northern Canyon and I’d got it wrong that I realised – I didn’t just want to talk to her! I wanted to be her trainer. I always had.”

This is so, so wonderfully awkward and he is so, so wonderfully in denial right now. Now my opinion that he's now an antagonist has now been validated by this one quote, whee! \o/

Theo was supposed to be the calm, quiet guy who happened to want to talk to Archopy too. He was not supposed to have secretly had his own motives all along.

I know! He was almost death-stared by Archopy herself a half-chapter ago!

And Carrie's still holding onto her job as reader's insert. :P

“Really?” Carrie snapped. “Because to me, it looks more like you took her against her will, out of your own selfish greed. You, a complete stranger. She’ll hate you for this.”

Actually, if he was greedy, he would have simply captured Archopy the first chance he had rather than listen to her life story. He's not so bad. >.>

Armaldo did nothing, staring blankly off to the side.

During that battle pose bit, I was just waiting for this eventuality. XD

“They trust me. They’d do anything for me. I’m like a father to them.” He took a deep breath. “And I can do the same for Archopy, if I just have enough time with her.”

Carrie stared. It sounded ridiculous – but then again, the look in four-fifths of his Pokémon’s eyes as they stood ready to defend their trainer was one of genuine undying support for him.

Well, they were all really blank slates that you could have done anything with, so I don't see your point. Armaldo being (somewhat) living proof.

“Oh, god,” Theo said, staring at the Pokémon that now matched his own in number, panic all over his face. “Oh, god, I didn’t want to have to do this.”

The first time I read this, I thought he was just going to close up the Secret Base in order to trap everybody inside in null-space and eventually come back with Archopy in his PC, leaving Carrie and crew inside. Of course, this proved to be too much of a stretch considering that the nearest Pokémon Center was miles away.


And cliffhanger. *_*

And we come to the end of this chapter. Rather surprisingly (for the characters, at least), the meeting with Archopy herself seemed to be more awkward than super-awesomely magical; although real awkward reactions did exist in the form of silence. Even though some things are not quite right with it, Archopy's monologue still manages to paint how lonely she must have been in her past life. Foliano having his POV in this chapter turned out to be a really convenient viewpoint in retrospect, seeing how easily the likely mess caused by translation and very much jealous Velotus thoughts were avoided by doing so. We also had quite of bit of humor in this chapter, either through Carrie's reactions, Theo's third-wheeliness, random racism, or just Amaldo's existence. The end is what really blew my (and everyone else's) minds, with Theo, who, although losing his somewhat new backbone midway through, still ended up feeling like an antagonist who really needed a reality-punch to the face.

Until next time, keep on writing!
 

 

-_____________________- Kaw.

[Darkfall]

    Spoiler:- Britney Sheers. Also SPOILERS. (Duh):

Show Spoiler

 
You know how long I've been waiting for this Roger Vorgle Dean. Yes you do.

But, oddly enough, I sort of saw it coming. You remember when we used to chat and I'd complain about Theo not getting enough love, and you'd say you had some plans. Well, I always imagined he'd do something like this, what with my magical bias goggles..

We all knew the Master Ball was a massively important plot device, rather then just a long winded mcguffin-esque irritance, and I'm sure many of us saw it being used to capture Archopy, though I'm certain not many imagined Theo would use it. Just have to say, even though I think you're possibly somewhat aware I figured it was going to happen, it still caught me by surprise. I knew he would do something dramatic, and has a feeling he might have gone as far as to capture Archopy, but in such a fashion so soon? Didn't see it. Well, untill you made a show of Carrie leaving her bag, followed by Theo. (At that point I convinced myself he'd grabbed the Master Ball whilst discarding his own bag, but then quickly realised several reasons as to why that was stupid.)

Knowing how much I adore Theo, and knowing how long I've waited for him to really do something interesting, I'm sure you can gauge how happy this makes me.

I have one minor nitpick, as Slow picked up on most of the things I'd comment on, (And I'm only mostly commenting as a Theo fan anyway...) and that is Theo's "motivational timeline" speech. The one that begins:

"Not the whole time," implying he hadn't thought of capturing Archopy for as long as she's been around, but ending with: "I wanted to be her trainer, I always had."

To me, there just seems to be something odd about ending a speech in a way that contradicts and undermines the opening of it. Perhaps I'm missing something, I don't know, but it just seemed a bit strange.

Also, gotta love Theo's Pokemon suddenly having a huge role. Can't imagine Aerodactyl in a secret base though. I'm assuming it's even bigger then we're made to believe.

What, that wasn't a review? What were you expecting other then "OMG THEO DID SOMETHING?" Pff, I've spoiled you enough :3.

Britney Sheers is a thought that popped into my head whilst reading about Kabutops and refuses to leave, so that explains that.


 

[adhdguitar]

I have yet to read the whole thing but so far its great.

The only problem I have is that your obvious hatred for Sceptile is a little creepy.

[Blitzy]

Blitzy is back, with a double review sandwich! Also, I will be your primary reason for staying on the first page for a while, so you better thank me :3 Either way, here are my thoughts on Chapter 1 and Chapter 2

Quick note before I post the chapter: for anyone who has reviewed here so far and has a fic of their own, I will try and review it at some point.

BTW, does this still hold true? :3


Chapter 1:

High up in the boughs of a tree sat a girl in her mid-teens.

Let me guess... the actual main character?

And he happened to be heading straight towards her tree. The girl wasn’t all that bothered. With her leaf green jacket and matching trousers, coupled with the fact that her messily ponytailed hair was dark green, she was practically camouflaged amongst the foliage. There was no way he would be able to see –

“Excuse me? You in the tree?” the boy asked, brown eyes staring directly at her.

I so saw that coming! Besides, something had to happen besides her launging around in that tree, which, in my opinion, are less than comfy, but I digress :3

“What?” the girl replied irritably.

She might not be a people person :/ I don't think I'd be that irritated if I was sitting in a hypothetical tree, with my hair in a hypothetical ponytail, and hypothetically balancing myself on a "smooth-barked" tree, as you described it to be.

So yeah, I doubt I needed the whole explanation thing, but yeah, she does not appear to be that social (oooh, me and my 'reading-into-things'-skills)

She grabbed hold of the branch and swung herself down, landing easily on the ground.

Let's hope she did not jump from too high, after all, she probably has a whole journey ahead of her for whatever reason that is yet unknown :3

Following her out of the tree, darting like bullets and landing equally effortlessly were no less than four Pok&#233;mon, all slightly different in looks but all clearly the same species. Their bodies were shaped like that of a raptor, green all over except for a red throat and belly, broken by a strip of green. A long, blue-green leaf extended like a crest from the head of each, clusters of three smaller leaves from the wrists, and two more from their rears.

I kind of had a feeling these guys would appear sooner or later :3

“My name’s Roy, and I was wondering if you could give me a Pok&#233;mon battle? I need to train for the Rustboro Gym.”

Just once, I wished they came up with a different opening liner T__T

“I’m Carrie,”

Nothing as convenient as introductions before a battle >__>

“Okay. I’ll battle you. Only three-on-three, though; I have six Pokemon, but three of them don’t feel like battling at the moment.”

Okay, this struck me as awkward, unless Carrie has crazy telepathic powers that allow her to read her Pok&#233;mon's minds, she couldn't have known this to such perfection (without asking) in my mind. Unless those three who won't battle are very lazy, I can't see how Carrie jumped to that conclusion so quickly. Also, I quote too much >__>

Realising that this had probably been what had made Roy notice her, she made a mental note not to hang it so far out in the future.

Confirmation received: Carrie is definitely NOT a people person xD

Foliano – that was his full name – and Ivyx

Nice names; especially Ivyx sounds particularily mysterious ;3

The fourth, and by far the smallest Grovyle jumped up onto Carrie’s back and clung onto her shoulders with his small claws. She winced slightly as his foot claws dug into her back, then smiled as he poked his face over her shoulder, next to hers. It was large in proportion to his body, with a rounded nose and huge, angelic yellow eyes peering out into the world with innocence.

Awwwww...

CUTIE - check
TOUGH GUY - check

now I just need some stereotype for Foli and Ivyx and my job is done here >3

Roy stared at the girl and her Grovyle in disbelief. “Er, should he be…”

“This is Raptola,” Carrie told him as if it explained everything. “He likes to do this. I get used to it.”

I like the "as if it explained everything" part. It made me snort for some reason xD

An Absol.

I skip description because I CAN, muahahahah... >3

Carrie looked on, worried. She couldn’t risk Crescent going near that venomous horn again – not that she particularly cared if she won or lost, she just didn’t want him hurt too much. Pok&#233;mon battling was fun, but it lost its point if your Pok&#233;mon ended up too badly injured…

True, and I felt it needed pointing out because this shows Carrie cares quite a bit for her Pok&#233;mon (not that other parts didn't show this, but I felt that this partition illustrated it the best)

“Okay, use a Faint Attack – but hit him from behind.”

I'm gonna do a jab here and say "Don't Faint Attacks always hit from behind?" and it kind of gives away where the Nidorino should look in case the Absol disappears-

Crescent nodded and began to fade away.

-Oh, hey, it disappeared!

The kicks subsided as Nidorino realised he was kicking at empty air.

Whee, for a "not the brightest crayon in the box"-comment.

“Keep your guard up, Nidorino,” Roy advised his Pok&#233;mon. “It could be anywhere.”

*whispers* I'd look behind you...

She winced as her Grovyle, Raptola, started letting out excited, high pitched cries right next to her ear.

Give the thing (nah, I love him too) a cookie so it'll shut up >3

With a cry of “Growl!”,

This sounds odd xD

At this, her Grovyle, the one who had been watching the battle hungrily from the start, hissed to obtain Carrie’s attention then motioned that he’d quite happily take the Fire type on. Foliano, who was watching lazily, rolled his eyes.

Correction, TOUGH GUY with ego :3

This praise, though not necessarily truthful, seemed to satisfy Velotus, and he resumed watching as he had before.

The poor guy has no idea that he, somewhere along the ficroad, will be horribly stripped of his arrogance; as is the destiny of all overconfident characters. If I'm wrong, then I wonder how you're gonna get character development for him... ooh, a crush of some sort might work as well >3

“Now Psychic, in a wave form,” Carrie told her Pok&#233;mon

And make it a real fancy one too!

Carrie sighed as Raptola began making another celebratory racket in her ear.

All this cuteness, it must be deliberate >3

He stopped, giving her an innocent, “I wasn’t doing anything,” look.

I told you so!

Roy pulled another ball from his belt – a blue and white one with red marks. He hurled the Great Ball into space, shouting “Electabuzz! I’m counting on you!”

Excuse, me how does he have all these Pok&#233;mon that are native to Kanto, when we're obviously in Hoenn? (unless Petalburg Forest spontaneously relocated xD)

“Velotus, I choose you,” Carrie muttered sarcastically,

LOL :3

He leapt backwards before the Electric type could get a punch in, then retreated the last few metres with an elegant somersault, showing off his agility.

Show-off >_>

Looking back, she caught a last glimpse of Roy’s confused face as it faded into the distance between the trees.

Though I don't like it, he probably won't return, right?

------------------------

Chapter 2:

Memories.

Such terrible memories.

I'm guessing we're not where the previous chapter left us O__o Or Carrie decided to go emo as she went to see what the mysterious thing was that her Grovyle sensed.

They burned through her mind like an awful chain reaction; one memory would trigger the next, which would in turn cause her to recall something else.

The first part sounds good, but "which in turn caused her to recall something else" seems a bit awkward. Meh, might just be me :/

Few of them were moments worth remembering. Most were simply filled with fear and grief and loss. Like her parents – she had found them dead one morning, killed by… Them? Who exactly were They?

Mystery Creature! I missed you <3

It was as if she had known nothing but this dreary box all her life – her real life – and the memories were just a dream. They never happened. Or perhaps... they had all happened to someone else?

Well, she wouldn't be a Mystery Creature if she didn't even sound mysterious :3 On a more serious note, this creature might not be the same as the one in the prologue?

So it wasn’t her parents who had been killed? It had been another creature whose childhood was plagued by fear and oppression? Someone else had had their best friend torn from them in a single moment?

All right, guess the question was a bit redundant xD

She cried out in alarm, but could already feel herself growing, stretching, becoming stronger. A tickling sensation ran down her still glowing arm as she saw leaves sprout from it, joining and growing with the three that were there already. The back of her neck itched; the same was happening there. She stood up in surprise as she felt a tail force itself out from her rear. Oddly enough, none of it hurt; rather it filled her with a rush of power and newfound strength. Watching as the tip of her tail sprouted leaves too, she stopped glowing.

"What? Your Mystery creature is evolving?!"

*music starts*

"Congratulations!Your Mystery Creature has evolved into an Even More Mysterious Creature!"

The stranger from the past had lived a fleeting adult life, with the now very real fear of being killed by Them.

Yeah, my question was pretty much answered here :3

She frowned and regarded her arms – several leaves extended from the sides, like giant feathers.

Tropius comes to mind, but I know it's not him >_<

She looked through the irregular hole and saw a small plain of yellowish grass – and beyond that, trees.

Look people, Trees! Not that we haven't seen them before but let's emphasize (this is so spelled wrong, I know it is >3) a bit here xD

It worked. She could feel herself lifting from the ground, supported by the full spread of her leafy wingspan.

Freedom!!!

Her soul mate from the past had lived in fear and misery her entire life; it was time for this Pok&#233;mon to start making the most of what she had.

I really like this sentence for some reason, it just makes me smile :3

Carrie ducked and dodged, branches whipping past her face as she ran, masses of trees threatening to block the path of someone travelling so quickly.

Ah, there she is. I almost started wondering what she was doing in that forest...

Over the years she’d grasped the basics of their language and could understand the gist of their speech.

A more creative variant on the "I UNDERSTANDZ POK&#233;SPEECH!", but it'll do :3

Raptola nodded excitedly.

I wonder how this still managed to create such a cute image in my head xD

“Grooooo,” Raptola moaned from her shoulder. He was young and not as articulate as the other Grovyle, but Carrie knew it meant something along the lines of “Quiiiiick.”

You're killing me! xD

As it approached, Carrie realised that this was no bird. No bird Pok&#233;mon were various shades of green; none had featherless arms, none had a face that looked like…

MEGAGASP!!! Could it be...

Immense wings with large pastel green leaves instead of feathers whooshed through the air, spread out to catch the wind on a downbeat as it soared over. The body, similar to a Grovyle’s but longer and darker, rushed past, allowing Carrie only a glimpse of a diamond shape on its underside. The tail flexed elegantly, the five or so leaves on its tip rustling as it did so. Twisting around to see it fly away, Carrie stared at the creature with awe and complete respect.

For the love of god, A FLYING GROVYLE (mutation of some sort... al right, "split-evolution")

Velotus let out a long hiss of satisfaction as he watched it leave.

And this seemed really cool for yet another unknown reason :/

Raptola bounced on Carrie’s back, overjoyed by what he had seen. Ivyx was still staring at the Pok&#233;mon as it dwindled to a mere speck in the distance, murmuring, “It’s… beautiful.”

Finally, I was wondering when we were going to get to her. She's been showcased the least of all Grovyle (hell, even Roy had more screen-time :<)

Carrie was proud to train Grovyle, and she knew all of her Grovyle prided themselves in what made them the creature they were – their elegance, agility and light, featherlike leaves. Not one of them had ever considered the option of evolving; the concept was practically alien to them. Carrie grimaced as the image of the… thing that Grovyle normally evolved into came into her mind. Sceptile.

Obligatory backstory coming up...

A large, upright lizard with a squat, triangular head and leering, bloodshot eyes. A skinny upper body atop a wide lower body that looked almost fat in comparison, the whole of it a bright, unnatural green. None of the featherlike leaves of Grovyle, this Pok&#233;mon’s two arm leaves jutted from its wrists at pointless angles. Its back was studded with six bulbous, yellow seeds, and the tail was long and dark green with spiked “branches” coming off in all directions. Some people found its tail cool. Carrie thought it looked like a Christmas tree.

Oh, and description of what seems to be something you, and not just Carrie, seem to dislike immensely. I think you might have immersed yourself a bit too much here (then again, this was from long ago)

And in her mind’s eye Carrie could see a Sceptile, its arm leaves formed into two glowing blades on each wrist, violently slashing a Grovyle and sending it slamming into the ground. The Grovyle which, only moments before, had saved Carrie from falling to her death from high up in a tree by quickly slicing off a branch and allowing her to grab onto it, slowing her fall. The Sceptile had attacked suddenly, presumably annoyed about the tree’s loss of its branch, caring little that a human’s life was saved.

You know, somehow, I cannot see a chain of actions in this description. It all seems very unlikely to happen, and may even be formulated a bit awkwardly :/

Though Carrie rarely spoke about Sceptile to them, Velotus and Ivyx had informed her that upon evolution, a Sceptile was generally so pleased with the sudden abundance of spiked objects on its body that it became insanely arrogant.

Forgive me here, but the reason sounds absurd :<

It was as if she had spent her entire life crawling to get around, not knowing there was any better way, and just now she had seen someone walk past her on two legs.

I like the analogy here, really nice :>

“I think I want to talk to Dad about this.”

Ah, the parents. One of the most important characters in the main character's life, yet they barely get any screen time. I fear that here will be no different.

To her at least, he was solid and dependable, perfect to call on if she had a problem, though she was largely independent and thus didn’t speak to him that much.

Yeah, but if she is, doesn't she have some place to stay then? Because, as was just mentioned, your character comes from Fortree. That is a long way from Petalburg Forest, and I doubt she'll travel that distance very often, so...

There was a background noise of slight rustling, and Carrie assumed he was in a forest too, on ranger duty.

Nice detail here :3

“Go ahead.” Carrie could hear a sigh coming from the other end of the line.

Asociality runs in the family?

“You saw a flying Sceptile?”

Amusing image that creates. You might as well say it pranced from cloud to cloud with a fairy wand xD

Brian was silent for a moment, contemplating. “I can’t think of anyone who might know,” he told her. “But other people must have seen the creature, and maybe one of them knows more about it. If so, they’re quite likely to be tracking it, so they won’t be far from where you are… wherever that is,” he finished ruefully.

I find it a little odd that he does not know where she currently is, I mean, "mid-teens" as you described her to be leaves a rather tiny range, and to be responsible enough to be that far from home, she'd be 16-17, I think :/

bar Raptola, who was currently poking around in a nearby bush, bored.

By now, you should see this coming, but he's freaking adorable xD

Carrie’s eyes widened slightly; it wasn’t like Ivyx to feel guilty. “All right then,” she said. “And really, I didn’t mind.”

Though the apologizing thing is rather sweet, it feels a little awkward because we haven't seen much of Ivyx up until now. And suddenly, we hear she doesn't usually feel guilty.. I don't know, it just looked a bit off to me.

----------

*phew*

My fingers feel numb xD

Well, all that remains for me to say is that I'm looking forward to read the next chapter (when I have time) and that I hope this character we're bound to meet next chapter will be fun, since he/she will probably serve more than a role than Roy... I just though, "maybe it is Roy", but it seems unlikely he followed her so, I'm fantasizing a bit about what kind of new character it will be. I'm looking forward to his Pok&#233;mon as well, and I hope he will serve as a bit of a foil to Carrie :3

Still hoping for a review, but if you don't plan to, mention this in your reply (you've gotten my hopes up). All right then, I'll see your next review

P.S Next time I'll put it in a spoiler (it's quite a bit of text >3)

[Sireath]

You, my friend, are fantastic.

I allowed myself a little treat catching up with these last few chapters: I decided to just read and let the story soak in, and you’ve really taken it places. I mean, first off, the conversation with the director over the transmitter was beautiful, and then you go off and really take Velotus’s character to a thrilling climax in his development. I don’t know any other fic I’ve read that has had me so involved in the development of a Pokemon character. The way you take him to a breaking point and pull him through it – glorious.

And of course, as a plot twist lover, I ADORE the thing with Theo going rogue on them in the most recent chapter. The fact that he did it so sincerely as well just made it creepy. In one moment, you took the exact same character and altered the way he was perceived.

Reading all of these at once really allowed me to gain a good perspective for how your story is flowing as a whole, so I think I can offer a few helpful “criticisms” at this juncture.

You seem to have many brief encounters with villains in the woods, and each of those scenes tend to have the same tone: the good guys are always guarded, the bad guys are always smug and nasty. Now each of these scenes was finely written (and especially the one with the walkie-talkie conversation with the director was long enough that it had its own arc), but you need to be careful that if you have any more villain encounters in the woods that you make it distinct in visual feel and tone. And a bunch of the Bad Light villains tend to run together, so make sure that you keep giving the audience villains that are familiar to them. It doesn’t do much good to have a lot of random faces acting as antagonists unless they are at the very least headed by a very distinctive person. Now you’ve been handling this fairly well so far, I just want you to be cautious as you continue to progress that you keep the story arc moving rather than repeating scenarios.

You’ve done some EXCELLENT work with developing your primary characters. I have felt a bit like some of the secondary characters have fallen to the wayside though as a result. I’m not saying you need to restructure your plot to give each of them a chapter or anything, just attempt to highlight them when the opportunities present themselves.

As always, It’s great to come back every now and then and find this on the first few pages. Sorry for my absences, my life has taken a turn away from writing, and I’m at that part of my life where you kinda have to pick and choose what you’re going to do. But hey, reading this makes me want to pick up an old project of mine, so who knows? I might just put it up here someday soon. You're just an inspiring person!

You’re awesome, keep up the good work!

Good Fortune!

[vareki]

Okay, That took way longer than it should have. But I think having two people you know die is a pretty solid excuse for not reading fanfiction. Anyway, lets forget about that, and I'll get to praising your Story.

Since I read all the chapters in one long burst, all the major events and plot-twists that everyone acclimatised too hit me one after another. I'm slightly disoriented, and any well thought out review like comments for the earlier chapters are lost, but heres what I have:


The last few chapters have been very interesting to read, especially with the inner conflict going on with both Carrie, and her grovyles, and myself. While I am opposed to MemorCorp in general, since you've been portraying them as evil torturers from the get-go, the motives they've so far revealed seem pure, if irrational. So I'm not sure how to think. Carrie has hated them for forcing inhumane treatments on pokemon, most prevalently the forced evolution, but is now not so sure about them, given their promise to resurrect more Archopy's.

This makes it all the more intriguing that she is the one who is pushing for Archopy to be used as breeding stock for a new race of pokemon. Her own dislike for the Sceptile race is letting her brush over the suffering of Archopy 0_o

Maybe its because I'm the sort of person to put the individual above the greater good, no matter the consequences, but that in itself has irked me about her.

Leading on from Carrie, Her flock of Grovyle are something I'm both enjoying and bemoaning. From the very start, up to now, I've considered four to be too many. With just three, like rght now, its so much easier to indentify and bond with the characters. To be honest, I saw Ivyx as completely unnesecary, other than to be Raptola's mother. Foli had a friendship with Kabutops, which was very interesting, and you get to be in his head a few times. Raptola moved the plot a few times, and provided some comic relief on the side. Velotus. Hell, he rules the story.

But Ivyx didn't seem to do anything. By herself that is. Their interactions as a group, are almost as interesting as their actions as individuals (More so with Ivyx) and that kept them more realistic. Foli, Rappy and Ivyx formed a single unit, Velotus stayed mostly on his own (Which is why we all love him =} ) and that worked really well.

Crescent is unbelievable, in the few times we've had a bit of insight into his mind. His talk with the Shiny!Skarmory was brilliantly scripted, and his remembered self-doubt was very powerful. The whole mechanic of Perish Song was better than any other I've seen before, especially with it interspaced with Crescent's Thougths.

I would say something about empathy, but there isn't really much to say.

But anyway, back on topic. Finally resolving the "Find Archopy" Portion of their adventure couldn't have been done at a better time. The story was just on the brink of the suspense being too much for it to really matter. I've seen several Fics implode from not resolving the story arcs, before people starting to get bored and no longer checking to see if its being updated. As it stands, you timed it sublimely.

Theo's madness and narcisstic mindset in the most recent chapter was a very unexpected character overhaul for me, but in no means unwelcome. It gets the story moving in a new direction, which is good, and adds more depth to a character who was relatively simple beforehand. Leaving his pokemon to cover his escape was the biggest face-heel turn of the whole thing, though. It firmly cements his change to a Neutral Agent/Antagonist, and thats a very interesting way of developing a main character.

I'm simply bursting with excitement to see how Kabuto will react (Hooray for having little to no character to base guesses on what the other three will do!), especially since its acting in direct opposition to his new freindship with foli.

Andrew seems slightly unmemorable to me. Besides threatening to elolve Carrie's pokemon (A strategy that only works on her and no one else. Because of course you have a contingency plan for every single trainer your likely to meet =P) and pretending his Arcanine can smell master balls, his input as a named character is ver limited.

Taking that train of thought further, I love the name Bad Light for the Gang, expecially the subtext of it (Evolution = Light, Carrie doesn't want them to evolve, dislikes evoluton = Bad Light), espcially since it suits them.

Thats about all I can think of to say right now, I'm very tired. I might (Dont get your hopes up, though) add a bit more to it later tommorrow

[elyvorg]

Okay, so it's time for one of my this-is-why-I-haven't-been-writing-I-swear-I'm-not-dead posts. Various distractions such as awesome TV programmes, playing a bunch of games and real life of all things have meant that over the past *coughcough* months, progress on the next chapter has been slow to nonexistent. But I'm getting there. I have marginally fewer real life distractions at the moment, meaning I've been working on this a bit more recently. The next chapter is still only about half done, but I will make sure that Chapter 31 is up at some point before the end of October. That's not just an arbitrary deadline, either; I actually have an LE-related reason why I want it done by then - see the bottom of this post for more details.

So! It's about time I replied to all you wonderful people who left such long juicy reviews that I've been cruelly neglecting. :3

All responses to people who have read Chapter 30 are under a spoiler tag. If you haven't read Chapter 30 yet, don't click the spoiler. Just don't.


adhdguitar - Thanks for reading. Yes, I'm aware that the Sceptile-hatred in the beginning of this fic is out of order, and I'm sorry. Sense was slapped into me by a reviewer at around the Chapter 10 point, which, while not changing the fact that it was still out of order before then, did mean that things got better afterwards and became portrayed more realistically and fairly. Thanks for putting up with it and continuing to read despite that, though.


Blitzy - I won't comment on anything you said individually, largely because I wrote those chapters such a long time ago that I'd do a lot of the things you commented on completely differently now if I were to write these chapters again. But as for your general perceptions of the characters - yes, you're absolutely right that Carrie isn't the most social person in the world. xP And yes, Velotus does have a bit of an ego, in a sense. That arrogance of his may well prove to be a problem somewhere along the line. Who knows? (Well, okay, I do, as does everyone else who's read the whole fic so far, but shh.)

Hope you enjoy reading more!



    Spoiler:- Chapter 30-related replies:

Show Spoiler

 
Dragonfree - :3

Velotus appointing himself as translator was very much an intentional thing on my part in terms of showing his character. =P After the previous chapter, he's incredibly ashamed about how he acted towards Archopy, so he'd rather take as little part in the conversation as possible, and being the translator is the perfect way for him to do that without it being too conspicuous. :3

It's not the first Foliano POV, no; there were definitely a couple in Chapter 12 with him getting to know Kabutops as well as one in Chapter 16 involving the stuff with the Everstone, and there may have been a few more, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. But yeah, this is the first one in a while, I believe, so I can see how it'd feel like a sudden change. You're right that I mostly chose it for the sake of tuning out the translating - writing that conversation from Carrie's point of view, hearing everything Archopy says indirectly through Velotus and then having to repeat it again herself would have been a nightmare - but the other reason I wanted Foliano's POV here was specifically so that you didn't know for sure what was going on in Carrie's head the whole time. Which was another one of my measures I put in to try and make people initially think, when the Master Ball pinged shut, that Carrie had been the one to throw it - 'cause without her POV beforehand, there's no proof that she wasn't thinking about it.

*nod* Kabutops is rather adorable, yes. I like him a lot.

Um. >.< About Archopy's friend's father... the general idea I have in my head is that his mother was raped by one of Them, and she told her son as little about his father as possible because she was afraid (quite possibly irrationally) that he would turn out like one of Them if she did - but obviously she couldn't actually tell him he wasn't going to evolve into a Sceptile because that lie would be uncovered too easily. I didn't actually directly mention that here partly because I'm sort of iffy about directly mentioning rape in this fic and partly because past-Archopy probably never quite figured it out herself, so present-Archopy wouldn't know, either.

...Your comments also enlightened me to one other fact about Archopy's backstory which I had previously been completely oblivious to, and that's that all these details aren't actually relevant to anything that's happening or going to happen in the fic. >.< I'd always intended to put it in this chapter mostly, I think, because I assumed the readers would be wanting some kind of clarification/fleshing out of the vague events of Archopy's memories which have been briefly mentioned before. I probably got a little too carried away with fleshing out said details while writing it in this chapter - while I had a vague idea of the storyline for Archopy's friend, most of the other details she mentioned here I literally made up on the spot while I was writing this. And you're probably right that Archopy probably wouldn't logically have wanted to go into that much detail. I don't think I'll change that when I rewrite part of the Archopy POV scene (as I'll go into later), though, because the fact is that however she tells it, the main point of that part is what she tells, and I would still want all that info in there even if it's irrelevant, because I've fallen way too much in love with Archopy's backstory and couldn't just completely erase that stuff from the fic's continuity.

I guess this is why I'm going to just up and write the full backstory for NaNoWriMo so I can get it all out of my system. =P

I also utterly failed to realise in writing this how completely not-logical Archopy's decision is in its current state. The bad logic of it is enough that I feel I should rewrite it in order to fix it, and after having thought some more about later chapters I realised that I want to do her character development a little differently than it's done here, so. Three or four paragraphs of her scene will be being officially rewritten. The basic idea is pretty much that she won't be more distanced from the memories at all, which you said would make things more logical, so hopefully that'll work. (I'm not even quite sure why I wanted to make her distanced from them now, specifically; I think the main reason might have been so that I had an excuse to start calling her something other than "she" in her narration, which seems a bit of a petty reason to decide on the placement of a significant piece of character development, in hindsight. D: )

I liked writing her being sucked into the ball. I had fun describing it being all impenetrable and stuff so that you just know it has to be the Master Ball. =P

So yes! Theo is adorable and I broke your brain. Whoo. =D You already know pretty much everything I have to say on this topic from that ramble I did on MSN at you a while back. :3

I'm fairly sure it does make sense in character for Theo to have waited this long. Partly, he just wanted to hear Archopy's story from her, and here, with Carrie as a translator, is the only chance he'll get. But aside from that, he's just really conflicted about whether or not he really wants to go through with this and can't quite bring himself to do it - that is, until he realises Archopy's making a decision and this could quite possibly be his last chance. Then he just sort of snaps and goes for it.

I'm so, so glad you enjoyed this twist. I may have mentioned it on MSN, but it needs reiterating that I was only hoping you'd find him at most mildly adorable; the fact that you're squeeing so much is just aaa~. :3

Sinnohdragon - You saying that you never saw this coming brought one word into my mind: success. 8D That was exactly the reaction I wanted from my readers; throughout all thirty chapters of this fic I'd just been desperately hoping that, if nothing else, they wouldn't see this coming. Because yes, this twist has honestly been planned for that long. :>

I also like that you still managed to empathise with him, because that's something else I hoped readers would do. Theo does have sympathetic reasons to have done this and he's really quite conflicted about it, and I tried to get that across to people instead of just having them go, "Oh. He's a villain now." So yay.

Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for commenting.

SlowCrow - I won't bother replying to your reply to my reply, because most of it would be me either saying something inconsequential, or admitting, "Yeah, you're probably right about that, but I'm using creative licence/lazy/[insert some other excuse here]."

The only exception to this is your long dissertation about Pokémon languages, which assumed something along the lines of Pokémon having one common pidgin language that they all understand, and then separate native languages specific to each species, and that it didn't make sense for Carrie to understand her Grovyle all the time if they sometimes spoke in this universal "Pokénese" which she doesn't know. My explanation for this is simply that this fic interprets Pokémon language-speaking differently. In my interpretation of the Pokémon universe, Pokémon, as part of their supernatural abilities such as their endurance and fast healing, also have the supernatural ability to understand every language they hear. (This is the simplest explanation for how they understand a trainer's commands even when freshly caught; the idea of a Pokémon having to learn its attack names like dogs learn tricks never sat right with me.) However, due to their limited vocal chords, Pokémon can only speak one language specific to their species. So Carrie only understands what we might call Grovylian; all other languages spoken by any other species of Pokémon are gibberish to her.

Now, the chapter. =D Yay for spoilers within spoilers containing actual spoilers!

    Spoiler:- Roses are red and violets are blue~:

Show Spoiler

 

I'm just wondering how Kabutops even managed to get close enough to Foliano to do damage since Foliano could use Grass Knot to keep him at bay and both 4x super-effective Leaf Blade AND super-effective Thunderpunch if Kabutops managed to get past that. And here I thought the ancient water type would be the rusty one. o_o

I guess Kabutops is pretty good at parrying Leaf Blades or something - he must be more practiced at using his blades than Foliano since they're what he has instead of hands, whereas Foliano's are only optional weapons. And, well, it not being a naturally learned move nor one of his type, I believe Foliano's a little rusty with his Thunderpunch, as you might see later.

I think Foliano's POV would work better for this small segment if it was put on hold when Velotus stopped the group and started back up again when he entered since forcing Foliano's perspective into a paragraph where Carrie's doing all the action makes this a bit awkward.

Hm, I guess you might have a point about use of perspective there which I can think about applying in future. Doing so might make it sound like a sudden jump into Carrie's perspective (using this paragraph here as a hypothetical example), though, perhaps? I dunno.

Strange, the emphasis seems to be sort of misplaced here. First off, the room's description, while amusing in the way of lampshading game mechanics, seems to be the center of attention instead of Archopy. Then there's the fact that everybody else that had to have been in front of Foliano (or rather, in his way and line of sight) suddenly being ignored by the description. All that plus Foliano not exactly sounding too amazed or excited about actually seeing Archopy (his mind doesn't even "flinch" and ask itself if that's really Archopy). This sort of makes it a bit anticlimactic after all that excitement outside the entrance. :\

You do have a point there. :/ Lack of potential climactic effect noted and hopefully learnt from?

Part of Foliano observed that Archopy’s voice sounded both strangely birdlike and like the only kind of voice she could possibly have had;. . .

Eh? I didn't know that Pokes could actually detect accents. That and what you meant there.

The meaning was meant to be essentially: her voice sounded strangely birdlike, and it also sounded like the only voice she could possibly have had. The actual line was the result of me attempting to word it in a less clunky way. Not entirely sure how I could reword it to make it both not clunky and not potentially confusing. :/

Accents? Eh, I guess. Either that or it's partially referring to the way Archopy's language sounds (see above) but Foliano doesn't really think of it as a language since he naturally understands everything anyway.

If you haven't guessed, Theo, you've been bumped all the way down to footnote and have no relevance here whatsoever.

:O But of course Theo's an irrelevant footnote! It's not like he's going to do anything significant in this chapter, right?

(oh, and since you wrote these comments as you read through the chapter and as such you probably pretty much genuinely thought that at the time, insert giggling here.)

No~! You fool!

At this point, I'm guessing that the bag will get swiped during the conversation and for a certain somebody to get Masterball'd. It's imminent. I'm betting money on this as a fact. @_@

Ahaha, so you instantly jumped from the bag getting left to the assumption that someone would use the Master Ball. I tried to make the mention of the bag as small and insignificant as I could because I was utterly paranoid that someone would think this and the big twist of the chapter would be ruined for them.

...of course, since your assumption, while technically correct, neglected to include a certain fossil enthusiast, it seems I needn't have worried. =D

Ah yes, the mandatory "Welcome to the World of Pokémon" speech. Who knew that Prof. Birch would get quoted in this scene out of all places? XP

xD. You mean "Welcome to the World of Humans", surely?


...so, basically, all your criticisms of Archopy's story are completely true, and to save me repeating myself, I might as well just direct you to my responses to Dragonfree on this matter (which pretty much boil down to "Yeah, you're right, I screwed that up. Sorry." That and that I'm going to actually rewrite Archopy's moment of decision as it's the most insanely illogical part.) >.< Yeah. Thanks for the criticisms, though, because if I ever do rewrite this whole fic, you've given me a lot of fodder to work on when I get to this chapter.

I think the reason this isn't affecting me as much is because at least I'm glad that the next part of the chapter worked well, and that's the most important thing. xP;

Yay for actual spoilers!

At this point, I thought that Carrie had a sudden change of heart and shifted full-gear into insensitive b**** mode right here.

Whoo, success! Because I deliberately set the whole thing up to make you think once the Master Ball pings shut that Carrie had thrown it. Just so that you'd hopefully be caught even more by surprise a moment later.

I was, for some weird reason, relieved that Carrie didn't throw that ball at this point (mostly due that Carrie would have crossed her Moral Event Horizon here and we'd have to put up with her for the rest of the fic). I was expecting Andrew, or Venessa, or Aiden to have thrown that ball. Instead...

...buuuut, it somehow never actually occurred to me that people would assume that other characters such as those that you mentioned might be the culprit. Which, in hindsight, is indeed a fairly logical assumption. Which just means that the end result managed to be even more of a surprise, yes? =D

You blew my mind in a way I haven't experienced for a long time.

Oh yes. This sentence makes me so happy. This kind of a reaction was exactly what I'd been hoping for since thinking this up, oh, about thirty chapters and a prologue ago, and I'm so glad I managed to achieve it. 8D

And I think you did a great job at emulating the reader's probable reaction through Carrie here. I just hope that future readers won't come across this and get spoiled and then miss out on all the fun. D:

I really hope not too! I don't want this to become LE's It Was His Sled - that would ruin it! D:

And yay for Carrie being reader insert. It never really occurred to me that that was what she'd be here, but I guess she pretty much is, so whoo.

This is so, so wonderfully awkward and he is so, so wonderfully in denial right now. Now my opinion that he's now an antagonist has now been validated by this one quote, whee! \o/

Antagonist? D: Pfft! Theo is so not an antagonist!

</possible author bias because she's been writing a lot of Theo recently>

Which part of that did you think he was in denial about, out of curiosity?

During that battle pose bit, I was just waiting for this eventuality. XD

Whoo for Armaldo's deadness! =D

Well, they were all really blank slates that you could have done anything with, so I don't see your point.

Yes, but Theo sees his point, and that's what matters!

Theo [...] ended up feeling like an antagonist who really needed a reality-punch to the face.

D: ! Theo is not an antagonist and does not need a reality-punch!

</more author bias.> I'm not entirely sure how it never occurred to me that people would probably see Theo as an antagonist now, and I don't actually mind from an objective standpoint of how readers are interpreting my story, but my mind's been writing and empathising with Theo so much recently that it just can't help but be all DDDD: about it. Given how a lot of people's view on Theo here is quite different from mine, I'll be interested to see what they think of the next couple of chapters.

But yay. I'm glad I managed to blow your mind so much. =P
 

Darkfall - I have already mentioned on MSN how utterly evil you are for sort of vaguely guessing this would happen. Especially from the thing with Carrie's bag, which I mentioned to SlowCrow had given me slight paranoia that someone would guess what was going to come from it, and yooouuu with your Theo-tinted goggles managed to do so and raaawr. D:

But given that you have Theo-tinted goggles, I did hope that you'd rather love this, so it's good to see that you did. :3

Theo's motivational timeline speech basically meant to say something along the lines of: he wanted to catch Archopy to start with, then for a while after meeting Carrie he stopped wanting to (hence the "not the whole time") but then after Northern Canyon he both started wanting to again and realised that he'd still subconsciously wanted to even when he'd been consciously thinking he didn't. Any potential contradictory-sounding-ness of the speech itself can be explained by Theo being in a somewhat desperate state of mind not exactly suited to making well-thought-out, non-contradictory speeches.

And yes, Theo's Pokémon do indeed get a huge role now. At least, a much bigger one than they had before. =D

Pssh, what are you talking about? Of course "OMG THEO DID SOMETHING" constitutes a review. You're silly, you.


Sireath - Psh, you're also fantastic. I love insightful reviews like yours. :3

It's nice to hear you just let yourself sit back and enjoy the story, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Particularly Velotus's arc - as you can probably tell I had a ridiculous amount of fun with it, and not everyone was overly fond of it so it's good to see someone else who was. :3

And of course I am glad to see that you loved the most recent plot twist. =D You know, back in your last review when you told me something along the lines of how you wanted to see some more depth in Theo, part of me desperately wanted to say "You will! Just be patient!", but there was no way I would ever let myself say that in case anyone guessed this plot twist. So I just fobbed you off with some vagueries about how I hadn't had much chance to focus on him or something instead. Which was sort of a white lie, because I always knew this was going to happen. :>

Thanks for the general pointers, too. As it happens, with the direction I know the story is going from here, I think it's going to end up abiding by both the things you advised by itself anyway, but I will take them on board and try to poke the story a little to make sure that it definitely does.

Thanks for the review - it's really warmfuzzy-inducing to hear that my story is apparently this enjoyable and inspiring. :3


vareki - Hi there. Always nice to see a new reader and someone who's willing to read all the chapters in one long go. I'm glad you've been enjoying it so far. :3

Interesting to see that you're conflicted as to whether you support Carrie or MemorCorp here. MemorCorp was always meant to be a bit morally grey rather than black, especially since their arguably noble goal was revealed, and equally Carrie is by no means the most perfect unselfish person in the world, so go ahead and back whoever you like. It's good to see that I've managed to make a conflict which doesn't come across as completely black and white.

As for Carrie herself and her Grovyle... The thing is, Carrie as a basic character existed a while before I even thought of this story, and at the time her Pokémon team was based off Pokémon I had in my Emerald version (including details such as Velotus actually knowing Hidden Power Fire and Raptola actually being the offspring of Foliano and Ivyx). And then when I started writing this story, Carrie was simply the best character to put in it. I'm aware now that perhaps I should have thought a little more about what works best for a story and perhaps tweaked her team a bit before writing it. But I was a lot younger and less experienced back then, so I didn't, and this is just the way the fic is now. I couldn't possibly rewrite it with differences such as, say, no Ivyx, because without every single one of Carrie's Pokémon there, it just wouldn't be this fic to me.

But yeah. It's nice to see that you particularly like Velotus (=D) as well as Crescent's moments in the limelight.

Whoo for the timing of ending the find-Archopy plot. It did seem the right way to do it in my plans - I'm glad it worked out.

As for Theo - he's mad and narcissistic, and leaving his Pokémon like that is a face heel turn? Looks like you agree with Carrie's view on this whole thing, then - 'cause as far as Theo's concerned, he's convinced himself that he's in the right and is doing this for Archopy's good. It'll be interesting to see what you think of the coming few chapters.

I am definitely going to be having fun with Kabutops and the rest of Theo's Pokémon in said upcoming chapters, as it happens. Hope you like what you see.

Andrew isn't precisely meant to be an overly significant character. He's there because his personality popped into my head as something that would spice up the Bad Light scenes, and since I enjoyed him so much I let him stick around and take part as the main Bad Light presence in another chapter after his first appearance. But he's never really been meant to be overly deep as a character. In fact, he really isn't - he's just a sociopath who does everything he does, even being a member Bad Light in the first place, simply because it entertains him. In-universe as well as out, there's simply no more reasoning to his actions than that.

I'm actually not overly fond of the name Bad Light. xP I find it a bit too cheesy and coincidentally-thematic, but it was the only thing I could come up with when I came up with it, so it had to stay. But I guess it's cool that at least someone does like the thematicness of it.

So! Thanks a lot for reading, and for giving fairly indepth comments on various aspects of the story. I love this kind of review. :3
 

Stuff that will be happening soon:

- I intend to rewrite a few paragraphs of the Archopy scene in Chapter 30 to fix the nonsensicalness of her thought process. Her actual choice won't change, but, so that it makes more sense, some of her character development will be retconned into something different. As such, I'd recommend people take a quick look at the rewritten part once I get around to doing it (I'll mention it in here when it's done).

- A while ago, I wrote an extra scene relating to Chapter 30 which Dragonfree thinks I should post in here for people to read. So the next time I post in here (not right now because this post is long enough as it is), I'll post that. It's not required reading - think of it more like bonus material - but you may find it enjoyable.

- I will get Chapter 31 up at some point before October 31st. This is because...

- ...I'm planning to take part in NaNoWriMo this November to write a fully fleshed-out version of the Archopy of the past's story. As you can probably tell, I fell rather too much in love with it while expanding on it in Chapter 30, to the point that there's so many more details and scenes from it floating around in my head and I just need to write it. NaNoWriMo seems like the easiest way to just get it all out of my system in one big go. I'm not saying this because I'm going to force you to read it once I finish it and post it or anything; I just thought you might be interested to know. But it does mean I won't be able to write any actual Lost Evolution in November.

So, uh... stay tuned?

[Lilly2]

This is beautiful! I only had time to read the first chapter, but I loved it so much that I read the second one anyway! Variations between the looks of Pokemon of the same species? Split evolutions? You do it so well! I also, unknowingly, became a fanfic writer when I was eleven...I mean I suck, but I'm still pushing for it cause I love my idea can I get you to critique my work when I have something worthy of critiquing?

[Griff4815]

Well... I know I talked to you throughout my read of chapter 28 and 29 but I felt I should give a crappy review. You did review (quite nicely) my last chapter, soo...

Yes, it's I... the only reader who is as empathetic towards Velotus as Velotus is himself. xP They were both good chapters in their own right... but I didn't like some of the things that happened to Velotus. xP Apparently I'm in the moral wrong since I agreed with him completely throughout [s]not to mention felt most of what he did[/i]. I still don't really see what the problem was, but...

Anyways, the description of the battle, setting, characters and all that was really good. Velotus is awesome. And completely fine. It's interesting that they finally met Archopy. Yeah... I need to lie down. Emotional, empathetic rollercoaster those chapters were and-- well, you read the msn convo. xP

I need to lie down. I'll read next chapter probably when the chapter after is released. Heh... err.

[elyvorg]

Lilly2 - Welcome to the fic, and thanks for taking the time to read the first couple of chapters. :3 I hope you continue reading and enjoying.

Griff4815 - Oh, you Velotus-person. You really shouldn't be complaining about any of the things that "happened" to Velotus; for these two chapters, at least, everything that he went through emotionally he brought upon himself. =P But yeah, glad you enjoyed it and everything. Do remember to read Chapter 30 sometime soon before you fall ridiculously far behind again, won't you?


So, uh... I was going to wait until I'd rewritten that Archopy scene in Chapter 30 like I said I would before I posted in here again. Except... it sort of hasn't happened yet. I haven't been in much of a present-Archopy kind of mood recently (I have, admittedly, been in a past-Archopy mood quite a lot thanks to the fact that NaNoWriMo is fast approaching, but that doesn't help much towards getting into present-Archopy's head), so I'm probably not going to get it done by the end of the month. I will do it at some point, of course, but more important to you guys I'm sure is that I get Chapter 31 up sooner rather than later. Which I still intend to do sometime in the coming week, as I've finished writing Chapter 32 at last.

But, well, you can still have the other thing I said I'd do the next time I posted. Here's a short extra scene relating to the most recent chapter. Be aware that it contains major spoilers for Chapter 30; for the sake of your own enjoyment, if you haven't read that chapter yet, you should not read this.

    Spoiler:- Extra scene - Chapter 30 spoilers!:

Show Spoiler

 
You also need a little bit of background to properly understand what's going on. Despite that I couldn't post this until now, this scene actually happened chronologically during Chapter 28, soon after Theo and Carrie split up because Velotus had run off and Carrie had gone to look for him. Additionally, having only understood one side of the conversation about Velotus' disappearance, Theo thought that the reason for him running off might have been because he'd found Archopy.

The beginning may still be a little confusing because this was written back when that scene in Chapter 28 was pretty fresh in my mind, but that should be enough to get the gist of it.

Anyway.

--

Theo took one last furtive glance over his shoulder as he walked to make sure Carrie was out of sight. The forest around him was clear. She and her Pokémon were nowhere to be seen.

He breathed a heavy sigh, feeling all the tension flow out of him. He was alone at last. No-one around to make him nervous, to force him to stay on his guard and act cautiously the whole time.

He wondered briefly if splitting up from Carrie back there had been the right decision. Was it the non-suspicious thing to do? It must have been. Theo hadn’t joined her the last time one of Carrie’s Pokémon had gone missing, after all. And if Velotus might have found Archopy, following her for that reason alone would have looked incredibly suspect. It wasn’t supposed to matter if only one of them “talked” to her.

No, he decided, going his own way had definitely been the right move. Even if it hadn’t, it meant he had some time to himself to relax without the constant paranoia that Carrie was about to figure out his intentions any second.

But what if Velotus really had found Archopy and Carrie was heading towards her right now? He had to hope she’d come and tell him, like he’d hastily suggested – which he’d done for his sake, not hers, despite how she’d treated the suggestion. Then again, this was Carrie. Theo wasn’t honestly sure that she’d care about him enough to bother.

He realised he’d come to a standstill and started moving again, forcing briskness into his pace. He had to keep looking in the meantime. He could not let Carrie reach Archopy on her own.

For several minutes Theo walked in silence, letting himself think thoughts he’d never felt safe to think around Carrie. Still he felt uneasy – he was hiding such a heavy secret, and there was no-one he could tell it to. The worst part was that he wasn’t even entirely sure if what he hoped to do was right.

But was there really no-one he could talk to?

He reached into his pocket for a Poké Ball and dropped it on the ground in front of him. White light emerged and formed itself into the shape of Armaldo, staring straight ahead as blankly and emotionlessly as ever.

No matter how many times Theo saw his Pokémon like this, it always broke his heart.

“Armaldo,” he said, trying to push aside those feelings as he looked down at the creature, “I need you to walk alongside me as I walk. There’s something I want to talk to you about, but we need to keep moving.”

Without even acknowledging the words, Armaldo obediently began to walk beside Theo as he set off again.

Theo tried to ignore how horribly robotic the Pokémon was as he marched in step with his trainer, instead gazing around at the forest and waiting for the words bottled up inside him to find a way out.

“I want to catch Archopy,” he said at last.

Armaldo made no sound other than the crunch of his heavy feet on the forest floor.

“I just needed to get that out,” Theo said to fill the gap. “I thought you’d be the best person to tell, since I can trust you to keep quiet.”

What was he saying? Trust? Why on earth would Armaldo staying silent have anything to do with trust?

“But yes,” he said, “I want to catch Archopy. Not for MemorCorp, for myself. I want her to be my Pokémon.”

He paused for a moment as he thought how best to explain himself to Armaldo – as if Armaldo would ever benefit from an explanation.

“I’m not doing this out of greed, you understand,” he said firmly, looking at Armaldo and trying to convince himself that the Pokémon might have been thinking that. “I’m doing this because Archopy was my fossil. My Pokémon. I was the one who dug her up; I was the one who got her revived. She’s mine. That does make her mine, doesn’t it?”

Theo stared imploringly at Armaldo, hoping to see some sign that his Pokémon agreed with him. Armaldo seemed yet to be convinced, still staring blankly ahead and saying nothing.

“It’s not any different from any of my other Pokémon,” Theo insisted. “I dug all of you up; I had all of you revived. Archopy is the same. It’s just that MemorCorp wouldn’t let me have her. Don’t you see? Now’s my chance to get her back. She’s always been mine.”

…But it still sounded pretty greedy.

At least, that was what Armaldo might have said had he been able to speak. Theo didn’t actually believe it himself.

“I’m not doing this for myself,” he said forcefully, feeling frustration seep into his voice. “I’m doing this for her. You heard me when I told you what MemorCorp does to its subjects, didn’t you? I can’t bear the thought of Archopy’s mind being messed up with memories that aren’t even hers. She must be so confused. I want to make her better. I can do that; I know I can.”

He looked towards Armaldo, waiting for an answer; surely he’d agree that Theo could make Archopy better?

The Pokémon’s silence said everything.

“I know I wasn’t any good at making you better!” Theo cried in bitter exasperation. “I know that! That’s exactly why I need to help Archopy, don’t you see? I need to do for her what I couldn’t do for you!”

He heaved a sigh, his shoulders drooping, and looked back at Armaldo’s emotionless face.

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you, of everyone, about this,” he said. “I’m doing it for your sake.” Theo looked away from his Pokémon and gazed unseeingly ahead as he walked. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’ve got to try. I just need to make Archopy trust me like the others do.”

Theo thought of his other four Pokémon. They had all known him from practically the moment they were born. They looked up to him like children to a father. Would Archopy really be the same?

Well, at the very least, he could hardly do worse with her than he had with Armaldo.

Theo sighed again and looked bitterly down at the ground. “I know making Archopy better won’t fix you,” he said. “I know it won’t change the fact that I’ve failed you. But… I guess it’ll stop me from feeling quite so bad about it.”

He couldn’t bring himself to look Armaldo in the eye as he dejectedly pulled out the Pokémon’s ball.

“That’s not the right reason to do it either, is it?” he asked the shape that was dissolving into red light. “I know. But I have to try.”

Theo swallowed as he stuffed the Poké Ball back into his pocket and quickly strode ahead. He’d got it out of his system now; he didn’t need to dwell on it any longer. He had to focus on finding Archopy.
 

Chapter 31 will be up sometime before the end of the month! Honest!

[Griff4815]

Griff4815 - Oh, you Velotus-person. You really shouldn't be complaining about any of the things that "happened" to Velotus; for these two chapters, at least, everything that he went through emotionally he brought upon himself. =P But yeah, glad you enjoyed it and everything. Do remember to read Chapter 30 sometime soon before you fall ridiculously far behind again, won't you?

I know I really shouldn't bother responding since my reply is so short, but I feel it's my duty. xP. Anyways, I wholeheartedly and respectfully disagree with that first statement!

And yeah, I'll try to get around to reading 30 sometime. I'm still recovering. xD

[elyvorg]

(If you haven't already seen my last post, you may be interested in the extra scene relating to Chapter 30 that I wrote.)

Whoo, it's Chapter 31 at last! Apologies for the long wait, but distractions are distracting.

Chapter 31: Escape

A loud, excited squeaking filled the wooden cabin. Vanessa grumbled something untoward, turning over on the mattress and burying her head in the borrowed pillow, hoping to fall straight back to sleep.

Joy was having none of it. The Togetic zipped across the bed and began poking her trainer energetically, punctuating each poke with a sharp “Tic!”. Vanessa opened her eyes and waved the fairy Pokémon crossly out of her face. “What is it, Joy?” she mumbled, glancing at the window, the sky outside visibly dark through the branches. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Tokii!” Joy told her proudly, pointing with a flourish towards the laptop that lay on the floor in the middle of the room, the light of its screen illuminating the wall in front of it.

Vanessa snapped from groggy to alert in an instant. She’d left the program that tracked her Master Ball running overnight, even though she hadn’t expected anything to happen – the orange dot indicating the two trainers’ location hadn’t moved since the early evening, and she’d assumed it wouldn’t do so again until morning. But apparently, she had been mistaken.

She scrambled out of the bed and reached for the laptop, turning it towards her while Joy flitted about excitedly in the edges of her vision. A smile made its way onto her face. There it was: the Master Ball’s dot, flashing white, showing that it was now occupied.

Archopy had been caught.

Vanessa peered closer at the screen as she zoomed into the program’s map of Hoenn, eager to know exactly where her Archopy had been found. Still on Steel Hill, apparently, less than a mile away from where the trainers had stopped that evening. But it didn’t look to be staying that way for long. The dot was moving.

* * *

Theo emerged from the Secret Base, his mind racing. Part of him could scarcely believe that he’d managed to go through with what he’d just done, what he’d always meant to do but never known if he’d have the guts to. But now the ball containing Archopy – his Archopy – was safe inside his pocket; he could feel it lying just above the rapid pounding of his heart.

And yet, it had all gone wrong. Carrie hadn’t understood. Of course she hadn’t; Theo had always known she wouldn’t. Yet something had possessed him to try and explain it to her, even though he knew she’d never listen to him. He should have just left straight away, then his Pokémon wouldn’t still be inside the base, fighting to stop her just so that he could get away. But if he wanted any chance of enough time with Archopy, Theo had to leave them. His own Pokémon. He was leaving his own Pokémon to fight alone. This had turned into a nightmare.

He looked frantically, hopelessly, around the near-pitch black forest he found himself in. What with the time he’d spent inside the Secret Base listening to Archopy, he’d practically forgotten that outside was a menacing, unfamiliar woodland in the middle of the night. The place creeped Theo out enough without him having to make some kind of desperate escape through one to find a hiding place. He didn’t even have any idea where to go about hiding in a forest. That was Carrie’s area, not his.

This had all been such a stupid idea. Carrie was going to burst out of the base and catch him any second. He shouldn’t have left his Pokémon in there on their own. What sort of trainer would do that? Archopy would never trust him.

Theo took deep breaths and forced himself not to panic. However much part of him desperately wished he could rewind time and never have caught Archopy in the first place, there was no going back now. He’d done this so that he could care for her and make her better – he had to make her better. Even if Carrie was right that Archopy would never trust him, he simply had to try. It wasn’t even as if he had any other option any more.

Feeling his pocket for Archopy’s Master Ball to reassure himself it was still there, Theo steeled himself, picked a random direction and ran off through the dark.

* * *

“Damn it,” Carrie was muttering to herself above Foliano’s head. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.” She paced across the width of the Secret Base, glaring at the line of Theo’s Pokémon blocking the way out. “Why did he have to go and do that? That idiot.”

Foliano could see where she was coming from. Even though he supposed Archopy was basically a wild Pokémon and so Theo was basically within his rights to capture her, it just seemed wrong somehow. Archopy hadn’t had a choice in the matter. Didn’t wild Pokémon usually decide whether they wanted to approach a trainer and risk capture? Didn’t Archopy, of all Pokémon, deserve that choice?

But then again, he’d listened to Kabutops talk about the kind of trainer Theo was. Foliano could think of far worse humans that Archopy could have ended up with.

“Master is not,” he heard Cradily hiss under her breath, quietly but fervently, returning Carrie’s glare. “Master is not an idiot.” The sea lily’s tentacles writhed slowly, sinisterly.

Still pacing, Carrie ignored her gaze, or at least pretended to. “And now we have to battle our way out of here,” she muttered more to herself than anyone else. “Just bloody great. This is going to be such a mess.”

“Damn right it is,” Aerodactyl rasped, grinning a rather too tooth-filled grin. Foliano noticed Kabutops eye the pterosaur warily, almost as if he were about to speak up, but he said nothing.

Heaving a frustrated breath, Carrie briefly inspected the walls of the base, lined with firmly woven vegetation. “And Secret Base walls can only be broken down from the outside, apparently.” She smacked the wall in question. “Damn it! There has to be an easier way out of this!”

She spun around and looked down at each of her Pokémon in turn. Her gaze came to a halt on Crescent. A grin spread across her face.

“Crescent,” she said, her eyes glinting. “You used Perish Song before, didn’t you? I need you to use it again. I know it’ll hurt, but it’s the quickest way out of here.”

The Absol was shaking his head before she’d even finished, shrinking back as he looked up at her. “I… I can’t,” he mumbled, letting out a soft whine. “I don’t remember how to…”

“We cannot let him use that move,” Foliano heard Kabutops warn the other fossil Pokémon behind him. “They’ll get away.”

“Please, Crescent!” Carrie urged. “I can recall you once you’ve sung it; it won’t hurt for long. Just…” She made a frustrated gesture at the Pokémon blocking the way. “I need to get past them!”

Crescent stared at the ground, clawing at it anxiously. “I… I suppose I’ll try…”

“No, you won’t!” came a high-pitched voice; a second later a spinning beige thing cannoned through the air towards the Absol and clonked him in the face. It took Foliano a moment to register that it had been Omanyte, of all Pokémon – she’d always been so shy before. Crescent snarled in indignation and slashed at her shell as it spun around for a return strike, but judging from the squeal of glee from Omanyte as she smashed into her target again, it had barely hurt at all.

Velotus took the sudden action as his cue and leapt at Aerodactyl, grinning wildly, his blades blazing with green-white light.

“Oh, fine!” Carrie yelled as Aerodactyl countered a strike from the Grovyle’s leaves with a swipe of his wing. “Attack them! Go, go, go! There’s more of us, anyway!”

The room promptly became a whole lot noisier. Most of it was down to Cradily, who dropped the threatening glare in an instant in favour of screeching wordlessly at the top of her voice as she flailed wildly in preparation for an attack. Empathy duly jumped forward and wrapped a psychic glow around the sea lily, halting her in her tracks. From the other side of the base, Foliano heard Aerodactyl snarl furiously at Velotus; Omanyte was still squeaking in delight as she ran rings around Crescent.

That left Kabutops. He hesitated before moving towards Foliano, raising his scythes unsurely, clearly torn. Foliano knew that neither he nor his friend could pretend this was going to be just another of their friendly battles. He grimaced as he lit his blades.

“I’ll take this one,” Ivyx said, stepping in front of him, her own leaves glowing. She spared a meaningful glance back at him; she knew how much this would have hurt Foliano to do. He gave her a smile of wordless thanks.

With a grin, she flew at Kabutops, but her scythe was swiftly parried by his. Foliano couldn’t help but worry as he watched them trade blows. Kabutops had clearly become better at fighting a Grovyle over the course of their friendly matches.

“Foli, don’t just stand there – we outnumber them, make use of that!” Carrie called as she watched the melee anxiously, her teeth clenched. “Crescent, Detect that Rollout already! Velotus, what happened to Thunderpunch?”

Foliano jumped at Cradily, who was still held in place by Psychic, scything at her lower body with a Leaf Blade. The strike was punctuated by a yellow flash from the other side of the room as he heard the crackling of electricity mix in with a primeval screech of pain. Beside him, Ivyx was still going for it against Kabutops; Foliano winced as she was hit with a nasty-looking slash. A burning liquid splashed over him as he was distracted, and he leapt back in surprise away from Cradily, who’d managed to pull off the attack even while immobilised.

“Empathy, quit trying to lift her or whatever you’re doing and just use Psybeam,” came Carrie’s frustrated command. “Ivyx! Stop duelling – he’s better at it than you. Energy Ball!”

Foliano felt kind of bad as Empathy began dealing blasts of rainbow light to Cradily while he filled in the gaps with Leaf Blade strikes, not giving the sea lily a moment to stop reeling and fight back. Battles weren’t supposed to be one-sided like this. “You don’t have to fight us, you know,” he said to her, almost apologetically. “We just want to leave.”

“No!” Cradily’s voice was vehement despite her pain from the attacks. “Master needs us to do this. Master trusts us.” Another Psybeam shook her, but one yellow eye remained piercing into him from the black cavity on her face. “Master will come back for us, but until then, you will not leave!” At these words, she lurched forwards, spraying more acid right into Foliano’s face.

He yelped and shook himself wildly, trying to stop the burning, part of him wanting to deliver a counter-strike out of principle – she’d only been able to do that because he’d stopped attacking. But something made him leap away from the sea lily entirely, heading towards another part of the battle. Carrie hadn’t been specific on where she wanted him to make use of their superior numbers, after all.

He skirted past Ivyx and Kabutops, narrowly leaping over a sparkling green Energy Ball that Kabutops had smoothly ducked underneath moments earlier. Carrie yelled something about Shadow Ball from behind him, and he saw Crescent, his usually silky white fur grey and sodden with water, charge a sphere of dark matter in his mouth and fire it at Omanyte, who swiftly disappeared inside her shell. Black tendrils of energy skittered around the shell as the ball disintegrated on impact, eliciting a squeal of discomfort from the Pokémon inside.

She promptly reappeared, waving her tiny tentacles vigorously as she sprayed a jet of water at the Absol’s face. “Won’t let you!” she squeaked as Crescent snarled in annoyance, raking his claws at her but missing due to the water in his eyes. “Won’t let you hurt Father!”

Did she mean Theo? Foliano’s first thought was that the human really hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he was like a father to his Pokémon; his second thought was that she kind of reminded him of Raptola. Omanyte seemed to be about as young as Foliano’s son, after all. And he felt sure that his son would fight with all he had if he knew his dad was in danger.

He watched as Omanyte vanished inside her shell again and launched herself, spinning, at her foe. He didn’t have the heart to start attacking her, even if Crescent looked like he might have needed the help, only dodging by the narrowest of margins as the spiral shell whizzed past his nose. Omanyte’s typing was doubly weak to Grass, anyway. It didn’t seem right, battling her two-on-one with such a large type advantage to boot.

His head snapped around as he heard a screech of pain from Velotus; Aerodactyl had clamped the Grovyle’s body in his long jaws, crystals of ice glittering around his teeth and sending a wave of cold air washing over Foliano. The pterodactyl flung his foe harshly into the wall of the Secret Base, Velotus unable to cushion the impact as his arms were trapped under a layer of ice.

Aerodactyl advanced on the wildly struggling Grovyle, more ice forming around his fangs. Carrie yelled at Foliano to get in there and help him, but he hardly needed the order. Ducking momentarily as a wayward Shadow Ball zoomed past, he leapt towards the pterosaur and slammed a Leaf Blade upwards into his chin. Aerodactyl’s jaws snapped shut on thin air with a clack, spraying tiny ice fragments everywhere.

“Velotus, where’s your fire?” Carrie called. Out of the corner of his eye, Foliano saw the other Grovyle shake his head as he strained to break free of the ice encasing him. A leathery grey wing smashed into Foliano, catching him off guard and sending him sprawling onto his back. “And Foli, didn’t you know Thunderpunch too?” his trainer added as the pterosaur loomed over him, wings spread wide, eyes glaring down at him from above and grinning that wicked, fanged grin.

Thunderpunch? Foliano vaguely recalled having learnt it from Velotus, but it’d been a while and he couldn’t quite remember how it was done. He peered at his arm, trying to concentrate; a tiny crackle of electricity flickered across it and was gone just as quickly. The next moment, his head was slammed against the ground, stars speckling his vision as Aerodactyl’s wings swiped viciously at him, the ancient Pokémon screeching in triumph. Foliano instinctively lashed out in retaliation, but his bare claws did little against the Rock-type’s thick hide.

“Tie him down!” Velotus hissed from beside him as Foliano tried in vain to channel some energy into his leaves so he could give Aerodactyl a proper strike. “I just need some time!” The ice around the other Grovyle’s body seemed to be cracking – he’d be free in a few moments.

Foliano forced his head to stop spinning and scrambled out from underneath Aerodactyl, narrowly missing being caught by another Wing Attack as he backed away to give himself space to concentrate. Inside the vegetation-rich Secret Base, it wasn’t hard to coax a twisting, snaking vine to erupt beneath the pterosaur’s feet, tripping him as he lunged towards his target and sending him crashing to the ground.

Aerodactyl roared in frustration, flailing around on the floor, his efforts hampered by another two grassy ropes that Foliano had managed to call up and entwine around his wings as best he could. He caught Velotus’ eye; the other Grovyle grinned back at him, his ice entrapment now covered in a web of cracks.

“Look at you two,” Aerodactyl hissed, giving up his struggles against the vines in favour of glaring murderously – or was it enviously? – at the two Grovyle. “You have no idea what it’s like. Being the only one. Our leader is the only thing that makes it bearable for us. For me.” He paused to growl softly, and Foliano could see real loneliness behind his savage stare. “Now he wants to do the same for Archopy, and you seek to stop him?”

“Damn right we do,” Velotus growled. The ice around him shattered, and he leapt straight at Aerodactyl, his eyes blazing with fire and his arm crackling with sparks. The fist connected and the Flying-type screeched in agony, writhing around in his grassy bonds as electricity coursed through him. The moment it was over, he hissed defiantly back at Velotus, snapping wildly with his jaws even as his body shook from the strain, but the Grovyle just dodged backwards out of reach with a sly grin.

Foliano backed away from the fight, leaving his Grass Knot loose and easy to tear through. Aerodactyl was weakened enough now that Velotus could doubtless end things on his own – and Foliano couldn’t help but feel sorry for the pterosaur. He didn’t know what it was like to be the only one of his species, after all. Not like Theo’s Pokémon. Not like Archopy.

But wouldn’t bringing back her species as a whole help Archopy more than one human trainer could?

Foliano was snapped out of his confusing thoughts by his own trainer. “Foli, please!” Carrie said, sounding almost like she was begging. “We’re still nowhere near through – please, you have to help out somehow.” The anger from earlier had left her voice, leaving only desperation. Foliano couldn’t bring himself to ignore her wishes, despite his sympathy with the fossil Pokémon – she was his trainer, after all, and he cared about her just as much as Theo’s Pokémon cared about him.

There was an explosion of green sparkles to his left as Kabutops deftly slashed at one of Ivyx’s Energy Balls, disintegrating it. Drawing in a breath, Foliano readied his blades and made himself approach his friend. He managed to put on a spurt of speed and slammed a Leaf Blade into Kabutops’ chest, catching him off guard while he was still focused on Ivyx. The shellfish caught his eye, looking almost amused as he raised his scythe to parry Foliano’s next blow.

“Two on one?” he chuckled, a playful edge to his voice. “Surely this isn’t fair?”

No, it isn’t, Foliano silently agreed as Ivyx fired off another Energy Ball from the sidelines which grazed the top of Kabutops’ head as he only just managed to duck it. “You could always just surrender, you know,” he said out loud, keeping up the pretence of friendly banter. “I’m sure our trainer would love you for that.”

Kabutops’ eyes lost their twinkle and became pained as he blocked the next few blows with more force than normal, driving Foliano back. “You know I can’t,” he said quietly. “Just as much as you can’t. Our trainers mean too much to us.”

The two of them stood there, each of their scythes blocked by the other’s, locked in a stalemate. Foliano almost wished his trainer wanted something else of him, just so that he wouldn’t have to fight his friend like this.

Another Energy Ball flew in from the corner of his vision and struck Kabutops square in the chest. The shellfish gasped in pain and staggered backwards as the green sparkles fizzed over his whole body, their Grass type power seeping into his rocky hide. Foliano shot a glance at Ivyx, not sure if he was angry at her or complimenting her for the nice hit; she returned it with a look of wordless apology.

Kabutops was still standing. He seemed to have determinedly shaken off the attack even though it must taken a lot out of him. Raising his scythes again, he began to stalk forwards, albeit with more difficulty than before.

“Grass Knot, Foli!” Carrie called frantically from somewhere behind Foliano. “You know it works on him!”

Gritting his teeth and feeling horrible for doing so, Foliano called up a pair of twisted vines around his friend’s clawed feet. Kabutops caught his eye in the moment before the knots tightened, his gaze unreadable – and then he suddenly shot vertically upwards faster than Foliano had ever thought he could move. He snapped his gaze up to the ceiling, but Kabutops had already leapt off it, too fast to follow. The next thing he knew, a scything strike slammed into his back, sending him sprawling forwards, almost crashing into Cradily’s bottom half.

Foliano lay there, dazed, not really taking in the sea lily’s wild threats towards Empathy above him. That attack had hurt a lot more than a normal hit from one of Kabutops’ scythes should have. The pain was reminiscent of Aerodactyl swiping him with his wings; the move must have been Flying type.

He still couldn’t quite heave himself up off the ground – the attack just now coupled with the lingering aches from Aerodactyl’s Wing Attacks and Cradily’s acidic assaults had taken a lot out of him – but he managed to look over his shoulder back at Kabutops. “You know Aerial Ace?”

The shellfish nodded, not catching his eye. “My trainer taught it to me a long time ago,” he said.

Foliano frowned, thinking of their friendly battles. “Then why did you never…”

“I didn’t want to hurt you that badly,” Kabutops mumbled, his voice plagued with guilt. Turning away from Foliano, he dodged to the side of another Energy Ball that Ivyx sent his way – she seemed to be really straining herself to pull them off now – and then leapt straight upwards. Foliano could only watch helplessly as the same move was used on her: rebounding off the ceiling and then the base’s left and right walls in quick succession, Kabutops caught her from behind with an impossibly fast strike that she could never have avoided. Ivyx screamed as she tumbled forwards, sprawling onto the grassy floor much like Foliano had. Unlike him, she didn’t move again.

The horror in his trainer’s eyes as she pulled out a Poké Ball matched his own. Carrie gave Foliano an intense look as she recalled Ivyx, and he knew exactly what she wanted him to do. He wanted to do it, too. Kabutops had just taken out his mate. His mate. Some primal urge within Foliano wanted nothing more than to fly at his friend in a rage, to hurt him just as badly – no, twice as badly – as he’d just hurt Ivyx. Suddenly able to ignore the pain of his injuries, he pushed himself up off the ground and rounded on Kabutops.

And it wouldn’t even be unfair any more. Carrie’s Pokémon no longer outnumbered Theo’s, after all.

Kabutops backed away from his glare, raising his scythes in what would have been a placating gesture had they not been the same scythes that had just struck Ivyx down. “I’m sorry,” he said desperately.

Foliano tried to force himself to calm down as he stared into Kabutops’ eyes. Ivyx was only unconscious, after all; she’d be fine. And Kabutops was his friend. The same Pokémon he’d shared playful banter with in the midst of friendly battles. He’d only done this because his loyalty to his trainer was more important to him, and Foliano could understand that.

But Foliano’s loyalty to his own trainer was just as important. And although it had been subdued somewhat, the instinctive fury within him hadn’t gone away.

“I’m sorry!” Kabutops said again, clearly seeing that he wasn’t about to back down. Foliano took a deep breath to keep a hold of himself as he prepared to take down his friend.

“So am I.”

* * *

Theo’s feet pounded heavily against the ground as he ran through the darkened forest with only his rapid breathing and Archopy’s Master Ball for company. He tried to focus on the thought of Archopy, to tell himself that everything would be all right once he had time to talk to her and make her trust him, but why on earth would she want to trust someone who’d just grabbed her and run away with her like this?

Theo was beginning to wish on top of everything else that he hadn’t started running. He could hardly see where he was going in the dark – the tall silhouettes of trees kept looming into his vision so fast that he was barely avoiding smacking headlong into them. And even if he had the first clue what made a good hiding place in a forest, he still wouldn’t be able to see any in this all-consuming blackness. This was getting him nowhere. All he was doing was leaving his Pokémon – the ones that actually trusted him – further and further behind.

The thought of never being able to find his way back and losing his Pokémon forever crossed Theo’s mind, almost making him stop and turn back then and there.

But he had to keep running. He’d captured Archopy. He couldn’t go back, not while Carrie was still there. She might even have defeated his Pokémon and be coming after him by now – she could track his footprints, couldn’t she? Theo ran faster; he had to find a safe place where he could send out Archopy, somewhere that Carrie would never find him.

He was running so fast that he’d barely registered the dark shape in front of him before he crashed into it. The shape in question was knocked backwards, letting out a cry of alarm – and Theo’s heart dropped into his stomach as he realised that he’d just literally run into a member of Bad Light.

He wheeled around frantically, taking off in the direction he’d been coming from, hoping desperately that the thug hadn’t noticed who he was in the darkness. His hopes were dashed as a flash of light from behind him lit up the forest and the sound of the trainer ordering a Thunder Wave reached his ears. Theo would have sped up even more if he hadn’t already been running at full pelt. He didn’t have any Pokémon to defend himself with any more; he could hardly send out Archopy, and the rest of his Pokémon were…

No, not all of them, Theo realised, digging into his pocket as he saw a Magneton float up beside him in the corner of his eye, blue sparks crackling around its magnets and reflecting off its steel bodies. He flung out his last occupied Poké Ball at the same moment the Magneton sent a wave of paralysing electricity surging through him. For the second time in two days, Theo felt his limbs seize up painfully, and he slammed into the ground, hard. His head spinning as he stared straight ahead, he saw his Poké Ball bounce and pop open with a flash of light, releasing his last hope of getting out of this situation.

But Theo knew how ridiculous it was to think he could count on Armaldo. In the intermittent light from the Magneton’s sparks, the fossil Pokémon’s blank gaze passed straight over him. Armaldo wasn’t even looking at the Pokémon that had taken his trainer down.

Theo could hear footsteps that must have belonged to the Magneton’s trainer approaching through the dark. His mind threw up scenarios of Armaldo helplessly getting fried by electricity, unable to do anything to fight back. Theo’s arms refused to listen to him as he struggled to push himself up; talking was also difficult, but with effort he managed to form recognisable sounds. “Armaldo,” he gasped, “Ancientpow – ow – agh…” He coughed and wheezed desperately as his throat seized up mid-word and he found himself barely able to breathe, let alone speak.

Without being given the exact name of the attack, Armaldo might as well have heard nothing at all. Still gasping for breath, Theo felt his insides fill with dread for his Pokémon as the crackling of sparks continued, but the Magneton’s trainer didn’t order anything. Instead, the man walked right past the fossil Pokémon into Theo’s field of vision – and bent down to pick up Armaldo’s Poké Ball, which had rolled away in the moment Theo had been struck by the Thunder Wave.

Theo could only watch helplessly as the thug recalled Armaldo and pocketed the ball as if the Pokémon belonged to him. It hardly bore thinking about what might be done to him now that he was in the Bad Light member’s hands.

“You two have the Director’s permission to capture Archopy, so long as you give it to one of us straight away,” the man said, a note of annoyance in his voice as he advanced on Theo. “That’s what I remember having to tell every single member of our team on the hill.” With a rough shove from the man’s boot, Theo was rolled over and found himself lying on his back, staring up at a face that seemed vaguely familiar. “So why were you running away with it, hm?”

Panic hit Theo in a sudden surge as he realised that there was nothing he could do to stop this man taking Archopy. His body still wasn’t listening to his mind’s frantic attempts to get it to move. “No,” he managed to gasp, finding his voice again. “You – can’t –” With a huge effort, he jerked an arm up to try and cover the pocket with Archopy’s Master Ball in a desperate attempt to hold onto her, realising too late that all he’d done was show the thug exactly which pocket he’d find her in.

Archopy. Theo had dug her up. He had to help her. He couldn’t let them take her back to MemorCorp and make her life hell.

But his body refused to move. There was nothing he could do but let out an anguished cry of despair as the man working for the Director reached into his pocket and tore his Pokémon away from him.

* * *

Carrie ground her teeth in frustration as she stared at the entrance of the Secret Base, still hopelessly out of reach on the other side of the battlers. Theo’s Pokémon were simply refusing to back down.

It wasn’t for lack of her Pokémon trying, either. The fight just seemed to have set itself up to be as annoying for them as possible. Cradily must have been using Amnesia, because she’d taken countless Psybeams from Empathy and still had enough in her to retaliate with an Energy Ball or a spray of acid. With physical attacks barely able to scratch her shell, Omanyte was proving ridiculously hard for Crescent to hit with a Shadow Ball once she got rolling quickly. Aerodactyl, despite having taken at least two Thunderpunches, was somehow managing to repeatedly flit out of the way of what would likely have been a final one and still find the opportunity to zoom in with a Wing Attack every now and then, leaving Velotus almost as hurt as he was. And since when had Kabutops known Aerial Ace? At least he seemed too tired to use it any more, locked in a scythe-duel with Foliano, who’d given up on Grass Knot after the fossil Pokémon kept avoiding it. Both of them looked exhausted as they traded blows.

But despite clearly being on their last legs, Theo’s Pokémon were not giving up.

Carrie almost wanted to tear her hair out. She was sure there had to be some strategic way to go about this, some way to arrange the battle so that her Pokémon had the maximum advantage and could work together to be out in seconds. The Pokémon were all too caught up in their individual battles to be able to stop and think; this was the part she, as a trainer, was meant to be doing. But Carrie had never been too great at overly tactical battling. There was just too much going on at once for her to be able to focus on it, and the ever-present knowledge that Theo was getting further and further away by the second was rendering her unable to think straight.

Carrie had opened her mouth to call out some kind of order anyway but stopped as the faint smell of a campfire reached her. She frowned, glancing at Velotus, but he showed no signs of having used his Hidden Power; in fact, after their conversation last night and the way he’d shaken his head earlier when she’d ordered it, she wasn’t sure he even could use his fire any more.

Which meant…

She looked frantically around the Secret Base, seeing wisps of smoke curling their way in through the weave of vegetation that made up the walls. And now that she thought about it, the room seemed a whole lot warmer than it had a few minutes ago.

“Stop!” she yelled desperately over the sounds of the battle in front of her. “Seriously, I mean it, stop! This place is on fire!”

The Pokémon seemed to have been vaguely aware something was wrong, but at this, they all broke off their fighting and began to properly take in their surroundings: the smoke that was already rising to form a layer of grey haze around the ceiling, the sound of crackling flames from outside, the steadily increasing heat. Carrie’s Pokémon backed towards their trainer; Theo’s simply stared around helplessly, at a loss for what to do.

“Yeah,” Carrie said, trying to keep her mounting panic out of her voice. “We need to get out of here. Um.” She fumbled in her pockets, pulling out Poké Balls rather clumsily thanks to her shaking fingers and recalling her Pokémon to the safety of their balls. Then she looked down at Theo’s Pokémon, all of them showing signs of exhaustion, all of them still guarding their positions in front of the entrance. “Um,” she said again. “You guys. You need to let me out.”

“Craaay, leee,” warbled Cradily, her bulbous head performing a twisting kind of dance that might have been a headshake. The other three Pokémon glanced at her. All three held their ground.

Carrie’s back was beginning to feel considerably hotter; she edged forward away from the back wall, in which flickers of orange were beginning to show through the vegetation. “Oh, right,” she said to the fossil Pokémon. “Yeah. You’re all Rock-types; you’ll probably be fine if this place burns down around us, won’t you?” Her usual sarcastic tone seemed to be coming out a lot higher-pitched than normal. “Has it occurred to you that I won’t be?” She pointed wildly at herself. “Human being here. Flesh and blood. Burns easily. You’ve got to let me out.”

Cradily remained as steadfast as ever, vehemently repeating whatever it was she’d said before. The other three looked less sure; Kabutops in particular seemed to be struggling with himself as he propped his battered body up with one scythe. Around them, the flames grew closer. Parts of the inside walls were beginning to visibly blacken and become engulfed in a flickering orange as the fire made its way in. Carrie felt hotter still.

“Please!” she said desperately, dropping to her knees as the layer of smoke coating the ceiling descended to be uncomfortably close to her head. “You know Theo wouldn’t have included ‘let her burn to death’ in his orders! He’s not that kind of person – you can’t leave me in here!”

At this, Kabutops hesitated for a brief moment and then spoke quietly to Omanyte, who was the other Pokémon most directly in front of the entrance alongside him. Carrie’s heart leapt – and then promptly stumbled mid-leap as all Omanyte did was start spewing jets of water at the walls in an attempt to quell the rising flames.

“Oh, great,” she said, watching the water hiss and turn to steam that rose to join the smoke above her head. “Keep me alive but keep me here, too. Yeah, thanks.” Kabutops ignored her as he joined in the efforts, firing off undulating pulses of water clearly meant to drench the flames, but its effect was somewhat lacklustre given how tired the shellfish was. “You know I’m just going to send out my Pokémon again and carry on beating you once you’ve put it out,” Carrie added huffily.

Her anxiety began to creep back into her as she crouched low in the very middle of the Secret Base, watching the two Water-types’ efforts to fight the fire. They didn’t seem to be winning. For every flame they doused, two more would spring up elsewhere along the walls, and the sprays of water aimed at them were getting weaker and weaker each time as Kabutops and Omanyte’s energy dwindled further. Carrie had to give them credit; they weren’t giving up, despite their exhaustion and the fact that they were fighting for someone they’d been fighting against only a few minutes ago. But it was looking pretty futile – she was just glad she’d been splashed with cold water several times by now, because the heat was getting intense.

Never mind the fire-fighting effort – she needed to get the hell out of there, way more urgently than she’d ever needed to earlier. Thinking furiously about her options, she was almost ready to start begging Theo’s Pokémon to just let her out again even though she could barely see them through the steam, but then something she’d said while thinking through this problem earlier came back to her. The walls of a Secret Base could only be broken down from the outside – and that was exactly what was happening.

Squinting through the haze at the walls around her, Carrie spotted a part off to her left where she could make out a decent-sized hole in the charred vegetation, the flames around which looked to be mostly out. Omanyte and Kabutops were furiously working on the opposite wall and didn’t seem to have noticed through the steam and the smoke and the confusion that they’d left their captive an escape route.

Trying desperately not to breathe too much in case she started choking, Carrie crawled hurriedly forward, heading for freedom.

Something snagged on her foot as she was almost through, something that grabbed tight and tugged furiously in an attempt to keep her there. Carrie could hear Cradily screeching indignantly somewhere behind her and lashed out blindly, feeling her foot connect with something round and heavy at the same time as the sea lily let out a yeep of pain. The tentacles around Carrie’s leg loosened for a moment, allowing her to yank herself free and scramble frantically forward, stumbling to her feet and running blindly as fire surrounded her on either side; she was only glad she was soaked through; that seemed to be keeping the flames off her…

She ran through a shimmering wall of light, and suddenly the world wasn’t on fire any more. Carrie skidded to a confused halt in front of a purple and black pig-like Pokémon that was spreading its arms, the pearls on its body somehow managing to glow with a black light. She stared from the Grumpig back to the Secret Base, seeing flames still gorging on the small mound of grass and the ground around it, but stopping as soon as they reached the wall of energy that the Psychic Pokémon was producing. It finally clicked in Carrie’s head that this was a Light Screen – looking around, she saw that the Grumpig was one of several Pokémon standing around the Secret Base, powering the screen in order to keep the fire contained inside a circle of light.

But as she looked around, she also realised that there was a further circle outside this one, one that she was still trapped by, and her hopes of freedom were promptly dashed.

It was a circle of Bad Light members.

“Hey there, Grovyle-girl,” came an irritatingly familiar voice from one side of the circle that sent the dashed pieces of Carrie’s hopes through the shredder. “Took you long enough. I was beginning to feel all insulted – it almost looked like you’d rather burn to death in there than come out and see us.”

Resisting the urge to smack her forehead in despairing frustration, Carrie looked towards the man who was standing as part of the circle, directly in front of the Secret Base’s entrance. Andrew was leaning against his Arcanine, completely at ease, looking straight back at her with a way-too-amused gleam in his eyes and the biggest of grins.

“I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that we’ve apprehended your evil, Archopy-thieving friend,” he went on. “But you’d better come along with us, too. The Director would hate for you to miss the fun.”

~~~

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[Dragonfree]

I love this chapter, as you may have noticed when I was squeeing over Theo and his Pokémon on Saturday.

There are no outstanding mistakes that I could see per se, or at least not that I remember right now. I did enjoy that you started with Vanessa, as a fun way to get back to what just happened, but that scene seemed sort of pointless in the grand scheme of things, considering Vanessa doesn't turn out to do anything else in the chapter and even that scene is just her waking up and seeing Archopy has been caught, with no further hint that it's there for any other reason than just being that fun way to get back to what just happened. Again, I enjoyed it, but afterwards it just feels a little out of place.

I love how everything played out story-wise; Theo getting caught almost immediately was ever so slightly anticlimactic after the whole grand twist in the last chapter, but I can't imagine it would really have been especially entertaining if you'd dragged it out, and it is very nice to see the villains being competent enough to do this, especially when they summarily capture Carrie as well.

As for the character side of things, Theo is adorable and his Pokémon are all adorable and I still irrationally love Andrew to itty bits and aaaa Foliano and Kabutops! D: I am looking way forward to Kabutops' POV.

Sorry for the lack of quotes; it's a little harder to speak that specifically when writing the review after reading as opposed to during.

[Darkfall]

You know I always hated the phrase "said nothing." How can you say nothing? 'Say' implies yo said something, 'nothing' is, well, nothing. I'll never grasp the intrinsic arcanum of this oxymoron.

Easily the greates thing I've ever read:

"The room promptly became a whole lot noisier. Most of it was down to Cradily, who dropped the threatening glare in an instant in favour of screeching wordlessly at the top of her voice as she flailed wildly in preparation for an attack. "

This sounds weird to me:

"The strike was punctuated by a yellow flash from the other side of the room "

- It makes it sound like the attack was actually interuppted or blocked. Also at this point the word 'punctuated' felt a bit repetitive. I know it wasn't, but being such an uncommon word, it DOES stand out more.

So. It was a very battle-centric chapter, which is fine by me because I love how you write fight scenes, the decriptions are easy to imagine, and they all flow quite nicely. I'd assume it was a bit of a challenge writing so many different scuffles at once though eh?

Theo. Oh Theo. I love how indecisive and failtastic you are. Silly Theo. Still seems cruel getting Thunder Waved though...

To be honest there's not a lot to say about the characters. Carrie reacted as Carrie would, though when she was looking at the Secret Base, why didn't she see Andrew then? Just a note.

No, can't say I've much to say. Or... Something? It was good, very good. I'd say well worth the wait, but nothing particularily AMAZING happened. I mean, the fight was amazing, but that's all it was, an enjoyable prolonging of the plot. Worth the wait, but not WELL worth the wait.

[elyvorg]

Hello again, dear fic thread! It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?

By which I mean it’s been two and a half years oh god that is unforgivable. But! I have not and never had given up on this story, and recently I have been getting at least somewhat back into the swing of writing it again. Thanks to my old one-chapter-ahead-of-posting arrangement for writing, I have also always had Chapter 32 in a nearly-finished state for all this time. So, even though work on Chapter 33 is currently going kind of awkwardly because I’m incredibly rusty (and it’s one of those tricky transitory chapters), I see no reason why I can’t post the next chapter sometime soon.

Therefore!

I will try to have Chapter 32 up within a week. There. Now that I’ve said it in here, I can’t be lazy and back out of it.

This… prior warning, I suppose, also gives anyone who’s still interested in this fic a chance to go back and reread some of the recent chapters if they want to refresh their memories. In particular, I have finally got around to editing in the rewritten version of Chapter 30 that a couple of reviews way back at the time of posting it persuaded me to write. Certain parts of it are significantly changed, and upcoming chapters will refer to these changed parts as if they are what always happened, so if you’re going to reread any of the chapters then I recommend you make sure to include Chapter 30.

Dragonfree and Darkfall, thank you for your reviews way back when. I’d reply to them, except I’d feel kind of silly since that was two and a half years ago, but they were appreciated nonetheless.

So, here’s to more Lost Evolution hopefully very soon!