Heya, saw this drabble collection lying around when I was getting a review out for your last ES chapter. I'd thought about dropping it a review but didn't have the energy for it at the time. Now feels as good a time as any to try and give another bite at the apple, so here we go:
A Cold, Bitter Future
Temporal collapse wasn’t the only disaster the Dark Future faced. All that frozen negativity had to go somewhere.
The Bittercold grew.
It began with small, floating pebbles. Then larger rocks started to rise. The landscape was marred as boulders began to levitate. Entire sections of land split apart as they rose up. The whole planet shattered.
Some unfortunate Pokemon that managed to defy time’s stagnant flow were carried away by levitating bits of land, never to be seen again. Others fell into the crevasses and cracks, disappearing into the darkness below.
And all the while, the Bittercold continued to grow.
Huh. I never really put much thought into how Bittercold would've interacted with the events of previous games, but yeah. As an entity that's fueled by negative emotions of Pokémon, the whole "world ending on you" thing would've logically been jet fuel for it getting stronger. Not that that bad future really
needed help getting worse.
Plastic
It was a strange material, but a fascinating one. It could bend and twist without breaking, yet it was as hard as rock, and light as a Caterpie.
It even smelled delicious!
... Is this 'mon sniffing the same plastic
I know? Since when plastic has an odor, it's really,
really awful.
What could have caused this thing's creation, though? Nobody had ever seen it before, so it couldn't have been made by a mundane Pokemon, unless this was what made up the underside of a Diglett. Could it be from the humans of legend?
Either way, he should tell the others what he found.
The Garbodor turned around to face his colleagues. "Guys, I think I found something amazing!"
... Oh, that would explain it.
I dunno whether or not this is something set in a posthuman PMD setting, but the notion of Pokémon coming across things that we take for granted as humans and being mesmerized by them has always struck a cord for me. The whole 'one man's trash is another's treasure'... quite literally here in this case for the Garbodor.
Too Late
CRUNCH!
Delcatty watched in horror as Accelgor's crumpled body slid down the wall she had been thrown into. She couldn't have survived that.
There wasn't any time to waste. Delcatty sprinted through the monster house towards Accelgor, weaving between dungeon Pokemon as he crossed the room.
Finally, he reached Accelgor. Hurriedly, he dug out the reviver seed from his bag, and shoved it in Accelgor's oral cavity mouth.
He waited. And waited.
Accelgor didn't get back up again.
Delcatty was too late.
Sobbing, he pressed up against his partner's body one last time, waiting for the monster house to finish him off.
Well
that got really dark really fast. Especially since Delcatty basically
shuts down and waits to die at the end. Though I suppose that part of living in a PMD world is also exploring what happens when things go
wrong, as they very clearly did here.
Zinnia
Every world had a Voice of Life. A being that was the embodiment of life as much as Xerneas, a soul made from bits of every other soul, the planet itself given a voice.
In one world, the world of only Pokemon, the Voice was a Hydreigon, summoning humans to combat the Bittercold. But what of the world of humans?
Some say that the Voice was Zygarde, the embodiment of balance. Some say it was the young green-haired man who could understand Pokemon.
One Magma grunt, with a Whismur she summoned herself, knew otherwise.
The Voice departed, to find Rayquaza.
Rayquaza as a Voice of Life, huh?
That's certainly a take I've never heard of before, but you could certainly do worse than that since I'd imagine that Rayquaza has quite the set of pipes. Plus a track record of being at least okay at orbital defense.
... Though now I'm curious as to if Rayquaza finds meteors it
can't stop to be its greatest failures or something along those lines, since at least in Mainline's world, there are indeed some space rocks that get past it.
Temporal Tower
Tick, tock.
Pillars crumbled, the rubble freezing in midair as it fell. A Treecko and a Piplup ran past, determined to reach the summit in time.
Tick, tock.
A pure seed was consumed, warping the duo to the stairs. There was no time to waste.
Tick, tock.
Even with their determination, their movements began to slow. The blue gears in their bag were beginning to lose their glow.
Tick, tock.
At the top, a pedestal fell off the tower.
Tick, tock.
The Treecko and Piplup suddenly, froze, movement of any sort becoming an impossibility impossible.
Tick.
Tick.
Temporal Tower had collapsed.
You know, considering the stakes towards the end of the Explorers games and the like, it
is a bit of a shame that Chunsoft never implemented game over screens for if you
did fall short in your crawls up to the likes of Primal Dialga. Though I suppose that if that'd happened those games would've scarred millions of kids for life even
more than what some of their darker elements did.
Emera
An expeditioneer returned home after a dungeon trip, setting their bag down next to a bucket of water, in which a transparent sphere soaked.
They took out a bottle from their bag, filled to the brim with rainbow dust. Emera powder, the lifeblood of a mystery dungeon, and a powerful resource.
They dumped the bottle in, and then with their tail, stirred the water until all the emera powder was dissolved.
Already they could begin to see small emera crystals on the sphere, and a light became visible within the sphere.
Soon, the escape orb would be ready for use.
Oh, right, you have a headcanon of emera fragments being usable to craft dungeon items. It's certainly a neat take there, and one I hope we get to see explored in ES at some point, since you clearly put a lot of thought into your system.
Lucario the Hero
An Abra, a Charmander, and a Larvitar were lost in Oddity Cave, stuck on the fifth floor.
"I-is anyone there?" the Charmander asked. "I'm starving..."
"Come! Over here!" an unknown voice shouted.
The three, hesitant, but out of options, followed the voice, coming to a Lucario with an escape orb in paw.
He shattered the orb, and the group appeared outside the cave, safe and sound.
"Stay safe out there," the Lucario said, before running off before the trio could thank him.
Years later, following in the footsteps of the Lucario who saved them, the three formed Rescue Team ACT.
While exactly none of this is canon, this
does feel like something that would be very easy to imagine being a part of Team ACT's backstory, since... yeah. They seem to be particularly motivated as a Rescue Team and Lucario surely was up to
something back in the day.
Back and Forth
Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
A day home in the human world, a day home in the Pokemon world.
One day you spend with your human family, the next spent with your Pokemon friends.
Sometimes you wonder what it'd be like if you couldn't do this. If you had to pick one world or the other to spend the rest of your life in, and never see anyone from the other again.
You're glad you don't have to choose. You didn't think you could choose.
Your partner gave you this freedom, and you couldn't be happier.
Back, and forth.
>t. GtI protagonist
Though I actually wonder why it took until Gates for Spike Chunsoft to leave that door open, since just abandoning the world you came from when for all you know you have family think that you're dead or something if you're really alive and well is... yeah.
But these were some cute drabbles you made here. I... admittedly think that the Zinnia one is a bit of an edge case, but I already know how your world system works in ES and will let it slide. I
do hope that we get to see some of these ideas get worked into ES at various points down the pipe, since even if they're short, these drabbles are fairly imaginative and do a pretty good job at showing glimpses of a living world through them.
Good work, and good luck with your future writing
@IFBench . ^^
