Pokémon Finding Strength Through Suffering

[elyvorg]

Well, here I am, somehow writing a Pokéfic again for the first time in forever. The kinds of fic I do occasionally write these days are always canon character-focused, which I never in a million years expected to want to do in the Pokémon fandom. But by some unprecedented miracle, the Pokémon games have finally figured out good nuanced complex character writing and have given me a character I absolutely adore, in Kieran. So naturally, as many good writers are wont to do with characters they love, I’m here to make him suffer more.

This is primarily a Kieran whump fic that exists to put my new favourite boy through the wringer, but in the process it’s using that as a catalyst for some character study of him as well. If you like both Kieran and whump, this story ought to be extremely up your alley. If you like just one of those two things and are at least okay with the other, you might enjoy this, too.

The plot of this is its own standalone thing that doesn’t require any knowledge of the SV DLC plot to be able to follow what’s happening. That said, there will be a bunch of spoilers for the DLC story in here, and a lot of the character stuff going on probably won’t mean nearly as much if you’re not familiar with Kieran’s canon arc.


Content warnings: Whump, obviously (which is to say, violence and suffering) but presented in a way that ought to be hypothetically suitable for children. I’ve aimed to more or less match the narrative tone of the Pokémon games themselves, just, you know, if they were whumpier. No blood, only very mild strong language, and things will turn out okay in the end.

Feedback preferences: Try not to dig too hard into the plot logistics here; while I’ve tried to make it all make reasonable sense, the plot basically just exists to facilitate the whump and character moments. In general, I don’t mind the occasional pointing out of an awkward bit that can be easily tweaked, but for the most part I’m not really that much about concrit these days. More than anything, I’d just love for people to engage with the story! Especially with regards to the character writing and the whump, of course.

Length-wise, this is going to be a short chaptered fic, so I’m hoping to get it finished within a reasonably quick timeframe. Not sure on projected wordcount just yet, but the rest of the chapters should be quite a bit longer than this bite-sized first one. Enjoy!

Spoiler: more specific spoilery CW for chapter 1, if necessary

This chapter depicts a near-drowning experience.

~~~​

Chapter 1​

– It’s because I’m weak –​

Kieran drew in a deep breath of ocean breeze as he watched the sun rise slowly over the waves. He was leaning into one of the round open holes on the east wall of the bridge, which gave the perfect view, something no-one else seemed to have discovered. The whole entrance area of Blueberry Academy was deserted at this hour, aside from a few wild Wingull – it was just him, here enjoying the sunrise alone.

Most students who woke up this early would be down in the Terarium right now, getting in some morning training before classes began. Not so long ago, Kieran would have been down there too, doing precisely that, every morning without fail, awake long before anyone else, relentless—

…Perhaps that was the very reason he’d taken to spending his mornings out here instead, even if it meant being on his own. The Terarium was an amazing place, and perfectly fine to hang out in in theory, but… sometimes the atmosphere in there just felt suffocating.

Besides, Kieran liked it out here for its own sake. It seemed kind of silly to think it, but this spot on the bridge was special to him. It was right here that he’d somehow mustered up the courage to ask Juliana if they could be friends again, after everything he’d done… and she’d just smiled and nodded eagerly like there could never have been any other answer. The thought of it still made him marvel, even now. It helped put his mind at ease, especially with Juliana back in Paldea for a while since a couple of weeks ago.

And hey – it wasn’t as if he was entirely alone, either.

“Mornin’, Dragonite.” The chubby orange dragon greeted him with a yawn as he sent her out. “Wanna go for another morning flight?”

She nodded, crouching to let him climb onto her back. Once he was sure he was secure, he gave the word, and they took off, flying out from the bridge to soar towards the sunrise.

Kieran readjusted his hold on Dragonite, trying to relax into the flight. This feeling of freedom, the wind in his hair, the sight of the ocean waves so far below unnerving yet exhilarating at the same time.

Only a moment later, he tensed up as Dragonite jolted briefly and water splashed over his leg. It was just a Wingull, it turned out, cheekily firing a Water Gun that Dragonite probably barely even felt – she yipped at it in annoyance, her antennae crackling with warning sparks, and the bird Pokémon quickly thought better of its mischief and flapped away.

With a long, steadying breath, Kieran forced himself to loosen his grip on Dragonite’s neck. Flying was still kind of scary at times… but it was really fun, too. There was nothing else quite like it. Which meant it was worth it to push through his nervousness and do it anyway – the only way it’d stop being scary at all one day was if he kept at it.

Dragonite was facing forwards, preventing him from seeing her expression, her body shifting subtly beneath him with every beat of her wings. Not for the first time, Kieran found himself wondering if things wouldn’t be so bad if he could just fly on any of his Pokémon except her. And then as soon as he’d had that thought, he wished he hadn’t.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her – really, it wasn’t. It was just… Dragonite was the only one of his Pokémon he hadn’t caught for himself. She’d been traded to him as a Dratini by his sister, during that time when Carmine had been visiting all sorts of other regions with Ms Briar, and he’d been… well, obsessed with training. For the rest of his Pokémon, Kieran had proven himself in the battles to catch them, allowing them to choose him as their trainer – but not Dragonite.

Still, he’d hadn’t ever had any problems with her disobeying him or anything like that. He knew he was probably overthinking it, being stupid, but even so, he could never quite shake the feeling that… maybe she just didn’t respect him like his other Pokémon did. (Why would she?)

Kieran shook his head, pushing the uncomfortably familiar thoughts of his mind. This had gone around and around in his head enough times before, and there was nothing he could do about it anyway. He nudged Dragonite to fly a little lower, watching the ocean waves rush by, smiling at the way they glittered in the sunrise.

Then an icy blast exploded into him out of nowhere. The world pitched and spun, his stomach lurching with it – and something large and flat slammed into his whole body.

The shock of the impact escaped his mouth in rippling salty bubbles, a heavy, cold sensation closing in around every inch of him. Water. He was underwater. His brain scrambled to piece it together: Dragonite had been attacked and he’d fallen into the ocean and he couldn’t swim!

Kieran clamped his mouth shut, more precious air leaving his nose in an exhaled grunt of terror as he fought the urge to take the breath he’d need to scream. Flailing his limbs, weighed down by his clothes, he opened his eyes against stinging seawater, straining to even figure out which way was up.

There…! One direction was brighter than the rest. He threw himself towards it with everything he had, grasping with his arms, thrashing with his legs, struggling with all his might to reach it. He didn’t know how to swim, but he had to try, he had to, he had to…!

One arm and then his head breached the surface, and Kieran gasped in desperate lungfuls of air. “Dragonite!” he screamed with his newfound breath, as loud as he could. Where was she? “Help me!” He needed her, he couldn’t keep himself afloat for long, his limbs were already burning with the strain of it, where was she…?!

There she was – some distance away, half-submerged beneath the waves, bellowing in urgent alarm as she caught sight of him. Sea spray kicked up around her, her image blurring towards him with the swiftness of an Extreme Speed – but then her trajectory swerved to the side and back again, around and around, caught in a swirling ocean current.

A… a Whirlpool?! She was trapped, unable to reach him… No, this couldn’t be happening…!

Dragonite looked beaten down, too, panting and grimacing as her spinning momentum slowed. How come…? Her Multiscale should have let her shrug off almost any attack from full health, even an Ice move, especially from a wild Pokémon. Shouldn’t it…?

No, that didn’t matter…! Kieran strained to keep his head above the surface, fighting against his sodden, heavy clothes that threatened to drag him down. He forced his jumbled mind to work with him, grasping for another way out, any other option – his Pokémon! He had other Pokémon that could help – Politoed…! Pokéballs couldn’t release underwater, but if he could just…

He stopped flailing one of his aching arms to reach down to his Pokéballs – and as soon as he did, his head went under, stinging saltwater rushing into his eyes and nose and mouth. Blind panic overtook him; he flailed again, harder, somehow just barely managing to resurface, spluttering and gasping. It took everything he had, both arms working non-stop just to keep himself from drowning, burning with the effort yet freezing from the cold at the same time.

No, no… there was no way he could reach his Pokéballs; he wasn’t strong enough…! Dragonite was his only hope, but…

He struggled to focus his stinging, streaming eyes to look over at her again. There was another shape in the water near her, a dark blue shell with spikes – a Cloyster? That had to be the source of the Whirlpool – if she could just take it out…!

Dragonite must have thought the same; she was roaring, her antennae crackling with the beginnings of a Thunder. But then she hesitated, glancing Kieran’s way for just a moment, and the sparks faded. She charged at her foe instead, slamming her tail into its tough shell. The Cloyster shrugged off the Breaking Swipe, retaliating with a point-blank Ice Beam that sent the dragon careening backwards with a mighty splash and a weak cry of pain.

“Dragonite!” Kieran screamed again, his head so horribly low to the surface that he couldn’t even see where she’d ended up past the waves all around him. Had she fainted? Why… why hadn’t she—

Something wrapped tight around his midriff and pulled him under.

Another bubbling gasp escaped him as he clamped down again on the urge to hyperventilate from sheer panic. Flailing his limbs was a hopeless endeavour; whatever had grabbed him was pulling him inexorably further and further away from where Dragonite had fallen, heedless to his struggling. He tried to tug against the long, thin appendages that had hold of him – tentacles, so many of them; a Tentacruel?! – but his aching arms were useless, sapped of all strength by the brief time spent fighting to keep him afloat. There was nothing he could do.

Why was this happening…? One aggressive wild Pokémon was bad enough, but two, at the same time? Did luck really have it in for him that much?

Kieran grimaced in terror, already struggling not to breathe in as the Tentacruel’s grip tightened, dragging him through the freezing water like hapless prey. He had no hope, no chance of getting out of this – unless…

Dragonite…! Please, please…

…But if she could have, she’d have reached him by now.

She wasn’t coming to save him. He hadn’t trained her to be strong enough.

(Or maybe she just didn’t care enough about him to try.)

He was going to drown. He was going to die, out here in the cold of the ocean where no-one would ever find him, alone and helpless and weak. All just because of some wild Pokémon, something any halfway-decent trainer should have been able to deal with – but not him.

His chest throbbed and writhed in pure reflex, his lungs begging for relief, begging him to stop denying them and let them breathe. It crossed his mind that he might as well just give in, let go, get it over with – but he still didn’t want to. The thought of water rushing in and flooding his body was too much, too terrifying. Even though he knew it was inevitable, he couldn’t stop fighting to put off that horrible fate for just a little longer, just a little longer, just a li—

There was a splash and his head broke the surface and – air!

He didn’t care how or why; he just breathed, gasping in great desperate relieved lungfuls of precious, sweet air. Sweet and sickly and… catching in his throat, making him cough, in a way that had nothing to do with the water.

Kieran opened his eyes, blinking seawater out of them to find his face surrounded by a cloud of yellow spores – spores that he’d been unthinkingly inhaling like his life depended on it.

Past that, the image of a red-and-white mushroom Pokémon, an Amoonguss, swam into blurry view, along with several dark-clad human figures, standing on the edge of a small boat of some kind. Huge concrete pillars towered even further back – he was under the entrance bridge…?

This wasn’t just a random attack from wild Pokémon. This was… a kidnapping…?

That realisation ought to have been even more terrifying. But with the spores still floating around him, coating the inside of his nose and mouth, Kieran couldn’t seem to remember how to be afraid right now. Everything was descending into a sleepy haze, his limbs floppy and useless as he felt the men drag his body up and over the edge of the boat, heard them saying words his brain couldn’t make out.

He landed in a soggy, crumpled heap on the deck, just briefly managing to hold onto one last thought before his consciousness slipped away.

Why’s… this happening…?

Why… me…?

~~~​

 

[Dragonfree]

…Perhaps that was the very reason he’d taken to spending his mornings out here instead, even if it meant being on his own. The Terarium was an amazing place, and perfectly fine to hang out in in theory, but… sometimes the atmosphere in there just felt suffocating.

I bet it does, with everyone there so hyped about getting stronger when that's still a sore spot for Kieran :copyka2:

Flying was still kind of scary at times… but it was really fun, too. There was nothing else quite like it. Which meant it was worth it to push through his nervousness and do it anyway – the only way it’d stop being scary at all one day was if he kept at it.

Do the scary thing even though it's scary! So proud of the boy being brave

Dragonite was facing forwards, preventing him from seeing her expression, her body shifting subtly beneath him with every beat of her wings. Not for the first time, Kieran found himself wondering if things wouldn’t be so bad if he could just fly on any of his Pokémon except her. And then as soon as he’d had that thought, he wished he hadn’t.

He's not seeing her expression, but sure having gremlins about how she feels about him anyway!

(Initially I read the second sentence there like the "if things wouldn't be so bad if" meant as in this is pretty bad but would be less so if he could fly on any other Pokémon except her, but in context it sooounds like it's more meant to be he's sort of wistfully wishing he did have another Pokémon that could fly, without thinking this is bad - not sure if it's just me, or if I'm misinterpreting, or if it's something you'd want to rephrase to make sure the intended meaning gets across!)

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her – really, it wasn’t. It was just… Dragonite was the only one of his Pokémon he hadn’t caught for himself. She’d been traded to him as a Dratini by his sister, during that time when Carmine had been visiting all sorts of other regions with Ms Briar, and he’d been… well, obsessed with training. For the rest of his Pokémon, Kieran had proven himself in the battles to catch them, allowing them to choose him as their trainer – but not Dragonite.

Still, he’d hadn’t ever had any problems with her disobeying him or anything like that. He knew he was probably overthinking it, being stupid, but even so, he could never quite shake the feeling that… maybe she just didn’t respect him like his other Pokémon did. (Why would she?)

Oh boy. Of course he has issues about the idea he hasn't earned the respect of a Pokémon to make them choose him properly, given what happened with Terapagos. Big gremlins that maybe the way he got Dragonite wasn't any better than that, not really. (He goes on to call these thoughts uncomfortably familiar.)

Dragonite looked beaten down, too, panting and grimacing as her spinning momentum slowed. How come…? Her Multiscale should have let her shrug off almost any attack from full health, even an Ice move, especially from a wild Pokémon. Shouldn’t it…?

No, that didn’t matter…!

Love him starting to think competitively about her strength and then forcing himself out of it. (I'm guessing she's actually just trying really hard to reach him with that Extremespeed and that's exhausting.)

Dragonite must have thought the same; she was roaring, her antennae crackling with the beginnings of a Thunder. But then she hesitated, glancing Kieran’s way for just a moment, and the sparks faded. She charged at her foe instead, slamming her tail into its tough shell. The Cloyster shrugged off the Breaking Swipe, retaliating with a point-blank Ice Beam that sent the dragon careening backwards with a mighty splash and a weak cry of pain.

“Dragonite!” Kieran screamed again, his head so horribly low to the surface that he couldn’t even see where she’d ended up past the waves all around him. Had she fainted? Why… why hadn’t she—

She didn't because she worried Thunder would hurt him! She started charging it and everything and then looked at him! But Kieran can't quite see it because his head's too full of gremlins that he hasn't earned Dragonite's respect or affection.

Why was this happening…? One aggressive wild Pokémon was bad enough, but two, at the same time? Did luck really have it in for him that much?

Kieran that's not how luck works

…But if she could have, she’d have reached him by now.

She wasn’t coming to save him. He hadn’t trained her to be strong enough.

(Or maybe she just didn’t care enough about him to try.)

Or, consider: she would have fought off the Cloyster easily with that Thunder if not for the fact she did care enough to not fight as hard as she could.

But, again, Kieran can't see that. He can only see things being his own fault, either because he'd failed to train Dragonite well enough, or he'd failed to earn her loyalty. (But he's not blaming her. It's automatically on him either way.)

He was going to drown. He was going to die, out here in the cold of the ocean where no-one would ever find him, alone and helpless and weak. All just because of some wild Pokémon, something any halfway-decent trainer should have been able to deal with – but not him.

It's all because he's weak, right? (It's absolutely not, Kieran needs to learn to shed this mindset)

Is this set pre-epilogue? No mention of epilogue happenings that I noticed, and it would make sense he has even more lingering issues about this pre-epilogue than post.

Why’s… this happening…?

Why… me…?

It's not like Kieran could possibly be important or worth anything, right? :copyka2:

A delightful start; some lovely drowning whump, but also lots of issues, as expected! Really digging the running thread about Dragonite here and how his insecurities about her relate back to Terapagos and to his whole complex about not being good enough for people to genuinely like and care about him; I'm guessing that's going to be a significant focus of the character development here, and that's going to be a lot of fun to see play out. Dragonite seems so good; look at her just being concerned for her trainer, even if he can't see it with all those gremlins in the way. Guessing we're going to see bits of why she loves him, too, and it's going to be adorable.

Also there's got to be Furret, right.

Happy birthday! Looking forward to seeing how this goes and how the boy gets put through the wringer and ends up stronger for it

 

[seatherny]

BIRTHDAY WHUMP BIRTHDAY WHUMP

He was leaning into one of the round open holes on the east wall of the bridge, which gave the perfect view, something no-one else seemed to have discovered.

I can see Kieran knowing lots of little nooks and crannies like this one that others don't know! I can see them being, like, safe spaces for him to run to when he's feeling overwhelmed or wants to be alone.

Not so long ago, Kieran would have been down there too, doing precisely that, every morning without fail, awake long before anyone else, relentless—

Ah, yes, after how many hours of sleep, Kieran? Two, three hours? Maybe hopefully more? hahahaha...

It was right here that he’d somehow mustered up the courage to ask Juliana if they could be friends again, after everything he’d done… and she’d just smiled and nodded eagerly like there could never have been any other answer. The thought of it still made him marvel, even now.

This poor boy, thinking there was ever a time she'd say no, sobs...

“Mornin’, Dragonite.” The chubby orange dragon greeted him with a yawn as he sent her out. “Wanna go for another morning flight?”

Aw, I love the idea of these two going on morning flights pretty often. A perfect way to watch the sunrise!

Flying was still kind of scary at times… but it was really fun, too. There was nothing else quite like it. Which meant it was worth it to push through his nervousness and do it anyway – the only way it’d stop being scary at all one day was if he kept at it.

Heh... That philosophy would do him well to remember, moving forward! Gotta be brave! He's done it before and he can do it again.

He knew he was probably overthinking it, being stupid, but even so, he could never quite shake the feeling that… maybe she just didn’t respect him like his other Pokémon did. (Why would she?)

Eyy, what a fun way to implement your HC about Carmine trading him a Dratini. Poor Kieran's self-esteem is still in tatters, so of course he doesn't think that, y'know, maybe raising her from a Dratini into a Dragonite or anything else earned him some respect. Through no fault of her own, his mind just defaults to questioning his abilities as a trainer. The idea of not having caught Dratini "properly" is probably especially raw given the way he caught Terapagos, too.

Dragonite had been attacked and he’d fallen into the ocean and he couldn’t swim!

...For some reason, Kieran not being able to swim doesn't surprise me. At all. How lucky for us right now. :3

He had other Pokémon that could help – Politoed…! Pokéballs couldn’t release underwater, but if he could just…

How unfortunate for Kieran here, heh. Thanks to whoever invented Pokéballs and decided they wouldn't be able to release underwater. :3

Blind panic overtook him; he flailed again, harder, somehow just barely managing to resurface, spluttering and gasping. It took everything he had, both arms working non-stop just to keep himself from drowning, burning with the effort yet freezing from the cold at the same time.

Fun descriptions here! Treading water in the middle of the ocean is fucking rough even for people who can swim. Him not being able to swim adds an extra layer of sheer terror and suffering that's fun to watch unfold.

Why was this happening…? One aggressive wild Pokémon was bad enough, but two, at the same time? Did luck really have it in for him that much?

He really is unlucky here, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He and Dragonite have done morning flights without incident before, clearly, so...

She wasn’t coming to save him. He hadn’t trained her to be strong enough.

(Or maybe she just didn’t care enough about him to try.)

Anddd even while being in such a dire situation, he's assuming that this isn't just unluckiness, this is his fault for not being a strong enough trainer and for not being a trainer worth saving.

t crossed his mind that he might as well just give in, let go, get it over with – but he still didn’t want to.

oof ouch my heart. If Dragonite doesn't see him as a trainer worth saving, why should he try to save himself? If she's not strong enough, surely he isn't, either...

Why’s… this happening…?

Why… me…?

ohoho... I'm wondering this myself! Wasn't expecting a kidnapping, even though Dragonite being defeated kinda easily was hinting at this not just being a wild 'mon incident. I was too busy focusing on the Suffering, and can you blame me? Looking forward to more Suffering!

 

[elyvorg]

@Dragonfree

I bet it does, with everyone there so hyped about getting stronger when that's still a sore spot for Kieran :copyka2:

And even aside from everyone else's attitude to training... Kieran kinda just traumatised himself with how unhealthily hard he was pushing himself back then, and being in the Terarium, where most of that training took place, sometimes vaguely triggers that.

Do the scary thing even though it's scary! So proud of the boy being brave

(he's gonna need to be very, very brave)

He's not seeing her expression, but sure having gremlins about how she feels about him anyway!

(Initially I read the second sentence there like the "if things wouldn't be so bad if" meant as in this is pretty bad but would be less so if he could fly on any other Pokémon except her, but in context it sooounds like it's more meant to be he's sort of wistfully wishing he did have another Pokémon that could fly, without thinking this is bad - not sure if it's just me, or if I'm misinterpreting, or if it's something you'd want to rephrase to make sure the intended meaning gets across!)

That is indeed what I meant with it! He was just thinking in the previous paragraph about how flying is still kinda scary, and the "so bad" is referring to that - like he's wondering if part of the reason it's still scary and it's taking him so long to work through that is because of his hangups about Dragonite. (But then he immediately feels guilty for having that thought, because that's almost like he's blaming his difficulty with this on Dragonite, and he knows that's not fair on her even as he can't help but have these gremlins about her.)

Oh boy. Of course he has issues about the idea he hasn't earned the respect of a Pokémon to make them choose him properly, given what happened with Terapagos. Big gremlins that maybe the way he got Dragonite wasn't any better than that, not really. (He goes on to call these thoughts uncomfortably familiar.)

Yyyyup. And, Terapagos aside (though that's very much a part of it), another reason the thoughts are uncomfortably familiar is that "this person who's hanging out with me (who has given absolutely zero indication that they don't want to be here) probably doesn't really care about me, though, right, why would they?" is still a thought he catches himself having sometimes, even as he's started talking to more people and making more friends.

Love him starting to think competitively about her strength and then forcing himself out of it. (I'm guessing she's actually just trying really hard to reach him with that Extremespeed and that's exhausting.)

Whoops, that Competitive Strategy Brain is still a bit ingrained.

It's actually not just that she's tired from the Extreme Speed! I was very much going for communicating the fact that she's more hurt from the initial Ice Beam than she ought to have been, given Multiscale. There is a reason for this (can you spot it?), but Kieran doesn't figure it out in the panic of the moment and chalks it down to "I must've failed to train her well enough", because of course he does.

(And he also doesn't realise that the Cloyster is trained and therefore probably quite a bit stronger than it'd be if it really were a wild one.)

She didn't because she worried Thunder would hurt him! She started charging it and everything and then looked at him! But Kieran can't quite see it because his head's too full of gremlins that he hasn't earned Dragonite's respect or affection.

Exactlyyy! Buuut Kieran could just as well interpret her glance towards him as "nah, I don't care that much about saving him, actually, I'm just gonna half-ass this". Which, noooo, Kieran, of course she wouldn't, no Pokémon would think that when their trainer was in danger.

(Though, to be fair to Kieran, he is also extremely panicked right now and trying very hard to not drown, which doesn't lend itself well to entertaining new trains of thought that he's not already predisposed to consider.)

Kieran that's not how luck works

but it is, right? Luck is some cosmic force that hands out good or bad things to people as it sees fit, so obviously it must have wanted to give him a bad time...?

(when really the cosmic force who decided to give Kieran a bad time is... oh, right, it's me )

Or, consider: she would have fought off the Cloyster easily with that Thunder if not for the fact she did care enough to not fight as hard as she could.

But, again, Kieran can't see that. He can only see things being his own fault, either because he'd failed to train Dragonite well enough, or he'd failed to earn her loyalty. (But he's not blaming her. It's automatically on him either way.)

She totally could have! She'd have absolutely destroyed that Cloyster one-on-one despite her type disadvantage if there'd been no other factors in her way, because he trained her to be really freaking strong actually!

It's all because he's weak, right? (It's absolutely not, Kieran needs to learn to shed this mindset)

When really, it's because these aren't actually random wild Pokémon - they're trained by a group of people who are trying really hard to kidnap him in particular for some reason and set up this specific attack plan designed to prevent him from escaping. And even then, he would have escaped it anyway if Dragonite had just been willing to let him take that one Thunder, because his Pokémon are really strong!

Is this set pre-epilogue? No mention of epilogue happenings that I noticed, and it would make sense he has even more lingering issues about this pre-epilogue than post.

It's post-epilogue! Kieran was not at Blueberry Academy in between the end of the main story and the epilogue, after all. (Or, well, maybe he was there for a like a day or two before deciding to take a mental health break, but certainly not for long enough to have made a habit of morning ocean flights like this.)

But even though the epilogue did give him a chance to show how strong he is, Kieran hasn't necessarily internalised that as much as he should have yet. His clubroom dialogue with Nemona does suggest that he's still struggling to see himself that way. His growth as we see it in the postgame is less that he's realised he's strong, and more that he's let go of the idea that whether he's strong or not matters in terms of how other people interact with him. (Though that's only for people - humans - not Pokémon, because Pokémon kind of intrinsically come with the whole "you've got to prove your strength for them to choose to Like You" thing, don't they, whoops )

(If it helps, I imagine this as being in a separate "universe" from the final song of my Kieran songfic, such as there even is a universe for that. That song had Kieran having really properly internalised a lot of the lessons that the epilogue and postgame existed to slowly teach him, but here? Maybe he hasn't quite so much yet...)

It's not like Kieran could possibly be important or worth anything, right? :copyka2:

Definitely not. What could any kidnappers possibly want with him???

A delightful start; some lovely drowning whump, but also lots of issues, as expected! Really digging the running thread about Dragonite here and how his insecurities about her relate back to Terapagos and to his whole complex about not being good enough for people to genuinely like and care about him; I'm guessing that's going to be a significant focus of the character development here, and that's going to be a lot of fun to see play out. Dragonite seems so good; look at her just being concerned for her trainer, even if he can't see it with all those gremlins in the way. Guessing we're going to see bits of why she loves him, too, and it's going to be adorable.

Glad you like Dragonite so far, I was hoping you'd get invested in the thread I set up here with her! I definitely have Plans with where this is going.

Also there's got to be Furret, right.

And yes, while Dragonite is going to be the most prominent of Kieran's Pokémon in this fic, I do have plans for some Furret Content too, because how could I not

Happy birthday! Looking forward to seeing how this goes and how the boy gets put through the wringer and ends up stronger for it

I am excited to get there and show you! It is nice to have a fic for once that I'm posting bit by bit and can keep people in suspense over what's going to happen next


@seatherny

I can see Kieran knowing lots of little nooks and crannies like this one that others don't know! I can see them being, like, safe spaces for him to run to when he's feeling overwhelmed or wants to be alone.

Aww, maybe! Poor shy kid. Though him having discovered that this spot gives the perfect sunrise view was mostly me thinking about the final scene of Indigo Disk, where there's that beautiful symbolic sunrise behind him as he asks Juliana to be his friend again.

Ah, yes, after how many hours of sleep, Kieran? Two, three hours? Maybe hopefully more? hahahaha...

Definitely Not Enough, is the answer there

Heh... That philosophy would do him well to remember, moving forward! Gotta be brave! He's done it before and he can do it again.

He's definitely gonna need to remember what he's learned about being brave, given what's in store for him here...

Eyy, what a fun way to implement your HC about Carmine trading him a Dratini. Poor Kieran's self-esteem is still in tatters, so of course he doesn't think that, y'know, maybe raising her from a Dratini into a Dragonite or anything else earned him some respect. Through no fault of her own, his mind just defaults to questioning his abilities as a trainer. The idea of not having caught Dratini "properly" is probably especially raw given the way he caught Terapagos, too.

Yeah, Kieran, maybe you proved your strength to her anyway by training her to be this strong? No?

(Terapagos is definitely feeding into why he feels this way about her, indeed )

...For some reason, Kieran not being able to swim doesn't surprise me. At all. How lucky for us right now. :3

It just seemed very believable to me that he'd be the kind of kid who'd never properly learned how. And then, having already decided this was gonna be a thing in the fic, I happened to rewatch a scene in Teal Mask that I'd mostly forgotten about, where you go to the Crystal Pool with Carmine, and what do you know: she explicitly mentions that she can't swim. And, well, if she can't, there's absolutely no way Kieran can. So it's basically canon, it turns out!

How unfortunate for Kieran here, heh. Thanks to whoever invented Pokéballs and decided they wouldn't be able to release underwater. :3

Aside from the part where I obviously made this a thing to facilitate the whump, I figure it's probably reasonable as a safety precaution that Pokéballs wouldn't open underwater, to prevent non-aquatic Pokémon from being at risk of drowning! And then I guess, if you're a trainer who actually wants to send out your aquatic Pokémon underwater for whatever reason, perhaps Dive Balls are designed as the one kind of ball that will open underwater, so you can just put your Pokémon in one of them.

Fun descriptions here! Treading water in the middle of the ocean is fucking rough even for people who can swim. Him not being able to swim adds an extra layer of sheer terror and suffering that's fun to watch unfold.

I imagine it is, especially with clothes on! As someone with near-nonexistent swimming ability myself, I can vouch that treading water even in a swimming costume under safe circumstances is extremely tiring and oh my god how does anyone ever do this, so I took that and multiplied it by at least ten for my mental idea of how hard this is for Kieran. There's no way he'd have been able to stay afloat for more than like a minute, tops if the Tentacruel hadn't sealed the deal anyway

He really is unlucky here, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He and Dragonite have done morning flights without incident before, clearly, so...

Except, as it turns out, this isn't bad luck - this is a group of people who've decided to kidnap him in particular for some reason. So, whoops, seems like his regular morning flights on Dragonite might just have given them an idea of how to go about capturing him, actually...

oof ouch my heart. If Dragonite doesn't see him as a trainer worth saving, why should he try to save himself? If she's not strong enough, surely he isn't, either...

But even then, even as he's convinced that there's absolutely nothing he can do and he might as well just give in, he still never stops trying as hard as he can anyway!!! which is an extremely Kieran thing in general, love how he responds to being whumped in ways that are very distinctly him

ohoho... I'm wondering this myself! Wasn't expecting a kidnapping, even though Dragonite being defeated kinda easily was hinting at this not just being a wild 'mon incident. I was too busy focusing on the Suffering, and can you blame me? Looking forward to more Suffering!

heeheehee it's fun getting to release this a chapter at a time so that I can keep people in suspense! Why would a group of bad guys go out of their way to kidnap Kieran of all people indeed...

 

[elyvorg]

Spoiler: more specific spoilery CW, if necessary

This fic contains torture – however, as mentioned in the general CWs, it’s carried out and depicted in a way that should be fairly in-line with kid-friendly media, despite the intensity of it.

~~~​

Chapter 2​

– You’re just okay being this weak forever? –​

It was cold and his body ached. He groaned, shifting, the surface beneath him hard and uncomfortable. This… wasn’t his bed…? This was—

Fear jolted Kieran fully awake as everything came flooding back. On instinct, he tried to get his limbs under him and push himself upright, but something dug into his wrists and ankles, keeping them in place.

He was tied up, he realised with dread, his arms behind his back, with what seemed to be another length of rope connecting them to his bound feet so that he couldn’t even stretch out properly. His body felt bruised all over, probably from when he’d hit the water, his still-damp clothes leeching cold into him. He shivered.

“Sir,” came a voice. “Kid’s awake.”

Kieran looked up to see a man in a dark outfit speaking into some kind of walkie-talkie while leaning by the door of this small, dimly-lit room. A guard, to make sure he didn’t escape. Not like he could even try like this. He tugged at his bonds on the off-chance, but his wrists were bound way too painfully tightly to stand a hope of slipping free.

“H-Hey! Wh-Where am I?” he asked the guard, his voice shaking. “What… what do you want with me?”

The guard glanced briefly down at him like he was no more interesting than a piece of trash, then shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the opposite wall, giving no answer.

Hating how horribly small he felt on the floor like this, Kieran managed with some effort to pull himself up into a sitting position. As he did, something even worse hit him: his hands were tied behind his back, right where his bag, his Pokéballs, should have been – but there was nothing there. No Pokémon. He was utterly alone.

“My… My Pokémon, wh-where are they?” he tried asking. Like there was any chance the guard would tell him – of course he didn’t respond. “Wh-Why’d you bring me here?” he tried again. Still nothing. “C-C’mon, just say somethin’, at least!”

The guard continued to ignore him entirely. As if he wasn’t even there.

Kieran shrank in on himself, grimacing. He wasn’t exactly unused to this feeling, but… it’d been a long while since he’d last felt it. It wasn’t a welcome return.

He swallowed, still shivering, and not just from the chill in his clothes. There was a lump in growing his throat, tears pricking at his eyes – but he shook them back. Crying wouldn’t help right now. He had to try and… and do something. If he even could.

Kieran twisted around to get a better look at the room he was trapped in, but it was almost empty. Just a shabby bunk bed, which made his stomach drop at the thought of how long they might be keeping him here. A round window was set into the back wall, but it looked too high to reach, too small to fit through… not that he could even try while tied up like this, anyway. There wasn’t a single thing he could use to escape. Of course there wasn’t.

He still couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t wrap his head around why. The only thing that remotely came to mind was Pokémon thieves, but they’d have no reason to keep hold of him like this after taking his Pokémon. And it couldn’t have just been a random choice, either. Kieran thought back to the way he’d been attacked, the Whirlpool preventing Dragonite from reaching him – this had been planned. They had to have been going for him in particular.

But absolutely nothing about that fact made sense. What could any kind of bad guys possibly want with him? He wasn’t important, or special, or strong. He was just… just Kieran.

For a while longer, he cowered there, shivering, his heart pounding in his ears, wishing he at least understood if nothing else. Waiting for something to happen, anything to break this unbearable anticipation, while simultaneously dreading whatever it might turn out to be.

Then at last, the door to the room swung open. The guard snapped to attention as another man entered, silhouetted by the light from outside. He wore a similar dark outfit, but it was smarter and more elaborate than the guard’s, and his iron-grey hair and beard seemed styled with a sharp, deliberate precision. More than anything, he carried himself with an air of lofty authority, as if it was self-evident that he owned the place.

This was… the boss, probably? The one who’d decided, for some unfathomable reason, to go after Kieran of all people.

“Gustavus, sir,” the guard acknowledged with a deferential nod. “Should… should I stay here?”

His boss spared him a withering glance. “I hardly think I need assistance against a restrained, unarmed child,” he remarked, a condescending sort of tone to his voice. “Do you?”

A chill ran through Kieran at hearing himself described that way. Unarmed. Small. Defenceless.

“R-Right, of course, sir,” said the guard. “I’ll, uh… I’ll just be outside, then.”

And he left, closing the door behind him. Shutting Kieran in here with his kidnapper.

Kieran tensed like startled prey as the man slowly stalked towards him. He tried in vain to shuffle backwards across the floor, wishing he could raise his hands to shield himself somehow, helpless to do either with the way he was bound.

“Y-You’re the one who…” he began to say, but his voice faltered. Paying no heed to his words, the man drew closer, towering over him. “I-I mean, what… what do you…” His captor bent down and grabbed Kieran’s chin in a rough grip, forcing his head upwards. “Aagh!” he cried out, struggling, failing to pull away. “G-Get off me—!”

The man held up some kind of device that flashed a light into Kieran’s eye for a heart-stopping moment – and then he released his grip. Kieran recoiled, grimacing, breathing hard, savouring the brief flutter of relief that he hadn’t been hurt – much.

As his captor took a step back, Kieran looked up at him again and realised what the device in his hand was. Just a Pokédex – a familiar model, too—

“Wait, that’s…! That’s my Pokédex!” he protested. And scanning his eye – the same thing he always did to verify his identity in order to access his PC boxes, which meant…! “No! Leave my Pokémon alone!” he begged, lurching forward in his bonds. “P-Please…”

His voice trailed off, swallowed up by the horrible reality of how completely helpless he was to prevent this. The man ignored him, frowning at the device, thumbing buttons to scroll through Kieran’s boxes as casually as if they were his own.

Then he let out a frustrated huff. “…Really?” he said irritably. “The ogre isn’t in your active party or on your PC? You don’t have it?”

Kieran’s eyes widened. “The… the ogre…?” he echoed numbly, as everything finally slotted into place. “Y-You want… the ogre… That’s why…”

That was why these people had kidnapped him. Because they wanted Ogerpon.

…Because they’d thought he was Ogerpon’s trainer. It was so ironic, he couldn’t help but splutter out a shaky, broken laugh.

This wasn’t really about him; of course it wasn’t. They’d just made a stupid mistake.

“Yes, well,” muttered the man – Gustavus, hadn’t the guard called him? He pocketed Kieran’s dex and turned on his heel to face his captive. “I had assumed that for a trainer to become Champion of Blueberry Academy’s league so remarkably quickly, shortly after returning from a field trip to Kitakami, the obvious explanation would be that you had captured the ogre whilst you were there.” He tilted his head back slightly, looking down at Kieran with one eyebrow quirked. “Apparently I was mistaken.”

Staring up at his captor, Kieran felt everything settle into a cold, stark kind of clarity in his head. This man, this villain, Gustavus, wanted Ogerpon. And he had the resources and the willingness to go as far as kidnapping someone to achieve that. How much further would he go?

Kieran shifted in his bonds, his shoulders lowering. He tried to kneel up to lessen the height gap, but the rope connecting his wrists and ankles pulled taut, keeping him on the floor. Instead, he leaned back, gaining slightly less of a steep angle to look up at Gustavus with. A scowl formed itself on his face.

“…Looks like your info’s out of date,” Kieran said. Without really meaning to, he found himself speaking carefully, enunciating his words the Unovan way, hiding the Kitakami twang. “I used to be Champion. Wasn’t even for that long.”

Masking his accent was just as well – he didn’t want Gustavus realising he was from Kitakami and hadn’t simply visited. Not if he could help it. The less this man knew, the better.

“Really?” asked Gustavus, a patronising note to his voice. “You lost the title so soon?”

“Yeah,” Kieran responded, like it was nothing, brushing away the echoed pang of the agony he’d felt upon his defeat back then. “‘Cause someone else was stronger than me. That’s how this stuff works.”

And it was nothing. He didn’t mind nowadays that he was no longer Champion. He knew that kind of thing wasn’t what mattered. But…

“It is, isn’t it. Pity.” Gustavus’s raised eyebrow was back again. “I had imagined you might be somebody to be reckoned with, but it seems… not.”

His gaze was withering, and Kieran couldn’t hold onto it. He glanced off to the side, scowling, letting out a long breath. Hearing this man act like it did matter, like it made Kieran lesser – it…

Still, this… this was good, right? If Gustavus knew Kieran was nothing to him, didn’t that mean he’d just… let him go?

But instead, he and his men would go after – Juliana…!

Or, would they…? If they’d gone for Kieran first, it meant they had no idea right now who Ogerpon’s trainer actually was.

…It suddenly hit Kieran that he really didn’t want Gustavus probing into who’d dethroned him as Champion.

“Why… why are you so interested in the ogre anyway?” he asked, hoping the change of subject wouldn’t be too obvious. “What is it to you?”

Just ‘the ogre’. Just ‘it’. He needed to be sure to refer to Ogerpon that way – he couldn’t let on how much he knew. Just had to let himself slip back into old habits, the terms he’d thought of her – it – by for most of his life.

“Why wouldn’t I be interested in it?” Gustavus replied, an undercurrent of fervour entering his voice. His hands came out from behind his back, gesturing along with his words. “The ogre that emerged victorious, one-on-three, against such powerful foes; the masks that further bolster its abilities in battle. Such a fascinating tale. What potential that Pokémon must have…!”

He knew the legend…? “You’re… from Kitakami, then…?” Kieran wondered. Was that possible? Mossui Town was small enough that surely he’d have seen this guy around, taken note of anyone else who actually seemed to like the ogre too. And he didn’t have the accent… not that that proved anything, of course.

“Not quite,” Gustavus admitted, “just a nearby province. Close enough for word of your local legend to have made its way to where I grew up.”

‘Your’…? Before Kieran could finish that thought, he had to fight the urge to shrink back as his captor lowered himself to one knee, approaching his level, uncomfortably close – though still decidedly higher up than him.

“Kieran, isn’t it?” said Gustavus, sending a chill through him. There was something unnerving about hearing this man address him by name. “I’ve heard about you: the Kitakami boy who’s always been fascinated by the ogre, too. It must be such a privilege to live there, in the very shadow of the ogre’s mountain itself. Don’t you think?”

So… no point in hiding his accent, then. Gustavus already knew that part. Kieran inched backwards just a little, as casually as he could, trying not to seem intimidated at being in such close quarters with his kidnapper.

“Didn’t exactly feel like a privilege,” he responded, finding himself still pushing back the local twang regardless. Talking this way helped him think before he spoke, after all. He had to keep being careful not to let anything slip. “I visited its den on the mountain a bunch of times, but the ogre never showed up for me. Guess I just wasn’t important enough.” He shrugged, trying to seem far more dismissive than he’d ever felt about that fact.

“But, hey,” Kieran went on, a little bolder as an idea came to him, his eyeline somewhere around his captor’s bearded chin. “If you’re that obsessed with the ogre too, why don’t you go to Kitakami and look for it yourself?” Which, of course, wouldn’t bring Gustavus anywhere near Ogerpon and would ideally just waste his time. “Maybe you’ll have better luck than me.”

Gustavus gave a patronising frown. “What kind of a fool do you take me for? Do you really think that wouldn’t have been the first thing I tried?”

…Yeah, it… it had been a pretty long shot to think that tactic would work, hadn’t it.

“We scoured the land of Kitakami quite thoroughly, I assure you. My scientists detected no readings of abnormally powerful Pokémon that could be attributed to the ogre. The only possibility is that it is no longer there.”

Scientists…? Not only could this group carry out an elaborate kidnapping plan, they had scientists too? Just how powerful was this man’s organisation?

Gustavus leaned closer, his eyes narrowing. “But something tells me that you know exactly where it disappeared to.”

Kieran froze, his heart pounding, his face carefully blank, trying very, very hard to think about anything except Juliana.

Shifting his gaze, he grasped for something else to focus on, any way to not directly answer that implicit question. From this close up, he could make out an insignia on Gustavus’s breast pocket. Three draconic heads with serpentine necks entwined together, the middle head larger than the others. It reminded him of—

He glanced away to the side. “…Maybe it was never real,” he suggested, breaking the tense silence. “The ogre. Maybe the stories are just… stories.”

“Of course it’s real!” snapped Gustavus, so forcefully that Kieran couldn’t help but flinch. He should have figured – he’d always hated that too, back when— “Your townspeople buried corpses of their local heroes in the wake of the ogre’s rampage,” Gustavus went on in a snarl. He rose to his feet again, pacing back and forth. “Are you really going to deny the truth of the part where it killed them? Is that not precisely why you admire the ogre?”

“H-Huh…?” Kieran stared up at Gustavus, a cold disgust creeping over him as it sank in, even as it wasn’t remotely surprising – this man believed the legend’s angle that Ogerpon was the bad guy, yet… he admired it anyway? And… he thought Kieran ought to feel the same way…?

Of course, Kieran couldn’t deny that the ogre fighting and winning while outnumbered against the Loyal Three was his favourite part of the stories – the only part he’d ever liked to think was true. But… that didn’t include the part where it had killed them. He’d never wanted to believe that’d truly been the end result, had always tried to imagine that was just an exaggeration made up to scare people, like the ridiculous thing about the ogre stealing souls.

And yet, Kieran knew the true story now – Ogerpon had killed the Loyal Three in their battle after all. That part really had been the truth all along. But, still…

“I… I always admired it, yeah,” he admitted, finding his voice, “but, not… not like that.”

Because he’d admired Ogerpon’s strength, to not give in, to hold her own and triumph even when so overwhelmingly outmatched. He shivered down there on the floor, struggling to hide his fear as his kidnapper towered over him, peering down at him like he was something small and insignificant.

Kieran really, really wished he could have any of that kind of strength right now.

“I should have realised,” Gustavus scoffed. “Despite our shared interest, it seems you simply lack the drive that I have. And all your pathetic townspeople, too terrified of the ogre to even go near it. Only I have the vision, the strength, to make its power my own.”

…Yeah. Of course it was about this. Gustavus hadn’t quite said so in as many words until just now, but it had been pretty obvious this was what he was after.

Kieran tilted his head, trying to seem sceptical, unimpressed. Not afraid in the slightest of what might happen if this man got his wish. “What makes you so special, that you think it’d choose you?”

Something flashed in Gustavus’s eyes. “As I said,” he snarled, “I have strength. I began from nothing, working tirelessly to amass this organisation, all through my own hand. Subordinates who follow my every command, who plucked you from your prestigious academy and brought you to me at my behest. I have more than earned the right to possess the ogre’s power too, if I so wish.”

As if Ogerpon would ever choose to partner with someone who’d stoop to kidnapping. “What if the ogre doesn’t think so?” Kieran challenged. “Ever considered that?”

…He hadn’t considered that, back then, had he? – hadn’t wanted to – the notion that, even if he could have proven himself stronger than Juliana, perhaps Ogerpon still wouldn’t have chosen him just based on that.

“What it thinks is hardly going to be relevant,” Gustavus snapped back, rising ire in his tone. “I haven’t come this far to leave my ultimate goal down to chance.”

Those words hit Kieran like a blow to the chest. “You’re not… not planning on giving it a choice…?” He winced, blinking away images of a Master Ball sucking Terapagos inside.

“And what about after?” he demanded, heated disgust creeping into his voice as he tried not to think about that blast of Terastal energy flying straight towards— “If you have to force it to join you, do you really think it’s gonna listen to you?”

“What do you know?!” spat Gustavus, rounding on him in furious indignation. “All Pokémon exis—!”

Then he stopped himself, taking a breath, regaining his composure.

Warily, his heart hammering, Kieran watched his captor pace back and forth in silence. Clearly he’d hit a nerve somewhere. He wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or an extremely bad one.

After a moment, Gustavus came to a stop, pivoting on his heel to look down at Kieran again. “You’ve heard of Team Rocket, no?” His voice was as calm and collected as ever, as if nothing had just been amiss.

“Huh?” This was a sudden swerve of topic – or was it…? “Yeah…” Kieran remembered hearing about Team Rocket sometimes on the news when he was little – Kanto and Johto were the most populous regions near Kitakami, after all. “But… didn’t they disband years ago?”

“Back when they were active, they had a motto: ‘All Pokémon exist for the glory of Team Rocket’,” Gustavus said. His voice turned sour. “The latter part there was never the important part, of course. Team Rocket turned out to be weak – its leader vanishing for such a pathetic reason, its admins pining after him rather than learning to stand on their own.” His contempt faded as he clenched a fist in front of him. “But I knew better. I saw the true meaning in that motto: all Pokémon exist for the glory of those who are strong enough to seize them for themselves.”

What with the kidnapping, Kieran figured he should have already known he was in something pretty deep – but hearing what sounded like first-hand knowledge of an actual criminal syndicate made it feel that much more uncomfortably real. “So… you were a member of Team Rocket?”

Gustavus didn’t respond, his face tightening – which gave Kieran a pretty good idea of the answer.

“There have been other teams besides Rocket that thought along those lines,” Gustavus went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Plasma – the Neo faction of it, at least. Cipher and Snagem – well, mostly Cipher, of course. Groups who researched ways to bring out a Pokémon’s true power, all while keeping them tightly under human control. Not all of that work was lost when the teams were dismantled – many of the members slipped through the cracks, just as I did.”

Plasma and Cipher…? Kieran hadn’t known much if anything about them, but he sure didn’t feel good hearing their methods right now. Not with everything else Gustavus was spouting. And especially not with Ogerpon as his target.

“So I sought them out. I earned their obedience, made them answer to me, and they’ve been working to refine that technology ever since. Now all the fruits of their research are mine, to do with as I see fit.”

A spark of indignation hit Kieran beneath his mounting dread. “You went and just… took all their work? You didn’t even put in any kind of effort yourself, you just…”

“I earned it,” Gustavus insisted. “I put in the effort by gaining more strength, and I proved that to all of them. The people who did that research respect my authority, because I am the strongest of anyone here. That makes it mine.” He gave a patronising smirk. “If they have a problem with that, it’s their problem for being weaker than me.”

Disgust contorted Kieran’s face. “So, if… if you did find the ogre, to make it listen to you, you’d…” He was beginning to hate how his voice still wouldn’t stop pushing back his accent, talking the same way he’d done when— “You’d mind-control it? You can just… do that?”

“Exactly. As I said: what it wants will not be relevant.” Gustavus drew himself to his full height, still smirking, like a Persian that was exceedingly pleased with itself. “And not only that – my machine will draw out the ogre’s full might, to a far greater extent than it could naturally exert on its own. Already such an incredible Pokémon, brought to the very peak of its power… Won’t that be magnificent?”

The thought of Ogerpon, mindlessly chained to this madman’s will, forced to lash out with a terrible degree of power somehow even greater the strength she already had… it wasn’t magnificent. It was awful.

“Won’t that… hurt it?”

A frown flitted across Gustavus’s features, like that was a meaningless question. “Well, obviously. You can’t obtain strength without the weak having to suffer. That’s just the way of the world.” He clasped his hands behind his back, leaning forwards, fixing Kieran with a steely gaze. “The only thing I need now is for you to tell me where to find it.”

All of the anger and disgust that had been simmering inside Kieran – he could feel it coalescing into something greater: a fierce, fervent, burning determination. He was not going to let this villain anywhere near Ogerpon. Not as long as there was anything he could do about it.

“What makes you think – even if I did know – that I would ever tell you?”

Gustavus huffed in impatience, yet Kieran caught a flicker of a decidedly unsettling smile as he drew himself back up. “I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the situation that you’re in here.”

With a flash of Pokéball light, a Rotom materialised and zipped forwards to hang in the air beside Kieran. Its lightning-shaped plasma appendages flicked back and forth, uncomfortably close to his face. A subtle yet unnerving staticky hum filled the room.

“I’m not asking.”

The Rotom’s eerily blank eyes stared through Kieran as the slow, horrible realisation sank into him. The fire in his blood drained away, vanished, consumed by an ice-cold, gut-wrenching terror.

No. This couldn’t be. This couldn’t be what he thought it was. This couldn’t be about to happen, to him, it couldn’t, it couldn’t—!

There was a quiet chuckle from Gustavus somewhere above him, but Kieran didn’t look up, couldn’t look up, his wide-eyed gaze fixed helplessly on the Rotom filling his vision as if it was the only thing in the room. The only thing that existed. It jittered up and down, giggling along with its master.

“Funny how weak even an ex-Champion becomes with no Pokémon at his command, isn’t it?”

Weak. Helpless. No Pokémon, no defence, no way out. Utterly at this villain’s mercy.

“Now, then. You will tell me where the ogre went, or you will suffer the consequences of defying me, for however long it takes for you to see reason.”

Kieran’s mind was numb, his breaths coming sharp and fast. He blinked several times, opening and closing his mouth as he tried to remember how to make words.

“I d… I don’t know…!” he finally found himself gasping, babbling, his brain latching unthinkingly onto this one chance, his only hope of maybe having this not happen to him because it couldn’t be about to happen. “I-I swear, I dunno, I dunno anythin’ about it, please, I don—!”

Fingers clicked, the Rotom flashed, and everything became pain.

It flooded every inch of him, blinding electric agony overwhelming all else. Too much, too intense – it hurt so much worse than he’d already been so afraid it would…! It sent his back arching, his face contorting into a wide grimace of anguish, yet he was powerless to even cry out. The lightning had his lungs, his whole body, seized tight in its terrifying, unbreakable grip.

Then it released him, and Kieran doubled over with a choked gasp. A long scream found its way out of him now that it finally could, a desperate, horrified release of the pain and the shock of what he’d just gone through, degenerating into pathetic shaky moans as he shuddered uncontrollably. The brightness against his vision faded, leaving him staring wide-eyed at the floor between his knees, hardly able to comprehend what’d just happened.

“Impressed?” came a voice from above him – Gustavus’s. “This Rotom of mine is quite skilled at maximising pain while causing no permanent damage to a human body. And you’ll be pleased to hear that humans lack the fainting reflex that makes a Pokémon fall unconscious before it can endure too much pain. There will be no reprieve from this, not until you tell me where the ogre is.”

This… this was so unreal. Kieran had heard this exact kind of villainous spiel before, a bunch of times – but in movies…! If this happened at all, it was supposed to be to the sort of characters who could face it all down with witty quips and an unbreakable spirit – heroes, who were strong, and cool, and larger than life, and absolutely nothing like him…!

This couldn’t be happening to him. It just… it just couldn’t be. This searing ache in his muscles, this horrible trembling all over, it couldn’t have been because—

“I-I don’t know…!” he repeated between gasping, shaking breaths, clinging to this one desperate hope, his only possible way out. “P-Please,” he begged, hearing his voice break, “I don’t know anythin’ about the ogre, I’m not, I’m not important, I’m no-one! I-I’m just—”

At the snap of Gustavus’s fingers, vicious lightning blindsided Kieran again. The agony, the sheer overpowering reality of it tore through his mind, shattering every defence, snuffing out any pathetic effort to deny it. This was real. This really was happening, to him, right now! And yet…! He tried to pull away from it somehow, begging his seizing muscles to work with him, to save him, please – but there was no escaping the pain. He couldn’t break free of it, couldn’t even fight it, couldn’t do anything but hurt…!

Only when the lightning let up did Kieran regain control, gasping, screaming out his anguish on a delay. Something was pressing uncomfortably into his shoulder, and he realised he’d fallen sideways onto the floor. He hadn’t even noticed it when he’d collapsed. The Rotom still hung there, somewhere just above him, its ever-present staticky hum sending his skin prickling.

“But you’re not no-one, are you?” insisted Gustavus from far overhead. He said that in a strange way, as if it was… true? “Your hometown knows you as the boy who’s always been obsessed with your precious Ogerpon.”

That word sent a spike of fear into Kieran. “Oger… p-pon…?” How…? Had – had he messed up, let slip the name without realising…? The past conversation was scattered in his head, fragmented by lightning – he couldn’t, couldn’t recall…

“Don’t play games with me,” Gustavus hissed. “Your whole town knows its name now. There was a big fuss there some months back, the true story of Ogerpon revealed, or some such, some people even claiming they saw it.”

He knew…?! He knew that much already? Why hadn’t he…

“And it was you who told them the truth, wasn’t it?”

“No…!” Kieran blurted out automatically. His mind was scrambled, fumbling to find words – the right words; he had to get this right…! “I-I didn’t know!” he insisted. “Whatever… whatever happened with the ogre, I didn’t have anythin’ to do with it!” (Which wasn’t even really that untrue, was it?) “I swear, I – I was just, just left out of everything, like al—”

In a snap and a flash, the pain swamped him mid-sentence, again, drowning him out, crushing him beneath his tormentor’s heel like he was nothing. Hurting from more than just the lightning’s wrath, he found out he could scream in the midst of it after all, a tight, strangled noise of fervent anguish that took all of his effort to force out of him. But it still didn’t help – it didn’t make the agony any less overwhelmingly impossible to bear—!

“Let me clarify my previous statement,” continued Gustavus overhead once it ended, as if nothing of note had just happened, as if Kieran wasn’t shuddering and gasping down here, moaning in desperate, precious, fleeting relief. “I know for a fact it was you who told the townspeople the truth about Ogerpon. Several of them outright named you as the one who did so. Whatever led to the ogre’s disappearance following those events, you must have been involved.” The pair of boots that faded into view before him paced impatiently. “I had assumed you’d captured it, but that isn’t the case – so what is?”

Tears rolled sideways down Kieran’s face as he blinked rapidly, trying to process what he’d just heard. He knew. Gustavus knew he’d told the town, so he couldn’t deny that part, but—

“I-I told ‘em, but, j-just…” He swallowed, grasping to string together a coherent thought despite the searing ache in his body and the frenzied pounding of his heart. The Rotom glowed above him, its staticky hum filling his ears, ready to hurt him all over again the instant he said something wrong. “I just… just found out my gramps was hidin’ the real story, s-so I tho… I wanted everyone to know… B-But that’s all…! I swear, I never even saw Ogerpon! I never met—”

His voice cut out, strangled, shut down, as agony overtook him once more. Reeling, knowing it was a hopeless effort, he fought anyway to push back against the raging torrent of pain, screaming with all his might, clinging to the words, the thoughts it was trying to deny from him. He hadn’t met Ogerpon. He hadn’t. If he could just – just hold onto that, his one chance, his one possible way out of this, then maybe this unbearable nightmare would—

“I didn’t!” Kieran screamed urgently, the moment the lightning let go and he had the capacity to form words again. “I’m tellin’ ya, I never met her!”

There was a scuffing sound, one of boots shifting decisively. “…Her?”

Horror stabbed into Kieran’s gut, twisting like a knife. No… No, no, he’d messed up, he’d messed up…!

“Not one of the townspeople mentioned the ogre’s gender when I spoke to them. To discover that on your own, you would have needed to get close enough to perform a Pokédex scan. And yet you claim not to have met it?”

“No…! I just…” Lost, frantic, he scrambled to form thoughts past the urge to scream at himself in frustration for being so stupid. How on earth could he explain this away, how…?! “J-Just a guess!” he blurted out, desperate. “I just… a-always imagined the ogre to be female, that’s all—!”

“Liar!” bellowed Gustavus. “You’re a LIAR!”

With a furious snap of fingers, the lightning lashed into Kieran, searing that word into his mind. Liar! the electricity roared as it coursed through him – liar! – proving just how weak he was as it overwhelmed him with ease – LIAR! – punishing him with its savage agony for daring to think he had the right to lie. Everything was a blur; he was screaming too, wasn’t he…? – lashing back, futilely crying out against it, it hurt so much, the lying, it hurt, it hurt—!

—And then the pain let up, and he choked out a sob, and – and he couldn’t bear it. He didn’t want to be a liar, didn’t want to lie (didn’t get to lie), especially not about Ogerpon…!

“O-Okay!” he conceded, his voice wracked with tears of helpless impotent anger. “Okay, fine, I – I did meet her!” He took a shaking breath through gritted teeth, screwing up his face, something burning and unstoppable bubbling up from within. “And I do know where she went – but I’m never gonna tell you!” burst out of him with every bit of force he could muster. “I’m never gonna let you hurt her! Never, never, never—!”

“Double it!” Gustavus roared, and with a deafening crack like thunder, the lightning’s might crashed down upon Kieran in retaliation. His defiance, his fervour, all of it was swept away by the sheer force of the agony surging through him – and he should have known, he should have known, why had he done that?! He was still fighting, screaming back against it, but what was the point? No matter how much he tried, he was always just met with more pain, again and again (just like he deserved).

And it wasn’t letting up. It was still going…! The electricity wrung him tighter and tighter in its vicious, unrelenting grip, his muscles searing, twisting, contracting so hard he felt like his whole body was on the brink of splintering into pieces. It was so much, too much, he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe, and there was no end to it, it was never going to end, never, never—!

Then, like some kind of miracle, it was over, and Kieran was writhing there on the floor, sobbing, gasping, choking. Wondering why he’d ever believed he could try and lash out against this, when of course it was just going to make things so much worse. (It only ever made things worse.)

“Never is a very, very long time,” the voice above him hissed, with dangerous emphasis on every word. “Are you quite sure you’re ready to find out just how long it really is?”

The threat sent ice through his veins, that horrible staticky hum ever-present in his ear. Why…? Why had he said that…?! All he’d done was stupidly dash his one hope of ever getting out of this…! Now that he’d gone and admitted that he knew, this would never end. This would never end…!

Wracked by uncontrollable shudders, Kieran pressed his face into the floor, whimpering in abject terror. “Please…” he mumbled hopelessly to nobody at all, his voice broken, choked with sobs, barely coherent. “Please no, please, please, please, please…”

“Pathetic child! Are you making fun of me?!” raged the voice. “Acting like you don’t already know exactly how to make me end this. Where is the ogre?!”

With a wretched grimace, Kieran fell silent. Shivering. Waiting. He didn’t bother trying to brace himself – he knew it’d be too much for him, like it always was.

“Look at you! You’re weak! You are nothing compared to me! So you will tell me!”

With those words, the lightning consumed him – and he was, he was so, so weak, he was nothing in the wake of this all-devouring agony. He gave up trying to scream; it was futile, a pointless waste of effort, as if someone like him would ever, ever be able to fight back against such devastating power.

It kept on for so long, crushing him, smothering him, demonstrating his unassailable worthlessness to him with every moment. This pain was on him, all of it, for being this horribly, helplessly weak. If he’d wanted out of such endless suffering, he should have just been stronger. But he wasn’t. (Of course he wasn’t.)

At last, he collapsed into an instance of brief, merciful relief. As the blinding brightness faded, he found there was a dark curtain shrouding his vision instead. His hair, so much of it, falling over his face. He didn’t know how or when it’d got there, but he welcomed it, blocking out the world from him.

Far above him, a voice was shouting, something about the ogre again. All the way down here in his shuddering heap on the floor, he ignored it, cowering behind his mask of hair, trying not to think about anything at all. Wishing he could just hide, and shrink away, and disappear.

But he couldn’t. And the lightning kept coming.

He didn’t know how many times. His whole world became nothing but the pain, the lightning, this raging force of nature that snatched him up, surged into him, tore him apart, then flung him to the ground, only to do it all over again. He didn’t bother fighting it, couldn’t do anything at all in its grip other than silently, helplessly beg for it to end.

Except it didn’t make a difference, because even when it did let up, it’d never be for long. Always too brief a reprieve, never enough. Each time, the voice above him raged, yelling out words that didn’t matter. He couldn’t allow them to matter. So he ignored them, wretchedly letting himself be swept up over and over into the storm of endless, insurmountable pain.

An eternity later – or maybe not much time at all? it didn’t matter – he found himself somehow in another of the lulls. His body ached even then, lying on the floor, breathing hard, hearing the constant staticky hum, and the voice. He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew what they’d be. Always the same, every time. Demanding to know where the ogre was.

The ogre was with Juliana, of course.

Everything else in his head was a murky blur. He couldn’t remember a thing about where Juliana was right now, or the name of the place she was from, or anything of the sort. He wasn’t even sure he knew where he was from any more. There was nothing, nothing except the cold hard floor, and the lightning, and the pain.

But… the ogre was with Juliana. He knew that much. He always knew that much.

And he couldn’t put either of them in danger. He couldn’t let this monster who’d go this far in hurting even someone like him get anywhere near them. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t.

His body jostled. This was… different. Something was jabbing him in the chest, something other than the lightning. It hurt infinitely less, so he didn’t mind. The words from above had changed to something new… but they still didn’t matter, weren’t worth listening to.

Then another new sensation against his scalp, sharper and more painful, his head being pulled up by his hair. He blinked with the discomfort of it, and as a face swam into view in front of him, he remembered that his eyes were for seeing with. They’d been open already, but he’d forgotten that, somehow.

Something about the sight of the man speaking to him made the words coalesce into actual meaning in his mind. “…beyond all coherence. So I am giving you some time.”

Time…? Did that – could that mean… time without pain…?!

He blinked again, groaning, pushing himself to listen better, in case…!

“…you use it to think very carefully about your situation. Nobody knows where you are. You have no other way out of this. As long as you continue to defy me, your life here will continue to be a living hell. Do you hear me?!”

He did. He didn’t like it, but he heard it, so he let out a wretched whimpering noise. It was the only acknowledgement he could muster.

His head hit the floor again with a thunk. In a flash of light, the Rotom vanished. That ever-present staticky hum that had consumed his whole world – gone.

“I will be back.” With those words, the boots stormed their way out of the room, the door slamming shut behind them. And then he was alone.

It was… over…?

It was over, but… only for now.

For a long, long time, he just lay there. Curled up in a heap, his eyes open but glazed, hidden behind his hair. He didn’t want to do anything except lie here and breathe. That was all he could manage. Just that alone was an effort.

Even with the worst of the pain gone, he still hurt. His body was gripped by a mind-numbing ache in every muscle, his wrists and ankles sore on top of that from the ropes digging into him. Trying to move even a little felt like way too much of an undertaking. And it wasn’t like he could go anywhere anyway.

Somewhere during the endless stretch of this listless, aching, empty nothing, he realised he’d started shivering again. He didn’t think it was cold any more, didn’t see the point in it, yet there it was. It would’ve taken effort to stop it, rather than the opposite, somehow. So he let it happen.

Not much longer after that, without knowing where it came from… Kieran found himself beginning to cry. Small, quiet, sniffling sobs. He didn’t have the energy for more, barely had the energy for even this – but the tears kept coming nonetheless.

This whole thing, this hellish nightmare he was trapped in – it was never, ever going to end. Sooner or later, the man and the Rotom would come back, and the pain would start all over again, and there was nothing, nothing he could do to stop it.

(There never was. There was never anything he could do.)

Through his tears and the hair shrouding his face, his gaze flickered dully around, trying to focus on his surroundings. The bare walls, the metal door, the utter lack of anything else in the room.

There was no point in looking, because there was no way out. Even if he wasn’t tied up, even if he had any strength to move his body, even if the door wasn’t almost certainly locked as well as guarded on the other side, there was just no way someone like him would ever be able to escape. He didn’t have a clue where he was, didn’t know a thing about the organisation that had him trapped here other than how much terrifying power it possessed.

Kieran was useless in the face of all that. Weak and helpless and worthless. (Just like always.)

If… if it were Juliana here instead of him, she’d know what to do. She’d be so much stronger, not a pathetic wreck like him, facing down the bad guys with heroic defiance, finding the perfect way to escape.

But then again… since she was so much stronger – wouldn’t she have just been able to prevent herself from getting captured in the first place? Of course she would have. She was too good to ever end up in here.

Even then, even knowing that, just the thought of it – of the bad guys going after Juliana, of any of this happening to her in his place… it wasn’t right. Kieran was so glad it was him trapped here and not his best friend, so glad that they’d made the stupid mistake of thinking he was worth anything at all and going for him instead.

This way, Juliana, and Ogerpon too – they wouldn’t get hurt. Both of them were so special, so much more important than Kieran could ever be; they deserved absolutely none of this. If somebody had to suffer in this nightmare forever… of course it should be him. That was just obvious. Just how things ought to be.

Kieran still hadn’t stopped crying, but it didn’t make sense why, because this was right. So long as Ogerpon and Juliana were safe, it didn’t matter what happened to him.

He didn’t matter.

~~~​

 

[Dragonfree]

The guard glanced briefly down at him like he was no more interesting than a piece of trash, then shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the opposite wall, giving no answer.

Well, that's not going to help Kieran's issues one bit :copyka2:

Kieran shrank in on himself, grimacing. He wasn’t exactly unused to this feeling, but… it’d been a long while since he’d last felt it. It wasn’t a welcome return.

Yeah, there it is. Poor kid is so used to being ignored and treated like he doesn't exist.

But absolutely nothing about that fact made sense. What could any kind of bad guys possibly want with him? He wasn’t important, or special, or strong. He was just… just Kieran.

Kierannn you are definitely strong

(But of course he feels chronically lesser and unimportant)

This wasn’t really about him; of course it wasn’t. They’d just made a stupid mistake.

Ooof. Confirmation that right, he isn't important, it was Juliana they wanted! He was just grabbed by total mistake, not because he was actually pretty remarkable or anything

“…Looks like your info’s out of date,” Kieran said. Without really meaning to, he found himself speaking carefully, enunciating his words the Unovan way, hiding the Kitakami twang. “I used to be Champion. Wasn’t even for that long.”

Enjoying him going back for hiding his accent, withdrawing back into that detached shell. Even as he's subtly bitter about how he wasn't champion very long at all, was he.

“Yes, well,” muttered the man – Gustavus, hadn’t the guard called him? He pocketed Kieran’s dex and turned on his heel to face his captive. “I had assumed that for a trainer to become Champion of Blueberry Academy’s league so remarkably quickly, shortly after returning from a field trip to Kitakami, the obvious explanation would be that you had captured the ogre whilst you were there.” He tilted his head back slightly, looking down at Kieran with one eyebrow quirked. “Apparently I was mistaken.”

Because he was remarkable! He was so strong it sounded like he must have done it by using a legendary but actually he just did that all on his own, without any special Pokémon!

“Yeah,” Kieran responded, like it was nothing, brushing away the echoed pang of the agony he’d felt upon his defeat back then. “‘Cause someone else was stronger than me. That’s how this stuff works.”

That's got to be an echo of how he thought of it when he was climbing the ranks of the BB League, isn't it, what he maintained when he knocked out other people one after another.

His gaze was withering, and Kieran couldn’t hold onto it. He glanced off to the side, scowling, letting out a long breath. Hearing this man act like it did matter, like it made Kieran lesser – it…

...It would have only brought back the ways in which Kieran himself thought until this fragile moment of finally beginning to let go of it. He regresses back into old habits because this villain is exactly the sort of person who would tear open that wound just as it's beginning to heal. Almost as if he was tailor-made to whump Kieran or something. :copyka2:

“Not quite,” Gustavus admitted, “just a nearby province. Close enough for word of your local legend to have made its way to where I grew up.”

‘Your’…? Before Kieran could finish that thought, he had to fight the urge to shrink back as his captor lowered himself to one knee, approaching his level, uncomfortably close – though still decidedly higher up than him.

“Kieran, isn’t it?” said Gustavus, sending a chill through him.

It's so incomprehensible to Kieran that Gustavus would actually know him, isn't it. He's no one, couldn't possibly be important. Even though we'd already established that he knew about him being champion of the BB League for a time, no way he'd be aware of him as the kid from Kitakami, the one who really was nobody at all, right?

“Didn’t exactly feel like a privilege,” he responded, finding himself still pushing back the local twang regardless. Talking this way helped him think before he spoke, after all.

"Think before he speaks" a.k.a. suppressing his genuine, instinctive responses in favor of something carefully cultivated, which he got all too used to. Oof.

Because he’d admired Ogerpon’s strength, to not give in, to hold her own and triumph even when so overwhelmingly outmatched. He shivered down there on the floor, struggling to hide his fear as his kidnapper towered over him, peering down at him like he was something small and insignificant.

Kieran you are also going to hold your own and triumph over this man who feels like he overwhelmingly outmatches you :D

“What do you know?!” spat Gustavus, rounding on him in furious indignation. “All Pokémon exis—!”

Enjoyed recognizing the Team Rocket motto even before he explained.

A spark of indignation hit Kieran beneath his mounting dread. “You went and just… took all their work? You didn’t even put in any kind of effort yourself, you just…”

Oof. Yeah, that would hit Kieran the wrong way, after just how much effort he had to put in to become stronger. And here's this guy who apparently got his strength by just having other people do all the work for him, bypassing all that? It doesn't feel right that you can just do that. (But perhaps it also strikes him a little bit like Juliana seeming so effortlessly strong, having luck that he feels like he doesn't have. As if this guy has also been chosen by luck, somehow.)

Disgust contorted Kieran’s face. “So, if… if you did find the ogre, to make it listen to you, you’d…” He was beginning to hate how his voice still wouldn’t stop pushing back his accent, talking the same way he’d done when— “You’d mind-control it? You can just… do that?”

Aww, hating the suppression of his accent because back when he spoke like that he was more like Gustavus than he would like.

A frown flitted across Gustavus’s features, like that was a meaningless question. “Well, obviously. You can’t obtain strength without the weak having to suffer. That’s just the way of the world.” He clasped his hands behind his back, leaning forwards, fixing Kieran with a steely gaze. “The only thing I need now is for you to tell me where to find it.”

That presentation sure posits Kieran as one of the weak who have to suffer, doesn't it.

“I d… I don’t know…!” he finally found himself gasping, babbling, his brain latching unthinkingly onto this one chance, his only hope of maybe having this not happen to him because it couldn’t be about to happen. “I-I swear, I dunno, I dunno anythin’ about it, please, I don—!”

Enjoy him decidedly slipping unthinkingly back into his natural accent here, after he's been sort of unwillingly keeping it up until now to protect himself - he's too panicked to keep it up.

“I-I don’t know…!” he repeated between gasping, shaking breaths, clinging to this one desperate hope, his only possible way out. “P-Please,” he begged, hearing his voice break, “I don’t know anythin’ about the ogre, I’m not, I’m not important, I’m no-one! I-I’m just—”

And again with the unthinking, unconscious belief that he's no one, he can't be important. He's lying about not knowing anything about the ogre but he's not lying about the conviction that of course he doesn't matter.

“But you’re not no-one, are you?” insisted Gustavus from far overhead. He said that in a strange way, as if it was… true? “Your hometown knows you as the boy who’s always been obsessed with your precious Ogerpon.”

That word sent a spike of fear into Kieran. “Oger… p-pon…?” How…? Had – had he messed up, let slip the name without realising…? The past conversation was scattered in his head, fragmented by lightning – he couldn’t, couldn’t recall…

Love how it just doesn't compute for Kieran to say he's not no one, and that his immediate first assumption when Gustavus says her name is that he must have slipped, it must be his fault.

“No…!” Kieran blurted out automatically. His mind was scrambled, fumbling to find words – the right words; he had to get this right…! “I-I didn’t know!” he insisted. “Whatever… whatever happened with the ogre, I didn’t have anythin’ to do with it!” (Which wasn’t even really that untrue, was it?) “I swear, I – I was just, just left out of everything, like al—”

Totally not bringing back some genuine feelings about being left out while Juliana and Carmine befriended the ogre :copyka2: He had gotten over that but at this point he's ripping open his own old wounds in the fumbling hope that it'll help.

With a furious snap of fingers, the lightning lashed into Kieran, searing that word into his mind. Liar! the electricity roared as it coursed through him – liar! – proving just how weak he was as it overwhelmed him with ease – LIAR! – punishing him with its savage agony for daring to think he had the right to lie. Everything was a blur; he was screaming too, wasn’t he…? – lashing back, futilely crying out against it, it hurt so much, the lying, it hurt, it hurt—!

—And then the pain let up, and he choked out a sob, and – and he couldn’t bear it. He didn’t want to be a liar, didn’t want to lie (didn’t get to lie), especially not about Ogerpon…!

One of my favorite bits of issue whump here. It's proving how weak he is and obviously he has no right to lie, and somewhere in it all the lying hurts so much. Perhaps Kieran had never fully articulated how much Carmine and Juliana lying to him did hurt, but it did, and they were lying about having met Ogerpon, and on some level he feels like he's doing that, only he shouldn't even get to do that because who's he.

“O-Okay!” he conceded, his voice wracked with tears of helpless impotent anger. “Okay, fine, I – I did meet her!” He took a shaking breath through gritted teeth, screwing up his face, something burning and unstoppable bubbling up from within. “And I do know where she went – but I’m never gonna tell you!” burst out of him with every bit of force he could muster. “I’m never gonna let you hurt her! Never, never, never—!”

Telling the truth, because he needs to for himself, but also being so brave! Never, never, never. Does not even occur to him to betray her. He's so good and doesn't realize it.

The threat sent ice through his veins, that horrible staticky hum ever-present in his ear. Why…? Why had he said that…?! All he’d done was stupidly dash his one hope of ever getting out of this…! Now that he’d gone and admitted that he knew, this would never end. This would never end…!

Wracked by uncontrollable shudders, Kieran pressed his face into the floor, whimpering in abject terror. “Please…” he mumbled hopelessly to nobody at all, his voice broken, choked with sobs, barely coherent. “Please no, please, please, please, please…”

“Pathetic child! Are you making fun of me?!” raged the voice. “Acting like you don’t already know exactly how to make me end this. Where is the ogre?!”

It's so clear in Kieran's head that he has absolutely no way out of this ever and it's never going to end - and Gustavus is so furious, because he clearly does know exactly how to make it end, and yet this child is acting like that way doesn't even exist. It just never even crosses Kieran's mind that giving in is even a possibility.

At last, he collapsed into an instance of brief, merciful relief. As the blinding brightness faded, he found there was a dark curtain shrouding his vision instead. His hair, so much of it, falling over his face. He didn’t know how or when it’d got there, but he welcomed it, blocking out the world from him.

Love his hair falling into his eyes to block out the world again. It's both a likely natural consequence of being there thrashing like that, and him finding some relief in withdrawing back into his shell, and also kind of symbolic of how this whole encounter is causing him to regress a bit, back to the Kieran who just feels weak and helpless and worthless.

An eternity later – or maybe not much time at all? it didn’t matter – he found himself somehow in another of the lulls. His body ached even then, lying on the floor, breathing hard, hearing the constant staticky hum, and the voice. He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew what they’d be. Always the same, every time. Demanding to know where the ogre was.

The ogre was with Juliana, of course.

Everything else in his head was a murky blur. He couldn’t remember a thing about where Juliana was right now, or the name of the region she was from, or anything of the sort. He wasn’t even sure he knew where he was from any more. There was nothing, nothing except the cold hard floor, and the lightning, and the pain.

But… the ogre was with Juliana. He knew that much. He always knew that much.

And he couldn’t put either of them in danger. He couldn’t let this monster who’d go this far in hurting even someone like him get anywhere near them. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t.

Love that this is the first time he actually articulates to himself that the ogre is with Juliana. All this and it sort of vaguely shakes that fact out of his head but he cannot, will not tell him that. And he can't even remember any of the context, just that one bit that he can't help but hold on to.

Then another new sensation against his scalp, sharper and more painful, his head being pulled up by his hair. He blinked with the discomfort of it, and as a face swam into view in front of him, he remembered that his eyes were for seeing with. They’d been open already, but he’d forgotten that, somehow.

Love that utter dissociation; very painful and raw and really drives the point home about how horrific this has been.

“…you use it to think very carefully about your situation. Nobody knows where you are. You have no other way out of this. As long as you continue to defy me, your life here will continue to be a living hell. Do you hear me?!”

Nobody knows where he is, huh? Not the Pokémon who they decidedly didn't defeat, just keep away from him as they kidnapped him? :copyka2:

This whole thing, this hellish nightmare he was trapped in – it was never, ever going to end. Sooner or later, the man and the Rotom would come back, and the pain would start all over again, and there was nothing, nothing he could do to stop it.

(There never was. There was never anything he could do.)

And Kieran buys into it, the idea that he's just completely helpless and there's nothing whatsoever he can do to stop it, because he's weak and there's never anything he can do. And it doesn't even occur to him that Dragonite is still out there, because it seems so obvious that he doesn't have anyone who would be able and willing to help him. Surely Dragonite just didn't want to help him, right?

If… if it were Juliana here instead of him, she’d know what to do. She’d be so much stronger, not a pathetic wreck like him, facing down the bad guys with heroic defiance, finding the perfect way to escape.

But then again… since she was so much stronger – wouldn’t she have just been able to prevent herself from getting captured in the first place? Of course she would have. She was too good to ever end up in here.

Kieran, she would also be just as terrified and suffering. You're just as good! You're being brave!

This idea that surely someone really strong just wouldn't have even been captured is so telling. It makes no sense that she'd just be magically immune to their laser-guided tactics, but he just feels as if this couldn't happen to someone who is sufficiently Strong, somehow. And yet, even though Juliana is Strong and would be dealing so much better than him, in his warped logic it's still just right that it's him suffering through this instead of her! If it were actually remotely correct that she'd be completely unflappable and easily figure out a way to escape, then obviously she would be the one who should rather be in this situation. But Kieran is so stuck on his own worthlessness that he can't actually take this line of thought to its logical conclusion. It should be happening to him.

Loving all this Kieran suffering with a large heaping of Issues. Looking forward to how we keep exploring him from here, whether Gustavus will change his approach and how Kieran manages to put the shattered pieces of himself back together (because this is character development whump, after all). You've told me a little bit but I honestly don't know much of how it might go from here, which is exciting!

 

[elyvorg]

Ooof. Confirmation that right, he isn't important, it was Juliana they wanted! He was just grabbed by total mistake, not because he was actually pretty remarkable or anything

Oops. If Gustavus hadn't outright figured Kieran had captured Ogerpon and was doing this purely because he's the kid who knows the most about Ogerpon and probably knows where it disappeared to, then Kieran would have found it harder to deny that he's actually a pretty important figure as far as Gustavus's goals are concerned! But no, because Gustavus was initially aiming for Ogerpon's trainer, and there's no way that would ever be Kieran :copyka2:

Enjoying him going back for hiding his accent, withdrawing back into that detached shell. Even as he's subtly bitter about how he wasn't champion very long at all, was he.

Well, the part of him that talks that way is certainly kind of bitter about not being Champion for very long, even if the rest of him doesn't really mind. :copyka2:

Because he was remarkable! He was so strong it sounded like he must have done it by using a legendary but actually he just did that all on his own, without any special Pokémon!

He is! The fact that he didn't have Ogerpon just makes his rise to Champion more impressive, not less! But Kieran is unable to see that, as he is chronically inclined to feel like his efforts as Champion mean nothing just because he couldn't beat Juliana. And even Gustavus manages to twist this around into a reason to be less impressed by Kieran, since the only thing he cares about is whether or not this kid captured Ogerpon before him.

That's got to be an echo of how he thought of it when he was climbing the ranks of the BB League, isn't it, what he maintained when he knocked out other people one after another.

It's all about Being Stronger than other people, right? definitely not as if there's another person in the room who shares and will help perpetuate that mindset or anything

...It would have only brought back the ways in which Kieran himself thought until this fragile moment of finally beginning to let go of it. He regresses back into old habits because this villain is exactly the sort of person who would tear open that wound just as it's beginning to heal. Almost as if he was tailor-made to whump Kieran or something. :copyka2:

whaaaat, who would do such a thing, make up an entire guy just to jab at Kieran's issues as precisely as possible? :pikashock:

“Not quite,” Gustavus admitted, “just a nearby province. Close enough for word of your local legend to have made its way to where I grew up.”

‘Your’…? Before Kieran could finish that thought, he had to fight the urge to shrink back as his captor lowered himself to one knee, approaching his level, uncomfortably close – though still decidedly higher up than him.

“Kieran, isn’t it?” said Gustavus, sending a chill through him.

It's so incomprehensible to Kieran that Gustavus would actually know him, isn't it. He's no one, couldn't possibly be important. Even though we'd already established that he knew about him being champion of the BB League for a time, no way he'd be aware of him as the kid from Kitakami, the one who really was nobody at all, right?

Right, yes, thanks, that is in fact what's going on in Kieran's head there...!

Originally my thought process behind Kieran reacting to the "your" was simply him realising that Gustavus already knows he's from Kitakami and so there's no need to mask his accent actually. But, since that reason for masking his accent was really just an excuse he told himself anyway, so as to not think about the real reason he's doing it (because it's the only way he knows to hide how scared he is), it makes a lot more sense that yeah, actually, he'd react that way to this because he feels weird about Gustavus implicitly knowing him as the boy from Kitakami. Nobody would care about that kid, right?

(except, if you're a megalomaniac obsessed with capturing the ogre, the also-ogre-obsessed kid from Kitakami really is quite important actually, and Gustavus is definitely not low-key jealous that Kieran got to grow up there while he didn't. nor was he especially more jealous when he'd been assuming Kieran had just casually up and captured the ogre normally to use in his battles without having to resort to mind control.)

"Think before he speaks" a.k.a. suppressing his genuine, instinctive responses in favor of something carefully cultivated, which he got all too used to. Oof.

Definitely just to carefully Hide Information and not at all because he's so so scared and masking that is the only way he can feel even vaguely in control of this interaction, right???

Kieran you are also going to hold your own and triumph over this man who feels like he overwhelmingly outmatches you :D

He isssss! And he does so by the end of this chapter! He already has so much of that kind of strength of Ogerpon's that he's only wishing he could have.

Enjoyed recognizing the Team Rocket motto even before he explained.

Kind of a good thing you managed to recognise it, because every time I glanced over that line while editing, my brain wanted to read it as a full statement and not just the first half of one. It sure was unintentionally amusing that Gustavus is apparently indignantly declaring that "All Pokémon exist!" I mean. they sure do do that, my dude, you're not wrong.

Oof. Yeah, that would hit Kieran the wrong way, after just how much effort he had to put in to become stronger. And here's this guy who apparently got his strength by just having other people do all the work for him, bypassing all that? It doesn't feel right that you can just do that. (But perhaps it also strikes him a little bit like Juliana seeming so effortlessly strong, having luck that he feels like he doesn't have. As if this guy has also been chosen by luck, somehow.)

Oh, but Gustavus can't have been chosen by luck! To be special in that way, you need to be like the hero of a story, not only Strong but Good! Kieran was very insistent that Ogerpon would never up and choose somebody like Gustavus despite his strength, after all. He's so indignant about this because Gustavus has acquired these things for himself without working hard for them or being Special enough to inherently deserve them anyway, and that's just cheating.

(Except no, it's fine, because it turns out Gustavus did "earn" this stuff by being stronger than the people who made it, which checks out well enough in Kieranlogic as something he'd have thought back then when he was Champion, whoops. He sure did get to boss everyone in the League Club around because he was the strongest, didn't he.)

Aww, hating the suppression of his accent because back when he spoke like that he was more like Gustavus than he would like.

Yyyyup. tfw your defence mechanism in the face of the bad guy is to unintentionally remind yourself of how much like the bad guy you used to be.

That presentation sure posits Kieran as one of the weak who have to suffer, doesn't it.

The fic's title is worded this way for a reason! Someone is certainly trying to find strength through (other people's) suffering, isn't he. I like a nice double meaning in my titles.

(Also please enjoy Gustavus's subtle hypocrisy about Ogerpon. She's powerful, but also, if he can mind-control her then she's just weak, right.)

Enjoy him decidedly slipping unthinkingly back into his natural accent here, after he's been sort of unwillingly keeping it up until now to protect himself - he's too panicked to keep it up.

Yep! I had fun making sure his lines here included some words that allowed me to show his natural accent, because he wouldn't be doing it consciously enough to mention it in his narration, but it sure is a Relevant Thing that he completely stops masking his accent here out of sheer terror

And again with the unthinking, unconscious belief that he's no one, he can't be important. He's lying about not knowing anything about the ogre but he's not lying about the conviction that of course he doesn't matter.

It sure is a thing that he's found himself in a situation where he needs to insist that he is unimportant and worthless and hope Gustavus believes it in order to maybe make the torture stop. Torture only happens to cool heroes, not random nobodies, right...?

Totally not bringing back some genuine feelings about being left out while Juliana and Carmine befriended the ogre :copyka2: He had gotten over that but at this point he's ripping open his own old wounds in the fumbling hope that it'll help.

Oops, still being forced to cling to his own sense of worthlessness as a way to maybe escape this. This really is just such a delicious scenario for Kieran's issues

One of my favorite bits of issue whump here. It's proving how weak he is and obviously he has no right to lie, and somewhere in it all the lying hurts so much. Perhaps Kieran had never fully articulated how much Carmine and Juliana lying to him did hurt, but it did, and they were lying about having met Ogerpon, and on some level he feels like he's doing that, only he shouldn't even get to do that because who's he.

Yesss. While all of the shocks were of course delightfully fun to write, this one was definitely one of my favourites. Fun fact: Gustavus's preceding line of "Liar! You're a LIAR!" is word-for-word something Kieran himself said during his outburst about the lying at Loyalty Plaza. I couldn't resist.

Telling the truth, because he needs to for himself, but also being so brave! Never, never, never. Does not even occur to him to betray her. He's so good and doesn't realize it.

He is so incredibly brave! And although he's been pretty busted on having met Ogerpon, he doesn't even really need to admit the part where he knows where she went. Yet he blurts that out anyway in fierce defiance, because some part of him just furiously wants to feel in control and get one over on Gustavus after how much he's been suffering, just waving in his face that he has what Gustavus wants but will never ever give it up.

(except, in true Kieran style, his moments of furious impulsive assertion are met with immediate backlash, so this doesn't even end up giving him any kind of lasting psychological satisfaction. not that that will ever stop him from continuing to be brave and defiant even if he can no longer bring himself to act that way!!!)

It's so clear in Kieran's head that he has absolutely no way out of this ever and it's never going to end - and Gustavus is so furious, because he clearly does know exactly how to make it end, and yet this child is acting like that way doesn't even exist. It just never even crosses Kieran's mind that giving in is even a possibility.

Gustavus is so mad because it sounds like Kieran's begging is aimed at him, like Kieran expects him to just randomly take pity on him and end this for no reason, when this infuriating child should already know perfectly well what will make him do that!!! how dare he >:(

It really does not cross Kieran's mind at all. Right at the beginning when he realised this was happening, his mind completely unconsciously solidified his only two options as "convince him I don't know anything so he'll stop" or "be tortured forever because I am never letting him near Ogerpon", and he has not and will not ever reconsider this. That burning determination he had just before Rotom appeared has not actually gone anywhere at all, it's just been completely covered up by terror and pain.

(Kieran is nothing if not incredibly stubborn and dedicated when he gets something into his head, after all!)

Love his hair falling into his eyes to block out the world again. It's both a likely natural consequence of being there thrashing like that, and him finding some relief in withdrawing back into his shell, and also kind of symbolic of how this whole encounter is causing him to regress a bit, back to the Kieran who just feels weak and helpless and worthless.

Yess. When it occurred to me that him thrashing around on the floor in agony would probably work his hairband loose, I just had to for the delicious Hairstyle Symbolism. I even specifically had him notice it at this particular moment when he really is starting to psychologically retreat and hide away like he used to back then.

Love that this is the first time he actually articulates to himself that the ogre is with Juliana. All this and it sort of vaguely shakes that fact out of his head but he cannot, will not tell him that. And he can't even remember any of the context, just that one bit that he can't help but hold on to.

Torture messes with a person's ability to recall information, but even then it just seemed right to me that this is one piece of information that Kieran could never not remember. "Juliana caught the ogre" was such a huge, life-changing, psyche-defining moment for him that there's no way anything could make him forget it like it was just some incidental piece of trivia.

Nobody knows where he is, huh? Not the Pokémon who they decidedly didn't defeat, just keep away from him as they kidnapped him? :copyka2:

Didn't they defeat her? She was hit with at least two Ice Beams, without the protection of Multiscale for either. Kieran was right to assume she'd probably fainted from that! If she's refusing to use Thunder (as well as Hurricane, her other special move, which also might put Kieran at more risk by stirring up the ocean into a frenzy), then she really is going to struggle one-on-one to defeat a Cloyster, even with a big level advantage.

And Kieran buys into it, the idea that he's just completely helpless and there's nothing whatsoever he can do to stop it, because he's weak and there's never anything he can do. And it doesn't even occur to him that Dragonite is still out there, because it seems so obvious that he doesn't have anyone who would be able and willing to help him. Surely Dragonite just didn't want to help him, right?

And even Dragonite aside, there are other people at the Academy who care about him and would have probably noticed him missing by now and would be trying to find him, surely? But no. Maybe this is something that would have occurred to Kieran if he'd had long enough to think about things at the beginning, but after how much the torture re-impressed his worthlessness upon him, it just doesn't even cross his mind that he could be getting any kind of outside help.

Kieran, she would also be just as terrified and suffering. You're just as good! You're being brave!

Well, technically, if they'd kidnapped Juliana then they'd just immediately steal Ogerpon from her and she wouldn't have needed to be tortured and whoops, the bad guys Just Win. But yes, hypothetically if Juliana also somehow didn't have Ogerpon herself but knew where she was, then she would be just as much of a mess upon being tortured as Kieran is!

This idea that surely someone really strong just wouldn't have even been captured is so telling. It makes no sense that she'd just be magically immune to their laser-guided tactics, but he just feels as if this couldn't happen to someone who is sufficiently Strong, somehow. And yet, even though Juliana is Strong and would be dealing so much better than him, in his warped logic it's still just right that it's him suffering through this instead of her! If it were actually remotely correct that she'd be completely unflappable and easily figure out a way to escape, then obviously she would be the one who should rather be in this situation. But Kieran is so stuck on his own worthlessness that he can't actually take this line of thought to its logical conclusion. It should be happening to him.

The idea I had for this, actually, was that Kieran latches onto the idea that this shouldn't be happening to Juliana because he does briefly imagine her, hypothetically in this situation, being trapped and hurt and scared, and he can't stand the thought of that happening to his best friend who is so much more Good and Special than him, she doesn't deserve that. (He is extremely reluctant to imagine this for more than the very briefest of moments, though, which is why his narration barely alludes to it.) He is, on some basic fundamental level, aware that even Juliana would indeed be suffering in a situation like this, even if his surface idolisation of her won't let him acknowledge it for long.

And so, the actual contradiction that Kieran can't quite take to its logical conclusion is the one where, if Juliana would be suffering just like him in this situation, she's not actually so perfect and invincible after all, and therefore maybe he's not actually any weaker than her. He has to keep believing that he is inherently the most worthless, so that he can make himself okay with suffering apparently forever in order to keep Juliana and Ogerpon safe. Again: clinging to his own worthlessness as a way through this - not to escape it this time, but just to cope with the fact that it's happening at all.

(I'm wondering if there's any way I could tweak these last few paragraphs to make this intended reading of it, which is slightly different to what you got out of it, come across more clearly?)

Loving all this Kieran suffering with a large heaping of Issues. Looking forward to how we keep exploring him from here, whether Gustavus will change his approach and how Kieran manages to put the shattered pieces of himself back together (because this is character development whump, after all). You've told me a little bit but I honestly don't know much of how it might go from here, which is exciting!

Everything I told you about was indeed just from these first two chapters! I too am excited to see your reactions to what I have Planned from here...

 

[Seren]

Hello I am here for WHUMPING THE BOY.

As usual, I'm intending to be mindful of what I say (which I don't think is going to be an issue anymore anyway, but just in case), but please do let me know if anything here comes off weird or uncomfortable in any way!

So, originally I was thinking it was unclear in the pre-fic warning if this was taking place during or after the DLC (I have now completed the epilogue by the way, very good content), and might be worth noting. But narration makes it pretty clear early on that it's set afterwards, so that saves a lot of time explaining how he got here to anyone familiar with his character arc already. This makes the chapter title even more intriguing, then.

It seemed kind of silly to think it, but this spot on the bridge was special to him. It was right here that he’d somehow mustered up the courage to ask Juliana if they could be friends again, after everything he’d done… and she’d just smiled and nodded eagerly like there could never have been any other answer.

It's pretty cute that he likes this special spot on the entrance ramp. I wonder if that's going to be used against him, knowing what's to come later on.

Which meant it was worth it to push through his nervousness and do it anyway – the only way it’d stop being scary at all one day was if he kept at it.

I like this line in particular, because he's always been like this, and it shows that that hasn't changed. During Teal Mask, he constantly worked through his struggles to improve his battling and get stronger, and then in Indigo Disk, he still had that worry of not being strong enough despite hiding it behind his tougher exterior. And now, post-DLC, he's still forcing himself to keep improving, although now in a more positive, healthier way. And one that isn't purely in battles.

but even so, he could never quite shake the feeling that… maybe she just didn’t respect him like his other Pokémon did. (Why would she?)

And here we see him still struggling with being accepted. It's good to see that making up with Juliana hasn't magically cured him of that, but it is still kind of sad to see, also. I wonder if this has to do with dragonite being traded to him rather than caught on his own? But even so, presumably he still raised it into a dragonite himself, not Carmine, so he's still gotta have some respect there, no?

Then an icy blast exploded into him out of nowhere. The world pitched and spun, his stomach lurching with it – and something large and flat slammed into his whole body.

Ah, here we go! I wasn't expecting them to be attacked, I just figured maybe he'd slip and fall off dragonite's back while lost in thought or something. Or maybe dragonite would do something to (accidentally) knock him of, thus worsening his already existing anxiety over her.

I'm impressed that Kieran has done these morning trips alone while never knowing how to swim. (I wonder how he feels about his school being surrounded by/under the water.) Anyway, he handled himself better here than I did when I almost drowned. He at least had the sense to be able to turn around and look for the surface, and still managed to keep his head above water for a while once he got there.

Dragonite must have thought the same; she was roaring, her antennae crackling with the beginnings of a Thunder.

I wonder what the logistics of this are. How far would lightning travel in the ocean, and how powerful or diluted would it be? Would it have even reached or hurt Kieran? Would it have hit every other 'mon within range? (This is just me musing more than anything else.)

Anyways, cloyster is a solid choice here for an attacker. Easy super effective multi-scale breaking move in icicle spear, whirlpool... I wonder why it's attacking them, though. They've clearly done these flights more than once by now and been fine. (Assuming it's relevant beyond 'I needed something to trigger the whump', heh.)

I'm also intrigued by the notion that pokeballs don't open underwater. I'd HC that more as an optional function rather than a design choice, personally. I can see why it exists, but then, how does anyone capture any water-type 'mon? Maybe specific balls are used for this (like lure or dive or net balls). But then again, you can still catch any pokemon with those, they're just better suited for water-types. Using a dive ball on a magmar would still then let the magmar out underwater... hm. Fascinating thought.

This wasn’t just a random attack from wild Pokémon. This was… a kidnapping…?

...Oh. Okay. Hm.

This lost me somewhat. It does explain why they're being attacked in the middle of the sea, at least, and why this random cloyster was strong enough to fell a fully trained dragonite.

But I admit I'm not sure how we got from Kieran being pulled under and drowning by a tentacruel to suddenly being dragged onto a boat and spore'd. Honestly, I might have thought they were rescuing him and sedating him to keep him calm if the narration hadn't outright said it was a kidnapping. It's also unclear how they got back to the school's entrance ramp. I guess the implication is that tentacruel dragged him there while underwater? And what happened to dragonite? (But now I suspect we're getting into 'this is a cliffhanger on purpose' territory, hah.)

Overall, this was really fun! It did feel a bit short, but maybe that's just because I wanted more. The whump itself was very believable, easy to picture, and gave a good, clear insight into Kieran's mind during it. And we've got more than just chapter-by-chapter whump going on too, what with his issues with Dragonite, and now a kidnapping! Which means this is going to be more interconnected than I originally expected. I assume we're also going to see Furret coming back at some point, too (I actually expected that to happen sooner rather than later, in fact). Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing what's up with this kidnapping!

And now I'm off to go read the chapter written for me! chapter 2!

 

[Seren]

And now it is time to ZAP THE BOY!

I'm really looking forward to this one. It looks a lot longer than the first chapter, too. Wonder how much of that is the torture. I'll be taking notes.

Spoiler: Long Lines Are Long

He was tied up, he realised with dread, his arms behind his back, with what seemed to be another length of rope connecting them to his bound feet so that he couldn’t even stretch out properly.

Right off the bat, confirmation that this was indeed a kidnapping. Hmmmm. So why would someone want to kidnap Kieran? Being a school champion is not at the same level as a regional champion, I believe, so... probably not that.

I do love me a good tied-up captive, either way!

Just a shabby bunk bed, which made his stomach drop at the thought of how long they might be keeping him here.

A bunk bed, huh? Either these guys kidnap people a lot, or they're expecting a roommate at some point. At least Kieran gets his pick of which bunk he wants?

But absolutely nothing about that fact made sense. What could any kind of bad guys possibly want with him? He wasn’t important, or special, or strong. He was just… just Kieran.

Oh dear. These are normal, common things people might think about themselves when kidnapped; who are they to be worth kidnapping? But to Kieran, their meanings reach a whole new level. He is important and special and strong, but not in the ways you'd look at from a kidnapping perspective.

“Gustavus, sir,” the guard acknowledged with a deferential nod.

Gustavus, huh? Is this an OC created for this role, then? I don't recognize him.

“Wait, that’s…! That’s my Pokédex!” he protested.

I wonder how many 'mon Kieran has in his storage. He did cycle through quite a few in the DLC, and who knows how many more that never made it into a battle with the player.

Oh, and they're after Ogrepon, of all things. Well, that should probably have been obvious. Either Ogrepon or Terapagos, but Ogrepon's story is the one he's familiar with the most, so... yeah I should have been able to guess that.

The next question, then, is why? Is the Kitakami legend more widely known? Or does this guy know the truth? (Possibly, given that Kieran proved the legend false in the DLC.) So... given this guy's got him captive, I doubt he's Ogrepon's original trainer/partner.

Well, now I think I have a reasonable guess as to the role the torture plays.

There's also a lot of juicy mental whump here too, that I'm struggling to articulate. Which I think is partly why I'm more a fan of physical whump. But there's a lot of Gustavus constantly pushing Kieran's buttons. Lots of comparisons between what Kieran had been doing in his temporary 'villain' role, and Gustavus now. Good to see he's mostly moved beyond losing his champion title, at least.

He knew the legend…? “You’re… from Kitakami, then…?”

Oh, this is interesting... so he's not from Kitakami, but close enough to know the legend. Still unclear if he knows the truth, but he does know that the ogre defeated three foes at once, which is all he really cares about anyway, so it doesn't matter which version of the legend is true to him here; this part remains the same in both.

Another example of a comparison between them, too. Gustavus' interest in Ogrepon is similar to Kieran's interest originally, so this is personal to him, too. This is really fun, watching Kieran have to articulate and come to terms with his own issues, in a way. (Here specifically referring to not being important enough to get the ogre to show itself to him when he visited the den on the mountain as a kid.)

Three draconic heads with serpentine necks entwined together, the middle head larger than the others. It reminded him of—

Hydrapple? Kieran's ace was a hydrapple. Calling it now, there's gonna be some significance there. (Assuming this guess is correct and it's not like, a hydreigon. Or a dodrio or something.)

“H-Huh…?” Kieran stared up at Gustavus, a cold disgust creeping over him as it sank in, even as it wasn’t remotely surprising – this man believed the legend’s angle that Ogerpon was the bad guy, yet… he admired it anyway? And… he thought Kieran ought to feel the same way…?

Oh okay, so he does believe the incorrect version still. Hm.

Can't help but notice this plays on what a lot of people (including myself) originally believed of Kieran, too; that he admired the ogre because it was powerful, bad guy or not. No doubt you're gonna break that down in the coming lines.

It's never quite struck me even that Ogrepon killed the loyal three in that fight. Like, obviously yes, that's what happened, but it's never really been the point of much focus, so I never sat and thought about it for long. Yikes. Cute little Ogrepon must have been really upset. Or desperate.

It is interesting to me that he's gone to Kitakami to look for the ogre, or at least sent teams of scientists to do so, and somehow hasn't realized that the townspeople have changed their beliefs of the old legend, and he still thinks they're all terrified of the ogre.

Those words hit Kieran like a blow to the chest. “You’re not… not planning on giving it a choice…?” He winced, blinking away images of a Master Ball sucking Terapagos inside.

Here's more of this pushing Kieran's personal buttons here. I realize that's the wrong phrase, but you get my point; Kieran's now on the other side of the same situations he himself had been in previously. He hadn't wanted to give Ogrepon a choice after losing that battle to Juliana at the den, even if he did realize deep down that he had to. And then he hadn't given Terapagos that choice (perhaps because he hadn't forged that personal connection and respect for Terapagos the way he had with Ogrepon's story growing up? Or perhaps purely because by that point he was so blindly focused on getting stronger that Terapagos' choice didn't matter to him.)

“What do you know?!” spat Gustavus, rounding on him in furious indignation. “All Pokémon exis—!”

Is this guy a Rocket??

“You’ve heard of Team Rocket, no?”

“But I knew better. I saw the true meaning in that motto: all Pokémon exist for the glory of those who are strong enough to seize them for themselves.”

He is (or, was)!, Well, this is going exactly where I expected it to from the mention of scientists, regardless of faction. They're gonna try to force Ogrepon to listen to them somehow. To control it. Cipher menton, so shadows possibly? Rocket has means of making shadow pokemon canonically (via Go, if you count that), so maybe. But then again, Rocket had ways of controlling pokemon before that anyway, and Neo Plasma just... didn't, I don't think? They just had that mindset.

“If they have a problem with that, it’s their problem for being weaker than me.”

More of Gustavus being a shadow of what Kieran had been; always more power, more strength. This like a mirror of how he was in the Blueberry DLC.

With a flash of Pokéball light, a Rotom materialised and zipped forwards to hang in the air beside Kieran. Its lightning-shaped plasma appendages flicked back and forth, uncomfortably close to his face. A subtle yet unnerving staticky hum filled the room.

Oh boy, here we go. It looks as though the rotom itself is already under some form of mind control here too, with the blank eyes. So it's not even doing the torture willingly, either.

Funny how Kieran avoided taking a shock last chapter from Dragonite (out of mercy and concern) and now is about to take several anyway.

“I d… I don’t know…!” he finally found himself gasping, babbling, his brain latching unthinkingly onto this one chance, his only hope of maybe having this not happen to him because it couldn’t be about to happen. “I-I swear, I dunno, I dunno anythin’ about it, please, I don—!”

Fingers clicked, the Rotom flashed, and everything became pain.

This bit strikes me as weirdly... idk, odd. I'm pretty sure I recall you prefer defiant victims, and while Kieran isn't exactly giving anything away here, he's... very much devolved quickly into a panicked, begging mess. And that's before he's even been shocked! I actually thought that was something you didn't like about mine; that it felt like Kimiko was too easily broken down. So even putting the zappy whump aside, that alone is going to be something I'm observing and taking notes on carefully going forward!

“Impressed?” came a voice from above him – Gustavus’s. “This Rotom of mine is quite skilled at maximising pain while causing no permanent damage to a human body. And you’ll be pleased to hear that humans lack the fainting reflex that makes a Pokémon fall unconscious before it can endure too much pain.

This portion here is great, where it has Kieran framing himself as unimportant and weak, the exact opposite thing this poor boy should be thinking about himself, as a self-defense mchanism.

Considering my previous line quote... you also do a good job here of like, showing how helpless and vulnerable Kieran is to the lightning here, while also still managing to defiantly not spill the beans on what he knows, insisting he still doesn't know anything about it. I think I like that better honestly; most people do seem to prefer that snarky defiance, but I personally do like this brand of 'crying mess that won't break' that Kieran becomes here better.

“Don’t play games with me,” Gustavus hissed. “Your whole town knows its name now. There was a big fuss there some months back, the true story of Ogerpon revealed, or some such, some people even claiming they saw it.”

Oh, what? He did know all along. I guess, again, it doesn't really matter whether the whole legend is true or not, all he needs to know is that Ogrepon defeated three opponents at once.

I am quite intrigued by this approach Gustavus has here, where he keeps presenting things to Kieran as questions, unknowns, and allowing him the chance to out himself... when really, Gustavus later reveals that he does know (like how he knows Kieran was the one to tell the townspeople the truth, but doesn't reveal that until after he gives Kieran the chance to tell him himself). It really does add a lot to the feeling of helplessness here, like Gustavus really is just toying with Kieran. After all, he really does only need that one piece of information.

“I’m tellin’ ya, I never met her!”

Oh no.

This whole segment here of Kieran having to lie to protect Ogrepon is a perfect simplification of the comparisons between Gustavus and Kieran. He knows there's a need to lie, he knows he has to, but he doesn't like it. I think we disagreed on this point before, but to me, this feels like a comparison to why Juliana and Carmine lied to Kieran; they were trying to protect him and his feelings. And now he has to lie too, but for much higher stakes.

Aaaaaand then he slips up again, asying he knows where Ogrepon is but won't tell. But with that, he's shown that he can be broken down if he's pressured enough. (This may have been shown earlier too, but it stood out to me a lot here.)

You've done a good job here of somehow making Kieran very vulnerable, begging for mercy, and yet somehow still not breaking. His mind still somehow has this notion that if he were stronger he'd be able to endure the torture better, which... no, silly boy, that is not how torture works. And it's not like he's actually given up anything that Gustavus doesn't already know anyway, so... he's doing pretty well, even if it doesn't feel like it! There's still that question though, of how long can he endure this?

Kieran still hadn’t stopped crying, but it didn’t make sense why, because this was right. So long as Ogerpon and Juliana were safe, it didn’t matter what happened to him.

He didn’t matter.

Ugh, this hurts to see. It's like... he's got the right mentality here, but for the worst, wrong reasons! He's plenty strong to want to protect his friends, and so far has done so. He's a good friend to be glad it's happening to him rather than them... but it's not because he doesn't matter!

This was a good blend of torture and getting into Kieran's mind during it. You have the advantage here of having a personal mirror for Kieran in this Gustavus too, who basically represents all of Kieran's past issues compressed into one visual for him to be harassed by, now physically as well as mentally! I also really enjoy his methods, revealing information he knows slowly and after he gives Kieran a chance to answer first, only to show that it was pointless to refuse to answer because he already knew. I've been taking notes, and I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to tie in anything like that into my scene, but my tormentor does have personal connections, so I may possibly be able to spin something better there.

Anyways, I wonder if next chapter is going to contain some more shocks? I kind of doubt it (it's not really necessary to keep showing it) but this is a whump fic, so who knows. What I am expecting is a different form of torment, instead. Regardless, I look forward to seeing how Kieran's issues continue to come back to haunt him!

 

[EonDuoLatios]

With the release of each new character in Pokemon, there are opportunities. Opportunities for artists to express their love for a new character, for a new Pokemon, for a new region. Of course, for most artists, their focus is on the Pokemon- who would not want to see the interpretations of their new favourite Pokemon, drawn using their unique, one-of-a-kind artstyle, and what kind of artist would not want to draw their new favourite Pokemon using their own artstyle? But there are those who prefer the characters, the trials and tribulations that they have gone through. And while this is much less common among the general fanbase, those who do dote upon the characters put out stories, fanfiction, frequently unnoticed by many [for many, the word "fanfiction" conjures up negative images, even]. For the few that have the fortune of coming across these stories, though, they are in for an absolute treat, as hit fanfiction writer Elyvorg fuses together canon and headcanon into a beautiful, harmonious ensemble.

Elyvorg's passion for Kieran is clear from the get-go. His detailed character analysis, posted on social media site Tumblur, clearly shows that he is very fond of Kieran as a character, and especially the character growth that he goes through. In the blog, he discusses in very much detail how Kieran as a character is one who is shunned, at least initially, by both society as well as the protaganist, during the story in The Teal Mask. The underlying motif that the stories of both the Teal Mask as well as the Indigo Disk are based on is clearly one quite similar, if not, an inferiority complex, where Kieran seeks to prove himself, time and time again, but each time thudding against the "might" (if one could call it that) of the main character. Elyvorg analyses this theme throughout his essays posted there extensively, mentioning how every slight against Kieran is taken by him to be rejection, or a sign that he is "not powerful enough", that leads him to increasingly extreme ends, such as capturing and attempting to Terastalise Terapagos.

It is clear that those underlying themes are still fresh in Elyvorg's mind when he penned the fanfiction, "Finding Strength Through Suffering". The title itself could be almost seen as prophetic, how it is a metaphor for the journey that Kieran had already undertaken and would undertake through the course of the story. And indeed, on this front, Elyvorg delivers. The recurring motifs of strength that had so thoroughly been analysed by him has already been expressed well. In fact, though this fic is labelled as "whump", or focusing on the hurt of a character, perhaps even more impressive than the already spectacular prose during those segments of the story where torture takes a front seat is how the theme is weaved into the conversations between Kieran and the kidnapper. The idea of "strength" of the kidnapper is almost perverse and unholy to Kieran, despite the fact that Kieran himself has pursued strength in his own less-then-ethical manners (again coming to mind would be the capture of Terapagos). Perhaps above all, one of the most critical choices that the writer has made is the utilisation of a kidnapping. By its nature, a kidnapping is meant to render the victim helpless, to make him feel weak. While some people may find strength in defiance against the kidnappers and the urge to break free, it is clear that the kidnapping, to Kieran, merely reinforces the beliefs that had been hammered into him, by himself no less, that he was weak and incapable. And perhaps that is the true key of success to the fic: that the character, especially his flaws, is integrated so tightly with the fanfiction. Without one, there cannot be the other, which makes the fic that much more hard-hitting than if a simple kidnapping scene was written, without context, without the emotions that beautifully permeate the narrative.

 

[elyvorg]

I like this line in particular, because he's always been like this, and it shows that that hasn't changed. During Teal Mask, he constantly worked through his struggles to improve his battling and get stronger, and then in Indigo Disk, he still had that worry of not being strong enough despite hiding it behind his tougher exterior. And now, post-DLC, he's still forcing himself to keep improving, although now in a more positive, healthier way. And one that isn't purely in battles.

Definitely a much healthier way now, in that he's directly facing the scary things that he's struggling with! His whole thing before of getting stronger with battling was largely a very indirect, running-away-from-the-problem sort of coping mechanism that would, in his head, somehow just make bad things Not Happen to him ever again, because he was too lacking in confidence to face his problems directly back then.

And here we see him still struggling with being accepted. It's good to see that making up with Juliana hasn't magically cured him of that, but it is still kind of sad to see, also. I wonder if this has to do with dragonite being traded to him rather than caught on his own? But even so, presumably he still raised it into a dragonite himself, not Carmine, so he's still gotta have some respect there, no?

This is very much about Dragonite being traded - his narration goes into that! And it miiiight just have a little bit to do with his feelings about how he didn't properly earn Terapagos's respect, too.

I'm impressed that Kieran has done these morning trips alone while never knowing how to swim.

Well, the risk of falling from a flying Pokémon into water, even if you can't swim, is still better than the risk of falling from a flying Pokémon onto solid ground! Kieran probably figured that if he did ever fall into the sea, Dragonite could swoop in and save him (in theory, gremlins about how much she cares about him notwithstanding), as it's not like she's going to have been, I don't know, randomly hit with a trapping move by a wild Pokémon at the exact same time, what are the chances of that happening

(I wonder how he feels about his school being surrounded by/under the water.)

Probably just tries to Not Think About It. Anyone who thought about it would likely be a little freaked out, even if they were a strong swimmer - if that dome broke, everyone inside would be very screwed.

Anyway, he handled himself better here than I did when I almost drowned. He at least had the sense to be able to turn around and look for the surface, and still managed to keep his head above water for a while once he got there.

Oh geez, didn't know you had actual experience of near-drowning! I'm glad you're okay with and able to enjoy the whump despite that, then. I was of course not drawing off any kind of personal experience myself here; I just figured Kieran's survival instinct would kick in pretty hard and allow him to manage as relatively well as he did, if only briefly.

I wonder what the logistics of this are. How far would lightning travel in the ocean, and how powerful or diluted would it be? Would it have even reached or hurt Kieran? Would it have hit every other 'mon within range? (This is just me musing more than anything else.)

Honestly, I don't have a clue either, but the important thing is that Dragonite thinks it might have hurt Kieran and wasn't willing to risk it.

Anyways, cloyster is a solid choice here for an attacker. Easy super effective multi-scale breaking move in icicle spear, whirlpool... I wonder why it's attacking them, though. They've clearly done these flights more than once by now and been fine. (Assuming it's relevant beyond 'I needed something to trigger the whump', heh.)

It was actually Ice Beam, not Icicle Spear! (Kieran felt some of the icy blast himself, which probably wouldn't have happened with the latter.) These kidnappers are not super well-versed in competitive strategies. Multiscale wasn't active for a different reason that had nothing to do with them - can you spot it?

I'm also intrigued by the notion that pokeballs don't open underwater. I'd HC that more as an optional function rather than a design choice, personally. I can see why it exists, but then, how does anyone capture any water-type 'mon? Maybe specific balls are used for this (like lure or dive or net balls). But then again, you can still catch any pokemon with those, they're just better suited for water-types. Using a dive ball on a magmar would still then let the magmar out underwater... hm. Fascinating thought.

My reasoning for this bit of worldbuilding is pretty much:

1. Because it lets the whump happen, shush. =P
2. Also I guess it'd make sense as a safety feature so that non-aquatic Pokémon aren't at risk of drowning, and speciality balls (such as Dive Balls) exist for if a trainer actually wants to let their aquatic Pokémon out underwater.

...Oh. Okay. Hm.

This lost me somewhat. It does explain why they're being attacked in the middle of the sea, at least, and why this random cloyster was strong enough to fell a fully trained dragonite.

But I admit I'm not sure how we got from Kieran being pulled under and drowning by a tentacruel to suddenly being dragged onto a boat and spore'd. Honestly, I might have thought they were rescuing him and sedating him to keep him calm if the narration hadn't outright said it was a kidnapping. It's also unclear how they got back to the school's entrance ramp. I guess the implication is that tentacruel dragged him there while underwater? And what happened to dragonite? (But now I suspect we're getting into 'this is a cliffhanger on purpose' territory, hah.)

Hm, I'm not sure how I could have made the transition clearer, since Kieran's POV shifts from "very panicked" to "very sleepy" quite fast and there isn't much opportunity to establish the logical flow of how this happened with him in either state - I'd just sort of hoped readers would be able to piece it together themselves. The idea is that the kidnappers' Tentacruel dragged Kieran towards their boat under the bridge (and it did so with him underwater because I wanted to whump him more because it shouldn't have taken long enough for him to drown anyway and it's the easiest way for a Tentacruel to drag someone), then it lifted him out right into the already-prepared Spore cloud so he'd immediately inhale it. (And maybe the kidnappers gave Tentacruel Safety Goggles or a Chesto berry or something so it wouldn't be affected itself.)

I figure any theoretical rescuers wouldn't sedate a rescuee right away like this and would only use that as a last resort if they were panicking so much they were at risk of hurting themselves. If it had been a rescue, there'd also have been at least some kind of indication of the Tentacruel being hit, changing course, letting Kieran go, etc, that he would have at least vaguely picked up on through his utter panic - as it was, nothing changed from him being grabbed and dragged through the water except that suddenly he's above the surface now.

(Though I have to admit I'm a little surprised you didn't realise this was a kidnapping sooner, given that I had told you this fic would involve Kieran being tortured. Torture usually requires the victim to be captured first, after all! =P)

Overall, this was really fun! It did feel a bit short, but maybe that's just because I wanted more. The whump itself was very believable, easy to picture, and gave a good, clear insight into Kieran's mind during it. And we've got more than just chapter-by-chapter whump going on too, what with his issues with Dragonite, and now a kidnapping! Which means this is going to be more interconnected than I originally expected. I assume we're also going to see Furret coming back at some point, too (I actually expected that to happen sooner rather than later, in fact). Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing what's up with this kidnapping!

This was indeed just a little bitesized bit of whump, establishing the situation and some of Kieran's relevant Issues, before the real meat of the story could begin! Of course this was always going to be an interconnected story, though - I'm not so mean that I'd just throw him into a series of completely unrelated whump scenarios just for the heck of it.

(Furret is already "back", for what it's worth - I headcanon that that reunion happened offscreen sometime before the epilogue, so they are happily friends again now! )

Right off the bat, confirmation that this was indeed a kidnapping. Hmmmm. So why would someone want to kidnap Kieran? Being a school champion is not at the same level as a regional champion, I believe, so... probably not that.

Honestly, with how elite the BB Academy seems to be, I wouldn't be surprised if Kieran was on par with most regional champions (since those can be kids too), at least in battling strength. Although regional ones probably have more influence over other stuff in their region, I guess.

I do love me a good tied-up captive, either way!

Gotta make Kieran feel as small and helpless as possible! (This is basically the only reason I had for tying him up, since he's locked up and Pokémon-less anyway so it's not like he'd be doing much even with the ability to move freely.)

A bunk bed, huh? Either these guys kidnap people a lot, or they're expecting a roommate at some point. At least Kieran gets his pick of which bunk he wants?

Or, third possibility, perhaps: this room which already had a bunk bed in it for whatever reason was the best option they had for a makeshift cell, because they don't usually kidnap people at all.

Gustavus, huh? Is this an OC created for this role, then? I don't recognize him.

As I'm sure you went on to realise as you read the chapter, Gustavus was extremely created as an OC for the sole purpose of whumping Kieran.

I wonder how many 'mon Kieran has in his storage. He did cycle through quite a few in the DLC, and who knows how many more that never made it into a battle with the player.

Definitely at least a few! With his Champion team plus the old friends from Kitakami who are explicitly still with him now, that's at least nine Pokémon we know he has these days.

Oh, and they're after Ogrepon, of all things. Well, that should probably have been obvious. Either Ogrepon or Terapagos, but Ogrepon's story is the one he's familiar with the most, so... yeah I should have been able to guess that.

The next question, then, is why? Is the Kitakami legend more widely known? Or does this guy know the truth? (Possibly, given that Kieran proved the legend false in the DLC.) So... given this guy's got him captive, I doubt he's Ogrepon's original trainer/partner.

Well, now I think I have a reasonable guess as to the role the torture plays.

This entire fic concept started with me self-indulgently wanting to imagine Kieran being tortured (you know, as you do), so I asked myself what he'd utterly refuse to betray under torture, and the obvious answer was Ogerpon. And hey, conveniently, there's plenty of canon precedent for evil teams wanting to capture legendaries and do terrible things with them, so this was a plausible situation to put him in!

There's also a lot of juicy mental whump here too, that I'm struggling to articulate. Which I think is partly why I'm more a fan of physical whump. But there's a lot of Gustavus constantly pushing Kieran's buttons. Lots of comparisons between what Kieran had been doing in his temporary 'villain' role, and Gustavus now. Good to see he's mostly moved beyond losing his champion title, at least.

Another example of a comparison between them, too. Gustavus' interest in Ogrepon is similar to Kieran's interest originally, so this is personal to him, too. This is really fun, watching Kieran have to articulate and come to terms with his own issues, in a way. (Here specifically referring to not being important enough to get the ogre to show itself to him when he visited the den on the mountain as a kid.)

I do love taking a character with Issues and jabbing at those issues as much as I possibly can. Just as fun as actually physically whumping them, in a bit of a different way.

Can't help but notice this plays on what a lot of people (including myself) originally believed of Kieran, too; that he admired the ogre because it was powerful, bad guy or not. No doubt you're gonna break that down in the coming lines.

Yeah, I honestly was thinking about that angle a little bit here - I kind of wanted to illustrate that, no, Kieran didn't ever like the ogre while believing it was the bad guy, because here's a guy who does that, and Kieran's not like him in that way.

It's never quite struck me even that Ogrepon killed the loyal three in that fight. Like, obviously yes, that's what happened, but it's never really been the point of much focus, so I never sat and thought about it for long. Yikes. Cute little Ogrepon must have been really upset. Or desperate.

That's something else I kind of wanted to cover here, because I'd seen some people sort of side-eyeing Kieran for apparently admiring the part where the ogre murdered three Pokémon. I wanted to deconstruct that and explore more how he really felt about that part in this fic, too.

Here's more of this pushing Kieran's personal buttons here. I realize that's the wrong phrase, but you get my point; Kieran's now on the other side of the same situations he himself had been in previously. He hadn't wanted to give Ogrepon a choice after losing that battle to Juliana at the den, even if he did realize deep down that he had to. And then he hadn't given Terapagos that choice (perhaps because he hadn't forged that personal connection and respect for Terapagos the way he had with Ogrepon's story growing up? Or perhaps purely because by that point he was so blindly focused on getting stronger that Terapagos' choice didn't matter to him.)

He did, in theory, want to let Ogerpon choose back then - he had just managed to mostly convince himself that she totally would choose him if he was Stronger than Juliana (and is only now reflecting that maybe she still wouldn't have done). For Terapagos, he was desperate, and convinced that it most likely wouldn't ever choose someone weak like him, to the point that he was willing to take the emergency measure of having his Master Ball ready on hand.

(But even then, I wouldn't quite describe it as Terapagos's choice not mattering to Kieran at all, and more like him being desperate enough to force it to join him despite knowing on some suppressed level that it didn't choose him and he doesn't deserve this. Still, that looks exactly the same on the surface as the kind of thing Gustavus is talking about, doesn't it, whoops! :copyka2:)

Is this guy a Rocket??

He is (or, was)!, Well, this is going exactly where I expected it to from the mention of scientists, regardless of faction. They're gonna try to force Ogrepon to listen to them somehow. To control it. Cipher menton, so shadows possibly? Rocket has means of making shadow pokemon canonically (via Go, if you count that), so maybe. But then again, Rocket had ways of controlling pokemon before that anyway, and Neo Plasma just... didn't, I don't think? They just had that mindset.

Pokémon Go's stuff is definitely not canon here, because nah, let's keep Shadows being Cipher's thing. (also Rocket has explicitly disbanded for good in this fic, so.)

Neo Plasma did in fact capture and control Kyurem for a little while! That's how they were able to nuke Opelucid City with ice.

More of Gustavus being a shadow of what Kieran had been; always more power, more strength. This like a mirror of how he was in the Blueberry DLC.

Not only always wanting more strength, but also: the belief that Strong People get to call the shots and do what they want, and that's just how it works, because they're Strong and they deserve this (while weak people deserve nothing).

Oh boy, here we go. It looks as though the rotom itself is already under some form of mind control here too, with the blank eyes. So it's not even doing the torture willingly, either.

I actually did not mean to imply that the Rotom is mind-controlled! I just described its eyes as "eerily blank" because Rotom's eyes are kinda blank, and in the context of "this Pokémon is about to torture me", Kieran would probably find that blankness very unsettling. Rotom was having a little giggle over how terrified Kieran was a couple of paragraphs later, showing just a bit of its personality. (It has fun zapping humans! It makes Rotom feel strong and makes its master happy with it! )

Funny how Kieran avoided taking a shock last chapter from Dragonite (out of mercy and concern) and now is about to take several anyway.

This is indeed some tragic irony - he's gonna have to take so many more shocks, because Dragonite didn't want to let him take even one! Oh, Dragonite, if only you knew. (But then again, as far as she knew he was going to drown if she didn't save him, which is in fact worse, and yet she still refused to let him take that one Thunder. Heart in the right place, but priorities a little skewed there, Dragonite.)

This bit strikes me as weirdly... idk, odd. I'm pretty sure I recall you prefer defiant victims, and while Kieran isn't exactly giving anything away here, he's... very much devolved quickly into a panicked, begging mess. And that's before he's even been shocked! I actually thought that was something you didn't like about mine; that it felt like Kimiko was too easily broken down. So even putting the zappy whump aside, that alone is going to be something I'm observing and taking notes on carefully going forward!

I do indeed enjoy defiant victims who are Fine, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy characters who react in other ways to being whumped/tortured! Most of all, I want to see my favourite characters react to whump in their specific, individual ways, precisely how they and nobody else would, so that I can explore their psyche in these extreme circumstances. So I'm not about to try and force Kieran to not be the terrified babbling mess he'd obviously be upon realising he's about to be tortured! (And, as it happens, I do also enjoy the opposite end of the spectrum, characters who are Utterly Terrified (and yet still brave and defiant anyway), so really Kieran just hits a different one of my favourite buttons.)

Above all (though I never said anything of the sort re: not enjoying her being broken down that fast), please don't feel like you need to change how Kimiko reacts in your whump scenes just to better fit my tastes! She's your character, and you know her best; let her be whumped how she's gonna be whumped, you know?

This portion here is great, where it has Kieran framing himself as unimportant and weak, the exact opposite thing this poor boy should be thinking about himself, as a self-defense mchanism.

Whoops. sure is fun for my exploration of his Issues that this happens to be his best possible defence against this torture! Torture only happens to Important People, which Kieran definitely is not, right

Considering my previous line quote... you also do a good job here of like, showing how helpless and vulnerable Kieran is to the lightning here, while also still managing to defiantly not spill the beans on what he knows, insisting he still doesn't know anything about it. I think I like that better honestly; most people do seem to prefer that snarky defiance, but I personally do like this brand of 'crying mess that won't break' that Kieran becomes here better.

I do love me a good crying mess that won't break, too.

(you can even have the best of both worlds with a character who starts out snarky and defiant, and then slowly degenerates into a crying mess, yet still doesn't break - though of course poor Kieran here just skipped straight to step 2.)

Oh, what? He did know all along. I guess, again, it doesn't really matter whether the whole legend is true or not, all he needs to know is that Ogrepon defeated three opponents at once.

Yyyep. And yet he still acts in the earlier conversation as if the ogre is still some big monstrous bad guy. I think he listened to the townspeople's story about how Ogerpon turned out to be a cute misunderstood precious bean and then just shoved it to the back of his mind and pretended he didn't hear any of it. Give Gustavus his terrifying murder-ogre, dammit. >:(

I am quite intrigued by this approach Gustavus has here, where he keeps presenting things to Kieran as questions, unknowns, and allowing him the chance to out himself... when really, Gustavus later reveals that he does know (like how he knows Kieran was the one to tell the townspeople the truth, but doesn't reveal that until after he gives Kieran the chance to tell him himself). It really does add a lot to the feeling of helplessness here, like Gustavus really is just toying with Kieran. After all, he really does only need that one piece of information.

My thinking as I wrote this approach was honestly a lot less about Gustavus's mindset and a lot more just "how can I hammer home to Kieran as effectively as possible just how helpless and outmatched he is". But hey, that does track as something that Gustavus would also consciously think about and try to do, I guess. That feel when your characterisation of your torturers is based off your own approach as a whump writer. :copyka2:

Oh no.

This whole segment here of Kieran having to lie to protect Ogrepon is a perfect simplification of the comparisons between Gustavus and Kieran. He knows there's a need to lie, he knows he has to, but he doesn't like it. I think we disagreed on this point before, but to me, this feels like a comparison to why Juliana and Carmine lied to Kieran; they were trying to protect him and his feelings. And now he has to lie too, but for much higher stakes.

Oh, I absolutely agree that Juliana and Carmine lied to Kieran in order to protect his feelings! (It was just still a stupid, short-sighted thing to do, because he was obviously going to feel even worse whenever he inevitably realised they were lying, and it also meant they had to keep leaving him out of meeting the ogre, the thing they both know is his lifelong dream that the opportunity for is right there if only they'd tell him the truth.)

But even then, Kieran here isn't really lying to protect Ogerpon so much as he's lying to protect himself, in the hope that Gustavus will believe he really doesn't know anything and stop torturing him. He can still protect Ogerpon without needing to lie, and continues to do so!

Aaaaaand then he slips up again, asying he knows where Ogrepon is but won't tell. But with that, he's shown that he can be broken down if he's pressured enough. (This may have been shown earlier too, but it stood out to me a lot here.)

That was a lot less of a slip-up and a lot more Kieran momentarily furiously wanting to feel in control and rub in Gustavus's face that he has what he wants and will never give it. Still kind of a slip-up in that it was done rather recklessly and impulsively in the agony of the moment and now leaves him with no chance of getting out of this, but not just a mistake!

You've done a good job here of somehow making Kieran very vulnerable, begging for mercy, and yet somehow still not breaking.

He's not even really begging for mercy, at least not to Gustavus, because he knows the only way to get that guy to stop and he's Not Doing That. It's more like Kieran's hopelessly begging the universe for this to just Not Be Happening to him at all. (except it is, because he's weak, that's always why the universe makes bad things happen to people, right.)

His mind still somehow has this notion that if he were stronger he'd be able to endure the torture better, which... no, silly boy, that is not how torture works. And it's not like he's actually given up anything that Gustavus doesn't already know anyway, so... he's doing pretty well, even if it doesn't feel like it!

He is! He's being so incredibly brave! And he just has this tragic mindset that he's hurting so badly from it all because he's weak and a Stronger person just wouldn't be in this much pain, which, no, of course not! He is being strong, because he's not giving in!

There's still that question though, of how long can he endure this?

Forever. If he was going to break, he'd have done so the moment his chance of getting out of this through lying got snuffed out, at the absolute latest - if not as soon as the threat of torture was levied at all. He's already suffering more than he feels he can bear and yet not breaking, because torture doesn't work - no amount of pain will ever make him a single iota less determined to protect Ogerpon. If anything, this is making him more so, after experiencing first-hand just what kind of hellish monster he's protecting her from.

Ugh, this hurts to see. It's like... he's got the right mentality here, but for the worst, wrong reasons! He's plenty strong to want to protect his friends, and so far has done so. He's a good friend to be glad it's happening to him rather than them... but it's not because he doesn't matter!

Hnnnngh, Kieran. Again, he's using his own worthlessness as a defence against the torture, just in a bit of a different way. But he is strong and he does matter!

This was a good blend of torture and getting into Kieran's mind during it. You have the advantage here of having a personal mirror for Kieran in this Gustavus too, who basically represents all of Kieran's past issues compressed into one visual for him to be harassed by, now physically as well as mentally! I also really enjoy his methods, revealing information he knows slowly and after he gives Kieran a chance to answer first, only to show that it was pointless to refuse to answer because he already knew. I've been taking notes, and I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to tie in anything like that into my scene, but my tormentor does have personal connections, so I may possibly be able to spin something better there.

I'm honestly a little surprised that the parts you appear to be taking notes on are the psychological interplay between torturer and victim, which are inherently going to be different in every scenario due to the different characters and circumstances involved, and they don't even have anything to do with your specific favourite flavour of torture! I always figured when you talked about "taking notes", you mostly meant "how to write a character suffering repeated electric shocks", since that's always going to be there in any electric torture scene one way or another. =P


@EonDuoLatios
Thanks for reading! And I'm happy to hear that, despite you not having played/seen the DLC as far as you told me, you went out of your way to read my analysis posts on Kieran so that you could get a grasp on his character and issues in order to better appreciate the character work going on in this story! I do pride myself on whumping my favourite characters in a way that is distinctly about them as a character and their issues, using the whump as a medium to explore them further, so I'm glad you can enjoy that about this fic, along with just the whumpy parts themselves!

The kidnapping honestly wasn't even a specific choice for the purpose of exploring Kieran while helpless, so much as it was just that... I self-indulgently wanted Kieran to be tortured, because that's a very fun intense kind of whump (and one which also inherently involves a lot of helplessness), and that generally requires the victim to be captured and at the torturer's mercy first, thus, kidnapping. Which does indeed delightfully lend itself to perpetuating his beliefs of being weak and helpless. You're right that a lot of characters probably would react with more overt defiance and trying harder to escape, essentially coming at it from the angle of their potential strength - but, not Kieran.

 

[elyvorg]

Chapter 3​

– This wasn’t supposed to happen –​

The tears had stopped a while ago. Which was good, really, because it meant Kieran didn’t have to think about whatever reason he could have had for crying. He could even mostly ignore the pain, now that it’d lessened to a dull ache. It only really hurt if he tried to move, so he didn’t. He just lay there. Not waiting.

It’d been… some amount of time. Hours, probably a lot of them – only he wasn’t thinking about just how long it’d been, because the longer it’d been, the more likely it became that any minute now—

Kieran wasn’t thinking about any of that. He wasn’t. He was just… existing. That was all. Nothing else. He was absolutely not waiting for anything at all.

And then the faint sounds of approach came from outside the room.

An icy spear of sheer terror stabbed into Kieran. The pain reawakened, flaring up in every muscle like it had never faded, just a fraction of the agony that was in store for him again—!

He struggled through sharp, rapid breaths to stamp down this pointless fear, get a handle on it before it consumed him. He didn’t matter. He didn’t, so this was fine, it had to be…!

Except – the sounds from outside were… different to what he’d have expected…? A whole variety of footstep noises, not just one set, and a voice, faint and muffled though it was, that sounded higher-pitched than the voice he’d been dreading, strangely almost… familiar—?!

“This one?” Kieran could make it out now, it was right in front of the door— “He’s in here?”

It was – he could barely comprehend it, but, there was no mistaking it…!

“Kiki!”

“Sis…?!”

A sudden mess of confused, indescribable, overwhelming emotion swelled up inside Kieran and burst out of him in a sob. “Sis, please, get me out of here!” he found himself crying out.

It was kind of a pointless plea when she was already working on doing just that, furiously rattling the locked door handle. But… it felt good to say it, somehow.

The rattling stopped after a moment. “Kiki, if you can hear me, get back from the door, okay?” Carmine’s voice warned. “We’re gonna break it down!”

“But… I can’t… move…!” he protested, struggling again to do so, but it only made the pain worsen, and that wasn’t even getting into the stupid ropes.

Instead of a response from Carmine, something powerful slammed into the other side of the door with a massive crunch, visibly denting the metal inwards.

It occurred to Kieran that his sister didn’t seem to be able to hear him – his voice, even with all his force in it, was still just a feeble croak. At least he was probably far enough back to be safe anyway? …He hoped.

He flinched as another huge impact buckled the door so much that strips of light made their way in around the edges. One of the hinges had snapped completely. Did Carmine even have a Pokémon that could deal this kind of damage to a metal door…?

“That’s it! Just one more!” came her voice, clear as day now. “They don’t call it Breaking Swipe for nothing!”

Wait, huh—?!

With an oh-so-familiar roar and a final heavy crunch, the crumpled door was defeated. It swung open, hanging limply on just its top hinge, revealing—

“Dragonite…?”

There she was, framed by the light from outside, twisting to peer urgently in at him with… concern…?

Before Kieran could begin to wrap his head around that, Carmine rushed into the room, her Mightyena at her heels. “Kiki! Oh, I knew we’d be able to find you, I just knew it, I knew it!” She skidded to her knees in front of him, pulling him upright despite the groan that escaped him as his stiff muscles protested. “But look at the state of you!” she went on, frantic, almost babbling as she looked him over. “Sheesh, as if locking you in here like some kind of criminal wasn’t bad enough, they had to go and tie you up, too?!”

Her hands fumbled with his bonds for a moment before she withdrew and went for a Pokéball instead. “Leavanny!” The leafcutter bug appeared beside them in a flash of light. “Cut Kiki’s ropes for him – just… just be careful.”

As Leavanny got to work, Kieran’s mind was numb, struggling to keep up. Everything was happening so fast, so unexpectedly, so completely the opposite of what he’d been dreading and trying not to think about for all those hours. Carmine was here, and Dragonite, and…

“How…?” he mumbled, trying to latch onto just one out of so many questions. “How did you find me…?” Nobody was supposed to have known where he was, right? He’d thought…

“You’ve got Dragonite to thank for that!” said Carmine eagerly. Kieran blinked. “She just showed up at the Academy entrance this morning, freaking out something crazy, and – and you weren’t there.” She grimaced and glanced away. “We figured out that she wanted us to follow her, and she led us all the way here. Then once we were inside this place, I had Mightyena track your scent to find you – pretty smart of me, huh?”

“But…” Kieran fumbled to sift through all this information, trying to make sense of it. Dragonite was here. Dragonite had gone and fetched help, had come all this way, to save him.

She was still crouching there just past the doorway, too big to comfortably fit through. Her gaze shifted between him and the room outside, as if she was on the lookout for danger – protecting him, even now. Mightyena, too, had positioned herself near the door, facing outwards, like a guard dog.

“But… when I was attacked, I thought…” he mumbled, “I thought Dragonite got knocked out…?” She had, hadn’t she? She’d taken at least two Ice Beams, maybe more – he hadn’t been able to see, but…

“Huh,” Carmine remarked. “I guess she must’ve forced herself back to consciousness way faster than normal, in time to follow the bad guys who took you. Just goes to show how worried she was about you!”

She said it without hesitation, as if it was obvious. As if Dragonite would never have done anything else.

“Dragonite… I…” Kieran murmured, his breath catching in his throat, the confusing mess of emotions inside him gaining yet another indescribable flavour. He stared in astonishment at the big orange dragon – his big orange dragon, who met his eye and gave a low, rumbling croon.

“And speaking of worried, so was I! C’mere!”

All of a sudden, he found himself pulled tight against Carmine – too tight, reawakening the pain in his stiff muscles, and he couldn’t help but cry out. “Ow! Sis! It hurts!”

“Ah! Sorry! I’m sorry!” She released him and pushed him back in an instant, tensed up like he was something fragile that might break any second. Then she frowned. “Hold on, it’s not just me – you’re hurt…!” Her thumb brushed against a bruise on his shoulder. That was just from him hitting the water, but…

Leavanny had finished cutting the ropes, Kieran realised, and yet his arms were still there, stiff and aching, behind his back. Carmine was running her hands down them, gently testing their mobility – or lack thereof. “You’re paralysed?!” she added, aghast.

Some detached, strategy-obsessed part of Kieran’s brain helpfully pointed out that with that many Thunderbolts, paralysis was practically guaranteed. The rest of him shuddered.

“Kiki.” Carmine’s voice had lowered to one of deadly seriousness. Something fierce and dangerous burned in her eyes as they locked onto his. “These people – did they hurt you?!”

Kieran let out a choked whimper, closing his eyes with a grimace, his mind beset by flashes of lightning. All he could answer with was a nod.

A quiet growl came from near the door, too rough to be from Dragonite – Mightyena’s.

“Who was it? Who did this to you?” demanded Carmine. “Tell me who, because I swear to you, I will grind them into dust.”

“I—” Kieran bit back the reflex to say he didn’t know; he didn’t want to lie to her. “I-I think… he was the boss…? G-Gus… something…” He shivered, opening his eyes to try and combat the irrational sense that the man was there in the room, towering over him, about to bring down the lightning once more with him helpless to— No. Carmine was right here, but… “P-please…” he mumbled, seeing his sister’s expression still demanding, “it hurts…”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, Kiki, I’m sorry—! Hang on a sec…” She fished inside her bag for a moment and came out with another Pokéball and a Cheri berry. “Always gotta keep a few emergency berries on hand!” she said with a definitely-forced smile as she popped the fruit into his mouth.

Kieran made a face before biting down on it. At least the painful spicy heat was something to focus on that wasn’t the aching all over his body and the awful memories playing at the edges of his mind.

As he swallowed, he noticed Carmine had sent out her Sinistcha, who floated just in front of his face, rattling in… invitation? “Sinistcha’s healing isn’t as potent on humans, but it should help,” Carmine explained. “Go on!”

Kieran peered at the green liquid that seemed to be an extension of the goopy ghost Pokémon’s body within the teacup. He’d seen other Pokémon drink Sinistcha’s matcha a bunch of times from its Hospitality ability, but he’d never thought about… what it was they were drinking exactly. With a wince, he closed his eyes and firmly decided he wasn’t going to think about it this time either. If it’d ease the pain, it was worth it.

It tasted surprisingly like actual matcha, it turned out, if a little more viscous. The initial bitter flavour helped combat the spice, then after a moment, it gave way to a pleasant, mellow sweetness. There was something strangely soothing about it.

“Well?” Carmine asked as Sinistcha drew back. “Feel any better?”

“I…” Kieran winced as he tried to focus on the state his body was in, but… it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. He felt looser, almost lighter, somehow. Just a little more like himself. The ache was still there, but fainter. Manageable.

And more than anything – he drew his arms forward of his own accord, flexing his hands. He could move freely. He had control again. “I think so, yeah,” he answered. “Th-Thanks.”

Carmine smiled at him, a real one this time, and Kieran returned it shakily, something heavy catching in his throat. His big sister was right here. She’d come to rescue him, and he was going to get out of here, and he’d never have to go through any – his breath hitched abruptly – any more of That—

All at once, the huge mess of emotions inside him found their way out. With a sudden lurch, Kieran clung to his sister as tightly as he could and broke into massive, desperate sobs.

“Huh…? Kiki…?!” He felt her flinch in surprise, but he didn’t let go, burying his face in her hair, the tears surging forth like a dam had burst. After a moment, she held him back, one arm around his heaving shoulders, the other gently stroking his hair. “I-I’m here, alright?” she said, a hint of flustered uncertainty in her voice. “I’ve… I’ve got you.”

He continued to shudder with loud, hysterical sobs, wringing out all of the nightmarish agony, the lightning, the helplessness, the indescribable relief that it was over, it was over, he was safe now. Everything he’d been through was allowed to hurt, was allowed to matter, at last, because it was over.

Carmine was holding him, increasingly tight, and as he breathed in her familiar scent between sobs, he remembered that – that he mattered. At least a little bit. He mattered to her.

His sister let out a choked noise above him, not unlike one of his own. “Dammit,” she mumbled, her voice strained. “Kiki, what did they do to you…?!”

Kieran flinched, his breaths coming tighter. All of it was flooding out of him right now, but the thought of trying to get actual words around it was too much, too impossible—

“S-Sorry!” Carmine exclaimed, her hold loosening just a bit. “Rhetorical question! You don’t need to answer that!”

He relaxed a little, still buried in her shoulder. The flood had begun to die down some, lessening to a stream of shaky whimpers.

“But – but listen, you’re safe now, okay?” she went on. Gently, she pried him off her so that she could look at him, brushing some of his hair out of his face. Her eyes were watery too, but a familiar spark of fierceness burned in them nonetheless. “I’m not gonna let those pathetic wastes of human flesh lay another finger on you, d’you hear me?!”

Sniffling, Kieran broke into a smile. “Yeah, Sis,” he said. “I know.”

Man, she could drive him mad sometimes, but… sometimes she was the best big sister in the world.

He took a moment to collect himself, wiping his face and having a much-needed drink thanks to a tissue and water bottle she produced for him. He felt a little better now, at least – like he often did these days after a good long cry.

“And guess what?” Carmine was saying as she unfastened one of the bags around her waist – she’d been wearing two of them, Kieran realised. She passed that one to him. “We even found where they were keeping your stuff on the way here! Your Pokémon are fine – it doesn’t look like they were hurt. Dragonite’s a little tired from the flight here, but we healed her up with some potions back at the Academy.”

“My Pokémon…!” Kieran murmured, opening the pocket where his Pokéballs were lined up. He hadn’t been expecting the kidnappers to have done anything to his Pokémon beyond keeping them away from him, but still… it was a huge relief to see them safe.

Five of the balls rattled in their pocket, the cries of each Pokémon echoing faintly from inside, relieved in turn to see him safe. Kieran laid his hand over them, choking back another sob. “Th-Thanks, you guys…”

He resisted the urge to send them all out – now wasn’t the time for a big reunion. Not when he still needed to get out of here.

As he turned to fasten the bag around his own waist, Kieran noticed a yellow cloth lying on the floor just behind him. It took him a moment to register what it was – his hairband.

He winced as he pictured himself lying helpless down there on the floor, thrashing and gasping in agony. …Yeah, it made sense that would have worked it loose, wouldn’t it.

Kieran picked up the headband and slipped it over his wrist. His hair was too much of a dishevelled mess to bother with fixing right now.

Carmine had recalled Leavanny and Sinistcha, leaving just Mightyena – and Dragonite. “We shouldn’t hang around here much longer,” she said, catching his eye. “You up for walking?”

Tentatively, Kieran nodded. He reached an arm around her shoulder to get her help in heaving himself to his feet. Standing up was still a bit of a struggle, but with her there to lean on, he could manage it. “Y-Yeah, I think so.”

“Good thing, too!” said Carmine, her arm tightly around him to support his weight, a cheeky twinkle in her eye. “‘Cause if you couldn’t, I was gonna have to give you a piggy-back ride outta here!”

Kieran spluttered, indignant. “I’m too old for that now!”

His sister chuckled and beamed an infuriating grin. “Just saying! Offer’s still open if you need it!”

Smiling despite himself, feeling a little lighter, Kieran made his way towards the door with his sister’s help, one step at a time. Mightyena slunk quietly outside as they approached, leaving just Dragonite.

She was still standing there as steadfast as ever, peering at him, her expression unmistakably one of affection and concern. Had… had she really always looked at him like that, and he’d never noticed it?

Overcome with emotion, Kieran staggered a couple more steps forwards and just sort of fell into her, his free arm reaching around her in a hug. “Th-Thank you…!” he gasped amongst a renewed burst of sniffling sobs. “I-I didn’t… I thought…”

His voice cut off, choked with guilt, because how could he even finish that sentence? How could he tell her that he’d been afraid she didn’t care about him, after she’d followed his kidnappers all this way and then gone back to fetch help, all while badly hurt on the brink of unconsciousness, all for him? She was hugging him back as best she could with her size, one paw on his shoulder, her snout nuzzling the top of his head, her low croon of affection and relief reverberating through him.

“Th-Thank you…” Kieran managed to say again, still feeling like it was thoroughly inadequate. She’d saved him from this nightmare. Without her to lead the way, it’d have taken Carmine so much longer to track him down – how much more would he have had to suffer in the meantime?

And… why hadn’t it even crossed his mind that of course his own big sister would be out there, looking for him, searching forever until she found him?

He felt Carmine tug at him, a gentle reminder that they were in the middle of escaping and they needed to keep moving. There was still so much swirling through his mind, but he could finish wrapping his head around it all later.

Kieran took a step back from Dragonite. Here outside the room he’d been trapped in, it was just a narrow corridor lined with a bunch of other doors – barely enough space for the big dragon to manoeuvre in. He tried to recall Dragonite to her Poké Ball, only for it to vibrate in his hand as she resisted the beam with a soft yip of protest. He stopped, hesitating.

“Don’t worry, Dragonite,” Carmine told her. “I’ve got him. He’ll be safe.” A bark of agreement came from Mightyena by her feet.

She was still worrying about him? “Yeah,” he managed to say, looking up at Dragonite. “Rest up. Just… just in case I need you later.”

That seemed to satisfy her, and she relented and allowed herself to be recalled.

Leaning on Carmine, Kieran let her steer him through the corridor as Mightyena padded along just ahead of them. Walking was becoming a little more manageable, though he still wasn’t sure how far he’d be able to go without his sister’s support.

At the end, they reached a door that led out into a much more open room. Huge square pillars ran down the middle of it, with several other doors in the distance leading who knew where. There was no sign of the outside, not even a single window. It was all cold artificial lights and metal – somehow exactly the kind of thing Kieran had been imagining as the huge imposing villain base he’d been trapped inside.

That sense of overwhelm, of helplessness to escape this place alone, gripped him for just a moment. But… he wasn’t alone. His sister was right here, with her Pokémon leading the way. They could do this.

And… he had his own Pokémon back now. He could defend himself, too, if it came to that.

“H-Hey!” came a voice from somewhere near the floor. Kieran looked down to see a man in that dark outfit, thoroughly trussed up and immobilised by the kind of silk threads a bug Pokémon might use. Was this… the guy who’d been guarding him earlier?

Carmine flashed the guard a dangerous smile. “Oh dear, still uncomfy down there, are we? Well, maybe you lowlifes should have thought twice before kidnapping my brother, hm?!” Mightyena punctuated her words with a sharp growl.

Kieran stared at the unfortunate man for a little longer as she steered him away. He’d almost forgotten just how scary his sister could be on his behalf sometimes.

He glanced up at her warily, but she just beamed at him. “Stun Spore and String Shot make a great combo for dealing with bad guys, don’tcha think?”

He wasn’t even sure what to say to that.

“Still, these guys aren’t total pushovers,” she went on, not waiting for an answer anyway. “The other half of my team’s down from battling my way here. Good thing I kept Mightyena out of things, or…” She trailed off.

“Where… what even is this place?” Kieran managed to ask, still somewhere between awed and intimidated by how elaborate this base seemed to be.

“You don’t know? Tch, I guess they must’ve knocked you out when they brought you in here, huh,” Carmine remarked, scowling. “This’ll surprise you, then – we’re on a ship! Some big fancy abandoned ship, just sitting by an island off the coast of Unova. Something about Team Plasma, apparently? Not so abandoned on the inside, though, it turns out.”

Team Plasma…? That was… one of the teams that the boss had mentioned recruiting former members of to his new group, wasn’t it? It figured that they might reuse an old Plasma base, then, if that was what this was.

“And get this,” Carmine added. “Y’know what this gang of losers call themselves? ‘Team Hydra’. Guess they think they’re hard to kill or something, but we’ll see about that!”

Despite his sister’s triumphant grin, hearing that name just sent a shiver down Kieran’s spine. He remembered the insignia on the leader’s – Gustavus’s – jacket: the three-headed dragon, with its middle head the largest.

“But hey, never mind them.” Carmine nudged him, oblivious to his discomfort. “You’ve got a way better hydra than any of those chumps!”

Even back then, it’d reminded him of his own Hydrapple, one of his most treasured Pokémon partners. Like the universe was just rubbing in how horribly, uncomfortably similar to him that man was.

“I… I dunno about that,” he mumbled, hiding his gaze from his sister behind his hair.

At least he was saved from having to think about this further as they reached a corner of the large room. There were no doors nearby, just a glowing green circular panel on the floor. Mightyena stepped onto it ahead of them, and in a flash of light, she… vanished?

“C’mon,” Carmine said, like this was totally normal. “We’d better step on together, or it might get weird.”

Kieran tried to mutter his confusion, but with her already pulling him forward, he didn’t want to find out what that weirdness could be. As they stepped onto the panel, a sudden blinding light enveloped everything. Kieran flinched, his breath hitching, clinging tighter to his sister in a split-second panic – but it didn’t hurt at all. His hold on Carmine kept him upright through a dizzying lurch, and then the light faded, and they stepped off, and…

“Huh?!” He blinked as he took in the entirely different room they were in now. “W-Wowzers… We’re… somewhere else?!”

“Yeah, warp tiles, duh! You’ve heard of them, right?” said Carmine. Mightyena was there waiting for them, and the two of them continued following her lead through the ship. “Didn’t we even use one as a shortcut out of Area Zero that time?”

“Y-Yeah, but, still…” Kieran had known about the technology existing, but it was the kind of hi-tech thing exclusive to big corporations, and fancy laboratories, and… and evil villain bases, he supposed. “And they’re all over this place?” He smiled a little, despite himself. “Way cool… this really is kinda like a spy movie!”

“Haha, you’re right!” Carmine grinned and struck a dramatic pose with her free arm as they moved along. “Just call me the beautiful, brilliant spy heroine, swooping in to save the day!”

Kieran grinned back. His sister really would make a good hero in a spy story.

But as for him… He was just the poor schmuck who needed rescuing, nothing more.

His mood suddenly dampened, Kieran dropped his gaze to the floor. “Sorry, Sis…”

“Huh?!” she responded. “Where in the world did that come from? What have you got to be sorry for, Kiki?”

“For… for still relyin’ on you so much,” he said, shrinking in her grip. “I’d – I’d really been tryin’ to get better with that, but—”

“Seriously?!” she protested, cutting him off. “What are you talkin’ about? This has nothing to do with any of that stuff! I mean, sheesh, these guys took your Pokémon, then had you guarded, locked up, tied up and paralysed!” She counted each thing off on the fingers of her free hand to emphasise her point. “Nobody could get out of all that on their own!”

Kieran couldn’t help but feel like the heroes they saw in the movies would find a way, somehow – except that the imaginary hero he pictured in his head somehow ended up being Juliana instead. For a split second, he wanted to think that she could too, but… no. That was a stupid thought, wasn’t it? Even someone as strong as her would have needed some help, surely, if she’d been trapped just like he had.

“C’mon, Kiki.” Carmine nudged him again encouragingly, oblivious to where his thoughts had ended up. “Of course I’m gonna come save you from something this bad. That’s just what big sisters are for!”

It… it was, wasn’t it? Maybe it was still okay to rely on her for at least some things.

“‘Sides,” she went on, “you saved me and the whole town from that Pecha-whatsit thingy, didn’t you? Even I couldn’t get out of that one by myself! So just… think of this as me returning the favour, if you like.”

The Pecharunt thing…? Almost on instinct, Kieran wanted to protest that all the real heroics there had been Juliana’s doing, just like always, but… he supposed he had helped out, too. At least a little.

They kept on making their way through the base, passing a few more silk-bound grunts that Carmine glared silent daggers at as they walked by. Kieran was ready this time for the lurch of the next warp tile they took – but as soon as they stepped out into the new location, everything was suddenly a lot noisier.

This was just another empty set of corridors, but further away behind the walls, he could hear the telltale sounds of battle: the roars and cries of Pokémon, the blasts of attacks, the indistinct voices of trainers yelling commands.

Before Kieran could ask his sister what was going on, she grinned down at him. “Hah! Sounds like the Elite Four are still giving those grunts a good thrashing!”

“Huh?” Kieran blinked – yet another new fact that he hadn’t been expecting. “The Elite Four…? From… Blueberry?”

“Yeah, keep up!” He’d almost stopped moving out of sheer bewilderment, but Carmine kept pulling him along. “C’mon, even I’m not reckless enough that I’d come charging in here all on my own – not if I didn’t have to, at least.”

It suddenly hit Kieran what his sister had meant all the times she’d said ‘we’. He’d thought she was just talking about herself and her Pokémon, but…

“They… came to help… save me…?”

“Duh! You’re their friend, silly, of course they came to help!” she insisted. “Even Drayton – man, you wouldn’t believe how serious he got all of a sudden when we realised you were missing. Maybe that bozo’s not so bad after all… but don’t go telling him I said that, okay?! I’d never hear the end of it!”

Drayton, too? That was… actually, genuinely unexpected. On reflection, perhaps the other three being here to help wasn’t such a surprise, not really. But Kieran had been under the not-so-subtle impression that Drayton still basically hated him for everything he’d done as Champion, despite his efforts to make amends. And yet… Huh.

Something else he’d have to puzzle out later. Carmine supported him carefully up a flight of stairs, and then suddenly they were up on the top deck of the ship – outside.

Kieran took a long, shaky breath, not having realised quite how suffocated he’d felt in there. He’d never been more glad to taste fresh air and see the sky. It looked like early evening or so – had it really been less than a day?

His sister seemed preoccupied, peering at something on her phone for a moment. “It’s this way, right?” she muttered to herself, turning towards another door that wasn’t far away. “You got his scent, Mightyena?” The canine Pokémon barked an affirmative, and Carmine gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Good girl.”

With that, still following Mightyena’s lead, she pulled Kieran towards the door.

“Wait!” he protested. “Wh-Where are we going?” He’d thought they’d been about to leave, but…

“There’s some big lab kind of room this way,” she told him. “Well, at least as far as I can make out from the floor plans Penny sent us.”

Even Penny…? Kieran frowned. He couldn’t quite place why, but something about the fact that their friends from Paldea knew about this too was… very, very worrying.

“Seems like a real important room, at any rate,” Carmine was saying. They were through the door now, into another open corridor-like space with little in it except for a single warp tile at the far end. “We figured if the big boss man’s gonna go anywhere when his base is under attack, it’ll be there.” Her face darkened into a scowl. “Juliana went on ahead to wipe the floor with him, but she better have left some for me – I’m gonna give that lowlife scumbag a piece of my—”

“Juliana?!” Kieran blurted out, his stomach dropping in terror. This was it. This was why. “She’s here? She’s battling – him?!” This was all wrong, this couldn’t be happening – what if she’d brought Ogerpon?!

“Yeah, she flew here from Paldea as fast as she—”

“No… no, no, she can’t be…!” Of course she’d have brought Ogerpon, she’d be pulling out all the stops, bringing her strongest fighters – but, she didn’t know—!

“Huh?” said Carmine, stopping them both in their tracks, wasting time, not getting the problem…! “Of course she can, you’re her friend too, duh! Or did you go forgetting that again?”

“No, that’s not it!” Kieran wrenched himself off her, stumbling his way past Mightyena, towards the warp tile – he had to warn Juliana…! “She can’t be here!”

“Kiki, wait!” Carmine called out, frantic. “Take it easy! What’s gotten into you?!”

“He wants Ogerpon!” Kieran exclaimed. “That’s why he—” His voice cut out, the words ‘tortured me’ too huge, catching in his throat, choking him. At a sudden halt, he gave his head a shake, gasping in a breath, fighting to stay upright past the lightning flashing through his mind. “He… He was tryin’ to make me tell him where Ogerpon is! And now she’s here!”

He looked back at his sister just long enough to see her raise a hand to her mouth, her expression horrified, as the stakes dawned on her. That was all he needed – Kieran turned and ran for the warp tile as fast as his shaky legs could carry him, desperately hoping he wouldn’t be too late, that he’d still be able to stop this, somehow…!

His foot hit the tile, and the blinding flash of disorientation swept over him—

“—finish it with Ivy Cudgel!”

No…!

He tried to keep running, but the dizziness was too much – the room lurched, and he only made it a few steps before collapsing to his hands and knees. Ahead of him, he heard the crunching smash of stone, looked up in time to see a grey-cloaked Ogerpon slamming her cudgel into the middle head of a Hydrapple (why did it have to be a Hydrapple?).

Juliana was there too, on the near side behind Ogerpon, and Gustavus was at the back, recalling his fallen hydra, and – and this was an important room, just as his sister had guessed, because of the huge, elaborate machine that dominated the far wall. The machine that Gustavus had gloated about, that would mind-control Ogerpon and force out her power, this had to be it – and Ogerpon was right here…!

“No!” Kieran cried out, as loud as he could. “Ogerpon! Get – get her away…!”

“Kieran?!” Juliana twisted around at the sound of his voice, her eyes widening in shock and worry as she saw him there. “What happened to you? Are you alright?!”

Ogerpon turned along with her trainer, her face hidden behind the Cornerstone Mask. “Popon?!”

“Re… recall her!” gasped Kieran, reaching out uselessly with one hand, his clumsy, aching body resisting his efforts to do any more than that. “Now!”

Ignoring the soft whoosh of the warp tile behind him, he looked up at Gustavus helplessly, and he could have sworn the man caught his eye for just a split-second before breaking into a twisted grin.

“You’re MINE!” he declared, and in one swift, fluid motion—

—he threw a Master Ball right at Ogerpon’s back.

Time seemed to stand still, everything in the room frozen except for the ball. It sailed through the air, bouncing off Ogerpon from behind before she could dodge or block it.

And it sucked her inside, as if nothing were more natural.

“Huh?” spluttered Juliana.

The ball fell to the ground and began to wobble. Kieran watched it helplessly, hoping against hope that somehow, magically, Ogerpon would just break out (just like he’d half-expected Terapagos to), and everything would be okay.

But she didn’t. The Master Ball did as it was made to do, trapping the legendary Pokémon inside it with a click.

“But…” Juliana had Ogerpon’s Friend Ball in her hand now, pointing it uselessly at the ball on the floor. Hers seemed to have gone inactive. “How…?! You can’t just…”

“Snag Ball,” said Gustavus, briefly pressing buttons on a Pokédex, casually shifting another Pokémon to his PC like Ogerpon was just his now, as he strode forwards to pick up the Master Ball. He caught Kieran’s eye again and gave a victorious smirk. “Didn’t I tell you where my grunts came from?”

Kieran didn’t have a clue what that meant, but neither did he care. Something acrid and appalled was bubbling up inside him, boiling into a haze of white-hot outrage. This was like some kind of sick joke, just rubbing it in. The nerve of him, from behind, with a Master Ball, like—

With a scream of fury, Kieran was on his feet, throwing himself bodily at Gustavus, grasping for the ball in his hand. “You can’t do that!” he yelled. “She’s not yours!!”

He wrestled with the man, fighting to pry the Master Ball out of his grip with whatever it took, smaller and weaker but fuelled by the sheer force of his disgusted anger at the one who’d dared to throw it, for acting like he had the right to just take what would never be his…!

In frenzied desperation, he sank his teeth into one of Gustavus’s fingers. The man gave an indignant yelp, the hand loosened, and Kieran seized the ball, firmly in his own grasp.

An instant later, the back of that same hand slammed into his face. The world pitched, and he hit the floor, hard, one whole side of his body lighting up with pain.

Kieran’s head was spinning, but, the ball – he still had it…! Nothing else mattered – he just had to hold onto it, as tight as he—

A heavy boot smashed down onto his hand, crushing it. He cried out in agony, his grip lost, the ball rolling away – no…!

Before he could try to reach out further, the boot jabbed into his stomach like a piston, right below his ribs, and suddenly Kieran couldn’t even breathe.

He gasped and wheezed, pain flaring all over, struggling to suck in air, helplessly watching through his hair as Gustavus bent down to pick up the Master Ball again like nothing had just happened. Like all of Kieran’s efforts had been utterly useless.

And then a guttural growl from behind him rose up into a hellish shriek of rage.

“Mightyena!” Carmine roared. Kieran twisted his head back, catching a skewed glimpse of a terrifying wildfire blazing in his sister’s eyes as she pointed straight at Gustavus. “Thunder Fang him!”

The canine Pokémon snarled, leaping in to tackle Gustavus to the side. He hit the ground with Mightyena on top of him, her teeth crackling with sparks – and she sank them right into the man’s shoulder. Trapped, helpless, Kieran watched Gustavus’s body tremble and jerk horrifically, his face a grimace of agony from the lightning coursing through him.

Gustavus let out a strangled scream once the electricity faded and Mightyena released her fangs. His eyes wide, bulging, he stared frantically between the Pokémon pinning him there and the trainer towering over him.

“That’s right! See how you like it, you sick bastard!!” Carmine thundered down at her victim, twisted by a monstrously wild, triumphant fury. “Again, Mightyena!”

Without a second’s hesitation, Mightyena charged up her fangs once more and dug them into Gustavus’s other shoulder. The nightmarish lightning and convulsions grew even worse – Kieran was immobilised, unable to tear his gaze away, hurting from more than just physical pain as phantom electric agony shot through him too at the sight of it.

The moment the attack faded, his sister’s Pokémon let out a furious roar right in Gustavus’s face before he could even try to scream, her lightning-laced fangs terrifyingly close to his throat. Everything was closing in on Kieran, crushing him, smothering him – he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe—

“Carmine, stop it!”

It was Juliana’s voice. Her reassuring firmness cut through the nightmare, letting Kieran gasp in a breath.

“Please…” she said, and he finally managed to look away from his sister’s victim to see Juliana staring pointedly right at Kieran himself.

Her fire halted and hesitant, Carmine followed her gaze – and then her eyes widened in horror as she caught sight of her brother.

“Kiki… I…!”

She screwed her eyes shut, clenching a fist over her chest. Her shoulders shook as she took several long, shaking breaths through gritted teeth.

When Carmine opened her eyes again, they looked… safer. Still with anger simmering in there, but – more like the big sister Kieran knew.

“Mightyena, return,” she said, her voice tight, holding out her Pokémon’s ball without looking at her.

The large canine vanished from on top of Gustavus. His body jolted in an effort to get up, but before he could, Carmine strode forwards and planted a foot firmly in his chest herself. “Don’t think you’re going anywhere,” she hissed.

Gustavus’s arm made awkward, jerking movements, like he was trying to reach for her leg but couldn’t, somehow. He was scowling furiously, probably in an attempt to mask the pain.

“Oh, paralysed already, are we?” simpered Carmine with a venomous smile. “Good.” She pulled out another Pokéball. “Leavanny, make sure this waste of human flesh won’t be moving another inch.”

As Leavanny emerged and got to work with String Shot, Kieran managed to relax a little. Carmine was just immobilising the man now, nothing more. That was… that was better. It meant he could focus on other things, like trying to breathe properly – that blow to his stomach had knocked the wind out of him something fierce, never mind what’d come after.

“Kieran!” Juliana hurried to crouch beside him, one hand on his shoulder, her expression full of worry. “Are you alright?”

Before he could even try to answer, a staticky hum pierced his ears, faint but hideously familiar. His body tensed, pain shooting through his muscles – no, he wasn’t alright at all…!

That Rotom, it was here, where was it…?! There, behind Juliana, emerging from the huge machine against the back wall. The Rotom jittered forwards in Kieran’s tilted, hair-shrouded view, and for a terrifying moment it seemed to be coming for him. But the reality was even worse – lying there in its path, forgotten where Gustavus had dropped it upon being attacked, was the Master Ball with Ogerpon inside.

“Ohhgh…!” Kieran gasped. He was too weak to get up, wheezing for breath too hard to form coherent words, but he had to tell Juliana, warn her – “Ohhhhghph…!”

“It – It’s okay!” Juliana tried to reassure him, still worrying about him like he mattered right now. He flopped one hand uselessly on the floor in an attempt to point, but his crushed, stinging fingers weren’t working properly. “Don’t, don’t try to move, if you can’t…”

No – the Rotom was right there, it had the Master Ball, it was already taking it back to the machine, it was going to be too late—!

“B-Buhl…” spluttered Kieran in desperate helpless frustration, trying for a different word, an easier one – “Ball!”

“The ball…? Ogerpon!” Juliana whirled around, just in time to see the Rotom deposit the Master Ball onto a pedestal at the front of the machine and then zip back inside it. Mechanical claws extended around the ball, locking it in place as the machine lit up and began to hum and whir into life.

“He had a sixth?! I should’ve thought—!” Juliana exclaimed, rushing up to the machine. “No! Give her back!” A burst of sparks flowed through the pedestal, shocking her as she tried to grab the ball. “Aagh!” She flinched back, clutching her arm.

A twisted, disjointed sort of chuckle arose from off to the side – Gustavus, laughing in spite of his paralysis and his almost-finished silk bonds.

“What’s so funny?” Carmine demanded. “What’s that big machine doing to Ogerpon?!”

“It’s too late…!” gloated Gustavus, his tone deranged and hysterical. “Even if you could get past Rotom, the ball and the machine are connected now! Removing it won’t change a thing! The ogre is mine to control!”

“Control her?!” Carmine’s gaze snapped to the floor, where Gustavus’s hand was awkwardly, surreptitiously trying to work some kind of small device out of his pocket despite his near-immobility. “Leavanny, that thing, destroy it! Now!”

Quick as a flash, the bug Pokémon kicked the device across the floor and sliced it clean in two with one of her blades. Had that been… a remote control for the machine? Then, that meant…!

“Hah!” Gustavus spat. “You really think I wouldn’t have installed an automatic setting as a failsafe? That alone should be more than enough for the ogre’s might to overwhelm you.”

“Automatic?” Juliana’s gaze snapped between him and the machine, frantic. “There’s… really nothing we can do?!”

“Ogerpon, come forth!” crowed Gustavus in triumph. “Show me your true power, and get rid of these fools!”

With a flourish of lights all around the machine’s exterior, the Master Ball on the pedestal released Ogerpon into the middle of the room.

Kieran braced himself for something terrible, but as she stood there, she seemed almost… normal? …Almost. She wasn’t wearing a mask, which let him see the look in her eyes – or an unnerving lack thereof, staring vacantly ahead.

“Ogerpon?” Juliana crept around to her front, peering at her carefully. “Are you alright?”

Ogerpon didn’t respond. One by one, all four of her masks floated out from underneath her poncho and began to circle around her, animated by some invisible force.

“Are you in there?” her trainer tried, waving a hand and forcing a smile. “It’s me – Juliana.”

“Po…?” Blinking, Ogerpon looked up in recognition, herself again – but then her gaze flitted anxiously between the masks circling her, like this wasn’t under her control. Like she couldn’t stop them.

“No… Get back, Juliana…” Kieran found himself saying, gripped with a horrible apprehension. “I-It’s not safe…!” This machine, the power Gustavus had – he’d dared to hope for a moment, but even Ogerpon couldn’t…

Juliana backed up just a small step, not taking her eyes off her Pokémon.

“Grr… Grah…” Ogerpon gasped, increasingly frantic, trembling from either fear, or something worse. “Ponoooo!” she cried out, fixing her trainer with an urgent, desperate stare. Eyes widening, Juliana backed away faster.

With a surging thrum of power from the machine, dark lightning seized Ogerpon’s body out of nowhere, making her arch and grimace in pain. All four masks around her exploded at once into dazzling, blinding Terastallisation.

And Ogerpon screamed.

~~~​

Spoiler: A/N

Whoops, did I say this was a Kieran whumpfic? Well, perhaps he might not have been the only member of the DLC cast that I had plans to put through the wringer here.

 

[Dragonfree]

He struggled through sharp, rapid breaths to stamp down this pointless fear, get a handle on it before it consumed him. He didn’t matter. He didn’t, so this was fine, it had to be…!

:copyka2: He is fine. (I enjoy how it's really coming out what a coping mechanism this is. He has to be fine because he doesn't matter.)

Enjoyed the opening in general and how you convey the agonizing waiting, still sort of dissociated, just lying there, not doing or thinking anything at all because then he'd have to think about what (he thinks) is coming.

He flinched as another huge impact buckled the door so much that strips of light made their way in around the edges. One of the hinges had snapped completely. Did Carmine even have a Pokémon that could deal this kind of damage to a metal door…?

“That’s it! Just one more!” came her voice, clear as day now. “They don’t call it Breaking Swipe for nothing!”

Wait, huh—?!

With an oh-so-familiar roar and a final heavy crunch, the crumpled door was defeated. It swung open, hanging limply on just its top hinge, revealing—

“Dragonite…?”

There she was, framed by the light from outside, twisting to peer urgently in at him with… concern…?

Oh, Kieran. He's so surprised, not just that Carmine has Dragonite but that Dragonite would even want to be there or care about him, as if she'd do anything else!

Before Kieran could begin to wrap his head around that, Carmine rushed into the room, her Mightyena at her heels. “Kiki! Oh, I knew we’d be able to find you, I just knew it, I knew it!” She skidded to her knees in front of him, pulling him upright despite the groan that escaped him as his stiff muscles protested. “But look at the state of you!” she went on, frantic, almost babbling as she looked him over. “Sheesh, as if locking you in here like some kind of criminal wasn’t bad enough, they had to go and tie you up, too?!”

Her underestimation of what has happened to him is painful. Incredulous that they tied him up. Immediate Oh No at when she'll find out :copyka2:

“But…” Kieran fumbled to sift through all this information, trying to make sense of it. Dragonite was here. Dragonite had gone and fetched help, had come all this way, to save him.

Yes! She did! Because she cares about you!

She was still crouching there just past the doorway, too big to comfortably fit through. Her gaze shifted between him and the room outside, as if she was on the lookout for danger – protecting him, even now. Mightyena, too, had positioned herself near the door, facing outwards, like a guard dog.

“But… when I was attacked, I thought…” he mumbled, “I thought Dragonite got knocked out…?” She had, hadn’t she? She’d taken at least two Ice Beams, maybe more – he hadn’t been able to see, but…

“Huh,” Carmine remarked. “I guess she must’ve forced herself back to consciousness way faster than normal, in time to follow the bad guys who took you. Just goes to show how worried she was about you!”

She said it without hesitation, as if it was obvious. As if Dragonite would never have done anything else.

“Dragonite… I…” Kieran murmured, his breath catching in his throat, the confusing mess of emotions inside him gaining yet another indescribable flavour. He stared in astonishment at the big orange dragon – his big orange dragon, who met his eye and gave a low, rumbling croon.

I love Dragonite and how you write her - just little things, but the way she's still protective, looking out for him, and the low, rumbling croon as he meets her eye just give such a sense of her character as someone who was really worried about him. And while she did get knocked out, she was just determined enough to force herself back to consciousness anyway because she had to follow them and see where they took him. What a good dragon.

“And speaking of worried, so was I! C’mere!”

All of a sudden, he found himself pulled tight against Carmine – too tight, reawakening the pain in his stiff muscles, and he couldn’t help but cry out. “Ow! Sis! It hurts!”

“Ah! Sorry! I’m sorry!” She released him and pushed him back in an instant, tensed up like he was something fragile that might break any second. Then she frowned. “Hold on, it’s not just me – you’re hurt…!” Her thumb brushed against a bruise on his shoulder. That was just from him hitting the water, but…

Aww. Legitimately sweet of Carmine how she just wants to hug him really tightly but she stops immediately when it's hurting him, worried, and then realizes the reason it's hurting him isn't just that she was being too much but that they'd done something to him. What an awful realization.

Some detached, strategy-obsessed part of Kieran’s brain helpfully pointed out that with that many Thunderbolts, paralysis was practically guaranteed. The rest of him shuddered.

Oh boy. Of course Kieran has a pretty detached strategy-brain, the mode he was in constantly while obsessing about getting stronger. Helpful commentary from that part of him.

“Kiki.” Carmine’s voice had lowered to one of deadly seriousness. Something fierce and dangerous burned in her eyes as they locked onto his. “These people – did they hurt you?!”

Kieran let out a choked whimper, closing his eyes with a grimace, his mind beset by flashes of lightning. All he could answer with was a nod.

A quiet growl came from near the door, too rough to be from Dragonite – Mightyena’s.

“Who was it? Who did this to you?” demanded Carmine. “Tell me who, because I swear to you, I will grind them into dust.”

Boy, she sure is taking the news well :copyka2: And her Mightyena, of course, is equally protective and equally inclined to seek revenge.

Kieran's reaction is also a bit of foreshadowing, isn't it. He doesn't want to remember the lightning or think about any of it, but Carmine wants her idea of justice a bit too much to properly think to be considerate of him.

“I—” Kieran bit back the reflex to say he didn’t know; he didn’t want to lie to her. “I-I think… he was the boss…? G-Gus… something…” He shivered, opening his eyes to try and combat the irrational sense that the man was there in the room, towering over him, about to bring down the lightning once more with him helpless to— No. Carmine was right here, but… “P-please…” he mumbled, seeing his sister’s expression still demanding, “it hurts…”

Oof, multiple layers to this. He doesn't want to lie to her like she lied to him. But it also says a lot that his first inclination was to lie in the first place. He doesn't want to think about or remember any of it - and the fact she's angrily asking him questions like that must by itself remind him of Gustavus's interrogation. When he says it hurts, she takes it to mean physically and gets out a Cheri Berry, but I think really he means emotionally more than physically, both having to think about and remember it and for her to be there demanding he give her information about a person she wants to hurt.

All at once, the huge mess of emotions inside him found their way out. With a sudden lurch, Kieran clung to his sister as tightly as he could and broke into massive, desperate sobs.

“Huh…? Kiki…?!” He felt her flinch in surprise, but he didn’t let go, burying his face in her hair, the tears surging forth like a dam had burst. After a moment, she held him back, one arm around his heaving shoulders, the other gently stroking his hair. “I-I’m here, alright?” she said, a hint of flustered uncertainty in her voice. “I’ve… I’ve got you.”

He continued to shudder with loud, hysterical sobs, wringing out all of the nightmarish agony, the lightning, the helplessness, the indescribable relief that it was over, it was over, he was safe now. Everything he’d been through was allowed to hurt, was allowed to matter, at last, because it was over.

Carmine was holding him, increasingly tight, and as he breathed in her familiar scent between sobs, he remembered that – that he mattered. At least a little bit. He mattered to her.

❤️ This is really good, the physical descriptions and the emotional. The realization that he mattered to her is super cathartic after how he spent the torture coping by insisting he doesn't matter at all.

His sister let out a choked noise above him, not unlike one of his own. “Dammit,” she mumbled, her voice strained. “Kiki, what did they do to you…?!”

Kieran flinched, his breaths coming tighter. All of it was flooding out of him right now, but the thought of trying to get actual words around it was too much, too impossible—

“S-Sorry!” Carmine exclaimed, her hold loosening just a bit. “Rhetorical question! You don’t need to answer that!”

He relaxed a little, still buried in her shoulder. The flood had begun to die down some, lessening to a stream of shaky whimpers.

Carmine sort of realizing the depths of what they must have done to him, and feeling emotions about it, just off the way he's breaking down like that, my heart.

I like him again flinching at the thought of having to answer her question, get words around what happened somehow, and Carmine again quickly apologizing and telling him he doesn't have to answer that, because she immediately senses she's making things worse for him actually and doesn't want to do that. Carmine is a good sister.

“But – but listen, you’re safe now, okay?” she went on. Gently, she pried him off her so that she could look at him, brushing some of his hair out of his face. Her eyes were watery too, but a familiar spark of fierceness burned in them nonetheless. “I’m not gonna let those pathetic wastes of human flesh lay another finger on you, d’you hear me?!”

Sniffling, Kieran broke into a smile. “Yeah, Sis,” he said. “I know.”

Man, she could drive him mad sometimes, but… sometimes she was the best big sister in the world.

Nothing unsettling at all about her repeated threats and referring to the people who did this as 'pathetic wastes of human flesh', nope :copyka2:

He took a moment to collect himself, wiping his face and having a much-needed drink thanks to a tissue and water bottle she produced for him. He felt a little better now, at least – like he often did these days after a good long cry.

He has learned crying can feel better! Proud of the boyyy

“And guess what?” Carmine was saying as she unfastened one of the bags around her waist – she’d been wearing two of them, Kieran realised. She passed that one to him. “We even found where they were keeping your stuff on the way here! Your Pokémon are fine – it doesn’t look like they were hurt. Dragonite’s a little tired from the flight here, but we healed her up with some potions back at the Academy.”

“My Pokémon…!” Kieran murmured, opening the pocket where his Pokéballs were lined up. He hadn’t been expecting the kidnappers to have done anything to his Pokémon beyond keeping them away from him, but still… it was a huge relief to see them safe.

Five of the balls rattled in their pocket, the cries of each Pokémon echoing faintly from inside, relieved in turn to see him safe. Kieran laid his hand over them, choking back another sob. “Th-Thanks, you guys…”

I like how you made the Pokémon's cries faintly audible from inside the Pokéballs, just so they can express relief that he's safe even before a good chance to properly send them out. Worldbuilding that serves the Adorable

As he turned to fasten the bag around his own waist, Kieran noticed a yellow cloth lying on the floor just behind him. It took him a moment to register what it was – his hairband.

He winced as he pictured himself lying helpless down there on the floor, thrashing and gasping in agony. …Yeah, it made sense that would have worked it loose, wouldn’t it.

Kieran picked up the headband and slipped it over his wrist. His hair was too much of a dishevelled mess to bother with fixing right now.

I think him choosing not to put his hair up again is less about not wanting to bother with fixing it and more about kind of wanting to be hidden from the world right now, and not wanting to expose himself like he was when it happened.

Carmine had recalled Leavanny and Sinistcha, leaving just Mightyena – and Dragonite. “We shouldn’t hang around here much longer,” she said, catching his eye. “You up for walking?”

Tentatively, Kieran nodded. He reached an arm around her shoulder to get her help in heaving himself to his feet. Standing up was still a bit of a struggle, but with her there to lean on, he could manage it. “Y-Yeah, I think so.”

“Good thing, too!” said Carmine, her arm tightly around him to support his weight, a cheeky twinkle in her eye. “‘Cause if you couldn’t, I was gonna have to give you a piggy-back ride outta here!”

Kieran spluttered, indignant. “I’m too old for that now!”

His sister chuckled and beamed an infuriating grin. “Just saying! Offer’s still open if you need it!”

She's definitely teasing him here in an effort to sort of bring back normalcy and ease the tension a bit, isn't she. What a good sister.

Smiling despite himself, feeling a little lighter, Kieran made his way towards the door with his sister’s help, one step at a time. Mightyena slunk quietly outside as they approached, leaving just Dragonite.

She was still standing there as steadfast as ever, peering at him, her expression unmistakably one of affection and concern. Had… had she really always looked at him like that, and he’d never noticed it?

Overcome with emotion, Kieran staggered a couple more steps forwards and just sort of fell into her, his free arm reaching around her in a hug. “Th-Thank you…!” he gasped amongst a renewed burst of sniffling sobs. “I-I didn’t… I thought…”

His voice cut off, choked with guilt, because how could he even finish that sentence? How could he tell her that he’d been afraid she didn’t care about him, after she’d followed his kidnappers all this way and then gone back to fetch help, all while badly hurt on the brink of unconsciousness, all for him? She was hugging him back as best she could with her size, one paw on his shoulder, her snout nuzzling the top of his head, her low croon of affection and relief reverberating through him.

“Th-Thank you…” Kieran managed to say again, still feeling like it was thoroughly inadequate. She’d saved him from this nightmare. Without her to lead the way, it’d have taken Carmine so much longer to track him down – how much more would he have had to suffer in the meantime?

And… why hadn’t it even crossed his mind that of course his own big sister would be out there, looking for him, searching forever until she found him?

Dragonite huuuug <3 I like Kieran feeling guilty about not realizing how much his own Pokémon cared about him. So hard for this boy to understand and appreciate that he is loved - but at least now he's capable of realizing he should never have thought that.

Likewise with Carmine - it really didn't ever cross his mind that she'd be looking for him (like it didn't cross my mind), but after being rescued and receiving some comfort and reassurance he's able to reflect and see that obviously she would be. That's who she is, and she loves him that much, just like Dragonite, and Kieran wasn't able to see that as he was being broken down but he can now.

He tried to recall Dragonite to her Poké Ball, only for it to vibrate in his hand as she resisted the beam with a soft yip of protest. He stopped, hesitating.

“Don’t worry, Dragonite,” Carmine told her. “I’ve got him. He’ll be safe.” A bark of agreement came from Mightyena by her feet.

She was still worrying about him? “Yeah,” he managed to say, looking up at Dragonite. “Rest up. Just… just in case I need you later.”

That seemed to satisfy her, and she relented and allowed herself to be recalled.

Aww, look at her being protective! Won't retreat to the Pokéball until Kieran convinces her on the basis that he might need her later instead.

Leaning on Carmine, Kieran let her steer him through the corridor as Mightyena padded along just ahead of them. Walking was becoming a little more manageable, though he still wasn’t sure how far he’d be able to go without his sister’s support.

Just a little hint that Kieran's still feeling pretty weak and insignificant, though - not sure if he could do much without his sister's support.

That sense of overwhelm, of helplessness to escape this place alone, gripped him for just a moment. But… he wasn’t alone. His sister was right here, with her Pokémon leading the way. They could do this.

And… he had his own Pokémon back now. He could defend himself, too, if it came to that.

But also, his sister being there is a source of strength! Her being there, with her Pokémon, gives him confidence - and then he's able to also think yeah, he also has his own Pokémon, he's able to defend himself, isn't he.

“H-Hey!” came a voice from somewhere near the floor. Kieran looked down to see a man in that dark outfit, thoroughly trussed up and immobilised by the kind of silk threads a bug Pokémon might use. Was this… the guy who’d been guarding him earlier?

Carmine flashed the guard a dangerous smile. “Oh dear, still uncomfy down there, are we? Well, maybe you lowlifes should have thought twice before kidnapping my brother, hm?!” Mightyena punctuated her words with a sharp growl.

Kieran stared at the unfortunate man for a little longer as she steered him away. He’d almost forgotten just how scary his sister could be on his behalf sometimes.

He glanced up at her warily, but she just beamed at him. “Stun Spore and String Shot make a great combo for dealing with bad guys, don’tcha think?”

He wasn’t even sure what to say to that.

Definitely not foreshadowing, Carmine having enjoyed tying up these lowlifes and being thrilled about it at him while Kieran finds it all a bit unsettling :copyka2:

“Still, these guys aren’t total pushovers,” she went on, not waiting for an answer anyway. “The other half of my team’s down from battling my way here. Good thing I kept Mightyena out of things, or…” She trailed off.

...or she wouldn't have found Kieran, would she. It was entirely possible she could have let Mightyena go down too in her eagerness to show these guys what for, and then she couldn't have used her nose to track Kieran down, and would have just been desperately opening every door she could find on this massive ship.

(Carmine, the character whose Pokémon team conveniently goes down offscreen so that a story can accomplish things with Kieran)

“And get this,” Carmine added. “Y’know what this gang of losers call themselves? ‘Team Hydra’. Guess they think they’re hard to kill or something, but we’ll see about that!”

Definitely nothing ominous about cheerfully saying she'll see about how hard they are to kill :copyka2:

“But hey, never mind them.” Carmine nudged him, oblivious to his discomfort. “You’ve got a way better hydra than any of those chumps!”

Even back then, it’d reminded him of his own Hydrapple, one of his most treasured Pokémon partners. Like the universe was just rubbing in how horribly, uncomfortably similar to him that man was.

“I… I dunno about that,” he mumbled, hiding his gaze from his sister behind his hair.

Putting that hair to good use for hiding how he's feeling!

Carmine's trying hard to pep him up and dismiss Team Hydra, but it just makes him feel worse because he in fact thinks they are very similar, and probably he still feels like ultimately he was shown to be weaker than them, and it doesn't feel correct to say his hydra is just way better. After all, if he were truly strong, surely he wouldn't have been tortured like that, because that's how anything works.

“Huh?!” He blinked as he took in the entirely different room they were in now. “W-Wowzers… We’re… somewhere else?!”

“Yeah, warp tiles, duh! You’ve heard of them, right?” said Carmine. Mightyena was there waiting for them, and the two of them continued following her lead through the ship. “Didn’t we even use one as a shortcut out of Area Zero that time?”

“Y-Yeah, but, still…” Kieran had known about the technology existing, but it was the kind of hi-tech thing exclusive to big corporations, and fancy laboratories, and… and evil villain bases, he supposed. “And they’re all over this place?” He smiled a little, despite himself. “Way cool… this really is kinda like a spy movie!”

Aww, look at him just being a big dork.

“Haha, you’re right!” Carmine grinned and struck a dramatic pose with her free arm as they moved along. “Just call me the beautiful, brilliant spy heroine, swooping in to save the day!”

Kieran grinned back. His sister really would make a good hero in a spy story.

But as for him… He was just the poor schmuck who needed rescuing, nothing more.

Kierannn! He has made progress, he is healing - but the fact he had to be rescued is still feeding his inferiority complex. His sister is very cool, and he's grateful for her... but he himself is just the guy who needs to be saved. He's still stuck in that mindset.

His mood suddenly dampened, Kieran dropped his gaze to the floor and found himself muttering, “Sorry, Sis…”

“Huh?!” she responded. “Where in the world did that come from? What have you got to be sorry for, Kiki?”

“For… for still relyin’ on you so much,” he said, shrinking in her grip. “I’d – I’d really been tryin’ to get better with that, but—”

But it's okay to need rely on other people sometimes, Kieran!

“Seriously?!” she protested, cutting him off. “What are you talkin’ about? This has nothing to do with any of that stuff! I mean, sheesh, these guys took your Pokémon, then had you guarded, locked up, tied up and paralysed!” She counted each thing off on the fingers of her free hand to emphasise her point. “Nobody could get out of all that on their own!”

Kieran couldn’t help but feel like the heroes they saw in the movies would find a way, somehow – except that the imaginary hero he pictured in his head somehow ended up being Juliana instead. For a split second, he wanted to think that she could too, but… no. That was a stupid thought, wasn’t it? Even someone as strong as her would have needed some help, surely, if she’d been trapped just like he had.

Carmine is very right, and also obviously doesn't quite get it, bless her. It's just bizarre to her that he would think something like that. But Kieran's picturing idealized heroes, Juliana (or the imaginary version of her that exists in his head). And yet... when he actually thinks about it, once again he manages to reflect a little and realize that hang on, that's kind of a silly thing to think.

“C’mon, Kiki.” Carmine nudged him again encouragingly, oblivious to where his thoughts had ended up. “Of course I’m gonna come save you from something this bad. That’s just what big sisters are for!”

It… it was, wasn’t it? Maybe it was still okay to rely on her for at least some things.

Yes! It's okay to be helped and saved sometimes!

“‘Sides,” she went on, “you saved me and the whole town from that Pecha-whatsit thingy, didn’t you? Even I couldn’t get out of that one by myself! So just… think of this as me returning the favour, if you like.”

The Pecharunt thing…? Almost on instinct, Kieran wanted to protest that all the real heroics there had been Juliana’s doing, just like always, but… he supposed he had helped out, too. At least a little.

A legitimate accomplishment from Kieran, which he of course instinctively internally responds to by dismissing it, saying it was all Juliana at work. But he supposes he helped at least a little! Slowly recovering the ability to be proud of himself!

“Huh?” Kieran blinked – yet another new fact that he hadn’t been expecting. “The Elite Four…? From… Blueberry?”

“Yeah, keep up!” He’d almost stopped moving out of sheer bewilderment, but Carmine kept pulling him along. “C’mon, even I’m not reckless enough that I’d come charging in here all on my own – not if I didn’t have to, at least.”

If she had to, of course, she totally would have come on her own. She is a good big sister.

It suddenly hit Kieran what his sister had meant all the times she’d said ‘we’. He’d thought she was just talking about herself and her Pokémon, but…

“They… came to help… save me…?”

“Duh! You’re their friend, silly, of course they came to help!” she insisted. “Even Drayton – man, you wouldn’t believe how serious he got all of a sudden when we realised you were missing. Maybe that bozo’s not so bad after all… but don’t go telling him I said that, okay?! I’d never hear the end of it!”

Drayton, too? That was… actually, genuinely unexpected. On reflection, perhaps the other three being here to help wasn’t such a surprise, not really. But Kieran had been under the not-so-subtle impression that Drayton still basically hated him for everything he’d done as Champion, despite his efforts to make amends. And yet… Huh.

Drayton actually cares even though he's very bad at showing it! I enjoy Kieran sort of realizing on reflection that the other three would, even though he's still so unused to having friends that it seemed surprising. But Drayton was different; he really was under the impression he still hated him. And yet he's also there.

(Also enjoy Carmine being very Carmine about it.)

“There’s some big lab kind of room this way,” she told him. “Well, at least as far as I can make out from the floor plans Penny sent us.”

Even Penny…? Kieran frowned. He couldn’t quite place why, but something about the fact that their friends from Paldea knew about this too was… very, very worrying.

It is, isn't it. Kieran wasn't expecting them to come from so far away, has been doing his best to not think about the fact Juliana has Ogerpon.

“Seems like a real important room, at any rate,” Carmine was saying. They were through the door now, into another open corridor-like space with little in it except for a single warp tile at the far end. “We figured if the big boss man’s gonna go anywhere when his base is under attack, it’ll be there.” Her face darkened into a scowl. “Juliana went on ahead to wipe the floor with him, but she better have left some for me – I’m gonna give that lowlife scumbag a piece of my—”

She sure is, isn't she :copyka2:

“Juliana?!” Kieran blurted out, his stomach dropping in terror. This was it. This was why. “She’s here? She’s battling – him?!” This was all wrong, this couldn’t be happening – what if she’d brought Ogerpon?!

“Yeah, she flew here from Paldea as fast as she—”

“No… no, no, she can’t be…!” Of course she’d have brought Ogerpon, she’d be pulling out all the stops, bringing her strongest fighters – but, she didn’t know—!

Kieran sure hasn't brought up to Carmine yet why Gustavus had kidnapped him! Makes sense - he didn't want to have to talk or think about it. But it also means Carmine blissfully has no idea why Juliana being here would be a problem.

“No… no, no, she can’t be…!” Of course she’d have brought Ogerpon, she’d be pulling out all the stops, bringing her strongest fighters – but, she didn’t know—!

“Huh?” said Carmine, stopping them both in their tracks, wasting time, not getting the problem…! “Of course she can, you’re her friend too, duh! Or did you go forgetting that again?”

“No, that’s not it!” Kieran wrenched himself off her, stumbling his way past Mightyena, towards the warp tile – he had to warn Juliana…! “She can’t be here!”

“Kiki, wait!” Carmine called out, frantic. “Take it easy! What’s gotten into you?!”

“He wants Ogerpon!” Kieran exclaimed. “That’s why he—” His voice cut out, the words ‘tortured me’ too huge, catching in his throat, choking him. At a sudden halt, he gave his head a shake, gasping in a breath, fighting to stay upright past the lightning flashing through his mind. “He… He was tryin’ to make me tell him where Ogerpon is! And now she’s here!”

Enjoying Kieran's pure desperation here a lot and the way actually naming the torture out loud is too huge. Poor Kieran. (Very brave of him to push through to tell her anyway, though! This is important!)

His foot hit the tile, and the blinding flash of disorientation swept over him—

“—finish it with Ivy Cudgel!”

No…!

He tried to keep running, but the dizziness was too much – the room lurched, and he only made it a few steps before collapsing to his hands and knees. Ahead of him, he heard the crunching smash of stone, looked up in time to see a grey-cloaked Ogerpon slamming her cudgel into the middle head of a Hydrapple (why did it have to be a Hydrapple?).

I like how you use the warp tiles to make Kieran disoriented here - fun use of the environment to facilitate the story and the whump.

(Also Hydrapple, the universe simply must keep reminding him how similar he is to this man)

“No!” Kieran cried out, as loud as he could. “Ogerpon! Get – get her away…!”

“Kieran?!” Juliana twisted around at the sound of his voice, her eyes widening in shock and worry as she saw him there. “What happened to you? Are you alright?!”

Ogerpon turned along with her trainer, her face hidden behind the Cornerstone Mask. “Popon?!”

Both of them worried about him, aww.

“Re… recall her!” gasped Kieran, reaching out uselessly with one hand, his clumsy, aching body resisting his efforts to do any more than that. “Now!”

Something about this just reminded me of Mark and May arriving where Rick is in chapter 75.

Ignoring the soft whoosh of the warp tile behind him, he looked up at Gustavus helplessly, and he could have sworn the man caught his eye for just a split-second before breaking into a twisted grin.

Carmine arriving on the warp tile, I assume?

Bet Gustavus sure likes to be able to rub in that he is getting Ogerpon now, because he is Stronger, and Kieran's feeble resistance meant nothing actually.

“You’re MINE!” he declared, and in one swift, fluid motion—

—he threw a Master Ball right at Ogerpon’s back.

This is an especially copyka moment both because 1) Gustavus is doing exactly what Kieran did to Terapagos, down to yelling the exact same words, and 2) Ogerpon only had her back turned there because she turned when Kieran yelled. If he hadn't come here to warn her, this might not have happened!

The ball fell to the ground and began to wobble. Kieran watched it helplessly, hoping against hope that somehow, magically, Ogerpon would just break out (just like he’d half-expected Terapagos to), and everything would be okay.

Awww, I like this mention that Kieran half-expected Terapagos to break out of the MSuaster Ball. Of course he did; even though it's a Master Ball, luck just doesn't like Kieran, right?

“But…” Juliana had Ogerpon’s Friend Ball in her hand now, pointing it uselessly at the ball on the floor. Hers seemed to have gone inactive. “How…?! You can’t just…”

“Snag Ball,” said Gustavus, briefly pressing buttons on a Pokédex, casually shifting another Pokémon to his PC like Ogerpon was just his now, as he strode forwards to pick up the Master Ball. He caught Kieran’s eye again and gave a victorious smirk. “Didn’t I tell you where my grunts came from?”

Super handy for this fic that there's an established team whose whole thing is technology that allows them to capture already captured Pokémon, isn't it.

Kieran didn’t have a clue what that meant, but neither did he care. Something acrid and appalled was bubbling up inside him, boiling into a haze of white-hot outrage. This was like some kind of sick joke, just rubbing it in. The nerve of him, from behind, with a Master Ball, like—

With a scream of fury, Kieran was on his feet, throwing himself bodily at Gustavus, grasping for the ball in his hand. “You can’t do that!” he yelled. “She’s not yours!!”

He wrestled with the man, fighting to pry the Master Ball out of his grip with whatever it took, smaller and weaker but fuelled by the sheer force of his disgusted anger at the one who’d dared to throw it, for acting like he had the right to just take what would never be his…!

From behind, with a Master Ball, like Kieran himself capturing Terapagos :copyka2:

I like how this is all just tailor-made to bring out his own self-loathing over that, and over what happened with Ogerpon. Acting like he had the right to just take what would never be his even takes it a bit further, sort of returning to Kieran's own feelings of inferiority, that simmering sense of resentment that certain things will never be his and who is he to think he has the right to have them anyway - in a twisted way he can relate.

But he has nonetheless broken through that mindset and is acting with the fierce conviction that Gustavus he can't do that because she's not his. Look at Kieran being good and understanding this and just filled with revulsion at the idea of it, because he only did that because he was in a really bad place and it was awful and now this guy is there like an evil caricature of him, doing the same for worse reasons.

An instant later, the back of that same hand slammed into his face. The world pitched, and he hit the floor, hard, one whole side of his body lighting up with pain.

Kieran’s head was spinning, but, the ball – he still had it…! Nothing else mattered – he just had to hold onto it, as tight as he—

A heavy boot smashed down onto his hand, crushing it. He cried out in agony, his grip lost, the ball rolling away – no…!

Before he could try to reach out further, the boot jabbed into his stomach like a piston, right below his ribs, and suddenly Kieran couldn’t even breathe.

He gasped and wheezed, pain flaring all over, struggling to suck in air, helplessly watching through his hair as Gustavus bent down to pick up the Master Ball again like nothing had just happened. Like all of Kieran’s efforts had been utterly useless.

Good whump Love the aching sense of desperation to Kieran wrestling the ball from him only for this much larger adult man to just mercilessly stomp on his hand and kick him in the stomach - Kieran never stood a chance against him in hand-to-hand combat, but he tried so hard anyway. And yet. He's not strong enough, is he.

“Mightyena!” Carmine roared. Kieran twisted his head back, catching a skewed glimpse of a terrifying wildfire blazing in his sister’s eyes as she pointed straight at Gustavus. “Thunder Fang him!”

The canine Pokémon snarled, leaping in to tackle Gustavus to the side. He hit the ground with Mightyena on top of him, her teeth crackling with sparks – and she sank them right into the man’s shoulder. Trapped, helpless, Kieran watched Gustavus’s body tremble and jerk horrifically, his face a grimace of agony from the lightning coursing through him.

I enjoy how the last sentence there reads very ambiguously as to which of them is trapped and helpless and grimacing in agony, which feels very appropriate to a scene where Kieran is being triggered by this.

Carmine, of course, wants to stop him but also just to get him back for hurting her brother, not just the torture that she didn't personally witness but the brutality she just had to watch. Of course she's terrifyingly angry about this - and she's been saying the whole time she's been here how much she wants to hurt these lowlifes.

“That’s right! See how you like it, you sick bastard!!” Carmine thundered down at her victim, twisted by a monstrously wild, triumphant fury. “Again, Mightyena!”

Without a second’s hesitation, Mightyena charged up her fangs once more and dug them into Gustavus’s other shoulder. The nightmarish lightning and convulsions grew even worse – Kieran was immobilised, unable to tear his gaze away, hurting from more than just physical pain as phantom electric agony shot through him too at the sight of it.

The moment the attack faded, his sister’s Pokémon let out a furious roar right in Gustavus’s face before he could even try to scream, her lightning-laced fangs terrifyingly close to his throat. Everything was closing in on Kieran, crushing him, smothering him – he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe—

I like how the narration from Kieran's POV calls Gustavus her victim. Poor Kieran - this has to be so terrifying and triggering.

“Carmine, stop it!”

It was Juliana’s voice. Her reassuring firmness cut through the nightmare, letting Kieran gasp in a breath.

“Please…” she said, and he finally managed to look away from his sister’s victim to see Juliana staring pointedly right at Kieran himself.

Her fire halted and hesitant, Carmine followed her gaze – and then her eyes widened in horror as she caught sight of her brother.

“Kiki… I…!”

She screwed her eyes shut, clenching a fist over her chest. Her shoulders shook as she took several long, shaking breaths through gritted teeth.

When Carmine opened her eyes again, they looked… safer. Still with anger simmering in there, but – more like the big sister Kieran knew.

Again with his sister's victim. Juliana is good - paying attention to Kieran, noticing him, seeing he's horrified watching this and stepping in to do something about it.

And Carmine really does care about him. She's overprotective, and can be not just overbearing but terrifying in that mode - but if she actually manages to see that what she's doing is hurting Kieran, she will stop herself. Because she's a good big sister and she cares.

Gustavus’s arm made awkward, jerking moments, like he was trying to reach for her leg but couldn’t, somehow. He was scowling furiously, probably in an attempt to mask the pain.

Of course this man will mask pain by scowling. He is Strong and that means he never has a Weakness and has never been defeated in any way. (Though I wonder if he was actually giving a command to Rotom?)

“Oh, paralysed already, are we?” simpered Carmine with a venomous smile. “Good.” She pulled out another Pokéball. “Leavanny, make sure this waste of human flesh won’t be moving another inch.”

As Leavanny emerged and got to work with String Shot, Kieran managed to relax a little. Carmine was just immobilising the man now, nothing more. That was… that was better. It meant he could focus on other things, like trying to breathe properly – that blow to his stomach had knocked the wind out of him something fierce, never mind what’d come after.

Carmine's still enjoying this way too much, but at least it's no longer quite as triggering for Kieran. (Sort of surprised he didn't react to her specifically making a jab about him being paralyzed, though - is that mainly because he didn't quite notice he was paralyzed until afterwards so it doesn't quite bring him back to the torture itself, or just because Carmine's being less scary now and her end goal is just to keep him immobile?)

Before he could even try to answer, a staticky hum pierced his ears, faint but hideously familiar. His body tensed, pain shooting through his muscles – no, he wasn’t alright at all…!

That Rotom, it was here, where was it…?! There, behind Juliana, emerging from the huge machine against the back wall. The Rotom jittered forwards in Kieran’s tilted, hair-shrouded view, and for a terrifying moment it seemed to be coming for him. But the reality was even worse – lying there in its path, forgotten where Gustavus had dropped it upon being attacked, was the Master Ball with Ogerpon inside.

“Ohhgh…!” Kieran gasped. He was too weak to get up, wheezing for breath too hard to form coherent words, but he had to tell Juliana, warn her – “Ohhhhghph…!”

Oh boy, Rotom trauma Of course he initially thinks it's coming for him, even though rationally the kid lying helpless and wheezing on the floor would never be the best target even if it wasn't going for the ball - he's just understandably terrified at the sight and sound of it.

(This is another tragic moment of Kieran actually inadvertently sort of leading to what happens to Ogerpon - Juliana was distracted worrying about Kieran, and if she hadn't been I imagine what she'd have done right away would have been to get the Master Ball.)

“It – It’s okay!” Juliana tried to reassure him, still worrying about him like he mattered right now. He flopped one hand uselessly on the floor in an attempt to point, but his crushed, stinging fingers weren’t working properly. “Don’t, don’t try to move, if you can’t…”

You do matter, Kieran! And that's why Juliana is focused on you. (But he wishes she weren't, because she and Ogerpon are so much more important, aren't they?)

“Control her?!” Carmine’s gaze snapped to the floor, where Gustavus’s hand was awkwardly, surreptitiously trying to work some kind of small device out of his pocket despite his near-immobility. “Leavanny, that thing, destroy it! Now!”

Quick as a flash, the bug Pokémon kicked the device across the floor and sliced it clean in two with one of her blades. Had that been… a remote control for the machine? Then, that meant…!

“Hah!” Gustavus spat. “You really think I wouldn’t have installed an automatic setting as a failsafe? That alone should be more than enough for the ogre’s might to overwhelm you.”

The automatic setting is interesting mostly for the bit where initially Gustavus was going for a remote. The story doesn't do anything with the remote, because Leavanny immediately destroys it - but the remote exists at all because of course Gustavus wanted to actually control Ogerpon himself, not just have Rotom put her in the machine and then activate an automatic mode. He still wants to do that once Ogerpon has gotten rid of them.

Kieran braced himself for something terrible, but as she stood there, she seemed almost… normal? …Almost. She wasn’t wearing a mask, which let him see the look in her eyes – or an unnerving lack thereof, staring vacantly ahead.

Just making me think of Kieran and the unsettling lack of light in his eyes during Indigo Disk :copyka2:

“Po…?” Blinking, Ogerpon looked up in recognition, herself again – but then her gaze flitted anxiously between the masks circling her, like this wasn’t under her control. Like she couldn’t stop them.

Mind-control whump is always best when the victim is aware enough to be trying to struggle against it

“No… Get back, Juliana…” Kieran found himself saying, gripped with a horrible apprehension. “I-It’s not safe…!” This machine, the power Gustavus had – he’d dared to hope for a moment, but even Ogerpon couldn’t…

Ogerpon was supposed to be the strongest, most amazing Pokémon, wasn't she? If even she can't stop this, Kieran comes perilously close to just accepting that Gustavus really is just impossibly powerful.

With a surging thrum of power from the machine, dark lightning seized Ogerpon’s body out of nowhere, making her arch and grimace in pain. All four masks around her exploded at once into dazzling, blinding Terastallisation.

And Ogerpon screamed.

Forced Terastalization, just like with Terapagos! And she's suffering, and Kieran is here as someone who can try to help her and restore her agency to her. Sort of a dual chance to make up for both the way he acted with Ogerpon and with Terapagos at once.

I imagine, since Gustavus is immobile and Ogerpon is on the automatic setting, chapter four will be mostly about how they help Ogerpon break through the mind-control while she's forced to try to eliminate all enemies in a generic way. Probably Gustavus would have at least tried to program the machine so that she would not attack him, but I wonder if she might still attempt to - I imagine Gustavus is still going to be relevant, one way or another.

Either way, this was a good chapter with a lot of stuff in it - nice comfort and recovery followed by a breakneck series of further desperation and trauma as we go repeatedly back and forth - Juliana's there, Gustavus catches Ogerpon, Kieran gets the ball back, Gustavus gets it back again, Carmine disables Gustavus, except also she tortures him and retraumatizes Kieran, and then Rotom gets the ball to the machine, but Leavanny manages to destroy the remote, but there's an automatic setting... Truly just does not let up. This wasn't supposed to happen, indeed. I think my favorite bits were the various bits with Kieran's self-hatred and hatred of Gustavus being one and the same - truly just some delicious copyka.

Really looking forward to how the climax plays out and how Kieran properly finds his strength, after all the ways he's suffered! And to him getting some good Furret hugs.

Ogerpon should also get hugs. Hugs need to happen.

 

[elyvorg]

:copyka2: He is fine. (I enjoy how it's really coming out what a coping mechanism this is. He has to be fine because he doesn't matter.)

It is very much a coping mechanism - and the fact that it's consciously one is actually a sign of Kieran's growth! Not so long ago, the notion that he doesn't matter was just an Ingrained Truth in Kieran's mind, but now he has a small spark of the belief that he does matter at least a little bit, to the point that he's having to suppress that and consciously insist to himself that he doesn't matter in order to cope with this.

(If the torture had gone on longer, though, somewhere along the way the notion would have become ingrained truth again that he'd have had to re-unlearn. But I'm not so cruel as to let that happen to Kieran here. This is character development whump, not character regression whump, after all.)

Enjoyed the opening in general and how you convey the agonizing waiting, still sort of dissociated, just lying there, not doing or thinking anything at all because then he'd have to think about what (he thinks) is coming.

He is Fine. :copyka2: If he'd been able to acknowledge the notion that people on the outside would actually be looking for him and trying to rescue him, then maybe the waiting wouldn't seem so bad because there'd be the possibility of a positive outcome, but as it is, he sees nothing but more pain in his future, poor kid.

Oh, Kieran. He's so surprised, not just that Carmine has Dragonite but that Dragonite would even want to be there or care about him, as if she'd do anything else!

As soon as he realises Carmine's here, the notion that she'd obviously want to save him at least makes sense to him, but Dragonite?????? does not compute, what

Her underestimation of what has happened to him is painful. Incredulous that they tied him up. Immediate Oh No at when she'll find out :copyka2:

Heh, it didn't occur to me that this would be an Oh No moment for readers upon realising just how little she knows of what's happened to him, but that's definitely tasty

I love Dragonite and how you write her - just little things, but the way she's still protective, looking out for him, and the low, rumbling croon as he meets her eye just give such a sense of her character as someone who was really worried about him. And while she did get knocked out, she was just determined enough to force herself back to consciousness anyway because she had to follow them and see where they took him. What a good dragon.

Haha, yes, there was me in the previous review reply pointing out that Dragonite almost certainly did faint, as if that meant she couldn't possibly have followed the kidnappers and know where Kieran is - when really, the fact that she'd fainted just means she was even more determined in order to force herself awake and follow them anyway, because she is Good.

Aww. Legitimately sweet of Carmine how she just wants to hug him really tightly but she stops immediately when it's hurting him, worried, and then realizes the reason it's hurting him isn't just that she was being too much but that they'd done something to him. What an awful realization.

She was so scared she'd never find him, of course she just wants to hold him tight and be reassured that he's here! (She opened with "I knew we'd be able to find you", but that was absolutely to cover up the fact that she was terrified maybe they just wouldn't.)

But then whoops, I do enjoy a good "character wants to hug loved one who's been whumped but that just makes the pain Worse" Especially so if they didn't even realise the person was hurt until they accidentally make it hurt more. fun times.

Oh boy. Of course Kieran has a pretty detached strategy-brain, the mode he was in constantly while obsessing about getting stronger. Helpful commentary from that part of him.

Thanks, Kieran's strategy brain, for casually reminding him of just how many Thunderbolts he suffered!

Boy, she sure is taking the news well :copyka2: And her Mightyena, of course, is equally protective and equally inclined to seek revenge.

I made sure to include a few little bits showing Mightyena being just as angry at the news that Kieran was hurt, just so that it makes sense why she doesn't even hesitate when ordered to attack Gustavus. Most Pokémon, even loyal ones, would probably pause if their trainer ordered them to attack another human, but Mightyena has the full context and she also wants to make this lowlife pay.

Kieran's reaction is also a bit of foreshadowing, isn't it. He doesn't want to remember the lightning or think about any of it, but Carmine wants her idea of justice a bit too much to properly think to be considerate of him.

Carmine's biggest flaw, particularly when it comes to her interactions with Kieran, is that she struggles to regulate her own emotions in a way that can lead to her disregarding his - especially when said emotions of hers relate to realising that he's hurting in some way. This really was a delicious scenario for exploring that flawed side of her. She can barely cope at all with the realisation of just how badly her precious little brother's been hurt - she doesn't know what else to do with that pain other than be furiously vengeful towards the bastards who'd dare to do this to him, whether that's what Kieran would want or not.

Oof, multiple layers to this. He doesn't want to lie to her like she lied to him. But it also says a lot that his first inclination was to lie in the first place. He doesn't want to think about or remember any of it - and the fact she's angrily asking him questions like that must by itself remind him of Gustavus's interrogation. When he says it hurts, she takes it to mean physically and gets out a Cheri Berry, but I think really he means emotionally more than physically, both having to think about and remember it and for her to be there demanding he give her information about a person she wants to hurt.

Ohh, man, I didn't even realise when writing this that Carmine's angry questions about someone she wants to hurt would be reminiscent of the interrogation, but it totally would and that totally is part of why this is upsetting to Kieran here, aaa. But I absolutely intended him to mean the "it hurts" emotionally even though Carmine takes it to mean physically, yes.

And I definitely was going for parallelling both Carmine's past lie to him and also him trying to lie during the torture with that line there. (As well as maybe a sense that he's instinctively lied that he didn't know when she's asked him similar things in the past - like maybe if he told her about being bullied and she demanded to know who was responsible, he'd be inclined to pretend he didn't know because her getting involved tended to just make things worse.)

❤️ This is really good, the physical descriptions and the emotional. The realization that he mattered to her is super cathartic after how he spent the torture coping by insisting he doesn't matter at all.

Huuuugs! It's not so hard to remember that he at least matters to her, it turns out, not when she's right there holding him and he no longer has to cling to the notion that he doesn't matter at all in order to cope with the apparent neverending torture.

Carmine sort of realizing the depths of what they must have done to him, and feeling emotions about it, just off the way he's breaking down like that, my heart.

hnnng yes. She doesn't know what they did to him beyond "they Hurt him somehow and apparently also paralysed him?", but oh god, he hasn't cried this hard and been this openly vulnerable with her since he was so, so little and what on earth could have been this bad, how dare they

I like him again flinching at the thought of having to answer her question, get words around what happened somehow, and Carmine again quickly apologizing and telling him he doesn't have to answer that, because she immediately senses she's making things worse for him actually and doesn't want to do that. Carmine is a good sister.

She is! And it really was basically a rhetorical question all along - it was just her way of processing and getting words around the realisation of how awful it must have been, not that she was ever actually expecting him to be able to tell her in this moment.

“But – but listen, you’re safe now, okay?” she went on. Gently, she pried him off her so that she could look at him, brushing some of his hair out of his face. Her eyes were watery too, but a familiar spark of fierceness burned in them nonetheless. “I’m not gonna let those pathetic wastes of human flesh lay another finger on you, d’you hear me?!”

Sniffling, Kieran broke into a smile. “Yeah, Sis,” he said. “I know.”

Man, she could drive him mad sometimes, but… sometimes she was the best big sister in the world.

Nothing unsettling at all about her repeated threats and referring to the people who did this as 'pathetic wastes of human flesh', nope :copyka2:

This one's less unsettling to Kieran, though! Carmine's still not mincing words about how much she hates these guys, but this time she's not promising to hurt them, just that she won't let them hurt Kieran again, which is exactly the reassurance he needs right now. He knows his sister can and will protect him from physical harm.

(And yet. That particular biggest pathetic waste of human flesh sure does end up laying another finger on Kieran quite brutally, doesn't he, despite what Carmine promised. :copyka2: )

((...Which is actually not Carmine's fault, really. She did everything she could to protect Kieran - it only happened because Kieran willingly removed himself from her bubble of protection and risked getting hurt again because he wanted to protect Ogerpon. It was his choice to take that risk.))

He has learned crying can feel better! Proud of the boyyy

Yesss! Kieran shows such healthy approaches to things in the epilogue and postgame that I figured it just made sense that he'd have learned this important fact, too. He must have had a lot to cry about, after all.

I like how you made the Pokémon's cries faintly audible from inside the Pokéballs, just so they can express relief that he's safe even before a good chance to properly send them out. Worldbuilding that serves the Adorable

Actually not my worldbuilding - this is canon! I wasn't going to include this, but then I happened to be rewatching the cutscene from just before the climactic fight in the main SV storyline, and it turns out that you hear Koraidon/Miraidon's cry faintly from their Poké Ball, like they're asking to be let out to protect you. Absolutely taking that and using it in this fic for more Adorable.

I think him choosing not to put his hair up again is less about not wanting to bother with fixing it and more about kind of wanting to be hidden from the world right now, and not wanting to expose himself like he was when it happened.

that definitely might be a lot of the reason why he doesn't do that, indeed. The Hairstyle Symbolism continues!

She's definitely teasing him here in an effort to sort of bring back normalcy and ease the tension a bit, isn't she. What a good sister.

She is! They are good dorky siblings. (Although she's not kidding; she absolutely would have given him a piggy back if he couldn't walk at all.)

(also please imagine her giving him piggy back rides when they were both younger, love these siblings just being cute together)

Dragonite huuuug <3 I like Kieran feeling guilty about not realizing how much his own Pokémon cared about him. So hard for this boy to understand and appreciate that he is loved - but at least now he's capable of realizing he should never have thought that.

He really is right to feel a little guilty! Back in chapter 1, his narration insisted that it wasn't that he didn't trust her, really - but, he kind of didn't. Sure, he trusted her to obey his commands and battle for him, but he never truly trusted her to care about him, even though she'd been his Pokémon for this long and she'd never given him any reason to assume she didn't.

(That said, Dragonite is quite quiet and reserved personality-wise, so she also never really gave him any explicit reason to see that she did care about him, until now. Kieran still should have assumed as much anyway! ...but of course, he has Issues)

Likewise with Carmine - it really didn't ever cross his mind that she'd be looking for him (like it didn't cross my mind), but after being rescued and receiving some comfort and reassurance he's able to reflect and see that obviously she would be. That's who she is, and she loves him that much, just like Dragonite, and Kieran wasn't able to see that as he was being broken down but he can now.

He really was just so broken down that the possibility of anyone looking for him didn't even cross his mind, because no matter how insignificant he feels, he's always going to know that his sister would want to find him if he just thinks about her at all. They may have their clashes and their baggage, but she has always, always Been There for him, if nothing else.

Aww, look at her being protective! Won't retreat to the Pokéball until Kieran convinces her on the basis that he might need her later instead.

She Protecc. Needs to be reassured that he will call on her later for protection if he needs it before she leaves him be.

Just a little hint that Kieran's still feeling pretty weak and insignificant, though - not sure if he could do much without his sister's support.

I mostly just intended this to be a genuine fact, to establish that he is still hurt enough that he'd struggle to walk unaided, so that it makes sense when he collapses later on. But I suppose it also does say something about Kieran's mindset that he finds himself thinking about things in that pessimistic way.

But also, his sister being there is a source of strength! Her being there, with her Pokémon, gives him confidence - and then he's able to also think yeah, he also has his own Pokémon, he's able to defend himself, isn't he.

It's almost like he was only weak and helpless because he'd been externally rendered that way, and not that he's actually inherently weak at all! :pikashock:

Definitely not foreshadowing, Carmine having enjoyed tying up these lowlifes and being thrilled about it at him while Kieran finds it all a bit unsettling :copyka2:

Definitely nothing hypocritical about her being aghast that Kieran was tied up and paralysed, and yet gleeful at having done the exact same thing to the grunts - no, it's fine, the grunts are Bad Guys who had it coming for being in on the kidnapping. (Even if several of the guys she did this to probably didn't play any direct part in the kidnapping itself.)

Definitely nothing ominous about cheerfully saying she'll see about how hard they are to kill :copyka2:

Haha, I didn't even consciously intend that line to be more of Carmine being Concerning(TM), just there to illustrate one of the reasons for the name Hydra, but hey, it totally works as that too, doesn't it :copyka2:

Carmine's trying hard to pep him up and dismiss Team Hydra, but it just makes him feel worse because he in fact thinks they are very similar, and probably he still feels like ultimately he was shown to be weaker than them, and it doesn't feel correct to say his hydra is just way better. After all, if he were truly strong, surely he wouldn't have been tortured like that, because that's how anything works.

Yep, Carmine's saying that to try and cheer him up, but she has no idea just how painfully similar Kieran found his kidnapper to be to him, so reminding him of that just rubs salt in that wound :copyka2:

Aww, look at him just being a big dork.

I went back and forth over whether to include the warp tiles that are canonically in the Plasma Frigate because it'd be a whole thing to describe them - but ultimately I decided it was worth it, to allow Kieran to get to be a big dork and feel a little more like his usual self for a moment. :3

Kierannn! He has made progress, he is healing - but the fact he had to be rescued is still feeding his inferiority complex. His sister is very cool, and he's grateful for her... but he himself is just the guy who needs to be saved. He's still stuck in that mindset.

When really, Kieran is the hero who endured torture without telling the bad guy anything important! That's also an impressively cool role to have (if a more unfortunate one), and even those such heroes often need outside help to be rescued! He just still can't quite view the torture as anything except him Suffering Because He's Weak.

But it's okay to need rely on other people sometimes, Kieran!

Carmine is very right, and also obviously doesn't quite get it, bless her. It's just bizarre to her that he would think something like that.

Carmine actually kind of does get it more than Kieran does! Kieran is thinking about how he'd resolved to rely less on other people, particularly his sister, and be more independent - something he was talking about wanting to do even back at the beginning of Teal Mask. Carmine, too, has also realised that she needs to give Kieran space to be more independent and has resolved to be less overprotective of him - she does actually know what he's getting at when he says he was trying to rely on her less.

But even then, she said she'd still keep an eye on him. Because sometimes things might happen where he still does need her, even though he's grown a lot more independent overall, and now is so obviously one of those times - all of that stuff about him not relying on others so much doesn't even remotely apply here! Carmine can see that, but Kieran can't until she points it out, because he was clinging a little too hard to the notion that he needs to stop relying on others altogether.

But Kieran's picturing idealized heroes, Juliana (or the imaginary version of her that exists in his head). And yet... when he actually thinks about it, once again he manages to reflect a little and realize that hang on, that's kind of a silly thing to think.

Maybe even Juliana wouldn't be able to escape if she'd had literally every single possible bit of agency and power stripped from her, gasp :pikashock:

(and maybe that means that you weren't actually weak at all and just also had all of those things externally taken from you, Kieran? no?)

Yes! It's okay to be helped and saved sometimes!

It is! It's always good to grow more independent, but even then, nobody can be expected to do everything alone!

A legitimate accomplishment from Kieran, which he of course instinctively internally responds to by dismissing it, saying it was all Juliana at work. But he supposes he helped at least a little! Slowly recovering the ability to be proud of himself!

I started planning out this chapter before the epilogue came out, but I was thrilled that the epilogue gave me an example of Kieran Being Strong and Making A Difference that he could be reminded of here to help pep him back up (even if, in true Kieran style, he still instinctively downplays his own contribution there).

If she had to, of course, she totally would have come on her own. She is a good big sister.

Oh, she absolutely would. Which would probably not go nearly as well with her being on her own, but damn it she would be too desperate not to throw herself in there anyway.

Drayton actually cares even though he's very bad at showing it! I enjoy Kieran sort of realizing on reflection that the other three would, even though he's still so unused to having friends that it seemed surprising. But Drayton was different; he really was under the impression he still hated him. And yet he's also there.

(Also enjoy Carmine being very Carmine about it.)

Really is about time Drayton actually properly gave Kieran any indication whatsoever that he cares. I appreciate that this fic gave me a situation serious enough to force him into doing that, because I am still kind of mad at Drayton for being such an unnecessary dick to Kieran in the postgame. >:(

And the fact that Drayton caring is an actual genuine surprise also allows Kieran to reflect and realise that actually, no, the other three being here to help isn't surprising, he knows they're his friends, of course they'd want to come save him. Look who has friends (plural!) after all!

It is, isn't it. Kieran wasn't expecting them to come from so far away, has been doing his best to not think about the fact Juliana has Ogerpon.

Granted, Penny and the others from Paldea didn't actually come here like the Elite Four did - they don't have fliers, so it would have taken too long - but Juliana told them about what'd happened, and Penny, being Penny, can still help remotely by sending them useful info.

“Juliana went on ahead to wipe the floor with him, but she better have left some for me – I’m gonna give that lowlife scumbag a piece of my—”

She sure is, isn't she :copyka2:

Indeed she is - and in fact, doing so is the only reason she brought Kieran here! The much more sensible and correct priority to have would have been just to get Kieran off the ship as soon as they were outside, get him to safety where he can't be hurt any more. But instead, Carmine prioritises getting revenge on the person who hurt him, and brings Kieran along for that as if he'd want to see her do so, which, uhhhhhhh

(mind you, that does wind up being a good thing, because if not then Gustavus would have just stolen Ogerpon off Juliana with nobody else there to help, but it's not like Carmine knew any of that at the time)

Kieran sure hasn't brought up to Carmine yet why Gustavus had kidnapped him! Makes sense - he didn't want to have to talk or think about it. But it also means Carmine blissfully has no idea why Juliana being here would be a problem.

Yyyup. Kieran would have brought it up sooner if he had reason to think Juliana might be here, but he had a hard enough time comprehending the idea that anyone at all, and then anyone but Carmine, would have come to save him. And Juliana was all the way in Paldea, sure she's his friend but she doesn't care about him that much as to come running from so far away, right?

(The first chapter briefly established that Juliana's back in Paldea right now - I went back and forth over whether to have her be in Paldea or at Blueberry but settled on the former mostly because it then gives Kieran much less reason to expect her to be here on the rescue mission until this moment here.)

Meanwhile, Carmine also never actually asked Kieran why he was kidnapped and hurt, because to her that question was just not even remotely a priority, not next to making sure he's safe and punishing the scumbags who did this to him. Who cares why they did it, they're Bad Guys, Bad Guys just do stuff like this, right? (and hey, Kieran's a really strong trainer, it probably had something to do with that)

Enjoying Kieran's pure desperation here a lot and the way actually naming the torture out loud is too huge. Poor Kieran. (Very brave of him to push through to tell her anyway, though! This is important!)

His narration never even used the word "torture" at all until this moment - it was already so much to bear, and framing it as him being tortured would have made it even more terrifyingly real. This brave kid.

I like how you use the warp tiles to make Kieran disoriented here - fun use of the environment to facilitate the story and the whump.

Originally, before I'd looked into the Plasma Frigate and learned that it has warp tiles, Kieran was still going to collapse here, because I needed him to be physically unable to block the ball from hitting Ogerpon. The idea I had for that was something like him struggling to push open a set of heavy double doors and collapsing forwards from the momentum once he did. But hey, warp tiles work too! The only reason I wrote them as causing a brief disorienting lurch was precisely so that this could allow Kieran to collapse here when he needed to.

(Also Hydrapple, the universe simply must keep reminding him how similar he is to this man)

I wondered if giving Gustavus a Hydrapple would be too on-the-nose, but nah, it being on-the-nose is the point, rubbing in their similarity for Kieran until he reaches breaking point.

Both of them worried about him, aww.

Was Ogerpon worried about him? She was wearing a mask, so who can say? :copyka2:

Carmine arriving on the warp tile, I assume?

Yep - Kieran wasn't going to be paying it much attention in the moment, but I wanted to quietly establish that she saw everything from Ogerpon being captured onwards.

Bet Gustavus sure likes to be able to rub in that he is getting Ogerpon now, because he is Stronger, and Kieran's feeble resistance meant nothing actually.

It's also very telling that Gustavus would rather rub this in to Kieran, and not to Juliana, whom he now knows is Ogerpon's actual trainer! You'd think he'd be more insistent at proving he is Stronger than the person who actually truly deserves to have Ogerpon as a partner - but thanks to Kieran utterly refusing to break under the torture, showing that Gusvatus can't just get everything he wants by throwing his "strength" around, Gustavus now has more of a petty sense of rivalry with him. See also: him bragging about the Snag Ball to Kieran as well, even though Juliana was the one who asked how he could do that.

This is an especially copyka moment both because 1) Gustavus is doing exactly what Kieran did to Terapagos, down to yelling the exact same words, and 2) Ogerpon only had her back turned there because she turned when Kieran yelled. If he hadn't come here to warn her, this might not have happened!

Yyyyup. Plenty of reason for Kieran to feel guilty here!

To be fair, Gustavus did have a plan B. I imagine he poker-faced extremely hard when Juliana sent out Ogerpon, hoping for some kind of distraction, which Kieran helpfully provided for him. But if that hadn't happened, once Hydrapple went down, his next move would have been to call out Rotom from the machine and simply snap his fingers - a nonverbal command for it to attack the human with Thunderbolt, which would hopefully have been unexpected enough to distract Ogerpon and allow him to throw the ball.

(Kieran doesn't know that, though, does he.)

Awww, I like this mention that Kieran half-expected Terapagos to break out of the Master Ball. Of course he did; even though it's a Master Ball, luck just doesn't like Kieran, right?

Of course he did! Heck, even I half-expected Terapagos to break out in that moment, because surely Kieran cannot just get to have this, so of course Kieran himself was thinking that too.

From behind, with a Master Ball, like Kieran himself capturing Terapagos :copyka2:

I like how this is all just tailor-made to bring out his own self-loathing over that, and over what happened with Ogerpon. Acting like he had the right to just take what would never be his even takes it a bit further, sort of returning to Kieran's own feelings of inferiority, that simmering sense of resentment that certain things will never be his and who is he to think he has the right to have them anyway - in a twisted way he can relate.

Yyyup. That bit you italicised there was very deliberately written in such a way that it also refers to Kieran himself.

But he has nonetheless broken through that mindset and is acting with the fierce conviction that Gustavus can't do that because she's not his. Look at Kieran being good and understanding this and just filled with revulsion at the idea of it, because he only did that because he was in a really bad place and it was awful and now this guy is there like an evil caricature of him, doing the same for worse reasons.

He may be full of self-loathing that this is bringing back, but it's also showing how much he's grown past that and realised how wrong it was, because he hates the idea of anybody else doing the same thing!

Good whump Love the aching sense of desperation to Kieran wrestling the ball from him only for this much larger adult man to just mercilessly stomp on his hand and kick him in the stomach - Kieran never stood a chance against him in hand-to-hand combat, but he tried so hard anyway. And yet. He's not strong enough, is he.

The correct thing for Kieran to have done here would have been to send out one of his Pokémon and have them wrestle the ball from Gustavus. Unfortunately, he was extremely not thinking clearly in the outrage of the moment, whoops, so desperate injured child against full-grown adult man it is. This is a guy who will torture a helpless kid, so he is also definitely a guy who would physically assault an injured kid, which is excellent for some whump

I enjoy how the last sentence there reads very ambiguously as to which of them is trapped and helpless and grimacing in agony, which feels very appropriate to a scene where Kieran is being triggered by this.

Carmine, of course, wants to stop him but also just to get him back for hurting her brother, not just the torture that she didn't personally witness but the brutality she just had to watch. Of course she's terrifyingly angry about this - and she's been saying the whole time she's been here how much she wants to hurt these lowlifes.

Not only that, but, while Carmine was aware for a while that Kieran had been really badly hurt somehow by this guy, she only very recently realised, just before arriving in the room, that he was literally tortured for information on the Pokémon he loves. Her horror at that realisation is extremely raw, and then she goes and witnesses the same guy physically assaulting her brother in this ruthless, brutal way - of course she just utterly loses it. She is very much the kind of person who would go for Revenge in a situation like this.

(Kieran's narration in the moment where he sort-of told her about the torture sees that she's horrified and thinks "good, she understands why Ogerpon's in danger" - but really, she's horrified because she's realising you were tortured, Kieran! The Ogerpon thing is very much second priority for Carmine in that moment.)

I like how the narration from Kieran's POV calls Gustavus her victim. Poor Kieran - this has to be so terrifying and triggering.

It really is - it's so horrifying to see that his sister is capable of hurting someone else in the exact same awful way he was hurt (and enjoying doing so), and the fact that the victim happens to be the guy who did that to him in the first place is just completely irrelevant next to that.

Again with his sister's victim. Juliana is good - paying attention to Kieran, noticing him, seeing he's horrified watching this and stepping in to do something about it.

Juliana mostly just told her to stop because she was horrified at seeing her friend doing this, too! (because of course, she doesn't even know most of the this-guy-tortured-Kieran context that led to this.) But then she noticed Kieran's reaction, and that's an even bigger reason that's even more likely to convince Carmine to stop.

And Carmine really does care about him. She's overprotective, and can be not just overbearing but terrifying in that mode - but if she actually manages to see that what she's doing is hurting Kieran, she will stop herself. Because she's a good big sister and she cares.

She doooeees! It's so hard for her to get a hold of her terrifyingly overwhelming emotions and stop herself, but she will do it, for Kieran. All this time she'd been convincing herself that all of her vengeful anger was for Kieran, but now she can see that it really wasn't at all.

Of course this man will mask pain by scowling. He is Strong and that means he never has a Weakness and has never been defeated in any way.

And of course Kieran realises that that's what he's doing with the scowl - Kieran himself has some experience of masking (emotional) pain and Weakness by scowling a lot, doesn't he.

(Though I wonder if he was actually giving a command to Rotom?)

That wasn't the intent, no! Rotom is aware of its master's goal and did this on its own in an attempt to please him - especially after he was kind of mad at it earlier because it didn't do a good enough job of zapping the human kid

Carmine's still enjoying this way too much, but at least it's no longer quite as triggering for Kieran. (Sort of surprised he didn't react to her specifically making a jab about him being paralyzed, though - is that mainly because he didn't quite notice he was paralyzed until afterwards so it doesn't quite bring him back to the torture itself, or just because Carmine's being less scary now and her end goal is just to keep him immobile?)

Hm, it just never occurred to my mental simulation of Kieran to react to that? I guess the reason is a bit of both - the paralysis didn't really feel like part of the torture because he wasn't even aware of it until Carmine showed up, and yeah, she is being significantly Less Scary now. Just immobilising Gustavus is a pretty reasonable goal under the circumstances, even if she's a little too thrilled that he's paralysed.

Oh boy, Rotom trauma Of course he initially thinks it's coming for him, even though rationally the kid lying helpless and wheezing on the floor would never be the best target even if it wasn't going for the ball - he's just understandably terrified at the sight and sound of it.

Him lying helpless and gasping on the floor never stopped Rotom from hurting him before, why would it now?

(This is another tragic moment of Kieran actually inadvertently sort of leading to what happens to Ogerpon - Juliana was distracted worrying about Kieran, and if she hadn't been I imagine what she'd have done right away would have been to get the Master Ball.)

Yyyup! If only Juliana didn't care about him, none of this would have happened to Ogerpon

You do matter, Kieran! And that's why Juliana is focused on you. (But he wishes she weren't, because she and Ogerpon are so much more important, aren't they?)

But he doesn't matter right now, not compared to Ogerpon! His situation's not about to get any imminently worse, but Ogerpon's is.

(But yes, Juliana absolutely went for worrying about Kieran first because she assumed Ogerpon's situation wouldn't get any worse inside the ball now that Gustavus is incapacitated, and meanwhile Kieran is struggling to breathe down there and that seems a lot more urgent.)

The automatic setting is interesting mostly for the bit where initially Gustavus was going for a remote. The story doesn't do anything with the remote, because Leavanny immediately destroys it - but the remote exists at all because of course Gustavus wanted to actually control Ogerpon himself, not just have Rotom put her in the machine and then activate an automatic mode. He still wants to do that once Ogerpon has gotten rid of them.

Something like that, yep! I almost didn't include this bit with the remote, but I'm glad I did. There's a little more I could say about the significance of it getting destroyed, buuut that should probably wait until after Chapter 4.

Mind-control whump is always best when the victim is aware enough to be trying to struggle against it

Of course it is! This would be so much less fun (and relevant) if Ogerpon wasn't suffering.

Forced Terastalization, just like with Terapagos! And she's suffering, and Kieran is here as someone who can try to help her and restore her agency to her. Sort of a dual chance to make up for both the way he acted with Ogerpon and with Terapagos at once.

Oh man, I didn't even realise that this parallels the way Kieran effectively forced Terapagos to Terastallise, hah! Nice.

I imagine, since Gustavus is immobile and Ogerpon is on the automatic setting, chapter four will be mostly about how they help Ogerpon break through the mind-control while she's forced to try to eliminate all enemies in a generic way. Probably Gustavus would have at least tried to program the machine so that she would not attack him, but I wonder if she might still attempt to - I imagine Gustavus is still going to be relevant, one way or another.

Either way, this was a good chapter with a lot of stuff in it - nice comfort and recovery followed by a breakneck series of further desperation and trauma as we go repeatedly back and forth - Juliana's there, Gustavus catches Ogerpon, Kieran gets the ball back, Gustavus gets it back again, Carmine disables Gustavus, except also she tortures him and retraumatizes Kieran, and then Rotom gets the ball to the machine, but Leavanny manages to destroy the remote, but there's an automatic setting... Truly just does not let up. This wasn't supposed to happen, indeed. I think my favorite bits were the various bits with Kieran's self-hatred and hatred of Gustavus being one and the same - truly just some delicious copyka.

Yess, I'm glad you appreciated all of the Things Going Wrong in the back third of the chapter; I really enjoyed how all of that worked out in the planning to just be an absolute non-stop cavalcade of Bad. Bringing out Kieran's self-loathing through Gustavus was also very tasty and one of my favourite parts to write.

Really looking forward to how the climax plays out and how Kieran properly finds his strength, after all the ways he's suffered! And to him getting some good Furret hugs.

Ogerpon should also get hugs. Hugs need to happen.

There will be lots of hugs, rest assured!