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Hi everybody, for those of you who happened to follow me a bit closely in the spring, you might have remembered that I ground out a set of “drabbles” in the course of like two weeks as part of the Fifth Anniversary Drabble Bingo in May 2024 in which I dipped my toes into the water with a hurt/comfort narrative with a recurring character that’s popped up in some of my other writings. Well, it’s here back in an expanded format where I actually bothered to do some quality control in a story that under current planning was slated to run for about a dozen updates.
For those who have been following me for the really long term, you will probably recognize the core of this story as being a retelling of a character arc from my time in the We Are All Pokémon Trainers RP circa around 2010-ish, which extends to the cast that includes cameos of characters played by @Venia Silente from here on Thousand Roads (who also was a beta reader for this story), Luke924 from FFN, along with Tangent128 and rmctagg09 from SerebiiForums. Well, sort of. The names of most of said characters were changed to ones thematically related to their original ones and some details regarding their characters were altered to fit a more grounded (har har) setting and chronology than the ones their original incarnations are from. As such, this story is dedicated to them and the others that I made fond memories with back then, and I hope that my writing did their efforts justice.
As is a bit of a tradition for stories outside of my primaryworks as a writer, this story updates on a schedule of “whenever I have the extra time, energy, and motivation for it”, though the Prologue and first chapter will be released roughly a week apart from each other. But if all goes well, this story should be done and dusted sometime by around this same time next year.
The original drabble versions are included in spoiler tags on the chapters they correspond to. They generally follow the same plot as the final versions, but if you’re curious as to what this story originally looked like and don’t feel like sifting through the Drabble Bingo thread, they’re here as an archival novelty.
Though that’s enough explaining for now, let’s get into the part that you’re all here for:
The Salamence watched as a flash of light melted away the simulated surroundings of her Pokéball and the world outside filled in around her. She looked down at her feet, at her shelled underbelly and then over at the red wings that she’d known for all of two days. Two very long and upsetting days. Between the couches, the Pokéball design on the floor, and the counter with large machines behind it, it dawned on her that she was in the lobby of a Pokécenter. The color of the counter and the layout looked a bit different, but it wasn’t that different from the ones that she’d seen before.
“Welcome to Johto, Marl.”
Marl blinked and craned her head over towards the source of the voice. It was a Marowak, holding her bone and looking up at her. Eira, one of her teammates. She’d been there with her back at her trainer’s house and she’d gotten used to looking down at her over the past couple days, but…
“Wait, Eira? What are we doing all the way there in Johto? What’s-?”
She turned back towards the doors of the Pokécenter lobby, where she saw her other teammates: Aries the Ampharos, Jaki the Honchkrow, a Lucario and Floatzel that she didn’t recognize. And of course, Roy the Blastoise—her trainer’s starter—was there too. He seemed much more tense than he normally was, and slowly lumbered up to her with a sheepish grin.
“Good to see you again, Marl. You’re… uh… bigger than when we last saw you.”
Marl felt her face curl into a frown and her fangs poke out of her mouth. No kidding she was bigger than the last time they met, and whose fault was that? Seriously, after everything that happened, Calvin seriously had the gall to send his other partners to meet her but not show his face himself?
She then heard footsteps and turned and saw him. A young man with an unplaceable face, who was nervously waving at her.
The Salamence grit her teeth as she felt heat at the back of her throat. Her eyes narrowed, as the rest of the Pokécenter faded away from her mind and gave way to hot, smoldering anger.
“You!”
Marl bared her fangs and lunged at the man. She briefly saw him stumble back, when she felt claws dig into her shoulder and another clamp her mouth shut. It was Roy, holding her back with Aries and Eira joining in to do much the same. She didn’t realize the three were so heavy, since for all her growling and thrashing, she just couldn’t shake the three and pull herself ahead.
“Let go of me!” she snarled. “This doesn’t involve you!”
They clamored in overlapping voices as she saw the man with the unplaceable face freeze and stare from the ground.
“Whoa! Easy! What’s gotten into you?!” the Lucario cried.
“Are, uh… all of his Pokémon like this?” the Floatzel asked. “Since maybe I shouldn’t have come along otherwise.”
Marl noticed that Lucario and Floatzel approaching from the side. She had no idea who those two were supposed to be, since her trainer didn’t train a Lucario or Floatzel as far as she knew, but she didn’t really care. Her thoughts were of getting to her trainer and making sure he understood his mistake loud and clear, without the excuse of being able to hide behind that human language of his. Maybe a bite would get the message across. Or a clawing. Or-
She felt the points of Roy’s claws jerk her back and turned to see the Blastoise staring at her with an expression that seemed to be both equally stern and frantic.
“Marl, I know that a lot’s been going on, I think we really should all take a moment to simmer down and try to explain things-”
“There’s nothing to explain!”
The Salamence batted her wings and tried to push her teammates off of her, her eyes focused on the young man who was nervously reaching for a Pokéball on the ground and getting onto his feet. Because of course he’d just try to avoid her more after just going and abandoning her during the most important day of her life! She heard a faint electric crackle and turned to see Aries sharply frowning at her, with static on his hide.
“Marl, I don’t want for things to come to a Thunder Wave, but you really need to calm down and talk things-!”
“Calvin knew I was about to evolve and he just left me at home for it! It’s been two days since then!”
Everything went silent afterwards aside from the sound of her angry breaths. Wingbeats followed, as her last missing teammate, Jaki flew up. The Honchkrow walked ahead between her and Calvin, traded glances, before rolling his eyes and turning over to the Marowak clinging to her foreleg with an unimpressed scoff.
“... Okay, bonehead. What happened here?”
Eira shook her head and let out a low sigh in reply.
“It’s a long story…”
Before everything happened, Marl thought her trainer was a kind human, if a bit spacey and sometimes prone to getting distracted. He’d moved to some ‘dorm’ thing in a ‘college’ in Lilycove City a couple years ago, which was cramped to the point that he’d normally had to split up Pokémon from his team between his person and the little three-floor house they all grew up in.
During their last stretch together, Calvin and the rest of her teammates had learned that she was close to evolving. She remembered being ecstatic once Roy translated things over for her, with the day when she’d finally leave her cumbersome form as a Shelgon behind and take to the air finally almost in her claws. That day was the most important day for every Salamence. She thought Calvin knew that and that he was looking forward to seeing it alongside her.
Except, a couple weeks ago, he sent her back to his family’s home along with Eira as part of a normal rotation. Marl remembered being nervous when she was told about it, but her teammates assured her that with the way that ‘PC Network’ humans had worked these days, that near or far, it wouldn’t take long to reunite when it came time for her evolution.
Yet she was not at all prepared for what happened. That moment came unexpectedly while on a walk around the neighborhood with Eira and Calvin’s parents two days ago. Marl remembered being beside herself in awe and wonder and just let the surge of energy overtake her as her body disappeared in warm light for the second time in her life. When she emerged, she was no longer the slow, cumbersome block she’d been for almost five years, but in the flightworthy body she’d dreamed of since she was a Bagon.
She was ecstatic at first, all but cartwheeling in the air and whooping and hollering in front of Eira and Calvin’s parents over her new body. She thought it’d be the happiest day of her life, and for those first few moments, it was. Sure, the rest of her team couldn’t be there for this exact moment, but it would be a short trip through the PC Network for everyone to be reunited.
So they went back to the house, and it was all suddenly a lot smaller-feeling, to the point where Marl couldn’t go through the hallways normally on her own. Calvin’s parents recalled her into her Pokéball to pass the time for what she thought would be a short phone call, and that they’d be off to a Pokécenter.
Except the short phone call kept dragging on, until the daylight through she could see through the simulated sky in her Pokéball vanished entirely. She grew worried by that point, and at night, Calvin’s parents finally let her out in the small house’s small yard for Eira to try and break the news on their behalf:
That Calvin’s parents had been calling that PokéNav thing of his all evening and hadn’t been able to get any response. That from how late it had gotten, that the two doubted the Salamence would be able to rejoin her friends until the morning.
The words hit her like a Blizzard, and she spent the night in a depressed stupor, worrying whether or not something had happened to her trainer and the rest of her friends.
The next morning, Calvin still wasn’t picking up, and his parents started to call around to others that Calvin knew. Marl tried to lift her mood and push her growing worries aside by taking to the air and flying around when the elder couple had time to watch over her outside, but it just increasingly felt hollow as the day wore on.
They finally found out from a roommate well in the evening that Calvin had left some for some sort of ‘Goldenrod Open’, but they still couldn’t get ahold of him.
That was when Marl realized that her trainer had decided to leave her behind. On the day she’d been looking forward to the most in her life.
She remembered crying after that, a lot. The afternoon came and went in a teary blur as she curled up in the yard as Eira tried to pat and reassure her. It didn’t do any good, since she’d pieced things together well enough to know why everything happened:
“You just ignored me so that way you could go and have fun by yourself!” she roared. “How could you do that to me?!”
Marl bared her fangs through claws desperately trying to hold them closed, glaring daggers down at her trainer. She noticed that Roy had an askew expression, while her other teammates traded looks with one another. The Blastoise moved his body forward for his eyes to meet hers from the side, before he shook his head with a tired sigh
“That… wasn’t what Calvin was doing at all, Marl,” the Blastoise said. “Rako, Aoi, go and get Calvin’s bag. Show Marl what we were going to give her before we found out she’d already evolved.”
The Lucario and Floatzel went up, and after a bit of prodding, managed to get Calvin to part with his bag. The Lucario—‘Aoi’, apparently—returned, before sticking her paw in and pulling out a couple blue-colored cubes from it.
“The plan was for Calvin to put you over the edge of evolution here after you reunited with your friends so that way he could enter you alongside us into the tournament as a Salamence,” the Lucario said. “Obviously, things didn’t quite work out.”
Marl blinked and stared down vacantly at the cubes. So… then Calvin hadn’t ignored her all this time? The Floatzel—‘Rako’—stared off back towards Calvin’s direction, before setting his teeth on edge.
“Also, you probably want to chill out,” the Floatzel added. “Since I think you’re about to get your trainer into trouble.”
Marl noticed a police officer coming up, accompanied by a Growlithe with his tail and ears pinned back who cast anxious glances over at her who visibly gulped. Not long after, the officer and Calvin traded words that she didn’t pick up on other than that it seemed to quickly turn into a rather awkward-sounding conversation.
Marl looked back at the blue cubes in the Lucario’s grasp. The Salamence’s breaths evened out as she tried to make sense of everything. S-So everything that had happened. That happy day that she’d been expecting to share. It’d all been ruined because of some mistake?
No, there was no excuse for any of this! Calvin had a PokéNav, and it didn’t need to be plugged into a wall to work like the phone at home!
“D-Don’t try and weasel him out of this!” the Salamence snarled. “Calvin could’ve called home, and-!”
“Unfortunately, he couldn’t,” a bleating voice said. “That one’s kinda my fault.”
Roy and the others let go of her, if still with a close eye, as Aries went over to the bag and rummaged through it himself. After a few clumsy pokes and prods, the Ampharos pulled out a PokéNav… which had been visibly blackened with portions of melted plastic.
Marl stared at the ruined device, looking back at the sheep as he flusteredly hemmed and hawed to himself.
“It’s a bit of a long story, but I kinda wound up electrocuting Calvin’s PokéNav during a sparring match the night before we took the ferry,” the Ampharos explained. “We still haven’t been able to get a proper replacement for it yet.”
“Not that you wouldn’t have had to wait anyways even if your sheep buddy didn’t fry that PokéNav,” Rako chimed in. “Your trainer was too cheap to pay for cellular service at sea.”
In the background, the police officer had backed off from Calvin as he slowly made his way over, Pokéball raised. Marl briefly tensed up, as Roy went over and hurriedly nudged his arm away before trying to explain things.
Marl’s breaths started to hitch and come in and out quicker, as her vision started to grow bleary.
“B-But if he’d just called beforehand and let us know, then-!”
A cawing scoff cut her off, as she turned and saw Jaki turning his beak up with an unimpressed frown.
“... I’m sorry, but are you stupid?” the Honchkrow harrumphed. “If evolving again was such a big deal for you, why didn’t you just suppress it and wait a couple days?”
The Salamence froze and began to tear up as a sinking realization came over her: Jaki was right. She’d been so swept up in the moment and excited at finally being able to fly that it hadn’t even occurred to her to try and put it off.
“B-But I was looking forward to evolving into a Salamence f-for my entire life! And I- I-”
She was such an idiot.
Marl hung her head afterwards as her voice hitched and she began to cry bitter tears. The surrounding Pokécenter just seemed to fade out, which was just as well since she didn’t want to think about how pathetic she looked in front of everyone right now.
“... Marl?”
Marl felt a pat against her scales and sniffled briefly. She looked up and saw Roy pawing at her neck just past her head. Behind him was their trainer, standing at arm’s length from her with a worried-looking stare that the Blastoise briefly acknowledged before looking back at her.
“I know that this wasn’t how you wanted your life as a Salamence to start,” the Blastoise said. “But the reason why Calvin called you here was because he wanted you to be a part of this tournament with us. Because he thought that you’d have fun with it.”
Marl listened as her trainer spoke up, still at a distance as he tugged at Roy’s shoulder and motioned over to her. There was a lingering pause, before Roy spoke up and tried to translate things, as Pokémon who first joined humans on their teams often did for their teammates who didn’t understand human speech as well.
“Calvin says he’d like to try and spend a bit more time with you while we’re here, to try and make up for things,” Roy said. “We’re all obviously going to be a bit busy, but won’t you give things a chance?”
Marl hesitated. Even if in the end, Calvin missing her final evolution entirely wasn’t all his fault, she didn’t have any idea how Calvin was supposed to even begin making up for a moment like that. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to think about that right now, or anytime soon for that matter.
But he was there and still looking worriedly at her. And at that moment, she just felt too defeated to protest anymore and hung her head with a low mutter.
“O… Okay.”
It was better than nothing, she supposed.
Original Drabble:
Concession Stand
Tailgating/Picnicking
In the locker room
The Big Match
A brawl battle between fans.
In the commentator's booth.
Memorabilia
Registration Booth
Pre-Game Pokemon Show
A flash of light melted away the simulated surroundings of her Pokéball as the world around filled in. She looked down at her feet, at her shelled underbelly and red wings that she’d known for all of two days and felt a bitter twinge. It dawned on her that she was in the lobby of a Pokécenter, which looked like the one back home, except a few things were different.
“Welcome to Johto, Marl.”
Marl blinked and craned her head over to the source of the voice. It was a Marowak, holding her bone and looking up at her. That much she’d gotten used to over the past couple days, but…
“Wait, Eira? What are we doing all the way there in Johto? What’s-?”
She turned back towards the doors of the lobby, where she saw her other teammates: Aries the Ampharos, Jaki the Honchkrow, a Lucario and Floatzel that she didn’t recognize, and of course, Roy, the Blastoise and her trainer’s starter, who approached her with a sheepish grin.
“Good to see you again, Marl. You’re… uh… bigger than when we last saw you?”
Yeah, and whose fault was that? Seriously, after everything that happened, Calvin seriously had the gall to send others to see her but not show his face himself.
She then heard footsteps and turned and saw him. A young man with an unplaceable face, who was nervously waving at her.
Her eyes narrowed, as hot anger took over her.
“You!”
She lunged at him. Roy hurriedly dug his claws into her shoulder and clamped her mouth shut, holding her back as Aries and Eira did much the same. All the while, Marl growled and struggled as she tried to pull herself ahead.
“Let go of me!” she snarled. “This doesn’t involve you!”
She thrashed and tried to wrench herself free of her teammates grasp, as the Lucario and Floatzel came in from the side.
“Whoa! Easy! What’s gotten into you?!” the Lucario cried.
“Are, uh… all of his Pokémon like this?” the Floatzel asked. “Since maybe I shouldn’t have come along otherwise.”
Marl had no idea who those two were supposed to be, but she didn’t really care. Her thoughts were of getting to her trainer and making sure he understood his mistake loud and clear, without the excuse of being able to hide behind that human language of his. Maybe a bite would get the message across. Or a clawing. Or-
She felt claws jerk her back and turned to see Roy staring at her with an expression that seemed to be equal measures stern and frantic.
“Marl, I know that a lot’s been going on, I think we really should all take a moment to simmer down and try to explain things-”
“There’s nothing to explain!”
The Salamence tried to push her teammates off of her, her eyes focused on the young man who was nervously backing away. Because of course he’d just try to avoid her more after everything. She heard a faint electric crackle and turned to see Aries sharply frowning at her, with static on his hide.
“Marl, I don’t want for things to come to a Thunder Wave, but you really need to calm down and talk things-!”
“Calvin knew I was about to evolve and you just left me at home for it! It’s been two whole days!”
Everything went silent afterwards aside from the sound of her angry breaths. Wingbeats followed, as her last missing teammate, Jaki flew up. He walked ahead between her and Calvin, traded glances, before rolling his eyes and turning over to Eira with an unimpressed scoff.
“... Okay, bonehead. What happened here?”
The Marowak shook her head and let out a low sigh in reply.
“It’s a bit of a long story…”
Before everything happened, Marl thought her trainer was a kind human, if a bit spacey and prone to distraction sometimes. He’d moved to some ‘college’ thing in Lilycove City a couple years ago, which was cramped to the point that he’d normally have to split up Pokémon from his team between his person and the little three-floor house they all grew up in.
During their last stretch together, Calvin had learned that she was close to evolving, which made her ecstatic for the day when she’d finally leave her cumbersome form as a Shelgon behind and take to the air. It was the most important day in the world for her, and she thought he knew that and was looking forward to seeing it alongside her.
Except, a couple weeks ago, she’d been sent back along with Eira as part of a normal rotation. She was nervous, but her teammates assured her that with the way that ‘PC Network’ worked these days, that near or far, that it wouldn’t take long to reunite when it came time for her evolution.
That moment had come unexpectedly while on a walk around the neighborhood with Eira and Calvin’s parents two days ago. She let the surge of energy overtake her as her body disappeared in warm light and she emerged in the flightworthy body she’d dreamed of since she was a Bagon.
She was ecstatic at first, all but cartwheeling in the air and whooping and hollering in front of Eira and Calvin’s parents over her new body as she thought it’d be the happiest day of her life. It was a bit disappointing that the rest of her team couldn’t be there for the exact moment, but it would be a short trip through the PC Network to be reunited.
They went back to the house, which was suddenly a lot smaller-feeling, to the point where Marl couldn’t go through the hallways normally on her own. She was recalled into her Pokéball to pass the time for what she to be a short phone call, and that they’d be off to a Pokécenter.
Except the short phone call kept dragging on, until the daylight through she could see through the simulated sky in her ball had vanished entirely. She’d started to grow worried, and at night, she was finally let out in the small house’s small yard for Eira to try and break the news on behalf of Calvin’s parents:
That they’d been calling all evening and hadn’t been able to get ahold of him. That given how late it was, that they doubted she would be able to rejoin her friends until the morning.
She felt gutted after hearing that, and spent the night worrying whether or not something had happened to her trainer during the day.
The next morning, Calvin still wasn’t picking up, and his parents started to call around to others that Calvin knew. Marl started to grow increasingly worried, and tried to lift her mood by taking to the air and flying around, but it just increasingly felt hollow as the day wore on.
They finally found out from a roommate well in the evening that Calvin had left some for some sort of ‘open tournament’, but they still couldn’t get ahold of him.
Marl cried after that, and curled up in the yard as Eira tried to pat and reassure her. It didn’t do any good, since she’d pieced things together well enough to know what was happening.
Why her trainer had decided to just leave her behind:
“You just ignored me so that way you could go and have fun without me!” she shouted. “How could you do that to me?!”
Marl bared her fangs, glaring daggers down at her trainer. Her other teammates traded looks with one another, before Roy let out a tired sigh from beside her.
“That… wasn’t what Calvin was doing at all, Marl,” the Blastoise said. “Rako, Aoi, go and get Calvin’s bag. Show her what we were going to give Marl when we met again.”
The pair went up, and after a bit of prodding, managed to get Calvin to part with his bag. The Lucario—‘Aoi’, apparently—returned, before sticking her paw in and pulling out a couple blue-colored cubes from it.
“The plan was to put you over the edge of evolution here after meeting up again so that way Calvin could enter you into the tournament as a Salamence,” the Lucario sighed. “Obviously, things didn’t quite work out.”
Marl blinked and stared down vacantly at the cubes. So… then Calvin hadn’t ignored her all this time? The Floatzel—‘Rako’—stared off back towards Calvin’s direction, before setting his teeth on edge.
“Also, you probably want to chill out,” the Floatzel added. “Since I think your trainer’s about to get in trouble because of you.”
She noticed a police officer coming up, accompanied by a Growlithe who stared at her with his tail and ears pinned back. Not long after, he and Calvin seemed to be in the thick of a rather awkward-sounding conversation. Her breaths evened out as she tried to make sense of everything.
S-So everything that had happened. That happy day that she’d been expecting to share. It’d all been ruined by some mistake?
No, there was no excuse for any of this! Calvin had a PokéNav, and it didn’t need to be plugged into a wall to work like the phone at home!
“B-But you could’ve called!” the Salamence insisted. “And-!”
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t. That one’s kinda my fault.”
Roy and the others let go of her, if still with a close eye, as Roy went over to the bag and rummaged through it himself. After a few clumsy pokes and prods, he pulled out a PokéNav… which had been visibly blackened with portions of melted plastic.
Marl stared at the ruined device, before turning to Aries as he flusteredly hemmed and hawed to himself.
“I kinda wound up electrocuting Calvin’s PokéNav during a sparring match the night before we took the ferry,” the Ampharos explained. “We still haven’t been able to get a proper replacement for it, yet.”
“Not that you wouldn’t have had to wait anyways,” Rako chimed in. “Your trainer was too cheap to pay for cellular service at sea.”
In the background, the police officer had backed off from Calvin as he was going over, Pokéball raised. Marl briefly tensed up, as Roy went over and hurriedly nudged his arm away before trying to explain things.
Marl’s breaths started to hitch and come in and out quicker, as her vision started to grow bleary.
“B-But if he’d just called sooner, then-!”
A cawing scoff cut her off, as she turned and saw Jaki turning his beak up with an unimpressed frown.
“... I’m sorry, but are you stupid?” he harrumphed. “If this was such a big deal for you, you could’ve just suppressed your evolution and waited.”
She began to tear up as a sinking realization came over her: Jaki was right. She’d been so swept up in the moment that it hadn’t even occurred to her to try and put her evolution off if she had to.
“B-But I was looking forward to evolving into a Salamence f-for my entire life! And I- I-”
She was such an idiot.
Marl broke down after that and hung her head as she began to cry bitter tears. She felt a pat against her scales and looked up and saw Roy patting at her, with her trainer standing at arm’s length with a worried expression.
“I know that this wasn’t how you wanted to start life as a Salamence,” the Blastoise said. “But the reason why Calvin called you here was because he wanted you to be a part of this tournament with us. Because he thought that you’d like it.”
Marl listened as her trainer spoke up, still at a distance as he tugged at Roy’s shoulder and motioned over to her. There was a lingering pause, before Roy spoke up and tried to translate things, as Pokémon who first joined humans on their teams often did for others.
“Calvin says like to try and spend a bit more time with you while we’re here, to try and make up for things,” Roy said. “We’re all obviously going to be a bit busy, but won’t you give things a chance?”
Marl hesitated. Even if in the end, it wasn’t all his fault or even what she’d thought had been happening originally. She didn’t have any idea how Calvin was supposed to even begin making up for a moment like that.
But he was there and still looking worriedly at her. And at that moment, she just felt too defeated to protest anymore.
