Pokémon Run Boy Run

[NonAnalogue]

Spoiler: Author's notes

So I'm writing fanfiction again! Got hit with this inspiration recently. This does mean that Not a Number is gonna be on the backburner for a while, but YOU KNOW HOW INSPIRATION IS! Hope you enjoy!

RUN BOY RUN

Chapter 1: Goner

He could scarcely believe his eyes.

A beam of light, cascading down from the heavens, impossibly big.

His home, his town, his family, his friends – all bathed in the blinding radiance.

Then… just as quickly as it had appeared, the light was gone.

And the light took with it… everything.

He dropped down from the tree he’d been climbing, bark clinging to his palms. His legs shook, barely able to support him.

A stone creature, round with cracks in its shell and light-colored protrusions jutting out, floated at his side, similarly stunned into silence.

He started walking, slowly at first. He remembered every cobblestone, every lamp, every shop that made up the streets of Penth. The grocery was supposed to be at the corner, the inn next to it. The blacksmith would normally have her forge going by this time of day, the smell of the smoke weaving through the crowds.

He began to run.

The Pokemon breeder was supposed to be there, the confectioner there…

He left what should have been the market district. A right on what was once named Orrery Lane. Ester’s home, gone; Malik’s home, gone; Arcana’s home, gone…

He stopped in his tracks.

He knew it was coming, but one small part of him had been holding out hope.

His home.

His mother.

The garden where he and Starlight first met, when she crashed down from the night sky.

The kitchen where he’d first tried Berende sprouts and promptly spat them out.

The fireplace in front of which he’d huddled up in a blanket to stave off the bitter winter cold.

The thatched roof that he and Starlight had accidentally punched through trying to see how high she could carry him.

They were all gone.

He fell to his knees, among the grass and flowers that had replaced everything he had ever known. A gentle pressure on his shoulder told him that Starlight was trying to comfort him as best as she could.

He couldn’t even cry. The tears wouldn’t come. The… enormity of what was facing him… it couldn’t sink in. Surely his mother was still out there somewhere, right? He must have just gotten lost on the way home, and only thought he saw his town disappear. That must be it—

“Robin.” A hand on his shoulder.

He looked up, his dirt-streaked bangs hanging limply over wide, dark eyes. “Arcana--?” It was her. Then, since she was still here, maybe, maybe everyone else was hiding somewhere nearby—

The hand cupped under his arm and pulled him to his feet. Though she was a few years older than him, Arcana and Robin stood eye-to-eye with each other; while he wore a simple tunic with pants tucked into his boots, she dressed with more of a flourish – a green coat that waved in the wind, black gloves that she liked to adjust dramatically at opportune moments. She fixed Robin with a piercing, amber-eyed stare. “So you’re here too,” she said in a low voice. “We need to get out of here.”

“What? Why?!” Robin said, his voice wavering. “Everyone else has to still be around here somewhere! We gotta find them! We… we have to…” He could feel the tears welling up, now – and there they came, spilling from his eyes down his cheeks and dropping onto the flowers underneath him. “I don’t, don’t want Mom to be…”

“Gone.” Arcana shook her head and turned her gaze away from him. Her voice was as level as it always was, but Robin could see her shoulders shaking. “Everyone’s gone. It’s just you, me, Starlight, and Opal.” At that last name, an azure blue sea lion with a pale fringe around her neck – a Popplio – clambered onto her shoulder, eyes watery. “And we need to get gone before whatever zapped the town decides to blast us to kingdom come too.”

“How can you be so, so calm?!” Robin took a step towards her, his hands balling into fists. “There’s nothing left!” His jaw was clenched tight, and he could feel his heartbeat pounding in his chest.

Arcana turned her head back towards him, her eyes glittering in the afternoon sun. “I’m calm because someone has to be. Time like this, someone’s got to keep her head on her shoulders. And we’re in danger here. There’ll be time for mourning later. So let’s go.”

Starlight nudged Robin’s arm. “I don’t want to go,” she said in a quiet voice that echoed inside her shell. She and Robin had been partners, a Minior and a human, long enough that they could understand each other nearly perfectly. “But… I think Arky is right.”

“She’s calling me Arky again, isn’t she,” Arcana said, her expression flat.

“If something happens to us,” Starlight continued, “then there won’t be any hope left. It’s only us. Nobody else knows what happened.”

Robin grit his teeth and wiped his sleeve across his eyes, leaving damp trails. “You’re… you’re right.” He looked at the flowerbed where his home had been only earlier that day. “I’m coming back though, you hear me? I’m not gonna just… leave everyone like this!”

“Less platitudes, more hoofing it,” Arcana said, grabbing Robin by the hand and running in the direction of the forest. “There’s a sanctum not far outside of town. We can at least be out of the open there.” She slowed to a stop, though, when Opal tugged at her jacket’s collar and muttered something into her ear. Arcana turned around to look – across the field, examining the flowers, was a woman, tall and elegant, wearing a simple white dress. Everything about her screamed slender, from her arms to her face. She plucked a flower from the earth and held it to her nose, breathing in deeply.

“Who’s that?” Robin whispered. “Is she the one who…?”

“Shh!” Arcana held a finger up to her lips and crouched, concealing herself in a patch of tall grass. After a moment, she pulled Robin, who clearly had not gotten the hint, down too.

The woman tossed the flower over her shoulder and cocked her head upwards, as if listening to something. Then she turned and stared at the tall grass.

“Don’t move,” Arcana hissed through clenched teeth. Robin stayed frozen in place as the woman took slow deliberate steps in their direction…

…and then turned away, evidently satisfied that there was nothing there.

Robin let out a breath that he didn’t know he’d been holding. “That was close,” he whispered, but before he could get back up, a yank on his collar did that for him. A Marowak, its skull scarred and cracked, hauled him to his feet, smacking him in the gut with its bone when he didn’t move quickly enough.

“Ah,” said the woman without turning around. “I knew there were some stragglers here and there.” Her voice was faint and airy, like wisps of smoke drifting out of her mouth. “Good job, Sorrow... bring them here.”

The Marowak prodded Robin with its bone a few times, and he stepped from the grass. Arcana followed him, her face awash with calculation. “You’re the one who did this,” Robin growled, trying to stop the tears from coming again. “Fix it! Bring everyone back!”

The woman put her hand to her mouth, letting out a slight laugh. “Oh dear… you don’t know what’s going on at all, do you? This wasn’t my doing, child.”

“Child?” Robin narrowed his eyes. “I’m 15!”

“Not the time, Robin,” Arcana hissed.

“The person behind this act,” the woman continued as if Robin hadn’t interrupted her at all, “has long since departed this place. Well before anyone had any hope of stopping him, in fact. I’m just here to ensure that anyone left over is… taken care of.” She stretched out one graceful arm. “To that end, Sorrow… you may begin.”

Robin backed up a few paces as Starlight drifted in front of him. “Are you sure?” he whispered to his companion.

“No,” Starlight said simply, “but I’m doing it anyway.”

Arcana muttered something to Opal at the same time, and the Popplio jumped down from her shoulder to likewise stand in between her partner and the threat. “I think you’ll find,” Arcana said, adjusting her gloves as her coat waved in the breeze, “that we’re not so easily dispatched.”

Sorrow leapt at them, hurling its bone through the air before slamming its fist, crackling with electricity, into Starlight. The bone slammed into Opal on its way past her, then once again on its way back, leaving her dizzied and stumbling. In one attack on each of them, Sorrow had left them much worse for the wear.

“Starlight!” Robin cried as cracks splintered across the Minior’s shell. She swiveled around to glance at him, and he knew that she was winking at him, even if he couldn’t see her face.

He knew what she was going to do.

Robin and Starlight had known each other for five years. Neither of them were especially enthused at the idea of fighting, but they’d still practice here and there, if only for the purposes of self-defense. Starlight was the only Minior many people in Penth had ever seen, and rumors abounded – Minior were spirits of the stars, Minior were sent from the heavens, Minior couldn’t survive for too long if their shell cracked open. Robin had been concerned about that last one, and even though Starlight wasn’t convinced it was a real problem, they trained for it regardless. Finally, they had it – a way to turn Starlight’s shell breaking to their advantage.

“Starlight,” Robin called, “SHIELDS DOWN!”

The cracks spidered across Starlight’s surface faster, until they all paused at once, for just a moment. The shell exploded outwards, pelting Sorrow with sharp fragments of rock and only narrowly avoiding Opal. Sorrow stumbled back as Starlight revealed her core – a black sphere with white nubs, with wide spiraling eyes and a small smile.

“Hey, watch it,” Arcana said with a scowl. “You almost got us with that. Opal, you know what to do.” Opal padded forward and spat a stream of water from her mouth, one that slammed into Sorrow’s helmet.

Sorrow shook off the water and debris, letting out a growl. It didn’t need any more instruction from its partner – it began lashing out wildly, landing blows with its bone and its fists alike. Without her shell, Starlight was easily thrown by just a single strike – and Opal followed soon after.

The woman laughed again, a haughty, pretentious noise that burned like fire in Robin’s mind. “Oh, you actually thought you stood a chance… the looks on your faces! Such wonderful despair…”

Robin screwed his eyes shut, unable to keep watching. The Marowak’s growl echoed in his ears, and he tried to drown it out with his own internal voice. Please, if there’s anyone out there, he thought, help us! Help me! She’s… we can’t stop her!

Sorrow quieted – in fact, everything did. A pinprick of warmth gleamed in his heart, then spread through his veins, calming his nerves. “Um, Robin?” he heard Arcana say, but faintly, muffled.

He opened his eyes.

The woman had backed away, her eyes wide and her pupils shrunk, with an incredulous smile on her face. “Incredible… that’s why you survived the erasure…”

Robin looked down at his hands. They had turned from his normal light brown to the color of midnight, with claws like daggers, and in one was a bent wooden club that looked like it would pack a punch. A light yellow, almost white, cloak had appeared around his shoulders, with a hood to cover his head.

Even Sorrow took a step back.

“So you can call upon Divine Favors too…” the woman said, her voice somewhere between laughing and crying. “That makes things more… complicated. Sorrow, let’s fall back for now. This wasn’t in the plan.” Before Robin or Arcana could move, she and Sorrow both took off running, disappearing into the forest.

“What… happened, Robin?” Arcana asked. It wasn’t often that Robin heard uncertainty underpinning her words, and even less often that he caught her looking confused.

Robin turned his attention back to his hands. They… didn’t look like his, but when he wiggled his fingers, the claws wiggled just as they should have; when he moved his arm, the arm formed from inky darkness moved the same way. “I, um, I dunno. I was trying to block out the sound of the Marowak, and then… this happened.”

A rustling in the grass drew his gaze to Starlight, who was reforming her core from the shattered rock. “I think it suits you, Binny,” she said, flashing him a smile before that section of her face got covered up. “You look like a Mimikyu.”

“A Mimikyu?” Robin said, furrowing his brow.

Arcana snapped. “That’s it, a Mimikyu!” She drew a pencil and a small stack of papers loosely bound together from one of her pockets and began sketching hurriedly. When she finished, she turned her paper around: it was a rough drawing of Robin, his face obscured completely in shadow except for his eyes, wearing a cloak that covered him all the way to his feet, with two ears and two red spots on the hood.

And then… the cloak dissolved into nothingness, and Robin turned back to normal.

“Aww,” Starlight said, her core reconstructed. “I liked it, too.”

Robin could only keep staring at his hands, baffled. “What’s… going on?” he muttered.

“I might be able to tell you.” The voice belonged to the wizened man who’d approached them without their noticing; he balanced on a cane and his steps were slow, deliberate, and, crucially, quiet. “Please, why don’t you come with me? I’m the healer at the sanctum near here. I rather think the four of you could use a rest, hm? I’ve got a stew going, and I can hopefully enlighten you a little over some dinner.”

Robin glanced at Arcana, who shrugged, as much at a loss as he was. “It’s where I wanted to head anyway,” she said.

“Okay,” Robin answered. Before taking off, he looked over the empty field, his home, one last time.

He would come back.

He would fix everything.

He had to.

 

[Equitial]

I... don't actually have much to say because I have no idea what the hell is going on. That's in a good way though. I couldn't stop reading. This chapter's flow was flawless. Those single-sentence paragraphs are a brilliant hook, and I felt like everything had just the right amount of description to be effective but not overburdened. Everything's amazingly breakneck and compelling (y)

The introduction scene of the mystery woman and Sorrow was nice. When Robin and crew thought they were winning, after Starlight had a dramatic moment, and then Mystery Lady just brushes them off??? *chef's kiss* Mystery Lady's a perfect mix of arrogance, shameless lack of morality, and competence and I already love her.

The quick pace of this chapter does have some drawbacks though. I feel like the beginning section had a dulled emotional impact because I the reader had no context. I couldn't get the full extent of Robin's grief at his town's erasure(???) because I know nothing about his town or family. I could sympathize for him, but not really feel what he felt. Putting in details about his town and mother helped a little, but not enough.

More nitpicky: it's my understanding that Robin's town got turned into a field. How, then, did not one or two but three people manage to surprise Robin with their appearance? Arcana makes more sense, because he was completely overwhelmed, but Mystery Lady and Old Dude surprised both him and Arcana. Old Dude was particularly out of nowhere, but also I felt like he completed the classic fantasy vibe so I'm tentatively okay with him.

 

[NonAnalogue]

Thank you for the comments! I definitely wanted the story to start with the reader being as blindsided and lost as Robin himself is, so I'm glad that worked. I can see how that worked against the emotional side of things, though - it's a tough balance to strike.

If I were being coy, I'd say that Robin and Arcana being caught unawares by the Mystery Lady and the Old Dude just echoes how nobody in Pokemon can apparently see each other unless line of sight is established, but it's actually just that I intended there to be a lot of tall grass in the erased town. I figured that would make visibility more difficult.

 

[NonAnalogue]

Chapter 2: Myths and Legends

The path was well-worn, a winding trail through the autumnal trees. Robin and Starlight trailed the healer by a step, matching his pace, while Arcana, with Opal on her shoulder, strode ahead, letting out annoyed sighs whenever she had to wait for them to catch up. The forest was full of Pokemon, Robin noticed, much more so than normal; Pidgey and Butterfree watching them from the trees, Rattata and Bellsprout peeking out at them from behind trunks that dwarfed them.

"I'm pleased to see you survived," the healer said with a creaking, slow cadence. "You always were an interesting one, Robin."

"Huh?" Robin, who'd been eyeing a Treecko that'd been glaring daggers at him, snapped back to attention. "Do we… know each other?"

The healer let out a wheezy laugh. "I'm not surprised you don't know me. Men of my age… we tend to melt into the background a little, hm? I came down to the market every week, and I always saw you, Dulcie, and of course Starlight getting your groceries. Oh, I did love the way you and Starlight played together," he added with a nostalgic smile. "That game where you'd toss an apple at her and see how many times she could bounce it before dropping it? Such fun."

Robin felt his face turning red. He hadn't realized anyone was watching them when they did that. "We called it Fruit Bump," he said in a small voice. He could picture it in his head so vividly – the fruit vendor, the way her hair waved in the breeze, her stall chock full of colorful fruit from all over, his mom palming an apple and passing it down to him…

He felt a nudge at his shoulder, and suddenly he was seeing out of his own eyes again. "Are you okay, Binny?" Starlight whispered.

Robin rubbed the back of his head and jogged a few steps to catch back up with the healer. "Um, yeah. Sorry," he muttered back. "I just got… lost in my head again, I guess."

Starlight giggled, an airy noise that, after echoing in her shell, always reminded Robin of wind chimes. "Not always a bad place to be lost."

Golden leaves crunched beneath his boots. Robin let the sound wash over him as he walked, tuning out Arcana demanding information from the healer, who only waved off her questions and told her to have patience. Patience wasn't something Arcana was good at and it never had been, not that he was any better. Still, Arcana always seemed to be anxious for something to happen… no, not anxious, he thought; that sounded like she was nervous. Arcana couldn't ever cool her heels – she couldn't abide waiting.

Before he knew it, they'd reached the sanctum, a simple stone structure resting in a glade. It bore sconces on either side of a plain wooden door, the light from its torches pushing back against the dusk. Smoke billowed out of a chimney, carrying with it the faint aroma of something savory.

"Please," the healer said, "come in. My dear Peach is tending to dinner."

Peach was, as Robin found out, a Hatterene, one just as elderly as the healer. Her colors had faded and there were lines drawn across her face, and she was slowly stirring a cauldron of thick stew, the ladle held aloft with a psychic grip. Starlight floated around the pot, basking in the steam rising from it; she spun on her axis and the steam spun around her, prompting a giggle from Peach.

The healer, with deceptive swiftness, slung two wooden bowls at Peach, who froze them in the air without any visible trouble and siphoned stew into both of them. The bowls flew through the curtain of steam and arrived in Robin's and Arcana's hands, nary a drop spilled. Robin tucked into his without hesitation.

"Okay, we've got the stew," Arcana said, setting her bowl aside for Opal to slurp at. "So now can you tell us what in the world is going on?"

The healer let out a breath, slowly lowering himself into a chair that looked even more ancient than he did. "One of these days, child, your hastiness will be the end of you, mark my words." He held out a hand just as Peach levitated a steaming cup of tea in his direction in a well-practiced ritual. "Now, where to start…"

"How about with the part where Penth just got vaporized into nothingness? Or, failing that, the part where Robin got a Mimikyu costume out of thin air?"

"Child," the healer said, "My name may be Sabri the Patient, but even I have my limits. The events that transpired today have their roots in myth and legend, and I dare not get this wrong. This is portentous stuff, you know. Make sure you take it all in." He aimed a look at Robin, who was in the middle of a long, noisy slurp from his spoon. "That goes for you too."

Sabri cleared his throat. "This legend begins at the creation of the world—"

"Oh no," Arcana groaned, "any story that starts that far back isn't going to be a quick one."

"Child, did you or did you not want to find out what happened? Learning about it without context isn't going to help. Now hush. So. The creation of the world. You know, of course, about the pantheon of twenty deities that created all of Ennen."

Both Robin and Arcana nodded. Robin's mother had never been especially concerned with matters of religion, but even she would offer a prayer to Takren of the Enumeration when gold was short.

"When Ennen was woven into existence, each deity contributed something different. Mihtas of the Nourishment created the sky, the seas, and the land, so that the creatures that were to be made would have homes. Ithria of the Surprise breathed weather into being, to help cycle air and water around the world, though she claimed she only did it on a whim. And Sunthe of the Genesis… she molded the first people – Pokemon and humans alike – so that Tzarth of the Breath could give them life."

Arcana raised a finger. "You did see that we nodded when you asked us if we knew about them, right?"

"Peach, if she interrupts me again, cover her mouth, please. I swear. You have no appreciation for storytelling, child. Where was I? Ah yes. Tzarth. Now, Tzarth is a cynical sort. It comes with giving all creatures the gift of life, but then taking it away from them when they die. Back then, she was more idealistic, but she was nonetheless worried that, eventually, humanity, who she didn't quite like the look of, would seek to subjugate Pokemon, her favored mortals.

"So she conferred with Sunthe, and the two of them came up with a plan. If it ever became the case that humanity overreached in a way that posed a threat to Pokemon, a union of the two would arise – a duo of one human and one Pokemon. Together, they would erase humanity using powers granted to them by the deities – powers that would allow the human the strength of a Pokemon."

"Erase…" The word slipped out of Robin's mouth unconsciously. It perfectly described what he had seen happen: the beam of light that seemed to come from the deities themselves, the way it wiped Penth away as cleanly as if it had never existed at all, taking everyone they'd ever known with it…

Arcana frowned, her face crinkling with thought. "Powers granted by the deities… Are you saying the Mimikyu thing was some kind of gift from the gods or something?"

"I think it's very possible, yes," Sabri said.

"…from the gods?" echoed Robin. He didn't feel any different than he used to – certainly not like he'd been granted a divine boon or anything like that. He wished he could will his brain to process everything faster, but it was all he could do to barely keep up.

"So, wait," Arcana continued after a moment's thought. "You said that there'd be one human and one Pokemon who were granted power, and that they'd do the erasing. That can't be Robin, then. He didn't erase anything!" She grinned, like she'd found a fatal flaw in Sabri's story. "Therefore, that story can't be true!"

Sabri rolled his eyes and glanced to Robin. "Tell me, is your friend always like this?" Robin nodded, trying to ignore the glare Arcana was shooting at him. "It's a legend, child," Sabri continued. "Some of the details may not be one-hundred-percent correct – but what happened to Penth is inarguable, wouldn't you say? I worry it's just the beginning. If it's true that the human and the Pokemon have already begun their crusade, then it's a matter of when they find their next target, not if. More and more will be erased until…"

"Until there aren't any humans left," Robin whispered.

Opal jumped into Arcana's lap, circling a few times before curling up in a ball. Arcana scratched behind Opal's ears and put her other hand to her chin. "But that's all just a legend. That can't be what's actually happening, right?" she asked. "I mean, surely if all of humanity were about to be wiped from the map, someone would be doing something about it."

"Someone would be…" Sabri's jaw hung open. "Child, do I not count as 'someone'? I am trying to 'do something about it'! The three of us are the only ones who witnessed what happened, and I want to make certain that both of you have the information you need to try and prevent this from happening again!" His cheeks had turned red, and the wrinkles that lined his face had only deepened. "I'd go solve everything myself, but, in case you haven't noticed, I'm very elderly and don't get around very fast!"

"That's not right," said Robin. Starlight had settled in his lap and he was passing his hands over her shell, the rough texture keeping him tethered to the ground. He had the vague fear that if he dwelled too long on any one thing – on his mother, on his home, on the woman in white, on the legend – he'd drift away into the sky and never be able to come back down. He closed his eyes, keenly aware that both Sabri and Arcana were staring at him. "It wasn't just the three of us. Who saw it, I mean."

Sabri's eyebrows jumped up. "There was another? Who?"

"The… woman." Robin shuffled his feet uncomfortably, knowing that the answer wasn't helpful. "The one with the Marowak."

"Ugh, her. She was a piece of work," Arcana groaned. "She completely wiped the floor with us, then ran off when the Mimikyu thing happened. You didn't see her?"

"Child." Sabri let a slow breath out through his nose. "I saw the beam of light from the heavens here, from the sanctum. I went to go investigate, but it took me some time to get there. The only people I saw were the two of you and your Pokemon."

"Well, whatever. She said that the guy responsible was long gone, anyway. 'Such wonderful despair,'" Arcana said in a nasal twang. "What a tool. If I never see her again, it'll be too soon."

"But…" The words came out of Robin's mouth more slowly than he liked. It felt like Arcana and Sabri were running circles around him. "That means she knows who was responsible, right? She was saying that she was just in charge of cleaning up… so doesn't that mean that if we find her, we can find out who the guy is who actually did this?"

Seeing the look on Arcana's face, Sabri shook his head. "That may be true, but perhaps we ought to continue this conversation in the morning, when we've all had a chance to get some rest and cool our heads. The sun has set; it's getting late. Please, feel free to spend the night."


Robin couldn't tell how long it took him to fall asleep, tossing and turning on what could have loosely been defined as a mattress. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the burning pillar of light, seared into his mind, incinerating away each memory he had of home.

The old well in the center of town? Gone.

The museum where old man Flint showed off all his gemstones? Vanished.

The alley off Twostone Lane where he and Starlight could hide when things got overwhelming? Erased.

It was all gone.

With tears in his eyes, Robin fell into a fitful sleep.

And while he slept, he dreamed.

He stood at the corner of Orrery Lane and Forgefire Walk. His hand was in his mother's, Dulcie's, course and calloused and comforting. It was market day, and the streets were packed with buyers and sellers alike milling to and fro. She held a finger to her lips and slid her hand into a passerby's satchel, neatly snagging a pair of gold coins without them even noticing. There was her radiant smile, the one that made Robin feel like no matter what happened, she would keep him safe. She gestured at another traveler, and Robin swiped a vial of healing potion from their belt…

…and they turned around, their eyes alighting upon Robin, the potion in his palm.

With a whooping laugh, Dulcie pulled Robin away and flew down the road, ducking under trees, over bushes, and down alleys. With the streets as packed as they were, the unfortunate pickpocketee had no chance of catching up.

It hadn't been easy since his father had died.

But his mother was making ends meet, and she was teaching him how to as well.

Robin squinted. There was something different, though. He remembered how this went. Nobody had found them, after they'd hid behind the abandoned tannery. They'd used the gold that Dulcie had found to buy dinner that day. Then they'd gone home, to the cottage that let in every chill and leaked in the rain, but they'd been together and that made everything all right.

But this time…

There was a figure approaching them, behind the tannery. Dulcie didn't seem to notice. They were cloaked in shadow, and also a cloak, which wasn't helping matters. Their hand, the color of the night sky, reached out to him, and he reached back, unable to stop himself.

A gust of wind.

Their hood fell back.

It was…

Him.


Robin bolted awake. Sun streamed in through the window. His clothes, the mattress underneath him, were drenched in sweat. He tried to hold onto the memory of the dream, but all that would stick was the image of a hand reaching at him… He shook his head. Best not to dwell on it, he thought.

"About time you got up," Arcana said, sitting by the fireplace and idly doodling in her notebook. "It was looking like you'd sleep forever."

"Ah… sorry." Robin yawned, then gave a tight hug to Starlight, who'd nudged him on the chest meaningfully. "Good morning, Starlight. Did you sleep well?"

Starlight chirped and bobbed in place, which Robin had long since learned meant that she was smiling. "Yes! I went outside and watched the stars from the roof. It was very relaxing!"

Robin stroked her shell. "Good. Hey, um, Arcana, where's the healer? Uh, uh…"

"Sabri?"

"Yeah. Sabri, that's his name."

Arcana glanced out the window. "He and Peach took off earlier. Gathering berries, he said. Apparently, they make potions with them."

"That makes sense for a healer, right?"

"I guess so. Look, I'm not much interested in waiting for him anyway." Arcana stood up and stretched her arms over her head. "Time to hit the road."

Robin's eyes widened. "What, already? Don't we need to talk to him about… everything?"

"Nope." Arcana shook her head. "I know what to do from here. Track down the Marowak lady, get information about the guy who did all this, and… well. Let's just say I plan to make sure he can't ever do what he did to anyone ever again."

"Wait, but… hold on a second." Once again, Arcana's rapid-fire delivery washed over Robin and took a moment to sink in. "We can't… hurt him or anything. We need him to fix this. To bring everyone back."

Arcana stared at him, her amber eyes drilling right through him, her gaze calculating. "You really don't get it, do you, Robin?" she asked, her voice low and steady. "They're all gone. All of them. Your mom, my sister, the entire town. They evaporated into light, Robin. Nobody comes back from that. No matter how much either of us wants them to."

"Wh-what are you saying, Arcana?"

Her voice rose in volume. "I think it's pretty clear what I'm saying, Robin! If what Sabri said is all true, then this is bigger than us! Bigger than our families! This guy could kill everyone! And right now the only one who can stop him is me!"

"But…" Robin tripped on his tongue. "But I can help stop him too! I don't want him to—"

"No, Robin. You can't. It's clear to me already." It was the most intense glare Arcana'd ever given him – her eyes were almost glowing. "If you tagged along, then as soon as I had him cornered, you'd try to pry information out of him, or make him promise to undo what he's done, or something pointless like that. The only thing that matters now is stopping him by any means necessary, do you understand me?"

Robin took in a slow breath through his nose and let it out through his mouth, just as his mother had always taught him to. "I… I do understand, Arcana. I understand perfectly. What you want to do… would ruin any chance I ever have of seeing everyone again. Of seeing her again."

"I told you." Arcana grimaced. "That hope is dead and buried."

"No. It never will be. And if you can't see that…" Robin swallowed, a knot forming in his throat and tears burning in the corners of his eyes. "Then I'll stop you, right now."

His challenge visibly floored Arcana, and it took her a moment to be able to put words together again. "Are you serious?" she asked, before turning to Opal. "For real, is he serious? Have I lost the ability to understand jokes? He knows we'd wipe the floor with him, right?"

Opal shrugged.

"It's not about whether I win," Robin said. "But I have to at least try, right?" Starlight made a shimmering noise beside him, and he knew he was making the right call.

Arcana threw her hands up. "Fine. Fine! I warned you, after all. Even tried to give you the common decency of waiting for you to wake up before I took off. Whatever. Let's at least go outside, though. That way we won't trash the place."

Behind the sanctum was a field that had the look of a space where someone had once wanted a garden but had never done anything past turning up the dirt. Robin and Starlight stood to one side, Arcana and Opal to the other.

"Let's make this quick, Opal," Arcana said, adjusting one of her gloves. "Water Gun. Get it done." Opal nodded and squeaked, waddling forward. She reared back and let loose a torrent of water, even stronger than the one she'd set against Sorrow. Starlight bobbed and tried to spin out of the way, but Opal had accounted for that and the spray landed squarely in her face.

Robin gave Starlight a warm smile as she looked back to him. "That's okay. Remember the idea you had a few days ago? Give it a shot."

Starlight nodded, her shell splintering. "I'll do my best!"

Arcana snapped her fingers. "We've already seen you do that once! Get ready, Opal! Here it comes!"

But instead of Starlight's shell blasting apart, this time the pieces just fell to the ground. Behind them, though, Starlight's eyes glowed a brilliant gleaming white, one that radiated outwards until nobody could see—

And then it was gone, leaving only a grinning Starlight and a dazed Opal.

"Tch! Hiding a Confuse Ray behind her shield…" Arcana grit her teeth. "That doesn't matter! Opal, keep up the tempo!" Opal stumbled forward, but only succeeded in falling flat on her face. "Opal, come on!"

"Starlight, use…" Robin said, then stopped himself. "No, I trust you. Do what you think is best, and let's end this!"

"Okay!" Starlight trilled. She hovered in place and spun on her axis, faster and faster – then dropped to the ground, flying forward like a wheel. She plowed into Opal and kept going, making a wide turn back towards her prone foe. Opal tried to get her flippers under her, but she only stumbled again – just for Starlight to mow her down another time.

Arcana let out an almost bestial growl. "Opal! Opal, are you okay? Come on, don't let them get the better of you!" Opal gave a wobbly salute, but Starlight crashed into her one final time, throwing her into the air. She landed and came to a rest right at Arcana's feet.

Starlight slowed to a stop and began reconstructing her shell from the shards she'd left on the battlefield. Robin knelt next to her and stroked her head. "Great job," he said quietly, so just she could hear. "I didn't think we'd actually pull that off."

"I don't believe this!" Arcana fumed. "You just got lucky!"

Robin stood. "Yeah, I guess I did. But… I still won, right? So… so that means you either have to let me come with you, or—"

"Funny." Arcana crouched and picked up Opal, cradling her in one arm. "I don't remember agreeing to that. And even after beating me, if you can't keep me from leaving… well. That says it all, really." She slowly walked for the footpath on the other side of the sanctum, almost daring him to stop her. "Goodbye, Robin."

Even though she couldn't see him anymore, Robin waved.

 

[DawningWinds]

How on earth did Arcana survive? You explain that Robin survived due to something relating to the random transformation into a Mimikyu, yet it doesn't seem like Arcana was with him when it happened. Of course, I could have missed something that explains that, or it could be something you're saving to reveal later.

Otherwise, I feel like you should've mentioned that the erased town became a field during the actual story, and probably also the tall grass a little bit, to give the reader a better idea of what's around them. After all, you tell us a bit about what the town was like before it was erased, but not really anything about after. This might lead to confusion.

I like the fast pacing at the beginning of the story- it gets the plot going right away.

I also read chapter two; however, I don't have much to say about it. I enjoyed it, but it almost seems like it sorta paused the plot in favor of exposition. I'm not sure if referring to the hooded guy in the dream is supposed to imply that he was his father or someone else who might be important to the plot.

I'm excited to read the next chapter; this is an interesting story.

 

[NonAnalogue]

Thank you for reading and for your comments!

- with regards to Arcana surviving, that's an interesting question, isn't it? :)
- I literally just went back to double check the first chapter and went "god dammit, I didn't actually say it was a field" SO.
- I intentionally wanted the second chapter to slow down a bit from the first, to match the state of Robin's head as the adrenaline wore off.
- Also, this isn't a spoiler or anything so I don't mind clarifying: when I said the hooded figure in the dream was "him", I meant it was Robin himself.

I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I'm really excited to get to the next chapter too!

 

[Equitial]

I noticed this in the first chapter as well, but I really liked the description and little details in your writing. It's all over your writing, but I especially liked your description about them walking through the forest, the Pokemon watching them and just a mention of leaves crunching under their boots. You have a nice writing style

In particular, I enjoyed this little paragraph with Peach's introduction:

Her colors had faded and there were lines drawn across her face, and she was slowly stirring a cauldron of thick stew, the ladle held aloft with a psychic grip. Starlight floated around the pot, basking in the steam rising from it; she spun on her axis and the steam spun around her, prompting a giggle from Peach.

I think you handled the exposition well. After having utterly no idea wth was happening during the last chapter, explanation was refreshing. I found Arcana's constant interjections and Sabri's reactions amusing, heh. But my favorite scene was the final where Robin and Arcana come into conflict.

I can't believe I didn't even think about how Arcana probably lost family and friends too when the town got erased. It should have been obvious, but it just didn't occur to me. That gives her sarcasm and general impatience despite everything a new light. I hope we explore her character more, especially because of how her and Robin's goals suddenly diverged. Good thing Peach left or she would have murdered them all.

(Also, DawningWind mentioned that Sabri explained Robin's survival but not Arcana's. That's also something that didn't occur to me. My interest is piqued.)

However, as much as I like the scene, it had practically no build-up. When Robin interrupts Arcana to say he wants to save his family, it comes out of nowhere because there had been nothing to indicate he had this idea. He thinks about his mother and town - the flashback/dream sequence was nicely written and I liked this segment,

He could picture it in his head so vividly – the fruit vendor, the way her hair waved in the breeze, her stall chock full of colorful fruit from all over, his mom palming an apple and passing it down to him…

but they don't convey his feelings other than that they're still in his thoughts. If Robin had at least had a thought about his mother and Penth when Sabri said he could stop the people being about the erasure, his conflict with Arcana wouldn't have seemed so abrupt.

 

[NonAnalogue]

The scene between Robin and Arcana is definitely my favorite out of the chapter as well - enough so that I think I may have been a little impatient to get to it, haha. I'm really excited to spend more time with Arcana in this story - her character arc is something I'm really eager to start delving into.

In fact, Arcana is just fun to write in general - I had a lot of fun with her being obnoxious during the legend. I don't like writing straight explanation and usually I try to find a more entertaining framing device for that kind of thing. A particular trope I fall back on a LOT is a character using a reference book that's written not at all like a reference book normally is. That'll probably happen at some point in this fic too!

 

[Negrek]

It's wonderful to see another story from you, one that I'll hopefully be able to keep on top of! The premise you have here is really interesting, and to be honest I was suspicious for a while that we might be looking at something to do with AZ's ultimate weapon... That's definitely what I think of when somebody's talking about wiping out all the humans! (Although apparently all the pokémon living in that village got erased, too?) Medieval setting would seem to jive with that theory, but otherwise I don't think it quite lines up. Still! It's a cool mystery you've got set up here, and you definitely waste no time about setting it up and getting things rolling.

Very cool to see a minior in a story, too! I don't think I've encountered one in a fanfic before, which is too bad. The Alolan pokémon are one of those things that make me think we're not in medieval Kalos, although it doesn't look like Alola, either! In the future it'll be interesting to see what Robin's connection with mimikyu is going to mean. Ghostly abilities? Maybe some connection with a real mimikyu, or a ghost legendary?

With Robin's backstory, a connection to ghosts (and trickery) maybe makes some sense. It's neat that he doesn't come from a traditionally "heroic" background; it's understandable why he and his mother resorted to stealing things, and I like Robin's unapologetic attitude towards it, like yeah, that's what you have to do to get by. It makes a lot of sense for that to be a kid's perspective on the situation, and it's neat to see an angsty backstory get played for not much real angst like this.

It was also interesting to see Robin and Arcana's very different takes on the situation. Not going to be an easy team-up-against-the-world situation for them, huh? They each have their own way of trying to cope with what's happened, whether it's by doggedly clinging to the idea of being able to reverse what happened because that means there's a chance of changing something, or insisting that nobody's coming back because trying to diminish everything and move on is much less painful than trying to find another way forward. I'm curious to see whether we'll keep following Robin assuming that the two of them actually do manage to split up, or whether we might end up bouncing back and forth between the two. The way Arcana's going, I could see her becoming a villain down the line...

I'm kind of curious what Arcana's past relationship with Robin is, too. They obviously know each other, but it doesn't seem like they're great friends or anything.

I can see some of the same humor and lightheartedness your brought to Mew-Child in this story, too. Overall I think that's a good thing, because the story has the potential to be real grim (I mean, literally all of Robin's family is dead as far as he knows) and I think you want to keep it from becoming too much of a misery slog. Sometimes, though, I think the humor feels kind of jarring for the situation. This is particularly true with Arcana's dialogue... stuff like her calling the person who literally just tried to kill them a tool or complaining about how long the healer's story is going to be seems so flippant as to be out of place at times. I know she's trying to minimize this stuff and act like she doesn't care when she actually cares a lot, but I guess the level of brattiness she brings to the table gets a bit hard for me to believe now and again. For the amount of Serious Stuff that's happened already, having that level of jokery seems out of place to me, I guess.

It was also a little odd to me, especially in the first chapter, that the characters at times didn't seem to have much of a reaction to what was happening. For example, there isn't much of a reaction to Starlight and Opal fainting--it's stated that they get knocked out, and then there's a paragraph about the mystery woman before we actually get anything about either Robin or Arcana being worried about the situation. (Also, the woman laughed pretentiously, but I'm not sure how a laugh comes off as pretentious?) It took me a second to realize that the pokémon had all been knocked out *and that meant the marowak was coming for them now.* Then this random guy manages to sneak up on them, and Robin and Arcana's reaction isn't to be startled or wary or anything, but instead to kind of exchange looks and shrug? The last person who ambushed them out here literally tried to kill them! Even if they decide the guy's no threat, I would kind of expect an initial knee-jerk reaction that was a bit bigger!

In any case, this is an interesting premise, and a cool setting as well! It seems like we've had several more medieval-ish fics pop up on the forums recently, and I'm all for that. I'd love to learn why Arcana didn't get erased, either, and exactly what Robin's mimikyu-mode is going to mean going forward. It's just the beginning, but this story feels like it has several interesting directions it could go. Hope you have fun writing it!

 

[kintsugi]

This concept is really cool. You throw us headlong into the action and it never really lets up. And it's got the same name as a song I really like. Just reviewing chapter one for now since it was a doozy.

Your setting is really interesting. I also love minior as a Pokemon and I'm glad to see someone else using it here. I'd like to see more of Penth (although that's unlikely) -- it feels like this isn't quite set in the traditional Pokemon games for sure, and there's definitely hints of quasi-Pokemorphs/shifters. Beams of light falling from the sky makes me think of AZ's weapon, but who knwos? I think you'll take this in a completely new direction and I'm pretty excited to see where that leads.

Everything below this line is honestly based on like a five or six minute conversation that we had on Discord. Feel free to ignore if I ended up reading too deep into what you were saying you wanted your tone to sound like.
- - - - - -

His home.

His mother.

The garden where he and Starlight first met, when she crashed down from the night sky.

The kitchen where he’d first tried Berende sprouts and promptly spat them out.

The fireplace in front of which he’d huddled up in a blanket to stave off the bitter winter cold.

The thatched roof that he and Starlight had accidentally punched through trying to see how high she could carry him.

They were all gone.

I don't normally do dives into tone because I feel like that's something that's pretty intrinsic to the writer -- it's just that in this case, you'd mentioned that you'd intended for this fic to be largely inspired by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or similar in style. I love Adams's style and he utilizes it well, and I think your own style here is really well-developed, but I'm not sure how similar the two styles really are.

For instance, in the quoted section above -- it's a bit dramatic, and we focus a lot on Robin's angst and turmoil here. And I'd say that's quite justified. He's a relatively young kid in a pretty sheltered/happy life, and all of that gets taken away from him instantly. Of course he's going to be upset, and the way that you stretch this scene out both lets us look backwards at what was lost, while still keeping us in the present for how Robin is processing things. This is doubly important too since as readers we don't really know anything about Penth or Robin, so you're having to convey the weight of losing Penth to an audience that knows nothing about Penth. Looking at it through this slower, more dramatic lens with each memory having its own line gives the passage a more weighty feeling than if you'd written this as a single paragraph -- again, adding more drama and sorrow into the situation. And I think this is necessary for the narrative reasons above, and also valuable because it does convey the finality well. It's a bit over-the-top for my taste, but it builds the world that you're establishing and I think it does a great job at it.

Compare Hitchhiker's Guide, which has a similar opening theme of a main character having their home vaporized in front of them. The entire book is written in a much more nihilistic perspective; in the grand (galactic) scheme of things, the destruction of Earth and everyone on it is relatively insignificant and it's not treated with really any sort of importance. I skimmed through the opening chapters to see if there's any sort of lingering prose like this where anyone's angsting about it. The chapter after we learn the world is about to end is a drink recommendation for a really nice alcoholic beverage. Earth blows up over the span of around 20 words, and the chapter after that is about a rich dumb alien with three hands stealing a nice ship. The closest we get to anyone feeling bad about Earth ending is this:

"And what's happened to the Earth?"
"Ah. It's been demolished."
"Has it," said Arthur levelly.
"Yes. It just boiled away into space."
"Look," said Arthur, "I'm a bit upset about that."
Ford frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his mind. "Yes, I can understand that," he said at last.
"Understand that!" shouted Arthur. "Understand that!"
Ford sprang up.
"Keep looking at the book!" he hissed urgently.
"What?"
"Don't Panic."
"I'm not panicking!"
"Yes you are."
"Alright so I'm panicking, what else is there to do?"
"You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy's a fun place. You'll need to have this fish in your ear."

And then they put the fish in his ear and life moves on.

You mentioned wanting to have tones like Adams and Pratchett so that you can have whacky characters doing fun asides or acting absurd, and I do think that's a key part of their style. But one thing that makes that style so hard to replicate, and so hard to inject when other people try to put it in their writing, is this underlying idea that none of the things that normally drive narratives -- stakes, drama, character conflict -- really matter. And those two things are intrinsically wrapped around one another, but often when I see authors trying to port the Adams and Pratchett flavor of writing, they only bring the whacky characters and not the underlying absurdist nihilism that makes their whackiness actually make sense.

In the above exchange, Ford not really getting how humans would react to a trauma like Earth exploding makes sense because he's actually an alien from another corner of the galaxy -- he doesn't get humans, and even if he did, he's seen so much shit that he's really not phazed by it. So his actions here are grounded, whereas in a fic that takes itself a lot more seriously, he'd come across more as the "lawl I'm so random".

And I think these two things are perfectly fine! For me, your fic takes itself seriously and operates on a much, much less nihilistic scale than Adams or Pratchett, which still makes for an engaging story. You have heroes who are bravely fighting to reclaim their homelands, villains who cackleat the wonderful despair of children, and a set of powers that seem to respond when the cards are down. This feels like a story where you want to have stakes; it doesn't feel like the brand of story where the ultimate moral is that most things don't matter -- which is to say that the absurdist characters and scenarios that pretty much define Adams and Pratchett might not fit here later.

- - - - - -

Anyway! Long aside about tonal dissonance aside, I think this is a really intriguing start. I love the concepts you're weaving here and I'm looking forward to seeing where you end up taking this!

 

[canisaries]

Hey! I've read the first chapter, and here are my thoughts.

This is a pretty snappy start to what seems to be a traditional fantasy journey story, with a teenage protagonist having their family killed by forces of the antagonist and awakening to their hidden magical powers through peril. I would argue it's too snappy, though, as everything happens pretty quickly. The start makes sense as a village literally disappears in a flash - and I love fast starts - but I think there could be more description to better build atmosphere afterwards. The village that used to be there is described a lot, yes, but what there is now gets very little attention, only established quickly as a field of grass and flowers. I think, in Robin's shoes, the reader would focus a mentionable amount on what still remains, maybe search for clues. Heck, maybe in desperation they'd try to even find a miniature version of the village somewhere between the blades of grass (how tall) and flowers (what kinds of flowers are they, what shapes and colors), thinking that perhaps the place has been shrunken down.

In terms of characters, we don't have much yet, though that's understandable as a change as drastic as this would floor just about anyone and temporarily shove aside finer personality quirks and the like. Robin's disbelief and denial at the situation feels very true. It's also true that a lot of people suppress external signs of their trauma to "stay strong" like Arcana does, but her going very soon to sass like "less platitudes, more hoofing it" clashes with the tone in my eyes. This could be worked with to imply that Arcana is using snappy remarks as a coping mechanism and to fake being less distraught than she is, but right now it just comes off as tonedeaf.

I think a more prominent issue here, though, is how improbable or suspiciously convenient certain events seem. Events like this hurt the suspension of disbelief and therefore break immersion. Here are a few that bothered me:

• Robin not seeing Arcana while looking around despite them being in a large, village-sized open field, only noticing her after being touched by her
• A patch of tall grass that was never mentioned before existing right next to the kids so that they can hide
• The Marowak sneaking up on the kids and mon undetected in an open field when the woman was spotted even before she could spot them
• Arcana having a pencil, which was invented as late as the 1500s - I don't know what time frame this story is set in, but it seems vaguely medieval, not to mention that it takes time for inventions to become available to common folk in preindustrial settings
• An old man who knows about this obscure magic stuff being present there precisely at the right time (and also sneaking up on the kids in an open field)

I don’t want to give the wrong idea, though: there are plenty of plot holes and improbabilities in stories many would consider great, and there hardly is a fictional story out there that’s 100% waterproof. It’s just when many of them happen in succession that they can start to weigh down the story. It also happens that fantasy stories like this have a lot of cliches associated with them, so certain conveniences can be very common and so stick out more glaringly.

A lot of conveniences can fortunately be made more reasonable through small additions or changes. The first three, for example, can be remedied by establishing the environment better beforehand as something where stealthy movement is possible (taller grass here and there, or even everywhere, though then it should warrant a reaction earlier on from Robin as running in waist high grass isn’t easy). And for all I know, the latter points I made may already have in-universe justifications that simply aren’t yet given in the first chapter, such as the old man having powers of his own and being able to track these magic users, thus finding the kids when one of them starts using magic.

Now for some miscellaneous notes:

while he wore a simple tunic with pants tucked into his boots, she dressed with more of a flourish – a green coat that waved in the wind, black gloves that she liked to adjust dramatically at opportune moments.

The description of Arcana's clothing could be specified a little, as just a green coat and black gloves don't scream "flourish" to me. However, an embroidered green coat and black leather gloves would make this not just more snazzy but more vivid as well. Consider also mentioning the shade of green, like viridian or emerald or the color of spruce needles or whatever, it's just that "green" encompasses a variety of different shades and hues.

The woman laughed again, a haughty, pretentious noise that burned like fire in Robin’s mind. “Oh, you actually thought you stood a chance… the looks on your faces! Such wonderful despair…”

This woman comes off as cartoonishly evil, which may just be part of her character, but it's hard for me to take her seriously as a threat that way. She feels more like comic relief.

Robin looked down at his hands. They had turned from his normal light brown to the color of midnight, with claws like daggers, and in one was a bent wooden club that looked like it would pack a punch. A light yellow, almost white, cloak had appeared around his shoulders, with a hood to cover his head.

This pokémon gijinka type transformation is honestly cool and not just cause I'm a furry I swear and I see a lot of potential on it. A wooden club might not be the coolest of weapons, but I can see how it fits a Mimikyu.

When she finished, she turned her paper around: it was a rough drawing of Robin, his face obscured completely in shadow except for his eyes, wearing a cloak that covered him all the way to his feet, with two ears and two red spots on the hood.

This implies she drew red spots with a pencil, which really is a kind of magic I'd like to learn.

This is all I can think of at the moment. If you'd like more elaboration on some point, feel free to ask.

 

[Chibi Pika]

This does mean that Not a Number is gonna be on the backburner for a while, but YOU KNOW HOW INSPIRATION IS!

nuuuuu ;-;

...ah, I know how it goes, hopefully it won't be on hiatus for too long. ;P

Anyway, I'm always a fan of your stuff so I knew I had to check this out! And hoo boy, not wasting a second throwing us right into it. On the one hand, yeah, it is a bit hard to feel emotionally affected by what's happening without any buildup, but on the other, I do love that the reader gets to feel just how utterly baffled Robin is. I mean, how do you even process something like that? If a loved one dies in front of you, it's horrifying, but there's a sense of certainty. But here? Are they dead? Can they be brought back? An entire town? How do you even react to that? And I do like how you use the slower Chapter 2 to kind of let us settle into the more emotional side of things, giving us more details of the life that was taken from our leads.

I noticed this a bit before with Mew Child, but it's even more obvious now--your writing style has a sort of video game feel to it. Everything from the way the plot sorta conveniently brings in characters/encounters when they're needed to the way the dialogue sounds, I definitely got the feel that I was playing the opening to an RPG while reading this. And I wouldn't say that's a bad thing either, though I can see how it might feel a bit off-putting to some readers.

Another thing I'm pleased to see make a return from Mew Child is the thing where the main character isn't so much a trainer as they are just bonded with one Pokemon, and a rather unusual one at that. I don't think I've ever seen a Minior in a fic before, and it's already been fun to see the various tricks Starlight can pull off.

Anywho, looking forward to seeing where this goes! Especially regarding the whole thing with humans using the powers of Pokemon. Curious to learn more about how Robin got that ability... and how Arcana survived, for that matter!

 

[Adamhuarts]

I just read the first chapter, and I'm somewhat mixed on it if I'm being perfectly honest. One on hand, I do like the premise and like others above I think the first few paragraphs set up a pretty good hook and things were moving smoothly, but then that lady showed up.

The battle with the marowak was kind of confusing and the woman herself didn't leave much of a strong impression on me personally. I was a bit let down by how quickly Starlight was taken down after her rock layer got down, considering the scene gave me that epic shonen power up moment sort of vibe. Robin's transformation also felt a bit abrupt, as well as the lady suddenly decided to disappear from the scene. That man appearing in the end didn't help matters either.

All in all I'd say the first half of the chapter really intrigued me and kept me reading, but the second half felt a bit chaotic and could've been streamlined more. The marowak battle could be smoother and made easier to read, and I think the chapter should've ended upon her fleeing, making Robin and Arky decide what to go next. The 'totally not suspicious' guy at the end could've been introduced in the second chapter as well.

A bit of a rocky start, but it's a concept with potential worth exploring.

 

[NonAnalogue]

Spoiler: Author's notes

THAT IS A LOT OF REVIEWS THANK YOU I'm gonna respond to them but y'all put so much thought into them and I really appreciate it ;_;

@Negrek I don't mind deconfirming that this has nothing to do with AZ - as I'm going to make more clear in this chapter, this is an entirely different world, with no relation to the canon established by the games (or the anime, but I don't know much about that anyway). Robin's a character I'm excited to explore, just because while he's a very idealistic kid, he also has no qualms about, you know, thievery. Thank you for your notes about tone - as you saw in Mew-child, I veer to lightheartedness often, and it can sometimes be difficult for me to rein it in!

@kintsugi YO THANK YOU FOR THE ADAMS DECONSTRUCTION I definitely agree that one of Adams' big things is nihilism, but I want to try and capture more his way with words and not his tone. I love the way the man spins a phrase. I'd also argue that Pratchett is very much not nihilistic - one of his most recurring themes is that everything DOES matter, big and small - and that optimism is definitely something I try to capture, not just in this fic but also in everything I write. Also Run Boy Run is absolutely the song that inspired this fic.

@canisaries Thanks for the notes! A few specific responses: I work under the assumption that the presence of Pokemon threw off what inventions were created when from our world, though I'll admit that's partially so I don't have to stress as much about looking up what was first made when. The woman in white is absolutely supposed to be a gigantic ham, and there's a reason for that - and saying too much else about her would be a spoiler. Also, we'll say that Arcana has two pencils, one black and one red, haha.

@Chibi Pika I'm so glad you're enjoying it! My writing style is definitely influenced by video games/RPGs, and this story in particular was originally envisioned as being game-like anyway, so I'm not surprised it comes across that way. It's a very specific kind of pacing and writing that I'm fond of, but I do acknowledge that it's not for everyone!

@Adamhuarts We already chatted a little about it, but that you for your notes! I like knowing what to improve on in the future.

Chapter 3: Different Lives

"You okay back there, kid?"

Robin didn't look up from the thick book in his lap until Starlight nudged his shoulder. "Huh? Sorry?" he asked, then the words actually filtered into his head. "Oh. Yes. I'm okay, thank you." The two of them were surrounded by tidy stacks of crates, with only a thin cushion of hay providing any comfort. The cart they were in trundled slowly down the path, the Mudsdale pulling it trotting at a laconic pace, its hooves drumming a rhythmic pattern against the stone.

"Good. Lemme know if you need anything, you hear? Sabri told me to treat you right, so if you get hungry or something, I got some 'food' in the back there."

"I'll let you know." The crate next to him bore the label 'FOOD', quotation marks included, which didn't fill Robin with confidence. He was pretty sure it had started growling, too. "Um…"

"Oh, don't mind that. The jerky can sense fear. Just smack the crate a few times and it'll shut up."

Robin adamantly did not smack the crate, and instead just scooted away from it.

"Anyway, we still got a ways to go," said the horseman, a middle-aged man whose hair, with its copious amounts of grease, should have been on the head of someone much younger. He was smaller than Robin, and, when standing, gave the impression that he'd once been average height before a Snorlax sat on him. His name was Kuzman Dragov, and Robin still wasn't entirely clear how he and Sabri knew each other, but Sabri had called in a favor to let Robin hitch a ride to the closest town, where he figured the woman in white and Arcana both were probably headed. "Make yourself comfortable," Dragov continued, taking a bite of a piece of jerky that was, mercifully, not moving, "and make sure to keep that sunhat on. It's a long path over the lake, and even this time of year, the sun can burn if you're not careful."

Robin tugged the borrowed hat low over his eyes as Starlight lurked in the shade provided by the crates. The book he held, The Collected Journals of Quintina Syre, he'd found inside Dragov's satchel, alongside a handful of gold coins that he'd pocketed without a second thought. The Collected Journals was thicker than any book Robin had ever seen before, and it had contained within its pages information on, well, almost everything. According to the forward, the author had spent her entire life traveling and writing things down; upon her death, her family compiled all of her essays and published them 'for the greater good', though a hefty amount of money had also exchanged hands.

The first article that Robin had looked up was 'Divine Favors'. "'A Divine Favor, note the capitalization, is a temporary boon granted to a mortal by one of the many deities that watch over the world of Ennen,'" he read under his breath. "'Whether or not this is a good thing depends entirely on the deity in question.'" Robin turned the page over, then flipped back. "That's it? That doesn't tell me anything more than Sabri did…"

"Is it really that weird to think that there's not much information available on mystical stuff like that?" Starlight chirped. She wasn't floating, choosing instead to rest in the cart; direct sunlight could be tricky for her in high doses, since her shell, not to put too fine a point on it, could act like an oven sometimes. "How common do you think the deities dropping some power on someone really is?"

"It's just…" The words weren't coming together in Robin's head right, but he and Starlight had been together long enough that she could read his gesticulations.

"I know," Starlight said, "it must be frustrating. But we'll learn more about it soon, I'm certain of it! Imagine if one of the deities really did give you a gift… I wonder which one? I hope it was Asanema of the Awakening...!"

"Are you sure you're not just saying that since she's the goddess of the night sky?" Robin asked with a gentle smile. He flipped to the section on prophecies, but once again Syre had nothing more to say than what Robin had already gleaned from Sabri. Shaking his head, he opened the book's centerfold – a world map the size of three full pages. He'd never seen a map like it before – only maps of Erdric, the region Penth was in – and he had to scan it for several minutes before he saw anything that looked remotely familiar.

Robin traced his finger along a line between two towns in the northeastern corner of the map. "Started in Penth," he muttered, "and headed to Sedre." The route passed over Lake Resolution, the hole in the center of the donut that was Erdric. Robin turned his head up and watched as the scenery of the lake passed him by: a glittering span of cerulean water bounded by expanses of red and gold trees. The bridge that connected the two sides of the lake was known formally as the Bridge of the Resolute and informally as 'that bridge, you know, the big one'. Erdric was a small region, with only five towns making it up, but even then Robin had never before passed beyond the bridge to the town that rested at its terminus.

There had been plans, of course.

After Robin's father had passed, Dulce had always said that when they saved up enough money, they'd move away from Penth to Sedre. Too many memories, too many people who knew their faces. Better, Dulce said, for them to disappear to another town, where they could start fresh and build different lives.

Of course, it never happened. They only ever made enough money to eke out a living, never enough for saving.

"We don't need gold, though, do we?" Dulce said, her voice whispering into Robin's ears.

His head snapped up. The sun was lower in the sky, and the bridge had passed behind them.

"I said, look, Binny!" Starlight said, spinning around him. "You can see Sedre up ahead! You napped almost the whole way there!"

Robin twisted around in place and squinted, looking past Kuzman Dragov and his enormous mount. Stone ramparts rose ahead of them, an imposing silhouette that looked out of place against the idyllic forest.

Quintina Syre had more to say on the topic of Sedre than on either of the subjects Robin had looked up earlier. "Erdric, on the whole, has never been much of a player on the world stage," she wrote, "largely due to its small size and unassuming populace. Nevertheless, this loose coalition of self-governed towns at one point had a standing military, as evidenced by the town of Sedre, built inside what used to be the Fort of the Resolute. Residents of Sedre like to say that they're some of the safest citizens in the world, but that's mostly because nobody really pays Erdric a second glance."

The fort's gate was already lowered as they approached, and Dragov gave the two guards a friendly wave. The road was evidently well-used, with humans and Pokemon alike passing them by in both directions. "Evening, Dragov," said the taller of the guards. "Setting up shop here again?"

"You know me, boys," Dragov replied, taking a theatrical bow that almost had him falling off of his seat. "Can't stay in one place too long. Got lots of premiere 'food' to sell this time, though, and just wait until you get a load of my 'ale'!"

And that was that. Nobody asked about Dragov's two passengers. "Do they not care that I'm coming in with you?" Robin asked.

Dragov shrugged. "This place looks real locked up, kid, but it's all for show. Lotsa people go in and outta here, all hours of the day. I mean, they got some small farms inside the walls, but not enough to keep this place fed, so they got food coming in from Port Yarcia and Penth all the time." He pursed his lips. "Hey, about that. I took my same route up to a farm near Penth that I always do, and I musta got turned around or something because I didn't ever hit Penth. Like the entire place was gone. Did the path there get messed up?"

Robin didn't meet his eyes. "…Something like that, I guess."

"Whatever." Dragov slowed the Mudsdale to a stop, climbed down, and fed it a carrot from his satchel. "Sabri was real cagey about it too. Something about not wanting to cause a panic, not that I know what he meant by it." He slung his satchel over his shoulder, stumbling as if he'd been expecting it to be heavier. "Where did… oh, you've got my book, kid. Eh, you know what, keep it. I've read it back to front already."

Robin set the borrowed hat on one of the crates and carefully lowered himself from the cart, hay clinging to his tunic. "Thank you, sir." He stepped back, placing a protective arm in front of Starlight, as another cart, this one drawn one-clawed by a Kingler, passed by them. They stood in the heart of… well, it was a market, but Robin hesitated to compare it to the one in Penth – even if the one back home doubled in size, it still would be beat.

"Can't say I know what business you have here," Dragov said, reaching a hand up to slap Robin on the upper arm, "but if you run into trouble, just come on back to your old pal Dragov. My consultation rates are reasonable." He shook Robin's hand with a grip that would have cowed a Machamp, then led the Mudsdale to an empty stall and began unloading crates.

Letting out a slow breath, Robin tapped one boot against the ground, and then the other. The road was cobblestone, but smoother than the cobblestones back home. The air carried a rich mix of aromas: fresh fruit, smoke, Pokemon, humans… The walls of the fort ran behind him off into the distance and looped back around far ahead, further up the rolling foothills of the mountains that imposed upon the sky. Most of the buildings he could see were cob, but the ones near the tops of the hills graduated into stone, culminating in a massive structure at the far end of the fort that loomed over the rest of the town.

"Well, Binny?" Starlight chirped, hovering at his side. "Where do we start?"

Robin fidgeted with the gold coins in his pocket and watched the sun cast long shadows across the town. "I want to see if I can find something real quick…"

Starlight floated above Robin's head and looked out over the marketplace. "Okay, but then we should find the inn, don't you think? It's getting late."

***

The inn nearest to the town's eastern entrance was the Mindful Mareep, run by a young woman who called herself Ms. Mabelle. Robin had, when he was at home, thought he had a pretty good idea of what an innkeeper looked like. Both inns in Penth were run by unrelated old men with leathery skin and permanent squints who nevertheless had hearts of gold once you got to know them. When one of them had passed on, a different old man, who nevertheless still had leathery skin and the squint, took over. Robin wasn't sure where they all came from.

It had quickly become apparent to Robin that this was not the case in Sedre.

Ms. Mabelle was tall, broad of shoulder, and always stood up stock-straight; she wore a tunic with no sleeves so that she could, at least as far as Robin could tell, show off her prodigious amounts of tattoos.

Robin had to admit that it was a nice change of pace. If nothing else, Ms. Mabelle made a mean omelet.

The next morning found Robin and Starlight well-fed and well-rested with none of Dragov's money remaining. After the purchase he'd made in the market – a satchel too big for him to swipe – the night at the inn wiped him out. The satchel was necessary for Dragov's copy of the Collected Journals, which had started giving Robin an ache in his arm after carrying it for only an hour. He'd also found a small linen ribbon, dyed indigo blue, that he tied around one of Starlight's spikes.

"So the building at the top of the hill…" Robin tilted his head. "That's a church?"

Ms. Mabelle nodded, her hands a blur as she slid breakfast orders onto plates. "Sure as sure can be. That's the Church of Alpani, though if you got someone else you like to pray to they'll take you in all the same. The disciple who manages it, that's Indra Alba, she's good people. If you're looking for someone, she'll know where to get you started. Sorry I can't help you more. You and Mr. Dragov are the only visitors I've seen from Penth in the last couple of days."

"That's all right. Thank you for breakfast." Robin pushed his chair in and left the inn, squinting at the bright morning light.

The church in Penth, devoted to the deity Alagi of the Evolution, had been a modest affair. Though any denomination could pray within its wattle and daub walls, the lecturer on loan from the capital-C Church in Vezretti across the sea always tailored his sermons towards followers of Alagi. Robin and Dulce didn't attend services often, but the lecturer always had a kind word for them when he saw them in town, and he always palmed them a few coins before Dulce could steal them herself.

Sitting at the peak of the town, the church of Alpani of the Emotion was the antithesis. Its stone walls, shrunken versions of the walls surrounding Sedre, bore elaborate stained glass windows that sparkled in the sun, each one representing the goddess Alpani. On their own, the three buildings within the church walls took up the entirety of the hilltop and easily dwarfed the already ostentatious homes that led up to it. Above the doors was the sigil of the goddess – a vertical line crossed with two diagonal ones – and even that etching was Robin's size.

Robin looked up at the towering structure. It was almost a castle, and it was only one of three. "I don't like this, Starlight."

"What's the matter?" Starlight had floated up to a stained glass window, one showing what was purported to be the white-and-green horned face of Alpani, and was watching her reflection bob and weave. "I think this place is nice. So much stone!"

"It's…" The words wouldn't come out of his mouth, and he wrapped his arms around himself. "It's too big. It feels… cold." He shook his head. "Not cold, but…"

Starlight spun down to him and rubbed against his head. "I understand. Then maybe we should find Miss Indra quickly, so you can get out of here. Do you know what you need to ask her?"

"Yeah. If she's seen the woman in white… and where to find her."

"There you go." Starlight trilled happily. "We'll be in and out."

They were not in and out.

One acolyte had pointed them in the direction of Indra's living quarters, but neglected to tell them that they were in the wrong building. Another had insisted that Indra was leading a group study session at the moment, and that she was actually in the building Robin and Starlight had come from. A third swore up and down that Indra had gone into town to buy some groceries. The last one was certain that Indra wasn't even the person in charge of the church and that she was an impostor.

"You know, I'm not entirely certain that last man was actually an acolyte," Starlight said as they made their way down a torch-lit stone hall. "His vestments looked a little…"

"Like a green potato sack?" asked Robin.

Starlight giggled. "I was going to say 'thrown together', but I think your description works too. Oh! Eyes up, Binny! I think we're there!"

A wooden door ended the hallway, with a smaller wooden sign hung on it bearing the inscription 'Quarters of Indra Alba.' Robin took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" The voice that answered was wispy, like it might drift away in the wind.

Robin froze. He knew that voice.

The door creaked open, and…

"Ah… oh my. How… delightful to see you, child."

A woman in white.

 

[kintsugi]

Chapter 2 Time! just when i think i'm catching up i'm falling behind again

Glad the Adams deconstruction was at least halfway useful; totally valid point with Pratchett! Idk why I kept slashing them together when their philosophies are actually so different that they horseshoe back to being the same, heh.

I'm not surprised you don't know me. Men of my age… we tend to melt into the background a little, hm?

That NPC life has gotta be rough.

But on that note, how big *was* Penth? I was imagining a small-ish village, but this comment makes it seem like it was much bigger.

Peach was, as Robin found out, a Hatterene, one just as elderly as the healer. Her colors had faded and there were lines drawn across her face, and she was slowly stirring a cauldron of thick stew, the ladle held aloft with a psychic grip. Starlight floated around the pot, basking in the steam rising from it; she spun on her axis and the steam spun around her, prompting a giggle from Peach.

Everything about this paragraph is just... *chef's kiss*. Starlight is just so cute here, witchy Hatterene stirring a wholesome cauldron. I love when Pokemon get to interact with one another like this because it shows their agency as characters outside of them talking to humans and leads to really tender moments like this one!

"How about with the part where Penth just got vaporized into nothingness? Or, failing that, the part where Robin got a Mimikyu costume out of thin air?"

I think it was this comment that actually prompted the deconstruction in my last review -- it's really strange to see one person so casual about everything and the other one repeatedly torn up about it. They're almost behaving like characters from two different stories with two different sets of stakes/morality views on how seriously things should be taken. That and the fact that we're mostly tied to Robin's POV and as such his tone is what's setting the story's tone makes Arcana's snark come across less like fun banter and more as crass. It sort of feels like superhero quips -- haha, funny joke about language, cap except dozens of people are dying in the background. It makes her feel really inhuman and not relatable -- which perhaps is your intent.

And we do get a little insight into the cynicism/pessimism that prompts Arcana to take this approach at the end of the chapter, and I get that she's trying to act cool and it's 98% a facade -- but in the context of the rest of the narrative it feels really jarring because we keep pulling back and forth from Robin's internal POV on this to Arcana's external projection.

Together, they would erase humanity using powers granted to them by the deities – powers that would allow the human the strength of a Pokemon."

It's a legend so I get that it's not supposed to be taken literally/hey maybe Sabri has the reasoning all backwards here, but if the concern is that humans will hurt Pokemon too much and the hybrid is a failsafe, why have the human at all? Why not just give a Pokemon the requisite power to do the human-erasing? Seems a bit counter-intuitive to give a ton of extra power to a member of the group that you're trying to wipe out.

The only thing that matters now is stopping him by any means necessary, do you understand me?

Getting some solid "for the greater good" villain vibes here

black gloves that she liked to adjust dramatically at opportune moments

Arcana said, adjusting her gloves as her coat waved in the breeze

Arcana said, adjusting one of her gloves.

lmao this is the literary equivalent of pushing your glasses up while the reflection blocks your eyes out, isn't it

And even after beating me, if you can't keep me from leaving… well. That says it all, really.

Realism!

Arcana crouched and picked up Opal, cradling her in one arm

This is an interesting addition -- if Pokemon battling is common (which it seems to be, given how easily the kids jump in to it), and Pokeballs/carrying methods don't seem common (just based off of what we've seen; idk) -- how do large Pokemon battle? Like if your Rhyperior faints are you just SOL until it's awake again? What if it gets really badly hurt?

The plot thickens, and Arcana exits stage left! Interesting chapter. Exposition over food is simple but effective, and I think you've got some really interesting lore buildup right now. I'm really excited to see how things started, as it seems like the legends aren't really a reliable source of information and there's definitely a lot of pieces in play. It looks like you have an interesting pantheon of non-Pokemon gods as well (or are those four the Tapus? idk what other four-member squad there is); curious to see how that plays in.

While you nail a good mix of emotions throughout (Arcana banter aside), the ending does feel a bit flat. We spend a lot of time in this + previous chapters getting a good feel for Robin's emotional state at various stressful moments (sad about Penth 1, sad about Penth 2, scared of Marowak lady) -- but the battle and fallout with Arcana this chapter feels really distant. Is he sad to see her leave him behind because he's too idealistic? Resigned because he knows her well enough that there's no changing her mind? Angry that she's not following the rules that he thinks are right? It's a little strange going from having such a tight view on Robin's emotions to having such a black box for him.

Still! The broad strokes of this story are really, really interesting. I feel like Arcana's gonna show up in a bad way later down the line, and lines like "your hastiness will be the end of you" are absolutely not helping. There's definitely some interesting subversion going on too -- Robin doesn't get his way just because he wins the battle; Arcana's not going to let them try to talk-no-justu the villains in the end. I like how you use them to explore two different ways of coping with loss, and it'll be interesting to see what happens if/when they end up meeting up again in the future.

forget Adams; I sorta get Earthbound vibes from this tbh

 

[kintsugi]

"Oh, don't mind that. The jerky can sense fear. Just smack the crate a few times and it'll shut up."

Heh. My gripes with Arcana's humor aside, this is one of the spots where I feel like the brand of comedy really works. Cartrdriver gives 0 fucks.

He was smaller than Robin, and, when standing, gave the impression that he'd once been average height before a Snorlax sat on him.

And this is a really lovely bit of description.

The first article that Robin had looked up was 'Divine Favors'. "'A Divine Favor, note the capitalization, is a temporary boon granted to a mortal by one of the many deities that watch over the world of Ennen,'" he read under his breath. "'Whether or not this is a good thing depends entirely on the deity in question.'" Robin turned the page over, then flipped back. "That's it? That doesn't tell me anything more than Sabri did…"

I like this book as a means of exposition. It's an interesting choice because we don't really get much useful information out of it -- which imo is the best kind of exposition; it makes the knowledge learned feel more like interesting worldbuilding than needing to hammer plot-relevant information in somewhere.

It sort of reminds me of playing a videogame and getting flavor text -- you don't really look for game-breaking plot things in random side books that you find (and you definitely won't find them in real life either), but it's reassuring and fun to read all the same.

She wasn't floating, choosing instead to rest in the cart; direct sunlight could be tricky for her in high doses, since her shell, not to put too fine a point on it, could act like an oven sometimes.

This is a really cute detail!

I wonder which one?

it's definitely the evil one isn't it?
Jokes aside, this is an interesting question -- are there multiple chosen hybrids from the multiple gods? Is Arcana one of them and that's why she didn't get bopped? Why have multiple nuke failsafes if just the one is probably enough to end the conflict? Is any of this legend real?

The air carried a rich mix of aromas: fresh fruit, smoke, Pokemon, humans…

The fresh fruit and smoke bits paint a really clear picture of what you're trying to describe, but 'Pokemon' and 'humans' are a bit of an open book as far as smells go. 'Pokemon' could mean any briny sea-faring species, or something like muk or weezing, or a smoky fire-type. Human smell is probably less varied than that, but still could be a lot of things -- haven't showered in a month and live under a bridge vs freshly cologned noble folk, you know?

omelet

M O T H E R T H R E E

'Quarters of Indra Alba.'

oh yeah her name is warrior thunderstorm god of white, I can't see how this would--

A woman in white.

nice. better run, boy, run.
or maybe she'll actually tell him something useful this time?

This chapter really hit a stride with me. I think part of it is that the character dramas take a bit of a backseat -- it's a lot easier to take a deep breath and laugh at the 'food' and 'ale' jokes when they aren't interspersed with characters explaining why the world is trying to end. Having a lot of uninvested characters really helps with that too, I think. When the stakes are as high as the literal end of all human life, and Robin/the narrator is as invested as he is, it's a bit hard to swallow that people who know about it (i.e. Sabri/Arcana last chapter) are going to have a conversation discussing these topics and not take it with at least some level of seriousness. But here, away from Penth, it makes sense that Dragov and Ms. Mabelle aren't focused on things like that, which means that when we talk about her bomb-ass tats or the wiggly jerky, these jokes are fun and they get to stick. And I think even the narration feels a bit brighter; you can have jokes like "that bridge, the really big one" without running the risk of weirdly making light of the world ending. I really like the whimsical balance that you strike with this chapter; there's definitely some stuff going on under the hood and now that the woman in white is back (and apparently has some high standing with the rest of the non-evil world), the plot is certainly going to thicken, but to me the comedy feels a lot more seamlessly integrated into the narration here.

I'm also really interested in the side mythos that you've set up! It doesn't really feel purely Pokemon, per se (in the sense that I don't think these are just re-named expies of different legendary trios or something), and I'm always really curious to see how authors approach religion in the Pokemonworld. You definitely seem to have some balls in the air on that one, what with the church services for both gods/non-deonominations and the different gods mentioned in Sabri's exposition last chapter, so I'm really curious to see where these end up going!

Overall, I think this chapter is where your tone really hits its stride -- just a bit of relaxing exploration, some lovely side characters, and yet the overarching shadow of the impending doom plot looming over everyone. Really dug the mix here.

 

[Chibi Pika]

The chapter just felt... comfy overall, and it was really easy to sink into that feeling along with the characters, what with all the fun details to the world, the background characters, and the town. We've barely been in Sedre and it already feels thoroughly lived-in. Almost to the point that I forgot about the crisis at hand, haha. But there were still reminders--I got a kick out of Dragov commenting that Penth seemed to be gone. It'd be pretty weird if an entire town vanishing didn't have any fallout on the surrounding area, even in a pre-industrial setting!

Oh, and the other great thing about the comfiness of this chapter--I got lulled into a false sense of security just like Robin. I was totally not ready for Indra Alba to turn out to be the woman in white, lmao. Sooo, now you got me anxious until we see where this encounter goes, haha.

 

[Equitial]

I actually didn’t enjot this chapter much. This is probably a personal preference thing because the other people really liked it, but yeah, not for me. It felt like nothing happened – the plot didn’t progress (except for the end), the characters didn’t make any decisions and weren’t explored, and it never felt like there was a goal for this this chapter. The wordbuilding in this chapter was too much. I zoned out and had to read back several times. I felt like too much time was spent on characters who’ll never be seen again. Of course, other people liked those aspects. Just differing opinions, I guess. I’ve always been much more interested in character and plot compared to worldbuilding.

The descriptions of the various one-off characters were delightful, though, and several lines made me chuckle. I still liked Starlight interacting with Robin. And I’m interested to see what happens between Robin, Starlight, and the woman in white, so hopefully the next chapter will connect more with me.

 

[Adamhuarts]

This story kind of fell off my radar for a while, but I've been meaning to get back to it, and so I decided to do that today. I'll say the second chapter felt better than the first and it also gives us some world building and explanations on what exactly is going on. The pacing also felt more balanced this time around, though I will recommend the use of line breaks to split scenes as the lack of them makes it confusing to know when they begin and when they end.

I'm a bit mixed on the last scene that happened back there. Why is Astra trying to go and fight that woman and whoever wiped out their home by herself? Didn't she and Robin both lose to that woman if it weren't for the latter awakening his hidden power? Even for someone stubborn like her, there's little justification for her to think she stands a chance.

This story does have potential and there are things I like about it, so, I'll keep an eye on it and see where it goes.