Pokémon Transversal, crossing the backs of legends

[K_S]

If there was any mercy in this abomination pseudo world it was that the childbearing his wife’s voice looked very little (precious little) like Grace.


Age distanced them, though at this moment he seemed younger, time-reversed, and all that was his curse for the moment. But at that moment his mind felt infinitely older.


Experience with seeing a near generation grow up had trained his eyes to anticipate how potential could manifest. Long-legged, long-necked, skin near glistening white, all tells of a… how had he heard it referred to? A swanmay build? There was a promise of near ethereal grace to this girl. With training and time, she might become one of those few blessed people considered a timeless beauty.


As it was her dress hid her knees and obscured the fact they were knobby, probably scraped from a fall and there was nothing to grace to the girl as she staggered to her feet. Though it was likely nerves rather than an upcoming growth spurt playing with her balance just then. She seemed horridly timid, dangerously fragile just then. It’d taken several minutes for her to understand that she could uncurl from where she’d fallen, never mind that her ‘mon, a black and blue star-speckled tuft named “nebby” was placidly sitting at her side. Hinting this had happened often enough the beast knew to wait her out…


While her altruism –she’d curled around her companion to shield it even as she fell- was an admirable trait in certain circumstances… Shown in someone this young… to this extreme… compiled with her instinctual fawning that’d make a deerling proud. The hints were disquieting.


Her timidity and the fact that there were no callouses to this child’s hands as he pulled her up, served as another wedge between this girl and Grace. Though her apologies, of wasting her time in that voice were like knives to the gut. Snapping his finger set Beedrill to alighted upon a nearby tree, and startled her to silence. Above them all, Beedrill forgoed scraping his blades for such obvious prey that clearly wasn’t worth it. While the blonde child got combobulated Giovanni stayed kneeling. Allowing the vaguely amorphous thing that’d attached itself to the girl’s side as her starter to sniff his fingers and chirrup up at him.


It looked, vaguely mind, like a star-speckled hopip, save less solid, and looking at it directly made his head ache.


So he looked away as he stood, brushing his knees and sliding his hands into his pockets.


She was taller than Grace had been at that age, or so he supposed. Grace had a small collection of school photos he’d flipped through a time or two, while they’d spent one afternoon reminiscing about their educations and plotted tame things, about how they were going to accommodate their child, perhaps multiple children, into a school and training regimen.


This legend wrought approximation, his rival he supposed, was different, and each difference was a mercy. He tallied them even as listening to her chatter about nothing much at all sent him back, to the bittersweet give and take that’d been the whole of his and Grace’s relationship.


It’d never meant to be.


Grace had worked near all her life. Menial jobs at first. Finances and lack of opportunity binding her to the most mundane of lives. Only a lucky lottery ticket had gotten her enough resources to elevate herself into the proper circles and into his regard.


And yet she hadn’t caught his eye. Not in the traditional ways. With her windfall, she’d aspired to an education, and her ambitions had been of an altruistic slant. Human medicine, nursing to be specific, and she’d had the freedom to pursue her passion at whatever clinic she wanted. She worked at the high-end hospitals, to test her skills, and spent chunks of her time volunteering at the poorest facilities to help those in need, refusing pay because she could and refusing to allow her services to be charged because to do otherwise would be amoral.


He’d found her a pretty face among a wash of them at some medical charity or other. A reoccurring guest among the elite as Viridian was promoting itself as humane and medical break troughs and humanities went hand in hand.


At first, he’d thought the elderly man on her arm her father, and for a grown woman to have such deep seeming familial attachments, had led to him dismissing her beyond her prettiness and lowered her status to that of a babble. When her escort had proven to be a director or other, some supervisor of hers, the illusion of being attached to her family at the hip was dispelled. She’d cycled through a small clutch of elderly men who looked nothing like her and been shamelessly using them as a means to access, and then poke and prod at the elite without being “available” and thus accosted by the powerful and preyed upon.


It was an interesting tactic.


When he’d found… or rather not found the biological relationship between her and the first guest. And discovered her angle and her source of shield… Well, it was a curious mode of operation, to go as friends with such elderly souls.


And she’d seemed to genuinely like humoring the old curmudgeons she went with. Spending her time trading catty work gossip and commentary on those about her to the delight of her companion of the evening.


She continued to brush against his world all accidental. And once affirmed that she wasn’t a professional escort -


And in such a humorous way no less! The Rocket had considering hiring her as such, thinking an evening on his arm would be a reprieve for them both when one of Giovanni’s rival, some oil dealer from Driftveil, had approached her to crassly suggest she spend the evening with him, rather than her present companion. The lewd undertones hadn’t been missed, and her refusal, to word it gently, had been to shoot both men and offers down. Calling any who’d hire her, a spineless reprobate, and suggesting a number of graphic medical conditions be inflicted on any who’d hire another as fucking eye candy.


Watching Clay slink off, tail between his legs, shirt front soaked as she’d ordered him to get back and when he hadn’t she’d lashed out. First with her glass’ contents, then by snapping up a knife from the table. To the sight of bared steel Clay’d backed down, blearily baffled as to why she’d get herself in such a twist at such a friendly offer.


But he’d left, to shamble off and inflict his drunken self on some other poor soul. And it’d been a treat to not only see an opponent debased but in such a way…


-So she was not to be confronted or approached as an escort, noted.


His amusement was only mildly tempered when he’d gone to look up a few of the more obscure diagnoses and been sickened by the reading.


Parties in Viridian were funerals with a festive spin. Perhaps off-put by the natural greens and spring about the city the rich and famous who gathered in Kanto’s green heart wore colors long associated with funerals. Black, near see-through, speckled with gems to the point of looking like cheap sequins made of diamonds, was the norm. She skipped that memo, cycling through a few vibrant colors before settling into a flattering red, ankle-length dress that’d made it easy to trace her moments as she wandered about.


It was about the time she’d settled into her preferred colors that he’d admit he was attending more events just to see her. That he was gathering tales and weighing approaches, and it’d been a year and a half that she’d gotten that lucky ticket. And the wonder of her, such a low-class girl, being a part of the upper eulachons, was starting to wear thin in his circles. She’d been getting fewer invites, and he’d come to the realization that he’d have to approach, sooner rather than later, but there was a terror in doing so. Clay wasn’t the only man she’d shot down in self-defense, and while he wasn’t like that, drunk or cold stone sober, he had his own reputation she might misinterpret.


Though, on the other hand, she seemed oblivious to him, his regard, and really anything beyond her altruism and her amusements.


It was a curious and endearing sort of tunnel vision.


He’d normally not listen to the various chat shows and gossip rags given air time, but it made acceptable and educational background noise while he worked. Winter was coming, a time when he focused on the social aspects of his public persona. Not bothered by holidays, religious leanings, or familial obligations, he’d been neck-deep in the workings of his syndicate until a day ago. Unfortunately working among the dredges of society had its… messy aspects… And he was dealing with the residue of executions on his wardrobe. While not quite neck-deep, it’d made a mess of his shirt and undershirt, as one of the fools to be killed had had the audacity to fight back. He’d peeled off his shirt and was working off a pair of blood-stained gloves while the tv prattled on. Rocket uniform shucked off and thrown upon a sheet of plastic, he made idle plans of burning, tossing one glove after the mess, and fighting a bit with the second.


Her name, and the word scandal, stopped him halfway with the other glove. The horror that she’d raised was a tame thing. Not dressing as the other social climbers. Some interviewer or other had pinned her down at her work, ignored her calls to security, to grill her on the many social norms she was eschewing. Wasn’t she aware of the shame of not stimulating the fashion industry, by not trading her garb with every event…


Her response, that this prattle was keeping her from her patient, and that the interviewer needed to go, now, was hardly marking a dent… And, because she hadn’t been taught better, she made something of a fatal mistake, she’d responded to the question pressed to her.


Why waste the money? Her candor had caused Giovanni to huff a laugh, the other glove off and among the pile, relief both surprising and potent as it ran through him and the prattle went on.


Grace, a woman without many social ones, merrily alternated between tearing into the interviewer about how it was better to be frugal than flagrant and how he was compromising the care of her patient… Then security had come and hauled the damned fool of an interrogator off and the media bit had tapered off, switching to other subjects.


Some affair or other, utterly expected and boring, only mildly intriguing how the married woman managed to step out with five partners behind her husband’s back in their home.


The alluded security holes of that caliber could easily be exploited for break-ins in due time, he’d have to send a Capo to look in on that.


The Rocket, near buzzed on a rush of relief, finished the chore of changing and gotten on with burning what evidence needed to be burned. The following interviews faded to mere background noise as he got back to work.


She favored flowers wound through her hair instead of the bejeweled clips, gemmed tiaras, of her betters. Deciding that if she was going to do “something with her hair” she was going to stimulate a part of the economy that wasn’t horridly wasteful. When winter descended she swapped the woven plants for nothing. Picking warm scarves and fluffy muffs, and despite lacking style, the accessories had shown off a bit of her ingenuity. Grace had slipped a blue tooth earbuds among the fuzz and synching the technology to her watch which she could activate by seeming to stretch. She’d been listening to some talk piece before he’d approached; smiled and nodding at her companion who’d been awkwardly talking at her for a while now. The man was some director’s son she clearly wasn’t interested in and wasn’t paying a whit of attention to.


And the man was that special type of bore not to notice he was being ignored.


It seemed such a horrid way to spend one’s winter holiday, being monopolized by a boring bastard, so plucking a bit of courage up, Giovanni approached. Amused that such a cunning woman would be content to seem vapid for a man she wasn’t going to be talking to again. But then considering the last time she’d been obviously without an escort and Clay’s attempts at… getting her attention… And how no one had intervened. She probably considered it safer to tolerate and play a fool than do without.


She was clearly dying of boredom because she didn’t drive him off when he approached. When he asked her something “borderline intelligent”, well that’d been it for her companion, who once recognizing Giovanni, was quick to leave and leave her unprotected as well.


“He’s a poor defense,” Giovanni noted, dark eyes following the fleeing doctor, lips pressing into a scowl.


The soft buzz of the broadcast cut off as she rolled her wrist and cut the signal with the flick of a finger that looked like a pet stretching gesture. She considered her companion who’d merrily abandoned her, then considered him, clearly bemused.


“Yeah, he’s definitely not the best… But I knew I was getting into when I got saddled with him. An at-work lottery… Anyways,” Shaking her head, red locks tickling her ears, surly, she tipped her head at him, hands on her hips. “I got a taser, just in case. I’m not going to need it, am I?”


“Hardly.”


It was a quick dart from here to the nearest refreshment table; she could adlib a weapon and drag up a scene in seconds. The rug under his feet could easily be pulled, though her dress would make the motions awkward… He could see her weighing the various environmental factors to use against him, and he slid his hands into his pockets, letting her complete what mental tally she needed to feel safer.


“You could get a ‘mon, pass it off as a companion and no one would need to know it was meant as a guard animal, especially if you forgo the Arcanine line. It’d be less obvious.”


“Think they’d let me in with a grimer?”


Just imaging the sheer chaos a grimer, or muk would kick up. He smirked, envisioning rivals and lessers all trying to tactfully not wither away under the fumes and scream as art, rugs, and shoes were ruined in masse.


“Probably not. But if you do let me know, I’ll bring a few antidotes along, just in case.”


And if a few of those antidotes were duds, setting certain enemies and inconsequential to die or have long lasting side effects… well it’d be an interesting springboard to launch a smear campaign against a few of his rivals in the poke-medical field. Archibald’s organic flouted medicines were getting enough traction on certain crowds to be irritating, and a recall would likely beat the entreprenuers sales down enough to get them out of Celedon, and eventually out of Kanto without too much mob interference.


Really, he just wanted that bald man’s face off the billboard across from his office, if a few more odious irritants died as a result, all the better.


She smirked at him, obviously trying not to laugh and endearingly oblivious to the true slant of his thoughts.


“Who’d of thought there was something like humor under all that broody staring and dithering.” She drawled and to that stab, at his pride he snorted.


“So you did notice me.” He might have preened a bit for that, but her smirk had him rewind what she said. Mirth felled, his face twitching in irritation as he translated from Kanto slang to Italian and realized what she actually meant. “I was not being broody.”


To that bit of petulance, she rose an eyebrow, tipping her head up a bit because she was just short enough to need to do that to look at him properly.


“Whatever delusion gets you through your day, sweetheart.”


Then she left him, to carry on with what she’d later tell him, were her “ rich person rounds”.


As if her presence amongst them had been a duty and chore.


While she didn’t bring a grimer, her borrowed Kanguaskhaun made quite the impact. He’d known about well before because she’d gone through the tiresome legalities of filling out all the paperwork to rent a beast from a company he’d owned that dealt in renting retired battlers for various charity or sportsmanship events as mascots. The request was so odd, she’d wanted to deck the thing out in a gown, and had asked for something with high tactile tolerance and affability for children, loud noises, and glitter… It’d been so damned odd it’d landed on his desk rather than an underling’s. And he’d granted it with the request he be allowed to see the process and end results of all these odd caveats personally.


Which was how he’d found out where Grace worked on the weekends. And spent one amusing afternoon among the long-term care children in a hospital assisting them “make Kanga pretty” for some party of other that they could scarcely pronounce.


He’d ruined a perfectly good suit in the chaos, lost a shoe, and was finding glitter for days.


He could not imagine this child to have such spirit as his Grace. And that revelation soothed some of the pain gripping his heart. He’d humor her, perhaps linger a bit, because Grace would have wanted such and he wasn’t such a shoddy Gym Leader to throw children to the ‘yennas… Then, once an appropriate amount of time had passed he’d leave her, hopefully, safer. But if not… Well, he’d do what was reasonable to make sure she wasn’t in immediate danger when he left and that’d have to do.


“If I may?” He indicated the ground beside her, he’d coaxed her to sit upon a smooth rock after they’d walked a little way because she was limping, and she’d followed his lead woodenly. Still, he was tired, and standing over her was more irritating than anything else. So when she nodded he took a seat on the ground beside her, leaning against the sun warm stone, thinking of too much and too little, all at once.


“Th.. Thanks for saving us. Me and Nebby, from your Beedrill. Not that we needed it. I’m sure he’s a nice.. um Bug Type and wouldn’t hurt anyone.”


To that Giovanni huffed a laugh. “Oh no, it’s an utter avaricious-“ tipping his head up he considered the child and her age. “-black hole. It’d of eaten your fluffball and you for a snack and gone for a rattata for seconds if I weren’t around to slow it down and remind him that we can’t afford to empty out whole echo systems because you’re feeling peckish.”


The last he hollered at the tree. Blades scraped then, irritation and a wordless assurance that if he’d have a settled nest/hive Beedrill wouldn’t have to go showing it’s superiority and hunger among the masses. With a certain amount of hatchling weedles to tend to it’d hunt less, not more. Lies, from first to last, and were he alone Giovanni’d of called the bug out on its Taurus shit. As it was he rolled his eyes and ignored both the scraping lances from above. And the fact that the girl wasn’t breathing. She’d either fix it or pass out and her subconscious would fix it for him.


“You know, I don’t think I caught your name.” She managed to squeak out, finding something like courage in acute discomfort and kicking her feet a bit as she sat… well not beside him per-say… but close enough that he scrunched a bit away from her least she miss and kick him by accident.


“Giovanni Sakaki, you?”


This was so different, so wrong….


Having stepped out “for some air” and mildly intoxicated, she’d hung rather unseemingly about the edge of a balcony. Ground level, mind, so the fall wouldn’t be too great, but she was far gone and surprisingly melancholy. A curious mix and it was a peculiar backhanded honor that she’d let him see her like this.


“Haven’t you hear of me?, I’m the luckiest bitch in Viridian, won two lottos back to back, and have all the mandibuzz of a region calling my phone. I changed my number twice, block the bastards and they still won’t leave me alone. I’m seriously considering changing my name, might slow the carrion eaters a bit.


“Lillie Aether.”


From over a decade ago, hearing her voice now brought the memory of her voice as and words as clear as the night he’d heard them.


“ ‘M, Grace Evens”


And he responded then as he did now, unable to shake off the fact that this echo was not a benign bit of whimsy, but somehow ominous.


“Well, regardless of how we’re meeting, it’s a pleasure.”


The child's resultant confusion to what must seem utter nonsense was more than understandable, still, he didn't explain, dare not explain, though she clearly wanted answers.

 

[TheCouchEffect]

This was a really fun story to read, even without much knowledge of the Manga on my end. Despite that, the story was easy to follow and incredibly interesting from start to where it is currently.

The plot itself is interesting - taking a character like Giovanni who is about as experienced as can be and who is used to operating in a much more brutal world then plopping him in the world of the games is wonderful. The set-up was wonderful as well with Giovanni suffering from injuries both man-made and caused by his actions against the Legendaries. Him being put into the current situation alongside Silver because Celebi took the most convoluted route of healing and potential punishment for his actions works well. I'm curious where you'll take it in the future since so far he seems to be avoiding the plot of the games. Will he decide that Aether and the Ultra Wormholes are his best bet to escape whatever this is? Will he ultimately get revenge on Celebi? How will he react to Guzma and Team Skull? Will Rainbow Rocket make an appearance? There are so many questions I'm dying to have answered.

I love the direction you've taken with the Legendaries as well. They are the closest thing to gods that the Pokemon world has, and that you've decided to depict them the way you have is really interesting since most of the time they're benevolent forces. Here they're a lot more ambiguous. Some of them like Entei and Jirachi having more positive views of mortals while those like Celebi view them as things was interesting to see. With Celebi in particular I can see why it's in the camp of viewing them with disdain since it only appears in times of peace... supposedly. Also Celebi is a lot more snarky than I would have thought and I really like that.

I also like that Arceus is considered something none of the other legendaries want to deal with if they can help it. It's a refreshing change of pace.

The battle scene between Giovanni and the legendaries was fantastic. It was well detailed, well choreographed, and had a really fun flow. It was nice to see that not only were Giovanni and Silver both working together to use their Pokemon to hold off the Legendaries, but that the two of them had actually gotten involved personally. Celebi having its fingers sliced may have been the most surprising moment in the fight, but it worked.

Overall, this was a great story and I can't wait to see more. Giovanni is such a fun character to see in action here and really makes this story unique.

 

[K_S]

You know I realized I forgot to answer all of your questions that I could without getting too spoilery and since I have some time I'll do so now...

The Manga has a really interesting combat system, where OP moves (those in the games and anime) might actually not save your bacon in contests/fights and the cast gets their hands dirty with one on one physical trickery brutality, and the like. It's a good case study to see an alternate way for 'mon battles. I drew Silver's attack on Celebi from the spirit of that, and Gio's going to draw on it during his chapters later on. I'm seriously thinking of having him walk around the scuffling 'mon, up to a Skull grunt during a 'mon battle and just decking one of them out of irritation... perhaps even Guzma... because they are in his way and that's not the safest place to be when he's on a mission/ticked/ect and having the whole Skull team just blue screen of death because this random dude just broke all the rules. Like broke broke them and they can not compute.

Celebi technically did heal Gio when he de-aged the man, all the Legend had to do was de-age him and ditch him and they'd of been done. The fact that Celebi didn't, and the fact that he dragged an innocent and good person into it (silver's kinda that antithesis of his father in that regard) in my mind slides Celebi out of ambiguous and into the villainous camp. And of course, Celebi's snarky, a lot of the Legends are basically entities stacked to a job they don't want. Legends fall into two categories, burned-out misanthropes, weirdos who really get into it and fall into their roles and legends with fanatical zeal, or the ones who want out. If Arceus wasn't a threat over their heads they'd all flit off to random directions and there'd be a disaster far and wide...

About Entei, and the hound trio... this is more SoulSilver/heart gold game canon more than anything but it's established that those Legends were actually a trainer's 'mon who died in a disaster. They were brought back by Ho-Oh as a miracle and... they're probably the most friendly Legend in Manga canon, probably because of their previous positive encounters and perspectives.

Actually, I think Entei was an Arcanine/Growlithe before he died. So the Legend's basically a reborn sabertooth volcano god who mentally's stuck in his head in being a floofer snuggle dog, his Legend status is something he hates and he helps people part to prove he's better than the "aloof more professional Legends" and because he's still a relatively good dog who really really wants pets.

I'm actually looking forward to the first "trial" chapter and the opportunity it offers to get into real combat. Because Gio's not dodged all of canon, he's preceded it by heading out early, so when it catches up and he tackles a "gym" more on a whim than anything... his style of fighting is going to be so out there compared to the games canonical.. I'm looking forward to the clash.

Anyway. That's all I can answer without going too far into spoiler territory, I suspect my next update is going to be a chapter (hopefully next month latest) we'll see how it goes.

 

[Tango]

Review:
Transversal Chapter 1

So, now I finally get to dive deep into one of your most prominent fics! I'm very much looking forward to it!

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

TITLE:
Transversal, crossing the backs of legends​

So, like most fics these days, I enjoy giving some thoughts on the title. Transversal: Intersecting lines. Hmm. Seems to suggest to me that Celebi's shrine is a place of intersection of various timeLINES. As such, I find this word to be very clever!

As for the rest, crossing the backs of legends... It sounds like walking over the backs of others. Since the main character is Giovanni, the idea of him making legendary mon prostrate themselves for him to walk across is SO fitting for a villain! This title paints the idea that Giovanni will be doing some incredible things and achieving some extraordinary heights!

Amazing job with the title!

Genre:
action/adventure mystery​

Oh I do enjoy me some mystery!

Content warning and ranking:
This story is ranked Teen, pushing mature per gore/violence at the moment.

Spoiler: CW

Most examples of gore are allusions to how sick Giovanni is at this moment. Vomiting blood bleeding from the mouth etc. Nothing too horribly detailed but that will change to scenes of cruelty and hunting as this fic progresses. While they won't be the crux of the story such will be part of it and chapters dealing with these themes/scenes will be marked at the start.

Good job as usual with content warnings.

This is quite the nifty piece of art here! I love how the back shows the identity of the boy in the middle!

Summary:​

The avian trio of Kanto had been thwarted. First in thier Arceus given duties by an uprising of amoral creatures, then in thier vengence. Thier elements had been dampened and harvested as tools by thier enemys innovation, thier rampages aborted as the humans called Rocket gleefully weilded technology that could catch them.

It's good how you set up by recapping important events in the manga that led up to this point. Many readers will probably enter the fic manga-blind, so this is very useful.

That said, there are many spelling errors in it. 8 of them, in fact. The spell checker on TR does a good job of catching them. If you went in to edit, you could likely clean up the vast majority of them with minimal effort.

Twice burned the Trio tried a different track for revenge. Reaching into an arsenal of ancient times they inflicted a curse upon the human responsible. It was guarenteed to draw its recipient into the personal hell of slow death by declaining health.. Each symptom primed to break him down...

Quite the nasty cold they gave him!

Too long had Kanto... No the world... Not felt thier lash. And in this they would be remembered.

The powerful Team Rocket leader would serve as a warning to those who dared tamper with them or thier duties.

And again they were thwarted.

Modern medicine had granted Giovanni Sakaki months rather then the expected weeks. And though that time was filled with suffering it was enough to succor an antidote.

And when Giovanni found his cure, through irony of ironies appealing to another Legend, he half expected it not to work. Giovanni was more then ready to make his last act eradicating a false healer off of the face of Johto... Do humanity a bit of a service on his way out.

But Legends are not solitary entities... And while Celebi was at His best an apathetic, entity, duty bound to respond to the proper sacrifieces...

How He responded was utterly up to Him.

And how He'd respond to this would be cruelity incarnate... Yes, there would be healing, but there would be humbling, debasement, and defilement of everything this petitioning creature held dear.

But not here... Not where Arceus and his Judgments and Mercy might intervene... But elsewhere...

And dragging Silver into this, making Giovanni watch as Celebi drew his son, a boy whos only crime was to be a victum of the Mask of Ice into this disaster would be the first turn of the knife.

Silver's screams were the first thing Giovanni remembered when he woke up, healthy, whole, and deaged back to adolescence. A little exploring found himself in an alien region he'd never heard of, surrounded by distorted 'mon. Not only were the 'mon wrong the world was subtly off, and designed to shenghigh him into a carciture of a journey. His team was reverted back to thier starter forms, and besides Bee-Weedle he had no clue where they could be.

The cues laid out in this world were obvious... Gather his team, follow the path, learn his lessons, repent.

Giovanni's plans, wrought from the fire of his outrage, fueled by the abduction of his son, were going to derail the classic 'mon journey formula... As a god of time Celebi should have known Giovanni's history, the Rocket had wrought horrors, torched towns, and put nations under his boot via his Team to get his boy back the first time... He had plans to do infinitly worse to Celebi's Never Never Land of a region.

Giovanni was going to enjoy watching it all burn.

So on the front end, I want to say this summary just outright spoils the first and second chapters of your fic, but this summary kicks up so much excitement and does such a good job of establishing the premise that I honestly think it excuses the spoiler. I'm pretty darn shocked at that. Excellent job with this!

Spelling errors abound, though. Put it through a spell checker for sure.

Chapter 1,
Intro: Something like Genisis​

A workable title. If it is meant to reference the bible, it is fitting since there are mythical legendary mon involved.

Perhaps it was his position, up high, nestled in the steel belly of a state-of-the-art helicopter, that lead to Giovanni Sakaki’s state

State used twice.

of detachment as he looked down on the world from a window by his seat. His vehicle of the hour was military-grade, illegally garnered, and altered to the point the military might balk on taking it down.

That is one fancy ride! And quite cool! 😎

Regardless of what Kanto’s armed forces might or might not do it was sturdy enough, and well-armed enough, that the various avian Legends of Kanto and Johto were unlikely to wrangle with the artificial flyer.

And considering his life, and how Legends were hell-bent on ending it, the varied beasts out for his blood must be taken into consideration in all things… Thus, what his critics might consider a bit of a dying man’s vainglory in the form of grandiose transport was a necessity to keep on breathing.

I mean, it's allowed to just be cool because he is Gio-freaking-vanni but reasons are good too.

He’d no intention of being shot out of the sky by a prickly Moltres or rampaging Ho-oh, again.

There was a slew of personal touches to the helicopter that left no illusions as to who owned it. The colors of the stolen chopper had been replaced by the soothing, black and reds. He’d built his life about such hues, marking all his organizations with those colors, so the flyer was no different. Beyond the ocular there were more pragmatic luxuries, the Barrier and Lightscreen augmented steel walls to keep the vibrations of the rotating blades to a muted hum to prevent a sensitive passenger from acquiring headaches. The windows were bulletproof and updated to acknowledge the more recently acquired irritants in his life’s perchance for the ‘chu evolutionary line, thus everything was lightning-proofed as well.

I love the detail that goes into his helicopter. Very cool!

And among the small indulgences, there were the large. An on-hand weapon system that did not require a piolets interference to set and fire.

From his perch, courtesy of technology and luxuries finest, the wilds below seemed obscenely rustic and hellishly familiar.

Ilex forest was like many places in the Johto and Kanto, so much so the uneducated would cobble it together with the varied, verdant, forests that made a patchwork of wilds through both regions and decide it inconsequential.

It seemed a special kind of insanity that a clearing in this woodland was the holiest spot in Johto. When there were hundreds just like it.

A good point, actually.

Today’s weather in Ilex, courtesy of sensors planted by the Slowpoke Well, noted the forest to be “damp” and “temperate”, and that was a grotesque understatement per the profanity-laden report his Sottocappo, Executive Proton, had penned.

I take it he is not a fan of damp environments... 😅

The highlights of the report, courtesy of the tablet on his lap, consisted of “Wet and humid enough down here to drown a pack of hounddour, damn the morning rains”, and the persons of interest noted in the area were inconsequential. “Local gym leader is an oblivious idiot, set a rookie Team to “challenge” his gym as a distraction. The only person of possible conflict is an old man named Kurt, the Team arranged an accident for the man’s granddaughter, he's tied up at Golden Rod’s hospital for the time being.”

Poor Kurts granddaughter! I hope she will be ok... 🥺

Executive Proton’s griping and information had been taken along with a bland morning repast, adding a bit of bitterness to the food.

What is a repast? What food? Is Giovanni eating breakfast or something?

A flick of his fingers and a finger scan and the device was doing a purge of all tracking software, purging traces, information, then switching modes so that public avenues and their various legal bits and bobs would find nothing untoward.

Tracking software? Is Giovanni being tracked? 🤔

With a click and hum to signify his efforts were complete, he opened up the various periodicals of Johto. The newspaper that covered Azalea at least confirmed Kurt temporarily closing services due to an accident, some faulty ladder at the ‘Well, a nasty fall for the man's granddaughter, the safety measure's failure dovetailed into an investigation that'd tie the local police up for a while at least.

Poor girl. Giovanni deserves a bit of his pain, it seems. But that said, a journey fic centered on a villain is such a cool concept!

Satisfied Giovanni killed all outbound programs, another purge of what commercial trackers he might have acquired, and then he typed in a thirty digit code, the screen darkened, and then awoke after a seeming sleep mode to a familiar, dull, grey. The touchscreen was crawling with video and picture icons, various bits of footage about the destination below. He’d seen them all before, but a refresher wouldn’t hurt.

That is one serious password!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPphyjkXnPc

As he leaned into the leather comfort of the passenger’s chair

Huh, I wonder what kind of leather it is? Is it Tauros leather? 🤔

he perused the screenshots taken by his advance team. Photos blended into videos, tests, migratory patterns of local mon, the lot blurred under his blurring vision

Blur used twice. Maybe use straining instead of blurring?

as boredom and exhaustion both pulled at him.

For being The Most Holy Place of Johto the place was decidedly …. uninspired. It was as if some force was holding a list and had ticked off a series of boxes, pinging off the requisite things of grass, moss, trees, applied a multiplier, and decided “well enough” before moving on to other pastures. Two oddities caught his attention. A grave, and a shrine, both man-made set beside a perfectly rounded pool.

Pulling his gaze from that grave –

Ignoring the tightness in his lungs at the sight, his chest that burned, those sensations were omnipresent and thus it only took a bit of delusion to dismiss them when he needed to concentrate, his dismissal of choice was “it wasn’t important,” and his delusion of “he’d deal with it later” were old standbys.

Neat to see how he deals with it since its been happening to him a while now.

-he considered the shrine. Wooden, weather-worn, yet untouched by the moss that grew rampant around it, it was a contradiction and curiosity.

As was the clearing itself. The place was perfectly symmetrical despite being in the center of a forest whose border was the definition of convoluted. His teams had noticed it as a whim and some rather asinine subcommand had wanted to pursue curiosity and done so. And they had found another oddity. Electronic trackers and measurers had failed. a roll of marked rope from a hardware store had confirmed one assumption correct, and born a slew of other experiments with bizarre results. Smartphones, and most techs, failed within the clearing’s bounds. Walkie-talkies worked for some odd reason until one crossed the final tree line. Then everything failed. From watches to lighters, nothing man-made functioned save poketech.

Good way of indicating there is something very strange about that place!

A low whistle from his piolet caught the headset just right and caused the Boss of Team Rocket’s earpiece to ping to life and carry the sound breaking the near-perfect silence of his cabin.

The sound of what? What was the sound?

Noticing his attention the piolet tipped his head, indicating the window nearest to his Boss. Giovanni straightened and looking out and down. Celebi's clearing seemed a target, a pale blue and green Tauros eye, and a gesture for them to go down for a better look was met with a headshake.

Static, a crackle from the earpiece and the piolet’s voice carried.

“Can’t do Sir, any lower and our tech will fry.”

Nodding, the Rocket Boss eased into his chair once more.

Under his hands, Giovanni twiddled, then reactivated, the sleeping tech. The latest tests, of ‘mon reaction to the area about the clearing were of some interest. Wild ‘mon being driven to the clearing’s edges only to be wrenched away or pinned by an invisible untraceable force. One test subject’s death played under his hands as he adjusted settings and scope to better see. Tamed zubat herded a wild furret about. It raced from the flying jaws until it hit head-on with… something. Twisting about in a frenzied panic, fighting against what seemed an invisible wall, the beast gave up breaking forward, near fluid as it flipped itself about and bolted from the shadows of approaching wings.

The furret ran alongside the barrier so close its fur was pressed down on one side, though above it, tamed zubat swung over and about the “wall” in erratic patterns.

One dive, a ‘bat swinging through the barrier to bite into the racing ‘mon’s jugular, the spray of blood was spectacular. The mynx fell with a gurgle and was promptly swarmed from all sides, skin and fur flying.

A click and the video paused, dead beast propped up on nothing, being chewed to bits from all sides. He watched what the emotional would consider an unsettling sight with perfect apathy, letting his dark eyes half close, he weighed information against exhaustion and fought the urge to doze.

Huh... I wonder what would happen if a tame Snorlax swallowed a wild mon whole and tried to walk through the barrier. Would it get stopped? If not, could it them barf up the wild mon on the other side?

He dared not dream.

Death felt so close, only one nap away. Without the varied devices and medication, he’d had to leave at his Viridian hideout when a rival faction had stormed the place… Giovanni might very well die in his sleep. Advanced, complex, sleep apnea was the newest symptom amongst the many varied ones he wrestled with daily.

Courtesy of an irate Legend.

With the threat of such an immediate death present and the faction of Rocket lead by an ex-Sottocapo that was hell-bent on killing him, he had sped up certain plans. The “later” of his health, was pushed to the state of “now”, hence this flight. The tests on the site which had started out as curiosities when he’d had leisure and nothing else had sharpened in scope and brutality per necessity. Hence the killing, hunting, and the last step that the populous of Azalea were blissfully unaware of per Sottocapo Proton’s last reports.

The encirclement of Azalea town, the commandeering of its various technologies, the steady feed of false information to lull the civilians into a state of torpor. The damning falsities of “all is well” even as his syndicate ran wild through Johto. Inspiring terror and using terrorism and violence to rip down the primitive shrines and lesser holy sites all the better to have the proper coin to pay for this… transaction in the making.

The strict perimeter about Azalea and its forest would dissipate, without any soul from the town knowing of it. The dead who’d wandered in would be buried, their bodies broke down and scattered under the trees for compost, the gentle clamps of obliviousness eased about the town, and the people who lived beside the holiest site of a region would wake one day, perhaps tomorrow, mildly bewildered to find the world was not as untroubled as they’d been lead to believe.

So what is going on in this last paragraph? Giovanni has the town surrounded by Rockets and if anyone visits the town, they get executed? Is that it?

A click against his ear and Giovanni stiffened, waited, and not one to make a man linger, much less this Boss, the piolet spoke. Destination to be met in ten minutes, prepare for descent in eight.

Nodding his understanding Giovanni let his fingers rest on the tablet in his lap just so, and the fingerprint reading software hummed to life and locked the whole under his hands until it was a black square of cooling plastic. Sliding the device in its carrying case he pulled a briefcase from under his seat beside him and clicked it open. It was a simplicity to set the device in place, exchange modern wonder for the longish rectangular box that’d held relics that’d been a wonder in their time.

Something rattled as he set the box in place, perhaps the finger bones, regardless the goods felt part and parcel to an inferior exchange, but as he slid the box into his trench coat pocket Giovanni Sakaki conceded it was the coin of the moment.

And if this “offering” wasn’t good enough. .. Well the experiments had shown poketech worked in the clearing, and he had no shortage of ultra-balls on his holster, and there were no weaknesses in his team.

If he could not coax he’d coerce. And if he failed, so be it.

He’d take this charlatan of a holy healer to the grave with him and call it his last service to humanity.

I'm glad you had this bit in there so we know what Giovanni's goal is and how he plans to achieve it.

XXX

It’d taken two hours to finish the hike. The route was taken in easy stages, and stubbornness got him where he needed to go.

He’d started the walk on his own power, but once he broke the tree line he conceded weakness, summoning and continuing the trek leaning on the forearm of his Nidoking. Enhanced by moonstone transplant surgeries, specific training, and an optimal diet, the beast had more than surpassed the expected four feet height, sporting six and a fraction not counting his horn.

I love the details of the extra things that make his Nidoking so powerful.

The beast glared about, no longer dismissing any with a red R on their chest, clearly recalling Sird’s betrayal and attack at their Viridian hideout. Tail tucked close, bulk an obvious deterrent to any who’d shoot Giovanni in the back, the beast rumbled a wordless death threat. The human branch of the Rocket Boss’ guard was professional enough not to flinch back at the overt hostility. And for that, he rewarded them, a snap of his calloused fingers caused 'King to make his rumbles quieter.

Interaction with the minions helps show his authority. Nice!

The last descent was made in near-perfect silence and a waved hand as he neared the final tree line caused the clutch of men and women at his back to go still.

He’d turned to watch them, scrolling weary eyes over the faces of those who’d sworn blood oaths, their children to his service, their lives, and their ‘mon as his to use until they broke if he willed it.

They pulled back, miming respect or sincerely respectful, he wasn’t sure, but for now, they followed orders.

“Secure the perimeter.”

And if his voice was a bloody ruin, none commented on it, they simply left to do as they were told. They’d take watch, and their places while the Boss did what needed doing.

And if he failed they’d turn weapon and ‘mon among each other, turn sacred woods to killing ground all to establish a new order when the artificial grave in the clearing’s heart became one in truth.

Their apathy was a mercy. He had one minute, perhaps two, before the burning in his lungs scaled to intolerable levels and they tried to shut down, his breathing picked up, alternated between a rasp and rattle. He fought to remain straight, and the effort failed him. Legs buckling, he was sandwiched between a moss-covered tree and tamed ‘mon, Nidoking’s tail sweeping about to obscure and shield him while he struggled to breathe.

Nidoking seems well-suited to watching over him.

The fit came and went. With a ragged gasp, Giovanni crawled to standing, fishing out the handkerchief from his breast pocket he dabbed at the moisture about his lips and jaw with practiced motions. If the wetness was blood its hue differed so little from the fabric it was impossible to tell one way or the other.

Wordlessly the Boss of Team Rocket tucked the wet fabric into its place. The black of his suit would obscure what needed to be hidden for vanities sake.

His colors certainly do well in hiding blood. Very true.

A few moments came and went, and when breathing no longer burned and the world’s edges seemed less grey he dared one step, another, into sun-dappled clearing too perfect to be anything but artifice, crafted by a beast of nature’s immaculate hand.

I really don't point out how nicely you word things very much. I think I've been a bit spoiled by your writing. This bit especially the last couple lines has some great word choice in it.

Shaking off the stone hand at his elbow, mindful of its spines violet and seeping venom, he reached back without needing to see. One scratch on the poison type’s chin and a nudge got the beast to back off, and one toss later and he and the ‘mon were no longer alone. Blinking back the light of ended suspended animation, the oldest, and most loyal member of his personal menagerie set her paws upon wet earth, looking about without a mew, a testament of her training and grace because she was, normally, a vocal feline.

For Persian hiding was a simple matter of her nosing about and padding into a thick patch of grass behind the shrine, a quick lay down and squirm got the tall stalks of the long grass to hide her from anything above.

I love how you used the word padding for walking for Persian.

Nidoking did not have it so easy.

First, the violet beast sunk into the grass beside the cat, earning an irritated “merow” and a paw smack to his snout by the sound of things. An impatient snap of his trainer’s fingers made the beast stand, with a snort, and look for a less abysmal hiding spot. The beast’s spines had poked out like sharkpedo fins in the surf, and another patch and hunker down in even shorter grass got another finger snap and a barked “hurry up”. To the impatience of its master and simplicity denied, Nidoking got creative.

Sliding a claw along a thick patch of moss by a tree, the beast rolled back the wet mass and dug a long furrow, twisting so only one eye and his nostrils poked out. He reached back and up pulling the plant growth over itself as it hunkered into the hole like it were a blanket. The edges of its spikes that poked out of the loam were lost among the shadows of branches to a trained human eye, and that would have to do.

Whole section with Nidoking hiding is both ridiculous and hilarious at the same time!

Contingency set in place, the Rocket limped past the tree line and into the clearing proper.

He avoided a dousing courtesy of his vanity.

Wait... what? What is going on in the line above?

Despite the heat of the day he’d forgone sense for tradition and symbol to better cow his underlings. Though a stereotype all its own his black fedora had kept the water of falling dew off his back,

Ok, so now the question from above gets answered here but it was distracting trying to figure out what was happening. Dew falling off of what? His hat is keeping the dew off him, but why is dew falling enough to douse him and what is it falling off of?

and his trench coat had deflected the rest. Each step of his steel-tipped boots left little scars in the mix match of moss and grass about him as he picked a careful path towards the water, towards that shrine that was devoid of dew through near everything around it was all but drowning.

So everything is very very wet. With how it's described, I'm imagining little water fountains spraying off of literally everything except the shrine.

And to that amusing contradiction and to spite himself the Boss of Team Rocket, Giovanni Sakaki, walked to his probable death with a huff of amusement. The noise summoned a white tail to rise out of the foliage. Noticing, he snapped his fingers with a scowl, and the feline’s limb slipped below the grass line, making the clearing seem empty once more.

Amusing little interaction with Persian.

Alone, for all intents and purposes, the Rocket staggered the last few steps to the pool's rock-ringed base and wondered in that near-perfect quiet how the impious were meant to summon a god.

A fair question to be sure.

He’d a small collection of relics and markers, holy symbols and charms that were pillaged from the various towns and shrines around and about Illex Forrest rattled in a box in his pocket. As worthless as loose change, they were, in theory, steeped with mythology and the stuff of tales. In fact, the lot was the sickening relics of outdated spiritual practices. Preserved finger bones wrapped in half-rotted shrouds were keeping company with wooden scraps that were twined in wish papers and prayer beads. There were stinking things seeped in tree gunk and speckled with feathers that were touted to be from the wings of Legends. DNA testing and basic observation had proven that “Legend” false and common sense screamed that the rest was mummery as well.

Still, these things were the backbone of many local superstitions that’d been repeated until it’d ascended to something higher. And at their heart, considering tales and the like, there was one communal theme that bound them besides insanity.

Sacrifice.

The box and its assorted assortment

assorted assortment? I can't tell if you are trying to be funny or actually put the same word right next to it self unintentionally.

were large enough to near fill his deepest coat pocket, and that’d been something of an irritant and boon. The plastic casting had necessitated he wears a holster for his gun and tolerate the thing being wound about his waist like a copper.

Like a copper? Is copper another word for belt or something?

Though Giovanni personally detested being so overt armed he’d be a fool not to be. The arrangement was such that there was just enough room for him to slide a digit over the boxes’ edge and seam without compromising the pocket, and he did so, weighing his options.

This was it, make or break. It was in mild shock and amusement he weighed options that’d seemed more fantasy than anything else before. And he circled around practicalities. Rituals were just bargains in archaic trappings.

So what could the dying offer something that was effectively immortal?

Allegiance was a limited thing if things stayed unchanged, but were his health issues to reverse the effort of upholding a deal with a Legend would likely stretch into intolerability. Wealth was a human-made construct. As for preservation of the Legend’s grounds and non-interference when the gears of industry ground up the remaining reserves of Kanto and Johto … Well, the offer was centered around a human construct and likely to be misunderstood as a threat in all likelihood.

Which left him… what to offer then?

I like how you walk us through his thought process here.

He couldn’t make a deal unless he either had leverage or collateral.

Finger near pricking on a seam, Giovanni withdrew his hand and pulled out the box along with his digit. Flipping it open he stared at the individually wrapped, fussily tab, segregated by lines of raised plastic, labeled, offerings of ages past. They’d been made with no little sacrifice from their originators; if nothing else sanity had been tossed to the winds as their original owners had bound ritual to tawdry to make… these trinkets.

And who said the “sacrifice” had to be something of his own?

Cracking a Persian’s smile, all edges, and cruelty, Giovanni considered offering and clearing and the subtle tells he could scrounge from its frame and form. There was no place to set the offering before the shrine. The pool got in the way one way and the grave the other. The structure was too shallow to place anything within, and the effort of keeping wood from being affected by reality warned that such may not be wanted.

Which left one option, really, and he looked at the pool, dark eyes glinting with a morbid amusement.

A fit took him then. Steeling smugness as pain made him bend double, and stubbornness made him lock his legs least he toppling headfirst into the water. He clicked the box shut as fast as he could. But not before his bloody breathing had tainted the lot, receptacle, and relics both. Stubborn had kept him alive thus far, made him get up when others would have given up, but it only went so far this time. Crashing to his knees, mirroring the poise of prayerful repose all unintentional, he fought against his Legend damned death for another breath, another minute, another hour…. He wept as the pain hit reflex, making him curl to ward off blows that weren’t coming, and the poise of curling summoned vile memories, those memories set his heart to hammering in recalled fear. But he couldn’t run, or fight, or do anything save suffer. The whole came together to make him look a pathetic image of suffering. On the whole, he’d mimed a show of repentance by accident.

The scene was made doubly ironic for it was done at the foot of the shrine of a Legend, one he hadn’t wronged or earned a lethal curse from.

Giovanni needs to take some Dayquil or something. I think Celebi has some.

Yet.

Striving not to vomit, the Rocket shuddered and panted, eyes slammed shut least the light catch just so to trigger a migraine and vomiting spell all at once. His thoughts devolved from plots and angles to a panicked mantra, a chant that hammered in time with his pulse…

Not yet, not yet.

The fit passed, and when he dared crack open his eyes he found the world ominously dim and swimming. A bloody mass clasped to his chest, under his chin, he stared at it. Not quite understanding. When the mess sloshed, and his arms hurt, because something under the mess was biting and hard and…. And he could feel the box’s edges digging into his arms; he’d all but folded around it and…. And scraping an arm over the congealed mess atop revealed the box under the organic sludge… The stuff surly stained the front of his uniform, it wet his knees in its falling, and a familiar warmth trickling down his face warned he had vomited, efforts non-withstanding, and his vomit looked like something from the trash can of an abattoir.

Well, I can't say he doesn't deserve it after getting Kurt's granddaughter hurt.

To that grim reality, of death being so close, the Boss of Team Rocket decided to hang ritual motions, seeming prayers, and just give the offering before things got worse.

Because the only worse here was dead, and death wasn’t an option, he’d not allow it.

With a shove, he managed to sit up somewhat straight, and with the last of his strength he nudged the box, blood and all, over the thin line of stones that served as this temple’s bank and the lot slid into the deep pool. The offering was accepted without a ripple.

And it ended as it had started, by following the patterns of cliché.

To his offering of age-old trinkets and present agony he’d, all accidental, set a sun to rise from within the pool. The light started dim and brightened as it rose from under the water. It was a slow, fireless, illumination, that as it crested the water that’d housed it stained stone edges sepia. The view was like a sunrise in miniature saves the colors were all wrong. Molten silver and golds replaced the colors of the rocks due to this false sun, sepia had taken the place of edges and lines. He did not look about himself or at himself to see how he was changed, only relieved that this fake sun produced no heat and so he wouldn’t burn. Curiously his blood on the stone boiled away even as he stared at it, and a tingling rush about his face and hands was perhaps the sight of his death being scrubbed away as well. He didn’t have a mirror or a reflective surface to check. So he didn’t.

Quite the presentation!

With a hiss, Giovanni struggled, from kneeling to standing, though his legs trembled at the effort.

And so it was when the sylvan god of Illex forest rose from illumination and water both, it found the soul who’d summoned it standing, and not groveling, as was a summoner’s norm.

Lips trembling, on hysterical laughter no less, Giovanni considered the sylvan creature before him. It had the look to being the kin to an onion of all the damned things. And that, and this clearing in its unnatural symmetry and additives to its clearing despite the being being a god of nature…. Well, the hypocrisy of it all nearly undid him.

Interesting that Giovanni nearly laughed even in the condition he is in.

Taking one deep breath, least he say what was upmost in his heart, that the little bastard in its perfect natural environs was such an utter hypocrite, Giovanni Sakaki let his gaze scroll over the wonder of a world long lost. Slender wings, leafy frame, twin antenna that was perked and curious –an assumption based off of the tip and angle his Beedril’s own antenna would go when the bug was feeling such things- it was a curious creature whose lower limbs looked almost like they were shoed due to their roundness. The leafy crest of its chest almost looked like the fold of a sprite costume they were angled just so to resemble a neckline...

And this… thing… was supposed to be the greatest healer of them all?

The Legend looked like a joke. Like a child playing dress-up, one with a perchance for leaves and glue. Fury quickened the Rocket’s heartbeat, gave him the strength to seem strong at least.

“Genesis 1:3.”

Wait, did Giovanni just quote the bible?

A huff, he meant it to be a laugh and if death weren’t so close it might very well be such. “How fitting.”

To the Rocket Boss' words, the beast tipped its head, utterly baffled, no little bit lost, and Giovanni felt uninclined to shed any light on the matter.

So this last bit here was abrupt and kind of confusing. 🤔

Closing thoughts:
Ok so most of this chapter was pretty clear. It introduces us to Gio's resources, a couple of his mon, his dilemma, and his plan to fix it. A solid first chapter to the fic. The spelling errors are in serious need of editing and don't fit the overall quality of the fic at all. Regardless, this chapter was still great!

 

[Tango]

Review:
Transversal Chapter 2

I'm back for another review!

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

Spoiler: Ranking, teen, author notes, and misc details

Chapter ranking. Teen per trigger warning section.

Triggers. Mild gore as Gio's still really sick but described distantly by someone who has no clue what sick means. Profanity near the end.


Who'd of thought an Olympus 'mon would have a god complex? I really can't write a nice legend for anything. This is probably only one of the two chapters in this fanfic that Cel' s going to be narrating for a very good reason.. The legend views all non-legends as it, thing, or creature. Special nods towards Giovanni who is petitioning it and gets a smear of respect. And title to match.

For the sake of clarity, until I do the sentence restructure and make this null and void....

summoner aka petitioner = Gio
summoner's spawn = silver
Bound beast/creature= any trainers pokemon

I'm extremely glad you added this section. I'm not a fan of having no clue what the crap is going on lol... 😅

Celebi was in a curious position, where seeming omnipresence wasn’t quite enough. He had an elevated view of the world that had nothing to do with his wings and the flight they gifted him and everything to do with a remedial grasp on the metaphysical.

Such a cool line! Another example of some great wording choices.

Thus, when the motions were made, a petitioner seeking him for healing all expected and normal, the Legend appeared to bless the petitioner with a viewing of Himself and froze.

There were two lethal wounds upon the creature before Him.

And that situation had left the Legend in a quandary.

The most straightforward path would be to deal with the physical illness that was making the black-clad creature exhale blood with its every breath. But in doing so Celebi would be reversing the damage of a Legend-kin.

Interesting that Celebi has to consider the right of other legendaries to inflict harm. Or at least that's how Celebi views it.

And there was that fun snag of “Why” why did someone with Power hate this insignificant black-clad thing enough to wish it this death.
Also, per the terms of the sacrifice, Celebi could only offer one miracle. Thus the sylvan creature could only attend to one injury. And the other damage, the one not spite born, was a curiosity from first to last. The damage was from an absence and yet it was a self-inflicted one. As if the creature had wrenched some utterly vital span out of itself and never knew how it’d done so. For comparison, the situation was like running down a hill to find a briar patch at the bottom, and in efforts to avoid the greater hurt you twist aside. Only this fall before the spiked vines hadn’t ended in acquiring cuts and scrapes, rather the creature’s heart had come out, and despite that vital loss the body had kept going.

For years, nearly a decade.

Interesting way of Celebi to describe Giovannis mental health/heart

And wasn’t that a breath of icy wind to the back? That wonderful, charming, image, helped along by the trickle of red that was seeping down the creature’s mouth as its face spasmed in holding back a cough?

Leaving the physical wound tended only for the soul wound to worsen to lethality seemed foolishness and a shade dishonest. For a dead soul would surely kill the thing that housed it, the Healer had seen it happen before.

Thus, Celebi, the Greatest Healer, was the quandary.

Let none leave your presence unhealed, let all harm cease at your gates. So had instructed Arceus, other rules, some whim some stipulations per disasters triggered in healing things wrong, had been tabbed on as the millennia wore on….

But this mess was something else altogether.

Tipping His head to better consider petitioner and damage, Celebi floated a slow circuit about the black-clad being that sacrificed a century or more of tributes for this one moment. The beast watched him wearily until watching would have required turning. Then, it charmingly showed a bit of trust. Stilling its tracking and head-turning, the beast slid its dark pit-kin eyes shut.

Such trust was amusing, to put it mildly, and the twitch of its gloved fingers about the thing’s mid-section binding went to a rhythm as if it were counting notes to a song.

Celebi is so cold and distant from the suffering of others. A person is bleeding out right in front of them and they are just like: "What a curiosity. Also, this is rather annoying how they are bleeding in my sacred grove. I suppose I'll have to figure out what to do with this problem"

Circuit complete, the leafy Legend lifted a paw, just as the beast before it opened its bloody mouth to say…. Something… The pale creature’s mouth snapped shut as it recognized the gesture, the mute plea for one minute, and the two-legged thing shifted back, black garments rusting.

“I’ve only so much time left, you understand.”

The complaint felt more like a warning than grousing, and to that Celebi frowned. But He obliged, after all, this was a summoner, and they were universally panicky things, what with being in a state of perpetual misery and dying. And the Legend could smell the creature’s death, the stench rose from every inch of this thing’s skin and seeped out the pores like the fumes of a Houndoom’s hellfires.

Nice reference to Houndoom. Houndoom is freaking terrifying in what it can inflict!

So Celebi offered mercy despite the creature’s transgression of speaking when it shouldn’t have. Color dimmed, as summon pool and clearing folded to one hue, sepia, with only black to mark corners and crannies and give the whole contrast. Such was the light show when Celebi applied the pressure of his regard to time itself.

And time slowed, shuddering to a stop.

In that apex of stolen time, Celebi tipped his leafy head to better glare at the petitioner all the to better indulge one unspoken warning. The summoner, oddity from first to last, bared teeth in a smile-kin gesture that set the sensation of hoarfrost to the winding vines of His veins. Still, the beast remained quiet, even while Celebi waited, and once done with waiting and stillness, (and shivers), Celebi tipped His head back. Wings humming, tipping his body towards the sun, Celebi lounged upon the back of broken moments, lost time, the whole seeming nothing more than sepia illumination to a beast that could not see beyond the physical, and perched upon the fulcrum of His existence the Legend cast His thoughts far and wide.

This bit here reads like some poetry (great stuff!) but I'm not sure I understand it. I'll try describing what I think is happening:

Celebi stopped time and froze Giovanni in a mid smile or perhaps a grimace. Celebi doesn't like Giovanni, so Celebi glared at him. Giovanni's smile was unnerving to Celebi. Celebi leaned back while levitating and reaching out with their thoughts.

If I got it right, great. If not, it might need some tweaks to make it a little more clear.

And the Legends of a region away responded, their hate was like pouring something molten in His own head.
It was the birds that screamed the loudest like birds were wont to do. They squawked and warbled the three avains voice’s blending into infernos, and storms, and wintery gales that surely kicked up odd weather about their nests. Only the iron-hard lock of Arceus’ commands kept them in their place. The terms of their legends were unmet, their seasons were not in effect, without nature on their side or a grand destiny in the works to supplant the cycles they could not move freely, and so the distance between them and their tormentor went uncrossed.

It was only happy chance that kept them from darkening the skies of Johto with their rage.

When the creature moved, just a few steps to better brace against a budding dizzy spell perhaps, that Celebi felt something… impossible.
The thrum was of the universe bracing.

Wait, I thought time was stopped. When did time stop stopping?

I have no idea what Celebi means by the thrum of the universe bracing. I'm not even sure Celebi knows either.

Sky kin eyes widening in realization, Celebi stopped before the creature as it tipped its head at him,

Celebi stopped what? Widening their eyes in realization? So the eyes are now partly widened are are fixed in that state of partial widening or they are now a normal amount of open?

curious and unseeing as the Legend’s foresight flared… and per his nature twisted to a sort of sideways hindsight.

What was curious and unseeing? Giovanni?

Who's nature? What nature?

There were lives inelegantly handled by this creature, used, and cast aside once they broke. The pattern of use and abandonment had been done so often the motions had left callouses under the beast’s gloves and was repeated ad nauseam until Celebi could see the residue of the suffering the petitioner had caused. The psychic residue of the used psyche was like blood, it ran from the petitioner’s fingertips to elbows….

Such a neat way to describe the atrocious past of Giovanni!

Blue eyes locking onto that bit of supernatural gore, Celebi floated back, out of easy grabbing range, and flicked his awareness further, farthest, until all the Legends resided in his mind.

Celebi is a living legendary cell phone!

Because this problem petitioner was more than living up to the ideal of headache inspiring and tossing a stomach ache on the lot to boot. This was complicated, and hate from the birds would only get Celebi so far.

Celebi considers hate from the birds to be useful? Why? I thought they made the fact that Celebi has to heal Giovanni more complicated? 🤔

Apathy was the answer from many of his kin. Immediate indifference. Which was a norm, even when the apathetic Legends could hear and
feel the grievances and rumbling roars of utter hate offered by the canines of Johto and birds of Kanto.

Such an inspiring family of legendaries.

More worrying was the curiosity from Celebi’s more destructive of his kin. And… from a different dimension that barely abutted this one, came the sensation of giggles.

Is Giratina giggling? That is immensely creepy if so.

Phionie was getting a belly rub from its trainer right now.

Well, that was useful and gave Him an avenue to cause one agony to dissipate. Rolling His eyes, Celebi eased the infantile pokemon out of this gathering of the minds.

So Celebi is looking to cut unhelpful legendaries from the group chat.

Mid-section hurting from a sudden rush of anxiety-

Because the universe wasn’t supposed to move when anything but a legend acted, this wasn’t right!

But Giovanni made the universe move... somehow.

The few steps the beast made made caused

made twice

the clearing to jolt and wobble to any psychically sensitive.

added a missing word?

and The things motions of steadying itself were making the clearing ripple, near breaking the moment of stilled time, and in desperation, Celebi tried another slant.

This is all one sentence combined with the ones above. Way too long.

So Giovanni is able to effect the moment of stilled time? How? Why? I guess even Celebi doesn't know?

The tried and true “who wants this problem, because it’s a likely world ender if done wrong!”

And normally the more elder Legendries would cue up to such a call.

Arceus was particularly famous, passing judgments left, right, and center

There were whole theological discourses on Arceus and his interference, the perk of being judgment incarnate was you could act, justice be hung.

And while normally no one ever willingly evoked Arceus’ attention by all but inviting him into a Summoning…. This one felt bad. Never mind the bitter hatred between the Mystical Legend and many of the weaker Legends because of previous high-handed treatment.
And to Celebi’s call, the God ‘Mon was silent, a new norm since the shenanigans with those humans in Sinnoh, which was a whole different plate of worry.

So Celebi got ignored by Arceus probably because of events in Sinnoh.

Worse was Xerneas’ enthusiastic approval to help with the impossibility before Celebi. A mute rush of enthusiasm and curiosity that was all but a petition to get involved. The Horned Healer was likely prancing in place despite being continents away; setting wild blooms to grow in abundance at his altar and place of binding...

And that thought was more alarming than the “gore” on the black-clad petitioner’s hands.

A restless healer was an ominous one, considering he was set to balance out Yveltal. Xerneas’ rebirth may grant one mortal eternal life, but for the rest about the deer’s chosen the forces of immortality would pass them by.

Xerneas’ region would be lost in a wash of purging and reshaping… and culling as Yvetal would be unleashed to still the overabundance of life and would be ordered to test and try the newly made immortal.

The cycle of the beasts of Kalos was the thing of nightmares and genocides, and Celebi eased the pair out to avoid making thing’s worse. Sensing the withdraw Yvetal’s relief was a warm citrus syrup on the back of his tongue, the bird’s last thought was enthusiasm for being able to sleep another millennia…

And Xerneas’ brays of denial sounded… then nothing.

I like how the different legendaries and their individual responses are considered.

Gripping time itself Celebi pushed through the material with His inner eye. Hoping the past would avail Him, and the creature’s past… was confusing. Longing and lust, near primal, yet controlled. Little ambitions set upon little plots, all piled and twisted about so that lesser creatures were broke under them so that this creature could acquire the tools to petition Celebi in this moment. To that utter failure,

So, I don't understand why Celebi viewed the past as something that would not avail him and that looking there for answers was a failure. I know what Celebi described, but I don't understand what Celebi was looking for, so I don't understand why what Celebi saw was not useful.

Celebi tried to spy the future, but it was such a jerky mess the Healer could not pull possibility from probability, and in the back of his head the wrathful howls of Legends scaled up a notch.

I also don't understand what Celebi was looking for in the future.

And now, at their loudest, the sylvan god was noticing one particularly glaring absence. The Legend was in the net that Celebi had tossed out, and following that thread of awareness… though physically not there Celebi could see Entei. Blunt snout set on folded fore paws, sod smoldering under black nails, Entei amused himself in this meeting of the minds by glaring at some sight before it. Since Entei was inherently boring, and bitter, what he saw beyond Celebi’s interest and thus did manifest for the sylvan being to look at too.

I don't understand the last sentence of this paragraph. I think it is trying to say that what Entei looks at forces Celebi to look at it too? The wording for the sentence is still... off. Maybe it's trying to be too clever.

Perhaps it was a budding volcano, Entei liked those.

As if sensing the regard of its peer the fire hound lifted its head, a corona of smoke billowing from crown, literally making the beast a hothead. Defying nature the smoke streamed down over the Legend’s broad shoulders, a mane all smog with a few embers to give a twist on the idea of highlights. Curiosity caused the fiery Legend to open its jaws, rumbling a note of confusion at the attention.
And to that show of simplicity, Celebi huffed, not fooled in the slightest.

“You can talk you know.”

“Ah, but have you learned how to listen yet?”

That new spawned, five-hundred-year-old, upstart! Near vibrating out of the psychic bond in anger, and near losing his grip on the stilled moment of time, Celebi plastered a sickly smile on His features, surely setting the creature in the clearing to worry as He smiled at nothing the petitioner could see.

“I am listening. I’ve got one of your creatures making a Muk in my clearing with all its cause and effect and I’ve been LISTENING to the Three Little Avians and your Brothers howling up an elemental storm in my head.”

“That’s nice.”

Entei clearly doesn't like Celebi You do great with Entei here to provide contrast from the other legendaries.

Flicking his fangs in a grin akin to the black-clad thing’s smile, Entei rolled his shoulders, straightened as if he were going to take the whole conversation seriously or at least standing, then the hound flopped back down. Slumping to one side, shoulder digging into a bit of scree as if he were getting an itch scratched. “How’s that working for you?”

“Badly.”

“Too bad.” Rocks rattled, melting a bit, and Entei dug into the budding magma with a satisfied rumble.

There was a budding quagmire under the other Legend’s ire. The maybes associated with this healing scaled his headache up to migraine levels, which considering he was the Great Healer, was a whole bundle of theological perplexity if mentioned in the right circles.
Entei, squinting up at Him, ember eyes flickering with obvious mirth, was not helping at all. And it took all of His will not to cut the firebrand out of the link. Still, the fire type’s quiet among the cacophony was intriguing and utterly out of character. Under Celebi’s irritated glare the other Legend continued his back rub with melting rocks and squirming rolls.

“What I want is answers.”

“Let me know when you find them.”

“Oh, I think I have.”

Celebi hummed, wings vibrating, and it was child’s play to sharpen a thought and cast it into the other Legend’s head.

The morass, seen under the yelp of shock, was confused and confusing.

Predominantly featured was a red-haired kin to the petitioner. The little creature was riding on Entei’s shoulders, and further poking found small memories as both creature and Legend were of rather small minds. Grooming, talking, wandering, warmth, playing fetch, such were the thoughts Entei held when thinking of the red-topped creature that was… a smaller spawn of the summoner.

So Celebi learned of Silver's connection to Entei and Celebi doesn't like Entei hence is motivation for Celebi to drag Silver into all this?

So, when not attending his duties Entei favored being a pet as he’d been before his rebirth. Pushing past that rather boring revelation he found another, neither His, nor Entei’s, but rather the small creature’s.

The summoner’s spawn was wrapped in a rather tawdry mystery of not knowing its kinship to the one who summoned. A nudge beyond that smelled of suffering, and Celebi could see red R’s, creatures working out their own trials without Legends, and since they did not aspire to claim a Legend’s aid, they obviously failed.

Ok so Celebi thinks humans are helpless without the aid of legendaries. Also, because of Entei's connection to Silver Celebi investigated Silver more.

But they rose up from their ruin and tried again, and the world withered a bit under their efforts.

There was a peculiar snag of panic, about a creature, a tamer of dragons seeking to ascend on the backs of his bound beasts with the intent to tear everything down.

Ok I think this is talking about the laser incident with Lance.

But that ended before it started, and the images cycled back to red R’s, and the mystery now no longer a mystery, that left guilt and crying.

The red-toped summoner kin had cried into Entei’s mane, braving embers and poisoning so he could hold on and sob at the hurt. Face rustling as the leaves about it twisted under His moue of disgust because Entei’d let the thing snuffle into him nearly for an hour,

Kindness to children?! We can't have any of that! Celebi you need to cause some suffering. We simply cannot let such an atrocity stand!

Celebi looked back, riding the affection Entei bore to the thoughts of the little summoner spawn. Nearly to the beginning. And the Legend was gifted with the vision of a clutch of small creatures that were vaguely shaped like the summoner. All were locked in icy cages and there were things that moved that shouldn’t and the panic about that thought, even though it was second hand, was enough to make Celebi pull His thoughts away least they freeze in His head.

So the stuff with Ice Mask was enough to unnerve Celebi? With how Celebi is so far, I half expected Celebi to bask in that as a form of mental mouth wash for Entei's distasteful pleasantness.

Celebi came back to awareness just in time to feel embers, see fangs, and since He wasn’t really there… Well, the spite and teeth crunched on the air He had projected his image for Entie’s benefit. The threat to the image left a message loud and clear and with a smirk, Celebi cut Entei out of the link, with Entei’s roars of how when this “world-ending mess” caught Celebi in the ass he’d be there to laugh and rub embers in the wounds…

So Entei is furious with Celebi for looking into that and hates that Celebi will likely be doing something bad to Silver. Celebi got what he needed, so he cut Entei out of the group chat.

And there was nothing but silence after Celebi twisted His neck and dumped the Legendary dog out of His head.

Sifting through the baffling input Celebi winced back to reality. The creatures who summoned and petitioned were minuscule, only earning their acclaim when they ascended to a Legend’s sight and spoke the right words, made the right sacrifices, and gathered their hard-earned boons. Celebi knew this, and when He sought the important things in the stolen memories and possible futures He found nothing save the small. Lots of small things. Actions and plots and cruelties all grinding together, making their own wheel to counter fate in bits and bobs…

So Celebi views Giovanni as important but only because of the many small things and plots he weaved together.

Which lead to here and now, and the impossible, improbable, and a decision the Legend did not want to make.

But he’d been bid, let none leave your gates unhealed.

You know... I'm getting the distinct impression that Celebi doesn't like his job.

Considering the weary, exhausted, thing before Him with something like respect, Celebi considered hate and options and decided one thing.

He wanted the ruckus in his head gone, now.

So he eased the avians out of the link, promising vague things, of simulating judgments to counterbalance sins.
That seemed to smooth ruffled hackles and feathers though their feelings were… for him at least… quite alien.
But it was a stance of those never wronged and assured of their immunity to ever being wronged to find such basic things as outrage baffling.

Sylvian faces twitching because with the other Legend’s gone from his head the silence was blessed.

No Arceus needed to sanction it, Celebi would do so right here and now, Celebi offered the black-clad thing a smile.

A warm smile one cast at a problem to be resolved. The creature was seeping its misery all about the grove, and for that transgression Celebi forgave it.

Because this was nearly done.

He’d made a promise and be held before Arceus if He didn’t deliver, and while judgment might take a century, perhaps two, Celebi wanted nothing to do with the God ‘Mon, none of them did.

Good to see Celebi's thought process. I'm so glad you made this chapter from Celebi's POV. It really clarifies a ton of things that would be completely up in the air otherwise.

The redhead summoner’s spawn had been part and parcel to this headache, so the creature could be part of undoing this. There were options, ways to advert whatever had caused this to be. Celebi hadn’t understood the thoughts of the red-topped spawn, or the summoner, or Entei, but given time, and contact, that could be changed. And with that knowledge, He could make sure the whole mess never happened. Doing so would set this whole mess out of His domain, and thus make everything to do with this, not His responsibility.

So, Celebi wants to understand the thoughts of Gio, Silver, and Entei to avoid the circumstances that led to Giovanni getting cursed so that Gio would not be here as a problem for Celebi to deal with? Gio would still be a problem but he wouldn't be petitioning Celebi so he would be someone else's problem. Ok... I think I'm getting it now.

Near sparkling in sudden cheer Celebi spun, hummed, and the black -topped summoner considered Him with thinned eyes. It’s… unfounded suspicions were irrelevant, as a Legend had a plan. A great one. A grand one. That’d make this all disappear. So the Legend tossed out a thought, to the most amiable of his Legend kin.

Zekrom, Reshiam, Jirachi… if you have a moment, please?

He met the creature’s gaze, wanting to impart how good this was, it would be healed after all. And perhaps Celebi’s attention had wandered and time had started up again, because the thing indulged its baser needs, that of trying to die. Slumping over, clutching its side, the creature hacked, and wheezed, and bled from its mouth. Celebi wrinkled his small face in mild nausea at the red that spread before the thing, from exhale that had drawn too deep and triggered a rush from the thing’s stomach. The ruination of its rotting had caused a lumpy mass to come up, splatter down, and a patch of the Legend’s clearing was liberally colored with the dying thing’s fluids.

This does an effective job at showing how grossed out Celebi is by Gio and how indifferent he is to Gio's suffering. Also, I find it odd that you refer to Celebi as 'he' even though Celebi is supposed to be gender-less. I would think that would warrant a 'they' pronoun, but masculine pronouns are easier to deal with, so while I find it odd, I still prefer Celebi to have masculine pronouns for sake of simplicity.

Well, it nothing else

Should be 'if' not 'it.

the sense of the thing dying brought the called three over in a hurry, though the Legends remained unseen they were seeing, and bemused.

Jirachi, agonizingly young, though not as young as the pampered water type a few dimensions over, gasped in shock, nearly appearing no less.

Yes, because Jirachi appearing would just be the worst! These legends have standards to uphold!

“Aren’t you going to heal them?”

The star-shaped creature used the wrong word, the creature was an "it", not a "them", and someone was going to have to point out the error.

Celebi is so freaking mean with that. But Celebi also helps clue the reader in that Jirachi is one of the only nice legendary mon. Entei being another. Not sure if there are any others.

But the thing was dying so now might not be the best times. But soon would be better than later, certainly before the next century before the bad habit sunk in too deep.

I hope Jirachi doesn't get corrupted by the other legendaries into thinking of humans as 'its' instead of 'them'.

Stuff like this makes me want to see Gio cross the backs of most legendaries!

They did not, Arceus knew, need another Entei on their hands. Much less a would-be Entei with a shrill voice all the better to rail about injustice and compassion and other nonsense about how important the creatures that petitioned, and the ones that didn’t, were.

The way legendaries think of humans kind of reminds me of desians.

“Yes,” Celebi promised. “But it’s a bit more… bigger than that.”

More smoke than substance frames lost in a swirl of their fireless burning, the Tao Duo perched upon nothing at all, sinking talons along the hard contours of nothingness and looked down upon Celebi’s petitioner, thinking as one, speaking as one. They were a discordant, disgusted echo.

“There is no path for this one…”/“It’s rejected all paths, sheering through nature and order, leaving nothing save ruination…”

Really, why He’d involved the Duo was a bit beyond Him, save for one facet. Besides Entei, these birds had the most involvement with humans. Their experience would make this judgment, and trial, easier.

And if the trial was unfair and hard, well the birds and hounds of Johto and Kanto would be appeased because they’d wanted the blacktopped petitioner to suffer after all. So it would and that would be good. The petitioner would of course need to stop dying to be tried, thus the healing requisite would be met, and as an added bonus, Jirachi would gain enough exposure to lesser beings to understand why Legends were better, and lesser were… well lesser.

All in all, it seemed a benefit for them all.

Celebi is pretty awful. Should make it easy to root for Gio, in theory. I do think Celebi being this way is a good thing narratively speaking. If Celebi was kind, gentle, and accepting, then it would be harder to watch Gio presumably wreck him later.

Unwilling to take the time to actually articulate cause and clause Celebi pressed the idea of how they were going to do things and at the idea of making a facsimile of reality to the other Legends. They could sculpt it on familiar paths, something that the dying knew well, and they could wheel in the red-haired summoner’s spawn as well. After all, what was divine judgment without a slant of unfairness and the innocent being swept up in it?

Celebi gets his kicks doing stuff like this. Laugh while you can, little green guy. Uncle G is going to claw his way back, and he is going to be very grumpy when next you meet him.

That last thought Celebi shielded from Jirachi. Layering His sending to the star child with curiosity of how the two who were bound by blood react to a reunion. But not just any reunion. A special one. Where the creatures were both made young again, where there were no wounds, Legend wrought or otherwise. It’d be a curiosity to set the creatures back to a simpler time, thus easing the complexities of their interactions and learning a thing or two about them both.

So Celebi will be watching them like rats in a maze to study them.

And wasn’t a second youth something all creatures wanted and wailed after? Spending their lives seeking fountains and the like to guarantee it?

Which was something Celebi could do quite easily and it would lead to a fuller healing for one and all.

His fellow Legend’s response was expected, the Duo was intrigued. They’d be the makers of the material, using their paths and patterns to sustain both beings and a world about them; for the Duo there was an allure in the complexity. As for the youngest Legend, there was a familiar rush of enthusiasm, for being able to grant so many wonderful wishes that were as good as healing, and wasn’t Celebi so nice for letting him dabble outside his domain, and…

Interesting how Celebi uses various legendary mon to craft the new reality/time.

Tis sad seeing Jirachi be used. I hope Jirachi sees what a jerk Celebi is later.

And if he were doing anything wrong Celebi might have felt guilt for his lie. Instead, he smiled wider, and then floated down, not touching the bloody ground before the creature, but nearly. Celebi thought the suggestion of tipping the creature’s head up gently and as a psychic thoughts were the same as doing. Immaterial limbs sprung into being and moved the summoner's head, making the creature look up and causing its silly, broad-rimmed topping to fall off. The petitioner’s crest was near as dark as its clothes, a few lines of silver running through the small patch of fur on its head, about its temples.

The way you describe psychic power is pretty interesting!

The petitioners scrunched its face, first a grimace at the non-touch, then clarity swirled in those glassy eyes, and the thing’s face twisted to something like neutral.

“You’ll have your healings, and wonders,” Celebi spoke, mind to mind, miming a tone and pitch he’d heard Arceus use. Even if the creature didn’t remember this when it got wherever it was going, the creature would remember eventually. When wasn’t that important. “And the thing you lost, the thing that you ripped lives apart for and torn apart the world for,

Aka Silver. But it might be better to clarify that a little more as I'm not sure all readers will pick up on that.

you’ll have that too, eventually, but there will be trials. Fail those and you and your…” What did humans call their offspring? Celebi floundered a moment, then decided on a reasonable-sounding term.
“You and your spawn will never be reunited. But mind the roads -“

Celebi is so detached and indifferent to humans that he doesn't even know the word 'child'.

and all unseen the Duo preened, “-and if their challenges are met, for both of you, you may be together, at journeys end.”

Ah, so Silver will have challenges too. I think I missed that on the first read.

Because there must be a slant of unfairness, and curiously, the creature jarred to life as allusions were realized. It stiffened, angered, lips peeling back in a snarl that‘d make lesser things flinch. Even its dying tremors -because it was dying, and the efforts of emoting were carrying it off too fast for Celebi to wheel out further speeches and dictates, oh well- seemed ominous, and not in the way one thought of dying tremors as ominous.

The petitioner’s show of hostility and deep growl made Celebi think of the earth, of bedrock crunching together, mere moments before splitting to rain fire and spite. He’d been there that one time, when that one volcano had made a similar sound right before it’d sprung into being and smothered an island… Pomin Pom-something several millennia back.

Huh. History reference to Pompeii. Of course Celebi would only vaguely be aware of it. A bunch of pointless humans died in it. Nothing note worth enough to completely remember. Completely indifferent to the suffering of others.

There’d been no survivors then, and the hostile tip to the creature’s frame, while it was dying, seemed to promise something similar towards Himself.

Celebi shifted his toes up a hair, eased back a bit, not wanting to test his luck.

Gio with his pure anger and presence set Celebi on edge. Too bad Entei wasn't able to see that. He would be eating some popcorn to it! (Or maybe some kibble? )

“You leave my Son, out of this you son of a bitch.”

Clearly, the creature had no idea of the scope or even build of a Legend if it were talking about things as base as mating and trying to be cruel about it. The creature staggered to standing and Celebi, shocked because those last words had sounded like a death rattle. But here it was, not dead, and instead of dying it was trying defiance.

The nerve.

The beast snapped its fingers and the earth about a tree was torn aside as a purple beast of poison and earth surged over the clearing. The venom beast took in the sight of Him, and its trainer (as all bound things thought of their bindings) and drew all the wrong conclusions.

Gio snapping his fingers to command a mon is cool. Reminds me of anime Gio commanding Mewtwo in his gym.

Oh, I wouldn't have even realized it was weird for Celebi to use the word 'trainer' but the explanation in parentheses fixed it just in case I did notice!

The punch was easily stopped; a twist of a thought and the air thickened to nullify velocity. The trick was a hatchlings ploy, really.
Clenched forepaws stilled in solid air an inch from the Legend’s face, the spines, Celebi noted, mental musing tinny and strained even in His own head, were angled to take out both of His eyes had the blow connected.

Nidoking went straight for the eyes. Too bad Celebi wasn't more perturbed by how close it got.

Above, not beyond, just lingering, the Tao watched and Jirachi hummed anxiety.

“He doesn’t sound very happy.” The star child noted, worried. “And his friends sound scared.”

Poor Jirachi just wants to make people happy. 😭

Before the Sylvian god could reply, or think to ask about the curious plural,

Ah! I missed this before! Curious plural meaning Jirachi was already aware of Persian but Celebi wasn't!

one answer came in fast and hard. Something white smashed into his back, tangling in his wings and scraping against the stalks over his spine. Again, the attack took minimal effort to stop, but the newest challenger had drawn blood with its fangs and there were leaves tangled in the white creature’s claws. The Bite stung something fierce. Even as Celebi wrapped his newest assailant in azure binds, gently showing his superiority, the feline swung at him, hissing a name like a battle cry.

Serves Celebi right. Mega cool moment for Persian.

“Jirachi.” Teeth clenched, headache back and back worse, Celebi glowered at the petitioner, and though both of its beasts were bound the biped creature wrapped in its dark clothes fearlessly met the Legend’s spite for spite, labored breathing and agony obvious and adding an edge to its animosity that set Celebi’s back stalks to twine. “Why don’t you get the things… ah… spawn.. and Wish it here?”

“Alright…”

“Then,” unseen behind him, the Tao loomed, eyes bright with internal vistas and paths and patterns they were going to set, and by setting this thing on them it would right a wrong, that the twin Legends were sure of. “We’ll get started, and this thing… and it’s pets-”

“Persian!”

“Kiing!”

The profanities were untranslatable to any tongue save intent, which promised maiming as a start and scaled up quickly. The purple beast, all thorns and bristling, was promising to snap his wings and toss it into a puddle of acid. Then, to prove its point, the creature let its jaw sag wide, dripping acid on the earth and making the ground sizzle and rot from its spittle.

“-can come along with it.”

So magnanimous of Celebi. Takes wounds and still heals and facilitates reunions. What's not to love?

When the star child had shimmered out of the present moment with a flash of golden light Celebi made ropes of nothingness and waved them into place. The creatures about Him bound, He’d get to healing, because the sacrifices had been made and the location and time were right, and He was obligated to do so.

So He would.

And in the back of His head, as Celebi pulled back from flashing teeth as the cat tried to bite him again, He could hear Entei. Which was insane as Entei was not present. Entei had been out of the mental link for ages now.

Phantom Entei born of Celebi’s recollection chimed in the psychic’s head despite not being invited.

The fire hound had been amused when Arceus had nearly been bound to a lesser creature and its mechanisms, and a pokeball.

That sounds like quite the story there. I'm guessing it was events in the diamond/pearl segment of the manga?

Entei, who instead of being outraged, had wryly noted that if the “lesser things were fighting back this hard maybe we should leave them alone,” it was the way he’d said lesser that’d set Celebi’s antenna to stiffen. As if lesser were the crassest untruth.

Perish the thought!

Shaking off recalled Entei’s words Celebi floated towards the hateful creature that bound others to it and met its black pit eyes with eternal patience and exasperation.

“You are making this a very healing difficult.”

With all the emphasis put on this line, I'm surprised you didn't realize that 'healing' should be after 'difficult' not before it.

“Then leave me for dead.”

Gio is saying that to spare Silver from Celebi's machinations. Laying down his life for Silver. I hadn't caught this at this point on my first read. This is very significant and speaks volumes about Gio's character. A very important tidbit for readers unfamiliar with manga Gio.

Repudiating a blessing asked? That baffled Celebi, and the Duo above stilled in stupefied wonder.

There was a reason, a path, a route, and the efforts for healing had been made. What madness would lead to it refusing now, so close to death even?

Then it recalled, when the attack started, the words that had triggered this insanity.

Spawn…

Clearly, it was the wrong word. And perhaps the Legend should apologize as the creature was an infuriatingly protective sort towards its… pup?

Celebi is so utterly out of touch that he actually thinks the reason Gio is angry because of Celebi's word choice and not what Celebi intends to do. It takes a special kind for indifference of this magnitude.

Celebi finally figured the creature’s insanity was catchy because Celebi would have sworn on Arceus’ name he could still hear Entei even though the sylvan Legend was pointedly not thinking of the fire mutt and the canine’s bitterness.
But there the dog was, despite Celebi’s best efforts, still in the back of his fellow Legend’s head.

Memory and fancy and it all felt horridly real at that moment like Entei were actually there even though the dog really wasn’t.

And Entei was laughing.

I love how Entei gets his jabs in even when he isn't there.

The unhealed thing’s fury, repudiating Him and His “damned healing” was all in wild desperation to extricate its spawn. The creature had made the cognitive jump before waking in its trial, which was impressive, and upon realizing its spawn was going to be judged unjustly was all but flailing and wasting its death throes in a mad effort to get the smaller red-topped creature out before anything had started.
Before the creature’s spawn had even gotten here.

Ok NOW Celebi seems to be understanding why Gio is asking not to be healed.

The other lesser creatures’ were yowling for the Legend’s blood, for Him imprisoning them. Never mind the balls at their “trainers” belt were more binding than their present shackles.

Celebi has somewhat of a point here, but mon develop bonds with their trainers and most of them don't mind being in Pokeballs.

Part spite, His back, and shoulder burned from the bite and scratches both, Celebi snapped His digits, miming the motions the creature had used in summoning. And that’s how the artificial binds between lesser ‘mon and lesser creature were erased.

The pokeballs at the creature’s belt made a curious clunk.

OH! I just realized that Celebi released Gio's mon! I thought he had just freed them from the psychic hold he had them in!

Also, the way Celebi used a snap to do it is quite adversarial, hinting at the conflict to come and the presumed inevitable point where Gio survives the trial and appears before Celebi again stronger than ever.

The only response from these three was the cat started clawing at air, trying to sheer its way towards the Legend that’d freed it, the earth beast tried to spit poison but the effort was stilled as the punch had been and the “King” was left having to taste its own vileness as the venom caught behind his fangs and stuck around. As for the black-clad thing, its lips were peeled back in a wordless snarl, the thinning of its eyes and rage pouring from it seemed death threat, though it’d stopped talking, settled for breathing erratically.

What the previously bound beasts did in this moment was irrelevant. They were acting on habit. And this trial would make the lesser ‘mon realize they were free and freed they’d go their own paths away from foolishness like “trainers” and threatening Legends. Celebi’d set the summoner’s spawns creatures free as well, another dash of injustice to the lot that’d be to the betterment of all.

They’d all be grateful to Him in the end.

So Celebi released all Gio's mon and is going to do the same to all Silvers mon. Daaaang!

Celebi’s self-satisfaction held exactly one moment after Jirachi appeared. His return was less a flash of light and more a tunnel of golden light carved out of the sky. Not set too horridly high up, just enough to avoid the thick branches, the pair sauntered down, clearly amusing each other. The creature Jirachi’d fetched was walking down on the edge of gold light like it was a forest path with a slope. The small Legend was swirling about the red-topped summoner’s spawn was keeping the “steps” in existence with proximity, only breaking off to look back, lift a hand, and dim the oval of golden light behind them.

“I always forget to do that…” The starry Legend whined, aloud, “I shouldn’t but…:

“It’s alright, everyone leaves the door open sometimes. You should have seen the last time Green left the door open. We were at a hotel near Mt. Moon and this swarm of zubat just swept in and we had to hide under the bed until they flew out… You should have seen the carpets after….”

Pretty cool way to introduce Silver. Epic entrance. Also, the banter between them is amusing.

I wonder if you planned to have Jirachi team up with Gio later and have Gio make an entrance like that to Celebi later? Because I assume this fic would end with Celebi's head on a pike or maybe with Celebi being captured by Gio.

And the summoner had gone dead still, so much so Celebi canted a glance on it, and though it wasn’t breathing just then its heart was beating, so the thing was not dead.

Which would do. To make sure it kept quiet Celebi willed a gag for the summoner, tying it painfully tight as an afterthought.

“Really?” Jirachi gasped.

“They crunched.” The spawn clarified, near whispered, a sort of pseudo horror to its tone, its lips quirking as it fought not to laugh at the door opening of the past. “and carpets aren’t’ supposed to crunch, they’re supposed to be soft.”

“Eeew…”

And Jirachi was going to get a long talking too after this was done.

“Yeah, ew.” The creature agreed.

Aww... Jirachi just wants to be Silver's friend. He doesn't understand what he is doing to Silver by bringing him here... Poor Jirachi.

Blinking back the light of its coming, lips quirked, the summoner’s spawn followed Jirachi’s flight even as it stepped forward. The silly motion lead to the creature twirling a bit in place when the small Legend zipped about in a series of tight circles. Huffing a small laugh, a soft-spoken rebuke of “slow down a bit would you?”, that Jirachi giggled at and obeyed as the pair cleared the last few “steps” down.

Then the spawn froze, looking past its guild and in response its mouth near unhinging in shock.

And it might have been the sight of the rope and psychic bound ‘mon floating about that made the red-topped creature freeze. The ropes and bonds lead to Celebi because He liked the tactile feeling of those binds in His paws, and the red-topped creature’s quicksilver eyes slid the path of rope, to ‘mon, to Legend, and widened even as it took a step back, paling.

The spawn’s… originator… bloody faced and stooped at Celebi’s feet might have led to several questions as well, and Jirachi, nearest and friendliest, should have swept in to answer them.

As it was the star-shaped Legend blinked bright eyes at the scene and hummed.

“What’d I miss, are we playing a jump rope game?”

Uh... Jirachi... not quite...

Reaching up, nudging the young Legend behind it, the summoner’s spawn pulled a pokeball from its belt, not calling any of its bound creatures to its side. It didn’t need to. A rustling about the spawn’s shoulders showed that it’d had something small, and black, on its back that’d blended in well with the black garb the creature sported. Celebi’d thought the spawn was hunch-backed, the lesser mon had blended in so well. But with a twist and rise the small ‘mon at the spawns back. Setting icy fore and hind paws to roost on the red-topped creature’s shoulder, the lesser ‘mon glared from over the spawns head, the spawns red topping mixing with its ‘mon’s red crest to make the pair look peculiar and two-headed just then.

But oddness aside there were bared fangs of ice, and a warning of words, not as humans understood them, but words all the same.

Keep away keep away, mine mine mine…

So Sneazel is wanting Celebi to keep away from Silver from the sounds of it.

Wild eyes skating from the bound to Legend to its bloody faced, the spawn took one step back, then stopped.

bloody faced... what? Bloody faced what? What is the thing that is bloody faced? I assume it is Gio, but the way the sentence is structured looks as if it is missing at least one word in there somewhere as it is not stating it.

And in that moment Celebi studied it. The summoner’s spawn was small, not as broad-shouldered as it’s forbearer or without a deep rumble to the voice.

So wait, Celebi is saying Silver's voice has a deep rumble to it? Why do I get the feeling this bit is an error and is supposed to be the opposite?

Nearly new hatched then and obviously not evolved. Dressed in a black thing that was tentatively akin to the long black thing the summoner wore, the long cloth flapped about its knees as it walked, the front was partially open so Celebi could see there were other layers under the flapping long cloth. One red and covering the creature’s top half, the other grit grey and covering the lower, both worn with patches of skin showing, mainly the lower about the thing’s knees but there were pinpricks about the shoulders as well.

New ones were forming as the lesser ‘mon on the creature’s shoulders kneaded icy claws and spit curses at Celebi.

“What the hell’s going on here?” The spawn’s voice cracked, definitely not evolved.

Ah, definitely not evolved. Celebi is using evolved as a way of describing a human that became an adult. Kids 'evolve' into adults in Celebi's mind. Interesting! The bit about the voice cracking suggests the thing from my previous comment was indeed an error.

When no Legend spoke the spawn looked past them, to the summoner. “Fath- Sakaki, what the Hell?”

And the summoner, Sakaki, twisted its wrist, freeing something shiny and sharp, the creature cut the Legend made gag to better draw breath, then roar.

“Silver, get out of here! Now!”

Another motion and the summoner had called all its bound beasts.

Fighting as hard as he can.

And the clearing was crawling with lesser ‘mon, buzzing wings

Beedrill

with stabbing spines,

Fearow?

creatures of stone

Rydon

and earth rampaged,

Golem

ripping the shrine and tossing it at the Legend it was made for. When that attack failed the beast pulled back stones from the pool, sod from the earth, they tantrum and attacked throwing as much of the clearing as they could about in a mad attempt to kill the Healer and defend their “trainer” from his healing.

Flicking in and out of existence, Celebi was not… mindful… of blocking the debris. And some of the attacks hit the other, observing, Legends, by utter accident causing Them to tantrum.

Which made the summoner’s spawn bark at its own bound beast, and there was ice on top of everything else….

Sounds like some pure chaos!

The insanity, when it died down, was ruinous, to clearing and Legend pride both, but it did die down, as the lesser beasts eventually lost and were siphoned away to the most begrudging healing in history.

Ok, so I guess you kind of glossed over the big battle that ensued here. It might have been a good opportunity to showcase what Giovanni's team were capable of. Silvers team too. That way when they go without their team going forward, the audience has a sense of just how nerfed they got. Granted, I guess you could show that in the coming chapters in various ways as well. I guess the battle being glossed over is actually pretty ok depending on how the other chapters go.

Closing thoughts:
Ok so the POV for Celebi was handled pretty well in a way that minimized confusion. Seeing things from a legendary mon perspective was really interesting, especially with how it allowed you to showcase other legendary mon and how they do things. A whole bunch of fascinating lore. Celebi is set up as the jerkwad antagonist too. I think I did a decent job noticing the various bits of plot, but some of them could potentially use a little more clarification just in case other readers aren't paying attention as much as me. There are also some bits where I was just legitimately confused, but there wasn't as many of those as I thought there were from my first reading. I still think this was a solid chapter even before potential tweaks. The things I liked about this chapter were far more significant to the overall experience than the flaws.

 

[K_S]

Review:
Transversal Chapter 1

So, now I finally get to dive deep into one of your most prominent fics! I'm very much looking forward to it!

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

So, like most fics these days, I enjoy giving some thoughts on the title. Transversal: Intersecting lines. Hmm. Seems to suggest to me that Celebi's shrine is a place of intersection of various timeLINES. As such, I find this word to be very clever!

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

Glad you caught the reference. It was a very subtle one that no one else has pointed out yet.

As for the rest, crossing the backs of legends... It sounds like walking over the backs of others. Since the main character is Giovanni, the idea of him making legendary mon prostrate themselves for him to walk across is SO fitting for a villain!

He brought his best cleets to the event! Nice and sharpened. And if he's willing to treat mon verse "actual god" like a stepping stone feel nothing but terror for the regular schmucks around him and thier spines.

This title paints the idea that Giovanni will be doing some incredible things and achieving some extraordinary heights!

Amazing job with the title!


Oh I do enjoy me some mystery!


Good job as usual with content warnings.


This is quite the nifty piece of art here! I love how the back shows the identity of the boy in the middle!

An old blitz win. Wasnt easy to earn, but hey, it looks good.

It's good how you set up by recapping important events in the manga that led up to this point. Many readers will probably enter the fic manga-blind, so this is very useful.

Prrof of a lesson learned. Initially i wasnt so cautious, but after getting some feedback went back and made it more accessable.

That said, there are many spelling errors in it. 8 of them, in fact. The spell checker on TR does a good job of catching them. If you went in to edit, you could likely clean up the vast majority of them with minimal effort.

Oddly enough my phone disables it? I gotta sink some time to brush up on a desktop and hope to do an edit spree post catnip. Thanks for catching what you did...

Quite the nasty cold they gave him!

Thats an understatment for t.b. on evil steroids if I ever heard one...

So on the front end, I want to say this summary just outright spoils the first and second chapters of your fic, but this summary kicks up so much excitement and does such a good job of establishing the premise that I honestly think it excuses the spoiler. I'm pretty darn shocked at that. Excellent job with this!

Spelling errors abound, though. Put it through a spell checker for sure.

Noted and thanks

A workable title. If it is meant to reference the bible, it is fitting since there are mythical legendary mon involved.

Actually, Giovanni is what his Mob folk back home would call a very lapsed catholic. Its his little dig at the scenario more than anything else.

State used twice.

Huh i missed that.

That is one fancy ride! And quite cool! 😎


I mean, it's allowed to just be cool because he is Gio-freaking-vanni but reasons are good too.


I love the detail that goes into his helicopter. Very cool!

If you own half the world you havw earned the coolest toys. Surge is jealous beyond all measure, and even now Gio would gloat about it if he could. He has the best ride.

A good point, actually.


I take it he is not a fan of damp environments... 😅

The executive whines no matter what environ he's put in. Mainly because Gio gives him the grungy jobs for low grade lols. He is quietly p.o.ed at all of his executives dor putting Sikvers life in danfer so he makes thier lives ell.

Poor Kurts granddaughter! I hope she will be ok... 🥺

She'll be fine. Gio sent orders for her to get hurt, not dead or disabled. If his men flubbed that bad kurt would get the end result of yubitsume as well as an insane paycheck.

What is a repast? What food? Is Giovanni eating breakfast or something?

Yep its just such low quality he cant unship enough to admit its breakfast.

Tracking software? Is Giovanni being tracked? 🤔

Established in a few other stories, but all technology is tracked and controlled. Gios paranoia is very juatified since Interpol is gunning for him.

Poor girl. Giovanni deserves a bit of his pain, it seems. But that said, a journey fic centered on a villain is such a cool concept!

Its a rare one...

And actually gio was hurt long before he ordered Kurts grandkid to be hurt. Pain/punishment is def not disuading him from harming her. As a matter of fact had he more time he woukdnt of gone this route and she'd of been spared...

That is one serious password!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPphyjkXnPc


Huh, I wonder what kind of leather it is? Is it Tauros leather? 🤔

I could make a joke about charmeleon hide... but actualky Gio woukd probably pick anything but. Tauros keather is kinda coded western in this setting, and anything that reminds him of clay (a hack of a ground trainer and a personal irritent in Gios opinion) would be set on fire with extreme predjudice...

Blur used twice. Maybe use straining instead of blurring?

Def will find a plan b.

Neat to see how he deals with it since its been happening to him a while now.


Good way of indicating there is something very strange about that place!

Hes a cautious one. And you dont know half it.

The sound of what? What was the sound?

Will habe to fix that i guess..

Huh... I wonder what would happen if a tame Snorlax swallowed a wild mon whole and tried to walk through the barrier. Would it get stopped? If not, could it them barf up the wild mon on the other side?

The somach acids would make that a mute point in... seconds. Saddly.

So what is going on in this last paragraph? Giovanni has the town surrounded by Rockets and if anyone visits the town, they get executed? Is that it?

Yep. And thier news/phone lines are all being hijacked too...

I'm glad you had this bit in there so we know what Giovanni's goal is and how he plans to achieve it.


I love the details of the extra things that make his Nidoking so powerful.

Nisoking is a nightmare and a half...

Interaction with the minions helps show his authority. Nice!

Ignore the flaming whip in gios dominant hand...

Nidoking seems well-suited to watching over him.

Funny enough, Nido probably could double as a service mon if it weren't for typing. King's the nurturing one, his Nidoqueen (left back at base) is his agressive hellspawn of a 'mon. Which flips thier pokedex entries hard.

His colors certainly do well in hiding blood. Very true.

It was less premeditated and more late discovered perk...

I really don't point out how nicely you word things very much. I think I've been a bit spoiled by your writing. This bit especially the last couple lines has some great word choice in it.

Glad you like. Preens.

I love how you used the word padding for walking for Persian.

I got cats. They totally alternate between a soft silent padding from room to room... to galoping like elephants with a grudge against the sound barrier. There is no middle ground.

Whole section with Nidoking hiding is both ridiculous and hilarious at the same time!

I was going to have gio get the jaws theme in his head because of the horn sticking out... but figured it too irrelevent for the moment

Wait... what? What is going on in the line above?

wait for it...

Ok, so now the question from above gets answered here but it was distracting trying to figure out what was happening.

I'll take a peek later in and swe if i can groom it a little better.

Dew falling off of what?

The leaves/branches. Ilex is very very damp. Hosting a slew of grass and bug types for it.

His hat is keeping the dew off him, but why is dew falling enough to douse him and what is it falling off of?

The plant matter over his head. Ilex is wet, blame the local skowpoke population. I'll try to wiggle a clarity point in later to expand on it.

So everything is very very wet. With how it's described, I'm imagining little water fountains spraying off of literally everything except the shrine.

Not quite that wet. But theres dew and the plants are water traps for those on foot.

Amusing little interaction with Persian.

Persian: hears gio talk, tail shoots up, assuming petsies are available and he's advertusing his kocation with his butt using his plume of a tail as a flag.

Gio: running the gauntlet if threatening someone over the phone, running his legit companies, ordering reservations, to ordering pizza... tiredly glares at the HAPPY TAIL(tm) and wonders why people think cats are dignified. Because dio his ain't...

A fair question to be sure.


assorted assortment? I can't tell if you are trying to be funny or actually put the same word right next to it self unintentionally.

I liked the aliteration and Gio was loopy for understandable reasons...

Like a copper? Is copper another word for belt or something?

Copper is very dated gang slang for police officer. His weapon orientations making him think of the cops and he's mentally going all "ew no".

I like how you walk us through his thought process here.


Giovanni needs to take some Dayquil or something. I think Celebi has some.

Ah but woukd cel' share?

Well, I can't say he doesn't deserve it after getting Kurt's granddaughter hurt.

The mans got cancer everything, sleep deprivation, lung damage from fire enhalation, partially healed full body burns due to this...

Spoiler: Manga spoiler

But aright mr. Vindicitve let me hunt down some salt here...

Quite the presentation!


Interesting that Giovanni nearly laughed even in the condition he is in.

He loves dark humor. This is about as dark as it gets.

Wait, did Giovanni just quote the bible?

Yep. And he even went to sunday school and everything.

Not explored until much later, but Gio was a catholic as a boy. More culturally pressured than devoute tho. Hes actually a doubke minority for it.

Kantos mainly mon/mew and ancestor worship, doesn't like abrahamic faiths since they put man before nature and 'mon which is a huge no-no in the Regions. Kanto is also very much anti-outsider/xenophobic.

Gios a dual citizen aka kanto-italian and brings up his catholic background to make any upity kanto citizens squirm.

So this last bit here was abrupt and kind of confusing. 🤔

Closing thoughts:
Ok so most of this chapter was pretty clear. It introduces us to Gio's resources, a couple of his mon, his dilemma, and his plan to fix it. A solid first chapter to the fic. The spelling errors are in serious need of editing and don't fit the overall quality of the fic at all. Regardless, this chapter was still great!

Glad you liked it, thanks for dropping a line

 

[K_S]

Review reply

Review:
Transversal Chapter 2

I'm back for another review!

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

Spoiler: Ranking, teen, author notes, and misc details

I'm extremely glad you added this section. I'm not a fan of having no clue what the crap is going on lol... 😅

Such a cool line! Another example of some great wording choices.


Interesting that Celebi has to consider the right of other legendaries to inflict harm. Or at least that's how Celebi views it.

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

Celibi also doesn't want incidentary happy legends like moltress deciding his forest is thier target range. Also he's a psychic. They can scream in his brain and ears 24/7 and he doesn't want that.

Interesting way of Celebi to describe Giovannis mental health/heart

Celebi basically is trying to find Gios emotions and finds a sucking black void of anger/hurt... and is horrified... imagine what poor arceus and giritina experience looking at cyrus.

Celebi is so cold and distant from the suffering of others. A person is bleeding out right in front of them and they are just like: "What a curiosity. Also, this is rather annoying how they are bleeding in my sacred grove. I suppose I'll have to figure out what to do with this problem"

Yep, healer does not equal nice in this setting.

Nice reference to Houndoom. Houndoom is freaking terrifying in what it can inflict!


This bit here reads like some poetry (great stuff!) but I'm not sure I understand it. I'll try describing what I think is happening:

Celebi stopped time and froze Giovanni in a mid smile or perhaps a grimace. Celebi doesn't like Giovanni, so Celebi glared at him. Giovanni's smile was unnerving to Celebi. Celebi leaned back while levitating and reaching out with their thoughts.

If I got it right, great. If not, it might need some tweaks to make it a little more clear.

I'll have to break it down into chunks and brush it up a bit. If i do would you be willing to go over it via pm?

Wait, I thought time was stopped. When did time stop stopping?

I have no idea what Celebi means by the thrum of the universe bracing. I'm not even sure Celebi knows either.

Basically while Gio is a mere little human his impact is on par to a Legends (able to make colossal changes around him basically disrupts the force...) and makes the force shake like jelly. Celibie is not appreciating the solid universe shaking like a waterbed with an army of spoink bouncing on it.

Celebi stopped what? Widening their eyes in realization? So the eyes are now partly widened are are fixed in that state of partial widening or they are now a normal amount of open?


What was curious and unseeing? Giovanni?

Who's nature? What nature?


Such a neat way to describe the atrocious past of Giovanni!

Celebi is a living legendary cell phone!

Better him then mew. Mews so scatered (basically a stereotypical cat) he has hold music geared to agrivate everyone on call. Except for zapdos and entie who mockingly rock out/sing along, which makes mew even more distracted. Suffice to say mew is not called on to provode "cell servixe" unless absolutly nessescary.

Celebi considers hate from the birds to be useful? Why? I thought they made the fact that Celebi has to heal Giovanni more complicated? 🤔

It tells him what hes dealing with in regards to gio without having to dig into gio tiny warped human head...

Such an inspiring family of legendaries.


Is Giratina giggling? That is immensely creepy if so.

Nah, that's letsgo's baby legend phan-whatever its called.

So Celebi is looking to cut unhelpful legendaries from the group chat.

With extreme prejudice.

But Giovanni made the universe move... somehow.

made twice

added a missing word?

This is all one sentence combined with the ones above. Way too long.

Will def fix during brush up. And yep Gios causing issues just by existing.

So Giovanni is able to effect the moment of stilled time? How? Why? I guess even Celebi doesn't know?


So Celebi got ignored by Arceus probably because of events in Sinnoh.

Arceus is hidong in archaic shinnoh ala Legends timeline to recpup from modern Shinnoh's insanity. Cyrus is a terror that makes 'mon god cringe... only ghestis was that bad.

I like how the different legendaries and their individual responses are considered.

I was gunna have them do different languages too but considering language is more a human conciet... i decided not to.

So, I don't understand why Celebi viewed the past as something that would not avail him and that looking there for answers was a failure. I know what Celebi described, but I don't understand what Celebi was looking for, so I don't understand why what Celebi saw was not useful.

Hes trying to cliff notes gios past to make abetter decision. That duded

(mans too complicated and shown in Silvers memories Legends dont really get human -except Entie who is the best boy-)

Gios future is both "dies in 5 rounds" and "somehow lives but is even more complicated" so looking forward doesnt work for Cel either.

I also don't understand what Celebi was looking for in the future.

A cheat sheet as for what to do in the present? A way to make Gio stop makong the world shake like jello? Both candidly.

I don't understand the last sentence of this paragraph. I think it is trying to say that what Entei looks at forces Celebi to look at it too? The wording for the sentence is still... off. Maybe it's trying to be too clever.

I'll play w it thanks for pointing it out...

Entei clearly doesn't like Celebi You do great with Entei here to provide contrast from the other legendaries.

That he does.

So Celebi learned of Silver's connection to Entei and Celebi doesn't like Entei hence is motivation for Celebi to drag Silver into all this?


Ok so Celebi thinks humans are helpless without the aid of legendaries. Also, because of Entei's connection to Silver Celebi investigated Silver more.

Yep.

Ok I think this is talking about the laser incident with Lance.


Kindness to children?! We can't have any of that! Celebi you need to cause some suffering. We simply cannot let such an atrocity stand!


So the stuff with Ice Mask was enough to unnerve Celebi? With how Celebi is so far, I half expected Celebi to bask in that as a form of mental mouth wash for Entei's distasteful pleasantness.

If entie directed it towards mon cel would be fine with it... but silvers horror is freaking cel out rsther than Masks actions. Its a definity "they can feel and i dont like it" moment for Cel.

So Entei is furious with Celebi for looking into that and hates that Celebi will likely be doing something bad to Silver. Celebi got what he needed, so he cut Entei out of the group chat.

And banned him too!

So Celebi views Giovanni as important but only because of the many small things and plots he weaved together.


You know... I'm getting the distinct impression that Celebi doesn't like his job.

In further news water be wet!

Good to see Celebi's thought process. I'm so glad you made this chapter from Celebi's POV. It really clarifies a ton of things that would be completely up in the air otherwise.


So, Celebi wants to understand the thoughts of Gio, Silver, and Entei to avoid the circumstances that led to Giovanni getting cursed so that Gio would not be here as a problem for Celebi to deal with? Gio would still be a problem but he wouldn't be petitioning Celebi so he would be someone else's problem. Ok... I think I'm getting it now.


This does an effective job at showing how grossed out Celebi is by Gio and how indifferent he is to Gio's suffering. Also, I find it odd that you refer to Celebi as 'he' even though Celebi is supposed to be gender-less. I would think that would warrant a 'they' pronoun, but masculine pronouns are easier to deal with, so while I find it odd, I still prefer Celebi to have masculine pronouns for sake of simplicity.

I make Cel masculine. The duo are agender. And Jir is undecided...

Should be 'if' not 'it.


Yes, because Jirachi appearing would just be the worst! These legends have standards to uphold!


Celebi is so freaking mean with that. But Celebi also helps clue the reader in that Jirachi is one of the only nice legendary mon. Entei being another. Not sure if there are any others.

The X bird whonpersonifies radiat89n poisoning funnily enough.

I hope Jirachi doesn't get corrupted by the other legendaries into thinking of humans as 'its' instead of 'them'.

Stuff like this makes me want to see Gio cross the backs of most legendaries!


The way legendaries think of humans kind of reminds me of desians.


Celebi is pretty awful. Should make it easy to root for Gio, in theory. I do think Celebi being this way is a good thing narratively speaking. If Celebi was kind, gentle, and accepting, then it would be harder to watch Gio presumably wreck him later.


Celebi gets his kicks doing stuff like this. Laugh while you can, little green guy. Uncle G is going to claw his way back, and he is going to be very grumpy when next you meet him.


So Celebi will be watching them like rats in a maze to study them.

Yep

Interesting how Celebi uses various legendary mon to craft the new reality/time.

Tis sad seeing Jirachi be used. I hope Jirachi sees what a jerk Celebi is later.

Jir gets a very up and close experience, some rescue be required.

The way you describe psychic power is pretty interesting!


Aka Silver. But it might be better to clarify that a little more as I'm not sure all readers will pick up on that.


Celebi is so detached and indifferent to humans that he doesn't even know the word 'child'.


Ah, so Silver will have challenges too. I think I missed that on the first read.


Huh. History reference to Pompeii. Of course Celebi would only vaguely be aware of it. A bunch of pointless humans died in it. Nothing note worth enough to completely remember. Completely indifferent to the suffering of others.


Gio with his pure anger and presence set Celebi on edge. Too bad Entei wasn't able to see that. He would be eating some popcorn to it! (Or maybe some kibble? )

Popped kobble? No idea.

Gio snapping his fingers to command a mon is cool. Reminds me of anime Gio commanding Mewtwo in his gym.

In Origins hes almost completely nonverble in his fightsand it freaks Red outto no end... Manga canon also is pretty quiet and has his team trained in complex menuver drills to avoid advertising his next move and it recks many a battle.

Oh, I wouldn't have even realized it was weird for Celebi to use the word 'trainer' but the explanation in parentheses fixed it just in case I did notice!


Nidoking went straight for the eyes. Too bad Celebi wasn't more perturbed by how close it got.

Actually hw was he just didnt emote it.

Poor Jirachi just wants to make people happy. 😭


Ah! I missed this before! Curious plural meaning Jirachi was already aware of Persian but Celebi wasn't!


Serves Celebi right. Mega cool moment for Persian.

Persian be awesome like that.

So magnanimous of Celebi. Takes wounds and still heals and facilitates reunions. What's not to love?


That sounds like quite the story there. I'm guessing it was events in the diamond/pearl segment of the manga?


Perish the thought!


With all the emphasis put on this line, I'm surprised you didn't realize that 'healing' should be after 'difficult' not before it.


Gio is saying that to spare Silver from Celebi's machinations. Laying down his life for Silver. I hadn't caught this at this point on my first read. This is very significant and speaks volumes about Gio's character. A very important tidbit for readers unfamiliar with manga Gio.

That he does.

Celebi is so utterly out of touch that he actually thinks the reason Gio is angry because of Celebi's word choice and not what Celebi intends to do. It takes a special kind for indifference of this magnitude.


I love how Entei gets his jabs in even when he isn't there.


Ok NOW Celebi seems to be understanding why Gio is asking not to be healed.


Celebi has somewhat of a point here, but mon develop bonds with their trainers and most of them don't mind being in Pokeballs.


OH! I just realized that Celebi released Gio's mon! I thought he had just freed them from the psychic hold he had them in!

Also, the way Celebi used a snap to do it is quite adversarial, hinting at the conflict to come and the presumed inevitable point where Gio survives the trial and appears before Celebi again stronger than ever.


So Celebi released all Gio's mon and is going to do the same to all Silvers mon. Daaaang!

Silver is gunna have a fit. Gios going tohave to manage damage c9ntrol when his team starts rampaging.

Pretty cool way to introduce Silver. Epic entrance. Also, the banter between them is amusing.

I wonder if you planned to have Jirachi team up with Gio later and have Gio make an entrance like that to Celebi later? Because I assume this fic would end with Celebi's head on a pike or maybe with Celebi being captured by Gio.


Aww... Jirachi just wants to be Silver's friend. He doesn't understand what he is doing to Silver by bringing him here... Poor Jirachi.


Uh... Jirachi... not quite...

Poor jirachi.

So Sneazel is wanting Celebi to keep away from Silver from the sounds of it.


bloody faced... what? Bloody faced what? What is the thing that is bloody faced? I assume it is Gio, but the way the sentence is structured looks as if it is missing at least one word in there somewhere as it is not stating it.

Gios bloody faced. Will touxh up.

So wait, Celebi is saying Silver's voice has a deep rumble to it? Why do I get the feeling this bit is an error and is supposed to be the opposite?


Ah, definitely not evolved. Celebi is using evolved as a way of describing a human that became an adult. Kids 'evolve' into adults in Celebi's mind. Interesting! The bit about the voice cracking suggests the thing from my previous comment was indeed an error.


Fighting as hard as he can.


Beedrill


Fearow?


Rydon


Golem

Good guesses. But nope.

Sounds like some pure chaos!


Ok, so I guess you kind of glossed over the big battle that ensued here. It might have been a good opportunity to showcase what Giovanni's team were capable of. Silvers team too. That way when they go without their team going forward, the audience has a sense of just how nerfed they got. Granted, I guess you could show that in the coming chapters in various ways as well. I guess the battle being glossed over is actually pretty ok depending on how the other chapters go.

The battle is revisited and greatly exoanded on no worries.

Closing thoughts:
Ok so the POV for Celebi was handled pretty well in a way that minimized confusion. Seeing things from a legendary mon perspective was really interesting, especially with how it allowed you to showcase other legendary mon and how they do things. A whole bunch of fascinating lore. Celebi is set up as the jerkwad antagonist too. I think I did a decent job noticing the various bits of plot, but some of them could potentially use a little more clarification just in case other readers aren't paying attention as much as me. There are also some bits where I was just legitimately confused, but there wasn't as many of those as I thought there were from my first reading. I still think this was a solid chapter even before potential tweaks. The things I liked about this chapter were far more significant to the overall experience than the flaws.

Glad u liked it and taking thw time to go thro ut from top to bottom. I'll.incorperate you suggestions as time permits!

 

[Tango]

📝AN: Ran through Grammarly 4/13/2021 but in bits and bobs. Will need to fuller sweep for small errors that might have been missed. 85% done though as of 4/14

Hmm. I'm noticing a lack of chapter title at the start. Just to make things clear, this review is for chapter 3! (You do have it in the threadmarks though!) Here to finish out the mini-blitz strong!

Spoiler: Line by Line Reaction

He’d expected these divinely dictated "trials" of his "healing" to be pulled from the anals of old mythologies. A mix-match of torments cobbled together to impossible tasks. And there was a punishment slant to this moment. His mind, half-awake, felt poked and prodded, and while a pain it wasn't agony. The sensation was comparable to something was burrowing in his head, and since fighting back, or trying to, made the pain worse...

Not agony? But burrowing in his head sounds pretty DARN painful! 😬

He didn't.

Can't say I blame him there. I expect with someone as familiar with pain as him, it must HURT.

And after a frisson of shock not his own set his spine to tingle, the presence in his head shifted attention from battle to sifting through memories.

Presence in his head? What a spooky uncertain term to describe thought! Like he isn't 100% sure he is himself!

Egotist that it was the psychic intrusion meandered along the thoughts related to recall and Legends. The results were a melding of Mythology 101 and the tales of his life, sloppily stitched together to form a borderline incoherent whole.

Once upon a time... gentler tales started such, this one being the uncensored grimoire of ancient times, there was no such gentling.

So it began;

In ancient times there'd been a madman who declared himself the emperor of Kalos. To prove might and madness both he'd wrangled with a pyroar while aflame in some tribute or other to gain the boon of a pelt that'd gift him immortality in battle.

The Legend's held their word, the man had earned the hide, and it was blessed, and bloodstained, as all old-time giftings of the Legends were back in those days.

Hmm! I suppose after sifting through enough myth, Gio will loop back around to his current circumstances. Cool lore, by the way.

In modern times, a near-decade ago Giovanni'd revisited the story and added his own embellishments.

The Hide Armor of the Unnamed Tyrant had been Team Rocket's first breakthrough.

Whaaat? Ok THAT seems really cool!

True, indisputable, confirmation of the Legend's existence that wasn't hearsay or his own sighting.

Giovanni's personal bit of hearsay, his viewing of a Legend, had been a thing of utter desperation. His "encounter" had started when he'd been woken by the sound of shattering glass. Shaking off sleep he'd raced down the hall, throwing open his son's bedroom door to see golden talons of a gigantic bird had plowed through the forced opening of a broken window. The avian was rooting through the room, and it'd been madness as the lights were trying to die and the bird's wing strokes were part thunder, part smoldering. The very air sizzled and steamed as rain met a "god" of fire and the resulting steam had been like stepping into a nightmarish sauna.

So Zapdos and Moltres were after Silver and in his BEDROOM!? I would complain how Gio wasn't being careful enough, but I'm not sure a hotel would work either. He would probably need some kind of legendary-proof bunker.

The walls burned on the outside. Never truly catching as it was a hellish downpour of hail and rain outside. The beast hung half on half off the outer wall of the building for support, embers rained from the things every wingstroke as it fought for balance and reaching all at once.

So all three were there? I'm guessing due to the hail.

Giovanni had frozen before the sight of that monstrosity. Not believing. But belief fell to facts. Heart hammering, he realized the angle of the reaching limb, the slant of the gouges in the floor, all pointed towards his son's bed and it'd only been chance the talons hadn't connected, sharp or grip. Swearing, Giovanni lunged, intent on snapping up his boy and bolting.

The basement's panic room... He could make it in less than five at a dead run, he just needed this one thing to go right...

Of course, it hadn't.

The bird, all sunlight and malice, had seen, heard, and it twisted about to better see him in turn.

And the Legend's regard was a pressure akin to boulders slammed against his back. No mere man could stand against it. And he hadn't. Struck down to his knees by a glare, near senseless from the bird's attention, Giovanni couldn't see. Wasn't permitted to even stand, and so at his Legends feet, in the ruins of his son's room, he'd been forced to assume a pose that the ignorant would take as prayerful.

Wow. This whole section has been some seriously impressive writing! Desperation, power, forced submission. Moltres makes one heck of a primal force antagonist! I assume Gio will be very powerful be the end of the fic, so this sets up an amazing contrast for later too.

If he couldn't stand, so he wouldn't, he crawled. Calling assurances to the sobbing, fear paralyzed child, he was here, he was coming... The smoldering carpets, the blindness that made him travel by touch and memory were of no moment...

He just needed one more moment, and the "gods" did not grant him even that.

A warble of victory from above, as claws found their target and gripped.

That's it right there. The inciting incident that set everything in motion. Knowing how much Gio cares for Silver and how he would probably watch the entire world burn before letting him die... Moltres may have the edge now, but Gio is now 100% motivated as Moltres's enemy.

His boy's scream would haunt him as he was dragged up and away. Waking and sleeping, for years and years. p

📝Extra 'p' at the end.

Picking up the pelt for the first time, that ultimate proof of a Legend's death, he heard those screams again, echoing in his memory, and if he wasted a day or so imagining it with sun-hued feathers in steed of golden fur, snapped talons and beak shavings serving as bindings instead of whatever claws had been threaded through the thing...

That was his business.

As for the Hide, acquiring it was wholly business.

So he sought the hide as a way to fight back against Moltres? Neat!

Passed from original owners next of kin to be owned by a collector of the bizarre. It'd been child's play to divest the man of his find and his life, and for a while, Giovanni Sakaki had owned the armor of Kalos's sole emperor. It was near indestructible as many tests with modern weapons had proved. Resisting fire and bludgeoning and electricity by twisting the heat and force of any attack away from the cloth. The immaterial forces of psychic-type attacks had passed through it like mist, and the keenest minds sharpened by sadism had been unable to even wrinkle the material...

Ok I LOVE the way you describe this artifact. That's one immensely cool super armor!

As for what it was... it was utterly worthless, despite being an assurance that Legends could die. It'd been crafted for one man and resisted the touch of any other. He'd seen video footage of it unclasping and sliding off of any who tried to put on.

Daaang. That bites!

And while it arrested the force of any attack directed at it... the deflection was inherently flawed. The fabric would be undamaged, its hairs unruffled... but estimates, backed by tests where it had been pinned to mannequins with a passing nod to human build, guaranteed that come the first projectile, the first elemental attack from any 'mon...

Well, the feet of the wearer would be the first thing to go.

Of course they did tests on it! That's really interesting... I wonder... Did he find a way to harness it's power? Did he use it to rescue Silver and that's why the birds hate him so much?

Further tests, and the inability to get a sample by any means to find out what beast had sacrificed its skin to make the flawed archaic armor, had affirmed the relics' worth. Needles, tweezers, scissors, even cotton swabs, could garner nothing. No DNA, or hairs, or dust for dating. Even water immersion had failed, the thing mirroring old religious legends by parting the water in the tub it'd been cast into and making a mess of one test room floor.

I don't know why I find this stuff about the relic so cool, but I really do!

So the relic had ended as it'd started. A mystery. But not a worthless one. Team Rocket had made a fortune selling the damned thing on a black market.

LOL

Still good for something, huh?

All that just to freaking SELL IT! Wow I laughed a solid couple minutes over that one! Most a fic has made me laugh all year!

Another collector of the bizarre without any quibbles about the law had taken the golden hide...

And if that man had been later killed, his bank accounts emptied, his property looted for bits and bobs of other Legends... Well, Team Rocket was at its heart a criminal enterprise.

Yeah... That's actually pretty smart. Ruthless and terrible, sure. But smart.

And so, all accidental, this hodgepodge of history and legend got its very own moral.

Caveat Emptor.

As for the incidentals... The Emperor of the tale had been a would-be dictator whose reign was so short he'd not gotten his name into the history books. He'd lasted mere minutes after gaining his divine gift, not even living long enough to crawl to the battlefield to learn the limitations of the pelt. The burns of his trial had carried him off to an inglorious death via medical complications well beyond his time, and thus a legend had been born from the stripped and blessed hide of a Legend, the tale's conclusion an inglorious one for Beast and Emperor both.

Very neat... It's like foreshadowing that Gio will end up destroying himself in the process of destroying the legends. But it could also be a red herring foreshadowing! Very cool.

It was a fitting story, a fitting moral, both dovetailed beautifully into the madness the Boss of Team Rocket found himself embroiled in now.

The scorn of that thought allowed him to connect mind to body in the form of a reaction. He huffed his amusement.

And that was the end of his detachment.

Man vs legend. And once again, Silvers fate depends on the outcome. This is how you start a cool fic.

One blink and his sight cleared in stages. The bland view of dark and square resolved into a ceiling of some sorts, save it was too dark to discern color because it was literally too dark to see much of anything... Giovanni tried to get a better view. To sit up. But the motion went all wrong and got him nothing save a weak jolt through his frame.

He tried smaller motions, then.

Wiggling toes and fingers, taking heart from those small motions he worked his way up to rolling over and exchanged one view of square and blankness for another.

What a go getter attitude. Letting himself be motivated by the smallest successes while ignoring the failure. Celebi would have to kill Gio to keep him down!

The only difference between the room's far wall and its ceiling was the shut and shuttered window on the far wall. There was no furniture save the bed he lay on so therefore there was nothing to tell him where he was.

Huh. So he is waking up in a room? I thought he was going to wake up in an unfamiliar forest! Hmm!

And while a lesser man might be furious, if not stymied, Giovanni was familiar with this forum of helplessness. The joys of limited mobility in the morning were not new. And it was a mercy that he was not bound by wires, or that he had to make his shaking hands work off a breathing mask and tubing before he could do anything else.

So... He is in a hospital?

Comparing the last few weeks of his life to now... This moment was near heaven.

Straining his ears Giovanni listened while he regrouped his energy. It was curious that now, that he was turned on his side, he could hear the sounds of wind, the muffled crash of sand and surf. And that was a curiosity as much as this baren room. Sound, while not omnipresent, wasn't so selective as to work like this. Letting his eyes roam away from the window killed the sound as if it were a tv and his attention was the mute button. Looking at the window dead on made the noise return, continued regard made it intensify to near headache inspiring levels.

Weird...

Closing his eyes made the sound dim, and he did so to better trace a mental path over maps and routes of Johto and Kanto both. If his memory wasn't failing him... or compromised.... there'd been no beach for nearly a hundred miles in any direction from Illex.

So, he wasn't where he'd started, and considering what had happened before waking up this likely was his "trial" then.

Hmmm! So he figures he is near a beach but considers there are none around where he was. Reasonable logic regarding the trail. I like how you portray Gio intelligently.

He'd expected to be in agony, ringed round with brimstone, irritate Legends poking and prodding him with talons and fangs, at the very least.

This room, he mused, rolling back onto his back to better stare at a blank vista that wouldn't give him a headache, was a bit of a letdown in comparison.

PPFFT!! He would rather have torture than boredom!

Gio is really made of something else!

Time passed, he wasn't sure how long, but in that span of stillness and silence Giovanni tallied facts to facets.

This is a nifty bit of prose. I like how it teeters back and forth like holding part up in one hand and then holding up the other in the other hand. Weighing and considering.

He wasn't burning, or burned, or rotting, or puking blood, or drowning in air. He also wasn't totally alone. The soft sheets that'd been tossed over him told that tale, and as he gripped at the fabric to better push it out of the way he strained his ears. When there were no tells, the quiet breathing of another, footfalls, Giovanni was satisfied his solitude would hold. Once he'd managed to sit up without falling out of the bed or flat on his face, he considered his next steps.

It does suggest that someone was caring for him. Perhaps it will be the girl in white from the cover art?

This fey exhaustion was familiar, akin to the Pressure of a hateful Legend. Having infuriated many of those the Rocket Boss was confident he'd find a workaround. Until then there was little to do besides gather what strength he could and struggle to stay awake.

I really admire his tenacity. Exactly what I would expect from Gio.

The latter wasn't as hard as it'd seem. A creeping sense of something wrong gnawed at him. He only pushed aside the impulse to poke and pry at his memories by the minuscule tug on the sheets, as something small gripped and caused the sheets to go taunt on the bed's far edge in an effort to climb up.

In his childhood long gone it'd be Persian, awake now that he was awake and wanting scritches for the reward of being observant. She'd loom over him in his youngest days, mewling and yowling for attention even as he gave it to her.

As a cat lover myself, I can't help but find this bit adorable. 🥰

At the beginning of their... partnership... her head had been big enough to fit in both his hands. His fingertips lost in her silky fur, he swore and ran them over her favored stroking spots. This was the "last time" he'd vowed he'd "just been going to the bathroom, he should not have to snuggle his cat into submission after doing something so pedestrian as having to go". She'd purr then, scrunching her eyes into near-invisibility as he got the span over her shoulders just right...

I miss having a pet cat. Giving attention to one is such a simple, yet therapeutic experience.

And like with awakening and the tale that'd bound him until he'd completed it, the nostalgia felt like a weight, the reminiscence required to be finished before he could speak.

"Persian?"

A chitter, definitely not his cat, answered, as was a thud as whatever it was fell from its perch of "nearly up" to the floor below.

Hmmm! The question becomes what or who this is!

Giovanni blanched for when he spoke what had come out of his mouth wasn't his voice, or rather wasn't as it had been just this afternoon. Higher pitched, not quite pre-adolescent, and definitely not his familiar, commanding baritone he'd wielded almost all his life.

He sounded like a child... and that realization was like a curtain pulled back in his head, and all the memories of before, not just his near dying, came roaring back.

Being a kid again would be a pretty neat experience for any adult, I'd imagine. I'm Gio's case, I'm pretty sure he hates it!

He swore, and damn the Legends and their inflicted weakness he clawed at the wall and bed frame until he was standing, stooped, but up. A frantic look about the room affirmed Silver wasn't there. The only things that'd he'd missed for not being up were a pile of boxes beside a door and the door which was the only way in or out.

Paternal impulse wrestled with exhaustion, the twinges of aching muscles and Legend inflicted fatigue warned him he should rest. The bed was temptation incarnate, he could sit on the edge, rest his eyes...

But the Boss of Team Rocket was a master of temptation, in inflicting and driving others to fall to their pet vices while mastering his own. Giovanni pushing the thought of rest out of his head. He'd rest once assured Silver was well, and not a moment before.

His willpower is pretty darn cool.

That's how you do it. Make doing the wrong thing (or presumed wrong thing) a tempting proposition.

Hobbling like a man many years his senior Giovanni staggered to the door, straightening in stages. The doorknob turned under his hand with no resistance and he nudged his way into the hall. A chittered squeal from behind stopped him from closing the door behind him. The Rocket turned, watched, braced on the door frame, as a weedle bunched its way across the bed towards him. The creature's myopic eyes were wide in wild shock.

Giovanni Sakaki stared at the beast, even as, with a whine, it reared and waved its suckers at him so madly it knocked itself over with a soft cry.

"Beedril?"

I'm not sure how he recognized Beedrill as a Weedle so fast, but he did raise Weedle and he does seem to have a keen memory. Still. It might have been nice to describe the Weedle as familiar or nostalgic like how he once had a Weedle like that only to realize he had a Weedle EXACTLY like that! And then maybe recognize Weedle as his Beedril maybe?

Either way, I feel like we need a little more before him saying Beedril.

The weedle screamed at him, near Screeching, small limbs twisting it from prone to standing once more in a blink. Trainer and 'mon stared at each other, and after a long moment, and a swallow, Giovanni limped back into the room. Not daring to kneel, he'd not be able to get back up if he did, Giovanni stretched his arm out in an old invitation. Understanding the bug scrunched, poison-tipped tail wagging in an old tell, before uncoiling and pulling a small hop from bed to the trainer's wrist.

When the suckers sunk in, and the bug tightened his small limbs on his trainer's arm, scaling higher... Well, this odd local and missing son were not all the surprises that were in store for the Rocket Boss it seemed. Sensations flooded the Rocket's mind as the long-neglected Gift of the Forest flared to life in the back of his head. He felt the insect's anger and pain, the utter humiliation of having lost what he'd fought to earn, and an old instinctual fear of a world gone too big too fast.

Yeah, devolving must be pretty traumatic and highly unnatural for a mon to experience!

It's also a very unique and cool concept that I've never heard of a fic using before!

And under that, soul-deep was the brittle, sharp, and venom seeped rage all poison types could harbor in the right circumstances.

📝commas (I made them max font size so you can see them easier. That's the way I add commas or periods now.)

A deep need as true as a heartbeat to tear and rend and sully the bastard that'd done this to them.

To feel his poison warp and rend the leafy bastard's photosynthesizing hide...

Oh yeah! A big move used on Celebi would be x4 effective! In other news, isn't it weird how Exeggutor has the same typing as Celebi?

Having scaled wrist, up arm, to shoulder, each step leaving a snippet of a 'monicidal fantasy in his trainer's mind, Weedle glared about him from his new perch, quivering. The urge to kill and maim roiling off the bug like a Sweet Scent, and to that, Giovanni tipped his lips up in a tight smile.

At least his mon seem to be on the same page as him.

"Sooner rather than later," Giovanni rasped, curious how his voice could sound young even as emotion not wholly his own, warped it so hard it near crackled. "But not now," Promise complete he ran a digit over the bug's hairy back. "More importantly. Have you seen Silver?"

Oh this is neat! I hear Gio's voice as a mixture of adult and child talking in unison! If your fic was an anime, that would be a cool way to do it. Like everywhere he goes you see the kid Gio enveloped in a ghost adult version of himself that people in the world can't see, but the audience does.

With a chur the bug reared, running its frame about Giovanni's cheek, and though seeming affection the proximity kicked a slew of memories, some his, some the bug's, and melded them together in his head.

The frantic battle, last moments.

Ooo! We get a flashback for what happened!

Nidoking being thrown aside by a psychic blast, Persian forced to slumber mid-swing, the black essence of a night slash dimming until natural light alighted her claws, as slumber dragged her down. At that moment they’d lost their main front fighters, and Giovanni's efforts, to recall his beasts were met with failure as they'd been "freed" before the conflicts start and the old tech meant to pull them out of danger failed per the Legend's meddling.

Confirmation that Celebi released his mon. Real jerk move there.

Love the way you described things here. Paragraph does a lot of work with comparatively low wordcount.

Silver’s Ursaring had been pulled away, wrangling with beasts more smoke than substance, swinging wild paw strokes to keep the twin avians from were approaching. The bear, seeing slashes weren't working, swapped to spitting hyper beams. Taking its last stand between its two masters, the Rocket and the boy who'd been its original trainer. Roaring, the brown hairy beast was charring the earth about it with the excess heat of each attack but the light show had made the birds pull back.

Ursaring is a fighter! Cool. Nice job on the description. Helped me get a scene in my head about it.

Rescue failed, Giovanni accepted Persian and 'King as losses as he gathered the last of his flagging strength to snag at Silver's shirt and drag the boy back.

No time to mourn Persian and King. Gio knows how to act in a pinch. Looking to maximize his chances of winning.

Celebi's next psychic blast missed the target and the ground Silver likely would have been occupied crunched and crumpled as if it were paper being set upon by a giant, invisible fist.

📝

I love the way you describe action sequences.

The shock of nearly dying set the boy to go... well not limp, but platable. And he followed Giovanni's shove towards the tree line, it seemed miles away but once they hit it the Legends would have a harder time hitting their targets, and once five steps out of the clearing all tech would function.

Ooo! That's a smart plan! ANYTHING is better than staying in that clearing!

The Rocket'd call for extraction, and he'd see how the stolen Kantoian military tech did when pitted against a Legend. Any of the Legends dare they try to pursue.

A good plan for the circumstances even though it obviously failed.

Above, his boy’s Murkrow was wheeling, trailing spite, and spitting dark bolts.

Seeing spite and Murkrow in the same sentence low key feels like a reference to Spiteful Murkrow.

Such was the essence of Nightshade that flew from the avian that was trying to offer what protective cover it could. Beedrill darted about the black bird, tossing poisoned needles and swiped at anything that dared float too close.

I love how all of the mon get descriptions of how they are battling!

A shame Celebi wasn't a complete fool. The creature's double team melded with a substitute made a small swarm of look-alikes that could take some damage. and the grassy Legend had set a swarm of them to fly to keep the tamed 'mon up high from pulling an aerial rescue

Ok wow. That's a combo move! Blending two attacks together! Is there a canon basis for that or did you come up with it on your own?

Regardless of the source, that's really cool.

Both flyers were slowing, a clear sign of exhaustion. They weren't falling from the sky but Giovanni had Beedril’s pokeball in hand just in case. He spared what attention he could from verbally herding Rhydon about the field to keep tabs on the flyers. The earth type’s contribution to the combat was to rip up trees and boulders and hurl them at whatever Legendary he could. He also kept a chain of earthquakes going, all to keep the Legends off the ground. Thus not closing in on the humans below and ending things prematurely.

Wow. What chaos! Now THIS is a battle!

The effect of the continual earthquake made for a stagger-laden run for the tree line, still it wasn't utterly unfamiliar and Giovanni was able to keep his feet more often than not. Silver though fell and scrambled like a drunkard, and Giovanni's slow pace was hampered further in having to help the boy up more than once.

Nice to see he was able to reach Silver!

Celebi, with a twitch of a hand, warped a projectile's trajectory to avoid getting pelted in the face by some fixture of its clearing. The first time the Legend had done so Silver had to grab Giovanni and throw them both aside to avoid being crushed by a stone bigger than the both of them put together. The second, a tree, had sailed beyond sight, throwing its shade over the humans trying to get to standing and running again as it sailed well beyond the clearing's bounds. Another... and Legend or not the thing had damned bad aim... had Sneasel hopping over a boulder screeching insults.

Ok I wasn't expecting to laugh!

Not understanding ricochet, the dark type had hissed, flicked her head feathers back, and tossed a snowball at Rhydon who was digging out another boulder for throwing. Celebi's holy pool was a muddy morass at the ground types clawed feet.

Oh dear. Friendly fire ON TOP of everything else!?

"Behind you!" Silver screamed. And that'd been enough to stop a feud in the making. The dark type had twisted about to ice beam another damned Celebi look alike. Another toss, another miss, and a boulder was deflected into some small floating... thing... that managed a squeaky toy sounding scream at impact.

Jirachi?

I would complain about not knowing exactly who Gio was referring to, but I have to say the ambiguity is actually very fitting!

Silver, hellishly young, took moment in the madness to huff out a laugh, then the boy scrambled back. Near knocking Giovanni over. Their route to out was cut off by the searing heat of sunlight channeled into a killing force. Foliage rose from where the beam had cut, alongside smoke, and rising from the charr was a living wall of plants that grew out of the earth so violently the soil crackled, pebbles snapping like dry twigs, and anything under that light would have burned and smothered under flora all at once.

I assume that was a solarbeam but I have no idea how or why plants are growing! But you know what? We will take it. Because this battle is reading like a high intensity roller coaster ride!

Shooting his last bullet, making Celebi shimmer away into whatever void teleporters traveled to avoid taking a hit, Giovanni barked for another earthquake and Rhydon obeyed. Arms slung over his son's shoulders, half being supported, half leading, the Rocket shoved them away from the now slumped wall of floral matter.

Celebi was a grass type getting too close to that much plant matter was asking to be killed.

And yet, in the midst of such chaos, Gio thinks and acts prudently. Not prone to panic. Gio is a satisfying character to follow. I can see why you wanted to write this!

The burning in the Rocket's lungs was starting to peak, and after a few meandering steps, Giovanni's legs buckled. Kneeling, panting, he managed to shove Silver enough that the boy wasn't taken down when he fell, and the boy looked back at him, namesake eyes wide and shimmering.

Oh yeah, I forgot he is pretty much LITERALLY dying while all this is going on!

Ripping his phone from his belt Giovanni tossed it to the boy, who was skilled enough to catch it, no fumbling. And despite himself, Giovanni cracked a small bloody smile.

He's proud of his boy. Even for just catching a phone. I certainly wasn't expecting something heartwarming in the middle of all this.

You REALLY know how to do that! Make the readers feel things seemingly inappropriate for the scene, and yet... IT WORKS!

"Get to the edge, hit the red butting

📝button?

once it lights up," He rasped, throat tightening, he managed to force out the last few words. It wasn't perfect, but would be enough, "Code: E.L. Lock, priority one."

A nod, and the boy, his boy, turned about, ready to run. But things weren't going to go to plan.

Despite its docile appearance Celebi was a hellish advisory, and his Son was too much like his father in one way. When the Legend shimmered into existence, blocking the path with green flames, Silver refused to simply run about the new obstacle. Taking up a knife he'd slashed at the Legend, and took two fingers in one strike.

Considering one of the Tao Duo had had to withdraw to heal shot-out fangs, Giovanni technically shouldn’t be complaining. But having to bark at Silver to pull back, to run around, because the boy got too hyper-focused on getting a hit in…

Ooo! Silver is feisty!

Well if he lived through this Giovanni was going to make the Mask of Ice pay for all his "training" he'd inflicted on Silver.

Nice to see a long term goal stated.

Leafy face twisting in spite, the creature floated back, dispelling pseudo twins to focus better on regenerating its fingers. Silver’s replying smile to the Legend's glare was tight and bitter, he set his knife, perhaps to throw, but the intercepting sweep of a feathered forelimb of one of the Tao Duo stilled the attempt.

Swearing, Silver scrabbled back from the bird of an alien region, face going pale as old phobias reared to life in his head.

Is Silver afraid of birds too? Was it from what Oak did to Green?

More to spite the bastard than anything else, Giovanni threw a pokeball. And while the catch was obviously not going to hold, it interrupted the floating Sylvain creature.

Ooo! That's clever!

The Legend reappeared in a flash of red light, at the tech's failure, but the unspoken threat of capture stilled all the other Legendaries from approaching. Silver, scrambling along the battlefield, took the reprieve with both hands.

Too bad Gio didn't have a masterball. But Gio really didn't have any ultraballs or do those not exist in mangaverse?

The boy snapped up Sneasal, who was tossing up ice walls between his trainer the other bird of the Tao Duo in a desperate attempt to make it go away.

A squawk at the meager defense, a flash of light, and the first wall buckled, absorbing the hit. A second scream, that made the air about the legend go violet, and the wall came down, all the walls, and like many a grandiose psychic there was that moment, where everything held perfectly still when it shouldn't have. The shattered ice, the crackling power that'd broken it wrapped about the shrapnel in the making, and the air hummed as supernatural energies built.

Not wanting to die like that, much less risk his son being mutilated in the downpour, Giovanni snapped his fingers, called on Rhydon. The earthen beast slammed his paws into the earth and a rock tomb snapped into being before both trainers.

Such a handy skill for Gio to be able to command his mon so masterfully!

A cry from above, an aborted squawk warned of one of the fliers going down. Silver poked about the impromptu shield to recall his bird, then Sneasel, ever the wiser of the pair, hooked icy claws into her trainer's coat and dragged them both behind the earthen barrier.

Good job, Sneasel!

And for a time there was nothing but a whiteout, as psychic mixed with ice and made an ice storm of a failed attack.

Alone, and one of the last pokemon standing, Beedrill swirled about the ruination of Illex's holiest clearing. It'd been warped near unrecognizable by the violence enacted on it. Trapped in an artificial winter, ripped up by malice, and slathered with poison, and amongst the destruction was a legion of enemies. Unable to see any friendly trainer, Beedril panicked. Triggering its own mega-evolution, its altered limbs became a swirling blur, splaying the clearing and enemies in sheets of poison and acid.

Woah! I didn't even know Beedril HAD a mega-evolution! That's sick!

But none of them were real, they only faded into sunlight after taking the lightest of taps.

Still, Beedril tried, might and main, to grab Celebi with its stingers and malice and kill the abomination that'd lied to its trainer.

I never thought I would say this, but is Beedrill Gio's coolest mon?

Staggering from the sanctuary of ice sheathed stone, eyes going to the sky, he listened. To the sound of running feet. Silver was running, and that would have to do. All Giovanni could do was offer distraction, buy time, so he did. Squinting up and seeing the familiar flicker of displaced space and time, ever a precursor of teleportation, the Rocket snarled.

“Beedrill, at your six o clock, poison jab!”

It was enough, and ironically the master of time did not counter an order steeped in the terms of Its own domain.

Wow! That's a really neat way of saying it hit!

The creature shuddered as the stabbing limbs struck home, leaves about the point of impact curling and browning as the poison took hold. The following order to use Venoshock, to stab another venom, one that would escalate the poisoning from agony to agonizing death, did not need to be said. Sliding his stinger out, Beedrill buzzed in hate, more than content to make a kill and kill everything and every one its trainer asked it to.

MVP BEEDRILL!!

It was of course then that the birds of another region shook off their fear of being caught. Perhaps it was seeing the tech fail in containing their peer, regardless of reason's they descended. Twin personifications of forces that Giovanni had found impractical and thus had dismissed, the Rocket knew little more than their names and that they weren't native to either Johto or Kanto. Their misplaced physical presence was enough to still any retreat, or rescue, however.

Silver’s horror of them was a mix of old fears and new, the realization of just how deep these water were in was settling in to roost as the smokey talons and wings herded him from clearing's edge to the center.

Giovanni, knowing how this was going to go, called out, and Rhydon, ever loyal, shook off a coat of hoarfrost and responded. Sweeping in low and fast, clawed foot leading, Rhydon's attack was like a miniature avalanche hitting home.

I love just how MANY cool moments you've packed into this chaos!

One of the avian behemoths staggered under the sweeping kick to its ankle, having to twist about to better balance. A jumped high kick, a feat done more from the strength of Rhydon's tail than his stubby, stony, limbs, slammed onto where the avian's privates would be if the beast were possessed of such.

Sounds like a critical hit to me!

The Legend responded as any base creature might, folding near double with a warbled squawk, and one mega punch up caused the bird's smokey beak to click together and its eyes to roll back.

Woaaaah! Gio is a BEAST of a trainer!

The surprise attack was enough to jar Silver out of his stupor, and he got back to running. But he was not fast enough. Granted, there wasn’t a “fast enough” when a creature that harnessed time was their antagonist. The world turned sepia, color bleaching towards near tan but never quite touching the hue, then everything stopped.

Flexing regrown hand, shaking off a few droplets of green blood in irritation Celebi shimmered into existence before the Rocket, and Silver, and all the rebellious lesser 'mon that'd stood against it.

And it seethed.

I'm guessing Celebi has them all where it wants them now.

Its aura was a gold akin to the sun’s light, but there was a stain of artifice to the lot because the sun was Ho-Oh's and that bird was not one to share. The leafy creature hung suspended upon the air of a misplaced moment and its frustration made this corner of suspended animation shake from its wraith.

Dying he might be, but Giovanni Sakaki was not a man to be cowed. Even by apocalyptic shows of power. And this one, that was leveled against a captive audience, more wounded and comatose than awake and aware, was pathetic.

He’d spat such at the things feet when the Legend had demanded his gratitude, his adoration, and pleas for clemency. He’d not bow to a thing that with a few more moments and a bit more luck he would have had under his control.

Charming little guy, that Celebi.

Giovanni's only regret was in doing this was that he’d dragginged Silver into this mess.

📝

And as artificial sun spiked in brightness, stealing sight via a deluge of light and the world faded away, Giovanni Sakaki resolved in the silences of his own mind that he’d live long enough to get his son out of this.

Battle lost.

That battle was one of the most incredible battle sequence I've read yet in a fic! Rivaled only by what I read in Drowning where the protagonist combined power of several water mon to launch tidal waves at Team Magma's forces! So freaking cool!!

Clearly, this mental... scatteredness and forgetfulness was meant to counter such resolve. He'd have to find a way to reward Celebi for its audacity at a later time...

Gio never loses his cool. If he is alive, he will keep clawing forward until his goals are within reach!

But for now, he tipped his head, allowing Weedle to twine his suckers around his neck. A wiggle and Weedle lay against the curl of a collar bone snuggled a pulse point with a soft chirrup. The contact helped ground Giovanni in the moment, pushing back all the worthless reminisce and tales in his head so he could function.

Cutting out all distractions. A single-minded focus and purpose. I can't wait to see how Gio navigates the various things in this world. I enjoy his POV in your fics too.

Once sure the creature was secure the Rocket straightened and staggered out of the room and into the hall. Cursing the Legends with each step because each step hurt like hell.

To spite the pain he did a sweep of each room he found.

Well. At least your curse is healed, Gio!

A small meowth joined him in his nocturnal wanderings, following him about a kitchen by the front of this... house... he supposed it was.

Nooo! Persian! What has Celebit done to you???

A glance outside showed palm trees and sand and the sky, pitch black and cloudless and moonless, affirmed it was either very late or stupid early and little else beyond that.

Unlike the window near where he'd woke he could not hear the surf no matter how hard he stared out, and he leaned against the door, looking at the path leading out into the dark. There was a beach, just barely visible in the distance, but seeing was not hearing, and Giovanni turned away from the distant shore after a cursory sweep of the front affirmed there were no footprints.

Deciding he wasn't quite done with searching the house yet, at least not until he had supplies, preferably a working wardrobe, he closed the door behind him and went back in.

A pushy nudge and soft murr broke into Giovanni's attention as he combed through cabinets and drawers. Weedle arched against his cheek, oozing irritation at their tag along and bemused the Rocket studied the feline as it capered about his ankles. The thing was too small and too quiet to be his Persian unevolved.

Oh. Ok! Was worried there a moment! 😅

And per the slant of whiskers and angle of its hips, it was obviously male. It was unbelievably stupid as well. One gesture, as if going to open the kitchen's fridge, had gotten the thing distracted, and it'd been child's play to pull an empty pokeball, labeled "K. MewMew", off its hook on the wall and encapsulate the quiet cat with a flick of his wrist.

Seal the Meowth
(A song by Tango. Most certainly not ripped off from a song about burning a rope!)

Con~gra~tu~la~tions

You managed to seal that mon, you see~
The annoying Me-owth~
You're the trainer we all wished we could be~

You made it through the kitchen~
You grabbed the ball in the drawer~
You-flicked-it-out-at-him~
Then you sealed Meowth and saved us all~
...
...
...
You sealed Meowth and saved us all~
...
...
...
You sealed Meowth and saved us~
Now you're a trainer~
You managed to beat the whole dang tri-al~
We're happy Meowth's gone, but how are you gunna spend the rest of this day-ay~

Maybe go ad-ven-tur-ing~
Maybe sleep in more and start again~

Now you're a trainer~
You managed to beat the whole dang tri-al~
We're happy Meowth's gone, but how are you gunna spend the rest of this day-ay~

Maybe go ad-ven-tur-ing~
Maybe sleep in more and start again~

Yes it's over now~
We didn't want to write a longer fic~
This is it~
you know~
it's true~

Now you're a trainer~
You managed to beat the whole dang tri-al~
We're happy Meowth's gone, but how are you gunna spend the rest of this day-ay~

Maybe go ad-ven-tur-ing~
Maybe sleep in more and start again.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/134684

(First time I've created a song to go in a review! )

Distraction done, and discarded, he set the 'mon's pokeball besides its beloved fridge to be found by whoever else was here, Giovanni got back to work.

Completely oblivious to the immensely important success of sealing Meowth...

Having tackled all the rooms, he expanded his search from "Silver" to "anyway to get information". There were no computers, no televisions, no periodicals. Only marked boxes and shrouded furniture that once unveiled was reviled to be rattan

📝reviled or revealed?

and aged but not so far gone as to be grungy. The layout of boxes and the like told a tale of someone having just moved here.

Him... and whoever else was meant to be here? The owner of the cat that wasn't his cat? There were precious few hints so he could only assume and the assumptions left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Very curious who he thinks it could be!

I guess he doesn't know whoever it is TOO well or he would have recognized K. Mewmew's name.

Expanding his search from "information" to "carriable valuables" Giovanni searched the whole place from top to bottom. Working his way from front to back, and only skipping the room closest to his own.

I love the methodical calculating approach he takes towards everything. Kind of makes him feel like an inevitability.

The sounds beyond it, of soft breathing, and murmurs of a woman's voice clearly speaking while she dreamed, assured him it wasn't Silver behind that door.

Hmmm! But who will it be? My guess is the girl on the cover art!

And that would do for now. He was not willing to risk a confrontation with the house's owner with only Weedle to back him up.

Not having the means to carry much he made a pile in the room he started in. And though tacky and a rookie's move he decided to hang professional pride and dig through a woman's purse.

I like how this form of snooping/theft is so beneath him that it makes him feel gross. I think he would much rather execute someone.

Within, the IDs were curiously smeared under the lamination, pictures, and text illegally illegible. The cash though was familiar, so the money joined the pile that'd consisted of over-the-counter pain medicine, a knife, water bottles flitched from a box of dishes, and a few clean soft towels. Setting the purse, superficially, to rights, Giovanni poked and prodded through the few other rooms. A backpack, too large and sturdy to be anything save meant for hard travel, had been a windfall and found by accident. Curiously, despite being made for serious use the backpack had been stuffed to near bursting with childish things. He hauled it into the bedroom he'd started in, dumping everything and shoveling the deluge of stuffies to the floor he began to pack what he'd stollen thus far.

I bet Celebi is laughing his butt off watching Gio have to sort through stuffies as part of his initial travel prep!

I wonder if Celebi is going to say things to taunt Gio at various points in the trial? Just his voice from some far off place maybe?

There'd been one room, another oddity as off as the window of the bedroom, that troubled him.

It should have been a closet. The shape and size seemed right for that assumption, but pushing the sliding door open and stepping in had found that his eyes had deceived him.

While small it had the prerequisite things to be a bathroom. The decorations were in a similar style as the living room and kitchen, rattan to the point of being ratty. The base staples of the room were ripped straight out recall. They were from the last hotel he'd been in while setting up the final steps for overtaking Azalea Town on the sly.

Ah, a major clue that Gio is in some stitched together reality!

A flick of a switch and the fluorescent lights kicked in and he'd looked over the familiar furnishings with a quirk to his lips. Weedle hissed at something and expecting... enemies, and attack perhaps, Giovanni followed the bug's head stinger to see... A mirror, his reflection.

And for the longest moment, Giovanni did nothing. While Weedle chirred bloody murder at himself Giovanni took in the features of a face he only recalled vaguely and had seen in pictures less than a handful of times.

The image before him was taken from well before the time he’d been the focus of the media for his philanthropic front. Before the forced studio shoots that were part and parcel of owning a gym.

Reaching out, Giovanni brushed his fingers over the mirror, it was cold, near icy, and an exploratory tap set the echoes of impact up his fingers and made the glass ripple like water.

Like the room, like the window... everything was wrong, subtly, awfully, wrong.

A rippling mirror? Wow that's weird. Maybe it's a doorway to another place? He should try putting his hand through it.

Nice scene with him seeing a mirror in general. He already knew his voice was messed up, but now he knows he looks the part too.

Nestled against his pulse, Weedle shivered, understanding soul-deep the wrongness of everything about him. Reaching down, Giovani twisted the tap, and after a moment, as if the plumbing were trying to contemplate its own purpose only to recall that it was to run… it ran. But reaching down, pulling the door of the cabinet under the sink back, a glance down confirmed another oddity and reaffirmed his fears.

There were no pipes.

Ok wow. That is creepy!

This place, despite seeming realness, was somehow divorced from reality, an utter facsimile then. Giovanni closed the doors after pulling out a first aid kit from a place where pipes should have been, setting the find on the sink's edge he considered water, and reflection, and indulged a bit of vanity.

Smoothing back his hair, wrangling a cowlick over his left ear since his hair was too long and it just grew out like that... The habits of late adolescence came to him without a thought and he indulged them while mulled. A lifetime ago, decades ago, he’d wanted to mimic the rebels of his time. It'd been a hellish year of wrangling with tangles and having to do so much to keep it styled as he’d been cursed with genes that kept his hair straight and would permit nothing else unless he’d slathered his head in hair products.

Except for that damned cowlick.

It would be pretty funny if Celebi somehow knew to make his cowlick part of the artificial reality to where the laws of physics in that world would not allow Gio to fix it. Granted, Celebi probably wouldn't indulge in such a small detail...

The sheer inconvenience now would have been enough to get him to the barber post haste. He'd kept his hair religiously short, learning how to tend it on his own mainly because most barbers couldn't get it right. Back then he'd been made of stupider stuff. Holding out a year and a half before deciding enough was enough.

The looming horror of having that cowlick on his identification, mainly his drives license, had been enough to drive him to the barbers.

As for now... Well, there wasn't one, or a razor, and he wasn't going to use the purloined knife for something that'd leave scalds of evidence behind. So water and fingers made for a crude styling. And it stayed, somewhat, with Weedle only a bit damp at efforts end.

At the shrilled complaint against his ear, Giovanni grimaced, and it wasn’t perfect, but he could glare at the reflection hard enough that Weedle would feel it.

In a way, him using the time to fix up his appearance is like him taking the first small bit of control back from Celebi.

In theory.

“You could easily have climbed down.” The Rocket drawled. Then killing water hunted about. He sullied one towel in drying, wiping the excess of water off of the bug type, and then tossing the towel into a basket by the door. Hopefully, it was there for clothes pick up, but if it wasn’t… Well, it wasn’t his problem.

Not to mention this entire reality is fake, so why bother being courteous in ways that don't directly benefit him?

God above, he was eighteen again. On second thought, the Rocket conceded with a grimace, considering his hairstyle, he was likely seventeen since he’d gotten himself to a saner hair length mere days before he’d gotten his driver's license at eighteen. Giovanni had decided simple and tenable was preferred to the rebel look and had lopped almost all of his hair off in a fit of last-minute introspection.

He looked... like a kid. Worse, with Weedle about his neck, the bug type like a bit of misplaced jewelry, the poison point adding a more modern punk slant to the look, the Rocket recognized the style. Borderline grunge groupie, a stereotypical rebellious rocker. All he had to do would be saddled with oversized pants the youth of Kanto adored and he'd be set. A shirt wasn't even necessary nowadays.

Disgust, and memories of so many bad choices, minor annoyances in the greater scope but still… The things he’d done and worn flashed behind his eyes and he recoiled in mental horror at the mere recollection of... everything.

Gio certainly feels most at home in an adult body, for sure!

Face burning, Giovanni shook his head. Mentally shoving the misplaced mortification back in his head. It was insane that even though the psychic type had got so many basic things wrong, Celebi could still capture, and inflict, adolescent mortification on a man well beyond such foolishness.

But, here and now, he wasn't an adult…

There was a horror to that. A muffled fear. He wasn’t an adult, and there were assumptions found in that.

That his family, his famiglia... might be alive and well... That... was a thing of his childhood nightmares come to life. Wrestling the instinctual fear down Giovanni dimmed the terror to something manageable. It was a concern if the Madam were alive and well.

But not an irreversible one.

Exactly. He dealt with them one before and he is now even more cunning than before!

While the hellish matriarch who’d ruled his childhood was very much dead in his time, if she were alive here would she be the same woman? Or was she a shell, a husk based off of a Legend's assumptions? Was the woman, sleeping peacefully a mere room away, Team Rocket's Madam? Her proximity to him said it was unlikely. Madam Rosaline had never slept in the same premises as him since he'd been a young child. But if he was wrong there was an opportunity.

She wouldn't have to wake, a knife to the throat, and the crisis could be averted. He didn't have Nidoking to spray the shallow grave in acid to make sure she wouldn't come back... But he wasn't unarmed.

Weedle, sensing the spike of his pulse if nothing else, reared and rubbed. Churring softly, the bug's concern obvious. Woodenly Giovanni reached up, traced a finger down the bug's back while considering places to dump bodies and focus on his breathing.

Ever the proactive pragmatic problem-solver.

Calm or at least breathing slowed and heart steady, Giovanni straightened, snapping up the first aid kit he killed the light and left the impossible room behind. It was mere steps between it and the room he'd woken in, and passing hers... he didn't stop.

For now, he wouldn't act until he was sure.

Because if it was her she couldn't live. She'd kill him kill Silver slow just for spite, then him as an afterthought. But for now the headache of having to cover up a murder with only a Weedle as a partner...

It's interesting hear about the other ways his mon were helpful to him. In this case, murder. Or getting away with it, rather.

He'd handle it when he must and not a second before.

The old anxiety of not being master of his own fate flickered about his mind and made a familiar acidic taste flood his mouth… Even as he settled on the bed's edge and flipped open the kit. The contents were relatively good quality, nothing expired, so he slid that into the packs. Then he dragged the nearest box over, ripping it open, and began to paw through it for what goods it held. Frivolities, report cards, an attendance award declaring a "perfect score" for someone named Moon.

So clearly this was "Moon's" room. Not quite as bad as "Red" or "Blue" would have been, but a bit unsettling all the same. And disheartening. Didn't parents know how to name their children?

I love the jab it makes at canon here!

But even more funny is that he named his kid after a metal. That isn't much better! 😂

Giovanni slid the papers away and dug deeper. Something had rattled metallically at the box's bottom and hopefully, that'd be of some use. Or value. He'd settle for a black market deal to get cash for some of this junk in a heartbeat.

Swallowing the thick taste of terror, Giovanni pulled out a pile of foulders. Identification, birth certificates, he wasn't fussy at this point and found more academic records for his trouble. The type a child might hoard to brag about.

Terror had become a near companion in the following years. He’d ripped Kanto to the bedrock looking for Silver, and then he'd buried the fear. Rage that had taken hold in grief’s place. He'd shifted, from living in terror to becoming a terror. Setting first Kanto, then Johto’s, criminal worlds under his boot. He'd made an organization to raze the regions to the ground at his command, and while he hadn't he'd applied pressure were needful.

📝where? needed?

So, it seems Gio had to give up on looking for Silver? Once he gave up he switched to full Rocket mode? Hmm. I'm thinking that might be some canon material? Or is it lore you crafted? OR is it something that neither you OR canon addresses? Like for why Gio went to hard into Rocket?

The economy and powers that be were pinned and penned playing an over-glorified game of cops and robbers while he used the bedlam to sift through data and legends.

He'd twist impossibility to his own needs. Warnings, and morals be hung. He’d been damned losing his son, and his agony was such all would share in it.

And they had, whole countries. For years and years. And only by chance he’d stumbled upon his child. He’d got Silver back, only to be repudiated for being "evil".

I mean, you DID murder a bunch of people, Gio!

Really, between Celebi and Oak it would be a trial to figure who he needed to get rid of first. Both had done near irreparable harm with their mind games.

The fact that he puts Oak on equal footing with Celebi says a TON!

I bet he still puts Mask higher than Celebi on his hitlist though.

Hands shaking, having not read a lick, Giovanni shook his head, lips peeling back in a snarl.

"If I stop blinking for thirty seconds. Pull my hair. Repeat until I tell you to stop."

A chirp and wiggle affirmed he'd be obeyed.

Trying to have Weedle help him maintain his concentration?

Hoeen, this boy had come from Hoeen. The dogged academic records were part of an exchange program of some sort. He'd torn through "Moon's" portfolio to find a cover letter explaining the process. The documentation was needed to apply for a gym leader sponsorship program...

Save there was something about Kakunas instead of Leaders. Probably some mistake from the Legends misunderstanding, though the mental tangent of oversized cacoons running gyms set his lips to quirk.

Yeah, that would be pretty funny. I see we will be experiencing the full range of Gio's emotions in this tale. Sounds good.

Shaking his head, amused, amusement fell to swearing as Weedle decided it'd been thirty seconds give or take, and pulled hard, The Rocket glared at his bug attachment.

"Pull my hair out again and you're getting a bath."

LOL Weedle only did what he was told and Gio still reacts that way!

Also, apparently Weedle detests baths. Makes sense. The expression 'angry as a wet hornet' comes to mind.

The find was intriguing but not what he needed. Pulling the rest of the papers out he laid them on the floor and under... there was a catch of batteries, wires, and a phone. He dug the latter out and its charging wire, and found the thing at fifteen percent.

Leaving it to charge Giovanni went back through the papers, hunting for Moon's trainer's license, regional ID, or medical records. Any of the three would grant him access to this region's pokemon centers, something he would need considering his present partner's unevolved state.

Oh that is a really cool statement! This essentially says that if he were at full power, he would be so untouchable in normal circumstances that he wouldn't even NEED Pokemon centers! 😎

It felt... beyond odd... not to feel stubble as he ran a finger under his chin as he read.

This is such a good detail to include! Having facial hair all the time and then going to perfectly smooth really WOULD be pretty weird!

Tracing the lines of his face confirmed what the mirror had shown, the frown lines and scars that'd marked his face had been smoothed by Celebi's.. healing. And while he hadn't lingered too long in the bathroom... he was positive that the white about his temples that'd been steadily growing in had been erased as well.

I mean... hopefully he gets to keep his young body after getting out. Or at least hopefully he gets to keep all the healing on his regular adult body.

Sorting the wires into piles, immediately useful and not, he found a few other technological odds and ends. An old MP3 player, some educational geared games for a tablet... A broken tablet. The latter he tossed back into the box with its "games", the former he put into the backpack. It wasn't so old as to be worthless, at least worth fifty bucks, so it'd come along.

This whole thing is pretty dream-like. Reminds me of dreams where I get to rummage through things looking for valuables like a particularly impressive stash of retro games that I'm allowed to take whatever I want of. And I like taking multiple copies of really good games, because why not. I usually find ones I don't already have too.

He wondered As he pulled another box, ripping it open, he wondered if Silver had been enamored with such frivolous tech.

📝Confusing sentence. Had to read it like 5 times before I understood what was going on. Suggestions.

He'd watched and rewatched his child from what surveillance cameras he could. Rewinding the footage from the Rocket bases. The tournaments from the Kanto and Johto League were a wellspring of data as Silver had to frequent those institutions to keep his team, legally.

Even while his health had failed Giovanni had never been without information on his son's whereabouts. It'd been an evening ritual to watch whatever gym leader event or badge battle his son had gotten involved in before seeking slumber.

Seeing him that interested in how things were going for Silver is pretty touching. I mean, camera use like that is probably something one would call creepy, but we get to see that his motivation to do so comes from a caring place with genuine interest in his son.

He found himself missing the updates even as he worked, a world away.

The last box gave with a little struggle, and within, he found clothes. Gaudy, SeaFoam island style, with floral patterns, printed on leis, and neon-bright colors. Such was the first impression of Moon's style. Digging deeper found that first impression going downhill, fast.

Deciding Moon was either color blind, or possessed of cruel relations who were draconic in picking the child's clothing, he worked on a shirt that wouldn't cause instant blindness if he spied it via a reflective surface. Sifting through the clothes, wincing at everything that might fit, he tried a few shirts, fought with a few pants, and found all the socks and underwear wouldn't fit in the slightest. Packing some of the less eye-searing pieces in his catch. Most were either too big or too small, but there was enough give they could work.

Wait a minute!! 🧐

Has Gio been walking around naked this whole time??

*Goes back to re-read various parts*

I don't see mention of clothing ANYWHERE. Dude has just been walking around snooping through everything everywhere in some strange unfamiliar house butt-naked with some girl sleeping in another room! 🤣

Only NOW does he consider clothes?! 🤣

Gio, what have you become without Grace around?

Though, I imagine this is not the first time he has been in such circumstances.

So they'd do.

Gio, those cloths are hideous. Better to be a nudist trainer. It's not a real world anyway. This is how you show your disdain for the trial. Plus you will get more chicks this way, for sure.

Small teeth tugged on his hair, despite him being aware and Giovanni stiffened at the tug. Tipping his stinger, towards the door Weedle quivered in a silent warning, then crawling a path behind his trainer's neck scaled up to his head and burrowed among his hair. A tap on the door frame, a woman's voice, awake and clearly not asleep any longer, sounded.

"Moon, sweetheart, is everything alright? Your lights on."

To his silence, the doorknob rattled as it was twiddled under nervous fingers. After a moment the woman spoke again, dropping the questioning note in her voice.

"I'm coming in."

Near buzzed on the rush of relief-

This woman wasn't the Madam. He was safe from that horror.

I guess it's a good thing he just finished putting clothes on... 😅

Seems like this woman in Moon's mother. But the question is... Will she see Gio as Moon, or will she realize Moon is gone and Gio is in his place?

Sheer relief made Giovanni's mind blank, and the moment to say something came and went. The door was pushed open, pushing some brick-a-brack aside, and the woman who'd spoken entered.

She was a pretty thing. A bit younger than his actual age, dark skin near warm coca in hue, with beautiful black eyes. A hastily tossed on sundress rustled about her as she came in. Her hair was coiled about her head like a crown, styling slack, but considering the hour that was more than understandable.

And when she looked at him, sitting ringed round by the scattered remnants of boxes and packing... She didn't quite meet his eyes. Looking a bit too low and to the left. Still, she smiled despite the mess, tone patiently unbelieving.

"Moon it is three in the morning. Arceus, I know you're eager to get started on your journey but it's too early. Go. To .Bed."

And then, Gio dropped all his stuff and got in bed to go to sleep. He had always wanted a real mother and reality or not, it was time for him to have another chance at life. The end.

Her regard was familiar like he was the centerpiece of her world. And it was a curious thing to be the focus of such regard.

I guess the closest thing he had to that was Grace. Really must be a weird situation for him. I don't think he quite knows how to handle it!

Weedle's stinger tail tapped against Giovanni's skull in anticipation. A head tip would end in the bug attempting a flying tackle and poisoning. He stared at this woman and her misplaced affection, not quite believing it was real.

Still, he'd act as it were, see where playing along got him.

His apology was accepted, hook, line, and sinker. And just speaking to her drew attention to how he obviously wasn't hers. From their differing looks to his thick accent. Strained and exhausted, Giovanni didn't bother with the usual effort of muffling how he spoke to better blend in and she didn't bat an eyelash for it. She wasn't Kalosian, or from Johto, or Kanto, she didn't talk right. And she was by no means Italiano, and yet in her mind, he was hers.

Yeah. I think in her eyes he looks and sounds exactly like Moon.

"I'll turn in, and pick this up in the morning." He promised, and she, a simple thing, smiled and nodded. Leaving him to his devices.

He waited until she was gone until he was sure her door was closed. Then gave her five minutes more. A chirp, a nudge, from the top of his head as Weedle worried, but he wasn't lost in his head, just deciding.

And the decision made he tipped his head back and Weedle rose with a squirm.

"Lock that." He ordered, gesturing to the door, sweeping the last of his goods up he slung the backpack over his shoulder, and though standing hurt he'd done so. And if he could stand, he could walk. And would as far as need be. "We're done here."

Once gone he’d figure out what he could, get Silver, then get them the hell out of this… pretend never Neverland.

Huh. I wonder if he will see her again at some point later? He has his basic travel gear now. But more importantly, he sealed Meowth and saved us all.

Closing Thoughts:
On so many levels, this chapter works immensely well. Waking up in unfamiliar and strange surroundings in a strange form with a devolved mon. The flashbacks to help show where things were and the events leading up to Gio's current predicament. And then Gio preparing for the journey ahead.

The lore with the relic was fascinating and at one point, hilarious!

The battle. WOW the battle!! I can't get over how amazing it was. You worked a bit of everything into it and showcased the various mon too!

The overall clarity of the chapter was nearly perfect and that's something you tend to struggle with a bit on some chapters of some fics. Not this chapter, though! Also, you did a pretty good job editing lots of stuff as I found minimal spelling errors as I went.

Transversal has a lot going for it, especially in the context of your series as a whole. The concept for Transversal is gripping on a number of different levels and the execution is some of your finest work.

But the most epic moment of the fic so far is when he sealed Meowth in a Pokeball. Nothing can top that.

I look forward to the next chapter so we can see what to expect from this strange new journey!