Welcome to Thousand Roads! You're welcome to view discussions or read our stories without registering, but you'll need an account to join in our events, interact with other members, or post one of your own fics. Why not become a member of our community? We'd love to have you!
A human wakes up as a pokemon in Open Pass, gets into trouble and somehow ends up in Serene Village. Or at least that's how the story should have gone. Instead, this one finds his journey intertwined with The Wandering Thunder from the get go. Now that the human doesn't meet his fated partner, how will this affect their destinies to come?
Depictions of blood. May contain dark themes.
I'm looking to get feedback focus on narrative structure, prose, rudimentary grammar checks and overall how well or badly I did regarding those factors.
Please bear with me, as I'm a bit slow when it comes to applying feedback. I'd recommend you check reviews on a chapter you're about to read In case you plan to do grammar checks and previous reviews have already done so as well.
Also i'd really appreciate if you could crosspost your reviews to my fic on other sites as well. I'll leave the links here to make it easier. Fanfiction.net and ArchiveOfOurOwn
The human snapped his eyes open with a gasp, quickly sitting up only to be struck back down by a splitting headache. He clutched his temples and tried to raise his body again, more slowly, but quickly collapsed. He groaned and held his eyes shut as he curled up on the ground. It was hard to even focus on just breathing. His whole body ached, as if he'd woken up a morning after swimming the length of the ocean floor.
A few minutes passed without incident. In that time, he regained enough strength to open his eyes again and take in his surroundings. Tall evergreen swayed gently with the winds, their branches spread out and huddling together. The clear blue of a daytime sky filtered sunlight through gaps in the foliage, dotting the ground with bright splotches. He closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath. The earthy smell of the ground helped soothe his mind enough for stray thoughts to start trickling in. Where was he? Why did his face feel damp? Was he crying? Tears had pooled in his eyes, streaming down his face as he laid there motionless.
He raised his hand to wipe his face, but his mind skidded to a halt the moment a white paw slid into view. He jerked back, sending leaves scattering as he tried to crawl away. His heart pounded in fear of the beast about to maul him, but there was nothing but trees and sparse shrubs as far as he could see. Had he imagined things?
He lowered his eyes, but he felt a sinking chill over his heart before he could even sigh in relief. Dark fur covered every inch of his body. The claw he thought belonged to some vicious beast was his. The human clenched and unclenched his paw over and over, his eyes shaking as if the thing would go away if he stared at it hard enough. Yet, it remained. A fresh stream of tears dripped down his face. The human, if he could still call himself that, shook his head slowly and his lips quivered.
He wanted to scream. All of this made absolutely no sense in the slightest. What happened to him? He tried to think back to the last thing he remembered— and then his train of thought collapsed like a house of cards. No matter how hard he tried to peer into his memories, a void so profoundly empty fogged his mind. His fur stood on end and his breathing grew erratic as panic took further hold of him.
The human knelt and beat his head on the ground, clenching a fistful of leaves as his claws dug into dirt. Why couldn't he remember anything? He clasped his head, wincing as his claws prickled into his dense fur. Th-This couldn't be right. There… there had to be something he could remember. He faced the fog in his mind, mentally ripping through the nothingness in desperation. Even as his head burned more fiercely and a dizzying nausea churned his stomach, he refused to relent. A single glimmer appeared at last. It was so faint and distant that he would've easily missed it. He gritted his teeth and reached for it through the fog, as a faded memory crossed his mind.
I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…
We failed, and it's all… it's all…
Yes, you're right. There's still hope.
This might be the only way…
Hiro… when you wake up… you must find me.
The human fell onto his side and gasped for air. His head throbbed more painfully than ever before, and he felt ready to throw up whatever meager contents of his stomach he might have had. What was that memory? He could only hear a voice, but he already yearned for the comforting familiarity it carried. He had no idea what the person was talking about or who they were. Maybe they were a friend of his? A faint smile found its way to his lips at that possibility. It wasn't much, but now he had more than a purely blank slate to work with. Also…
"Hiro… is that my name?" Though hoarse, Hiro's voice still sounded soft and somewhat high pitched. A part of him somehow knew he should've sounded different. Though like everything else about his real identity, he had no real way of knowing. Soon he closed his eyes, and immediately went out cold.
Peach clouds, dyed from the late noon sun, drifted across the sky by the time Hiro woke up. He groaned and rubbed his eyes, flinching when fur brushed his face. Right, he'd turned into some kind of creature. His heart quivered and he took steady breaths to quell it.
Hiro decided to get moving before evening approached. His headache had abated a bit during his brief sleep, but now he felt terribly parched. Maybe he could find a vast lake nearby, or a gentle stream. Perhaps even a gushing river snaking through the forest somewhere. Only problem was that he couldn't tell up from down from where he sat. The nearest body of water could be days' worth of travel for all he knew. If fate smiled upon him, he might stumble upon one and sate his thirst before exhaustion wore him down, or a hungry beast picked him off as an easy meal. He gulped at just the thought of such awful scenarios.
Hiro pushed himself to his feet and sighed in relief. He could stand up without problem, but could he walk in his new body? In trying to take a step, his leg kicked forward with far more strength than expected. He yowled and screwed his eyes shut, anticipating to pitch face-first to the ground. Nothing happened. Surprised, He peeked an eye open and found himself crouched forward with his foot planted in the ground. The other one had dug claws halfway into soil to prop him up, leaving Hiro in an awkward half-running pose.
It was then that the fan of feathers glued to his rump introduced themselves. Hiro glanced over his shoulder to get a better look at them as he fixed his posture. Did the feathers aid his balance? It sure felt that way, as they'd tilt and flick each time he looked like he was about to faceplant to the ground. He had another one on his head too for some reason. A swarm of questions flooded his head over how he as a furred creature would have feathers at all, but he silenced his mind after failing to come to any conclusions. He decided not to question how his strange new body worked until later, sometime when he wasn't worried about basic sustenance and his own life and limb.
Hiro took baby steps around the clearing to get himself used to walking. A few minutes passed before he could make it all the way from one end to the other without wobbling like a slinky toy. He smiled at his progress, a tinge of wonder twinkling in his eyes. Now he could get moving along in earnest. His ears skimmed the surrounding sounds to pick a direction to follow when he heard faint sounds of flowing water coming towards his left and walked deeper into the forest.
Fate smiled upon Hiro after all. A river happened to be a few minutes' walk away from where he'd woken up. He approached nervously and caught a glimpse of a pair of deer-like creatures-that curiously had pink fur coats-drinking from the river bank. He'd barely taken a step on a patch of dirt when a twig snapped beneath his foot with an audible crack. The deer-like creatures seemed to hear it, as they sprang up in alarm and scurried back into the cover of forest. Hiro pursed his lips in a frown. He wished he'd gotten a better look at them; what in the world were they? Thankfully, his disappointment proved short lived, as he made his way to a calm tributary to quench his thirst.
Hiro dipped his paws in to cup some of the water at first, and it all but drained through his claws. Clearly his paws weren't intended to be used as makeshift bowls. Sighing – and without any brighter ideas – he leaned forward and dipped his muzzle into the water to drink.
Fresh cold water bathed Hiro's throat like rainfall after a long drought, invigorating his very soul. He took gulp after gulp till he had his fill, then pulled his face back with a satisfied sigh. That was the first drink he'd had as far as he could remember. For all he knew, it was the first drink he'd ever had in this body. Hiro lowered his eyes, staring despondently along with the flowing currents for some time.
He looked around and found a calm pool nestled between the rocks along the riverbank downstream. He made his way over, and found that the surface was still enough to reflect objects in it, including his own face. A face looking like a cross between a cat and a weasel stared back at him, adorned with a yellow gem in his forehead. He… he looked kind of cute? The moment he made eye contact with his reflection, the name 'Sneasel' sprung to his mind without prompt as if his mind had picked it out from a glossary list in its deepest recesses. Hiro shook his head with a sigh.
First, he lost all his memories, and now he knew things he couldn't possibly have. Hiro squished his cheeks in his palms and growled in frustration. He wrapped his arms around his legs and tapped his knee frantically. There were silver linings to his situation. Sneasel was a Pokemon…
That word popped into his mind out of nowhere too, and it gave him goosebumps. He clenched a fist and exhaled a huff. The pink deer from earlier must've been Pokemon too. He didn't know their species however. Could he only identify a Pokemon's species if he could see their face? Hiro wondered if the person, or thing, that brought him to this strange world gave him the cognitive ability as a gift. Who knew? Maybe he had other gifts he didn't know about yet to discover too.
Hiro's heart drummed at whatever implications might come of that. He shook away the distracting thoughts and brought his mind back to his current situation. Before anything else, he needed to find some form of shelter. A place to find food as well. If his claws and fuzzy feline frame were anything to go by, it would likely be in the form of meat. Of course, he had no idea how to hunt in his current state either. If there had been a school of fish swimming in the river then perhaps an outdoor roast would've been on the menu… assuming he had some way of starting a fire. However, all he could find in the water were rocks and green algae draping their sides. He… wasn't desperate enough to find out what the latter tasted like. Not yet, at least.
Food would have to wait. A dead leaf snapped off a branch overhead and drifted to the water's surface, waiting for no one as it floated downriver. Hiro squinted his eyes and thought. Where there was a body of water, there were bound to be people living by it at some point. Without further deliberation, Hiro got up and, followed the river's course. With luck, perhaps he'd stumble upon a village or something.
Hiro's paw found an easy grip on a mossy boulder, letting him hoist himself over. He hadn't expected the riverbank to leave a carpet of rocks in his path. The draining exercise left a growing hunger to gnaw at his stomach, which made him groan and sit down for a quick break. The river beside him poured tirelessly on its downstream course, though the forest was already quieting down for slumber. Orange streaks dyed the clouds as evening cast a dark shade from the other horizon. He couldn't even sense much life loitering about him anymore. There was just him and the river.
Hiro sighed wearily, and considered camping out for the night when his stomach growled in protest. He sighed again and slid down the rock. A smooth pebble by his foot caught his eye, and he picked it up to feel its surface. Hiro considered tossing it into the water, but he squinted and pinched his brow in annoyance. There were better times to be distracted. He still had some time before the sun dipped behind the horizon, and he wanted to keep moving till then. At least that was the plan until he heard beeps coming from the trees.
Hiro's fur stood on end and he stiffened up. He sprang back to his feet and resumed marching along the river, afraid of even looking back to see what was following him. The beeps only drew closer the longer he walked. Someone, or something, was surely stalking him, and they weren't doing a good job at hiding it. Was it a bandit? A hungry beast? He didn't know which of the two he'd rather try his luck with. Hiro clenched his fists and took a sharp turnaround.
"Hey! I know you're following me! Come out and show yourself! It'll save you the trouble, won't it?" Hiro yelled, swinging his outstretched claws out to look as threatening as he could. Frigid blood rushed through his veins, and he tried his best to hide his trembling as he waited for his stalkers to reveal themselves.
A silent breeze swept leaves off the ground, then three cone headed figures emerged from the shadows of the forest. Hiro cast a careful gaze on his guests, memorizing every detail he could about them. Their appearance struck him as otherworldly, yet familiar. Though like before, nothing concrete reached his mind aside from the word: 'Beheeyem'.
Their ovoid eyes stared him down. He didn't know how he was sensing it, but the chill of malice radiated off them like a rotting stench. A cold shiver went up the full length of Hiro's spine. He took a step back without thinking, only stopping to breathe when a puddle splashed beneath his foot. They absolutely weren't giving him a good first impression! Behind him was the churning river and ahead of him stood the trio. Hiro would have to go through them to reach the forest. They'd backed him against a wall, and he quietly cursed under his breath at that realization.
"Who on earth are you guys?" Hiro asked, a deep growl rumbling in his throat.
His question was answered with twitching and flickering lights from the Beheeyem's colorful fingers. Hiro squinted his eyes. "I really don't understand what you're… saying."
Again, no response. A suffocating silence took hold of the forest floor as the trio of foreign pokemon remained in place, their eyes fixed on Hiro like they'd just discovered a curious specimen. He tightened his left paw around its pebble and returned a sharp glare, not so much as stopping to blink. Time drew to a lull during the brief staring game. The gushing river was all that broke the deafening silence. Everything about them was so unnerving that Hiro just wanted to make a break for it.
As it turned out, he didn't need to wait long for them to break end the stand off. The Beheeyem on the left outstretched its arm with sparks dancing at its fingertips. Hiro swiped his paw with all his might and flung the pebble through the air like a missile to its target. It struck the Beheeyem with a loud thunk right above its eye. The Beheeyem erupted in a loud screech, before a misfired sizzling bolt burst from its hand. Hiro's body reacted before his mind did. His tail fanned to the side and he sprung out of harm's way just in time for the attack to zip past him, lightning bolts snapping at the water's edge when it crashed into the river.
Hiro's shock at the lightshow lasted only a moment. He shot forward at the other two, claws outstretched as he ran with reckless abandon. The Beheeyem zipped out of the way to avoid Hiro's mindless claw swipes.
Another standoff played out. The felled Beheeyem hovered off the ground and snapped its head upright, a motion that made Hiro's stomach squirm. Tension choked the air as the Beheeyem eyed Hiro cautiously, and his feather flicked at every sound from the woods behind him.
Hiro took a sharp turn and bolted for the forest. Just as he reached the shade of tree cover, a bright light lit up the right side of his vision and a searing pain cleaved through his hip. Hiro cringed in pain and clutched tightly at the fresh wound. He bit his lips to force back a scream, eyes narrowing to slits as he gazed back at the Beheeyem. The eyes on that same Beheeyem that got up carried a dimming glow. It wasn't hard to put two and two together. Despite it all, Hiro pushed himself as hard as he could and pressed onward.
Ear piercing beeps resounded from behind, letting him know the Beheeyem were still giving chase, and kept his feet firmly running. Rows upon rows of towering trees whisked past Hiro's vision, seeming to shift out of his path. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? He didn't dwell on it. There was a better time to stop and wonder about it.
After sprinting for some time, Hiro pressed his back against a tree to catch his breath. He glanced at the paw held firmly to his hip and found it red with blood. In the dim twilight, it looked just as dark as the rest of his fur. The pain from the wound hadn't sunk in yet thanks to the adrenaline pumping through his blood. Even so, he had to squeeze his eyes shut as tears threatened to force their way out. A cold feeling slithered into his heart and his whole body wouldn't stop trembling.
Beep
Hiro straightened his back right away. The Beheeyem caught up to him already? He surely thought he'd run far enough to lose them and yet… He peeked off the side of the tree and caught one of them hovering just off in the distance. They casted surveying glances around the forest floor. Maybe they hadn't found him yet. Even so, the Beheeyem was slowly nearing the tree he used as cover. It'd only be a matter of time before it discovered him if he just stayed put.
Hiro looked down and spotted a sturdy fallen branch at his feet, and he quickly picked it up in his claws. He bit his lip and waited, dying the end of the stick in blood as he gripped hard on it. His ears trembled and twitched, keeping surveillant for the beeps. They grew louder, and closer. Then, Hiro leapt out of cover and swung the branch down with all his might. The branch fell like an anvil, but froze in the air inches from the Beheeyem's face.
Hiro widened his eyes. A bluish glow surrounded the branch, and it matched the shimmer in the Beheeyem's eyes. The Sneasel tried to break his weapon free even as his wounded hip burned with agonizing pain. His eyes quivered, but he gnashed his teeth to fight back the foreboding cold spreading to his chest.
The Beheeyem tilted their head, as if curious about their pitifully struggling prey. They flexed a finger and the branch was sent flying, carrying Hiro along with it. The Sneasel yowled as he pinwheeled through the air and crashed into a tree.
Hiro crumpled to the ground. As he frantically tried to push himself to his feet and run. His head suddenly grew dizzy. Though he'd managed to stand back up, he fell like a dropped needle and sent leaves fluttering about. Hiro struggled to move, and he could feel a seeping warmth dampening his waist. Had he lost too much blood? If only he'd come up with something better than the gamble he pulled earlier. He struggled to keep his eyes open, staring blankly at the trees that danced and blurred in his vision.
Just nearby, he could feel someone approaching. The Beheeyem most likely. Who else would still be making those beeps? A low growl rumbled in his throat, but he didn't even have the strength to glare daggers at his pursuers.
Hiro's heart grew heavy and he failed to suppress his whimpers. Just like that, he'd woken up in a bizarre world and already he was about to die without so much as being told why. His consciousness slowly slipped away, he didn't know if he'd ever wake up again. Perhaps fate had never smiled on him to begin with if this was the sort of cruel ending he'd meet. Just before the world faded to black, a bright yellow light lit up his eyes.
"Help has arrived!" a booming voice yelled, followed by another flashing light and the crack of something being struck down by thunder. Hiro couldn't make sense of what was going on. Had someone come to save him? Why? He felt a warm tap on his shoulder.
"Rest…," said a second voice. It was wispy – almost ethereal.
Hiro closed his eyes and moaned. It was all too much, and so very confusing. It didn't concern him anymore though. He drew a long breath, exhaled, and the world grew silent…
Finished reading it, and holy cow! I can’t wait for Chapter 2! Such a neat concept Excellent work on this masterpiece and I’d be honoured to read the beta!
Clearly, our Hiro hasn’t seen the art that is “Who’s that pokemon” trivia!
But getting on topic, not gonna lie, this was actually pretty good. This story and initial chapter really does a good job with descriptions and conveying how the character feels through the narration that doesn’t feel unnatural or distracting.
The plot itself does good to help us understand our Hero Hiro better, especially in stuff like how he decided not to skip a stone because he still had some daylight left. I like little subtleties in works like this.
However, there are two things I would like to discuss.
First, the summary. It should be used to pull a reader in like a clincher, but yours kind of spoils the tension in this chapter. I thought the way the Beheeyems were going at him really conveyed they had some form of malice intended and perhaps even mystery to what they want with him, but your summary really just explains it away. I would advise re-writing it to perhaps indicate the latter part of it, “The no partner” thing or perhaps something that doesn’t seem or feel as direct.
The second is the “Beep” sound effect. While the way you do it is better than others and dare I say it works very well for what you’re going for in this section, I would discourage using the singular sound effect word on a normal basis. Stuff like how you use it here is very fitting because of the suddenness factor it is for our protagonist (who the narration is going through) as well as the first person experience intertwined with it. It’s sort of the moment where it does definitely add more than it distracts. So yeah, good job on that.
The only other thing is maybe little bits and pieces where either information is repeated needlessly or odd word choices like “His eyes screwed shut”, but there really isn’t enough of those instances to warrant making a section on them.
I read "spread out and huddling together" as a contradictory statement for a few times before I realize you may have meant that the branches in the same tree were spread out while huddling together with the branches of other trees. It's still kind of confusing.
It was then that the fan of feathers glued to his rump introduced themselves. Hiro glanced over his shoulder to get a better look at them as he fixed his posture. Did the feathers aid his balance? It sure felt that way, as they’d tilt and flick each time he looked like he was about to faceplant to the ground.
I like these parts about the feathers being functional parts of his new body that have reflexes! A Sneasel body would be easy to write as if it was just a costume and I'm sure readers (me included) would accept it, but the parts like this make it seem more like its own living species.
---
General Comments
I liked the description and prose in general here a lot. It's colorful in its detail - the earthy smell of the woods, the startled deerling, the running water - as well as its word choices, and in general there's just something very likable in the writing style. I don't really know how to describe it, but it feels like it has personality. It's that personality that also brings Hiro to life - we know very little about him as a person, but somehow just seeing him deal with all this stuff, making plans, weighing his options and fighting back against his pursuers makes him appealing kind of in the same way as a cartoon character doing these things in an animated short. I don't know if that makes sense, but I just kinda get a similar feeling.
I don't really remember enough from the plot of PSMD to speculate what kind of consequences there would be from being rescued by Ampharos and skipping Serene Village, but since Hiro has won me over in such a short time and on such a general level of relatability, I'm definitely interested in learning more about him in terms of personality. I'm sure to read the next chapter once it's come out. In the meantime, good luck in writing!
Howdy, Adam! This one was real cute, excited to see you working on fic again and this seems promising. I've never played Super, so I'm a 'blind' reader of sorts, for the most part. I won't get much out of the AU component, but I'm already enjoying plenty about this story, including the charming description, Hiro's mix of nerves and proactive problemsolving, and the light dose of whump towards the end. That's some good pain and fear right there.
Also, that art is cute as fuck. Kudos to you for that, it's a huge pull to be honest. Shows that you're invested and feels promising. Plus the vibe of the chapter header is superb.
Some thoughts:
I've been imagining this kid as basically sounding like Hiro from Big Hero 6! I can't help but wonder if that's even his real name, or if he heard 'hero' and thought it was his name. The pun in the chapter title feels like it could be setting up for a brick joke.
Really like the progression of Hiro being afraid and confused, coming to terms with his situation, and traversing a natural landscape. The sense of place and the details of his reactions are great, although I do think the prose lingers about 5-10% too long on the physical symptoms of him having been isekai'd.
Ah, he wouldn't know they were crimson yet, right? This chapter does have a strong visual feel, almost like it ought to be animated, but we're also constantly getting info on his internal feelings, so I read it as if I were following him very closely. The perspective is what I'd call close third, the narration is 'over the shoulder' third person as far as I judge it, and as such, he won't know his own eye colour for another couple scenes.
Looks like you're getting another review! I know this is chapter 1 and you've already gotten tons reviews probably. So I'll keep this light.
I have played SUper a long time ago, but my memory is fairly rusty and supplemented mostly by a bit of wiki. The premise is certainly interesting. Knowing what I do about super, I have to wonder whats going to happen if the partner in Super never meets the MC.
For starters, I found the piece as a whole enjoyable to read. There weren't any glaring errors or issues that stuck out, and it was fairly smooth and standard start to a PMD story (save for Ampharos it seems, appearing!). Hiro was a charming guy, and even tho we don't get to see a lot of him yet, I liked the bit I did see. There's some grit I see, and determination. It would certainly make me curious to read more.
I think the only part I found myself caught on was maybe the bit where Hiro realises he's a pokemon, and the other creatures are pokemon too. As a PMD reader I know all this already, so I did glaze a bit on reading that, but thats fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.
Peach clouds, dyed from the late noon sun, drifted across the sky by the time Hiro woke up. He groaned and rubbed his eyes, flinching when fur brushed his face. Right, he’d turned into some kind of creature. His heart quivered and he took steady breaths to quell it.
Rows upon rows of towering trees whisked past Hiro’s vision, seeming to shift out of his path. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? He didn’t dwell on it. There was a better time to stop and wonder about it.
Also this bit of prose is great. I wonder though about the trees seeming to move out of his path. Is that just his mind, or is it... idk trevenant?
Thats kind of a leap tho
Ohoh! I wonder who this second voice is! Is it a reference to (super spoilers) Mew perhaps? Or someone else? I don't think its Ampharos, but maybe it is!
Anyways, really digging this piece, looking forward to seeing what plans you have for this unusual AU!
hey adam! awesome to see you posting again tbqh. my impression is that this story is sort of a "what if" situation based on canon, and my pmd chops ain't too great, so i might not get 100% of what's going on here but i'll do my best!
1. a hiro's beginning
gotta start by saying that the chapter art here is lovely. i'm a sucker for a good landscape and it's actually something i don't seen much of from you, so that was a nice treat! tree shapes are hard but you knocked it out of the park and really nailed the somber atmosphere and made hiro feel very small and out of place. good stuff.
onto the fic itself—this is a fun one! i think this is my favorite thing i've read from you so far. like your previous works, this story (so far) focuses on transformation, and the sensation of being in a new and wondrous body. so far, hiro hasn't used any special attacks or anything, but i'm predicting that stuff is going to get fun once he learns what his new body is actually capable of.
echoing the sentiments others have left that hiro has got a really great personality, which i think is hard to achieve in a context like this where there aren't really any other characters for him to bounce off of, so kudos to you for that! you managed to pack a lot of little character moments into the way he interacts with his new situation. i chuckled at the way he found his new body strangely cute, and the handful of times that he finds himself wanting to do some silly thing like tossing a stone into a river and has to get himself back on task. despite that he seems really driven and cool under pressure, too. despite the fact that he's in a pretty upsetting and disorienting situation, he pretty rapidly gets on his feet and begins seeking water and shelter in a methodical way. even when he's being cornered by multiple powerful pokémon, he's able to use his wits and new reflexes to escape. i think you did a great job demonstrating these qualities in a context where doing so is more difficult than usual.
another thing that jumped out at me was the portrayal of the beheeyem. i think you did a great job there as well; their odious auras and alien blinking and general menacing presence was really well-done. they feel properly unsettling and i felt like hiro was pretty brave for responding to them the way he did, so they doubled as character-building too, hey.
i also felt your descriptions have leveled up quite a bit since the last i read from you! there were quite a few entrancing descriptions of the natural environment that i highlight in the line comments below. it really built up the atmosphere and tbh i just like reading descriptions of nature ngl.
honestly don't have a whole lot in the way of criticism here—it feels to me like you did a pretty good job achieving what you set out to do with this chapter and i'm looking forward to more! there are a few bits where the phrasing is slightly weird (i outline some but not all of them in the line comments below) but tbh that's the kind of thing you just have to grind out through reading and writing, and you are certainly putting in the work imo—you've come leaps and bounds since we met and i'm excited to see where this story goes! i'll definitely be around for the next chapter... i hope the similarities between our fics' titles does not result in a similarity between their release schedules.
i also found the phrasing here a little strange—i feel like the first sentence can be cut here or at least reduced to just a couple words. maybe something like: He lay there still for a moment, gathering strength to open his eyes again and take in his surroundings.
i got a bit tripped up here, it sounds like it's saying that the clear blue of the sky is what's dotting the ground, whereas i expect you really mean the sun is.
He lowered his eyes, but he felt a sinking chill over his heart before he could even sigh in relief. Dark fur covered every inch of his body. The claw he thought belonged to some vicious beast was his. The human clenched and unclenched his paw over and over, his crimson eyes shaking as if the thing would go away if he stared at it hard enough. Yet, it remained.
nice. i think his emotional state comes across really well here—he's shocked, and the panic is starting to sit in but hasn't quite hit him in full yet.
omg. when you transform into a pokémon, do you keep your stomach contents? is it possible that he's brought mcdonald's with him into the pokémon world? these are the real questions.
Hiro pushed himself to his feet and sighed in relief. He could stand up without problem, but could he walk in his new body? In trying to take a step, his leg kicked forward with far more strength than expected. He yowled and screwed his eyes shut, anticipating to pitch face-first to the ground.
It was then that the fan of feathers glued to his rump introduced themselves. Hiro glanced over his shoulder to get a better look at them as he fixed his posture. Did the feathers aid his balance? It sure felt that way, as they’d tilt and flick each time he looked like he was about to faceplant to the ground.
this is a neat detail! the feathers on sneasel are cool from a visual perspective but you do have to kind of wonder what they're there for. i think this is a pretty creative answer.
His ears skimmed the surrounding sounds to pick a direction to follow when he heard faint sounds of flowing water coming towards his left and walked deeper into the forest.
i would have expected him to notice this when he's thinking about water and worrying about whether there's any within a reasonable distance. i'd actually written a line comment suggesting that you add in a detail about whether or not he heard a water source and then deleted it once i saw this, lol. maybe have him hear the water then, and have his desire to get there prompt his learning to walk?
Fresh cold water bathed Hiro’s throat like rainfall after a long drought, invigorating his very soul. He took gulp after gulp till he had his fill, then pulled his face back with a satisfied sigh.
The river beside him poured tirelessly on its downstream course, though the forest was already quieting down for slumber. Orange streaks dyed the clouds as evening cast a dark shade from the other horizon.
His tail fanned to the side and he sprung out of harm’s way just in time for the attack to zip past him; lightning bolts snapping at the water’s edge when it crashed into the river.
Merry Blitzmas
Disclaimer: This is mostly stream-of-consciousness thoughts. Take it as you will.
-I approve of this punny chapter title. It’s beautiful. Chef’s kiss.
-I’m not personally sure if I’d describe a sneasel as having paws. Their claws are basically the entirety of their hands, kind of like grovyle.
-Integrating a slight flashback of the ending of Super where you learn this is actually your second time dealing with Dark Matter is a good touch and nice way to start a ripple effect. Especially the bit about Hiro needing to find the partner.
-While I’m personally never a big fan of lingering on the human getting acclimated to their new body bit, I think tying a sneasel’s tail feathers to their sense of balance is a unique take. I don’t seem to recall reading anything about that. It does make me wonder what would happen to Hiro if his feathers are damaged in any way. Perhaps that’s something you plan to explore in the future?
-I also like how you quickly build into Hiro recalling certain pokemon-related words. The bit about needing to see faces strikes me as a good solution for having Hiro being able to recognize pokemon so you’re not trying to painstakingly describe them for an audience who knows all about pokemon, while keeping his amnesia intact.
-Got a chuckle from “candy-colored fingers,” but candy isn’t an actual color. That said, I do think these opening areas seem rather colorful compared to canon PSMD.
-I appreciate that you differentiate the beheeyem ambush by actually having Hiro fight back. I’m surprised that’s what his instincts drive him to do and wonder if this means he’ll be on the headstrong side. Y’know, the type to rush headfirst into a situation.
-Certainly, Ampharos’ appearance instead of Nuzleaf sets up for things to do much differently. I’m not going to toss out all the hypotheticals I have. Will just have to wait and see what happens.
Hi Adam! This is going to be a relatively quick review, since you only have one chapter at this time, but I hope you find it useful regardless!
I love the use of all the senses in the opening paragraphs. You paint a very vivid picture of the forest, and it helps me feel grounded in the world. I also love how you describe Hiro’s movement, it feels just slightly animalistic, but not so animalistic that he feels like an animal, as opposed to a human in an animal body who doesn’t quite understand how his body works yet.
I think it makes some sense that he doesn’t recognize every pokemon right away. It takes getting a good look for him to be able to pull the names from his memory.
The prose in general feels good, but there are a few spots here and there that feel a bit wordy. I’m going to grab the example that stood out to me the most:
All of this made absolutely no sense in the slightest
Personally, I would use either “absolutely no sense” or “no sense in the slightest” but not both absolutely and in the slightest. Take this with a grain of salt, though, because this might just be my prose preferences shining through.
At this time, I’ll refrain from discussing plot and characterization, because there’s not a lot to discuss yet. This chapter is mostly set up, and we don’t get to see much of either of those as a result. We get to see a little bit of Hiro, but we haven’t had the opportunity to see how he interacts with others yet.
Overall, I think you’ve done a great job with your setup, and I enjoyed reading what you’ve written so far. I look forward to future chapters!
Nice opening! And for being a take on Super, you did a good job at immediately establishing that it's going to be different somehow. Had I not been familiar with the aspects of Super's beginnings I wouldn't have suspected anything about it being an alternate start.
Some offhand thoughts as I went through...
"Vomiting the contents of his stomach" was a little more wordy than it needed to be as I was reading through everything. The sensory language was nice, but in some spots it dragged because of it. Beginning slowed more than it needed to because of that.
The general terror and such with waking up with amnesia is something I've seen a lot lately, so there isn't a whole lot novel to comment on. I do appreciate the hint of the past to give him a glimmer forward at least. It definitely fits in with Super beginning with the way it suggests things about failing the first time, and helped to illustrate it.
The segment on survival was pretty straightforward. Favorite line was him idly thinking that he looked kind of cute, so at least he's adjusting to his body pretty quickly! Some aspects of the description again felt a bit wordier, and I don't think enough time had passed, this being the first chapter, to go for truly dramatic prose when it came to drinking water. It seemed to only slow the pacing down.
Tiny nitpick: if an attack "misfired," why did Hiro still have to dodge the attack?
Ahh and there we go, the Beheeyem and echoes of instincts on why they're probably bad news. The bit where he was helpless on the ground seemed a few sentences too long, since it's a bit of a foregone conclusion that he'd get out of the problem somehow, with it being the first chapter and all. Good way to end it off, though!
To be honest, I almost want your summary to not mention precisely who it was that saved him, because that bit of mystery almost had me tempted to keep reading. Unfortunately the next chapter hasn't been posted yet. So, I'll see you then!
Hi Adam! Thought I'd check out your latest story. I'm not too family with Super, so I won't be able to offer speculation on how the story will go differently beyond this chapter, though I recognized the beats of this (with the beep-y beeyehem) from having read the first chapter of Espy's PMD fic.
This chapter has a leisurely feeling, taking time to get us situated in Hiro's new body and in the forest itself. It's interesting that his internal narration calls himself "the human" for most of the chapter, as if that's the defining part of his identity. But towards the end, in the heat of the chase and combat, he becomes 'the sneasel.' It's hard to feel alien from your body when survival is forcing you to use it. I liked Hiro's attempt to fight the beeyehem rather than just turning tail--it makes him feel more active than a 'woke up in the woods amnesiac' protagonist often does. Of course, he is out-numbered and quickly outmatched. The beeyehem feel ominous, particularly in the moment when he tries to whack them with a log and they use their psychic power to thwart the attack. Hiro can tap into his new body's instincts, but he doesn't have enough knowledge about this world yet to properly strategize.
Nice work with this one; best of luck working on chapter two!
I was a little confused over what it meant for his eyes to be shaking. When I think of someone fixedly staring, I don't think of their eyes moving that much.
I think simplifying that second clause a bit would read more clearly here: for example, cutting 'so profoundly empty.' There's something a little contradictory about an empty thing fogging a mind.
If he's lost all his memories, how does he know that the things he knows are things he couldn't possibly know? Knowing what you should and should not know is itself a kind of knowing.
Hiro’s paw found an easy grip on a mossy boulder, letting him hoist himself over with ease. He hadn’t expected the riverbank to leave a carpet of rocks in his path. The draining exercise left a growing hunger to gnaw at his stomach, which made him groan and sit down for a quick break.
His tail fanned to the side and he sprung out of harm’s way just in time for the attack to zip past him; lightning bolts snapping at the water’s edge when it crashed into the river.
Semi-colons connect two independent clauses ie, things that could stand on their own as sentences. Right now the second clause here (lightning bolts snapping at the water’s edge when it crashed into the river) is a fragment.
Hey there, Adam! Time for me to check things out as part of our review exchange.
Though before I even start reading, I gotta say I quite like the cover art! It’s cute just like the one you made for Kuki’s Tale and it works wonders for getting people interested in checking out the story.
A few minutes passed without incident. In that time, he gained enough strength to open his eyes again and take in his surroundings. Tall evergreen swayed gently with the winds, their branches spread out and huddling together. The clear blue of a daytime sky filtered through gaps in the foliage, dotting the ground with bright splotches. He closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath. The earthy smell of the ground helped soothe his mind enough for stray thoughts to start trickling in. Where was he? Why did his face feel damp? Was he crying? Tears had pooled in his eyes, streaming down his face as he laid there motionless.
Pretty good opening sequence here. The description is very solid and I like how Hiro’s name is introduced to the reader. I remember giving some criticism regarding that when I read Kuki’s Tale, but you’ve definitely improved for sure!
Interesting. If Hiro doesn’t know what he currently is then he’s either from a world without Pokémon or part of his memory loss is that he forgot what Pokémon are.
Hiro took baby steps around the clearing to get himself used to walking. A few minutes passed before he could make it all the way from one end to the other without wobbling like a slinky toy.
I like this bit here. Even if Sneasel are bidepal like humans it makes sense that Hiro would need a moment to get used to moving around in his new body.
Ah yeah, looks like Hiro simply forgot what Pokémon are after all. Makes sense it’s slowly coming back to him after seeing a visual reference like a face.
Where there was a body of water, there were bound to be people living by it at some point. Without further deliberation, Hiro got up and, follow after the river’s course. With luck, perhaps he’d stumble upon a village or something.
That’s clever of him. Not sure if it will pay off, since who knows who far the nearest village is, but it’s definitely a better idea than just wandering through the forest aimlessly. Plus it means a source of water is always close, so he doesn’t have to worry about dehydration.
The draining exercise left a growing hunger to gnaw at his stomach, which made him groan and sit down for a quick break. The river beside him poured tirelessly on its downstream course, though the forest was already quieting down for slumber. Orange streaks dyed the clouds as evening cast a dark shade from the other horizon. He couldn’t even sense much life loitering about him anymore. There was just him and the river.
Yeah, very threatening there with that stammer, Hiro :p
Hiro swiped his paw with all his might and flung the pebble through the air like a missile at its target. It struck the Beheeyem with a loud thunk right above its eye.
Anyway, I enjoyed this chapter. I think it’s a good start to the story and I like the "What if?" premise that the fic has. I’m curious to see where this will go and how the story will deviate from the one in PSMD.
As for any criticisms… I don’t have any! Keep it up!
Hey, Adam! It's time at last for me to check out your writing, and what better opportunity than to jump in at the beginning of a new project?
Honestly, this is probably actually my first time reading a PMD fic that starts off with the played-straight amnesiac protagonist; it's kinda nice to be able to read an opening like this without yet having seen it a million times before, haha. The pacing of the slow return to proper consciousness is really solid, which I imagine helps a lot as well!
Based on the premise of the story (I have played PSMD but it's been a while so I may forget some things), I assume this isn't going to happen anytime soon. :P
There were silver linings to his situation. Sneasel was a Pokemon…
Man, being chased by a bunch of relentless, wordless, beeping, hovering aliens would be ridiculously unsettling. This overall scene gets that across pretty well. Hiro's reactions are appropriately frightened and breathless, and there's a great sense of whipping through the forest in a panicked scramble to escape. Well done.
Hiro looked down and spotted a sturdy fallen branch at his feet, and he quickly pick it up in his claws
My memory's failing me regarding which member of the Expedition Society this might be (if it's not a different character altogether). S'pose we'll find out when Hiro wakes up later, though!
I don't have too many questions yet, aside from the obvious "what caused Hiro and PSMD Partner to become separated, and why?". I expect more will arise as we delve into the meat of the story proper, and more and more things diverge from standard PSMD. For now we've got a pretty simple opening that hints at more to come, but with a very strong sense of place in a believable temperate forest. The beheeyem are appropriately menacing, and while Hiro's still mostly in the "my personality is that I have amnesia and am confused" stage of his reawakening, we do get to see flashes of what's underneath in his relatively quick willingness to defend himself and act rashly while doing so.
All in all, color me intrigued! I wish you best of luck with your new project, and I look forward to seeing the next chapter (and new chapter art!) when they appear!
Hey there! It's been a long time since I've read anything of yours (besides Blacklight) so I was excited to check out your newest fic!
Fight off the bat, I like how Hiro focuses on physical sensations to ground himself, it's a good way of coming back down to earth after dissociation (or in this case, a rather literal out of body experience.) In a way, the intro is a lot of what you'd expect from an isekai, but there are a lot of nice details that make it stand out. In particular, the moment of confusion about the tears on his face and his voice sounding different, which is something I don't see too often. "The human, if he could still call himself that" was a fun line. Also nice touch having the narration shift from calling him "the human" to "the sneasel." I like the detail of the feathers instinctively correcting his balance.
Overall the prose is really smooth and effective, and a huge step up from the last time I read your writing, pre-Blacklight. I think there were been a few instances where the wording could be trimmed down a tad that were mostly already called out by other reviews. But it's generally a smooth read, and easy to sink into Hiro's POV.
Interesting that we're taking the approach of a human who isn't familiar with Pokemon! Or at least, mostly unfamiliar. The fact that Pokemon names exist somewhere in his memory seems to imply he may have once known, but lost that knowledge. It makes for a good balance because you get the feeling of Hiro being disoriented and unfamiliar with the world, but the fact that he can recall the names means that you get to switch to using the species names once he recalls them, which is easier on the reader. Best of both worlds.
The Beheeyem chase was some good tension! And we've got our protag getting whumped right from the start, heh. Despite being stuck in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar body, Hiro seems to have a fairly practical head and some scrappy instincts. I can tell he's gonna need 'em.
Some hinting going on with the idea that he's 'supposed' to meet his partner but... isn't going to? Interested to see where this goes!
hi Adam! Long time no see; excited to see this project from you is starting to launch! I admit I'm not really at all familiar with the canon of Super (which I think this is based off on, at least in the opening?), so please take all of those questions with a grain of salt as they come up. I thought the title art was really cute, and the chapter art for this first chapter was nicely ominous while still having a really cool style. Monochrome slaps.
This chapter feels very introspective to me. Hiro wakes up in the woods, and they're strange and scary, and then runs into some aliens, and that's strange and scary as well. It's difficult to tell a fish-out-of-water style story since you've got to explain how the world and the characters work roughly simultaneously, without the protagonist being able to casually and confidently comment on how things are, so I think sometimes there's an added layer of removal that's hard to get around. I see why you'd want to take things a little slow and in general set this intro away from any sort of large cities or conversing characters, although on the flip side it's a little hard to get a gauge for what the story's about--time will mostly tell with that front! I really do think it's hard to comment on the arc of the fic/whether or not this narrative choice lands only from the first chapter (in the sense that it's not bad/makes sense that there's a lot left up in the air so far).
If there had been a school of fish swimming in the river then perhaps an outdoor roast would’ve been on the menu… assuming he had some way of starting a fire. However, all he could find in the water were rocks and green algae draping their sides. He… wasn’t desperate enough to find out what the latter tasted like. Not yet, at least.
I like the evolution of thought here--I could do fish! There aren't fish. Also I can't have fire. Shit, I don't want to eat algae. I get the impression that Hiro's a bit passive, prone to thinking more than doing in some cases (although, truly, is there a real way to react to waking up in a sneasel body?), but it's fun to see him try to go for the first logical option before thinking that through and realizing that his original plan was not a great plan. I sure hope this isn't a character trait that comes up later!
For me the most interesting thing to watch was the gradual shift from "he" to "Hiro", as he gradually falls into this role he's crafted for himself. Since he spends a lot of this chapter being forced into various terrifying situations, I thought this one bit of agency was a nice through-line/evolution for the intro.
Some brief line edits, although I noticed that there were already a lot of suggestions for this chapter, so I stopped gathering at around the first or second scene break to spare you from having to sift through a bunch of disparate ideas.
"his mind skidded to a halt" is a good descriptor here, but it works better if there's descriptions of things that his mind was doing beforehand? Otherwise, it feels a little clunky.
Alright, it took me quite a bit longer than planned to finally get to this. But I'll be jamming out a review for Weaversong as well tonight before conking out.
So as backstory, I'm actually on the beta team for the story. But it's been long enough since the final product for the first chapter shipped that I figured that it'd be far enough removed from my mind to give things a second look, highlight things that I might've overlooked and maybe get in some character banter along the way.
I originally intended to do this about 3 weeks ago as part of Week 1 of Review Blitz, but... yeah, time kinda didn't pan out. Fortunately, I've got another chance to bite at the apple, so without further ado...
Chapter 1
The human snapped his eyes open with a gasp, quickly sitting up only to be struck back down by a splitting headache. He clutched his temples and tried to raise his body again, this time more slowly, but no dice. Instead, he groaned and held his eyes shut as he curled up on the ground. It was hard to even focus on just breathing. His whole body ached, as if he’d woken up the morning after swimming the length of the ocean floor.
A few minutes passed without incident. In that time, he gained enough strength to open his eyes again and take in his surroundings. Tall evergreens swayed gently with the winds, their branches spread out and huddling together. The clear blue of a daytime sky filtered through gaps in the foliage, dotting the ground with bright splotches. He closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath. The earthy smell of the ground helped soothe his mind enough for stray thoughts to start trickling in. Where was he? Why did his face feel damp? Was he crying? Tears had pooled in his eyes, streaming down his face as he laid there motionless.
He raised his hand to wipe his face, but his mind skidded to a halt the moment a white paw slid into view. He jerked back, sending leaves scattering as he tried to crawl away. His heart pounded in fear of the beast about to maul him, but there was nothing but trees and sparse shrubs as far as he could see. Had he just imagined things?
He lowered his eyes, but he felt a sinking chill over his heart before he could even sigh in relief. Dark fur covered every inch of his body. The claw he thought belonged to some vicious beast was his. The human clenched and unclenched his paw over and over, his crimson eyes shaking as if the thing would go away if he stared at it hard enough. Yet, it remained. A fresh stream of tears dripped down his face. The human, if he could still call himself that, shook his head slowly and his lips quivered.
He wanted to scream. All of this made absolutely no sense in the slightest. What happened to him? He tried to think back to the last thing he remembered— and then his train of thought collapsed like a house of cards. No matter how hard he tried to peer into his memories, a void so profoundly empty fogged his mind. His fur stood on end and his breathing grew erratic as panic took further hold of him.
Ah yes, totally the sensation you want to wake up to in the middle of the woods. Stuck in a body you know is alien and weird with zero recollection of how you got there or anything at all from your past.
The human knelt and beat his head on the ground, clenching a fistful of leaves as his claws dug into dirt. Why couldn’t he remember anything? He clasped his head, wincing as his claws prickled into his dense fur. Th-This couldn’t be right. There… there had to be something he could remember. He faced the fog in his mind, mentally ripping through the nothingness in desperation. Even as his head burned more fiercely and a dizzying nausea churned his stomach, he refused to relent. A single glimmer appeared at last. It was so faint and distant that he would’ve easily missed it. He gritted his teeth and reached for it through the fog, as a faded memory crossed his mind.
The human fell onto his side and gasped for air. His head throbbed more painfully than ever before, and he felt ready to throw up whatever meager contents of his stomach he might have had. What was that memory? He could only hear a voice, but he already yearned for the comforting familiarity it carried. He had no idea what the person was talking about or who they were. Maybe they were a friend of his? A faint smile found its way to his lips at that possibility. It wasn’t much, but now he had more than a purely blank slate to work with. Also…
“Hiro… is that my name?” Though hoarse, Hiro’s voice still sounded soft and somewhat high pitched. A part of him somehow knew he should’ve sounded different. Though like everything else about his real identity, he had no real way of knowing. Soon he closed his eyes, and immediately went out cold.
And thus, we got our Hiro Protagonist. I can feel the Snow Crash vibes already. :V
Peach clouds, dyed from the late noon sun, drifted across the sky by the time Hiro woke up. He groaned and rubbed his eyes, flinching when fur brushed his face. Right, he’d turned into some kind of creature. His heart quivered and he took steady breaths to quell it.
Hiro decided to get moving before evening approached. His headache had abated a bit during his brief sleep, but now he felt terribly parched. Maybe he could find a vast lake nearby, or a gentle stream. Perhaps even a gushing river snaking through the forest somewhere. The only problem was that he couldn’t tell up from down from where he sat. The nearest body of water could be days’ worth of travel away from him for all he knew. If fate smiled upon him, he might stumble upon one and sate his thirst before exhaustion wore him down, or a hungry beast picked him off as an easy meal. He gulped at just the thought of such awful scenarios.
Hiro: "Boy it would've been nice if my amnesiac mind was a lot less cognizant of my own mortality right now." ._.;
Hiro pushed himself to his feet and sighed in relief. He could stand up without problem, but could he walk in his new body? In trying to take a step, his leg kicked forward with far more strength than expected. He yowled and screwed his eyes shut, anticipating to pitch face-first to the ground. Nothing happened. Surprised, He peeked an eye open and found himself crouched forward with his foot planted in the ground. The other one had dug claws halfway into soil to prop him up, leaving Hiro in an awkward half-running pose.
It was then that the fan of feathers glued to his rump introduced themselves. Hiro glanced over his shoulder to get a better look at them as he fixed his posture. Did the feathers aid his balance? It sure felt that way, as they’d tilt and flick each time he looked like he was about to faceplant to the ground. He had another one on his head too for some reason. A swarm of questions flooded his head over how he as a furred creature would have feathers at all, but he silenced his mind after failing to come to any conclusions. He decided not to question how his strange new body worked until later, sometime when he wasn’t worried about basic sustenance and his own life and limb.
Hiro took baby steps around the clearing to get himself used to walking. A few minutes passed before he could make it all the way from one end to the other without wobbling like a slinky toy. He smiled at his progress, a tinge of wonder twinkling in his eyes. Now he could get moving along in earnest. His ears skimmed the surrounding sounds to pick a direction to follow when he heard faint sounds of flowing water coming towards his left and walked deeper into the forest.
I have to wonder if you got this idea from another story or some other media. Or if this was just something that occurred to you while planning the story as a thing that Hiro would face when becoming a surprise knifecat. Since it's fairly logical that a human-turned Pokémon would have limb weirdness at first, especially if they didn't get turned into a Pokémon that was relatively humanlike in body plan. And I actually can't remember the last PMD story I read that featured humons that made it an explicit plot point like you did.
Fate smiled upon Hiro after all. A riverThere happened to be a river few minutes’ walk away from where he’d woken up. He approached nervously and caught a glimpse of a pair of deer-like creatures that curiously had pink fur coats drinking from the riverbank. He’d barely taken a step forward on a patch of dirt when a twig snapped beneath his foot with an audible crack. The deer-like creatures seemed to hear it, as they sprang up in alarm and scurried back into the forest's cover of forest. Hiro pursed his lips in a frown. He wished he’d gotten a better look at them.What in the world were theythose creatures anyways? Thankfully, his disappointment proved short lived, as he made his way to a calm tributary to quench his thirst.
Hiro: "So we've established that wherever I'm from, that pink deer weren't normal there. Alright, good to know."
Hiro dipped his paws in to cup some of the water at first, and it all but drained through his claws. Clearly his paws weren’t intended to be used as makeshift bowls. Sighing – and without any brighter ideas – he leaned forward and dipped his muzzle into the water to drank.
Yeeeeah, those claws on Sneasel do kinda seem a bit too spread-apart to cup effectively. ^^;
Fresh cold water bathed Hiro’s throat like rainfall after a long drought, invigorating his very soul. He took gulp after gulp till he had his fill, then pulled his face back with a satisfied sigh. That was the first drink he’d had as far as he could remember. For all he knew, it was the first drink he’d ever had in this body. Hiro lowered his eyes, staring despondently along with the flowing currents for some time.
Such is life when your life might as well have started a couple hours ago thanks to everything being a complete void beforehand. :V
He looked around and found a calm pool nestled between the rocks along the riverbank downstream. He made his way over, and found that the surface was still enough to reflect objects in it, including his own face. A face looking like a cross between a cat and a weasel stared back at him, adorned with a yellow gem in his forehead. He… he looked kind of cute? The moment he made eye contact with his reflection, the name ‘Sneasel’ sprung to his mind without prompt as if his mind had picked out from a glossary list in its deepest recesses. Hiro shook his head with a sigh.
First, he lost all his memories, and now he knew things he couldn’t possibly have known. Hiro squished his cheeks in his palms and growled in frustration. He wrapped his arms around his legs and tapped his knee frantically. There were silver linings to his situation. Sneasel was a Pokemon…
That word popped into his mind out of nowhere too, and it gave him goosebumps. He clenched a fist and exhaled a huff. The pink deer from earlier must’ve been Pokemon too. But... he didn’t know their species however. [ ] Could he only identify a Pokemon’s species if he could see their face? Hiro wondered if the person, or thing, that brought him to this strange world gave him the cognitive ability as a gift. Who knew? Maybe he had other gifts he didn’t know about yet to discover too.
I think that given that this is kinda a major rule for Hiro IDing others in-setting, that you might want to consider beating it over the heads of the audience by dropping in something like the below in brackets:
[ And yet, when he'd seen his own face in the water's reflection, the word 'Sneasel' instantly popped to mind. ]
Since that way, it tees up "... Wait a minute, maybe I need to see a Pokémon's face for this to work?" after he realizes that that's what happened to him.
Hiro’s heart drummed at whatever implications might come of thatfrom being able to identify other Pokémon in such a fashion. He shook away the distracting thoughts and brought his mind back to his current situation. Before anything else, he needed to find some form of shelter. A place to find food as well. If his claws and fuzzy feline frame were anything to go by, likely in the form of meat.
... Of course, he had no idea how to hunt in his current state either. If there had been a school of fish swimming in the river then perhaps an outdoor roast would’ve been on the menu… assuming he had some way of starting a fire. However, all he could find in the water were rocks and green algae draping their sides. He… wasn’t desperate enough to find out what the latter tasted like. Not yet, at least.
I'm reminded of that one Simpsons episode that ripped off Lord of the Flies.
Part of me feels this paragraph might work better split, but it's your call there.
Food would have to wait. A dead leaf snapped off a branch overhead and drifted to the water’s surface, waiting for no one as it floated downriver. Hiro squinted his eyes and thought. Where there was a body of water, there were bound to be people living by it at some point. Without further deliberation, Hiro got up and, follow after the river’s course. With luck, perhaps he’d stumble upon a village or something.
Hiro’s paw found an easy grip on a mossy boulder, letting him hoist himself over with ease. He hadn’t expected the riverbank to leave a carpet of rocks in his path. The draining exercise left a growing hunger to gnaw at his stomach, which made him groan and sit down for a quick break. The river beside him poured tirelessly on its downstream course, though the forest was already quieting down for slumber. Orange streaks dyed the clouds as evening cast a dark shade from the other horizon. He couldn’t even sense much life loitering about him anymore. There was just him and the river.
Hiro: "... Is simple rock climbing supposed to make me feel this hungry?"
Hiro sighed wearily, and considered camping out for the night when his stomach growled in protest. He sighed again and slid down the rock. A smooth pebble by his foot caught his eye, and he picked it up to feel its surface. Hiro considered tossing it into the water, but he squinted and pinched his brow in annoyance. There were better times to be distracted. He still had some time before the sun dipped behind the horizon, and he wanted to keep moving till then. At least that was the plan until he heard beeps coming from the trees.
Hiro’s fur stood on end and he stiffened up. He sprang back to his feet and resumed marching along the river, afraid of even looking back to see what was following him. The beeps only drew closer the longer he walked. Someone, or something was surely stalking him, and they weren’t doing a good job at hiding it. Was it a bandit? A hungry beast? He didn’t know which of the two he’d rather try his luck with. Hiro clenched his fists and took a sharp turnaround.
“Hey! I know you’re following me! Come out and show yourself before… I give you a piece of m-my mind!” Hiro yelled, swinging his outstretched claws to look as threatening as he could. Frigid blood rushed through his veins, and he tried his best to hide his trembling as he waited for his stalkers to reveal themselves.
- Beat moment -
Hiro: "... That didn't sound the least bit threatening, did it?"
Beheeyem: [beeping intensifies]
Hiro: "Yeah, I didn't think so either." ._.;
A silent breeze swept leaves off the ground, then three cone-headed figures emerged from the shadows of the forest. Hiro cast a careful gaze on his guests, memorizing every detail he could about them. Their appearance struck him as otherworldly, yet familiar. Though like before, nothing concrete reached his mind aside from the word: ‘Beheeyem’.
Ah yes, just what every human-turned-Pokémon needs to run into all of two hours after literally learning how to walk properly.
Their ovoid eyes stared him down. He didn’t know how he was sensing it, but the chill of malice radiated off them like a rotting stench. A cold shiver went up the full length of Hiro’s spine. He took a step back without thinking, only stopping to breathe when a puddle splashed beneath his foot. They absolutely weren’t giving him a good first impression! Behind him was the churning river and ahead of him stood the trio. Hiro would have to go through them to reach the forest. They’d backed him against a wall, and he quietly cursed under his breath at that realization.
“Who are you?” Hiro asked, a deep growl rumbling in his throat.
His question was answered with twitching and flickering lights from the Beheeyem’s candy colored fingers. Hiro squinted his eyes. Were they telling him something? “Sorry, I really don’t understand… what any of that meant.”
Hiro: "Considering the vibes these three are giving off right about now, I'm not sure I want to know either."
His question went unanswered. A suffocating silence took hold of the forest floor as the trio of foreign pokemon remained in place, their eyes fixed on Hiro like they’d just discovered a curious specimen. He tightened his left paw around its pebble and returned a sharp glare, not so much as stopping to blink. Time drew to a lull during the brief staring game. The gushing river was all that broke the deafening silence. Everything about them was so unnerving that Hiro just wanted to make a break for it.
As it turned out, he didn’t need to wait long for the lull to end. The Beheeyem on the left outstretched its arm, sparks dancing at its fingertips. Hiro swiped his paw with all his might and flung the pebble through the air like a missile at its target. It struck the Beheeyem with a loud thunk right above its eye. The Beheeyem erupted in a loud screech, before a misfired sizzling bolt burst from its hand. Hiro’s body reacted before his mind did. His tail fanned to the side and he sprung out of harm’s way just in time for the attack to zip past him; lightning bolts snapping at the water’s edge when it crashed into the river.
Hiro: "Oh, so all of that probably meant 'Prepare to die'. Great to know."
Hiro’s shock at the lightshow lasted only a moment. He shot forward at the other two, claws outstretched as he ran with reckless abandon. The Beheeyem zipped out of the way to avoid Hiro’s mindless claw swipes. Another standoff played out. The felled Beheeyem hovered off the ground and snapped its head upright, a motion that made Hiro’s stomach squirm. Tension choked the air as the Beheeyem eyed Hiro cautiously, and his feather flicked at every sound from the woods behind him.
Hiro took a sharp turn and bolted for the forest. Just as he reached the shade of tree cover, a bright light lit up the right side of his vision and a searing pain cleaved through his hip. Hiro cringed in pain and clutched tightly at the fresh wound. He bit his lips to force back a scream, eyes narrowing to slits as he gazed back at the Beheeyem. The eyes on that same Beheeyem that got up carried a dimming glow. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Despite it all, Hiro pushed himself as hard as he could and pressed onward.
Well this whole "becoming a Pokémon" thing is just going swimmingly for Hiro there. ^^;
Ear piercing beeps resounded from behind, letting him know the Beheeyem were still giving chase, and kept his feet firmly running. Rows upon rows of towering trees whisked past Hiro’s vision, seeming to shift out of his path. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? He didn’t dwell on it. There was a better time to stop and wonder about it.
After sprinting for some time, Hiro pressed his back against a tree to catch his breath. He glanced at the paw held firmly to his hip and found it red with blood. In the dim twilight, it looked just as dark as the rest of his body’s fur. The pain from the wound hadn’t sunk in yet thanks to the adrenaline pumping through his blood. Even so, he had to squeeze his eyes shut as tears threatened to force their way out. A cold feeling slithered into his heart and his whole body wouldn’t stop trembling.
Hiro straightened his back right away. The Beheeyem caught up to him already? He surely thought he’d run far enough to lose them and yet… He peeked off the side of the tree and caught one of them hovering just off in the distance. They casted surveying glances around the forest floor. Maybe they hadn’t found him yet. Even so, the Beheeyem was slowly nearing the tree he used as cover. It’d only be a matter of time before it discovered him if he just stayed put.
Hiro looked down and spotted a sturdy fallen branch at his feet, and he quickly pick it up in his claws. He bit his lip and waited, tightening his grip on the stick as he listened for the beeps. They grew louder, and louder. And then Hiro leapt out of cover and swung the branch down with all his might. The branch fell like an anvil but froze in the air inches from the Beheeyem’s face.
Hiro widened his eyes. A bluish glow surrounded the branch, and it matched the one in the Beheeyem’s eyes. Hiro tried to break his weapon free even as his wounded hip burned with agonizing pain. His eyes quivered as he gnashed his teeth to fight back the foreboding cold spreading from his chest. The Beheeyem tilted their head. They flexed a finger and the branch was sent flying, carrying Hiro with it. The Sneasel yowled as he pinwheeled through the air, before crashing against a tree.
Hiro crumpled to the ground, as he frantically tried to push himself to his feet and run. His head suddenly grew dizzy. Though he’d managed to stand back up, he fell like a dropped needle and sent leaves fluttering about. Hiro struggled to move, and he could feel a seeping warmth dampening his waist. Had he lost too much blood? If only he’d come up with something better than the gamble he pulled earlier. He struggled to keep his eyes open, staring blankly at the trees that danced and blurred in his vision.
Hiro: "I. Call. Hax. And this certainly wasn't how I was expecting to go out." >_>;
Just nearby, he could feel someone approaching. The Beheeyem most likely. Who else would still be making those beeps? A low growl rumbled in his throat, but he didn’t even have the strength to glare daggers at his pursuers.
Hiro’s heart grew heavy and he failed to suppress his whimpers. Just like that, he’d woken up in a bizarre world and already he was about to die without so much as being told why. His consciousness slowly slipped away, he didn’t know if he’d ever wake up again. Perhaps the fates had never smiled on him to begin with if this was the sort of cruel ending he’d meet. Just before the world faded to black, a bright yellow light lit up his eyes.
“Help has arrived!” a booming voice yelled, followed by another flashing light and the crack of something being struck down by thunder. Hiro couldn’t make sense of what was going on. Had someone come to save him? Why? He felt a warm tap on his shoulder.
“Rest…,” said a second wispy – almost ethereal - voice.
Hiro closed his eyes and moaned. It was all too much, and so very confusing. It didn’t concern him anymore though. He drew a long breath, exhaled, and the world grew silent…
Hiro: "Blaugh. I feel as if I should be a lot more worried right now. Especially by that second voice, but I'll take what I can get here." @.@
Alright, overall thoughts:
It's a pretty solid opening that in very short order establishes that we're dealing with a Super AU since... yeah, the canonical sequence of events didn't play out like that at the end (though it's frankly a bit more interesting). You clearly put a lot of love into this, as the chapter illustration on TR evidences, and it shows in the prose.
I didn't really have too many quibbles since it was a prologue beyond a couple wording choices I didn't really agree with or goofs that slipped my attention from my pre-launch readthrough. But it's up to you as an author as to if you want to roll that way or not.
Congrats, @Adamhuarts , and good luck pushing this story forward, since its initial reception from what I can see after giving a proper dissection of it seems pretty well-earned. ^^
Hiro's mind drifted through a murky cloud. He whimpered from the sparks of pain that dug into his flesh, winced at muddled voices surrounding him in all directions, and felt like a suffocating from something being tightly wrapped around him. Each transient pause lasted longer than the last before a deep sleep was permitted to him.
A while later, Hiro began to stir, groaning softly as his mind stitched itself back together. He opened his eyes and blinked slowly at the oak wood ceiling above. A trill escaped through the whirring in his throat, followed by a languid yawn and the popping of his claw joints.
Where was he? Hiro sniffed at the air, noticing a faint cocktail of herbs and berries permeating around him. The smell reminded him of an infirmary. He flicked his ears like a tuning rod. The cacophony of the forest floor was gone, replaced by a cozy silence that helped ease his nerves.
He pawed at his stomach and felt a dull pain beneath the bandages wrapped around his torso. Someone had saved his life, but who? Hiro thought back to his encounter with the Beheeyem, though doing so made his stomach lurch. How powerless he'd felt. That unfortunate event aside, everything else that came after was too foggy for him to make out in much detail.
Hiro cast a surveying glance over the dimly lit room. Light trickled in from a small window, kindling a shimmer over the two empty beds next to him, both tucked in flaps of bedsheets around corners. He turned his eyes to the door standing at the far end of the room, then at the other sitting ajar on the left corner. Their rough woody frames would make for perfect scratching pos— Hiro immediately stomped that thought and shook his head. He squeezed his eyes shut to gather his bearings and opened them again at the doors, wondering which would lead him outside.
A stool sitting between two medical cabinets caught his eye. It was wholly unremarkable, if not for the still and lifeless plush doll hiding quietly beneath its shade. He quirked a brow and studied the doll from a distance; it had a big round head and two-hole cutouts on its chest. Maybe someone kept it around to comfort younger patients? Or It could be that a child forgot it there during a previous visit.
Hiro's stomach growled, and he remembered he hadn't eaten for… He blinked. How long had he been unconscious for exactly?
"Hungry…?" asked a wispy, feminine voice.
The voice made Hiro's ears perk right up. He peered over his bed and found the 'still and lifeless' doll slide out from under the stool and tug slowly towards him. There were few things more bizarre to witness in an infirmary. The doll's large head flopped to each side with every motion as if strings guided her body.
The doll paused in front of his bed with her head drooping forward—long dangly ears draping her face and all—and evoked a faint hiss. She threw her large head back, and Hiro could swear something blinked at him through the holes in her chest. Why were her eyes down there? He pinned his ears back and dug his claws into the straw mattress bit by bit, his mind running in circles just from trying to comprehend what he was even looking at. He didn't even notice the pair of dark velvety tendrils snaking up from below, until they brushed his cheek.
Hiro mewled in fright, clasped his paws over his mouth, and quickly crawled back to the other end of his bed. Half his mind rang with alarm bells and the other remained flushed with embarrassment at the sound that just escaped his throat.
The tendrils flinched and retracted back down the bed. "Loud…" she said with an irritated hiss.
"U-uh, I'm sorry?" Hiro quickly blurted out. He prodded his claws together as he reluctantly inched back near her on the other bedside. Sure, something about her felt off and creepy, but he hadn't met anyone else he could communicate with till now. He clenched his claws and asked, "Um. Hey, can you tell me where we are?"
"Village," she replied in a voice filled with indifference. Then she nonchalantly crawled up his bed, like a magnet sliding up a wall. Hiro remained seated in place, almost tempted to check beneath those rags to see if she had legs, or tentacles instead… and if then, who knew how many she'd have?
Hiro also couldn't help but wonder why she dressed herself up in a mascot costume in the first place, though he figured she likely had her reasons. Even stranger was that he couldn't tell what kind of Pokemon hid beneath the get up. That only affirmed to him that he did actually need to see a Pokémon's actual face to know what they were at a glance.
"What are you?" Hiro asked tensely, hoping the question wouldn't be seen as rude.
"Mimikyu… No. Mebh," She drawled, tapping her wooden paddle-shaped tail against the bed frame.
"N-no… I meant… are you a pokemon?"
"I am Mebh."
"Ummm…" Hiro raised a paw and then lowered it with a sigh. "Never mind." It didn't feel like he could get much more than that out of her.
"My name's Hiro." He rasped his claws together and flicked his ears nervously. "Nice to meet you?"
"Hiro…" Mebh hissed faintly as she withdrew her tendril.
And then she just… stared at him, quietly, without so much as an utter. Hiro twiddled his paws and stared back, waiting to see if she'd say anything. Perhaps something like asking him how he ended up in the infirmary, where he was from, or even tell him a bit about herself. Instead, she slithered a tendril towards him. He couldn't help but tense up slightly when she started prodding at his bandages. She seemed oddly curious about the white fabric, appraising it from every angle on his body.
"Why are you…? Wait a minute." Hiro suddenly leaned towards her, his forehead gem catching some of the light from the window as he asked, "Oh I get it. I remember a voice before I passed out now. Was that you?"
Mebh shook her head, pulling away with a quiet hiss and pushed his face back with the flat side of her tendril. "Atlas."
"Who is—"
"For you," Mebh said, cutting him off with a sphere that felt cold against his chest.
Hiro blinked at her in confusion, and trailed his eyes down to find a fruit of some kind in his claws. Did she want him to eat it? The thought alone caused his stomach to rumble with a growl, and his cheeks flushed in embarrassment. To his relief, Mebh showed no reaction to him. Not that he could tell even if she was smiling smugly under her costume.
"Thanks," Hiro whispered in appreciation.
Orange pearls of liquid seeped from the dark-skinned berry as he grazed a claw against it. A hunch told him he'd seen the fruit somewhere before, but he couldn't remember for sure. It did look harmless enough, so he brought the berry to his mouth and licked the juice off the skin. An explosion of flavor engulfed his taste buds. The overwhelming sweet and sour taste captivating him so much that his feather fluttered like a butterfly.
"What is this fruit?!" Hiro gasped as his mouth drooled. "I've never had something this sweet in my life!"
Any table manners he might have practiced in another life went out the window as he tore fangs into the berry, each bite showering his mouth with a punch of warm flavors.
"You… are strange."
Mebh's voice pulled Hiro back to reality, making him pause in the middle of licking berry juices off his claws. He hurriedly wiped his mouth with flushed cheeks. An awkward moment of silence later, his tail feathers fanned up and down behind him. "You wouldn't happen to have more… right?"
Mebh answered him with a low hiss and shifted herself to the side. A second berry appeared seemingly out of nowhere, which she promptly handed over to him. Hiro blinked twice. He decided not to question what he just saw and quietly gobbled down his berry.
"Atlas. Doctor. Here soon," Mebh said as she straightened her drooped head.
That name again. Just as Hiro cocked his head and opened his mouth to ask her who they were, one of the doors sprung open with a loud creak.
Mebh hissed irritably and vaulted off the bed, landing a few feet away on the ground.
"Huh? Where are you—" Before Hiro could finish his sentence, Mebh zipped her tendrils to the open window, flew out, and made herself scarce from the room.
Hiro stared dumbly at where Mebh had been just a second ago. What was that about? He turned his face when a small click from across the room made the dull orb hanging down the ceiling spark to life. A gentle blue glow illuminated the infirmary, allowing Hiro to glean a better look at the person that just arrived.
A Pokemon he'd never seen before walked in, pinching his long greying whiskers with a wide yawn. The rattle of a strap of tools jostled back and forth with his long sleeves. The figure looked clearly exhausted, if the dark corners in his eyes were anything for Hiro to go by.
The Pokemon cast a wide glance around the room. His eyes fell on Hiro and he smiled. "Sneasel, thank goodness you're finally awake." He raised a brow at the empty spot beneath the stool holding the bowl-filled tray.
"Oh, the other one left on her own?" He turned to the bed and met Hiro staring back at him like a mute. "Call me Mienshao, I'm the one who fixed you up."
"Oh, so you're Atlas!" Hiro said, the mattress sinking beneath his claw as he leaned forward and pointed the other at the Pokemon. Mienshao froze mid step as though pushed back by a sudden gust, then he snickered.
"I'm not Atlas. Could you imagine that?" He shook his head and tugged at a whisker. "He brought you here. To say you were knocking on Yveltal's cocoon would be an understatement. Any later and…" He waved a paw. "Well you're alive now and that's all that matters."
"I see…" Hiro muttered as he lowered his eyes to his bedsheets, tapping idly at his chest gem.
Mienshao walked to the other side of the room and hung his tool strap on a rack. He rummaged through a nearby cabinet next to a colorful assortment of glass bottles to fetch a pair of familiar looking Oran berries. However, he paused when he approached Hiro with them and noticed the hints of orange and blue coating the Sneasel's claws. "So, you've already helped yourself to some Orans while I was away, have you?"
"Ah, that?" Hiro scratched his cheek and chuckled. "I got them from Mebh."
Mienshao scratched his chin and nodded slowly like he'd heard a remarkable tale.
"That… one? How curious. She barely moved an inch since you got here; at this point I thought it was her hibernation at the start of spring. I didn't think she'd do my job for me while I was away" Mienshao chuckled with a wave of his paw and returned the berries to a nearby tray on a cabinet. "So, how are you feeling right now, Sneasel?"
"I feel-" Hiro stared down at his body, and for once he noticed how exceptionally normal he was feeling. His lips parted in amazement when he didn't even feel the slightest ache when he pawed at his bandaged hip. "What was in those berries?"
"You almost sound as if you've never seen an Oran before in your life," said Mienshao as he sorted miscellaneous items on the cabinet. "Surely it's not that rare up north."
"Up north? Well…" Hiro didn't have an inkling of an idea where up north even was or what lived there.
"Let me help you get those off now…" Mienshao insisted. The Fighting-type approached Hiro and untied the knot holding the bandages together. The Sneasel sat still as two rolls of fabric unwound around him.
"There we go. Nice and easy," Mienshao said as he took the lump of fabric and disposed of it in an empty bin.
Hiro brushed his paws against his matted fur and stretched his limbs till they gave a satisfying pop. That felt good. A clap from Mienshao's paws got his attention. "Alright, that will be all now, Sneasel. You're free to go," Mienshao said, returning to a desk where he sat and pulled a quill out of an inkwell.
Hiro slid down the edge of the bed and just looked idly in several random directions. He raised a paw and pressed his ears to his head. "Which way should I go? I don't know this place… at all."
Mienshao sighed and half rolled his eyes. "The Atlas you mentioned earlier is just outside. Ampharos, with a red cape. You can't possibly miss him."
Hiro nodded and made his way to the sturdy wooden door. Standing face to face with it made it hard to keep his eager and itching claws tucked to his side from raking a door he had no money to pay for.
"Is something wrong, Sneasel?" Mienshao asked from his desk.
Hiro frantically shook his head and slapped his cheeks. "N-no, I'm fine. I was just… leaving."
He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his paws and pushed his way out without looking back.
….
Hiro shielded his eyes and let them adjust to the warm light washing in from the end of the corridor. He made it out of the infirmary where a gentle cold breeze greeted his face. He couldn't help but gasp in awe at the sight around him. To anyone else, it would have been little more than a humble small village, but to him it was the most mesmerizing thing he'd ever seen. There were wooden huts and houses carved into the mossy cliffside, cut in half by a waterfall. He'd counted about twelve houses when a ball zipped past ahead to the other side of a bridge, and chasing it were two small pokemon he identified as a Mienfoo and Mudkip.
"Enjoying the view?" asked a yellow pokemon on a cedar bench. A rouge cape embroidered with a pair of thunderbolts crossed over one another hung around his back, concealing some of the black bands around his neck. The Ampharos' deep black eyes burned with the sagely air of one wise with years of experience, and the strength of one who'd fought a great many battles. His presence alone left Hiro awestruck until he noticed Mebh perched next to him. From the way the Mimikyu stared back, she'd probably noticed him first.
Hiro's eyes brightened up when he saw her, then he furrowed them and took a moment to think. If she was with the other pokemon, then that probably meant… "You're Atlas, right?"
"Yes, indeed! It is none other than I," Atlas replied, his voice firm and resolute. "You must be Hiro then, I assume?"
"Yeah, I am," he answered, straightening his back.
"I'm pleased to see you're in good health. You'd been left quite the worse for wear by the time we arrived." Atlas smiled reassuringly. "Fret not, we made sure those hooligans scampered like a rattled scuttle of Wimpod."
"Wimp… what? O-oh, you mean those Beheeyem." Hiro tensed up as he replayed the encounter in his mind. The empty eyes and loud beeps still made him feel uneasy. "Thank you very much for saving me. If you hadn't showed up when you did…" He huffed a breath. "I'm alive, and that's fine."
"Don't mention it, lad. It's only natural to help a mon in need." Atlas chuckled and leaned his arm over his knee. "Please, have a seat. There are a few things I'd like to ask you."
He flashed a friendly smile when Hiro hesitated to take the offer.
"Don't worry, this won't be an interrogation of any sort," Atlas insisted. "A few details regarding your attackers will suffice."
That seemed fair enough. Hiro approached the two and dug his claws on the edge of the bench to vault himself over, forgetting for a moment how light his new body was. The sudden movement almost toppled him back down as soon as he got onto the bench, but Atlas was quicker to hold him back in place. Hiro muttered a quiet thanks and seated himself properly. Atlas nodded, then flashed a curious glint in his eyes as he dug a notebook and a pen out from under his cape.
"Hey, if you're doing this… are you some kind of constable?" Hiro wondered.
Atlas flicked an ear and cast him a confused glance. "A constable?"
Hiro raised his left paw to answer, but the answer to the question danced across the grooves of his brain like an acrobat, elusive and beyond the edge of realization. He lowered his paw slowly, grimacing at the wooden planks below. "Never mind. What… do you want to know first?"
"Right." Atlas flipped the notebook open and began his questioning. "To start off, can you tell me why you were being attacked by the Beheeyem?"
Hiro fell into deep thought. The more the memory replayed in his mind, the more things just didn't add up. The Beheeyem found him alone in a forest, and he had a hunch they'd stalked him longer than he realized. They hadn't approached him at random; there must have been a motive.
"I don't really… know." Hiro shook his head, holding his arm as he lowered his gaze even further, ear flicking every time Atlas' pen scratched against parchment. "I woke up in the middle of nowhere, walked around for a bit to figure out where I even was, then they showed up out of nowhere trying to kill me." He twiddled his claws anxiously and glanced at Atlas. "You showed up not soon after, I think."
"In the middle of nowhere? Open Pass isn't the middle of nowhere." Atlas said, his pen pausing mid-scribe.
"Open Pass?" Hiro fanned his tail feathers and quirked a brow.
"The Mystery Dungeon we found you in." Atlas clarified, earning a slow nod from Hiro. "Open Pass is a famously low distortion Passage dungeon. Most mon don't even know how deep its history goes." He grinned, reminiscing from knowledge he'd acquired during his more youthful years. "For the most part you'll only encounter harmless and docile wildeners roaming its grounds, and you needn't worry about the dungeon warping as you pass through them, which makes it ideal as a shortcut to Coral Coast."
Atlas flipped a page on his notebook and continued. "Open pass being a low risk dungeon makes it ideal for outlaws to use as a hideout," he explained. "Though of course, prolonged stays in dungeons isn't something I'd recommend anyone do."
"Is that so…" Hiro muttered distantly.
The strange terms mostly flew over his head, much to his annoyance. If only the generosity of the person who flung him to the Pokemon world included giving him all the rudimentary knowledge about the world as well. Hiro leaned forward, rested his chin on his palm and lightly tapped on his cheek. Not knowing what else to say, he voiced the first question on his mind.
"How did you guys know I was in trouble anyway?"
"You can thank her for that." Atlas remarked. He gestured to Mebh with his pen, who had herself occupied watching a flock of starly chirping on a tree up ahead while the Mudkip and Mienfoo from before leapt up and threw pebbles at them from below.
"We were on our way to Coral Coast when Mebh wandered off on her own, as though possessed by Meloetta's call, and led me to the scene."
Hiro glanced at Mebh with surprise. Then suspicion gradually caused him to grimace, because he now wondered how Mebh knew to go and find him. Perhaps she heard him screaming, or she had a good sense for danger.
"Did you leave any belongings in the dungeon?" Atlas asked, tapping the blunt side of the pen on the notebook. "As I mentioned earlier, you were in a bad shape and we had to bring you here quickly. We didn't have time to search." Atlas glanced at Hiro top to bottom and hummed. "From the way we found you, one could've mistaken you for a wildener. If you had anything on you, we could return there now to search for whatever you dropped. Mind you, we can't do anything about your food items, those would've been long eaten by wildeners by now, but everything else should still be mostly intact somewhere in there."
"But I didn't have anything on me when I woke up… I…" Hiro clenched his teeth, a sinking feeling rising in his gut. Try as he might, the thick fog in his mind still remained… "I actually don't remember much of anything from before that."
Atlas widened his eyes and stopped writing midsentence.
"You have amnesia? Hmmm… I'd cite those Beheeyem as the cause, but memory alteration is a delicate process. Would they have gotten the chance…? No, that's unlikely." Atlas propped his back against the wall behind them and frowned slightly. "Besides, a dark type like you should have some resistance to mental tampering of that sort."
"What could those mon possibly have wanted to do with an empty-handed Sneasel?" Atlas brought a fin to his chin and narrowed his eyes. Gears turned in his head as he considered possibilities. "What can you remember? Even the smallest of hints could prove vital for our investigation."
"I…" Hiro pursed his lips. He could spill his secrets to Atlas and tell him all about how he was actually a human from another world. But just as he started thinking that, doubt seeped into Hiro's mind like an inkblot on a white canvas.
What even was a human in the first place? A vaguely bipedal figure formed in his mind, but that did little to ease his worries. From the little that came to him, it could've just been a distorted image of a Sneasel or a different Pokemon. How was he so sure that he hadn't been a Sneasel all his life and he had just now come down with a case of madness on top of memory loss? His mind was so troubled by the possibility that he didn't notice the frost gathering on his claw tips till Atlas patted him on the shoulder.
"Lad, are you alright?" Atlas asked, his voice soft with concern.
Hiro flinched and quickly scraped the gathering ice on his claws off against the bench. He watched the ice melt gradually, though he didn't have the mind to marvel at it.
"I'm sorry. I really don't know… I'm sorry," He said, lowering his gaze again with a deep sigh.
"It's okay. Anyone in your position would feel disoriented as well." Atlas patted him again on the back. He slipped his pen and notebook back under his cape before drawing a deep breath. "I have a colleague in Lively Town. She's a specialist of the mind and may be able to help you restore your lost memories."
Hiro's ears propped up in surprise. "There are people here who can do that?"
“People?” Atlas muttered to himself, finding the word strange and unfamiliar. “Yes… she’s a Hatterene.” He paused to gauge Hiro’s reaction. The fact that he got none piqued his interest, but he continued. “You needn’t worry, though. I assure you, she’s a very friendly mon for her kind. If you come with us, I can get you an appointment with her.”
Hiro’s eyes brightened up, but then he shrank back and looked away. Atlas was still a stranger to him, but he had no one to turn back to, and no leads to follow. Before him stood a village, and even with their strange houses and creatures, he could make a life for himself here… Hiro pursed his lips and shook his head. He’d only give in to complacency if he did that. There was only one thing he could do, but…
“Why are you helping me? I’m just a stranger you happened to save… I’m sorry if this sounds rude, but what’s in it for you?” Hiro asked while scratching at his arm with cold trembling claws.
"I don't mind. To answer you… Call it a whim if you'd like." Atlas beamed a reassuring smile. "Like I said before, it's only natural to help a mon in need," Atlas said, then slid off the bench. "Besides, your memories might tell us more about those Beheeyem, and that'll allow us to capture and prevent them from hurting anyone else like you."
"I see… hearing that is a relief." Hiro flashed a faint smile back at Atlas. "If I remember anything more about them, I'll let you know."
Atlas nodded. He reached into his bag and retrieved a piece of clothing that looked like it had seen a lot of use. "Here, wear this for now until we find something better for you later."
Hiro studied the thing and it came into his claws. It didn't seem to smell bad when he sniffed it, so he wore it around his neck like a scarf.
"Thanks," Hiro said, adjusting the scarf till it nestled comfortably.
"Let's go…" Mebh hissed, already on the path up ahead. She stared upwards after the clouds cleared, affixed by the velvety blue sky.
Hiro walked up beside her, his lips curling in a narrow smile. His mind's worries were surely still there, but the new company he'd made helped ease him through them. He recalled the voice he'd heard before.
'You must find me'
He tugged at his scarf and grimaced. As soon as he got his memories sorted out and found a place to settle, he'd find them alright. And they'd better have answers.
…
Three somber figures climbed up a rocky hill at the edge of the forest, their footsteps leaving no sound–for rather than walking, they hovered. The middle Beheeyem lagged a few steps behind the others, and they often had to wait for them to catch up. A still healing burn scar marked the edge of their shoulder. Soon, they arrived at the mouth of a secluded cave where a dark tunnel welcomed them within.
Not far inside, a Nuzleaf sat at alone with a sleeping guest in the dark cave. He tugged at the leaf growing from his head till it nearly snapped, then he'd release it, and repeat the process. The sting from it helped him stay calm. All the while, he kept glancing at the entrance as he tapped his foot with a scowl. At last the Beheeyem hovered into view, and the sight of them made him slam a fist against the rock he was sitting on.
"What is the meaning of this?! All you had to do was stick to our plan, yet you left me standing out there all evening." Nuzleaf stomped towards them. The Grass-type paused briefly, his eye twitching when he noticed they were missing somemon. The Beheeyem flinched from his gaze, and quickly spoke.
"We failed to procure the human," the leftward Beheeyem said, coming forward.
"An interloper got in the way," the middle one added, reaching for its wound.
"It is not for any incompetence on our part," the rightward one finished, hovering down slightly with a whirr. All three spoke in the same tone of voice down to the pitch.
Nuzleaf furrowed his brows, dark purplish wisps drifting from his fist. His glare made them fear he'd maul them any second. "Tell me everything that happened, and then maybe I can decide if you three are good for anything or not."
The Beheeyem nodded their heads in unison. They told Nuzleaf how they'd watched a Sneasel pop into existence through a storm of light before their very eyes, and how they'd stalked him until they were sure it was the human they'd been tasked to find. Nuzleaf placed his hand on his hip, his face stuck in a scowl while he listened up until they reached the part about why they really failed.
His face blanched when Atlas' name was dropped, biting hard on his lip till it bled. This was bad. He'd hoped to keep his mission under The Expedition Society's radar.
"We only escaped because the Ampharos was too busy tending to the injured human to chase us after our teleport," The Beheeyem said, finishing their tale.
"How could you three-" he waved his hand and grumbled under his breath, "-of all Pokemon on this planet to be involved, it had to be him?!" Nuzleaf raised a hand to the leaf on his head, but stopped short of it. He'd surely snap the already abused stalk, and it'd take days for the leaf to regrow. So, he chose to mutter profanities under his breath instead.
"Should we continue pursuing the human?" middle Beheeyem asked, eyes glowing dimly. "Ampharos is likely to take the human back to Lively Town. If we intercept them on the way—"
"Absolutely not," Nuzleaf said, immediately snuffing the Beheeyem's plan out. "Your faces have already been seen by the head of The Expedition Society himself. Just get any ideas to deceive him out of your minds. You'll be fried to ashes if he so much as catches a glimpse of you again." Nuzleaf bit his thumb in frustration. "If we're lucky, there won't be wanted posters of your faces across half the continent by the weekend."
"Then, we should leave the human be?" The rightward beheeyem asked, hovering back up.
"Is that wise?" the one on the left asked.
Nuzleaf opened his mouth to speak, but clenched his fist and brushed his other hand over his face.
"This will be tough, but…" Nuzleaf looked over his shoulder at the only other mon in the group asleep: A Xatu. He muttered what sounded like gibberish to himself, then a smirk crept to his lips as small bits of a plan began to take shape in his head.
"The future is still on our side, is it not? Xatu here’s been most helpful with seeing to that," Nuzleaf said, flicking the bird’s head.
A crack split down the middle of Xatu’s beak like it was made out of weathered clay. Nuzleaf flinched for a moment and pulled back. He glanced back at the three Beheeyem with a grin.
They exchanged glances with one another. A dull glow ignited in the eyes of the middle one, showing uncertainty. “The human has her protection. Foretelling his future will likely bring Xatu to ruin. This time he may not survive.”
Nuzleaf’s lips pulled in a frown. The Beheeyem pulled back by a pace, anticipating an outburst. Nuzleaf doused the tension in the air with a wave of his hand, and the Beheeyem seemed to relax. Though they seemed confused.
"His life is worth the price,” said Nuzleaf, shooting the wilted Xatu a glance. “It upsets me to waste a puppet so soon, but our hands are tied, in no small thanks to you.” He looked away and raised a palm, which cast a shadow over his face.
The Beheeyems’ eyes glinted with a blue light in unison, all three as attentive as pawns awaiting a patriarch’s decree.
“Have Xatu discover our human’s actions and whereabouts as far out in the future as possible,” Nuzleaf began. He pushed his hand into his cloak and pulled out a card. A yellow sun-like symbol confined in a yellow ring embellished the card on both sides. The Beheeyems’ eyes went from blue to a darkish purple; the color of anxiety.
“Here's what you three must do…"
1) Added the description of Open Pass as a Passage Dungeon, along with a few minor grammar edits.
Update Notes 8/14/22: Reworked a few dialogue lines and added some new ones towards the end of the chapter
Here to fullfill the prophecy that if one reviews both Weaversong and Wandersword chapter 2 on the same day, a chapter 3 will magically materialise soon. So, I have absolutely no clue on PMD and what is standard-setting and what is not. My only other exposure to PMD is Eternal Shadows. Keep that in mind while I'm as confused as Hiro about everything.
So, we start out to our hero waking up and not knowing anything. He's quite confused as to the new body he finds himself in -- understandably so.
The first thing that came to my mind was "how does he know he's human?" Like, if one doesn't remember anything, why would they classify themselves as human? Why do they even know that classifying themselves as a species is important?
But those are some really meta questions, and I think normal PMD doesn't go into this at all.
(Though the entire human-turned-pokemon thing in PMD always baffles me a bit, for several reasons -- like, why are always humans the heros? What screwed up bias is that? What's the narrative value of being a human/being reincarnated when you throw amnesia at them right out the gates? Okay, definitely not your concern, I'll end my rant about a franchise I know next to nothing about.)
Also, in ch2, Hiro questions why he thinks he's human, and I like that angle a LOT better. Thinking they're a pokemon with amnesia and later learning they are human would be a neat twist!
But yeah, Hiro waking up is really sweet. The way you handle your characters in those two chapters has a very "clean" and "safe" feel to me. Like, I get the feeling that this is not Game of Thrones, where everything is dirty and every character is about to die. Wounds are not described in detail, they can be magiced away with Oran berries, the furniture is clean, the nature is beautiful -- kinda like a saturday morning cartoon. I love fics like that
Him not immediately going down the existential dread route or panicing, but instead straight up crying really thick tears is also playing into that tone. And it is really really sweet. When you mentioned the stream of tears, I went "aawwww..."
I love your environmental descriptions a lot. So far I've never read anything from you, but, oh boy, you have them down. I noticed several times that you use very "uncommon" adjectives ('peachlike' was one, iirc) and focus on smaller things (the leaf on the river). Those really stood out to me. They are so colorful and give something for the inner eye to latch onto.
Also, big kudos on pokemon choice. Sneasel and Mimikyu are always good to see, and it's not every day that I see Beheeyems. Mebh is a cool character, and you depicted this ghost type really interestingly. The first word that comes to my mind is "feral," but not in the PMD sense. Like, she hisses a lot and doesn't speak in full sentences. Which makes sense for a ghost, I guess, being only a shadow of a living thing. (I have a professional interest in ghost types, don't mind me drilling into them on every occasion)
So, yeah. Sorry I can't give you a better gauge of the story or stuff, I'm really lacking the sense for pmd stories here to give any pointers at all. Ahm... I'm not really fond of the first chapter always being MC being lost and confused about their new body, but you skipped over that quite quickly by not delving into it and then gave a real cool action scene, where Hiro got to use his new claws.
With that, I can fondly say "gud fic, pls update" :D
Oh, and PS: Your art is amazing and so sweet and fits the tone perfectly <3
Though I am still a firm believer that he would be a fucking genius in the PMD world. One day, when I've finally learned to not come up with a 500k minimum story idea, I'll write this oneshot:
A human-turned-Kecleon awakes without memories and immediately jumps to his feets, saying, "booyah, I know exactly where I need to be and how to get there." Then he follows his path to the nearest adventurers' guild for about 30 seconds before he realises that he can now breathe fire and then continue to wreak havoc on the entire mystery dungeon.
2. a hiro's first steps
first things first: what's with this chapter name, he took his steps last time, smh. anyway, i was glad for another chapter of this story! nice turn around... maybe next time you'll beat me :sneakypix:
this chapter serves as a nice little introduction into the pmd world outside of the mystery dungeon where he gets mercilessly mugged. we're introduced to who i assume will turn out to be key characters, and at the end we get a bit of an insight into the overarcing plot and conflict. i guess hiro will be searching for someone, and he will be pursued by some alien gangsters. pretty straightforward, but there are a lot of ways it could go.
the characters you introduce here are fun. i really liked mebh, she's really quirky and her body language is very expressive. atlas is fun too, his manner of speaking definitely evokes a larger than life legendary hero. the beeheeyem are kinda charming too, and although i was laughing at first at the little nuzleaf commanding the big aliens around, he actually does have kind of an intimidating presence, so kudos for that. i'm not used to you writing this many characters, but you do a great job with it; they're all quite strongly characterized and fun to read.
something i noticed is that hiro did not recognize the species of mebh, atlas, or mienshao on sight, but he does seem to still have the power. is that something you forgot?
there are some very adam themes still present here, in particular the adaptation to a new and unfamiliar body (and feasting on berries, of course), but aside from that, this feels like a bit of a departure from your usual stuff. not a good or bad thing, but it's interesting! the narrator here is much more involved with the society around him, and there's a much larger cast of characters than normal. i think you do pretty well with it, and i'm curious to see where it goes. i think this story also has more of a "standard" plot than the stuff you usually write; kuki's tale is pretty slice of life even when it isn't, and the previous pmd fic you wrote—apologies, i can't recall the name—was a bit meandering too and seemed to focus largely on the relationship between two characters. but hiro here is... well, he's kind of a hero. dang. crazy how nature named him dat.
i will say that there were some small typo-level things that popped up frequently enough that it sorta took me out of the chapter at times. i highlight some in the line comments below (apologies if the line comments feel negative btw; i did like this chapter!), but there are more. let me know if you ever need a beta and i'll be glad to pick this stuff out.
all things considered, it's a bit of a chiller chapter, but there's some good setup and it doesn't overstay its welcome. hiro's reactions to stuff are pretty funny still and it's fun to see him puzzling out the world around him. i thought it was interesting that he doesn't really remember the human world all that well either and is pretty much truly a blank slate. looking forward to the next chapter! bet you can't write it before i write mine 😤 💪
The unexpected voice made Hiro jump. He peeked over his bed and found the ‘still and lifeless’ doll slide out from under the stool and slowly tug towards him. The doll’s large head flopped to each side with every motion as if strings guided her body.
Hiro mewled in fright, clasped his paws over his mouth, and quickly crawled back to the other end of his bed. Half his mind rang with alarm bells and the other remained flushed with embarrassment at the sound that just escaped his throat.
thats right. i have to love how this guy is like, cowering in fear of the mimikyu but also embarrassed that he made a weird noise in front of it. i feel you man.
“That… one? How curious. She barely moved an inch since you got here; at this point I thought it was her hibernation at the start of spring. I didn’t think she’d do my job for me while I was away,” Mienshao chuckled with a wave of his paw and returned the berries to a nearby tray.
The Ampharos’ deep black eyes burned with the sagely air of one wise with years of experience, and the strength of one who’d fought a great many battles.
Hiro’s eyes brightened up when he saw her, then he furrowed them and took a moment to think. If she was with the other pokemon, then that probably meant… “Are you Atlas?”
Hiro raised his left paw to answer, but the answer to the question danced across the grooves of his brain like an acrobat, elusive and beyond the edge of realization.
“Call it a whim if you’d like.” Atlas beamed a reassuring smile. “Like I said before, it’s only natural to help a mon in need,” Atlas said, then slid off the bench.
He tugged at the leaf growing from his head till it nearly snapped, then he’d release it, and repeat the process. The sting from it helped him stay calm.
Nuzleaf looked over his shoulder at the only other mon in the group asleep: A large green bird Pokemon with long red and black tipped white wings—A Xatu they’d so kindly encouraged to work with them.
this is a run on, what with the colon and then the dash. could probably do to split it up, or maybe just remove "A large green bird Pokemon with long red adn black tipped white wings" altogether since "Xatu" does just fine for that. also, lots of rogue capital A's.
