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Alpha and Omega: A Hoenn One-Shot Contest

TeamUniverse12

Team Universe Boss
So, I ended up not posting my entry, I just didn't feel it was ready, and had nothing to it... Perhaps I'll post as a regular one-shot sooner or later?

Anyways, looking forward to seeing results, maybe I'll enter the next contest!
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
Now that we are aware of the number of entries, can an estimate of time be made?

Also how are you guys doing keep us posted! :p
Like bobandbill said, the number of entries is really just one factor in the amount of time it takes to get judging done. Because the judges work hard to give each entry a nice, in-depth review, they generally need to be able to find a nice block of uninterrupted time to sit down and prepare their replies, and without knowing what's going on in all the judges' lives, I can't really know when they're going to be able to find that time.

I'll be checking in with the judges on a regular basis, though, and I'll post any updates in this thread as we go along. Don't worry, as soon as I know something, you'll hear about it!
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
It's been about a month since the final submission deadline, so I figured I'd give you an update on how the judging's coming. I've done five reviews, bobandbill's done six, and we both expect to finish the rest by the end of the month. Phoenixsong and Dragonfree have read all the entries, but haven't actually started writing reviews. Butterfree expects she can have hers done in a week or two, but Phoenixsong doesn't really have an estimate as to how long the actual reviews will take her.

At this point I think we can probably expect the results by October, but it's difficult to say anything concrete yet. I'll keep you posted.
 

Umbramatic

The Ghost Lord
It's been about a month since the final submission deadline, so I figured I'd give you an update on how the judging's coming. I've done five reviews, bobandbill's done six, and we both expect to finish the rest by the end of the month. Phoenixsong and Dragonfree have read all the entries, but haven't actually started writing reviews. Butterfree expects she can have hers done in a week or two, but Phoenixsong doesn't really have an estimate as to how long the actual reviews will take her.

At this point I think we can probably expect the results by October, but it's difficult to say anything concrete yet. I'll keep you posted.

Excellent! Keep it going!

EDIT: Though I'm confident I'll place 6th at best. >_>
 
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Negrek

Lost but Seeking
Hi everyone! Now that it's October, I thought I should give another quick update on the judging. Bobandbill, Dragonfree, and I are all done with our reviews, and Phoenixsong's written five of hers. So all in all it's going well, and I think it's safe to hope that my next post in this thread will be bringing you the results.
 

Umbramatic

The Ghost Lord
Hi everyone! Now that it's October, I thought I should give another quick update on the judging. Bobandbill, Dragonfree, and I are all done with our reviews, and Phoenixsong's written five of hers. So all in all it's going well, and I think it's safe to hope that my next post in this thread will be bringing you the results.

[Anticipation intensifies]

But seriously, can't wait to see the results.
 

Shurtugal

The aura is with me.
I don't mean to sound imprudent, but how is this running along? I only ask because ORAS is going to be released in a few days, and I was under the impression that the goal was to finish this before its release!

A month and three weeks ago, Negrek seemed confident that the results would be done very shortly! Hopefully Real Life stuff hasn't gotten in the way (and if it has, I'm terribly sorry!). I know I'm really looking forward to the results! I guess that's why I wanted to post, because I am curious. Hopefully I'm not a nuicance or anything :X

Best of luck to all of you judges! :)
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
I'm still waiting on reviews from Phoenixsong, but I know she's doing her best to get them in before the game release. Unfortunately that's really all I've got for you at this point; I guess we'll see in a few days how things go down.
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
Alpha and Omega: A Hoenn One-Shot Contest
Final Results

Hello everyone! I hope the lucky who've managed to get their hands on ORAS are enjoying the game, but whether you've gotten your dose of trumpet yet or not, you can finally enjoy our local authors' takes on Hoenn!

First off, a bit of bad news: Phoenixsong isn't sure whether she'll be able to finish all her reviews in a timely manner, so we've decided to post the results with her feedback omitted. She did read all the entries and contribute to the rankings, and if you'd like feedback on your story, feel free to drop her a line--we just won't be displaying her reviews with the results.

On the bright side, we had a lot of wonderful entries this time, and I strongly suggest you check them out once they get posted. As you'll see from the scores, we had a lot of trouble ranking these, and in my opinion this is the highest-quality crop of entries we've seen in a one-shot contest yet. Great work to all the contestants.

Before we get down to brass tacks, a couple of words about how the stories were ranked. As in previous contests, each judge scored the stories independently, and their placings were converted to points as follows:

1st - 100 points
2nd - 80 points
3rd - 65 points
4th - 50 points
5th - 40 points
6th - 30 points
7th - 20 points
8th - 10 points

The final rankings were determined by adding the points from the individual judges' rankings together.

With that out of the way, let's bring on the results. Drumroll, please!
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
8th place: "No Regrets" by GalladeofSpades

Scoring
bobandbill: 8th place (10 points)
Dragonfree: 8th place (10 points)
Negrek: 8th place (10 points)
Phoenixsong: 7th place (20 points)
Total: 50 points

No Regrets

The port was completely crowded with Pokémon and people trying to escape Hoenn.

The incident at Mount Chimney was the tipping point for the Hoennese. An entire village near Hoenn’s still active volcano nearly burned down from the magma if it hadn’t for a mysterious trainer that’s been stopping these things. I really wanted to thank them. It can’t be easy stopping environmental terrorists.

Of course, I would be even happier if they caught them, tied them up and kill them war style, but I guess that’s too much. A boy can dream.

Honestly, I’m still surprised that it took this long for my parents to leave Hoenn. Really, the things I’ve seen on my journey would’ve scared them straight. But no, of course they didn’t believe me when I said that they held people hostage in the Slateport Museum. Of course they didn’t believe me when I said they robbed a scientist near Fallarbor. It took people nearly dying to get us out of the region. When something like that is the only thing that makes you… revaluate your situation, there is something wrong with you.

And that was why I wasn’t speaking with my parents while we waited for the boat to Johto.

“Jasper, sweetie, could you get me a magazine?”

“Nope.”

My Cacturne smacked me in the head.

“Ow! Fine, fine…” I whined as I got up to get the magazine, mumbling angrily all the way.

Port Lilycove was completely full. Men, woman, children, adults, elderly, it looked like the entire region was looking for a way out of this mess. People were doing some shopping at the stores around the docks, drinking at the mini-bar, checking in… Well, I’d expect nothing less from the busiest port in Hoenn There was a constant buzzing in the air, accompanied by the ticking of the giant clock tower in the middle of the port.

It was amazing how it managed to fit in there.

As I walked into the store that sold magazines, I heard a voice announcing that my boat was arriving late. I groaned. Just what I needed. More time alone with my parents to be in awkward silence, with me trying to stop all attempts of conversation. Great.

As I turned around, I saw my Cacturne staring right at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Cact,” it answered.

“I left you behind? Whaddya mean?”

My Cacturne gestured to the sea of people behind him, and then to himself. “Turne, cac cac.”

“Well, it’s not my fault you’re so slow.”

His arm started growing spikes.

I just sighed. “If you Needle Arm me once, I will return you and you won’t ride on the boat.”

“Turne.” His eyes widened.

“Don’t test me, Fiyero. I will do it.”

Fiyero looked me in the eye, as if he were thinking about it, and then decided that it was worth the risk, hitting me in the arm and running off.

Aren’t I lucky to have him as my starter?

Fiyero was given to me on my twelfth birthday, as a Cacnea, so I could start my journey through Hoenn. He had always been a bit… uptight with manners. He was like my third parent: telling me how to eat, how to act in public, controlling me when I had a temper, taking care of me when I got sick… I remember one time I got a fever on Route 123 and he wouldn’t let me leave our campsite for three days. Since he didn’t know how to use human medication, he just gave me whatever he could find.

Of course, that just led me straight to a stomach pumping session, so maybe he wasn’t the best nurse.

He was also a bit physical and abusive. The amount of scars I had from his Needle Arms from when I didn’t behaved (in his way of seeing things) was bigger than the amount I had from training Elphaba. And she was a dragon.

But I’ve always kept a fond spot for him in my heart. We’ve been through the best and the worst, and honestly, I can’t see my life without him anymore. He’s my best friend.

My best friend is a cactus. Isn’t that depressing.

As I walked up towards Fiyero (he was kind enough to wait for me out of guilt), I heard my boat ride being delayed. I sighed. “Sorry buddy, but you’re gonna have to wait a while longer to get on the ship.”

Fiyero sighed.

And then we heard the screaming.

“Have you not been listening to me?! I’m not Team Magma!”

“Y-you can’t fool me! You have a horned hoodie! That’s a sign of Magma!”

“Are you kidding me?! Look at me! Do I look like Magma to you?! And put the damn phone down! That’s not a weapon!”

“St-stay back! I’m armed!”

I looked at Fiyero to see if I was the only one listening to the ridiculous conversation that was happening just now. But no, he also heard it. He was so curious that he looked for the source of the noise. I had no choice but to follow him, or else he’d get lost.

And I don’t like losing my starter.

Anyway, by the time we got to the source, all we could see was a terrified dock worker sobbing uncontrollably on top of the counter screaming and pointing menacingly at a girl in a dark blue hooded vest with horns on the hood and a white tank top underneath with a nearby phone from a phone booth. The girl looked completely exasperated and was shouting at the top of her lungs, trying to convince the attendant that, no, she was not a threat, and yes, the worker looked absolutely ridiculous.

We walked up to the duo (everyone else decided to watch the show unrolling before them) just to see what we could do. You know, because we were nice people.

The worker became even more hysterical once she saw me, and started accusing me of being her accomplice in trying to take over the dock. She ended up throwing the phone at my face and getting attacked by Fiyero, who was trying to protect me. Then, the girl sent out her Pokémon to help out the attendant, which made her a target for Fiyero. To protect the girl, I sent out Elphaba.

Then all hell broke loose.

Elphaba decided she was in a bad mood and started firing Dragonbreaths at random people, and one of those people was the girl. Thankfully, she dodged it, but her Absol didn’t find it funny. In fact, it didn’t like it so much that it decided to fire Razor Winds at Elphaba. Being the dodging queen she was, most of them ended up missing and hitting random passersby. Said passersby released their Pokémon, and started attacking mine. That led to me releasing Glinda, another horrid mistake I made, because Glinda started attacking anyone who went near Elphaba. Then I made the mistake of bringing out Nessarose.

Nessarose decided to stab me. She was rather new to my team.

And that was how I and multiple other people ended up in a security office.

As the other people shot me and the girl glares for making them pay a heavy fine for public disturbance and wasting their precious time and left, I ended up talking with the girl, whose name, as I found out, was Tessa. Tessa was also going to Johto and a trainer like me. Her parents had gone to Johto months ago because they thought it was too dangerous to be in Hoenn at the moment.

“Well, your parents have more common sense than mine,” I said, looking down at my dark, somewhat dirty running shoes.

“What do you mean?”

I looked up and studied her face, seeing if I should trust her.

“Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re about to trust a complete stranger with a secret. What do you think?”

“That you won’t tell anyone because we’re trainers. And trainers trust other trainers. It’s in the Trainer Code,” I answered.

“What? No it’s not!”

“Of course it is!”

“So we should just disregard what our parents taught us about stranger danger? That makes no sense!”

I looked at her confused. “Dis-what now?”

Tessa blinked her dark brown eyes and covered her face with her heavily tanned hands, groaning. “How extensive is your vocabulary?” she finally asked.

I blinked, not understanding where she was getting at.

Seeing that she wasn’t getting an answer, she just told me to forget about it and just tell her what I wanted to say.

“So, my parents are optimistic and secluded… like hermits. Do you know the branching path in Verdanturf Tunnel?”

“The one that leads to a Route that is supposedly haunted by a ghost that keeps losing his glasses, and that if you find them for him he’ll eat you alive?” she asked, a bit too specific for my liking.

“… Yeah, that one. Anyway, my parents decided that it was a good idea to live and raise a child in an opening in a stone wall for spiritual purposes. You know, to connect themselves with the earth and what not.” I paused, waiting for her to acknowledge what I saying. When she nodded, I went on. “Well, as I said, my parents are overly optimistic, and always taught me that the world was a wonderful place to live in, where everyone loved each other and nothing bad ever happened. Since there was no TV reception in caves and there was no one around to tell them otherwise, I had no one tell me anything different.”

“Your parents are-“

“Delusional? Naïve? Idiots?” I deadpanned. “I can go on if you’d like.”

“I get the point. They’re optimistic,” she said. She tucked a long strand of her black hair behind her ear and then looked at me. “Wait, you know what ‘naïve’ and ‘delusional’ mean, but not ‘disregard’?”

“I’m not forced to know every word in the world you know.” I huffed.

“Fine, you illiterate baboon, continue telling me your epic tale that upholds great secrecy.”

“Stop teasing me.”

”Spoilsport.” She pouted, but kept her mouth shut.

“Anyway, they taught me that since I was little, so naturally, when I went on a journey, I thought it would be peachy keen. But I was so wrong. So very, very wrong.

“You see, I originally had a team of five with me. Fiyero was my starter; my parents caught him on a spiritual journey. Elphaba, I caught her when she was just a hurt Trapinch in the desert. Glinda was floating around north Rustboro when I caught her. Boq was caught in Granite Cave, after which the rest of his tribe hunted us down like a pack of Mightyena. And I caught Nessarose recently. She still doesn’t like me though.”

“I noticed. I thought she was just an aggressive Beautifly.”

“Oh no, she’s worse. Much worse.

“Moving on, we were a pretty nice team. Sure, we weren’t perfect. There always a few fights among us: Glinda got overprotective of Elphaba, who got overprotective of Nessarose, who got overprotective of Boq, who hated Elphaba. That led to a lot of fights. I remember one time I was in a double battle and I sent Elphaba and Boq out at the same time. They ended up attacking eachother and I ended up losing.” I chuckled. Tate and Liza had no idea what to do that day…

Tessa nodded, as if understanding, and said. “My Absol, Philomena, and my Crawdunt, Ferdinand, are the same way.”

“But that all changed when Boq was killed.”

Her eyes widened, but she said nothing.

My eyes were starting to water up. No turning back now I supposed.

“One month ago, my Aggron was killed. My team and I were ambushed by Team Magma in Jagged Pass. We were picnicking… We… We were having Pecha Pie my parents sent me.” I started shaking as that day replayed itself before my eyes.

“I… didn’t listen. I didn’t check for danger. We’d been to Jagged Pass before, so we kept ourselves out of the… um, the wild Pokémon territories. We were… they… Boq tried to… Damn it, Boq don’t… Just… no… Stay away from the fire… Wait, was it fire? No, it was Magcargo magma… or was it lava…” Tears were threatening to fall. No turning back.

Taking a minute to calm down, I continued. “We were picnicking when we were ambushed by Team Magma. They threatened me and my Pokémon, saying that if I didn’t hand over my Cacturne and leave, they’d kill us. Thankfully, or unthankfully, Nessarose had left to find some berries and was coming back. Seeing that Boq was being threatened, she stabbed one of the grunts in the eye.

“After that it was all a blur. I grabbed my hunting knife and whistled a series of notes while stabbing the grunt holding me at gunpoint in the leg, making him drop the gun. The tune was a signal I trained Glinda to recognize and she unleashed an Uproar that made the thugs cringe. I was used to it, so it didn’t affect me much, but that was the opening my team needed.

“Elphaba breathed Dragonbreaths everywhere, while Glinda used Hyper Voice at the thugs. Boq was digging into the ground, preparing for two attacks at once: a Dig and a Surf that used any underground water he could find. Fiyero and I battled the grunts fist to fist. His Needle arms were amazing, the strongest I’d have ever seen them. But Nessarose was the most vicious. I’m pretty sure she was sucking vital fluids whenever she stabbed one of the grunts.

“But they fought back. They released their Pokémon and suddenly, we were surrounded. Thankfully, Elphaba whipped up a Sandstorm and we managed to get away. It was only after a while we realized that Boq and Nessarose were missing.

“I remember trying to go back through the path we came from unsuccessfully. Then we found a panicked Nessarose, flying around a small lump of sorts. We darted towards her.

“I still have the image of him partially melted recorded in my brain… I didn’t believe it. He… he was… it wasn’t him… It couldn’t have been him. He was so… different.” I looked up and stared at Tessa, holding back as best as I could. “He… was still alive though. In utter pain, with enough injuries to cause him serious pain for the rest of his life, but alive. I… I called the Emergency Center for help, but… he was in so much pain. He was begging to be put out of his misery. He begged me for hours, while the Emergency Center team tried to find us. His final wish was engraved in my brain. Just let me go… Please...

“So I did.” I trying to hold back as much as I could, but I wasn’t going to last much longer. I kept going.

“I returned him into his ball and the Emergency Center Team arrived shortly after. I told them what happened and I was brought in for questioning. Killing a Pokémon, even if its terminal is still a crime in Hoenn, but I just told them that he died while we waited. He’s still in his ball and I don’t know what to do and I feel guilty because I killed my own Pokémon. I killed one of my friends… I…“ I didn’t care who was listening anymore. I just hugged Tessa and cried the tears I should’ve shed when I found him. He was gone. All I could do now was apologize.

Apologize for not realizing sooner

Apologize for being such a bad trainer.

Apologize because it’s my entire fault.

After they interrogated us about the events that happened (they went easy on us. Probably because my eyes were still red and I still had tears running down my face), they let us go, calling in the worker, who fearfully ran into the office to avoid us. I couldn’t really blame her. Tensions were high after everything that happened, and everyone was afraid.

When I went to my Mom to give her the magazine, she asked me why I had been crying. I told her that I told what happened to another trainer and, unlike her, that Trainer believed me. She deserved it. It was her fault. She told me I had nothing to worry about. I had just lost Boq, and she just told me to get a replacement.

No one would replace Boq. No one.

Instead, I spent the time waiting for the boat (which had arrived, but wasn’t letting anyone on board for some reason) walking around with Tessa. We traded trainer stories (well, happier ones), introduced our teams to one another and we even sparred a bit in the space reserved for battles.

During one of those sparring matches between our Pokémon (I remember it was Philomena and Glinda), she asked me a question.

“So, whose side are you on?”

I turned my head carefully so I wouldn’t awaken the Beautifly that was on it. I felt bad for Nessarose and I understood her anger. Boq was like her big brother and she watched him die. She had to be honoured with the event of the death of her favourite team member, and she blamed me. She didn’t understand how I could’ve been able to do that to him.

I didn’t bother defending myself.

Anyway, I asked her to explain.

“Well, you know that there’s Team Aqua and Team Magma.” I shivered at the name.

She glared at me. “Okay, that’s getting annoying. That’s the tenth time you’ve done it. Stop it already.”

“It’s a reflex. I can’t help it.”

“Tauros-**** you can’t.”

I pouted.

“Well, as I was saying, you know that those two teams,” she said carefully, eyeing me, “are fighting each other viciously. It’s like a gang war.”

“Yeah?” I said, not seeing where she was getting at.

“So, who do you support? Team Aqua? Or the other one?”

I tilted my head up carefully to look at the ceiling. That was a good question. Though, it was easy to see the answer. Except for the fact that Team Aqua was just as dangerous as the other Team.

“Can I just say neither?”

“Nope. Pick one.”

“… Team Aqua then. Besides the obvious reason, we could still live if we expanded the sea. Pacifidlog’s a prime example for that.”

“Don’t they live on a colony of Corsola?”

“That’s just a myth.”

She looked away from me and stared at her black hiking boots, twirling her black hair in her finger absently. “I actually agree. They haven’t been nearly as destructive as Magma has been. It’s like their more… peaceful, y’know?”

I nodded slowly. Philomena ran over to Tessa, barking something rather quickly.

“Again? You have the smallest bladder in the world!” The Absol fidgeted. “Fine, I’ll take you there. I’ll be right back.”

I watched as they both went to the restroom. Once they were gone, I turned my head to face a Wigglytuff staring at me in the face. I reeled back in surprise, awaking the Beautifly on my head. Thankfully, she just voiced her grumpiness and flew elsewhere, leaving us unharmed.

I sighed, feeling that no matter what I did, she’d always hate me for doing it.

“Tuff.”

I looked at Glinda. She patted me on the shoulder (I was sitting on the floor) and gave me a reassuring smile. “Wigg, tuff tuff wi tuff gly.”

“Yeah, right. She hates me.”

“TuffWiggly!”

“You’re not going to talk to her. The only person who she listens to anymore is Elphaba.”

“Wigglytuff!”

“Elphaba is not the ideal Pokémon to give advice, given that she’s a grumpy mood swinging dragon.”

“Brava.” Elphaba landed next to me, sounding a bit annoyed. Glinda puffed her cheeks.

“What? Yes you are!”

Glinda raised her paw, ready to slap me.

“Fine, fine! She’s not!” She lowered her paw.

“Vibra, vibrava avavi.” Elphaba said.

“Tuff!” Glinda nodded.

“I know she’s in pain, but I don’t blame her. She’s right. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Brava vi, vibrava brava.”

“I understood a few words, but I got kind of lost. Hold on.” I took out the translator I used when I first started my journey out of my jacket pocket. I didn’t use it as much anymore, since I could understand my Pokémon well enough, but I took it everywhere I went, just in case.

Elphaba repeated what she said into the translator.

If you had not killed him, he would have never forgiven you.

“Of course he would’ve.”

Elphaba rolled her eyes and said something into the translator.

You are even more naïve than the ones that raised you, Trainer. Think of it this way: if you were in that much pain, would you want to live? Or would you rather end the pain before you went mad?

I stayed silent as she continued using the translator.

He was dying, Trainer. I did not like Boq. But no warrior deserves to suffer the fate of eternal pain. It was his time to go. Nessa doesn’t realize this, but we’ll talk some sense into her later. Just don’t shut down like you did the first week after he died. It was not your fault Trainer. It was simply his time.

I felt a pair of prickly arms hug me. “Turne,” Fiyero said.

Glinda nodded.

Nessa will come to her senses and forgive you one day. And on that day, we will move on.

I felt my eyes water up, but nodded.

Elphaba did so as well, and nudged the translator towards me, showing that she was done.

I joined everyone except Nessarose into a group hug, when suddenly the intercom voice sprung up again.

The message was the last one I expected.

“We apologize for the inconvenience, but due to Team Aqua hijacking both the docks and the S.S.Violet, all future trips have been cancelled until further notice. Have a nice day, and expand the sea!”

My eyes widened. I let go of everyone and ran towards the door, when Tessa came in.

Pointing a gun.

“Sorry, sweetie. I can let you live, since you’re pro-Aqua, but you can’t really stop the hijacking. So return your Pokémon, and don’t try whistling.” She fired the gun upwards, making me recoil at the sound.

I did as she said, returning all three of my Pokémon. She led me through the docks, into the main port, and I saw that she had taken most people hostage in front of the clock tower. As we walked by, I managed to make out my parents from the running crowd.

Tessa looked at me. “You’re probably wondering why we aren’t chasing them. We’re not allowed to leave our specific targets unsupervised, or else we’ll risk the mission.”

“And that mission is?” I asked.

She made me sit down with the rest of the hostages. I noticed a man, who I recognized as the security officer who interrogated us, walk up to her with a bandanna on his head with the Aqua symbol and whisper in her ear. Tessa grimaced.

“Damn it. Ok, listen up boys and girls!” She yelled. “We have reason to believe that there are Magma members in these docks. If any of you happen to be part of Magma, please step forward. If not, we will kill you all. Is that clear?”

The hostages and I nodded.

“Good. Jasper, since I happen to know that you are not Magma, you will come with me to find any hidden people.” She turned to the grunt next to her. “In an hour, I want to be hearing gunshots. Are we clear?”

He nodded.

Tessa grabbed me and dragged me through the docks again, looking for stray people. I saw the agent that accused her of being Magma lying dead on the stone floor of the docks. To distract myself, I asked her questions.

“So what was the point of dragging me towards the hostages when you were going to take me anyway?”

“I wanted you to see how the situation was. Y’know, how it was impossible to save them, how organized this operation is… Just so you wouldn’t get any ideas to play hero.”

“What happened to being peaceful?”

“We’ve never been peaceful. We just left no witnesses.”

“What’s the mission?”

“I didn’t answer you the first time, I’m not answering it the second time.”

“Why?”

She turned around, smiling. “The sea should be expanded. Land is unnecessary. That is all I need to justify the mission.”

The smile creeped me out. If it weren’t for the fact that Pokéballs make too much noise, I would’ve released Elphaba and get rid of her here.

Suddenly, there was a gunshot noise.

“… That’s one. Let’s see if anyone else volunteers,” she said. I know for a fact that she isn’t planning on letting anyone live unless they pledge allegiance to Aqua.

That gave me an idea.

“What do I have to do to become Aqua?”

“Nice try. But I’m still not telling you the mission.” There went that idea.

“You said you left no witnesses. What changed?” I asked.

“People have been listening to Magma’s message more than they have been listening to Aqua’s. So we’re taking a stand.” The way she said it, so cold, so carelessly, like she wasn’t committing a mass murder, disturbed me a bit.

And then I saw colours.

I grinned.

“You’re grinning,” she noted, pressing the gun against my forehead. She traced circles with it, trying to make me go mad. She got closer. “Why are you grinning?”

I kept on grinning, although I was shaking a bit. The colours landed on her head gently enough so she wouldn’t feel them.

And then Nessarose stabbed her in the eye.

What followed was a violent beat down of Tessa at the hands of my Pokémon and I. Nessarose and Fiyero were by far the most violent, punching and stabbing every single exposed area. Elphaba breathed so much fire that her right arm was scorched black, Glinda punched her in between the legs (I was surprised that it worked, when I thought about it), all while Philomena and Ferdinand desperately tried to defend their trainer. Tessa tried fighting back, but she had lost her gun in the middle of the fight, and by the end of the fight she was lying on the floor helpless.

I kept kicking her till she was on the brink of death. I was getting revenge. I was beating a murderer, just like them. They were no different. If anything, they were colder, crueller. They didn’t want to show mercy, so neither did I.

Eventually, I stopped. I was breathing heavily in anger. Fiyero had his eyes on me, ready to reign me in at any moment. Elphaba and Glinda were fighting of Ferdinand and Philomena.

But then she spoke some way too familiar words.

“Pupth… pupth me outh oth my mithey…”

Put me out of my misery. The words rang in my mind, and I shut down completely. I came to my knees. I… I didn’t know what to do. Those words… they pierced like knives as they made me relive everything in my mind again. I wanted to cry. I just wanted to forget everything, curl up in a ball and just forget everything and just stop trying altogether. She was way too good at psychological torture. Or maybe she was just desperate, not having any second meanings. What did it matter anyway? All that mattered was Boq’s death was replaying again and again and again…

Nessarose fluttered down, landing on my head. She gently crawled over to my left ear (she knew I had problems with the right one) and sweetly, gently whispered something into my ear, snapping me out of the trance those words had put me in.

I understood her loud and clear.

And to this day I have no regrets.

Reviews

bobandbill

This was a rather violent representation of Magma and Aqua compared to the games, haha.

In regards to keeping to the theme, while it certainly involved Hoenn and key parts of it (the setting, the Magma versus Aqua theme), I wasn’t quite convinced that the other plot lines – namely, about Jasper trying to get over the death of his Pokémon – would have changed terribly much in another setting. And the focus never really centred on Hoenn either. While all the Pokémon were from Hoenn as well, again I feel that if they had been exchanged for non-Hoenn Pokémon along with the setting, not much else would have changed.

That particular part of the plot itself was in my opinion decently done. His misery about the event was well portrayed, and I liked the inclusion on what the other Pokémon felt about it. It was also interesting to bring it into the ending with Tessa’s final words reflecting his Pokémon’s and what he had to do as a result. That said, I am not too convinced that mercy-killing her would have really have helped him in get over his misery over his Pokémon, but rather just feel okay about that alone, so I wasn’t quite convinced the main plot thread had been resolved. Perhaps that was intentional though.

I also liked the contrasting personalities and mannerisms each of the Pokémon had, on that note. You did well in making characters out of them. It did seem however that a few of those Pokémon only had brief moments in the fic when you had taken longer in say introducing the Cacturne at the start of the story, but Nessarose didn’t get much time in the story and she was the most affected of the lot by Boq’s death. I feel that it would have been nice to have seen more of her and also of the other Pokémon, although too much emphasis on them may take away from the story. Maybe part of why I say this is because despite the set up on the Cacturne, much of the information introduced there never really came into play in the story, while the fact Nessarose was newer to the team and was blaming Jasper held much greater prominence but yet had much less screentime.

I did find the bit about Jasper’s upbringing and his parents to be a bit hard to swallow. I couldn’t seriously take on the idea that his parents believed the world was great and that he was brought up ‘in an opening in a stone wall for spiritual purposes’. Not only did it come off as really weird and frankly somewhat ridiculous, I don’t think that level of exaggeration was at all necessary for the story or really added much. It also just felt out of place given the gang war going on, hostage situations, the protagonist dealing with the trauma of having to kill his own Pokémon, and so forth. And given their supposed reaction to their son telling them about his Pokémon’s death, it didn’t seem that they had actually been all that spiritual at all, making this seem at odds with each other as well.

The writing in general was nice in the description, and I liked a few lines a fair bit (such as the third-last paragraph, and the exclamation of ‘My best friend is a cactus. Isn’t that depressing.’). There were a number of typos throughout that do need addressing; here’s a few of those.
Men, woman, children, adults, elderly, it looked like the entire region was looking for a way out of this mess.
This read oddly with your choice of commas between the list of types of people and the second part of the sentence. Maybe an ellipsis or hyphen would serve better here.
Fiyero looked me in the eye, as if he were thinking about it, and then decided that it was worth the risk, hitting me in the arm and running off.
Tenses seemed to be confused here. You have a mixture of past (looked, decided) and present (hitting, running) in the one sentence.
The amount of scars I had from his Needle Arms from when I didn’t behaved
behave.
As I walked up towards Fiyero (he was kind enough to wait for me out of guilt), I heard my boat ride being delayed.
Hadn’t this (hearing about the boat being delayed) happed about a page earlier: ‘I heard a voice announcing that my boat was arriving late’?
Anyway, by the time we got to the source,
I feel the ‘Anyway’ isn’t necessary. It gives the narration an informal tone which, again, doesn’t seem to fit the content of it overall.
“I’m not forced to know every word in the world you know.” I huffed.
There were a few instances of this. Instead of a full stop after ‘you know’, you would want to use a comma (or say !). The reason for this is that the sentence doesn’t end there. ‘I huffed’ refers directly to the dialogue, so it is part of the sentence.
”Spoilsport.” She pouted, but kept her mouth shut.
This is another example where going with ‘“Spoilsport,” she pouted, but she...’ reads better to myself.
They ended up attacking eachother and I ended up losing.”
Spacing issue between words.
During one of those sparring matches between our Pokémon (I remember it was Philomena and Glinda),
This was another case of the narration coming out as informal – more like he was talking to me on the street rather than writing it down in a story. Having the narrator somewhat pause the story to say what he recalls the detail to be just interrupts the pacing more so then just writing what the Pokémon were in the first place.
That was a good question. Though, it was easy to see the answer. Except for the fact that Team Aqua was just as dangerous as the other Team.
These thoughts of the narrator/Jasper feel too fragmented. The comma after the slightly odd choice of ‘Though’ seems out of place, and I don’t think the third sentence starts comfortably either. Something like ‘However it was easy to see the answer, ignoring the fact that...’ would be easier to read.
It’s like their more… peaceful, y’know?
they’re (they are).
It was not your fault Trainer.
Given the Pokémon is addressing Jasper by a title like Trainer, a comma should come before it. I did find that the Pokémon calling Jasper by that stock-standard title every time instead of his name to be a bit odd though. He had a clear connection with his Pokémon and used their names, so why not the other way around?
If it weren’t for the fact that Pokéballs make too much noise, I would’ve released Elphaba and get rid of her here.
I think ‘gotten rid of her’ would be better then ‘get rid of’ in this instance.
Elphaba and Glinda were fighting of Ferdinand and Philomena.
fighting off.

The part where he was ‘grinning’ was a bit repetitive with that particular phrase as well – four times in six sentences. Try replacing one or two of those (two in one piece of dialogue is understandable, but not the word appearing right before and after said dialogue as well).

Overall, it was a decent story, but a few things (namely his parents and the protagonist’s background) didn’t sit very well with me, and in the end the story didn’t quite relate to Hoenn as much as I would have liked it to, or as much as other stories have. That said, while I may have ranked this 8[SUP]th[/SUP], I did enjoy the story and feel that with some further editing it’ll be even more enjoyable. Perhaps this is just testament to the fact that the turnout this contest had was pretty strong.

Dragonfree

I like Jasper's narration; you've captured his first-person voice nicely. I also enjoy his relationships with his Pokémon and their relationships with each other, from what we see of them (I see your extended Wicked reference, by the way, though it feels a little random and out of place). You do a pretty good job of making them seem distinct just from short mentions of how they act.

On the other hand, I unfortunately can't buy Jasper's conversation with Tessa at all, which really hurts the overall believability of this story. First, when Tessa asked what he meant about her parents having more sense than his, I assumed he was just going to talk about how they refused to believe they should evacuate until people were starting to die, like he mentioned in the narration near the beginning. Instead, Jasper out of nowhere decides to explain, to this girl he met five minutes ago, a deeply traumatic event where he illegally euthanized his own Pokémon. He even keeps on returning to the story after they've started to veer off on tangents, like he's really determined to tell the whole thing. Why? All she asked was what he means about his parents lacking common sense. How does this question call for telling this story, one he's clearly not really emotionally ready to tell anyone, to a total stranger, especially when it involves him committing a crime? For all he knows she'll go to the police, and the only explanation he gives for trusting her is this bizarre notion of a "Trainer Code" that somebody who has supposedly become cynical and jaded has no business putting blind faith in. Heck, not only does she dodge the question of whether she'll keep the secret, she explicitly thinks the whole idea that trainers can trust each other is nonsense and that there is no such code among trainers. How on earth does he think she's trustworthy?

It would be more understandable if this had been eating away at him and he was just really desperate to tell someone, but you set up the whole story as simply where the conversation happened to go, an answer to a question, rather than as him deciding he wants to confess to a stranger to feel better. That just doesn't match up with how he tells the story, with all that detail that she didn't ask for and that has nothing to do with his parents and their common sense (or lack thereof).

If I were you I'd rethink the setup of this conversation from the ground up. For example, instead of Jasper suddenly deciding to tell Tessa the whole story, make him only hint at it at first (evasively just saying he woke up to the real world when one of his Pokémon died, for instance) and have her probe for more details until she's fished out the entire thing. That moves the responsibility for making him tell it onto her, who might reasonably be curious (especially once he mentions Team Magma were involved). Or something else; point is, the conversation just seems overall contrived as it is - it feels very conspicuously like a backstory delivery device, not like a natural conversation that might happen between these two characters in this situation.

It was also extremely jarring to me how this supposedly sheltered kid, raised to believe everything is good with the world, apparently didn't find it particularly traumatizing to be ambushed, threatened with death and then dragged into a horrifically violent fight. He describes his Beautifly stabbing people in the eye and sucking out their vital fluids with an alarming casualness, and he apparently has enough presence of mind immediately afterwards to simultaneously give a special whistling command and stab somebody holding him at gunpoint in the leg. I'd think he should have been terrified out of his wits this whole time, yet he only starts to seem at all traumatized recounting it when he gets to the part about Boq. It makes sense that would be the worst part, but it's certainly not the first part that would shock someone out of the notion that life is sunshine and rainbows, nor the first that would be nightmarish to recall.

(I also found the bit where he starts speaking to Boq, as if he believes he's there all of a sudden as he speaks, to sound kind of overdone and unbelievable, and I thought the joke about Jasper's vocabulary was more bizarre than funny, but those are more minor points.)

Anyway, enough with that one conversation. I quite like how you build up to the reveal that Tessa is a member of Team Aqua - the part where she asks him which side he's on raises some creeping suspicions in the reader without making it too blindingly obvious, and once she comes out with a gun and starts taking hostages, it's pretty chilling. You could show Jasper's fear better in the narration - he doesn't sound much different when being dragged around with a gun to his head than he does when buying a magazine for his parents - but you still build a nice sense of tension and horror.

But I'm afraid everything about the handling of the end, once Nessarose shows up to save Jasper from Tessa, rubs me absolutely the wrong way. The way you impassively list who did what to her actually manages to be more unpleasant than a more detailed, in-the-moment description: while the latter could have just been a natural continuation of what's happening, the actual scene consciously 'zooms out' of the action only to detail the beatdown anyway, like a film that cuts away from a gruesome murder only to graphically describe it in voiceover instead. It makes it feel like you're unnecessarily reveling in extreme violence just because, or just to make it darker and edgier, rather than because it serves the story you're telling.

Then her request for a mercy kill is wordy to the point of coming off as grotesquely comical - if her teeth are broken or her tongue swollen enough to warrant that kind of phonetic spelling, why would she prolong her pain by spitting out all eight syllables of "Put me out of my misery" instead of just "Kill me"? If she was deliberately repeating the exact quote Boq said (though Jasper's retelling of the incident doesn't actually indicate he used that exact quote), then why was Boq so unnecessarily wordy? The very fact I can't tell whether she actually was deliberately quoting Boq also bothers me; the lack of any indication of how she says this line means I can't even speculate on whether she's actually supposed to be begging or if he's right that she's mocking him, and that seems to me like a pretty significant question with major moral implications for what happens next.

Even more disturbingly, Jasper's POV shows no sign of any of the kinds of emotions I'd expect from somebody in his situation. He just gives an impassive summary of the "violent beatdown" like he doesn't particularly care. You say later he was angry, but it doesn't feel like he was angry; the description of him participating in brutally beating a girl within an inch of her life feels cold, calculated, matter-of-factly. Somebody lashing out in terror and fury and hatred after being betrayed by someone he thought he trusted does not mentally note down exactly what everyone else is doing, muse on their surprise that hitting a woman between the legs is effective, or notice his victim's Pokémon's despair in passing. The end result is that he comes off as a sadistic, unfeeling monster; I'm horrified and repulsed by him. If this is what you intended, good job on that, but most of the fic doesn't sound like you did.

The ending could be a lot clearer. My best guess is that Nessarose told him to kill Tessa and believes he was right to euthanize Boq now - that seems to fit best with Jasper's reaction and the overall character arc - but why? What changed her mind? And that would indicate he considers killing Tessa an act of mercy (after all, that seems to follow if killing Boq was), but the narration doesn't sound like Jasper is remotely inclined to be merciful towards her - he goes from brutally beating her to thinking she's psychologically torturing him to (I'm assuming) putting her out of her misery, without anything that looks like a shift in his perceptions. I could be interpreting what Nessarose said the wrong way, of course - maybe it was something like "It was right to put Boq out of his misery, so I forgive you, but she doesn't deserve mercy" and the ending was Jasper standing up and leaving her there - but in that case it really needs to be made more obvious, because it's not by any means straightforward enough to be automatically implied. I get that you wanted to go for an ambiguous ending, but precisely what happened here feels important enough to the overall implications of the story that I think the ambiguity is ultimately just frustratingly vague.

Either way, though, the end is screamingly unresolved: isn't there a hostage situation going on? Wasn't Team Aqua murdering people? Did they not notice one of their members being brutally beaten somewhere on the dock? It doesn't sound like they went very far, and I would presume she made some sounds during that violent mauling. I mean, sure, Jasper got his revenge on Tessa and apparently came to some sort of personal resolution regarding Boq's death, but really, who cares about that? People are dying! This is not a satisfying cut-off point; it feels like you just forgot about the wider context of what's happening here.

Ultimately, I'm not sure what you were actually trying to do with this story. More than anything else, it feels like it's meant to be about Jasper overcoming his trauma and making peace with Nessarose; if that's the case, the fact he comes off as an unfeeling monster is a problem, and you should try to do something about that. Give him more relateable emotions regarding the whole Tessa thing and make it clearer that he takes mercy on her at the end (or whatever). Or then again, maybe this is the story of an unfeeling monster, of a boy who once lost his Pokémon and his last sympathetic human feelings with it; maybe this is meant to be Jasper crossing the moral event horizon. But then the ending could do with making that more obvious. And in any case, you should either add more resolution at the end or change the setup so that it doesn't as alarmingly call for more resolution.

Finally, this was also marred by quite a few typos and errors of various kinds that could have been taken care of with better proofreading.

So all in all, you write pretty good first person and your characters have potential, but I feel this particular story falls apart in the contrived way you set up the backstory and the disturbing, inconclusive and unsatisfying ending.

Negrek

This is one story where I think the rule of "show, don't tell" really comes to the fore. You set up a very dramatic, very emotional scene where the main character is attacked by Team Magma and one of his pokémon ultimately dies. That's good stuff! You could imagine that being the pivotal chapter of a novel or a big, memorable scene in a movie. Unfortunately, rather than writing that scene out and letting us see it, you have the main character recap it in the narration, and that choice ultimately ends up knocking a great big hole right though the heart of your story.

The thing is, for this piece to play off well, it really requires that we empathize with the protagonist. We have to be able to understand his point of view and, even if we don't agree with his decision, be able to viscerally feel why he would make that call (and have no regrets!). The best way to do that is to take us through the same things the protagonist has been through, to allow us to experience, even secondhand, those parts of his life that deeply affected him. This means actually letting those important moments play out "onscreen," in the moment, rather than recapping them after the fact the way you do here.

There are a lot of relationships that are important to how this story plays out--the relationship between Nessarose and Boq, the relationship between the protagonist and his various pokémon, and his relationship to the Aqua grunt. Aside from the last one, though, we get little to no actual evidence of them in the actual text of the story. We get told that Nessarose cared for Boq, was devastated by his death, and resented her trainer as a result of it, but we never see any of that. That the protagonist has been badly affected by his experience with the Magma grunts is shown a little better, from how desperate he is to relate his story and how much it shakes him up to think about the incident. Nevertheless, how much more acutely would readers feel for him if they actually saw him forced to deal with that Team Magma encounter?

Ultimately you're trying to get the reader to feel for these characters, but with the story as it is now some of the pokémon exist more or less in name only; most of them do very little for the narrative, even Nessarose, who is the third most important character in the entire story and supposedly one of the worst affected by Boq's death. Without that empathy, while I can understand the logic behind the protagonist's actions, it doesn't really give me that visceral, gut-level accordance with the character. I mean, it's unquestionably awful to beat someone to death--to kill someone in general--even if they're a killer themselves or threatened to kill you; I think your goal, ultimately, is to have readers recognize this, but also really appreciate the sort of twisted way in which it makes sense for the protagonist to do this. This simply isn't as effective if you can't get them to appreciate him as a person.

It doesn't help that you kind of set the protagonist up as a jerk in other respects as well, what with his constant digs at his family for being hermits or whatever. Again, it makes sense that he's stressed, and his parents clearly don't understand what his pokémon mean to him and what he went through, but putting such a large focus on their incompetence makes the protagonist come across as a whiny brat more than anything. The comedic tone you have going on at the beginning of the story in particular and a little bit in later parts as well is kind of jarring, too. Humor can mix with dark, violent themes, and indeed the contrast can be very powerful, but the way the two were combined in this story made the humor feel out of place more than anything. One moment a joke about the absol needing to go to the bathroom, the next moment people getting brutally murdered... it just made the humor bits feel a bit wince-worthy to me.

In the end I think you had a workable story idea here, but unfortunately you kind of shot yourself in the foot in the way you chose to present it. This story really turns on the relationship between the reader and the protagonist, and unfortunately it just doesn't work for me as it is.
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
7th place: "Paradise" by Subzero Dragon and Shurtugal

Scoring
bobandbill: 6th place (30 points)
Dragonfree: 7th place (20 points)
Negrek: 6th place (30 points)
Phoenixsong: 8th place (10 points)
Total: 70 points

Forty years ago, the world was a different place. A long period of peace was enforced by me, the Great Dragon, Rayquaza.

However, there was a time when Hoenn was nearly annihilated; a time when humans dared to upset the cosmic balance. This was the prelude to a well-known legend that would repeat four decades later. To think it all started with one human's arrogance... it feels obvious looking back on it.

Before then, no human had dared scale my palace. No one even thought of the ancient Legend, and that was the way it should have stayed. Let me retell the tale, so that its lesson may never be forgotten...​

-------------​

At last, what I had been waiting for was right in front of me. I ascended the last of the stairs, eagerly awaiting what I knew was at the peak of the Sky Pillar. It would finally be mine, thanks to yours-truly of course.

All that remained between me and my new domain was a door. One great, final door. Its silver surface was emblazoned with an engraved mural depicting the legend I knew by heart. The Great Dragon, Rayquaza, hovered above a desolate land as great storm-gales arced from his body and smote the unworthy residents in his wake. His mighty head was upturned, snubbing the wasted land below and abandoning it to its fate. Instead, his gaze was fixed on a floating continent, verdant and rich with life. Rayquaza's head was leaning towards the continent, submitting himself before the person he gazed upon.

That person, that woman, would soon be me. I would be the one to rule Paradise. As queen, I would cleanse the land like a soon-to be-goddess should.

"It took long enough." I ignored the familiar voice from behind me, knowing that it belonged to my so-called commander, Kyler. I knew he had been growing impatient with me, but I didn't care. I was Rayquaza's chosen disciple after all. Even the lord of Team Aerial could do nothing without me.

Team Aerial... I clench my teeth every time I think of those idiots. Their foolish dogma that the Great Dragon, Rayquaza, was the key to ruling the world— bah! What nonsense. The only reason I even put up with that fool of a commander was so I could fulfill the legend. Nothing would matter once I've acquired Paradise for myself. It was my turn to rule.

"Stuff it, Ky." I smirked over my shoulder at the countenance of a rather annoyed Kyler. "I'm the only one who can open this door."

The man's right eye twitched, but his scowl remained. "Just open the door, Natalie." His cold tone failed to mask his ire at having to play second-Nanab to me. Arceus, it felt good to put him in his place for a change. He'd been stepping on me for too damn long. It was my turn to be on top. That bastard would never hurt me or anyone else again.

Because he'd be the first sinner to die.

I reached my hands out towards the door. Just as I knew they would, the doors swung open, as if welcoming me into Paradise itself. Just one final staircase remained.

"Finally!" Kyler shoved me aside and rushed up the stairs ahead of me. "It's mine! Rayquaza shall choose me! Thanks, Natalie! I'll remember you when I'm king!"

That backstabbing little—! Ah, I should have known he'd do that...

Reviews

bobandbill

A co-written entry is always an ambitious task, I feel. Overall I think this came out well, bar a few complaints I have with the execution and ending. As for the prompt, this of course fitted it to a T – after all, it did involve Rayquaza and the Sky Pillar, although a few changes along with a different legendary Pokémon with a key item wouldn’t have been too big a change to the general story’s plot, I feel (but on the flip side, the Ralts line being used as the protagonist’s key Pokémon again helps the fitting of the prompt theme). I liked the deviations from canon representations of the world, namely in having a singular Team Aerial, and I also rather enjoyed how Rio the Ralts (and later Gardevoir) came out. I could believe the bond with his trainer, and how he acted seemed fairly realistic too (including the ending in particular). The one point where I feel otherwise is that he had a vision about his trainer’s death the day before, and that perhaps he should have put more into his appeal for her to not go (like actually managing to tell her what would happen). Him being a Psychic type I think would have been a good reason to pay more attention to him, and also allow a way for him to better convey his thoughts than just speaking.

The battles were entertaining – well described and full of action, and with the interesting dynamic of Pokémon not only targeting the trainers (I also btw liked the touch of Breloom being uncertain about doing so) but trainers fighting as well with aura powers. However, aura powers specifically allowing for fighting didn’t seem to be smoothly introduced into the story. It hadn’t come into play in the battle by the time it was first chronologically introduced after the tube experiment, but with the indication that she had those powers as a kid. This made the fact that she had such powers and particularly knew how to fight with them already surprising to me. Admittedly, it is mentioned she had ‘high aura readings’ shortly before the experiment, but there’s no indication that she had been using aura to try and get out, but just tried punching and kicking. It seems odd to me that she hadn’t tried using any aura powers on it before, so maybe even a passing indication of it before would help.

Details thrown in like:
Did I mention that adrenaline-boosted aura temporarily increases the individuals muscle mass?
seemed oddly down as well. Who was she addressing? It seemed like an odd fourth-wall breakage given nothing quite as direct is said besides the repetition of the above shortly afterward. On that note, this sounded rather confusing – how does adrenaline-boosted aura increase the muscle mass? Granted, this is the Pokémon world, but this sounds very odd to me. (Also – individual’s muscle mass, I believe.)

But yes, in general fighting with aura powers was a neat added dynamic. They were well described for the most part; maybe a bit less telling at times would have been useful though. A few more reactions from Pokémon (I felt the Galie defeating Flygon in a couple short sentences could have been slightly expanded upon) and some more description in the parts where Natalie doubted whether Rayquaza was going to obey her or not would have helped too. In those parts we were basically told ‘This is impossible/All wrong’, but I didn’t really feel that she was worried without any description of those feelings or actions of hers beyond looking ‘with abject horror’ to emphasis them. This probably was impacted by the format of jumping between the present and past events throughout, but otherwise I liked that format and felt it was a good choice for telling the story).

Besides those parts, there was only one other complaint I had with description, and that’s to do with Kyler. Too many times there was a comment regarding his glare or face – ‘glare was enough to make little kids cry’, ‘expression was like a Mightyena’, ‘The look he shot me...’, ‘Face still red with rage, ‘, ‘The shocked look on Kyler's face was priceless!’, for instance seems too much to me. On the flip side, details like how Rayquaza smelled with its tongue was a nice touch. (In retrospect, this line I just wrote out of context is weird.)

I think it would have made more sense if Rio could have communicated with telepathy or not just wait for spoken commands before attacking himself, and indeed in understanding why Natalie was sad when Kyler fell – the fact he had to be told that he had the green orb seemed a bit odd to me for a telepathic Pokémon.
The ending was neat in that it turned out that she had been wrong, and the price she paid for assuming she was the divine one and all, but when she realised the meaning behind her dream, immediately I thought ‘so it was a warning? Rereading the dream scene with Rayquaza I don’t feel convinced that I would blame her for failing to interpret it as a warning, and I feel that really the Great Dragon wouldn’t have to have told the tale if he had been better at communicating (why not speak in the dream, or be less vague?) Maybe this is intentional, but I can’t say I really felt Rayquaza was blameless and given he was telling this tale to say why people shouldn’t come up his tower... In other words, it may be worth considering trying to find a better balance between a dream that can be misinterpreted, and one that could still be decently clearer in trying to give a warning.

There were some small errors here and there, or places where I felt a rewording or minor change could be considered. But besides that it was generally clean spelling/grammar wise.
It would finally be mine, thanks to yours-truly of course
I wonder if that hyphen really is necessary? Consider taking it out.
The Great Dragon was angry...but why?
Have an extra space after the ellipsis.
I glared at the Alakazam standing next to her (perhaps if I looked at it hard enough, it'd shatter into a million tiny pieces like my test tube).
I think this would sound better as two sentences without the brackets. The latter just make it sound like a tacked-on thought by her (which come to think of it is odd if Rayquaza is telling the tale too). E.g. ‘...next to her. Perhaps if I looked...’
He'd evolved since then and he was now a Gardevoir.
I feel it sounds better as ‘He had evolved’, and you could probably skip the second ‘he’ (as we already established he’s the subject in question).
"You can't trust them!" He snarled.
That ‘he’ should be uncapitalised. Same goes for:
"You first!" He growled, drawing another Pokéball.
Rio and I finally collected the eight GYM badges of Hoenn,
’GYM badges’ seems an odd choice of capitalisation – why not just Gym or gym badges?
The Glalie growled, firing a stream of super-chilled snow at Flygon.

"Damn!" I swore, recalling my fainted Flygon as she fell.
I already mentioned this, but I just wish to point out that this section felt low on description. We don’t really see how the move is performed in detail, what the attack feels like (just that it is super-chilled), and all we see from Flygon is that she fell. Spice it up a bit, I suggest.
"I don't have an answer, Rio...but we have to do something!"
Another place where you ought to have a space after the ellipsis.
How could such a peaceful being be, in fact, such a violent monster?
Why does she think that? And by that, I mean how could she think it a peaceful being? She knew that it had great power from the dream and was worried about it earlier. I guess it hadn’t attacked them yet, but it still seemed a rather odd statement by Natalie given she wants to use him to take over Hoenn.
Such utter fury! Something I did was the cause.
Similarly here; when I read this my first thought was ‘something?’. I would have thought that it was obvious what the cause was, so there is no need to allude to it as ‘something’.

Overall, it was an entertaining tale. Some issues here and there did make it feel more disjointed than I would have liked all up however, but addressing those would really benefit. Well done on the story and keeping it right at the word limit!

Dragonfree

Your opening is really nice (the first proper scene, that is, not the bolded intro). You start in the middle of the action, show us the main character and what she's doing here, demonstrate her breathtaking arrogance and conviction that she's the Chosen One, and tell us she's been working with an evil team to do this - it's a great hook, establishing both the plot, the protagonist and a very tangible sense that things are just about to go horribly, horribly wrong, all within the first page of the story proper.

Unfortunately, though, I didn't end up enjoying this as much as the opening made me hope. First, I have to say I just don't think the flashbacks are contributing much here. One of the cool things about your opening was how it set up the plot: in the space of one short scene, you established the situation and conflict and made me interested in what was about to happen. Natalie absolutely believes she's chosen by Rayquaza; she's been working with Team Aerial, who want to use her to gain control of Rayquaza, but she's only using them to get there and plans to betray them as soon as possible; Kyler is jealous of her and wants to be Rayquaza's chosen king instead; it's all there. But then you go on to repeatedly interrupt the main story, the one you actually got me interested in, to show me flashbacks that are mostly just reestablishing the same stuff the opening told us. Sure, we learn more details, but those details largely don't matter, I don't think knowing most of them actually adds anything, and the few things that are important would usually be trivially easy to establish in the opening scene, or fit in later, such as the fact her powers come from the Green Orb. The actual vision may warrant a full flashback because of its importance for Natalie's present motivation, but in all honesty I don't think any of the other flashbacks are doing much for the story. And it's always a danger sign if your story spends a lot of time on things that don't actually matter, especially in a short story where things should be as tight as possible.

You might argue that the flashbacks do matter because they set up Natalie's relationship with Rio. And yes, it's true that they set up their relationship; I can tell that you intended it to be pretty central here, and if you just cut out the flashbacks his appearance near the end would indeed be pretty out of nowhere. But in fact, Rio himself is completely irrelevant to the story: everything that happens after he shows up in the present could just as well have happened without him. Sure, he saves her from the Salamence and it's his attack that knocks Kyler off the edge of the tower, but that's merely incidental - you could easily have written the events of the battle slightly differently so that she wouldn't need saving there and some other attack knocked Kyler off the tower, without it impacting the story in any broader context. And that's the last time anything Rio does, or anything that Natalie does because of Rio, actually matters in any way at all. You could cut him out entirely and nothing would change, which is incredibly incongruent with the amount of focus he is given.

When I was first reading this, I thought the point of Rio was going to be that he grounds Natalie - that one way or another, he would crucially convince her she had it all wrong in the end. The bond between them would be integral to her eventually coming around and averting the inevitably terrible consequences of trying to control a legendary Pokémon, directly or indirectly: perhaps once things were starting to turn out different from Natalie's expectations, he would finally persuade her she'd interpreted her vision wrong; perhaps circumstances would eventually force her to choose between Rio and Rayquaza and she would ultimately choose him; perhaps it would be something else. In that sort of story, Rio would be legitimately crucial, and yes, then the flashbacks could even be justified purely as a means of setting up their relationship (though then I'd expect the flashbacks to focus more on that than on the Team Aerial stuff). The sort of story you actually told, where Natalie realizes her folly on her own, is fine too, but like I said, you might as well cut Rio out of it. If you really want a story focused around their bond, the chain of events should hinge on that bond somehow - it can't just be this thing in the background that doesn't impact anything.

Besides the flashbacks and Rio, a large chunk of the story is also spent on the battle with Kyler, which just isn't very interesting when we're in the middle of a legendary confrontation. Natalie attacking Kyler in her conviction that it's his fault Rayquaza is angry, yeah, that's the logical next step in the story, but I'd argue narratively you should have made the battle shorter before the Green Orb is broken, just so we don't start forgetting what we're actually here for. Alternatively, you could just give the battle a better sense of progressing the plot, such as by having it revolve more around Rayquaza; for instance, perhaps Natalie is trying desperately to impress it with her skills, and it just looks at them with more and more distaste while her mind ties itself into knots inventing justifications for it. Another part of it is that the orb breaking just feels rather clumsily set up, because you don't mention that Kyler has the orb or that breaking it will drive Rayquaza insane until it's about to happen. This is another thing you could leverage to make the battle feel more relevant: if Natalie knows Kyler has the Green Orb all along and thinks she must get it from him without breaking it in order to gain Rayquaza's blessing, the stakes are a lot higher and the plot will seem to be moving during the fight. These are all just ideas, of course - it's up to you what you want to do in your story - but I at least thought that the battle in its current form felt like a distraction from the actual plot and diminished the tension you'd set up at the beginning.

I quite liked Natalie as a character throughout all this. You've clearly intentionally set up an extremely arrogant, unlikeable, dangerously delusional protagonist who fully intends to murder everyone she doesn't like once she's queen of the world, and it's fun to watch her fitting everything into her skewed worldview and rationalizing anything that doesn't seem to fit. She's so terribly, humanly wrong that I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her, and that's a good thing (when intentionally done, anyway): it means that I care and am invested in the character.

But exactly because I quite liked how fanatically delusional she was, I was pretty dismayed when, after the Green Orb broke, Natalie just abruptly realized her delusions of grandeur were wrong for no good reason. Her primary character trait is being completely wrapped up in a narcissistic conviction that she's destined to be a queen! After managing to hold on to that conviction throughout years of arguing it with her skeptical Gardevoir, all it takes to convince her she's wrong is... this? Rayquaza is going berserk, therefore this is the image she saw in her vision, therefore the vision was a warning, therefore she's brought about the apocalypse? None of this line of logic makes any sense. She says she recognizes "all this violence and devastation", but the orb has only just been broken; Rayquaza hasn't actually destroyed anything yet as far as I can tell, much less turned the ground below into a living Hell. And it certainly wasn't going berserk in her vision (in fact, she describes it as a creature of perfect benevolence there), so exactly what about the current situation is reminding her of the vision at all? Even if it were exactly what she saw in her vision, how would that indicate the vision was a warning - wouldn't it just indicate this is the moment she's been waiting for, when Rayquaza will submit to her will?

Even if it did make perfect sense, though, the sudden revelation still feels too easy, unrealistic and simply out of character, coming from Natalie. Only just earlier, she saw Rayquaza glaring at her and decided it was Kyler's fault; what makes her suddenly so willing to believe she's been wrong all along that she'll make several logical leaps to get there? It should take a lot to convince her she was wrong. Judging from her previous characterization, she ought to be fighting tooth and nail to deny it even when it's staring her in the face, until it's absolutely impossible to rationalize it anymore. And it's not like you don't have a perfect moment where it does make sense it would be impossible to rationalize it anymore - after all, only shortly after this, Rayquaza calls her an insect and explicitly tells her the vision was supposed to be a warning not to come there.

In fact, you write the bit where Rayquaza tells her it was a warning like Natalie didn't conclude this independently a couple of pages ago, which is pretty bizarre. There is no sign that she tried to deny it at all when she realized it - she just decided she needed to focus and didn't have time to wallow in self-pity - but then she's completely dumbfounded when Rayquaza says the same thing a few minutes later. This would all make more sense if you just removed the earlier bit where she realized she was wrong entirely.

Even if you did, however, I think Natalie should visibly struggle a lot more to accept this, when she's passionately believed she's the Chosen One since she was a child. This is probably more to do with my next issue, though, which is that I don't think you're portraying Natalie's emotions very effectively a lot of the time.

The first flashback scene has a line that goes, "In all honesty, I didn't think we'd be okay. My parents were murdered before my eyes just hours ago." I found it extremely jarring; she says that so casually, in such a throwaway manner, that it sounds almost like you're trying to show the reader that she didn't really care about her parents at all. Seeing as the rest of the story doesn't sound like that's the case, I'm assuming that's not the intended effect. Many of the details you write into this scene do show that she's shocked and scared, which is good - you clearly try to show and not just tell - but her actual narration only sounds vaguely irritated half of the time, and as a result, it's hard to really, properly feel her emotions. Just look at her lack of reaction when the Team Aerial woman tells her her parents aren't dead (just "Dang it! She's bluffing - isn't she?"): even if she's very sure she saw them die, shouldn't some irrational part of her desperately want to believe it? Shouldn't she be thinking back to what she saw, trying to imagine if they could somehow have actually survived? Shouldn't we see her agonizing over whether she should resist Team Aerial (and thus possibly get her parents killed for real, on the off-chance the woman is telling the truth) before she goes on to do it? "Dang it! She's bluffing - isn't she?" is how you'd react to a bold move in a friendly poker game, not to being threatened with the lives of your parents.

The next few flashbacks only make her sound less like a scared child whose parents have just been murdered. Soon she's breezily inventing epithets for her captors, mentally mocking them and describing everything in the most casual terms possible:

I didn't have much time to be surprised for long; Scumbag and Scumbag #2 diverted their attention from Rio and onto me. Which was fine by mua, 'cuz I was about to kick some scumbag buttocks. This little girlie was pissed, let me tell you!

And yes, this is partly justified because she's just received a boatload of power from the Green Orb and it pumped her full of adrenalin, but then - right after she declares that she feels like a queen - we get this:

"Rio! Are you OK?" I went over and picked up my Ralts, cradling him against my chest. My vision had reverted back to normal naturally, thank Arceus for that — I was too scared to assess him with my aura abilities. All I could do was hope he wasn't dead.

Suddenly we're supposed to believe Natalie is scared, and presumably is supposed to have been scared the whole time since Rio was hurt, and I'm just not buying it. A person who is too scared to use her aura abilities does not talk about how awesomely like a queen she feels. The preceding scene does a great job of making her sound arrogant, hyperconfident and high on power, but if she was actually supposed to be terrified for Rio's life, we clearly have a problem.

That's kind of a running theme, I feel - you do her narcissism and arrogance well, which is good since those are some of her most prominent traits, but her other emotions are a lot more hit and miss. Natalie is shocked and horrified when Kyler apparently falls off the tower, but then seconds later when he lets go, she's so desperate for him to die that she doesn't want to tell Rio to save him even though not doing so will send Rayquaza into a rage. It just doesn't seem consistent. Then she's "overwhelmed by guilt" as she realizes she's brought about the end of the world, only to just think she needs to focus and seemingly completely forget about it. That guilt really doesn't seem very overwhelming if she can push it out of her mind so easily. And then, most importantly, when Rayquaza reveals definitively that it was trying to warn her away, she's "at a total loss for words" for a paragraph and then pretty much goes straight to "Oh, well, guess I was wrong and actually the stuff I did was kind of awful and my attitude was terrible and now I have to die, maybe this is karmic justice." This should not be stuff that just comes to her the moment she realizes she misinterpreted her vision: even when they realize they've made a mistake, people still tend to try to cast their own actions in the best possible light, especially if they're people like Natalie who have spent years upon years being passionately convinced they were doing the right thing. If the whole world comes crashing down on her and she can't justify anything she did anymore, show her mind grasping and failing and stumbling; don't just cut to "Guess I was an awful person." This should be an incredibly intense, emotionally devastating moment - just try to imagine you've been horribly, disastrously wrong about everything you've worked for since childhood - and you let it pass in a paragraph of generic shock. It's extremely anticlimactic after all the setup of her conviction.

Meanwhile, I can't make any sense of Rayquaza's actions. Apparently Natalie's vision looked just like the ancient scrolls with the prophecy, and both Natalie and Team Aerial independently came to the conclusion that it looks like Rayquaza is submitting to the human, so clearly that's not a particularly far-fetched way to interpret it. What on earth possessed Rayquaza to think this was a good way to warn people? Still more damningly, after Team Aerial had already misinterpreted the scrolls, why did Rayquaza then show that exact same scene to Natalie? Did it not occur to Rayquaza to think, Hey, these humans didn't understand my warning at all; maybe I should be a bit more explicit with this girl they're grooming to help them? (I'm assuming here that Rayquaza actively and specifically gave her that vision, which seems to be the case, judging from the fact it recognizes her specifically and says, "I warned you not to come here.") And given both Team Aerial and Natalie only climbed Sky Pillar in the first place because of Rayquaza's "warning" making them think they should, none of this would have happened if Rayquaza had just left things alone and not warned anyone about anything. All in all, from Rayquaza's point of view this reads like a Greek tragedy where someone's foolish efforts to avert a terrible prophecy are precisely what makes it come true, not like something Rayquaza would tell humans to teach them a lesson as indicated by the framing device. Although yes, Team Aerial and Natalie were definitely foolish and arrogant, the biggest takeaway from the story is that Rayquaza is terrible at communication and ultimately brought all this on itself, which I doubt is what you intended.

I'm not sure exactly what to make of the weirdly sexual way Natalie talks about Rayquaza (its breath is "arousing", its eyes were "alluring", it has "rippling muscles", she's convinced it's male because of its "musk and dominance"). On the one hand it kind of fits with the way she's fetishized the entire idea of being Rayquaza's Chosen One and adds an extra layer of lunacy to it, and if that's what you were going for it works pretty well, but on the other hand I'm not positive it's actually intentional, and if it's not you should definitely look into that, because people having sexual feelings towards Pokémon tends to be considerably on the awkward side of things you can unintentionally imply in your Pokémon fanfiction.

The writing was mostly fine, aside from the aforementioned issues with communicating emotion through the narration. I felt you used rather too many exclamation marks, though. They can be okay in first person, but they should be used rather sparingly; past a certain point they just make it sound like the narrator is trying to convince us things are more exciting and dramatic than they are. I also found some of your real-world phrases with Pokémon names or concepts replacing particular words, like "the world is your Cloyster", kind of contrived - you use a noticeably unusual amount of these, to the point where I start to get the feeling you were going out of your way to find phrases you could do this with, which just makes it feel unnatural.

So, in summary, you had a nice setup, and I was quite intrigued by Natalie's characterization as someone wrongly convinced she's the Chosen One, but I felt her ultimate realization was rushed, the emotional points were rather hit-and-miss, Rayquaza's actions seem dictated by the plot rather than by what it makes sense for Rayquaza to do, and the story wastes a lot of time on things that end up not mattering. Ultimately I'm afraid I was just rather disappointed in where this story went after the opening scene - but there was a lot of potential here, and it could be quite good if tightened up.

Negrek

I was wondering whether we'd see any "third team" stories for this contest, since with both Kyogre and Groudon getting a terrorist cell devoted to their capture it seems natural that there should be a faction interested in Rayquaza, too. Team Aerial wasn't really the focus of this story, but it was interesting to see how you thought the dragon's mythology could be used to attract a gang dedicated to its capture.

For the most part your mechanics are pretty clean, but you have some trouble staying in past tense near the beginning of the story, and in the "past" segements especially. For example, you start "Rio nudged me with his paw, his brilliant blue eyes reflecting the same fear and hurt I know must be in mine" in past tense before slipping into present, and "Then again, aura usually takes the wind right out of me, but I hadn't even broken a sweat yet" shows the opposite pattern. In addition to isolated sentences like those, you really can't seem to decide what tense you want to use for the main characters' thoughts in that section (e.g. "Oh, Arceus. Am I going to die?").

It also looks like you're using a thesaurus for some of your vocabulary or reaching for words you don't actually know the meaning of in order to dress your prose up a bit, which leads to some amusing goofs here and there. For example, towards the end there, I'm pretty sure Rayquaza's yelling was getting more furious--almost the opposite of "furtive," which is what you use instead. Even when you don't outright misuse your vocabulary, it has a tendency to distract rather than clarify; it's a weird clash in tone when you're regularly throwing around words like "enrapturing" and "bravado" (I don't think you meant bravado there either, for what it's worth) alongside characters who scream "I HATE YOU!" in all caps. The more unusual words stick out, especially when there are a lot of them in a relatively small space, and they often feel just a slight bit off. They also contribute to the of melodrama about the piece, which I'll get into more later.

Finally, you have a little trouble with dialogue punctuation. In particular, you should only be using a comma at the end of a piece of dialogue if the narration that follows is a speech tag, like "he said" or "she howled," that can't stand alone as a sentence. If the narration isn't decribing how the dialogue is being said, you end the dialogue in a period. For example, here:

"I'm sorry," I gently patted his hair.

"I gently patted his hair" doesn't have anything to do with how "I'm sorry" is being said. It's its own sentence, not a speech tag. The correct form would be this:

"I'm sorry." I gently patted his hair.

The same issue arises twice here:

"Rio," I put a hand on his shoulder, unclasping a cloak from my shoulders, "This is for you."

Again, "I put a hand on his shoulder, unclasping a cloak from my shoulders" has nothing to do with the dialogue at all. The correct form is:

"Rio." I put a hand on his shoulder, unclasping a cloak from my shoulders. "This is for you."

Alternatively, if you wanted to split "Rio, this is for you" across two pieces of dialogue with narrative in between, you could reword to something like this:

"Rio," I said, putting a hand on his shoulder as I unclasped my cloak, "this is for you."

Now "I said, putting a hand on his shoulder as I unclasped my cloak" is no longer a complete sentence and acts as a dialogue tag. Note that because "this is for you" is a continuation of the dialogue started with "Rio," it is not capitalized.

You also mess up in the opposite direction, either using a period where you ought to use a comma or capitalizing a speech tag as though it were a full sentence, but for the most part you were okay there. All in all you probably want to pay special attention to your dialogue while you're proofreading until you've got the rules down real solid.

All in all, there are a couple of places you want to brush up on your grammar and punctuation, but it wasn't to the point of serious distraction. I would say your use of vocabulary is a little more so, although usually not outright wrong.

There were some small things that bothered me a bit while reading:

- Is there any particular reason you kept putting "gym" in all caps? It's a bit strange-looking.

- Aura sphere seems like an odd choice of attack to have Ky dodge, seeing as one normally can't dodge it.

- I'm not clear on why Rio couldn't nab the green orb from Ky without pulling the guy back up, if saving him was really such a dealbreaker...

I have to admit that I wondered what Rayquaza was doing throughout all the battling. Just hanging out and watching? It was kind of weird for it to drop out of the narrative for around fifteen pages until it was time for it to start rampaging at the end. The whole rampage thing was also a bit strange, since Rayquaza went from apparently berserk and unreasonable to being able to have a rational, if angry, conversation with the main character, after she did nothing but hit it with a couple of attacks. It's one thing if Rayquaza just can't control itself without the Green Orb, but the way things played out in this story, it seemed like it was capable of conscious decision-making even after the orb was destroyed. If that's the case, then it would mean that Rayquaza isn't rampaging around destroying everything because it's out of control, but rather because it's having a big temper tantrum--it's choosing to up and murder basically everyone in the region because the orb got destroyed. The ultimate effect is to paint Rayquaza as incredibly petty and, ultimately, the villain of the story, which I don't think was your intent. After all, his behavior then boils down to, "You woke me up from my nap and broke my shiny thing, so now I demand tribute or else I will go wreak vengeance on all of the people down below who have nothing to do with this situation whatsoever."

I get that you wanted to have the main character come to her realization gradually during that section, and to build up the drama with Rio begging to be taken instead, etc. However, I think that you could have worked towards the same revelation without needing to have Rayquaza directly involved, with the main character realizing that everything's going to be destroyed unless she does something to stop it, Rio not wanting her to risk it, her ultimately dying, etc., with Rayquaza only coming to its senses afterward. Or you might be cool with Rayquaza being a huge dick here. That's fine, it's just that I don't think you were intending for it to come off that way.

All in all, though, I'm afraid what didn't work out for me about this one-shot was the main character. On the one hand, it's nice to see you went with a character with real flaws rather than what you might call a more "traditional" protagonist; and not only do you make her a bit unpleasant, but you also allow her to screw up several times over the course of the narrative, and let those screw-ups have real consequences. Overall, though, I think you were going for a character arc along the lines of, "Scared young girl is captured by criminal organization, becomes bitter and corrupt in the course of being raised by them, and then ultimately recognizes her failings and makes a heroic sacrifice." Pretty archetypal sort of character arc, nothing wrong with it, but the issue is that I don't think it actually came through very well in this story. Specifically, the narrator we see during the "present" section of the story is basically identical to the one we see in the "past."

At one point the main character refers to her past self as a "timid little girl"--but honestly, she never comes across that way to me. She's every bit as smug, violent, and overconfident in that section as she is in the "present." If you had intended for her to come across as timid, I'm afraid it didn't work out for me. At no point was she timid; she was always defiant and acted more irritated by her capture than anything. She got especially angry when Team Aerial hurt Rio, yes, but it wasn't like she'd been cowering before then.

All that is absolutely fine! It's just that the narrative seemed like it was trying to build the main character up as someone with a traumatic past who'd clung to the idea that she's the chosen one, destined for greatness, etc., as a coping mechanism--or at least, that she started out relatively innocuous and morphed into the slightly unhinged, megalomaniacal person she is in the present. I just don't see evidence for that trajectory; her personality in the past reads too similarly to what we have in the present.

At this point I think it honestly would make the most sense to just cut the past segments. Right now they're not really showing character growth, and most of the information they present is already alluded to or outright stated in the "present" segments; shuffle a little more of the vision stuff into that section, and I think you'd have a perfectly tight story about someone power-hungry and consumed by greed who comes to realize her mistakes and does something heoric. Or, of course, you could alter the "past" segments so the narrator actually is scared and traumatized during them! If you made it clear that she was really affected by her parents' near-death, rather than just having her occasionally mention that oh yeah, she's mad about what Team Aerial did to them, or if she genuinely seemed frightened of Team Aerial's goons, even just for a little, it would do more to sell the image of her as being timid and afraid. Either route is perfectly valid; as it is, though, I feel like the story kind of tried to do the second one and didn't quite make it.

Part of this is probably stylistic issues. As I mentioned, I would really have liked to have seen some evidence that the main character was ripped up over what happened to her parents, but as it was, it was just stated once or twice. It's the whole show-don't-tell thing, and it really bit you in this piece, especially in the "past" sections, where you seemed most inclined to outright state what the main character was feeling at any given point. It gets especially jarring when you tell something that doesn't match what's shown (e.g. the whole "I grew from a timid girl" line).

You can try to fix this by avoiding bald statements about what a character's feelings are and considering how those feelings would cause them to act or think. For example, you show quite clearly the main character's contempt for Team Aerial in the way she labels them in her narration (e.g. "scumbag," "notepad witch," etc.), by the way she talks back to them, and by the way she compares herself to them (i.e. she obviously thinks she's superior). There's no need for you to say she has no respect for the team; the readers feel it loud and clear. In fact, any time you do state that for the record, it seems redundant. So consider how you might instead have shown the main character's fear, her concern for her parents, and her concern for Rio, although you did a bit of a better job of that.

To an extent the tendency towards telling, even when you've demonstrated something perfectly clear in the narrative, contributes to the overdramatic tone of the piece. Things just feel the slightest bit over-the-top throughout. Part of it comes from the characters, like Ky, who isn't merely an unpleasant person who wants Rayquaza's power for himself, but is actually a murderous scumbag who would rather die and ensure the main character will fail than let her have what she wants. The rest of Team Aerial is populated by the usual buffoons and evily evil-evil types who feel more like cardboard cutouts than actual people. It's also a bit in the prose, where the bad guys aren't merely bad guys, they're "human fiends," where things aren't merely notable, they're "captivating" or "alluring," and where the events that occur warrant lots! of! exclamation points!

In the end, it just feels like you have a sense of how you want the readers to see the scene and are just working really, really hard to hammer it home. "Look at this guy! He's evil! See how evil he is?" and all that. It's good that you have an actual idea of what you're trying to accomplish with the various characters and scenes, but at the moment I think the artifice is too clear. I think dialing back just a little bit would make the scenario seem more real and, as a result, more effective. Right now the over-the-top tone lends a kind of cartoony air to the story, which I don't think is what you want.

Anyway, that's a lot of negative stuff, but I want to stress that I think the core idea you have here is plenty solid. Right now I think your writing just isn't quite meeting the demands of the story, but it's not bad by any stretch. While there are some areas to improve, I think that you do some things well, too. Overall I think the battle that took up most of the story played out pretty well, and you do a great job of conveying the main character's haughtiness and how delusional she is in her thinking. Perhaps strangely, there's one sentence in particular that I liked, where you describe the blast of moist air that comes off Rayquaza as he uncoils--it's an unusual piece of description that really helps bring home the reality of the moment, in contrast to talking about how piercing his eyes are, how he's majestic, etc. It was just one wonderfully specific line, and it really stuck out to me.

I think this would be a top-half entry in most of the contests I've judged here in the past, but this contest simply had an unusually low number of entries and an unusually high number of excellent pieces. With a bit of clean-up, I think this could be a very nice one-shot.
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
6th place: "Crater Dreams" by InsaneTyranitar

Scoring
bobandbill: 7th place (20 points)
Dragonfree: 5th place (40 points)
Negrek: 7th place (20 points)
Phoenixsong: 5th place (40 points)
Total: 120 points

Crater Dreams

The Sootopolis gym was closing for the day. Workers were leaving for home, and Trainers were heading towards the Pokemon Center for the night. At the Gym's master bedroom, a young man with a white shock in his hair was talking to a young boy with turquoise hair and a white beret.

"Wallace," said the young man. "It's time for a bedtime story."

"But I'm not tired yet! I wanna train my Pokemon some more, Juan!" Wallace replied, his face in a visible pout.

"Now now, Wallace," said Juan. "This story is about your ancestors. The ones who founded this very city."

"...So?" said Wallace, crossing his arms. "They're dead now. Why should I care?"

"Tell you what, if you listen to my story, I'll let you train your Pokemon a bit more."

Wallace glanced warily at Juan. "I suppose..."

"Alright!"

The two sat down.

"Long long ago," said Juan, "On an island far off the coast of the Hoenn mainland, there were two children, one much like you..."

-------

A small island village was winding down for the day as the rays of the setting sun licked the thatched rooftops of its huts, farmers returning to their houses and mothers calling their children inside. One green-haired girl and her young Tropius, however, stayed outside and moved towards the edge of their village.

"Come on, Blanca!" said the girl. "I wanna explore some more!"

The Tropius, who at the time wasn't much taller than the girl, plodded along behind her, giving small, contented "Pi"s.

Suddenly, the girl noticed a turquoise-haired boy sitting beside a small pond, watching a Feebas swimming about.

"Hey, you!" said the girl.

The boy looked up in surprise.

"What kinda Pokemon is that?"

"She's a Feebas!" said the boy. "Her name is Thetis!"

"She's ugly!"

"No she's not!"

"Yuh-huh!"

"Nuh-uh!"

Suddenly they noticed their two Pokemon touching noses and making friendly noises.

""I think they wanna be friends..." said the girl.

The two children paused, staring awkwardly at each other.

"I guess that means we should be friends?" said the boy.

"Well... I suppose so..." Narissa muttered.

"I'm Apollo! What's your name?"

"...Narissa."

"Narissa!" said a voice from the huts. "Time to come in!"

"Gotta go!" said Narissa, running back to the huts with Blanca. "See you!"

"See you!" said Apollo, waving back...

Reviews

bobandbill

I felt that at the base, this was a good tale in tackling how people first came to live in Sootopolis. It fitted the prompt decently, and I don’t see this particular tale applying well to other locations easily either. Why people live in the middle of a hard-to-access place like it is certainly a good curiosity to try and figure out, and I felt that your story was a satisfactory explanation for that.

Overall, it felt like a bit like a thriller movie in its structure – set up of the story, sudden event leading to the relocation of the two protagonists, a couple scenes of the bad guy hunting them down, and following some plot events a final show down and happy ending for the pair who overcame their challenges. And a few lines (e.g. Apollo saying ‘The Absol Paw Tribe’ to end a scene) also contributed to that feeling. The execution of the tale however is not quite there – it didn’t capitalise on the decent structure imo, and so it did read somewhat predictably. Maybe that is partly because I know the people would be successful (after all, the story Juan tells is about his and Wallace’s ancestors so they would have had to survive in the end), which is fail enough. But with certain scenes, such as one at the end with Kyogre saving the day... it just seemed that I knew what would happen in them as soon as they started, or even earlier.

One of the reasons I feel this is the case is that the events ran somewhat smoothly. Taking that Kyogre scene as an example, the lack of the antagonists fighting it, or any struggle against it, was somewhat disappointing. Given the whole story, the final battle ended by Kyogre blasting them out of the cave with a torrent of water, followed by the simple line ‘The villagers all cheered.’, and then a bit more work by Kyogre to convince the tribe members to leave for good, was somewhat anti-climatic and a bit of a let-down. Curb-stomps may be funny, but there was potential for a more thrilling finale.

Part of that can also be helped by using more description and ‘showing’. The writing style was rather simplistic, and while that has its advantages, it was too much so as I felt as we didn’t get enough of a real idea on how people felt during events. There was a lot of ‘this happened, then that happened’ (e.g. ‘The villagers all cheered.’), which doesn’t do their reactions enough justice.

Another notable example of the above for myself was the Altaria scene. I can see why you put it in – it showed why Narissa was scared of Dragon types and hence gave Narissa her own mini-plot and obstacle to overcome, which was a good idea. However, I wasn’t sold or convinced that she was really scared of Dragon types, as she just states that ‘But Dragon Types are scary!’ and a stutter before that to convey that fact. If you played it up more and used more description to make us also feel scared of the Altaria, then this plot point might feel more believable, or at least have more impact. For instance, with ‘she beat the flames out’, going into more detail (e.g. the pain of the fire, and her fear and shock – how else does she react beyond ‘Aaah’ and beating the flames out, for instance?) would have helped. The same goes for later encounters. She does an odd stutter, sometimes thinks ‘not a Dragon type!’, and only at most has her gut wrench. More details that emphasised her fear of Dragon types would have made her overcoming that fear to beat Grima that more impressive, and for that matter more enjoyable to read.

The beginning and ending in framing the main story as a bedtime story by Juan for Wallace was cute, but I did notice that despite Juan’s bribe of letting him train his Pokémon some more Wallace just ended up sleeping after the story anyway. Crafty Juan. =p I’m also glad that it did link into the main story somewhat with the crystal rose, and the very last line of the story as well, but the crystal rose itself felt like a rather convenient item for the story (it did contribute to the feeling I had of the battle ending easily).

I was a bit surprised at the number of the beta readers listed at the end, given at the same time the number of simple errors that got through. Maybe it is unfair of me to comment on this because I don’t know if they saw the final product, or just parts of the story, or just helped with the plot, or something along those lines, but with that many eyes there were still a number of mistakes.
At the Gym's master bedroom, a young man with a white shock in his hair was talking to a young boy with turquoise hair and a white beret.
I am not sure what ‘white shock’ refers to.
an island far off the coast of the Hoenn mainland
There’s an extra space here (between ‘of’ and ‘the’).
A small island village was winding down for the day as the rays of the setting sun licked the thatched rooftops of its huts, farmers returning to their houses and mothers calling their children inside.
This sentence read like a run-on sentence. I would suggest making a new sentence – e.g. ‘...its huts. Farmers were returning to...’.
The Altaria huffed and flied off as Apollo and Blanca ran over.
flew.
We came here from Sinnoh to conquer in the name of our lord, The One Beyond. But we're hardly done yet."
There was a missing quotation mark at the beginning.
He pet the Milotic, who cooed in response.
petted.
"The Absol Paw Tribe." said Apollo.
That full stop should be a comma.
While seven quotes isn’t that many, it’s worth mentioning that these are just those I noticed in the first five pages of the story (for example, there were other examples of the last sort of error, a pair of full stops together, etc).hile I’m not going to mention all of the others, a couple other quotes from afterwards of note:
The two, after much climbing of cliffs, eventually reached a cave entrance, pausing to stare at it a while.
This sentence was also a run-on. I feel it would have been better to split it up into two sentences (or even more) and expand on the description to make the cave entrance appear more mysterious or scary.
In a cold, icy forest a young man paced, a sword held by his side. Away a bit stood another young man, leaning against a tree.
This would count as another example of where better description would have helped. While this turned out to be Grima, the description of ‘young man’ for both people didn’t suggest anything special about him, nor helped me identify who was who for a while. This also would have been an opportunity to build Grima up to something more, and expand on his character.

Overall, it was a good basis for a tale, which used the prompt of Hoenn decently. I feel it just needs some more polishing to really give it more impact, and more description and showing (rather than telling) will go a long way with that. I did like the story overall. Good luck with editing!

Dragonfree

This is a pretty ambitious story - canon backstory, battles against genocidal villains, legendary Pokémon, and character arcs for the main characters, all in under 10,000 words. That's a lot to pull off, and I commend you just for trying. That said, there are some issues with the execution.

First, I get the impression from your villain-POV scenes that you wanted to give Grima and the Absol Paw Tribe some depth rather than just making them flatly evil. However, I don't think you entirely succeed in that, because even in the scenes centered on him and his tribe, Grima doesn't sound like the hero of his own story. You use phrases like "chuckling joylessly" and call his grin "unsettling" - those make him sound unhinged and creepy and therefore less human and sympathetic. His motivation for genocide is simply believing other people are scum that needs to be cleansed, and you don't explore why he feels this way in a way that could allow the reader to understand it. He's happy to see blood spilled, thinks nothing of mowing down innocent people, and generally sounds like a complete monster, not like he sincerely believes this is necessary for the greater good. Even when you reveal his people were exiled for worshipping Giratina, rather than capitalizing on his anger, grief, sense of injustice or desire for revenge, you make him just decide everyone should fear them, another stereotypically villainous motivation that's hard for a normal person to sympathize with.

If you want him to be something of a tragic, three-dimensional villain, then you're going to want to make these sections read more like he really believes he's in the right - write them as if he's the protagonist of the story and we're supposed to root for him. If the eventual residents of Sootopolis currently live where the Absol Paw Tribe used to before they were exiled, for instance, he could view the whole thing as taking back what's theirs - these people stole his tribe's ancestral land and presume to own it, and the mere thought of it makes his blood boil. Or perhaps they live in fear, believing Giratina is becoming restless and might destroy humanity if it isn't pacified immediately with the blood of heretics. Regardless of exactly what his ultimate motivation is, decide exactly what it is that drives him, why he believes his actions are right or necessary, and how he feels about them, and show that consistently in his thoughts and behaviour - he needs to feel like a solid, concrete human being with a real set of sincere beliefs and values behind his actions if we are to buy him as a three-dimensional character.

Not all villains need to be tragic and three-dimensional, though. If all you need in your story is a terrifying threat, then you can have villains who are just genocidal without exploring their reasons, and that may be a better fit for this particular story - but then I'd just cut the villain-POV scenes, because they undermine the sense of looming menace you could otherwise get out of the Absol Paw Tribe.

(Also, is the leader named Grima or Mal? Because you introduce him as Grima but then you suddenly start to call him Mal half of the time. I'm not sure if this is a mistake or if they're both his name one way or another but you just forgot to explain it.)

Secondly, I commend your efforts to show Apollo and Narissa developing throughout the story, having their own fears and insecurities but working to overcome them, and clearly caring a lot for each other. I feel you rely rather too much on spelling out their thoughts to show this, however. Take a line like this one, for instance:

"I... don't know," said Apollo. And I'm rather afraid to find out.

Instead of just having him think "And I'm rather afraid to find out", show us he's afraid to find out: perhaps he hesitates until Narissa drags him in, or he unconvincingly suggests it was probably nothing. In fact, even just the hesitant way you write his dialogue here ("I... don't know") could suffice to tell us he's unsettled - you could probably cut the thought altogether. I feel it's pretty often the case that the lines you write as direct italicized thoughts are either already implied by the narration or dialogue or would be better reworked to convey the same point through the characters' actions, speech or narration. As it is it feels like you're afraid the reader won't understand what the characters are thinking unless you make it explicit, but the best stories trust the reader to be able to read between the lines - you can actually convey a lot more about a character just by describing the way they act and how they see the world and people around them than by directly telling us what they're thinking at every turn. I'd encourage you to check out JX Valentine's entry in this contest and take special note of how she shows the characters' personalities and emotional states indirectly through things like their body language, actions, and how they think and talk about what's going on.

More generally, your narrative POV is somewhat unusual. Although this is clearly third person omniscient, where we can see the thoughts of many different characters, you barely ever actually narrate the characters' thoughts or feelings; you only include actions, descriptions, dialogue and direct thoughts (the italicized ones). If your narrator has access to every character's direct thoughts, then you can also narrate their thoughts indirectly, as in "He was rather afraid to find out" instead of "And I'm rather afraid to find out." Just that doesn't do any more "showing" than the direct thought, obviously, so it wouldn't fix that issue, but even just this kind of rewording here and there could add a bit more variety to your prose and make it somewhat smoother to read - you have a lot of direct thoughts while the rest of the narration is almost completely detached, which makes it feel a bit disjointed.

Thirdly, I think Narissa's fear of dragons could do with being expanded upon more. The inciting incident with the Altaria feels rather rushed as it is, since it's so short, and it doesn't feel very scary, which makes it rather unconvincing that it would cause that lingering fear of Dragon-types we see. If she's stammering at the sight of Dragon-types years later, I'd think something more should have happened than just her clothes being momentarily lit on fire, with the flames easily beaten down: she should probably have gotten hurt, or at least feared for her life for more than a couple of seconds. And actually showing her having some sort of traumatic flashback to the original experience would be more effective at conveying her phobia than just having her think "Not a Dragon-type!", tying in with the above point about overreliance on direct thoughts.

Fourthly, you have Kyogre tell Apollo and Narissa from the start that she will drive the Absol Paw Tribe away if they ever come there, but you still have them engage them in battle first before they think to retreat into the cave to get Kyogre's help. Thus, they risk everyone's lives needlessly - they seem to have just forgotten about Kyogre. When characters just forget about obviously vital information like this, it feels like they're simply holding an idiot ball for the sake of the plot, and the story feels less believable as a result. If you don't want them to go to Kyogre immediately, they should either be unable to get in contact with Kyogre until later, have a reason to only turn to Kyogre as a last resort, or not know beforehand that Kyogre is ready and willing to help them (and then it should be reasonable for them to not have guessed).

Fifth, some of the minor events here are kind of contrived. Apollo and Narissa become friends when their Pokémon start acting friendly, which takes all of five seconds - were Thetis and Blanca just automatically drawn to each other somehow? You could have gotten a cute scene out of this by showing them being curious about each other and starting to interact, but instead Apollo and Narissa just "suddenly" notice their Pokémon are making friendly noises at each other. And when Grima is looking for them, the deus ex machina of a random wild Pokémon happening to make a splash just as Salamence is getting close is awfully convenient; why not have them distract Salamence through their own ingenuity somehow?

All that said, you have some cute character interactions, I enjoy your portrayal of Kyogre as casual, friendly and somewhat motherly rather than serious and dramatic, and the ambitious story with its drama and high-stakes action definitely shines through and keeps the fic interesting even through the rough spots. Although it's hard to compare such an intense, dramatic piece to the slice-of-life that was your Interpretation contest entry, I felt this one was considerably more engaging; the execution may still need more polish, but you're definitely on the right track, especially in how you're clearly striving to show the characters going through emotional situations and overcoming personal struggles.

Negrek

So, the founding of Sootopolis, huh? That's not something I've seen looked at before, I don't think, nor Wallace's family origins.

On the whole I think this works fine as a bedtime story/legend. It's a pretty simple, straightforward plot, but for a story you're going to tell a little kid, that's just fine. However it read to me as being rather fragmented. You've split this story into a series of very short scenes, some of which are only a few sentences long, and this gives the impression of things happening very fast while also lending the narrative a bit of a jumpy quality. It almost feels like a summary more than a story, where you've condensed things down to a series of brief snippets that give snapshots of the overall plot.

Some of these snippets don't really do much to move the story forward, either. In particular I thought the POV shifts were unnecessary. What did the bits from Grima's POV really add to the narrative? Most of them were extremely brief and consisted of Grima being menacing in one way or another. I think what you were trying to do was humanize him a bit, make him a more nuanced villain, but spending a little time with him when he's just doing generic-evil things like being determined to hunt down the chieftan's son don't do a lot for the story. The flashback to how the Absol Paw Clan got started was certainly the most interesting of the bunch and did the most to give insight into Grima's character... but you really need more than that to properly flesh him out as a person. Similarly, the part where he's talking about his plan does impart some useful information about what the Absol Paw Clan is, but it comes across as very "As You Know, Bob"-ish ("We are the Absol Paw Clan! In case you guys hadn't figured that out yet."), and all that information could have easily been introduced by the narrative in a different way--Kyogre pretty much covers it when she hears about Narissa and Apollo's plight, for example. And we certainly don't need to tune in to see that yes, Grima's still following them, or yes, he's found them: he can just show up again in the main narrative, and readers will be able to figure that out.

Also, Narissa's little subplot about getting over her fear of dragon pokémon seemed unnecessary. I think having her work through her fears and become prepared to lead their clan is definitely a good thing, and a nice character arc--she's pretty much the only person who visibly grows over the course of the story--but the fact that it's dragons specifically seems a little odd. Like, you're faced with this vicious, powerful pokémon, and you're primarily worried about it just because of its typing? All the cases we see where Narissa's scared are ones where she's perfectly justified in being scared for reasons other than the fact that she's being confronted by a dragon, so I think you could do as well just having her learn to face down scary situations in general rather than overcome her fear of dragons specifically. This would mean you could also remove the little scene where she gets on the altaria's bad side, which is one of those super-brief things that doesn't feel like it does a whole lot for the story.

Also, it's unfortunate that Narissa is the only one to get a real character arc, here. Apollo is, as far as I can tell, basically the same at the end of the story as he was at the beginning, despite having gone through quite a bit of trauma in the interim. Overall he really just seems to be there to be the love interest. That's something you usually see in female characters, but while it's nice to see you turn that around here, it still isn't good that one of your major characters acts more like a set piece than anything else. Yes, he does important things plot-wise (prevents Narissa from being killed that one time by knocking her over, say), but he isn't a fully-realized character in and of himself, which is a shame--it means that you're kind of wasting space with him where you could be presenting the reader with someone more dynamic and interesting, someone who has real relevance to the story.

One final word on structure before I move on: you certainly did a better job of introducing conflict in this story than you did in your previous entry (and more on that later), but I think you still aren't getting all you could out of it. The thing is, most of the conflicts going on here are things that happen to the characters, rather than as a result of their actions; and they likewise tend to be resolved by circumstance rather than through any particular merit or action on the part of the characters themselves.

For example, the Absol clan attacking the village has nothing to do with Apollo and Narissa; it's just something that happens to them, the same way a hurricane or earthquake would. Then they manage to escape Grima by hiding and getting lucky when he's distracted. They encounter a storm (which again is just a force of nature), but they escape and Thetis happens to stumble on Sootopolis. Then they find Kyogre, who immediately decides to help them out simply because it doesn't like the Absol Paw Clan. It's kind of just a story of people dealing with stuff that happens, and who, through a series of lucky breaks, happen to come out on top.

Think of how much more interesting it could have been if Narissa and Apollo had actually had some kind of hand in the problems that arose, some kind of character-based reason to be involved. What if Narissa and/or Apollo had actually done something to provoke the Absol Paw Clan into attacking the village, for example? Now you have the characters making choices, making mistakes, and then having to face the consequences of their actions--much more interesting than "stuff happens," even if it's emotionally taxing stuff for the characters. Similarly, what if Kyogre's aid required more out of someone than simply that they show up, have a tragic backstory, and not be obviously evil? What if Narissa and Apollo had to rely on some skills that they'd developed, or rely on each other, perhaps, in order to win the legendary's aid? Ultimately it just doesn't feel like the characters really have to work for their wins here or that the conflict more than tangentially has to do with them. Ideally it's the characters who should drive the events of the story, rather than the story causing them to run around doing stuff to compensate. That's not to say that "acts of God" are universally bad in stories, but they work better when they're somehow tied to what the characters have done. For example, what if a storm sweeps down on the characters, but it's only really a problem because, in their hubris, they hadn't prepared properly? Or what if it was their curiosity that caused them to get into a situation where they were vulnerable to X random event?

In this respect, Narissa's "overcoming her fear" arc is important, because it's the element of her character that actually gives her some real stakes in the battle against Grima. It would have been better if this fear had earlier been an actual hindrance for her, so that her ultimate decision to stand up to the salamence was a clear change in direction. Nonetheless, here's a case where the conflict is actually rubbing up against a character's weakness, forcing them to do something that's out of their comfort zone, making them choose and then face the consequence of those choices. It's still an externally-imposed choice--Grima isn't really going after her for any reason related to her as an individual--but it's better than things like where they discover Sootopolis, where the resolution happens without any actual effort on the characters' parts. So you've got conflict, which is sort of step one; what I think you want to work on now is tying that conflict to your characters, rather than having things happen because you have such and such plot planned out where these things have to happen.

Your writing is overall pretty clean. The usual caveats about typos, but there was nothing major in that regard. The prose itself is pretty spare, but it's plenty clear and direct. A couple minor points: first, you seem a little fond of the word "suddenly." When you have things popping up "suddenly" all the time, it wears out the effect of the word, and "suddenly" in general has the danger of slipping into melodrama ("Suddenly, a shot rang out!"). You might consider having things happen "suddenly" or abruptly by how they're introduced in the narration rather than by simply saying that they happened suddenly.

Also, I was a little put out by the Greek names throughout the story. You kept them consistent within Apollo/Narissa's tribe, which was good, since it then feels more like something specific to their culture. On the other hand, their culture doesn't feel Greek in any other way, so they still seem a bit out of place. And on the topic of names, I couldn't figure out why Grima kept getting referred to as "Mal" at various points.

This story is pretty dialogue heavy, which works fine for a story you imagine might be told out loud--there aren't going to be many long descriptive passages. For the future, though, you might consider fleshing out the narration a little more; the dialogue keeps this all moving along very quickly, and the impression it gives is of several scenes where people have a brief conversation before the story moves on to something else--it contributes to the fragmented feeling I mentioned earlier caused by the POV shifts.

Also, while your dialogue is generally good, at times it feels a little on the nose, i.e. where people are saying things because the story dictates that they state them for the record rather than because anyone in real life would actually say that. Take the part where Narissa says, "Hey, you know how you help me when I'm angry or scared...?" for example. That sounds like the kind of dialogue you'd find in a cheesy JRPG, not the kind of thing that would come out of someone's mouth in real life (barring an unusual person, of course).

Like I said, though, your more casual dialogue is generally fine. Kyogre's in particular stands out because she has a distinct manner of speaking that clearly sets her apart from the other characters. The other characters tend to blur together in terms of who's saying what, so I think you can perhaps learn from the approach you took with Kyogre to try and give the rest of the people in your stories distinct voices.

Now, you wanted to know whether I thought this entry was better than the one you sent for the previous contest. Looking back at your Interpretations entry, the primary criticisms were that it wasn't clear what the point of your one-shot was, there wasn't any conflict, the meaning was mostly conveyed through an info-dump at the end, your character didn't really react much to her situation (show don't tell problems), and you missed out on some opportunities to go deeper with your interpretation by glossing over some of the more interesting problems a Latias would encounter when trying to pretend to be a human... whew, that's a lot, there! But fortunately the news is good in this regard.

This story clearly has a conflict and a point. You obviously did your best to make life a bit more difficult for your characters, what with their village being attacked and so on, and overall there was a clear narrative arc, and a character arc for Narissa. You also did a better job of letting your characters react to their situations and conveying their feelings through their responses rather than straight up saying that they were angry, frightened, etc. And most of all you didn't have any character come out of nowhere to spout off a bunch stuff that seems only tangentially related to the narrative!

I will say, though, that I thought your previous entry was a little more creative. In trying to come up with something that has a clear direction and an obvious plotline, you settled on what is a fairly generic backstory for one of Hoenn's locations. The whole group of people who are displaced from their home and discover some new land is pretty common, and you didn't go anywhere particularly new with it. It also didn't have a great deal to do with Sootopolis itself; Kyogre was there, but other than that, you could have told almost exactly the same story for any of the other cities in Hoenn (or, changing up the pokémon referenced a bit, anywhere in the pokémon world). The characters themselves did show emotion, but it was very general emotion: they were scared when scary things happened and sad when their home was destroyed. This is all well and good, and to be expected. But it doesn't give them much personality. They lack the texture that really makes characters come alive and seem like real people: their idiosyncracies, the ways that they see the world differently than other people, rather than the same. The way they're written now, Narissa and Apollo feel a bit flat. Probably the most memorable character in the story is Kyogre, who shows a little spunk. On the other hand, your previous entry was about a topic that people don't usually think much of (a legendary trying to blend in with humans) and had lots of little details, like how Latias has to try and make her mouth move in time with her psychically-projected words, that gave it flavor. There was less of that feeling with this story, and I do think that's a shame--but I imagine you also had something of a different focus going into this story than the last, and were more concerned with other elements of the narrative. Just saying that you have your own personal style that I think you did a better job of bringing to the page in the previous story than you did in this one.

So while I do think there are areas for you to work on, you've certainly come a long way since the previous contest, and I think you did a good job of incorporating the judge's feedback when preparing this entry. I'm sure if you keep working at it you'll see a lot of success with your writing in the future.
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
5th place: "A Magma Mess" by starliteevee

Scoring
bobandbill: 3rd place (65 points)
Dragonfree: 6th place (30 points)
Negrek: 5th place (40 points)
Phoenixsong: 6th place (30 points)
Total: 165 points

A Magma Mess​

"You said that he doesn't battle much?" Tabitha eyed the creature floating in the air before him. It was rubbing its yellow-striped tummy with two stubby black arms, and its large, bulbous tail was emitting a soft glow. The Pokémon glanced nervously around the room as Tabitha stared at it, watching its transparent wings beat the air.

"Yeah, he mostly just helps me with computer stuff." Tabitha switched his gaze from the Pokémon to the speaker. Like his companion, the man’s eyes were darting around the room restlessly. Tabitha moved his eyes up and down Jake's body with some disdain. He was rather scrawny, and didn't look as though he got outside much. His white fingers wouldn’t stop fidgeting with the fabric of his new uniform. Sighing inwardly, Tabitha wished that the new team member would carry himself with a bit more self-respect.

Tabitha frowned. "The Volbeat knows computer science?"

"Well... not really," Jake admitted. "He mostly just does what I tell him, like 'Beat, get me this,' or 'Hey, can you shine on a light over here?' He knows how some parts are supposed to go together, but he doesn't know as much as I do."

Rubbing his eyes with one hand, Tabitha wrote it down on a piece of paper. He had hoped that the Volbeat would be more suitable for battle, as they were in need of more fighting Pokémon. Still, they could always use more team members who knew how to work technology.

Looking up from his report, Tabitha asked, "Do you have any questions?"

"Yeah, where will I be staying?"

Leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, he paused before he replied. His lids seemed so heavy that he would have been happy to just sit there in silence and drift off to sleep, but he forced himself to stay awake and stated, "That depends on what we'll have you do. We usually spread out the new recruits so that they'll all have opportunities to get experience. Since it looks like you'll be working with our computers and machines, I'll probably move you to Mauville."

Tabitha opened his eyes to see the pale man bobbing his thin head up and down in affirmation.

With his arms draped over those of the chair and slouching back in his seat, Tabitha drowsily asked, "Any other questions?" He usually didn't allow himself to appear as such before underlings, especially new ones, but the past eighteen hours had been hectic. Constant Pokémon battles, interviews, and scheduling had been done, and he had not gotten a wink of sleep through it all. He prayed that this would be the end to their conversation, but the next words from the man's mouth crushed that hope.

"Um, yes. Do we get maternity leave?"

Tabitha sighed before automatically responding, "Any woman who--wait," he eyed the man suspiciously. "Why do you care?"

"Oh, uh.... " Jake's anxiously averted his pale eyes and anxiously glanced around the room, as though looking for a reasonable answer. "I just wanted to get an idea of how the organization worked as a whole, y'know...." The last of words died on his mouth as he met the commander's distasteful glare.

"Do you have any other questions?"

Bowing his head, Jake mumbled, "No."

"That's it, then." Standing up, Tabitha offered his hand, which Jake took. "Sorry that this had to be so late; it's good to have you on the team. And in the future, I'd like you to address me either as 'commander' or 'sir.' " Noting the slight quiver in the young man's hand, Tabitha added, "And have more confidence. We don't punish you unless you screw up, and you're less likely to screw up if you aren't so nervous."

"Yes sir," Jake responded with earnest and—for the first time since the interview began—a smile.

After seeing Jake to the door, Tabitha went through to a side room and hastily took off his uniform. He exerted an enormous sigh of relief as his head hit the pillow; bliss overtook him, and all of his muscles relaxed as he reminisced. It had been a profitable week; the new members had been inducted, the mission was successful, and--

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.

Tabitha's eyes popped open as the rhythmic pounding reached his eardrums. He glanced at the clock. It was ten-thirty, and Courtney would arrive to oversee the team’s next mission by five. Not wanting to deal with any trouble, he decided to just let it slide and scold them tomorrow for whatever mess he found left behind. Shoving his head under the pillow, he tried to fall asleep.

Thirty seconds later, he removed his head from the pillow and his body from the bed. It was unacceptable; the team should not be defying orders under any circumstances. No matter how badly he wanted sleep, his conscience refused to rest until everything was in order. Cursing the lax nature of his team members, he rose from his bed, blood boiling in his veins.

Rage bubbled within him as Tabitha hastily threw on a uniform and grabbed Mightyena's Pokéball. He could usually intimidate the underlings well enough, but it always helped to have a bit of backup.

Storming into the hallway, he found Jake staring curiously at a door that stood ajar. Lights flashing in varied colors poured from the room, and the rhythmic booming emanated from within at a deafening noise level. Opening the Pokéball, a blinding white light filled the hallway before it materialized into a large canine lying on the floor. As the Pokémo noticed his trainer, he stood up and stretched slowly. His enormous teeth were displayed as his jaws parted in a yawn. Shaking his shaggy grey fur, he glanced questioningly at Tabitha.

Tabitha gestured to the room, and the Pokémon understood. As Tabitha opened the door and walked in, the Mightyena followed him, snarling and baring massive ivory fangs.

No one noticed him as he walked in. People were dancing, holding red plastic cups above their heads. Many were laughing and conversing animatedly. Tables lined the wall on the left, filled with food and clear glass bottles. Strobe lights flashed erratically, and one man stood in the back between two speakers, selecting songs as he browsed a laptop. Tabitha sighed and held his face in his hands at the despicable sight, shielding his eyes from two girls who suddenly jumped on a table and tried to dance.

He turned to his right as someone bumped into him. Her hood was off, and she looked up at him with unfocused, hazy eyes.

"Sorry," she said quickly, and turned back to her friend. Doing a double-take, she stared at Tabitha for a moment longer and became petrified when she realized who he was. Her eyes immediately focused, and the drink slipped from her hand, spilling onto the floor.

"Come on, Maddy," her friend was saying to her. "What's wrong?" She looked up, and similarly froze when she saw Tabitha. The two girls seemed to be made of ice sculptures as Tabitha glared at them with baggy, bloodshot eyes. Removing his gaze, he began walking to the center of the room. As he passed, people immediately stopped dancing and seemed to turn to stone as they stared at him in horror. One even spat at his drunk and shouted a curse word.

He reached the middle of the room, where he stood and crossed his arms. Mightyena stood at his side, snarling. Someone turned off the music, and his ears could savor the sweet silence that followed. The strobe lights all shut off, and the main ceiling light flicked on as everyone stared at him in lethal silence. Disgusted, he glanced at all the members in the room; their uniforms, if they were even wearing them, were often messy, and a number of them had unfocused eyes. A pungent smell hung in the air. Tabitha took a moment to absorb all of it, his lip curling in revulsion and his hands balling into fists as his fury peaked before he exploded.

"I told you all to be up and ready at five AM! Why are you all trashing this place and getting wasted six hours before we need to move out?"

The crowd remained silently staring, a few of them bowing their heads in shame or else nervously averting their eyes.

"So nobody has a good answer." The words were hardly more than a whisper, yet everyone in the room was able to hear him perfectly. "I spent the last eight hours filling out schedules for all of you and conducting interviews and managing your wages, and you're in here smoking and drinking alcohol!"

One woman feebly tried to defend them. "Th-that's not alcohol; it's water."

Grabbing a red glass bottle, he indicated the label on the front of it. "This is wine."

"Praise the Lord and His miracles!" The crowd nervously laughed until she had to dodge the projectile flying at her. The bottle shattered as it hit the wall, spraying glass and liquid everywhere.

He continued to shout at them, his voice growing hoarser as it rose in volume. Mightyena stood faithfully next to him, but at some moments stopped snarling and looked at his trainer with concern. As their commander raged, throwing in curses every few sentences, the underlings shifted uncomfortably in place and looked away in an attempt to escape his glare. But every time someone glanced up, Tabitha’s piercing black stare cut into him.

"You all may have completed this last mission, but you're going to cause us to fail on our next one!" He paused for a moment, breathing hard, then came to a decision. "Actually, you're not going on a mission tomorrow. Instead, all of you will spend the next two days cleaning the base from top to bottom!" Immediately, people started groaning and shouting protests. Mightyena silenced them by shooting a Shadow Ball at a bottle of vodka; it exploded, and people covered their faces with thick gloves to protect themselves from the flying glass.

"If you start complaining, then I'll add in a conditioning session tomorrow too." Nobody said anything, but a few let out sighs of frustration. "I need to go talk to Maxie. You all can start tonight by cleaning up all this." As he left, he said to Mightyena, "Watch over them while I'm gone, will you? Make sure they don't do anything stupid." At Mightyena's affirmative growl, he stalked out of the room.

++++++++++++++++++

"You punished them for celebrating?"

Tabitha winced. Though Maxie sounded polite and calm, the blunt nature of the statement made Tabitha feel as though he had overreacted.

He rubbed his forehead with one hand and uncomfortably shifted the phone in the other. "Yes, sir. We were supposed to go on a mission tomorrow early in the morning, and I thought that staying up and partying would make them unprepared and possibly jeopardize the situation."

"That may be true, but I prefer that you don't make these sort of decisions without talking to me about it first."

Tabitha closed his eyes and leaned heavily on his desk, sighing. "I'm sorry, sir." Dread pricked his heart as he considered what Maxie might do to him for not consulting his advice before punishing the lower-ranking members.

There was a pause. Tabitha's muscles tensed in apprehension as he waited with baited breath.

At last, his leader spoke. "It's all right; I wouldn’t have done it much differently. Besides, the bases could all use some cleaning. I'll talk to Courtney about this and have her take another group to do this mission instead. It'll push us back a few days, but it's nothing we can't deal with."

Breathing once more, Tabitha replied, "Yes, sir."

"And make sure that you get sleep as well. I don't need one of my commanders dropping from exhaustion."

Tabitha gave a final, "Yes, sir," before he heard a click on the other end of the line. Putting the phone down, he returned to the room and supervised as the grunts put away food, drinks, stereos, lights, and everything else that was brought out. Others were sweeping up the broken glass and mopping up the wasted alcohol. Each did his work without complaint, having no further wish to incite Tabitha's wrath again. As he watched them, he noticed that Mightyena was nowhere to be seen. He wondered where his companion could be, but decided that he had probably gone to their room and slept. Tabitha couldn't blame him; the Pokémon had worked harder than he had and needed to rest.

After everyone finished cleaning and their commander had excused them, Tabitha made his way back to his room. As soon as he closed the door and flicked on the light, he saw Mightyena sitting there with a half-full bottle of vodka next to him. The Pokémon wagged his bushy black tail upon sighting his companion, and yipped happily as Tabitha reached down and patted his head.

"Hey! I thought you had gone to sleep; what are you still doing up? Oh, is this for me?" he asked as the Pokémon picked up the bottle by its neck and offered it to him. Tabitha smiled wryly as he considered the drink; it had been so long since he had drunk alcohol, but, especially as a commander, he had to be thinking clearly at all times. Alcohol would only make things worse in his position. He put the bottle down and shook his head. Noticing Mightyena's dismay, he patted the Pokémon, gently saying, "Thanks pal, but not tonight. There's too much going on."

The canine flattened his ears against his head. As Tabitha ruffled his companion's thick black fur, the Pokémon stopped sulking and playfully tried to bite his owner's hand. Sitting down, Tabitha tapped first one side Mightyena's face, then the other. The Pokémon jerked his head from side-to-side, trying to get a hold of the human's flying hands.

Mightyena flattened his forelegs against the ground, his rear sticking in the air and his tail wagging. Tabitha stood up and darted his hands rapidly around the Mightyena’s face, feeling his weariness ebb away as the Pokémon chased them. Tabitha smiled, which eventually opened as he laughed.

“You like that, don’t you boy? Don’t you? Hey, let go of my glove! Do you want my glove? Go, boy, go get the glove!” Throwing the glove that he had discarded on the floor, he watched happily as Mightyena darted across the room and came trotting back with the item held loosely between his teeth. Tabitha ruffled Mightyena’s matted black fur, noting the tangles and knots in it. “You need to be groomed,” he noted. Mightyena looked at him, his crimson pupils piercing Tabitha’s black ones with an accusatory stare. Sighing, Tabitha replied, “I know, it’s my fault; I just haven’t had time, with work and everything.” He grimaced as he corrected, “Well, I guess I’ve been letting work take over me. But don’t worry, I promise that we’ll spend more time together.” Detecting his owner’s sincerity, Mightyena began to wag his tail again, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as Tabitha sat down and ran his hands through his fur.

At last, he jumped into Tabitha's lap, placing his large paws on his owner's chest and eagerly sniffing Tabitha’s face. Laughing, Tabitha said, "Stop, boy, that's enough. Ew, don’t lick my face, I know where that tongue has been. Stop. We’re both tired.” Sitting up, he pushed the Pokémon off him.

Tabitha stood and undressed, and saw Mightyena begin to pace in circles before lying down on the hard floor. His heart panged with guilt as he saw the one he cared about most trying to sleep on a cold sheet of metal.

"Hey boy, do you want to come in bed with me tonight?" Pricking his ears and raising his head, Mightyena saw Tabitha sit down on the bed and pat the space next to him. The Dark type jumped up and landed on the covers. Tabitha smiled once more as he saw the Pokémon settle at the foot of his bed. Mightyena fell asleep almost as soon as he lay down.

Feeling weariness overwhelm him, Tabitha closed his eyes and finally allowed himself to rest. Before he succumbed to sleep, he whispered, "If I ever get a wife, she'll have to let you sleep with us."

Reviews

bobandbill

This was an enjoyable slice-of-life story overall. I quite liked this exploration of one of the Magma Admins in Tabitha and showing what it may be like to be in charge of a whole bunch of unruly Grunts, and the actual ‘admin’ side of it as well. Addresses the prompt pretty well!

This was a good expansion and portrayal of his character, and his relationship with his Mightyena was very sweet. I really liked the scene where he was playing with him; it certainly felt real, and this was my favourite part. I remember playing with my own dog in such a manner after all, so this certainly felt accurate!

The description was solid throughout. You did well in showing how people felt and acted throughout the story, from the nervous Jake to a rather frustrated Tabitha. The confrontation scene was a good case of the description shining through in setting the mood and establishing how annoyed Tabitha was about it. I felt that he was quite relatable in the whole ‘lie down for half a minute before deciding he really should do something about it’ part, and his reaction was realistic.

Sometimes the writing was a bit repetitive in word choice. For example:
"Oh, uh.... " Jake's anxiously averted his pale eyes and anxiously glanced around the room
Anxiously twice here is certainly repetitive, so you could go without one of them. But there were other instances; one that comes to mind is how you described people being drunk or tipsy in the party by using mixtures of ‘unfocused, hazy eyes’, ‘unfocused eyes’, or how someone’s ‘eyes focused’ when they realised something was amiss. Try to vary those sorts of descriptions, as even a second use of it in a paragraph or two is easy to notice.

A more nitpicky example is the following:
...he rose from his bed, blood boiling in his veins.

Rage bubbled within him...
Although you’re not using the same phrase here, you are repeating the same general idea – his anger is boiling/bubbling inside of him. That same idea is repeated one right after the other, when I feel you really only need the one to get that across to the reader right now (even if both are nice ways to put it by themselves).

I also feel that the story would be better if it had been rounded a bit more. There was a nice introduction about Jake, which introduced his Pokémon and what he was like. But after the first page-and-half, he appears in passing shortly after once and then is never seen again. There was some potential to use him more, and have this newcomer given some more involvement in the story, I felt. For instance, if he was more involved in cleaning up the party room, or was allowed more of a chance to be shown what he thought of Tabitha, then it would have helped supplement the story and Tabitha as a character. As it is, I almost feel that this entry would be really great as part of a larger story that Jake and Tabitha are seen in. The ending was nice, but as a result of a lack of connection between the beginning and it, I did feel that something, however slight it may be, was missing.

There weren’t many typos or things I felt might have been better another way – some things were as minor as an extra space.
Tabitha sighed before automatically responding, "Any woman who--wait," he eyed the man suspiciously.
This may be better if you made a new sentence at the end of the dialogue. (‘“...who—wait.” He eyes the man suspiciously.’). This would add a bit more impact to his sudden realisation that he was being asked that particular question by a man.
And in the future, I'd like you to address me either as 'commander' or 'sir.' "
There’s an extra space here at the end.
and--
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.
Maybe consider having full stops after each ‘BOOM’, which you refer to it as rhythmic pounding? I’ll also admit the first thing I thought of here was an episode from Blackadder, where a character is poetry saying BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. As it turned out to be some rave music, maybe a better word than ‘BOOM’ could be used that would be more indicative of its nature.
As the Pokémo noticed his trainer, he stood up and stretched slowly.
Missing ‘n’ there.
One even spat at his drunk and shouted a curse word.
drink. Although spitting at a drunk would be something.
Lastly:
Grabbing a red glass bottle, he indicated the label on the front of it. "This is wine."
"Praise the Lord and His miracles!"
No complaint here – just a well played joke. =)

Well done on this entry; I thoroughly enjoyed this representation of this character.

Dragonfree

This really feels like a random snippet of a longer story; I don't get any real sense of an overarching plot or main idea here. You start with Tabitha interviewing this new recruit who suspiciously asks about maternity leave, then that gets quietly dropped. Then he's about to go to sleep when a bunch of Magma members start partying, so he goes to yell at them and reports to Maxie about it, none of which has anything to do with the new recruit (although he's mentioned in passing). Then at the end you spend a page just on Tabitha playing with his Mightyena, with no real relation to either of the first two parts. I'm just not sure what this is supposed to be about.

My first guess is that this is meant to be a "day in the life of Tabitha" sort of thing, but the fact we're only properly seeing a snippet of maybe an hour in the evening undermines it - if you did mean to show a glimpse into the dreary life of a Magma admin, you probably should have shown some of the grueling work he's been doing all day instead of just hastily noting in the opening scene that it was preceded by eighteen strenuous hours. Alternatively, you may have just been going for "Tabitha's quest to get to sleep", but then randomly ending on a full page of him appreciating his Mightyena is an extremely strange choice - it feels like a weird halfway plot switch. In fact, the end and particularly the final line makes it sound like his relationship with Mightyena and how it makes this bearable for him is supposed to be at least one of the main themes, but it clearly wasn't a main theme until that final scene - hell, Mightyena isn't even mentioned until the second scene.

So all in all this doesn't feel very focused or satisfying. You need to decide exactly what you're going for here and construct the story in such a way that it gets that across without extraneous cruft.

I do think you have all the right components here for an interesting look into how Team Magma functions as an organization from the inside, or a sweet story humanizing Tabitha through his bond with his Pokémon, or both. Members partying wildly in the evening even though they're supposed to be up before five in the morning sounds like exactly the kind of thing you'd probably have to deal with from the sort of unruly rebellious teenager/young adult crowd that might join a criminal organization with bizarre ecological goals. Interviews for new recruits would also be an interesting topic to explore, but you only have the one, and the implication that Jake is actually a woman/trans/something doesn't go anywhere. And the Mightyena stuff is quite cute; it's just so overloaded at the very end of the fic and nonexistent at the beginning that it kind of just seems to come out of nowhere and hijack the story. Including it in a more consistent and balanced way could make for a very sweet Pokémon/human friendship fic.

Is this by any chance taking place in the Drowning continuity? I've only read the first chapter of that (though continuing has been vaguely on my list), but overall I feel like this story would make considerably more sense as part of something bigger, and given the thematic similarities it seemed plausible if it were some sort of spin-off. As a free-standing story, though, I'm afraid I just don't really get a lot out of this as it stands.

Negrek

This is a nice character study for Tabitha, and it gets plenty of mileage out of the six pages or so it has to work with. In the end it doesn't feel like a complete story to me, though. I think what prevents things from gelling for me is that the ending doesn't quite seem to match the central arc of the story.

On the surface, it looks like we have everything we need for a complete and well-realized story. There is an arc here, namely Tabitha realizing that he's been overworking himself and that he needs to lighten up a bit. The events that play out over the course of the story both seem consistent with Tabitha's character and comment directly on this central idea. At the end of it all, Tabitha has clearly changed and learned a lesson. All good.

I think the problem lies in that the actual conflict being addressed shifts over the course of the story, so the ending doesn't actually wrap up all of the loose ends. For most of the piece, the central concern is mostly the fact that Tabitha is really uptight and taking his crankiness out on the other members of the team. Around the party scene, though, it shifts more to focus on his relationship with Mightyena and the fact that he's been neglecting his pokémon. These issues stem from the same source--that Tabitha's been working too hard--but although the story resolves his relationship with Mightyena, it doesn't do the same for his relationship with Magma as a whole.

You can see this most easily by looking at the change in Tabitha's attitude towards Mightyena versus his change in attitude towards the rest of Team Magma. At the end of the story, he clearly recognizes that he's been neglecting his friend and resolves to do better. On the other hand, he doesn't quite seem to have learned not to take his overwork out on other members of the team. At the beginning of his conversation with Maxie, he starts to think that maybe he was too hard on them, but that sentiment doesn't reemerge later--the primary thing Tabitha seems to get out of the conversation is "oh thank God I'm not fired." There's no clear indication that he's resolved to change his behavior in that department, or or what he might do differently in the future.

In the end, then, you have build-up that doesn't go anywhere. The issue of how Tabitha might have screwed up with respect to his treatment of the grunts is just kind of dropped in favor of going more in-depth on his relationship with Mightyena. While there is a connection in that giving himself a break, spending more time with people that are important to him, etc., will certainly improve Tabitha's disposition towards his other duties, you don't take the necessary steps to make that connection clear. What results is a set of scenes that pull just fine, but which aren't quite pulling in the same direction. This, I think, is why the story ends up feeling unfinished.

There are a few ways you could go about changing that. One is to simply draw that line to connect Tabitha's relationship with Mightyena to his behavior in general, thus making his resolve to improve his treatment of his friend clearly reflect a resolve to do better in other areas, too. Or you could include more closure for the initial arc, perhaps by having Tabitha start to realize he's in the wrong after his conversation with Maxie or while watching the grunts skulk around all glumly cleaning up after their party. Another would be to focus only on one or the other of "Tabitha's relationship with Mightyena" or "Tabitha's relationship with the team" and make sure you pull it through start to finish.

Enough of that nattering on about the narrative structure. Let's take a look at the writing itself.

Your grammar and punctuation is generally pretty good, but there were a fair number of typos lurking around in here--I think another round of proofreading would have done you good. In particular "One even spat at his drunk and shouted a curse word" confused me... I think you meant "spat out his drink," but I'm not sure.

Small nitpick, but pupils aren't colored; they're black. (They're just holes to let light into the eye.) Mightyena has red irises, not red pupils.

In general the prose is pretty solid. The bit at the end where Tabitha's playing with Mightyena stood out in particular; it's just adorable, and easily the cutest segment from a story submitted for this contest. All in all I think you do a good job of getting across how Tabitha's been worn down by all the work he's had to do: the narration genuinely makes him feel worn out, cranky, and irrationally angry about little things. The story progresses nicely, and none of the scenes feel out of place or out of character (even more of a concern than usual in a shorter piece!).

The only reservation I have is that the humor feels a bit forced. The "water to wine" joke isn't bad, but it feels kind of shoehorned in there, like you really wanted the grunt to say something funny and went looking for a joke. On the other hand, I'm not really sure what's amusing about the guy asking about maternity leave... it's a bit unusual, but it's certainly a valid quesition, and there are plenty of reasons why he might want to ask it.

In sum, I'd say that this is a great start to a story, but that as it is it kind of leaves me hanging. I think the writing is solid and what's there works, but you probably want to tweak your presentation or add a little more to it to wrap everything up neatly, and probably give it a good proofread, too.
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
4th place: "Trainers of Hoenn" by Dramatic Melody

Scoring
bobandbill: 4th place (50 points)
Dragonfree: 3rd place (65 points)
Negrek: 2nd place (80 points)
Phoenixsong: 4th place (50 points)
Total: 245 points

cablecar.png

Hello there! My name is Brendan. I like traveling with no itineraries, trying out the specialties of local restaurants, and listening to what people have to say.

While the first two are very interesting topics of conversation, it’s the third one that I want to talk about. I like finding out about people’s stories, from romantics in their mid-twenties getting an epiphany in the middle of a walk to eight-year-olds who had a delicious dinner the night before. I like hearing people talk about their goals, their dreams, and their ambitions, but I also get goosebumps when they tell me what they want their Secret Bases to look like, or the routes they take in their daily commutes, or what happened when they threw their first Poké Ball. For me, these are what make being part of humanity worthwhile.

I just moved here from Johto with my family, and ever since I got my first Pokémon here, I’ve been traveling around the region to find trainers who are willing to share more than a battle with me. I believe that every trainer has something to say, and the only way that they can be heard is if someone makes the effort to listen.

Turns out, what they have to say are nothing less than interesting, but don’t take my word for it. Better yet, hear it from the trainers of Hoenn themselves.

Reviews

bobandbill

This was a rather unique story throughout. Lots of little conversations making up mini-stories was a neat way to incorporate the NPCs of Hoenn, and the screenshots you included also helped – I remembered each of them, and I have to say (and you probably already know this =p) is that this sort of story certainly appealed to me. Regarding the screenshots, did you take them yourself, or just use an LP? I’m thinking possibly the former, given how Brendan was standing next to every NPC he spoke to in the same way. Anyway, I quite liked it, and felt that it was a great take on the prompt as well.

The introduction to the stories I feel could use a little work. I’m not too sure how trying out the specialties of local restaurants really makes for a great topic of conversation (as much as I like food myself), and it did feel a bit repetitive towards the end of it that Brendan was indicating he was going to share some of the stories/conversations he heard with us. A couple of quotes from the beginning as well that I had issue with:
I like finding out about people’s stories, from romantics in their mid-twenties getting an epiphany in the middle of a walk to eight-year-olds who had a delicious dinner the night before.
This appeared to be a bit too wordy for my liking without a comma in the middle section to separate the two examples of stories told.
Turns out, what they have to say are nothing less than interesting, but don’t take my word for it.
This sentence sounded a bit awkward in how it starts. I think something like ‘It turns out that what...’, or just going into ‘What they have to say...’ or a different direction in rewording is something to consider.

In short, the introduction could perhaps use a little tweaking here and there, so the set up is smoother from it to the stories themselves.

Overall the stories that were told were interesting, although some did fall a little bit flat to me – the second one for instance, or the two-lined conversation with the swimmer talking about how going with the flow won’t get you anywhere. To a lesser extent, the third story (the female veteran trainer) also felt a bit flat to me, as what she spoke about just felt a bit predictable. After her first sentence, I felt that I knew what she was going to continue to talk about, and nothing particularly remarkable or interesting popped up afterwards. So in a sense, I felt that the story did take a little while to get going.

The fourth story by contrast was much more interesting to me, and it was here where I was really beginning to enjoy the entry. Here, the trainer gave more of a sense of her thoughts and feelings in what she said, and that was the difference I felt. This particular conversation carried some more meaning, while the veteran’s thoughts on her worries with current methods of Pokémon training didn’t carry the same impact as it could have. She was basically just telling her worries, but I couldn’t really see them, if that makes sense.

Which leads me to a thought I had a couple times when reading – the stories could have perhaps benefitted from some description outside of dialogue. I certainly appreciated the challenge at writing a story entirely out of dialogue (sans the introduction I suppose) and replicating the inspiration’s format as well, but it may have helped flesh out some of the stories some more. For instance, including how the veteran trainer spoke and perhaps something she did during the conversation, would better convey how she was feeling to the reader. Maybe she could be interacting with her Pokémon, or inspecting Brendan’s Pokémon while complaining about the complexity of training today. Other stories could have also benefitted; e.g. some description of the enthusiasm and excitement the woman in the couple spoken to about what she’d do when she found treasure would have further enhanced that part, I felt.

Speaking of which, that story was one of my favourites from the bunch. Three others I enjoyed in particular were the following one (the guy sending letters via Wingull), the Numel trainer’s conversation, and the man with the Zigzagoon. A bunch posed rather interesting insights into Hoenn, such as the Team Magma trainer, and I found it neat that you even included the likes of a Gym Leader and E4 Member. I liked the interpretations you provided for such characters – they certainly expanded well on the few lines they get in the games.

I do feel that the ordering of the stories might be interesting if they were ordered ‘chronologically’, or rather, in order Brendan would have met these characters in the games. Steven’s conversation at the end was a decent selection I thought and this would keep it at the end as well if you had it as a post-E4 picture in Emerald, going by the content of that story. Otherwise, in its current state there wasn’t a clear order and that might help give the story a bit more of a structure. And now I’m intrigued by the idea of such a story being done as a trainer fic – the adventure of the games only told by conversations with people encountered every so often, heh. I guess that’s one of my favourite things about this; the unique structure and potential such a layout has.

A couple typos I noticed along the way (but generally it was rather clean):
“Take a lot of risksI only figured that out for myself
Needs a ! and space.
Right now, he’s going from region to region and competing in different Leagues to see if he can become a gym leader in one of them, or even a member of their Elite Four.
Given you capitalised Elite Four (and elsewhere League Champion), I feel it might make sense to also capitalise Gym Leader, as it is also a position of high importance in the games. The same goes for Flannery’s story.
“What really bugs me is how whenever anyone asks her for a battle,
’bugs me’ is amusing given he was also talking about Bug types. :V

I quite enjoyed this. A rather inventive prompt – well done!

Dragonfree

I quite like the idea of Brendan just really liking to hear people's stories; what with how the player character listens to people say the randomest things about themselves in the game, it seems very fitting. The trainers' anecdotes are a nice cross-section of the variety of lives trainers might lead, each with their own troubles and views of the world, and a lot of them interestingly take on issues that you don't really see much in Pokémon fanfiction.

I did think it ended rather abruptly, though. I expected either an anecdote that clearly ties the others together somehow or a return to Brendan - as it was I was just surprised to find eventually I couldn't scroll down any further. It fits with the "Humans of New York" inspiration, since that project doesn't have an end, but in a self-contained short story it leaves it feeling kind of aimless.

I also felt the stories could have been more consistent in the level of realism in their approach to the Pokémon world. Mixing lighthearted comedy and seriousness is fine, but some of the more comical stories sound exaggerated and artificial, rather reminiscent of in-game dialogue - the first couple, for instance, as well as the one with the woman recounting all the things she wants to buy and especially the one with the Pokéfan going on about her Pokémon. It wouldn't be so bad if all of them tried to emulate the style of the games that way, but because the others tend to be more realistic and genuine, I think the two styles kind of sabotage each other - the more realistic ones make the more gamelike ones sound cartoony and fake in comparison, and the more gamelike ones make the more realistic ones harder to take seriously.

The one about the Numel the woman got from a Team Magma member is an unusual case; there the woman's actual story is told in a more serious manner, but the scene it describes and the dialogue quoted is distinctly clichéd, with the heartless evil team member calling Numel a "good-for-nothing Pokémon" and being willing to fairly battle a random bystander for her. It seems particularly shallow in light of the very next story, where the reasons somebody might be part of an evil team are explored in a more sympathetic fashion; the flatly villainous game-style Magma grunt described in the previous story does not feel like he belongs in the same world as the man who feels trapped and worries about repercussions for his family if he quits. Compared to the other, far more sweet and genuine story of a trainer befriending a Pokémon (the one with the Zigzagoon that was trying to clean up the beach), the Numel one feels pretty uninspired.

There are also some typos and odd wording here - not enough to detract massively from it, but enough to be somewhat noticeable. A few more rounds of proofreading would have smoothed it out better.

Overall, I think you did a good job of portraying a little slice of the Pokémon world, showing how different people's stories can be and the kinds of things different trainers may be thinking or worrying about. Some of these stories are beautiful, sweet, interesting, even insightful perspectives on their respective topics. But the cartoonier entries felt a bit out of place, and the lack of structure and closure blunted its impact a bit for me.

Negrek

I love this idea. I'm a big fan of Humans of New York, and I'm always excited to see somebody trying something new for a contest.

I think you do a good job of capturing the feel of HONY, too. In particular you have a great knack for getting down the "**** people say" style excerpts, where the interviewee says something completely on the nose and vaguely funny or wise (I'm talking in particular about entries like the first "figuring out the trainer part" one or the one with the picnicker in the desert). After reading through the whole thing, though, I felt like you were missing a bit of the poinancy of the original. You have some trainers with difficult backgrounds, some who don't really know where they're going in life, some who're having a great time, and so on, but the tone of them is pretty similar throughout; they don't really drive towards the extremes. In HONY itself you have some stories that seem just impossibly tragic or beautiful or downright hilarious in addition to the mundane. There weren't any interviews that struck me that way in this group. Obviously transcendant stories like that are a ton to ask of a writer, and a lot of what makes it possible for HONY is that you're getting people's actual stories, rather than constructed fiction. It adds a raw edge to things that's very difficult to imitate. Nonetheless, I'm not sure you were stretching towards capturing that kind of effect as much as you could have been. I feel like the emotional range of the stories being told could have been broader, and that if it was it would help give the story as a whole more versimilitude and impact.

However, while I thought the tone for the interviews might have been a little same-y, I love how varied you made the trainers' backgrounds and aspirations; I thought you did a great job of portraying more than just the "typical" trainer's journey. That definitely helps give the impression that this is a real world Brendan's inhabiting, and the diversity of people's views on what training means, and the many different reasons they pursue it is obviously important to your theme. However, given the number of people who espouse some disdain for hyper-competitive trainers who are obsessed with climbing the achievement ladder, suggesting that people perceive it to be a common perspective, I'm a bit surprised that Brendan didn't actually run into any of them during his wanderings.

While I liked how many different stories you gave glimpses of here, I think you might want to consider cutting down on the overall number. By around page 22 things were starting to feel a bit draggy to me. Choosing what stories you want to include in a piece like this is always going to be difficult; obviously you need to choose ones that relate to your theme and/or desired message, but you don't want the collection to feel too constructed, so you don't really want a laser focus either--there should be room for kind of quirky, off-the-wall inclusions that only indirectly comment on the theme or act to mix things up a bit. You want the collection to feel a little messy, I think. Overall I think the balance you came up with here is good, so I would suggest trying to maintain it if you do decide to eliminate some entries (i.e. don't simply get rid of all the jokey ones).

As for the theme itself, I think what you're going for here is a message about finding yourself and going your own way--enjoying the journey for the journey rather than being heavily focused on results. I think it might be a little subtle; after the first read-through I wasn't entirely sure what you were going for, but returning to the piece again later I thought the intent was pretty clear. I think you might want to foreground the theme a little more, although again, that's going to be a real balancing act in a story like this, since nothing would make it more tedious than getting punched in the face with "SO THE MORAL OF THIS STORY IS" every page.

As far as the writing goes, there are a few typos here and there, but all in all it's nicely polished. As I said earlier, I think you do a good job of capturing the conversational tone you often see on HONY. If anything, it would be nice to see a little more variation in how the people being interviewed speak. The vast majority of them seem to speak in a fairly neutral voice--slightly pleasant, slightly wise, but without a lot of individual character. There are exceptions, but not many, and they're pretty universally played for laughs (the pokémon fan, for example; that one felt a bit out of place). I don't really get the feeling that any of the people being interviewed are particularly cranky, or were jokesters, or pushy, or any of those other strong sorts of personalities that you can pick up very quickly from people. This is again difficult to pull off because these traits often aren't as pronounced in what real people say, in short snippets, as they are in fiction. But I think a little more diversity in tone, to match the diversity of backgrounds in the interviewees, would help to make the exerpts feel more interesting and realistic.

I also have to admit that this didn't feel very "Hoenn." The pictures, of course, are all of Hoenn locations, some of them very iconic. The prose, though, often didn't do a lot to locate the speaker in the region. How might a trainer from Hoenn have a different perspective from a trainer from Kanto? For the most part the responses sound like they could come from ordinary people living anywhere.

In the end I also gotta admit I don't know how well this one would work for somebody not already familiar with HONY. Not that that's a bad thing, really, but it'll be interesting to see what some of the judges who aren't familiar with/fans of it think.

All things said and done, this was the entry that excited me the most, and while I think there were some elements that could have been executed better, I absolutely love the idea. This is just such a very, very hard kind of writing to imitate without actually having real people's words to draw on--usually when we write fiction, we're not actually trying to capture the world precisely as it is, but rather construct a world that feels real but is actually more refined than true reality. Here you really want to capture that reality, but using words that are completely made up. It's a tall order, but even with some imperfections, it's great to see somebody take on that challenge.
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
3rd place: "The Master's Trick" by Mrs. Lovett

Scoring
bobandbill: 5th place (40 points)
Dragonfree: 2nd place (80 points)
Negrek: 4th place (50 points)
Phoenixsong: 2nd place (80 points)
Total: 250 points

The Master’s Trick

To whom it may concern,

My name is Eddie. I’m writing this from my grandparents’ house in Fallarbor, due to the kindness of Mr. Ty and the City Press, who have each written references in support of my case that I have attached. I would be glad to receive a spot in your Opinion Column for the chance to share my story with the rest of the world, so that others might take up my flame and realize for themselves that everything I’m saying here is true. Some people might think I’m insane (and I’ve been told so before), but that’s only because they haven’t been a witness to what I’m about to tell you. And by the time they are, with all due respect, it’ll probably be too late.

I’ll start from the beginning, as well as I can remember.

---​

Seven years ago, a girl named May moved in to Littleroot Town. She was the daughter of Norman, leader of the Petalburg City Gym, and left her old home with her mother to be closer to him. May was eleven, but as far as I know, she had no pokémon or prior experience with training them. I don’t think she ever intended to challenge the League in the first place, but I guess when you move into a town where a famous pokémon professor lives and gives out starters, it starts to sway your judgment. Less than a week later, she left on a journey to start collecting badges.

At the time, I was eight. Technically, that’s not underage for the League (heck, there are tag-team toddlers out there who can kick butt), but it’s still young enough to have to make weekly calls home to my parents, and to think that wearing a yellow T-shirt with blue shorts is cool. My family lives in Rustboro City, in a neighborhood really close to the Gym, so I’ve been interested in pokémon battling pretty much from the time I could read. As I got older, I tried my hand at catching, and spent my free time after school training to battle Roxanne. That year, I finally managed to beat her. I negotiated a bit with my parents, and convinced them to let me off on my own to challenge the rest.

I admit, I was a bit nervous about becoming a full-time trainer, but not much more than I’ve been about other things in my life. I knew what to expect — first Dewford, then Mauville, then Lavaridge… all the way to Sootopolis, with some catching, buying, and battling in between. I finished Dewford after two weeks, then took a ferry ride to Slateport, where I’d hike up Route 110 and go to Mauville.

I wasn’t fazed when I got off at the city’s dock, which teemed with people and cars and had ships the size of buildings. I didn’t lose my wits when I passed the booths and tents in the marketplace, and I didn’t let myself wander on my way to the PokéMart. Granted, I hesitated for a few seconds when I reached Route 110, and that fabled fork in the road where the dirt path branches off to the left, and the gleaming bike trail called Cycling Road slopes up to right. But even then the choice was clear to me. After hours of hiking through a city, the last thing I wanted was to be pedaling a rental bike up a hill. Also, I heard that some people who lived in the routes often opened their doors for traveling trainers. So if I got lucky, I could take a rest!

But the walk turned out to be really long, and after the first half hour trudging through humid, sun-soaked nature, my backpack was starting to bog me down. I began to think of turning back, but then, out of the blue, my eyes landed on a house. It was standing at the junction of Route 110 and 103, right by the road where everyone could see it. I hurried over to get a closer look, as if something about its appearance could tell me if the people inside would let me in. The house was tidy, but small, and looked like it could have had two rooms, at most. I started to round the corner to glimpse its full depth, and as I passed the door, my eyes landed on a sign beneath the window. It read: “Three steps → and two steps ↑ to reach the amazing Trick House.”

I think I spent a good minute staring at that sign, trying to make sense of it. Obviously, people’s step sizes vary, and they don’t have identically good vision. What if I read the sign when I was standing five steps away? Or what if I had approached it from the side, instead of the front? Then the entire protocol would be shattered.

Out of a sheer sense of certainty, and a desire to prove myself right (though to whom, I didn’t know), I took a step back and started to walk towards the door. But right as I did, the text vanished, and the sign turned into a plain slab of wood. When I stepped back to my former spot, the words reappeared. It was like one of those cards whose picture changes when you tilt them. I thought that was pretty cool, and definitely too good to be an empty decoration, so I was more than intrigued enough to walk in...

Reviews

bobandbill

I always enjoyed the Trick Master and his house in the games, so this was a choice of setting that appealed to me. Needless to say, no other region has such a location, so it fitted the theme quite well. I also liked that you kept the mysterious vibe of him, but also characterised him as you did. I rather enjoyed that portrayal and his relationship with the protagonist, and his slow ‘descent to madness’, for lack of a better phrase, was also well delivered. Good work on exploring that location and character.

Various little details included certainly helped flesh out the world and ‘recreate’ the place in your story too, from the sign by the house, to the various items found by Elliot in his first trip in there, and to the messages (and the choice of the last one was quite good too imo). I also enjoyed the description throughout the story, and while the writing style did at times did slightly drag out the story a bit too much for my liking it was easy to read.

May being a prodigy was also decently established, but ultimately she came off as a far flatter character to me. Winning seemed to come easy to her going by not only by the events, but also her boasts of achievements in the recount by Zigzagoon, but beyond that she just didn’t seem very interesting, and in frustrating the Trick Master without any real apparent struggle on her part she came off as somewhat unlikeable and underdeveloped. I feel there was some potential in building up the Trick Master’s rivalry with her some more by using her more. It may be due to the fact that while the Trick Master’s mazes were getting more and more impressive, May continued to just breeze past them – she was effectively just curb-stomping his challenges, and life in general, while a more balanced ‘battle’ may have been more interesting to read.

I’m also unsure if May really would have just forgotten about the Trick House like that in her last scene (‘I completely forgot this place was here!’). She had made a point of returning quite often to try and beat him, and was still impressed by the challenges (e.g. the city). So the fact she had not returned for seemingly some years didn’t sound right nor realistic to me. Mentioning that she had come very close to besting the Trick Master quite some way before the end may have spoiled some of the surprise that she... well, hadn’t done so. It may be worth considering removing that mention (it’s after the scene where May beats the challenge for the first time).

I liked that there was some mystery concealed in the last encounter between May and the Trick Master through using Ziggy as the witness and translating what he saw (if only he hadn’t gotten distracted...). But otherwise save for that part and his introduction he didn’t get shown off much, and I felt it would have been neat to have some mentions of him every now and again. It would also save any potential forgetting that the Trick Master did indeed have a Zigzagoon.

Lastly, the beginning was somewhat confusing (in part because I already could see how long the entry was). Elliot begins by penning a letter presumably to a newspaper, wanting a spot in an opinion column. But I remain sceptical on opinion columns allowing for twenty-one page long submissions, so this just seemed rather weird to me. I’d suggest thinking of another way to open the story instead, or leastways some other idea than an opinion column.

While there’s a good base, I did feel that the story did get rather long with its set up (even though it was interesting enough to read), and the above issues did nag at me throughout. Addressing those I feel will be what you should look at with editing.

There were some small typos throughout, but given the length of the entry (not much below the word limit) and how minor they tended to be it wasn’t too bad by any means. Here’s what I noticed:
Granted, I hesitated for a few seconds when I reached Route 110, and that fabled fork in the road where the dirt path branches off to the left, and the gleaming bike trail called Cycling Road slopes up to right.
I feel this would read better as ‘...110, at that fabled fork...’.
Also, I heard that some people who lived in the routes often opened their doors for traveling trainers.
Every so often there would be an extra space (in this case, after ‘Also,’). I feel this would have read better as ‘I also had heard that...’, for that matter. Lastly, this part also allows me to wonder why he hadn’t taken a rest in Slateport and insisted on getting out of town, only to want to have a rest in a person’s house on the route if they let him inside.
“ROUTE 110 CLOSED AS INVESTIGAYTION CONTINUES.”
A somewhat unfortunate typo. =p
Why hadn’t I just sat down in the shade and kept going?
This line is confusing.
Other times I saw battle items: legitimately-made Rare Candies, X-Attacks, and berries.
I wonder what sort of Rare Candies are those that weren’t legitimately made? This sounded a bit odd to me, as I didn’t think that there would be a ‘fake’ rare candy, or why the Trick Master would have those.
I pushed through it, and was ready to beam when I recognized the front room, but then I saw that there was no exit.
Maybe not a typo and more just ignorance on my part (I assumed this is the case), but I can’t say I know of the expression ‘was ready to beam’.
which amounted to ten Potions, four Revives, and five Parlyz Heals.
I think that even if you wanted to go by the way it’s written in gen three, it may have been better to just go with paralyse (or paralyse) in full.
We exchanged numbers, then he saw me off with a cheery wave.
‘and then’.
A trainer in Mauville once told me how it had taken a whole month with the best installation teams for Wattson to get his electric switch puzzle set up. The Trick Master had built an Electric room in two days
You went from electric to Electric – be sure to be consistent.
May knit her brows. “We’ll see about that, Trick Master!”
‘knit her brows’ may be another phrase I haven’t heard of before, but I figure I’d mention that this is the case here too in case of typo or somesuch.
You said on one’s ever gotten that far, right?”
no one.
I know a lady at the Pokémon Fan Club who can understand pokémon speech, so I took Ziggy to see her.
I feel this would be better as ‘I knew a lady...who could understand...’, especially as the paragraph (and story) is also in past tense (‘what had happened’, ‘had been taken’, ‘convinced them’).
“Hey Trick Master!
A comma should come before ‘Trick Master’ here.
My hands fumbled in my backpack and locked on the ear of PokéDoll
of ‘a’ PokéDoll, I feel.

The ending was certainly interesting and somewhat unexpected that the Trick Master had managed to do that. His dramatic speech to Elliot seemed off – maybe it was some form of recording? – because I didn’t really see why he would yell at Elliot that ‘his victories were shallow and temporary’. It seemed a bit odd to me, and the Rayquaza popping out like that was rather surprising and maybe a bit too sudden an event, which did make the ending feel a bit rushed to me.

I enjoyed the story overall, but there were a few parts I feel that could have used polish in the end. It’s a neat idea for a story nonetheless, and I commend you for it.

Dragonfree

I really enjoyed the portrait you paint of the Trick Master here - his eccentricities, his bizarre genius, the impossible feats he performs to create his rooms, his goofy ego, his competitive nature, and eventually his obsession with besting May with ever more elaborate puzzles, even to the point of alienating most of the people who would otherwise enjoy his work. He's lovable, ridiculous and infuriating all at the same time. I also like your May - she's hypercompetent as seems appropriate for a player character, sails through his challenges and is completely oblivious to how much this playful competition (as she sees it) is taking over the Trick Master's life. Their battle of wits is a unique but interesting plot, and the choice of telling it from the point of view of a third party works out very nicely - we only see glimpses of most of the Trick Master's rooms this way, and that shows well what's happening but retains the mystery of how the rooms are created, while leaving the puzzles and how May solves them up to the reader's imagination.

I think the ending is a bit much, though. I mean, in a way it works surprisingly well: the Trick Master's rooms have been escalating amazingly in elaborateness, the last one we heard of seemed to be an entire city, and when he subsequently spent years making the next room, it had to be something pretty mindboggling. And I actually rather like the overall creepypasta feel the story ends up with, a first-person account of initially mundane events with quirky characters that ends up in some kind of bizarre supernatural horror.

But I think you end up overdoing it. You've successfully built up the story in such a way that I'm willing to buy that the Trick Master somehow constructed an entire alternate universe that's slowly sucking in the real one - which is quite something! But going full-on A GOD AM I? He'd been established to have an ego, sure, but his ego revolved around cleverness and puzzles; I can't see him wanting to rule over a universe as some sort of god, so that part just seems to come out of left field. And then there's also Rayquaza and things blowing up, not for any obvious reason that I can see. As funny as that sounds when I've already accepted this dude having supernatural universe-creating powers, it's this stuff that makes me go, "What, really?" Compared to all the build-up about the Trick Master's determination and the incredible spaces he can create, these elements just seem pulled out of nowhere at the end. If I were you I'd tone down everything about the ending except the actual created-a-universe bit - the really audacious thing you've built up becomes a lot harder to swallow when accompanied by a bunch of other weird stuff that isn't built up the same way, even if the main event is clearly a lot more outrageous in itself.

I also thought the story started a bit slow. I don't think we need to hear this much about the beginning of Eddie's journey before he first found the Trick House, and while showing the sea maze is good to give us a proper taste of how the rooms work, I feel like Eddie spends perhaps a bit too long in it. The Trick Master is such a colorful character that it picks up pretty much the moment he appears, so I think just trying to shorten the stuff before his introduction could be a good idea. It's not exactly monstrously long before that point, but Eddie isn't terribly interesting on his own merits and so the beginning doesn't do the best job of hooking the reader in.

Finally, I had some smaller nitpicks - there are quite a few typos (perhaps most noticeably, one of the headlines Eddie imagines when he thinks he's going to die in there has "trainier" while the other has "investigaytion"), as well as some weird lines. For example, you describe a man of average everything to be the strangest sight Eddie has ever seen, which just sounds absurd; presumably his averageness is not the bit he finds strange, so having that sentence immediately after saying he's perfectly average is odd. Later, you say "something in my anger snapped" - the word "snapping" is usually used for when someone becomes angry, or for when something is said in anger, so it feels like a very angry word, and that means it reads very weirdly when you use it to say someone has suddenly stopped being angry. I had to reread the sentence several times just to be sure what you meant.

So all in all, you have vivid characterization and an unusual, surprisingly entertaining plot, and in general I thought this was definitely one of the most enjoyable entries. In particular, I commend how you managed to make me buy the most audacious part of your bizarre ending. I think the various other weirdness at the end detracts from it, though, and the beginning could be tightened up a bit.

Negrek

Ah, the Trick House! Definitely a favorite Hoenn spot and a great choice for this contest.

For the most part your grammar and punctuation is solid, although there are a fair few mistakes lurking about. Another proofread or beta session could help polish this up a bit. Also, it looks like you have problems putting commas where they don't belong, as in these examples:

As I got older, I tried my hand at catching, and spent my free time after school training to battle Roxanne.

You only want to use a comma to split two clauses that can stand on their own as complete sentences. Here, "And spent my free time after school training to battle Roxanne" is not a complete sentence, so there should be no comma before it, like this:

As I got older, I tried my hand at catching and spent my free time after school training to battle Roxanne.

Same deal here:

Granted, I hesitated for a few seconds when I reached Route 110, and that fabled fork in the road where the dirt path branches off to the left, and the gleaming bike trail called Cycling Road slopes up to right.

Again, "And the fabled fork in the road where the dirt path branches off..." is not a complete sentence, so it shouldn't be fronted by a comma. Likewise the third comma: "And the gleaming bike trail called Cycling Road slopes up to right" isn't a sentence either. The sentence should be punctuated like this instead:

Granted, I hesitated for a few seconds when I reached Route 110 and that fabled fork in the road where the dirt path branches off to the left and the gleaming bike trail called Cycling Road slopes up to right.

As far as the story itself goes, it mostly works pretty well. It's a cute take on how exasperating the player character would be for NPC's in the game world, and the Trick Master's frustration and the subsequent escalation of his tricks works just fine to bring us to the surprise ending. However, the narrative feels a little labored to me, a little drawn out. There are some parts I think you could probably lose and not miss. For example, Eddie's little backstory and his item usage woes don't really add much to the piece: it's not his story, after all. He's just our viewpoint character and insight into the relationship between May and the Trick Master. While these additions do provide logical reasons for Eddie to find the Trick House in the first place, and to keep going back later, they ultimately don't move the central conflict along.

Similarly, I'm not sure that the framing works well with the story. If this were really something being written for the newspaper, intended to warn people about what had happened at the Trick Master's house, I would expect it to be much more to the point at the expense of context. I would expect a "full story" approach like this in a situation like a police interview or similar, where the goal is to get all the facts and to try to understand the bigger picture. If the goal is to warn people, then I would expect the warning to be the predominant part of the message.

Ultimately, it's a question of what you gain by using some kind of framing device rather than just telling the story straight out. If the story began at "Seven years ago" and ended with "I ran for my life," what would you really lose? I do like the ending line; I think it's a snappy, effective stinger that really drives the twist home. However, I also think you could have landed on it just as easily by adding a little on to the narrative rather than going back to the meta letter concept, something like "As for me, I ran for my life. It wasn't until later that I managed to make sense of what I saw: the Trick Master has created a new world." You could add any of the implications alluded to in the second-to-last paragraph just as easily. All things considered I don't think you do enough with the letter conceit to justify it.

I'll also admit to being a leetle confused as to what exactly the Trick Master's "new world" is supposed to represent. At first I thought it was supposed to be a reference to the remakes, i.e. May had managed to complete all the challenges Hoenn had to offer, so the Trick Master had created a whole new world for her to conquer, namely ORAS. The only things to really suggest that, though, are the lines "I am the alpha and the omega" and Eddie's warning about people disappearing or being changed, i.e. remade, in their new lives. Most of the description of the world itself makes it sound more like some kind of purgatory, and the idea still works without any reference to ORAS: the Trick Master builds increasingly elaborate puzzles for May, until at last he manages to create an entirely new world/dimension. So, if you did want to imply that he'd built ORAS, I think you might want to be slightly more explicit about it.

But like I said, I think for the most part the story comes together fine. You do a nice job of the Trick Master's character, and the twist at the end is both clever and fits in well with the build-up before it. I liked the little details you included throughout the story, like the implication that the Trick House is somehow constructed using secret power, as a secret base might be; the descriptions of how the Trick Master prepared his various courses, with the reference to Mirage Island and other Hoenn staples; and your description of the timer ball. You obviously put a lot of thought into how you could bring as many elements of Hoenn into your story as possible, and I think it adds a great deal of life and texture to the piece.

All in all, this is a good story and a solid entry. I think the narrative could use a little tightening up, but other than that, the idea is well-realized.
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
2nd place: "Malice" by [Imaginative]:[Clockwork]

Scoring
bobandbill: 2nd place (80 points)
Dragonfree: 4th place (50 points)
Negrek: 3rd place (65 points)
Phoenixsong: 3rd place (65 points)
Total: 260 points

Malice

Fresh off the S.S. Anne, a group of three young adults had squeezed themselves into a waterside spot of the enormous Slateport Beach. In the ocean, amongst dozens of other swimmers, Cody bobbed around, enjoying the clarity and freshness of the water that couldn’t be found in Vermilion City’s mossier waters. Robin wasn’t far, lying on a striped towel, slowly falling asleep despite the constant chatter from the surrounding crowd. And sitting in one of the rentable chairs was Marcus, pretending to be anywhere else as he read from his PokéNav.

“Oh!” he said, looking at Robin. “It says there’s a museum! It’s all about, like, the ocean and beaches and stuff. You love the beach.” His voice rose steadily through the sentence, but Robin remained on her back, rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses.

“I’m good,” she muttered, exerting the minimal amount of effort required to wave her hand dismissively inches above the sand.

“There’s also a Contest Hall,” he tried, scrolling on his PokéNav with his finger. “Didn’t your Oddish do pretty well in that contest back in Saffron?”

“Yeah, but it was all kinds of boring,” she answered dryly. “I’d really just rather stay at the beach, y’know?”

“We’re only here for two days,” Marcus whined. “Are we gonna be spending all of our time at the beach?”

“Yep!” Cody answered from the water, just before he bounced an inflatable ball back to a stranger.

With a long groan, Marcus leaned back in his chair, scanning the beach. There were so many people. Absolutely no privacy. As he was resentfully looking up at one of the lifeguards, he saw a little black dot floating in the sky. Throwing his hand above his eyes, he squinted at it as it grew closer and larger.

It was a ghost, bouncing around the air in a seemingly aimless path but always pointed toward one destination. Over two thousand people were on the beach that day. Over two thousand lives, histories, and personalities. Over two thousand points of potential interest, and the curious little Pokémon chose Marcus.

“What the hell?” Cody mumbled, walking onto the sand. The Pokémon was circling around Marcus’s chair several times, examining everything with her blue, candy corn eyes. Her entire body was just a head sitting above a constantly billowing curtain, no higher than a grown man’s knee.

She finally stopped in front of his face, smiling as broadly as her tiny mouth would allow. Then, with a squeak of a yawn, she settled into the crux of his armpit and closed her eyes.

“The undead sure are friendly around here,” Robin said, smiling dully. “Pretty cute, too. The cutest ghost type we have back home is a cloud of gas with demon eyes.”

Marcus said nothing, focused intently on his new friend.

“You gotta catch that thing, dude,” Cody said, digging his wallet out of their beach bag. “I’m gonna go buy a soda, and when I get back I expect you to have a new little ghosty Pokémon on your team, got it?” Again, Marcus had no reply, so Cody merely shook his head and began strolling away. However, he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw everyone in their vicinity had given them a much wider berth than before. Most of them had gone back to chatting and tanning, but nervous glances were cast toward the Pokémon frequently.

“I guess people aren’t used to wild Pokémon approaching you around here,” Robin said quietly, looking around at the crowd.

Cody finally shrugged and continued on his walk. “Everybody can’t be as tough as the people in Kanto,” he said smugly.

The nervous tension on the beach hadn’t subsided by the time he reached the refreshment shack. If anything, it had increased, and Cody found himself the receiver of countless distrustful looks. Did people think he was a poacher or something?

“It just flew up to us on its own,” he explained, a little louder than normal speaking volume. Instead of understanding shrugs, as he had expected, he noted that people seemed to bristle at his words, some shaking their heads warily. “Everybody needs to calm down.”

He entered the shack, met with the same looks as before.

“We don’t want any trouble in here,” the man behind the counter said gruffly. “Just get what you want and leave.”

Cody furrowed his brow. “Dude, what is everybody’s problem? You don’t even know me.”

“We heard about your friend’s little ghost,” said a young woman sitting at a table with her friends.

“So?” he answered. “We’re trainers. We catch Pokémon all the time. Chill out.”

“He didn’t catch that Shuppet,” said the woman harshly, setting her drink down so she could turn and face him more directly. “It went right up to him. The closest place Shuppet live is up on Route 123. It sensed he was coming and came all the way down here.” Everyone was watching quietly as she cocked an eyebrow. “To feed.”

Cody stared at her incredulously before breaking into heavy laughter, grabbing his stomach and throwing his head back. “You think,” he panted, “that little thing’s gonna eat us?” He laughed even harder. “I knew Hoenn was artsy. I guess I should’a figured you’d be a bunch of babies too!”

“Are you stupid?” The woman stood up, staring at him unwaveringly. It was now that Cody noticed her black lipstick and the four Dusk Balls clipped to her belt. “Shuppet don’t eat people. They feed on emotions. Envy. Malice. Vengefulness. Your friend’s a ticking time bomb of hatred, and we don’t want him on our beach when he blows up.”

“That’s ********,” Cody said, his voice trembling slightly. “You don’t know Marcus. He’s a wimp, but he doesn’t hate anybody.”

“I think the only one who really knows your friend,” she said, tossing her drink into the metal trash can, “is that psychotic little ghost down there.” With a final scowl, she and her friends walked out the door.

“Cheery,” he mumbled, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking around the room for some sign of solidarity. When he saw none, he scoffed and walked out the door, kicking the trash can on his way out. It surely didn’t improve his group’s reputation on the beach, but it did help absolve some of his embarrassment.

When he got back – after making the same death march through the throngs of hostile beachgoers – he was alarmed to see that the crowd’s attention was now fully focused on Marcus and Shuppet.

The young man was giggling like a child as the Pokémon used its psychic powers to lift him in the air and spin him around, flying alongside him. Robin had snatched his PokéNav and was taking pictures of the antics, ignorant to the fact that the people around them were horrified, not amused.

“Robin,” Cody growled, grabbing her arm. “What are you doing?”

Wrenching herself out of his grasp, she waved Marcus’s phone in the air. “What does it look like?”

“We can’t stay here.”

“What? Why?” She stepped back. “You don’t want to go to the museum, do you?” She looked him up and down, remembering a plethora of moments in which Cody had displayed an active stance against learning.

“No, gross,” he scoffed, nervously looking at Marcus as he sailed through the air with careless ease. “Listen, people don’t want us here. Some lady at the drink place said Shuppet only come to people with really dark emotions, like hate and stuff. People think he’s a psycho. And they might be right.”

Ever the skeptic, Robin opened the web browser on the PokéNav and looked up Shuppet. “‘Shuppet grows by feeding on dark emotions,” she read, “such as… vengefulness and envy, in the hearts of people. It roams through cities in search of grudges that taint people.’ That’s… not good…”

“Do you think it’s true?”

“No. No way,” she answered tightly, quickly exiting out of the web page. “Absolutely not. It’s Marcus. Little Marky. He’s too… soft to be, like, evil. Right?”

Just then, Marcus landed back on solid ground with a thump. Robin watched him with a hint of caution, noticing that his smile seemed abnormally wide. “It’s like an imitation of joy,” she whispered quickly, biting her lip.

“Are you guys ready to go?” he asked hopefully, Shuppet floating above his shoulder. “You wanna go to the museum now?”

“Sounds great!” Robin blurted out. “This is your vacation too, after all.” She laughed woodenly, keeping her head down as she led the group through the crowd and into the city. Eventually Marcus took the lead, using the map on his PokéNav to navigate the streets.

“You gotta be right,” Cody whispered, hanging a safe distance behind so he could take to Robin privately. “He’s the same old guy. A little weird, but super nice.”

“I’m not so sure now,” Robin murmured, smiling broadly when Marcus turned around to make sure they were keeping up. “Do you remember that time he screamed at us for telling people at school his mom still dressed him? Like, I know we were out of line, but, God, what an overreaction.”

“He does always seem weirdly angry when I play keep-away with his Poké Balls.”

“Wait… where’s Shuppet?” Just as she said it, she felt a soft puff of air on her ear and jumped. Shuppet slowly flew over her shoulder, glaring at her with eyes that had definitively lost their cute charm. The ghost then nestled onto Marcus’s shoulder, and if Robin hadn’t known Pokémon couldn’t talk, she would have sworn they were whispering to each other.

“He’s gonna kill us,” she hissed, sounding like a pinched balloon slowly releasing air.

“We’re here!” Marcus announced, waving to the enormous line that stretched out of the building and around the corner.

Seeing the ferocious interest he had in visiting the place, Robin and Cody agreed to wait, and after a mere two hours, they were paying the hefty interest fee. From here, they plastered fascination on their faces as Marcus read every single every exhibit infobox, taking it upon himself to expand on what the paragraphs had neglected to cover in great enough detail. By the end of the visit, they knew almost nothing about tides but had learned that Marcus’s right eye twitched slightly when he was speaking passionately.

“Boy, I am dead tired,” Cody said, faking a yawn as they greeted the afternoon sun once again. “Let’s head back to the Pokémon Center.”

“But there’s a Pokémon Contest starting in forty-five minutes!” Marcus said, brushing Shuppet’s head. “Robin, you should sign up! You and Oddish are killer!”

There was too much for her to focus on. Why would he say ‘killer,’ an outdated piece of slang that, to her knowledge, he had never used before? Was it a threat? Was she imagining it, or was it more of an order than a suggestion? Why were his nostrils flared so drastically? Was that something people did in excitement, or was it exclusively reserved for thinly veiled rage? And most distressingly, what was the faint string of black aura that now connected the trainer and Shuppet? What did it mean? Had that been there before? Would Cody protect her when the time came, or would he just run when he saw Marcus was adequately distracted with her murder? She knew the answer to that one.

“Sure, buddy!”

The contest was a surprising relief for Robin. Although her knees trembled constantly, she considered herself lucky to have her name and face memorized by an entire crowd in case the moment came for positive body identification.

Cody, on the other hand, sat next to Marcus and his new Pokémon friend in the audience. Every cheer made him flinch, and it was here that he noticed the strange connecting aura between Shuppet and the young man. He was going to ask about it, but a cold glance from the ghost convinced him otherwise. Instead, he sat still and sweated profusely in the air-conditioned building.

Robin kept a safe distance as her Oddish used his leaves and various-colored powders to paint a mural of the judging table on the performance floor. She supposed she could always poison Marcus if he tried anything. She wasn’t sure how to take out Shuppet, though. Oddish wasn’t much a battler.

In the end, she did surprisingly well. Out of ten contestants, she placed fourth and received a white consolation ribbon. Cody looked nervous and uncomfortable when they met back up, while Marcus was visibly angry.

“You were way better than that guy with his Spheal,” he said, disgusted. “Those judges were mental.”

More tired slang, she noted fretfully. Was it some kind of hint? He definitely seemed more upset that was usual for him, and the bond between him and Shuppet looked stronger than ever.

“Maybe we should let Shuppet go home,” she suggested. “She probably-”

“No!” he barked, his face tightening. After a moment, he softened up again, “Sorry, I just… I really like her, and I’m not sure I’m ready to let her go yet. I’ll definitely set her free before we leave on the ship again.”

“In body bags?” she mumbled after he had walked a safe distance away.

“Hey,” Marcus said gruffly, and Robin froze, petrified. “There’s a Pokémon Fan Club down the street. Let’s go.”

“Yes, sir!” Cody shouted. Robin narrowed her eyes at him, to which he shrugged defensively.

Under what they considered merely an illusion of free will, they followed Marcus as he lurched down the sidewalk. By this point, everyone was clearing out of the way, ducking into even the most overpriced and tacky shops to avoid meeting up with the boy who had befriended a literal sack of contempt. Robin gave them all apologetic looks, but promptly stopped that after a look from Shuppet.

The Pokémon Fan Club would have been an absolutely lovely place if every Skitty, Azurill, and like-minded trainer hadn’t spent the half hour cowering on the edges of the antique couches or taking abnormally long bathroom breaks that seemed to involve lots of panicked breathing based on what Robin heard as she was waiting for her turn. Cody had picked a place by the window, trying and failing to covertly get the attention of any strong-looking trainers who passed by.

After it became clear that none of the members could appreciate the unique beauty of the glowering Shuppet, Marcus cussed out the elderly president, knocked over a hand-painted lamp, and left in a huff, his panicked entourage stumbling behind him.

“Idiots,” he said, more to Shuppet than any person. Dark bags were underneath his eyes, and he looked even paler than usual. “Let’s go back to the Pokémon Center.”

“Marcus,” Robin said meekly, wringing her hands together. “I think you should probably get rid of that Shuppet.” Cody’s eyes grew huge as he heard her. “It’s making you-” She stopped immediately. Her lips would no longer open, and her entire body felt stiff and immovable. She looked at Shuppet, and saw that her eyes were glowing bright as she controlled Robin’s movements.

“What?” Marcus asked impatiently, putting his hands on his hips.

Robin tried to speak up again, but the only motion she made was to unwillingly shake her head back and forth, slowly and deliberately.

“Good,” he continued. “Let’s go.”

Cody glanced at Robin, who walked stiffly under Shuppet’s influence, but said nothing.

Their rooms were all in a row, but Marcus opened his own door and suggested they gather inside. “I think we should talk.” Both forcibly and out of fear, the two friends entered. “Sit on the bed.” They obeyed.

“Today was really fun,” he began cheerily. His voice sounded like the Marcus they knew pre-evil omen, but his stiff body, ragged face, and the black aura that now surrounded his entire body suggested otherwise. “Probably because, for once, we did what I wanted to do.” His tongue slid in between his gums and bottom lip, like a worm crawling in his mouth.

“Marcus,” Robin started. “We-”

“Shut up,” he spat. The glowing in Shuppet’s eyes surged momentarily, causing the lights to flicker and then bust, leaving them with only the evening light that filtered through the curtains. “I’m talking.” He smiled.

“Did you know,” he continued, “that I was a genuinely happy person before I met you two?” He looked around expectantly, waiting for any kind of answer. “I guess not. Well, let me tell you, I was. I had good friends, I did well in school, and I even had a girlfriend. Then you came along.”

Robin watched helplessly as her and Cody’s Poké Balls were telepathically unclipped from their belts and placed on the other side of the room.

“You were nice at first,” he remembered, his tone whimsical, as if this was a nostalgic meeting between three old friends. “Then you started doing things like convincing me to skip school and drive you to Saffron City. Nobody paid me for gas. Or buying you guys meals, promising you’d ‘make up for it later.’ As I recall…” He tapped his chin thoughtfully with one finger. “You never did.”

“We’re sorry!” Robin cried. “We weren’t good to you, but we’ll be better from now on! We don’t deserve to die!”

“I guess we just have to agree to disagree,” Marcus shrugged. The blackness was swirling aggressively around him, and the ghost Pokémon was absorbing it thirstily.

“We’re your friends!” she shouted. “Don’t d-” Without warning, Shuppet lifted her off the bed and flung her against the wall. She gasped as the breath was knocked out of her and crumpled onto the floor, sobbing. Cody sat still, scratching his fingernails down into nubs.

“You always did like to disagree with me,” Marcus said hotly. “And now,” The aura became turbulent, “I’m going to tear you apart,” It was all funneling directly into Shuppet, whose eyes were getting brighter every moment, “limb by limb,” His body was literally shaking from the darkness being sucked out of him, “until you beg me for-” In an instant, the black glow was gone, the last of it disappearing into Shuppet’s small curtain. Marcus’s face plumped up immediately, the dark bags lightened back to their normal color, and his rigid stance softened.

“… mercy,” he finished weakly. He looked at Robin, crying on the floor, and Cody, visibly grinding his teeth, and tears filled his eyes. “I don’t… I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said quietly, beginning to tremble. “Why... what…”

Shuppet was the only the one in the room who was totally unperturbed by double murder that had seemed imminent only a moment ago. In fact, she looked as if she had just had the tastiest and most filling meal of her life. With one last catlike rub against Marcus’s cheek, she giggled, opened the window, and disappeared into the orange sky without even a single apology.

“Dude. What the hell was that?” Cody said, testing the waters to see if he could assume his old personality again without being torn apart, limb by limb, until he begged Marcus for mercy. “That thing just left.”

“I-I don’t kn-know… I don’t feel angry anymore…”

Standing weakly, Robin staggered forward. “He literally… fed on your anger, I think.”

“He ate it?” Cody asked, rising casually as if the whole thing was no big deal whatsoever.

“I think she’s right,” Marcus said, looking at nothing in particular. “I feel… good. Like, really calm. Normally I kind of have this… resentment underneath. Just a constant annoyed feeling that I hide. But I don’t have to hide it anymore, ‘cause it’s not even there.”

“He must have taken every bit of anger in you,” Robin said, sitting on the bed with a groan. “That’s probably what that dark stuff was. He pulled it all to the surface and then just… sucked it up.”

“That must be why I kept getting angrier.” He sat on the bed too, resting his tired body. “He took it all out from underneath.”

“So you’re back to normal?” Cody asked carefully, to which Marcus nodded. “Then let’s be real here, bro.” He sait on the bed between them. “You almost killed us. You owe us big time.”

“No joke,” Robin said, laughing softly. “I expect at least three free dinners. Nice ones, too, not fast food.”

“I’ll settle for free rides to Saffron whenever I want,” Cody said justly. “And I get to pick the music.”

“That seems fair,” Marcus answered complacently.

Robin put her arm around him. “It’s good to have you back, buddy.”

The next day, and during the remaining three stops of their cruise, they spent every free moment on the beach. Cody bobbed around in the water, joining any nearby group of strangers whether welcomed or not. Robin lay on a beach towel, soaking in the warm sun and idly chatting with Marcus, who sat on a rentable chair, playing disinterestedly on his PokéNav.

They truly had learned their lesson about the way they treated their friend. Unfortunately, they found it difficult to apply their learning to a person who, at least temporarily, was incapable of feeling any resentment or anger. Robin reasoned with herself that vacations were for relaxing, and it really wasn’t relaxing if she was walking on eggshells around her friend. So she made a pact with Cody that as soon as they got back home – and not a moment sooner – they would be much more generous and loving. It was ambitious, for sure, but in the end, she proved that both her and Cody were perfectly deserving of her little white consolation ribbon.

Reviews

bobandbill

Now I know what to do if a Shuppet decides to hang around me!

This fitted the prompt rather well in focusing on a Hoenn Pokémon, and I have to admit it was refreshing to read a story about the line that didn’t centre on the more usual angle of ‘it’s a possessed doll that was thrown out’. Admittedly that’s more for the Bannette form, but I digress. I don’t feel that the Pokémon could have been easily changed for the story, and I felt the setting of Slateport and visiting each of the major attractions of it was also done well, fitted the story and Pokémon as a result, and also complemented the characters you used nicely.

They were, on that note, also well written. I liked how worried Robin and Cody became during their ordeal, gradually getting more and more upset as their friend deepened into his ‘anger-mode’. In particularly I liked Robin’s suddenly wave of questions to herself when he used the phrase ‘killer’ and following parts (like Robin considering ‘herself lucky to have her name and face memorized by an entire crowd’). I also laughed at the flat-out reaction of ‘sure, buddy!’ and then ‘Yes, sir!’ to visiting the Pokémon fan club. (Especially as they came from Kanto – their one must be known for the rambling Rapidash lover.)
I was somewhat amused by how quickly after the event that they decided he should buy them dinner and all. I hope they did really treat him better back in Kanto. (On that note, it was neat that there were some hints to their mistreatment of Marcus earlier (them exclaiming how he overreacted to essentially them bullying him)). Maybe that was a bit too much of an acceptance of the Shuppet just leaving and things going back to normal which made the ending fell just a tad rushed. I might have preferred it if they had really been more sympathetic and tried to make Marcus feel better before the trip ended. Having you as the narrator sum up that they had truly learnt their lesson and planned to be better friends after the vacation wasn’t quite as satisfying as I feel the story’s ending could have been.

Description was very nicely done – not too overwrought, and the pace of the story remained smooth throughout bar maybe that ending. I also particularly liked the confrontation scene in Marcus’ room. The description there really did well in creating the atmosphere – details like how ‘his tongue slid in between his gums and bottom lip’ and the following effects on the lighting by the Shuppet were great.

It was neat seeing the reactions of the Hoenn people to the Shuppet picking out Marcus like that, and their general hostile nature following that, which really did help place emphasis on the danger. That said, I did have two complaints with this aspect. One part which did not appear to incorporate it was the museum:
Seeing the ferocious interest he had in visiting the place, Robin and Cody agreed to wait, and after a mere two hours, they were paying the hefty interest fee.
I think it would have been easy enough to slip in some mention on how the people in the line reacted to them. Maybe even have them allow the group to walk in ahead of them, or a few decide they didn’t want to go into the Museum anymore?

I also feel that perhaps the Hoenn people would have still been at least a bit apprehensive of the group the following day – granted, they wouldn’t have had the Shuppet anymore, but given how they were reacting the previous day I feel some would still be at least wary. A small mention of that again should be easy enough, as I feel that no mention at all of that is perhaps a missed detail.

A few more quotes:
As he was resentfully looking up at one of the lifeguards, he saw a little black dot floating in the sky.
I think this sentence reads fine without the ‘was’ (As he resentfully looked up at one...).
It was a ghost, bouncing around the air in a seemingly aimless path but always pointed toward one destination.
This sentence read a little oddly to me, as if it was missing a word or two. Maybe consider expanding this slightly.
Cody said, testing the waters to see if he could assume his old personality again without being torn apart, limb by limb, until he begged Marcus for mercy.
I think this was too repetitive from what Marcus had just said – maybe it was for effect but it didn’t quite work out imo.
“And now,” The aura became turbulent, “I’m going to tear you apart,” It was all funneling directly into Shuppet, whose eyes were getting brighter every moment, “limb by limb,” His body was literally shaking from the darkness being sucked out of him, “until you beg me for-”
British English tells me it’s funnelling with two ls, but I assume you are using the US version which doesn’t do that. But another point is that I feel you could consider either going without capitals for the parts between the dialogue (which may also require some rewording), or making new sentences (e.g. ‘“And now.” The aura became turbulent. “I’m going to tear you apart.” It was all...(etc)’). Or hyphens instead of commas at the end of dialogue, to indicate he’s still talking while you describe what is happening at the same time. You may have to see which turns out to look the best (or even mix them), but the way it currently is doesn’t quite seem correct to me.
He sait on the bed between them.
sat.

Lastly, while it may have been challenging, I would have liked to have had more of a sense of how Marcus felt after the Shuppet left. It would be challenging in that he isn’t really feeling any anger, but perhaps there may have been some relief, or just plain numbness?

I really enjoyed this entry throughout. It told an interesting story, the characters were intriguing and the writing style was smooth and enjoyable. Well done!

Dragonfree

This was nicely written, and it's amusing watching Cody and Robin's mounting paranoia over every little thing Marcus does, but ultimately I was really disappointed by how straightforward it was. If the main characters spend basically the entire story convinced something is going to happen, and everyone else in the know also agrees that it's going to happen, the reader is hardly going to be blown away when exactly that happens, you know? There is no twist on things at all - from the moment the people on the beach explain Shuppet to them, everything goes exactly as the reader has been told to expect, and that's just rather boring and anticlimactic. I spent most of the story waiting for the part where it would turn out not to be as simple as they thought, one way or another, but it never happened.

If the point of the story was just meant to be to show how the Shuppet brings forth Marcus's hidden feelings and eventually how this makes Cody and Robin decide to treat him better, then I'd really suggest you not make the beachgoers at the beginning explain that this is what Shuppet do - let them just start getting a creeping feeling that something weird is going on with their friend without knowing exactly what's going on, and build up what's happening to him with a sense of sinister intrigue until he snaps. Make it shocking when he turns out to want to murder them - it would make for a far more potent sense of horror than when you've been telling us he will for most of the fic.

That being said, I think this story would be a lot more interesting if it were what I thought it was. The buildup you have works great with the assumption there will be a twist - you show the dynamic between the characters well, with Marcus's well-meaning enthusiasm and Cody and Robin's utter lack of respect for him, and the latter two's conviction that Marcus is going to go axe-murderer on them feels like something they might actually think (because they think so little of Marcus and know he has good reasons to resent them), but not at all like something that's necessarily true. You show Marcus trying to have a fun day and making a point of involving his friends in it, only to be met with stiff nods and people desperately avoiding them. You show Cody and Robin reading murderous intent into everything down to the hokey slang Marcus uses. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I was pretty sure you were implying Cody and Robin were being paranoid and that Marcus's souring mood had less to do with Shuppet than with everyone else's hostile reactions to the Shuppet. I could think of a myriad possible endings that would capitalize on that buildup - I was looking greatly forward to seeing what you'd go with. But instead these hints that their assumptions are wrong turn out to just be red herrings, and while it's your decision what story you want to write, I can't help but think you're wasting a perfectly good setup.

The final paragraph also feels awkward, the way it starts off insisting they truly learned their lesson, then goes on to tell us actually they took advantage of his new mellowness, then hastily goes back to saying they really did learn their lesson, really. If you want to show us the characters changed for the better, this is not a very convincing way to do it, to say the least. It does fit well with Cody and Robin's characters that they'd continue to take advantage of Marcus if he won't complain, but telling us that while simultaneously insisting the lesson was thoroughly learned just sounds like making excuses for them. You can end a story with a simple "They learned their lesson and never did X again", but if the situation is more complicated and morally gray than that, I think you're better off with an actual extra scene that shows us in a more nuanced way what has truly changed in their attitudes and gives us a real, tangible idea of what their relationship with Marcus will look like in the future, rather than trying to hastily summarize it.

Also, you flip-flop weirdly on the Shuppet's gender. The narration usually calls it "her" but sometimes "it", and the characters start off calling it "it", then they call it "her" and then at the end they're suddenly all calling it "him". If there's any sort of reason for these shifts, I can't tell what it is.

So overall, I enjoyed most of this and your prose and characterization are solid, but I thought the end was a huge letdown after a buildup that seemed to be leading towards a more interesting twist on what was going on. You should think carefully about how you're building up the reader's expectations in your story and how that affects their reactions to what happens later - this sort of thing can really make or break a story.

Negrek

This is a cute spin on shuppet's pokédex entry, and one that makes a good amount of sense, too--after all, if a pokémon feeds on spite, you'd kind of expect that spite to be consumed and gone afterwards!

If that's how shuppet normally work, though, I'd kind of have expected people to figure it out by now... it's one thing if the cause and effect is ambiguous, but here the shuppet treatment leaves people feeling dramatically better and less resentful. I didn't get the sense that this particular shuppet was supposed to be out of the ordinary. As a result, people's extreme aversion to Marcus doesn't make a lot of sense. He's not actually dangerous (except maybe during that brief freak-out at the end--but that was brief) and just him being a resentful person in general doesn't seem like enough to make people *that* terrified of him. That doesn't really distract from the story as it's being read, but after finishing it was definitely on my mind.

You do a nice job setting a comedic tone, with little details like Marcus swooping around giddily in the background while his friends discuss how he might be inclined to violence and rage, the people all cowering away from him at the fanclub while he obliviously tries to chat about pokémon, and Robin's paranoid interpretations of his vocabulary all contributing to the tongue-in-cheek tone of the piece. Making Robin and Cody out to be such comically awful people makes it easy to laugh at their plight rather than take it too seriously; all in all the situation kind of made me think of the sort of thing you'd see on Seinfeld.

You have a lovely ear for dialogue; that's definitely the highlight of the piece, I think. Your prose is solid, too, although you often have adverbs creeping in to clog things up. You have one about every other sentence towards the beginning of the story especially, and to me they often feel tacked on rather than contributing to the text. For example, "Everyone was watching quietly as she cocked an eyebrow" (as opposed to watching loudly?), or "The woman stood up, staring at him unwaveringly" (usually stares are unwavering by definition).

"Absolved" does not mean what you think it means. There are other word goofs in here, too, like "interest" when I'm pretty sure you meant "entrance."

Anyway, this story hinges on the relationship between Marcus and his friends, but unfortunately it didn't quite work for me. There are some indications that Robin and Cody aren't particularly nice to Marcus--or nice people in general, given the way they act otherwise--but it hardly seems severe enough that they could sincerely believe Marcus wanted them dead. Ignoring what he wanted to do in favor of hanging out on the beach is a bit jerkish, yeah, but we aren't given a lot to suggest that this goes beyond being a dickish to him now and again. Robin and Cody's constant concern for their own well-being without a single thought for their friend who's being fed on by a ghost does help establish that they're pretty awful people, but again, I didn't really get a sense that there's a lot of beef between Marcus and them specifically. I think it would help if you perhaps added one or two more references to past grievances earlier in the story so that it becomes clear that the two of them are actually bullying him and not simply occasional jerks. Something as simple as them getting him to pay for ice cream or something and ignoring his pleas that they pay him back this time seriously guys please could easily establish both that they're dicks and that this treatment is a chronic problem and Marcus probably does have a ton of resentment.

In a similar vein, I was a bit thrown by the ending. Robin and Cody not learning from their little brush with death is definitely in keeping with their characters and the comedic tone of the piece, but in the end I couldn't tell whether you intended to imply that they did keep being jerks to Marcus or did not. The way the last sentence is constructed now, it definitely says that yes, they changed their ways at least enough to earn a consolation ribbon. I personally was expecting the piece to end in the vein of "it was ambitious, but Robin was sure she could prove that she and Cody...", i.e. that Robin was just thinking about how they would be better people rather than actually acting on it, and I got a bit confused when that's not how it turned out.

If you want Robin and Cody to shape up at the end, I think you need to include something concrete that demonstrates that resolve. Otherwise it sounds like they're all talk; I can't see them progressing so far in character development from people who would take advantage of Marcus just because he seemed so chill to people who actually treated him at least semi-well that I can believe it without some kind of evidence. A small gesture like them treating him to a meal (whether back in Kanto or otherwise) or just apologizing for having been dicks in the past would have been enough. On the other hand, if you actually wanted it to be clear that Robin and Cody weren't going to change, I think you definitely need to reword that sentence! The way things are now the ending left me doing a double-take rather than forming a neat summation of the story.

Aside from some uncertainty about how you wanted the Marcus/Robin/Cody relationship dynamic to play out, though, I think this all came together well. The spin on shuppet's 'dex data is clever, and you packaged it in a nice, lighthearted story that showed some very effective characterization. All in all an enjoyable read.
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
1st place: "ERROR 1393: Tales from the End of the World" by JX Valentine

Scoring
bobandbill: 1st place (100 points)
Dragonfree: 1st place (100 points)
Negrek: 1st place (100 points)
Phoenixsong: 1st place (100 points)
Total: 400 points

ERROR 1393: Tales from the End of the World

Lanette’s berry plants were dead.

Fantastically dead.

So dead that they weren’t just sad, brown corpses, wilted in the summer sun. They were desiccated memories of plants, crumbling into dust onto the cracked mud that had at one point (namely, yesterday) been soft, well-watered soil. The berries themselves had fallen to the ground, but they were well beyond the point of rotting and well into the point at which they were shriveled rocks that reeked heavily of sweet persimmons.

This didn’t interest her. She was too preoccupied by the reason why they were dead: the sunlight. It was too bright outside. Too hot. So hot that water was steaming in the wailmer pail resting beside the dead berry patch. Lanette had been standing outside for the past two minutes, and already, she could feel her fair skin burning under the sunlight. It was far too hot.

Squinting, she stared first at the pale sky and then at the smoking peak of Mt. Chimney. Half of the sky was a uniform white—not with clouds, as usual, but with a brightness so intense that it was nearly blinding. Yet to the south, the brightness gave way to thick, dark clouds, and the mountain ranges that separated Fallarbor from Rustboro and Verdanturf were obscured with gray, hazy sheets of rain. Meanwhile, to the west stood Mt. Chimney, from which brown-gray plumes of smoke rose and mingled with the southern storms. In the distance all around her, Lanette could hear and feel the rumbling of rocks, of earth, of millions of gallons of water being dumped all at once onto the ground. Lanette had seen weather like this before now. Back when …

When...

She turned on her heel and walked back into her cottage. Her fingers were already fumbling with the pockets of her apron by the time she kicked the door closed. Finally, one of her hands extracted a pokégear from her pocket. Her thumb pried it open while her mind drafted a message. All the while, her eyes drifted to the nearest window, through which she could see Mt. Chimney. She couldn’t help but think it was beautiful, standing there with a backdrop of white sky and gray clouds.

But that was the problem with her home region. It looked beautiful even when it was falling apart...

Reviews

bobandbill

Quite the imaginative story, full of neat touches and insights into the Gym Leaders and main characters of Hoenn. I am not at all surprised to see you involved Lanette in this btw. =p Her being in charge of the Time Capsule certainly makes sense, and I liked the idea of it being used as well in the story like that (and rather curious as to how it would work). I had thought early on a few pages in that it would be used in some way, and while I’m not sure if that was your intention for it to be guessable, I liked that I was right on that.

It’s undeniable that this related to the contest theme, haha. I also guessed at that this was going to use the Emerald and upcoming ORAS games (I guess that can be coupled into guessing a time capsule was involved though), but there were a couple hints towards that and I don’t feel it was that obvious either. The details relating the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] gen games and their upcoming remakes (how Emerald had both legendaries fighting and a need for Rayquaza, and the hint towards the primal forms of Kyogre and Groudon in the future) were neat as well.

The exception to this for myself is the interchange between Wallace and Steven when Wallace mentions convincing Lanette to reset the timeline so Steven is champion again (and presumably that he’s a Gym Leader again). It suggested to me that their positions were only set by chance at resets, where say maybe having Steven choosing to step down this time may have been a neat idea to explore, if only in passing (say, so he could travel more and keep more of an eye on May this time around?) That would make their conversation ‘maybe next time you could be the champion again’ or something along those lines. Something to consider – this wasn’t anything I felt was bad, but upon pondering that scene I thought that would have felt better.

I quite enjoyed seeing each of the Gym Leaders (or in one case their immediate successor) and how they were reacting to the tragedies in their respective cities. There were nice contrasts, each with a reoccurring motif of ‘nothing else to do but hope/wait’ for the most part to connect them together. I think my favourite portrayal from the bunch was Wattson and his influence on Flannery and Winona, as well as his backstory to his first Pokémon and Flannery’s grandfather. I also liked Liza and Tate’s use of psychic powers in predicting when the message would come and so forth.

May meanwhile was great. I loved her happy-go-lucky attitude in her first scene (‘Steven Stone-approved!’) and insistence to herself that she had to catch Rayquaza the hard way because she was the hero. It was also neat to have her fail by (accidentally) killing Rayquaza. She should have gone for a Natural Cure Roselia. =p

I have a few minor issues and questions here and there. I’ll start with Flannery not knowing about the system and Winona saying the instructions may have been lost during the transition of Gym Leaders in Lavaridge. Given the system is a reset of the entire region (or world for that matter), and it relies on the Gym Leaders responding with the correct key, I feel that it should have been vital that they all knew about it and what to do if everything went wrong. The same goes for Norman – he didn’t seem to understand it either and took some convincing (partly from sandbanks breaking at the same time, when I felt that it really would have been in everyone’s best interest, particularly the League’s, to make sure everyone understood that at least.

Lanette’s call to the twins also revealed that she knew that Brawly was dead, but I’m wondering how she had known that given Shauna had only replied back the answer to the question via sms. Maybe there was an off-screen interchange? Just wondering what the explanation for that is.

Lastly, the ending was slightly unfulfilling for myself in the references to Lannette’s timeline theory and why the Gym Leaders couldn’t help the hero this time around (or for that matter any time). I feel the two may be connected, but the closest I can get is theorising that this is really a close following to the games where nobody else is allowed (or able?) to do otherwise than their role (I guess it’s fair enough that I’m guessing that way though given another fic =p), but if I’m on the mark there then it wasn’t quite clear enough imo that this is the case. A little bit more for that would be all it would take however.

The description was solid, and I liked a number of lines (like the repetition of ‘it was such a long way down’). The .exe for the Time Capsule part looked accurate and decently presented as well, and also was easy enough to read. (And I laughed at the ‘Have a nice day.’ thrown in at the end of it too). The story seemed mostly clean from errors or odd-sounding parts bar these few I noticed:
‘...had at one point (namely, yesterday) been...’
I feel that maybe this would actually read better without the brackets, or even just read ‘had yesterday been...’. I suggest this because in that paragraph you have ‘at one point’, and later ‘beyond the point’ and ‘into the point’, which is fairly repetitive. On reflection, maybe the repetition of a few phrases or lines did occur a bit too often (e.g. in the next paragraph, I think you could have gone without finishing ‘It was far too hot’, as it was said and shown this was the case fairly clearly in the same paragraph without it.
toward the Dewford Gym, the next.
This part with ‘the next’ confused me. I’m not sure what it is meant to mean or refer to.
She had lost track of how much time had passed. But Pokémon? That was easy.
It took me a moment to realise that she meant track of Pokémon left, so maybe consider making that a bit clearer here (e.g. ‘But Pokémon remaining?’).

Lastly:
“Kyogre and Groudon are awake. This isn’t supposed to happen.”
Heh.

A great read overall. This entry really sucked me in, even when enough was revealed that I got a good sense of what was going to happen next, and this story engaged me the most out of any other and also related to the prompt pretty darn well (and nor could this be easily applied to the idea of RBY/FRLG or GSC/HGSS without a heck of a lot of changes as well). Well done!

Dragonfree

This was just all-around lovely. Most of all I enjoyed how you showed all these different characters reacting to the horrors that are going on; you hit the emotional points perfectly, and the result is both vivid and gutwrenching. The whole out-of-control weather thing never seems that menacing in the games, but there's a hugely dramatic large-scale disaster film hiding in that plot, and you bring it out beautifully. Weather-controlling gods rampaging is actually pretty terrifying; who would've thought?

And at the same time, this is a fic about soft-resetting when you accidentally faint a legendary. It's about cocky ten-year-old player character May who wins every battle and is convinced she's invincible and is too proud to catch a legendary with a Master Ball even when the fate of the world is at stake. It's about a legendary getting poisoned by Poison Point when it hits your Roselia and then fainting from that poisoning when you're trying to catch it. It's about the different timelines portrayed by different games. It's simultaneously set firmly within the video games and in a real world with real people suffering and dying in it, which sounds like a pretty bizarre combination, but you harmoniously weave the two worlds together into one and make it work.

There are some bits of fridge logic that nag at me here, though. First, I don't really understand why it is so important for all the Gym leaders to confirm which kind of weather is going on in their city. Even if they need to unanimously agree to run the reset system, no part of the process appears to actually involve mapping out what the weather is currently like in different places in Hoenn (and, as rightly noted in the story, Lanette could just as easily find that out by watching the news), so why do they have to say what weather they see going on? And even needing them to confirm it at all seems kind of unnecessary and dangerous, especially since apparently not all of them even know about the system. What if Flannery hadn't happened to be with Wattson and Winona when she got the text? What if Brawly had had his Pokénav on him when he was swept away by the tsunami? Narratively I definitely appreciate the question's purpose in tying the story together, but I think you should have invented a more obvious reason for it to be asked.

Lanette also seems to be extremely unnecessarily cryptic, both in the content of the rain/shine message and at the beginning of her conversation with Norman. Again, given not all the Gym leaders even know about the system, and that it was a while back and some of them may have forgotten, wouldn't it be more useful to phrase the question in a way that makes it at least a little clearer what she's talking about and why they should answer it? When I see "Rain or shine?" my first thought is to assume it's a question about preference - would you like rain or shine? - and even if I understood it to be asking for the current situation, if I didn't know what it was for, I might decide I have more pressing things to attend to at the moment than telling Lanette something she could just as well find out on the news. Again, the mystery of what "Rain or shine?" means and why it's being asked is a really nice hook narratively, but it doesn't seem like the way you'd phrase the question when getting the right answer as soon as possible is a matter of life and death for an entire region.

Now, granted, maybe that's just Lanette in a hurry not being very good at keeping in mind whether the person she's talking to actually understands her, and that's fair enough; it's been so long since I played R/S/E and she had such a small role that I don't actually remember much of how she was characterized, but intuitively it seems to fit. But if she's not very good at keeping in mind whether the person she's talking to actually understands her, one would think she'd be used to people having no idea what she's talking about and needing to explain herself better. In the conversation with Norman, she merely repeats the same question and then says several more cryptic lines ("It's in your best interests to respond"?) before she actually gets around to telling him what she's on about. Maybe this is a deliberate characterization thing, but I find it hard to get a grasp on what's behind it here; it reads like she's just being cryptic for cryptic's sake.

But either way, I was gripped throughout, which is what matters most. I would honestly have gobbled up twenty more pages of NPCs feeling powerless in the face of the apocalypse, and the unusual blend of game logic and realism with the accompanying bizarre time-travel mindscrew only makes it more interesting.

Negrek

This is a cool idea. All of pokémon's regions could use a handy-dandy reset mechanism, honestly; for a world portrayed as being so generally peaceful, the place sure does seem to be teetering on the edge of the apocalypse surprisingly often.

I thought the first couple sections were a bit overwritten, particularly with regards to the description of how very dead Lanette's berry plants were and how devastated Roxanne was by the earthquake that hit Rusturf. People who are in shock and grieving felt to me more like you were trying to underline what a terrible tragedy this was for the benefit of your readers than a genuine reaction; like I said, overdone. Somewhat similar was May's passage. The way you had her manage to not only fail to catch Rayquaza but completely destroy any chance of ending the weather war was clever, but her own death seemed a little forced. If she was leaning so far out that a gust of wind could easily knock her over like that, I don't think vertigo would let her let go long enough to put her in any real danger, though I'd probably not have noticed so much if you hadn't gone about how it was "all too late" for her to grab hold. Great big "dun dun dun" moment there; it feels a little silly.

I was rather confused over the Shauna section because I wasn't sure what Shauna would be doing in Hoenn. It might be some bit of canon I missed, in which case my bad, but I don't know of anything indicating a connection between Shauna and Hoenn at all, much less Brawly specifically. At this point I'm pretty sure it's an OC/minor ingame trainer who just happens to be named Shauna, but I'm still not sure whether I missed the point of that section.

On the other hand, I think Norman's passage was the strongest out of all of them. You did a nice job of integrating his conversation with what was going on all around and getting across both his character and emotions in a relatively small amount of space.

The final section felt very explain-y to me. I think you got across the essence of what was going on just fine in the earlier sections--the idea of Lanette's reset program, of things going increasingly wrong, of May being woefully unprepared for what she was supposed to take on--and I think it would have had more impact if you'd left it at that. This section brings up a bunch of stuff you don't really have time to explore: the idea of the gym leaders being in some way tied to their towns, or how Steven keeps picking these kids to go on journeys despite their being woefully unprepared, for example--these are interesting wrinkles to add to the situation, but they come in a lump at the end and raise more questions than they settle, I think. If you were going to go on and have a whole story exploring these issues, then I think it makes sense as an end to what would be the prologue, but as it is I think that it kills the momentum you had built up going into the end and leaves off on an oddly ambiguous note rather than a real sense of closure.

So overall I like the idea, and the prose is solid. To me it feels more like the beginning of something than a self-contained story of its own, though.
 

Negrek

Lost but Seeking
That's it! Let's have a big round of applause for everyone who entered, with a special shout-out to our top three, JX Valentine, [Imaginative]:[Clockwork], and Mrs. Lovett! Thanks, too, to the judges for taking the time to put together such wonderful reviews, and to all of you for your patience while they did their work. Happy ORASmas, everyone, and I hope to see you all back again for the fanfic forum's next contest!
 

Umbramatic

The Ghost Lord
6th place: "Crater Dreams" by InsaneTyranitar

6th place? I placed just as I expected. XD

Scoring
bobandbill: 7th place (20 points)
Dragonfree: 5th place (40 points)
Negrek: 7th place (20 points)
Phoenixsong: 5th place (40 points)
Total: 120 points

So Dragonfree and Phoenixsong liked it more than bobandbill and Negrek did. Huh.


bobandbill

I felt that at the base, this was a good tale in tackling how people first came to live in Sootopolis. It fitted the prompt decently, and I don’t see this particular tale applying well to other locations easily either. Why people live in the middle of a hard-to-access place like it is certainly a good curiosity to try and figure out, and I felt that your story was a satisfactory explanation for that.

Thank you! I did want it to be a Hoenn-y origin story.

Overall, it felt like a bit like a thriller movie in its structure – set up of the story, sudden event leading to the relocation of the two protagonists, a couple scenes of the bad guy hunting them down, and following some plot events a final show down and happy ending for the pair who overcame their challenges. And a few lines (e.g. Apollo saying ‘The Absol Paw Tribe’ to end a scene) also contributed to that feeling. The execution of the tale however is not quite there – it didn’t capitalise on the decent structure imo, and so it did read somewhat predictably. Maybe that is partly because I know the people would be successful (after all, the story Juan tells is about his and Wallace’s ancestors so they would have had to survive in the end), which is fail enough. But with certain scenes, such as one at the end with Kyogre saving the day... it just seemed that I knew what would happen in them as soon as they started, or even earlier.

One of the reasons I feel this is the case is that the events ran somewhat smoothly. Taking that Kyogre scene as an example, the lack of the antagonists fighting it, or any struggle against it, was somewhat disappointing. Given the whole story, the final battle ended by Kyogre blasting them out of the cave with a torrent of water, followed by the simple line ‘The villagers all cheered.’, and then a bit more work by Kyogre to convince the tribe members to leave for good, was somewhat anti-climatic and a bit of a let-down. Curb-stomps may be funny, but there was potential for a more thrilling finale.

Hmmm... I'll havce to have my antagonists put up more of a fight, then.


Part of that can also be helped by using more description and ‘showing’. The writing style was rather simplistic, and while that has its advantages, it was too much so as I felt as we didn’t get enough of a real idea on how people felt during events. There was a lot of ‘this happened, then that happened’ (e.g. ‘The villagers all cheered.’), which doesn’t do their reactions enough justice.

I admit: Descriptions are my mortal nemesis. I'll have to practice them more and get advice on them from more experienced authors (I'm thinking JX Valentine first, the descriptions in the excerpt from hers blew me away!)

Another notable example of the above for myself was the Altaria scene. I can see why you put it in – it showed why Narissa was scared of Dragon types and hence gave Narissa her own mini-plot and obstacle to overcome, which was a good idea. However, I wasn’t sold or convinced that she was really scared of Dragon types, as she just states that ‘But Dragon Types are scary!’ and a stutter before that to convey that fact. If you played it up more and used more description to make us also feel scared of the Altaria, then this plot point might feel more believable, or at least have more impact. For instance, with ‘she beat the flames out’, going into more detail (e.g. the pain of the fire, and her fear and shock – how else does she react beyond ‘Aaah’ and beating the flames out, for instance?) would have helped. The same goes for later encounters. She does an odd stutter, sometimes thinks ‘not a Dragon type!’, and only at most has her gut wrench. More details that emphasised her fear of Dragon types would have made her overcoming that fear to beat Grima that more impressive, and for that matter more enjoyable to read.

OK, definitely adding more to flesh that character trait out.

The beginning and ending in framing the main story as a bedtime story by Juan for Wallace was cute, but I did notice that despite Juan’s bribe of letting him train his Pokémon some more Wallace just ended up sleeping after the story anyway. Crafty Juan. =p I’m also glad that it did link into the main story somewhat with the crystal rose, and the very last line of the story as well, but the crystal rose itself felt like a rather convenient item for the story (it did contribute to the feeling I had of the battle ending easily).

Hmmm... Not entirely sure how to fix that last bit. Will need to think about it more.

I was a bit surprised at the number of the beta readers listed at the end, given at the same time the number of simple errors that got through. Maybe it is unfair of me to comment on this because I don’t know if they saw the final product, or just parts of the story, or just helped with the plot, or something along those lines, but with that many eyes there were still a number of mistakes.
I am not sure what ‘white shock’ refers to.
There’s an extra space here (between ‘of’ and ‘the’).
This sentence read like a run-on sentence. I would suggest making a new sentence – e.g. ‘...its huts. Farmers were returning to...’.

flew.
There was a missing quotation mark at the beginning.

petted.
That full stop should be a comma.
While seven quotes isn’t that many, it’s worth mentioning that these are just those I noticed in the first five pages of the story (for example, there were other examples of the last sort of error, a pair of full stops together, etc).hile I’m not going to mention all of the others, a couple other quotes from afterwards of note:
This sentence was also a run-on. I feel it would have been better to split it up into two sentences (or even more) and expand on the description to make the cave entrance appear more mysterious or scary.
This would count as another example of where better description would have helped. While this turned out to be Grima, the description of ‘young man’ for both people didn’t suggest anything special about him, nor helped me identify who was who for a while. This also would have been an opportunity to build Grima up to something more, and expand on his character.

Beta readers were more for plot, and "white shock" was the white part of Juan's hair. Still, all those errors... >_< I'm definitely revising those.

Overall, it was a good basis for a tale, which used the prompt of Hoenn decently. I feel it just needs some more polishing to really give it more impact, and more description and showing (rather than telling) will go a long way with that. I did like the story overall. Good luck with editing!

Thank you!

Dragonfree

This is a pretty ambitious story - canon backstory, battles against genocidal villains, legendary Pokémon, and character arcs for the main characters, all in under 10,000 words. That's a lot to pull off, and I commend you just for trying. That said, there are some issues with the execution.

Ehe, when you put it that way I was pretty ambitious. ^_^; But thanks for the commendation.

First, I get the impression from your villain-POV scenes that you wanted to give Grima and the Absol Paw Tribe some depth rather than just making them flatly evil. However, I don't think you entirely succeed in that, because even in the scenes centered on him and his tribe, Grima doesn't sound like the hero of his own story. You use phrases like "chuckling joylessly" and call his grin "unsettling" - those make him sound unhinged and creepy and therefore less human and sympathetic. His motivation for genocide is simply believing other people are scum that needs to be cleansed, and you don't explore why he feels this way in a way that could allow the reader to understand it. He's happy to see blood spilled, thinks nothing of mowing down innocent people, and generally sounds like a complete monster, not like he sincerely believes this is necessary for the greater good. Even when you reveal his people were exiled for worshipping Giratina, rather than capitalizing on his anger, grief, sense of injustice or desire for revenge, you make him just decide everyone should fear them, another stereotypically villainous motivation that's hard for a normal person to sympathize with.

If you want him to be something of a tragic, three-dimensional villain, then you're going to want to make these sections read more like he really believes he's in the right - write them as if he's the protagonist of the story and we're supposed to root for him. If the eventual residents of Sootopolis currently live where the Absol Paw Tribe used to before they were exiled, for instance, he could view the whole thing as taking back what's theirs - these people stole his tribe's ancestral land and presume to own it, and the mere thought of it makes his blood boil. Or perhaps they live in fear, believing Giratina is becoming restless and might destroy humanity if it isn't pacified immediately with the blood of heretics. Regardless of exactly what his ultimate motivation is, decide exactly what it is that drives him, why he believes his actions are right or necessary, and how he feels about them, and show that consistently in his thoughts and behaviour - he needs to feel like a solid, concrete human being with a real set of sincere beliefs and values behind his actions if we are to buy him as a three-dimensional character.

Not all villains need to be tragic and three-dimensional, though. If all you need in your story is a terrifying threat, then you can have villains who are just genocidal without exploring their reasons, and that may be a better fit for this particular story - but then I'd just cut the villain-POV scenes, because they undermine the sense of looming menace you could otherwise get out of the Absol Paw Tribe.

The Absol Paw Tribe were originally flat, force-o-nature villains, but a beta reader didn't like that at all so I tried to give them more depth, but it seems I forgot to completely excise Grima's old characterization. I'll have to decide which direction I want to go in revising.

(Also, is the leader named Grima or Mal? Because you introduce him as Grima but then you suddenly start to call him Mal half of the time. I'm not sure if this is a mistake or if they're both his name one way or another but you just forgot to explain it.)

Gah! That was a mistake - he went through a couple name changes and apparently I missed some. So sorry. >_<

Secondly, I commend your efforts to show Apollo and Narissa developing throughout the story, having their own fears and insecurities but working to overcome them, and clearly caring a lot for each other. I feel you rely rather too much on spelling out their thoughts to show this, however. Take a line like this one, for instance:



Instead of just having him think "And I'm rather afraid to find out", show us he's afraid to find out: perhaps he hesitates until Narissa drags him in, or he unconvincingly suggests it was probably nothing. In fact, even just the hesitant way you write his dialogue here ("I... don't know") could suffice to tell us he's unsettled - you could probably cut the thought altogether. I feel it's pretty often the case that the lines you write as direct italicized thoughts are either already implied by the narration or dialogue or would be better reworked to convey the same point through the characters' actions, speech or narration. As it is it feels like you're afraid the reader won't understand what the characters are thinking unless you make it explicit, but the best stories trust the reader to be able to read between the lines - you can actually convey a lot more about a character just by describing the way they act and how they see the world and people around them than by directly telling us what they're thinking at every turn. I'd encourage you to check out JX Valentine's entry in this contest and take special note of how she shows the characters' personalities and emotional states indirectly through things like their body language, actions, and how they think and talk about what's going on.

I added the direct thoughts to give the characters more depth, but you give some good suggestions as to how I can do that better, thanks. I'll have to ask JX Valentine to show me hers!

More generally, your narrative POV is somewhat unusual. Although this is clearly third person omniscient, where we can see the thoughts of many different characters, you barely ever actually narrate the characters' thoughts or feelings; you only include actions, descriptions, dialogue and direct thoughts (the italicized ones). If your narrator has access to every character's direct thoughts, then you can also narrate their thoughts indirectly, as in "He was rather afraid to find out" instead of "And I'm rather afraid to find out." Just that doesn't do any more "showing" than the direct thought, obviously, so it wouldn't fix that issue, but even just this kind of rewording here and there could add a bit more variety to your prose and make it somewhat smoother to read - you have a lot of direct thoughts while the rest of the narration is almost completely detached, which makes it feel a bit disjointed.

Hmmm... Noted. Dry narration is a problem for me, so again, I need practice and advice for that.

Thirdly, I think Narissa's fear of dragons could do with being expanded upon more. The inciting incident with the Altaria feels rather rushed as it is, since it's so short, and it doesn't feel very scary, which makes it rather unconvincing that it would cause that lingering fear of Dragon-types we see. If she's stammering at the sight of Dragon-types years later, I'd think something more should have happened than just her clothes being momentarily lit on fire, with the flames easily beaten down: she should probably have gotten hurt, or at least feared for her life for more than a couple of seconds. And actually showing her having some sort of traumatic flashback to the original experience would be more effective at conveying her phobia than just having her think "Not a Dragon-type!", tying in with the above point about overreliance on direct thoughts.

Hmmm... Maybe I should make it a bit more violent, with another Salamence this time. Plus the flashback note.

Fourthly, you have Kyogre tell Apollo and Narissa from the start that she will drive the Absol Paw Tribe away if they ever come there, but you still have them engage them in battle first before they think to retreat into the cave to get Kyogre's help. Thus, they risk everyone's lives needlessly - they seem to have just forgotten about Kyogre. When characters just forget about obviously vital information like this, it feels like they're simply holding an idiot ball for the sake of the plot, and the story feels less believable as a result. If you don't want them to go to Kyogre immediately, they should either be unable to get in contact with Kyogre until later, have a reason to only turn to Kyogre as a last resort, or not know beforehand that Kyogre is ready and willing to help them (and then it should be reasonable for them to not have guessed).

Hrep derp, thanks for detecting that plot hole. Will need to think how best to fix it.

Fifth, some of the minor events here are kind of contrived. Apollo and Narissa become friends when their Pokémon start acting friendly, which takes all of five seconds - were Thetis and Blanca just automatically drawn to each other somehow? You could have gotten a cute scene out of this by showing them being curious about each other and starting to interact, but instead Apollo and Narissa just "suddenly" notice their Pokémon are making friendly noises at each other. And when Grima is looking for them, the deus ex machina of a random wild Pokémon happening to make a splash just as Salamence is getting close is awfully convenient; why not have them distract Salamence through their own ingenuity somehow?

Noted on both. Will have to think of how to fix.

All that said, you have some cute character interactions, I enjoy your portrayal of Kyogre as casual, friendly and somewhat motherly rather than serious and dramatic, and the ambitious story with its drama and high-stakes action definitely shines through and keeps the fic interesting even through the rough spots. Although it's hard to compare such an intense, dramatic piece to the slice-of-life that was your Interpretation contest entry, I felt this one was considerably more engaging; the execution may still need more polish, but you're definitely on the right track, especially in how you're clearly striving to show the characters going through emotional situations and overcoming personal struggles.

Thank you! I like to think character interactions are one of my strong points.

Negrek

So, the founding of Sootopolis, huh? That's not something I've seen looked at before, I don't think, nor Wallace's family origins.

Hehe, that's good!

On the whole I think this works fine as a bedtime story/legend. It's a pretty simple, straightforward plot, but for a story you're going to tell a little kid, that's just fine. However it read to me as being rather fragmented. You've split this story into a series of very short scenes, some of which are only a few sentences long, and this gives the impression of things happening very fast while also lending the narrative a bit of a jumpy quality. It almost feels like a summary more than a story, where you've condensed things down to a series of brief snippets that give snapshots of the overall plot.

Htmn... Hopefully I can help with that by expanding descriptions and such.

Some of these snippets don't really do much to move the story forward, either. In particular I thought the POV shifts were unnecessary. What did the bits from Grima's POV really add to the narrative? Most of them were extremely brief and consisted of Grima being menacing in one way or another. I think what you were trying to do was humanize him a bit, make him a more nuanced villain, but spending a little time with him when he's just doing generic-evil things like being determined to hunt down the chieftan's son don't do a lot for the story. The flashback to how the Absol Paw Clan got started was certainly the most interesting of the bunch and did the most to give insight into Grima's character... but you really need more than that to properly flesh him out as a person. Similarly, the part where he's talking about his plan does impart some useful information about what the Absol Paw Clan is, but it comes across as very "As You Know, Bob"-ish ("We are the Absol Paw Clan! In case you guys hadn't figured that out yet."), and all that information could have easily been introduced by the narrative in a different way--Kyogre pretty much covers it when she hears about Narissa and Apollo's plight, for example. And we certainly don't need to tune in to see that yes, Grima's still following them, or yes, he's found them: he can just show up again in the main narrative, and readers will be able to figure that out.

Noted. That makes me lean to getting rid of the villain POV bits, but I'm still not entirely certain.

Also, Narissa's little subplot about getting over her fear of dragon pokémon seemed unnecessary. I think having her work through her fears and become prepared to lead their clan is definitely a good thing, and a nice character arc--she's pretty much the only person who visibly grows over the course of the story--but the fact that it's dragons specifically seems a little odd. Like, you're faced with this vicious, powerful pokémon, and you're primarily worried about it just because of its typing? All the cases we see where Narissa's scared are ones where she's perfectly justified in being scared for reasons other than the fact that she's being confronted by a dragon, so I think you could do as well just having her learn to face down scary situations in general rather than overcome her fear of dragons specifically. This would mean you could also remove the little scene where she gets on the altaria's bad side, which is one of those super-brief things that doesn't feel like it does a whole lot for the story.

Hmmm, noted. Will have to think of how best to handle that.

Also, it's unfortunate that Narissa is the only one to get a real character arc, here. Apollo is, as far as I can tell, basically the same at the end of the story as he was at the beginning, despite having gone through quite a bit of trauma in the interim. Overall he really just seems to be there to be the love interest. That's something you usually see in female characters, but while it's nice to see you turn that around here, it still isn't good that one of your major characters acts more like a set piece than anything else. Yes, he does important things plot-wise (prevents Narissa from being killed that one time by knocking her over, say), but he isn't a fully-realized character in and of himself, which is a shame--it means that you're kind of wasting space with him where you could be presenting the reader with someone more dynamic and interesting, someone who has real relevance to the story.

Apollo: Huh?! I'm the useless love interest?! O_O

But yeah, will try to expand on him.

One final word on structure before I move on: you certainly did a better job of introducing conflict in this story than you did in your previous entry (and more on that later), but I think you still aren't getting all you could out of it. The thing is, most of the conflicts going on here are things that happen to the characters, rather than as a result of their actions; and they likewise tend to be resolved by circumstance rather than through any particular merit or action on the part of the characters themselves.

For example, the Absol clan attacking the village has nothing to do with Apollo and Narissa; it's just something that happens to them, the same way a hurricane or earthquake would. Then they manage to escape Grima by hiding and getting lucky when he's distracted. They encounter a storm (which again is just a force of nature), but they escape and Thetis happens to stumble on Sootopolis. Then they find Kyogre, who immediately decides to help them out simply because it doesn't like the Absol Paw Clan. It's kind of just a story of people dealing with stuff that happens, and who, through a series of lucky breaks, happen to come out on top.

Think of how much more interesting it could have been if Narissa and Apollo had actually had some kind of hand in the problems that arose, some kind of character-based reason to be involved. What if Narissa and/or Apollo had actually done something to provoke the Absol Paw Clan into attacking the village, for example? Now you have the characters making choices, making mistakes, and then having to face the consequences of their actions--much more interesting than "stuff happens," even if it's emotionally taxing stuff for the characters. Similarly, what if Kyogre's aid required more out of someone than simply that they show up, have a tragic backstory, and not be obviously evil? What if Narissa and Apollo had to rely on some skills that they'd developed, or rely on each other, perhaps, in order to win the legendary's aid? Ultimately it just doesn't feel like the characters really have to work for their wins here or that the conflict more than tangentially has to do with them. Ideally it's the characters who should drive the events of the story, rather than the story causing them to run around doing stuff to compensate. That's not to say that "acts of God" are universally bad in stories, but they work better when they're somehow tied to what the characters have done. For example, what if a storm sweeps down on the characters, but it's only really a problem because, in their hubris, they hadn't prepared properly? Or what if it was their curiosity that caused them to get into a situation where they were vulnerable to X random event?

Oh, didn't quite realize that. Will definitely try to adjust as much as I can.

In this respect, Narissa's "overcoming her fear" arc is important, because it's the element of her character that actually gives her some real stakes in the battle against Grima. It would have been better if this fear had earlier been an actual hindrance for her, so that her ultimate decision to stand up to the salamence was a clear change in direction. Nonetheless, here's a case where the conflict is actually rubbing up against a character's weakness, forcing them to do something that's out of their comfort zone, making them choose and then face the consequence of those choices. It's still an externally-imposed choice--Grima isn't really going after her for any reason related to her as an individual--but it's better than things like where they discover Sootopolis, where the resolution happens without any actual effort on the characters' parts. So you've got conflict, which is sort of step one; what I think you want to work on now is tying that conflict to your characters, rather than having things happen because you have such and such plot planned out where these things have to happen.

Noted, definitely.

Your writing is overall pretty clean. The usual caveats about typos, but there was nothing major in that regard. The prose itself is pretty spare, but it's plenty clear and direct. A couple minor points: first, you seem a little fond of the word "suddenly." When you have things popping up "suddenly" all the time, it wears out the effect of the word, and "suddenly" in general has the danger of slipping into melodrama ("Suddenly, a shot rang out!"). You might consider having things happen "suddenly" or abruptly by how they're introduced in the narration rather than by simply saying that they happened suddenly.

Suddenly, I decided to cut down on the suddenlies.

Also, I was a little put out by the Greek names throughout the story. You kept them consistent within Apollo/Narissa's tribe, which was good, since it then feels more like something specific to their culture. On the other hand, their culture doesn't feel Greek in any other way, so they still seem a bit out of place. And on the topic of names, I couldn't figure out why Grima kept getting referred to as "Mal" at various points.

Will try something else, then. And see my note to Dragonfree on Grima.

This story is pretty dialogue heavy, which works fine for a story you imagine might be told out loud--there aren't going to be many long descriptive passages. For the future, though, you might consider fleshing out the narration a little more; the dialogue keeps this all moving along very quickly, and the impression it gives is of several scenes where people have a brief conversation before the story moves on to something else--it contributes to the fragmented feeling I mentioned earlier caused by the POV shifts.

Again, description is my mortal nemesis. Will try to fix anyway.

Also, while your dialogue is generally good, at times it feels a little on the nose, i.e. where people are saying things because the story dictates that they state them for the record rather than because anyone in real life would actually say that. Take the part where Narissa says, "Hey, you know how you help me when I'm angry or scared...?" for example. That sounds like the kind of dialogue you'd find in a cheesy JRPG, not the kind of thing that would come out of someone's mouth in real life (barring an unusual person, of course).

Will have to nix those bits, if I can find any of the others.

Like I said, though, your more casual dialogue is generally fine. Kyogre's in particular stands out because she has a distinct manner of speaking that clearly sets her apart from the other characters. The other characters tend to blur together in terms of who's saying what, so I think you can perhaps learn from the approach you took with Kyogre to try and give the rest of the people in your stories distinct voices.

Normally my characters are pretty distinct in terms of dialogue and characterization... I guess the problems here are that I wasn't focusing as much on that and I sadly wasn't invested as usual with most of the characters, when being more invested generally leads to better characterization on my part. Will definitely try to fix that, at least with my leads.

Now, you wanted to know whether I thought this entry was better than the one you sent for the previous contest. Looking back at your Interpretations entry, the primary criticisms were that it wasn't clear what the point of your one-shot was, there wasn't any conflict, the meaning was mostly conveyed through an info-dump at the end, your character didn't really react much to her situation (show don't tell problems), and you missed out on some opportunities to go deeper with your interpretation by glossing over some of the more interesting problems a Latias would encounter when trying to pretend to be a human... whew, that's a lot, there! But fortunately the news is good in this regard.

This story clearly has a conflict and a point. You obviously did your best to make life a bit more difficult for your characters, what with their village being attacked and so on, and overall there was a clear narrative arc, and a character arc for Narissa. You also did a better job of letting your characters react to their situations and conveying their feelings through their responses rather than straight up saying that they were angry, frightened, etc. And most of all you didn't have any character come out of nowhere to spout off a bunch stuff that seems only tangentially related to the narrative!

Glad to see you found some improvements!

I will say, though, that I thought your previous entry was a little more creative. In trying to come up with something that has a clear direction and an obvious plotline, you settled on what is a fairly generic backstory for one of Hoenn's locations. The whole group of people who are displaced from their home and discover some new land is pretty common, and you didn't go anywhere particularly new with it. It also didn't have a great deal to do with Sootopolis itself; Kyogre was there, but other than that, you could have told almost exactly the same story for any of the other cities in Hoenn (or, changing up the pokémon referenced a bit, anywhere in the pokémon world). The characters themselves did show emotion, but it was very general emotion: they were scared when scary things happened and sad when their home was destroyed. This is all well and good, and to be expected. But it doesn't give them much personality. They lack the texture that really makes characters come alive and seem like real people: their idiosyncracies, the ways that they see the world differently than other people, rather than the same.
Hmmmm... Will have to try fixingf that. I admit, I was not really as invested in the characters myself as I usually am, so that hurts things.

The way they're written now, Narissa and Apollo feel a bit flat. Probably the most memorable character in the story is Kyogre, who shows a little spunk.

I'm glad both you and Dragonfree thought Kyogre was a strong point- she was fun to write, probably the most fun to write out of anybody, but I worried you guys would think her characterization was weird. Guess I shouldn't have worried. ^_^

(And again will try to improve my leads.)

On the other hand, your previous entry was about a topic that people don't usually think much of (a legendary trying to blend in with humans) and had lots of little details, like how Latias has to try and make her mouth move in time with her psychically-projected words, that gave it flavor. There was less of that feeling with this story, and I do think that's a shame--but I imagine you also had something of a different focus going into this story than the last, and were more concerned with other elements of the narrative. Just saying that you have your own personal style that I think you did a better job of bringing to the page in the previous story than you did in this one.

Hmmm... Will try to capture that style in revising,

So while I do think there are areas for you to work on, you've certainly come a long way since the previous contest, and I think you did a good job of incorporating the judge's feedback when preparing this entry. I'm sure if you keep working at it you'll see a lot of success with your writing in the future.

Thank you so much!

Thank, you, all of you, for the feedback! I'll try to get some from Phoenixsong and then make a plan for revising...

...As soon as I finish revising Caging Destruction, that is.

(Also congrats to the top three!)
 
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