Knights in Shining Armor [one-shot]

[はるひ]

Notes:

Dark Knight = Ghetsis.

Also, this is my first one shot, pweeze comment. Sorry I i went too fast :[

Once upon a time, in a land far away, lived a lonely princess. She was a very beautiful princess indeed. Her eyes were as red as a rose; her fur was as blue as the ocean; her wings are pretty as a peacock’s and she had 3 heads as cute as buttons. Her name was Hydreigon; a one of a kind girl.

However, yesterday night, she was going to see her true love until she was captured by the dark, the devious, the clever and the all-around, black knight of Team Plasma. He was the ring leader of his team. With his flowing green hair and his eye patch of wonders; he was the mastermind of evil plots. Planning them swiftly, it seems like he never fails. That night, he went and took the beautiful princess, Hydreigon from the home she shared with her true love.

Now it is up to a brave, bold and most awesome hero to save the princess. Who would that hero be? None other than her true love, himself. Me! Sir Haxorus is the name. With armor on my skin and a sword on my hip. Speeding on my Rapidash, I traveled for many hours hoping to reach the Dark Knight’s lair. The wind in my face; the way the armor sounds in the wind. Such a rush down my spine. Traveling through deserts, forests and ice lands can be a bother, especially considering that a dragon like me gets affected by the cold weather. But for my Hydreigon, I shall prevail.

After many hours of harsh traveling, I reached the Dark Knight’s lair. Parked my Rapidash and headed over to the long tower, where Hydreigon awaits. The tower itself was just a long structure with nothing special added to it. Just a stupid green tower. Nonetheless, I looked up at the opening way up high on the tall tower, hoping to see movement. I called out:

“Hydreigon! You there, pretty girl? I’m here and I will defeat the Dark Knight and rescue you from this place”

After that call, she jumped from the opening on the tall tower, and proceeded to fly, at a rather fast pace, towards me. So fast that before I can extend me hand to hug her, she plowed right into me, knocking both of us onto the ground. With her mini-arm heads, she wrapped them around me to give them a hug as I, with my right hand, ran my fingers through her black fur and wings behind her.

“Haxorus…” Hydreigon said softly as she rests her main head on my shoulder. She was sobbing with joy, because she was about to be set free.

That moment of mine was interrupted by a voice… a dark sinister voice to be exact. It came from over there! By the main lair to the castle. I stepped in front of the princess and drew out my sword, ready to protect her at any cost. Then, I saw him. The Black Knight coming toward me with his menacing eyes and his shiny black armor.

“Haxorus…” Hydreigon held on tight from behind, scared, helpless and shaking.

I pried Hydreigon off of me and I went towards the Dark Knight with my sword in hand. Before you know it, we were both standing at least 5 feet from each other. A staring match it was. Just standing, looking into each other’s eyes, wondering when the first move would be made. The Black Knight drew out his sword as his first offense. As he tried to move that sword toward me, I stopped it by using mine to hit his. Now, we are in a sword fight. And in these kinds of fights, you have to be skilled and precise or else you would end up on the wrong end of the fight itself.

The more the Black Knight welded his sword toward me, the more I was on the defense as I blocked his attacks with my own sword. In the mist of this, I was getting bored. Mainly because I wasn’t anticipating on being on the defense. Any minute, the Dark Knight can actually win this, because he keeps attacking in many surprising angles. From the side and from on top of my head at a great speed, it gets hard for me to block his attacks, one by one. As the time progresses, I grew tired and weak as I could no longer try to block his attacks. After my last block, I fell to the floor in a pool of sweat.

My eyes were blinded by the sunlight and my breath was short. I laid there, thinking to myself: I failed. I don't want to fail Hydreigon. She's my true love and she needs me to protect her. She has made it clear before that without my presence, she can't function. For her I must be strong. I must be. No matter what happens. With my body aching, I got myself up very slowly.

I saw the Dark Knight with his back turned to me, coming towards Hydreigon. She was crying as she was floating backwards to get away from him. He came at her, with a sword in hand and on arm out to grab her. I looked down at my sword and I picked it up, as I saw my chance to beat the Dark Knight. I came toward him, quietly, planning my attack. Then... WHACK! I hit the Dark Knight hard on his metal plated helmet, which lead to a ringing vibration in his head. We watched as he fell hard to the ground and never got back up.

Hydreigon, once again, came flying towards me. This time, she gently gave me a hug without knocking me to the floor... assuming that she knew how I was knocked by the Dark Knight. However, she was crying louder than before.

“Don’t worry, pretty girl… I’m here.” I whispered.

“Haxorus… my hero…” she whispered back as she hugged me tightly.

At this point, I picked her up; went back on my Rapidash, and went into the afternoon. Just riding and holding Hydreigon in my arms.

 

[chanseychansey77]

A bit cliched, is it not?

You didn't really add anything to the standard "prince saves the princess" thingy, and everybody knows how that ends...

If you had some poetry-like parts, it might be passable, even great. But it doesn't really...

 

[Kindrindra]

I saw this just earlier today on Deviantart. ^_^

Anyway, the idea itself is interesting, to say the least. If someone was told that there was a pokemon fan fic about the stereotypical knight-rescues-princess, this certainly isn't what they would image. They would likely image a story where the knight used pokemon either instead of or alongside his blade. If they were also told that all the characters were pokemon, they still wouldn't think of this- they would be likely to think the princess was some dainty species, with the knight being one of the many sword-bearing pokemon. Heck, even if they were told that it was a reversal of the idea, with the knight as the kidnapper and the princess and prince as dragons, they would likely think the Princess was an Altaria or some such.

But, no. You get an over dosage of creativity points for making the princess a Hydregion, of all pokemon. A three-headed, part-dark pokemon. Now that's creativity. Okay, okay, I'll start on the nitpicking now. -_-

Though I respect you for keeping so closely to the knight-rescues-princess formula, it has the typical downside of being clique- which seems a little sad, as I was certain the princess was going to buy her prince the time he needed after he was knocked down with Flamethrower or Earth Power or some-such. Next, the sizes seemed a little... off. What do I mean by this? Well... You had a Rapidash carry both a Haxorus and a Hydregion, both of which are larger than it. Okay, okay, I'm getting to the end. The last thing I noticed was the description. It seemed a little... distanced. Detail is always a good thing, but you had the reader almost expecting it when you had the narrator introduce themselves as the prince. That part, let me say it, was a stroke of genius- you pulled the reader from a detached, third person point of view to an intimate first person point of view absolutely beautifully. The problem, however, was your follow-up. After you pulled the reader into your grasp, you kinda... let them drift away. The detail after that point was not quite at the same level as the hook. What do I mean by detail? Well...

I came toward him, quietly, planning my attack. Then... WHACK! I hit the Dark Knight hard on his metal plated helmet, which lead to a ringing vibration in his head. We watched as he fell hard to the ground and never got back up.

While this is a respectable paragraph, I personally think it would of worked even better with more detail. To provide a (bad) example...

Silently, I crept up behind the Dark Knight, stealthily closing the distance between us. As I approached, I glimpsed the fear in my princess's eyes once more- The very same eyes that depended on my protection. I sharpened my resolve, bringing my blade high above my head- Suddenly, I struck, the bright sun illuminating my sword's length mere seconds before I brought it down onto the villain's metallic helm with a dull thud. A clear, loud note rang out as metal met metal, a sound I knew would be reverberated within the kidnapper's skull hundred-fold. The Dark Knight fell to the ground before our eyes, never to rise again, his evil forever vanquished.

...Sorry if my example is really, really bad. It's 2AM and I'm really tired. ;_;
I'll see if I can come up with anything better to say in the morning.

 

[はるひ]

Though I respect you for keeping so closely to the knight-rescues-princess formula, it has the typical downside of being clique- which seems a little sad, as I was certain the princess was going to buy her prince the time he needed after he was knocked down with Flamethrower or Earth Power or some-such.

Well, Hydreigon in this story (in my series of stories actually) is one to wait for someone to rescue her, even if it took forever for him to get there, she will wait.

Next, the sizes seemed a little... off. What do I mean by this? Well... You had a Rapidash carry both a Haxorus and a Hydregion, both of which are larger than it.

I just looked it up since my initial thought was horse = big. But it's only off by 5-9 inches since I made Hydreigon a tad bit smaller than Haxorus.

 

[Dragonfree]

This really just isn't very interesting, I'm afraid. It's 100% formula and features no character development, depth or real suspense. Haxorus is an archetypal prince, Hydreigon is an archetypal princess, Ghetsis is an archetypal evil lord - why would we want to read yet another story composed of literally nothing but archetypes we've seen before? You don't even make any use of the fact they're Pokémon: for some reason Haxorus is carrying a sword instead of just Earthquaking or Dragon Raging that laughable little human pretending to be a knight into oblivion, and though Hydreigon can fly, this is only used to make her fly down from a tower and knock him down, not to do anything clever.

Furthermore, the fridge logic piles up pretty hard if you think at all about any of this for a minute. Most egregiously, when Hydreigon arrives, you have Haxorus fly down from the tower to tackle him down. Why on earth did he need to rescue her in the first place if the window was open and she was free to simply fly out of it? I know you keep insisting that Hydreigon is one to wait to be rescued rather than fighting back by herself, but she doesn't need to fight back - she just needs to leave. And moreover, even if we were to accept that somehow Hydreigon doesn't consider that possibility until Haxorus arrives, that still leaves the question of what Ghetsis was smoking when he put her there. If you take a prisoner who can fly, you don't leave them unrestrained in a tower with a large, open window. That's simply ridiculous.

And... once Hydreigon has tackled Haxorus down, why don't they just run? Why are they fighting Ghetsis to begin with? I mean, it looks like they only harmlessly knock him out and then leave him at the end, so it doesn't look like it's about making sure he won't hurt anyone ever again (which is pretty silly in the first place; if he's evil, you should be a bit more concerned about at least getting him behind bars if not killing him). Since Haxorus can't even see Ghetsis when he's at the main gates of the castle, it seems like he's far enough away for it to be easy for them to simply run for it instead of Haxorus actually engaging him. This setup doesn't work like this; Ghetsis would have to be actually blocking their escape to justify fighting him if the only reason he came there is to save Hydreigon. He should only seek him out of defeating Ghetsis is a goal in itself (and then he ought to do something more about it once he's knocked him out than just ride off into the sunset with Hydreigon and leave him to regain consciousness and continue his evil ways).

Also, I haven't read your main fic, but I was under the impression Hydreigon can fight when Haxorus is with her, so why doesn't she at least help him fight Ghetsis instead of just standing there while he's on the verge of losing the swordfight?

Your writing unfortunately doesn't really make up for this. Your style is pretty distanced and simplistic, as the previous reviewers noted, creating little tension or emotional connection to the characters. Then there are quite a few grammatical mistakes, some word confusion like writing "mist" where you meant "midst", and a whole lot of random tense shifts. (If her fur was as blue as the ocean, you can't say her wings are pretty as a peacock's, unless what you mean to convey is that her fur isn't blue as the ocean anymore. Incidentally, it's a peacock's tail that's the big thing about peacocks, not its wings, so I'd assume that's the comparison you wanted to make.)

I'm a bit puzzled by why you wrote this; you don't appear to be actually saying anything with it, or at least nothing that isn't just a cached rehash of the most typical fairy tale imaginable. It's kind of cute, but I'm sorry to say it doesn't make much of an impact.

 

[はるひ]

Ah I dont read most of the stories here so I didnt know this was an overused idea. I'm not the best writer out there sense I perfer my writing to be cute and simple. I'm actually trying to write a dark story as of now.

As for escapting, well... I didn't really think about that. I was going for the "knight in shining armor" image. Also, if Hydreigon left, then the story would be no use because it's about Haxorus rescuing Hydreigon. And naturally, she wouldn't leave because she wants to have Haxorus come save her and sweep her off her feet on to his valiant steed. (sorry I got fancy there)

I had to put the fight because I didnt think the story would be intesting without a fight or struggle of some sorts. Anf Hydreigon didn't help because Haxorus is supposed to be the one to defeat him.

:[

 

[Dragonfree]

It's not that it's overused here, it's that it's an age-old cliché. You didn't just happen to think of the idea of a knight in shining armor rescuing a helpless princess from a dark knight; you derived that idea from the hundreds of stories like that you must have previously heard in your life. The point is there is nothing original here, no real idea that is unique to your story. You can't excuse that by saying you didn't know it was overused; that's something you can say if you do something you thought of yourself but happens to be considered a cliché here (e.g. giving the main character of a journey fic an Eevee), but you say yourself that you were going for "the knight in shining armor image": you already had an image in your head of all the existing stories about knights in shining armor, and then you simply went and made one just like them. I doubt there are any other knight-in-shining-armor fics on this board in particular, but that's irrelevant because that wasn't the point. The point is the lack of originality.

Your plot justifications are all in the vein of "but I wanted to have X in the story". The thing is I wasn't telling you not to have X in the story; I was telling you that as you set things up, X doesn't make any sense when it happens in the story, so you need to set it up differently to make it work within the world of the story. Yes, the story would have no point if Hydreigon just left. That means you need to make there be a reason she couldn't have done that, an in-universe reason, not just "that's not what I wanted to have happen in the story". Likewise, I'm not saying Haxorus shouldn't fight Ghetsis, but that you have to make him need to fight Ghetsis for some in-universe reason.

Thus, for example, to fix the plot issues I brought up, you could make it so that Ghetsis had chained Hydreigon in the tower and barred the window, with Haxorus needing to fight Ghetsis just to get to the tower so he could break the chains and free her. That way you still get to have him save her and fight Ghetsis, but the plot makes a lot more sense. It's still clichéd, but doesn't have me wondering "why didn't X just do Y?" at every turn.

(Also, if Hydreigon would wait for her knight in shining armor to sweep her off her feet rather than simply fly away when she has every opportunity to do so completely safely, she is pointlessly endangering both herself and Haxorus just for the sake of some strange romantic ideal, which honestly qualifies her as dangerously insane - just imagine a person who, whenever they cross the street, stops in the middle of it and waits for their partner to pull them out of the way of the cars, because that's more romantic. If that's what you were going for, complete with the extremely unhealthy implications this has for their relationship, by all means go for it, but somehow I don't think so.)

 

[はるひ]

To be honest, I got the idea from a reviewer unintentionally. What happened was that she was reviewing my main story about Giratina making friends. And she commented about how Haxorus was inconsistent because he was supposed to be brave, a good fighter and and knight in shining armor yet he was too gentle to push Giratina out of the way of an attack.

That's how it popped into my head. I was rereading the reviews and I wanted to do a Haxorus story when I read that again. So yeah that's how it came up.

Nonetheless, I know I'm not perfect, so my writing is always going to be not so great. But I'm trying.