(*canisaries is not yet an official countess of r63)
i tried to make a design with more personality. can’t tell if i succeeded just yet, but i suppose looking back at this some months from now i’ll be able to
also, i can’t really decide on whether i should call her “alva”, “althea” or “alfhild”. the first and the last are scandinavian names which don’t really tie into the american feel of orre, but while “althea“ is greek and therefore a bit more familiar to american culture, i think it sounds a bit too much like athena. thoughts?
not kidding this whole project took like literal days to finish
well anyway; welcome to auntie canis’ crazy LORRE story time hour. today we’ll hear the flipping weird tale of the alphabet kid who turned into just bet kid. about the content? uhh i dunno i suppose there’s some violence, but nothing really special, just guns and murders with said guns.
and without further ado, find the story after the break, and take a seat or something because it’s over 3500 words long so you know, might take a while
1. We begin right after XD. Alpha is tired from the long journey. The media takes great interest in Alpha’s story, and he starts off humble, but after a while the fame starts going to his head.
2. Being so famous, Alpha gets attention from all around Orre. He goes to visit not only the places he was to during his journey, but also many other, more obscure locations. During his travels, he gets acquainted with the local people and Pokemon, but also with the leisurely activities. As a result, he picks up gambling – he develops no serious addiction, but he spends a good part of his time among the cards and chips.
Seeing more of Orre, Alpha begins to realize what a huge and devastating impact the nuclear strike decades ago has had on the region. There are shortages of water and food in places; all the while mysterious glitches are running rampant. The old Orre the elderly describe is nothing like the deserted wasteland of today – the way the talked of it, it sounded like a green paradise.
3. This inspires Alpha to read up on Orre’s history. He learns of the events preceding the strike, of the attacking Shengdu region and a certain president Baba – her origins, her Pokemon friends, the ups and down of her career, the attempts on her life and her final decision to drop the bomb. Alpha begins to wonder what Orre would be like today, had the nuke never happened.
And just like that, he gets an idea. Along his journey, he skipped back in time on multiple occasions. He goes to his PC to consult his old friend, Parafox, and she lets him know that yes, she indeed has the power to bestow the power of time travel on single people and Pokemon. She tells him that her powers are currently weak, and her current powers allow someone to operate on only a radius of a few days, maybe weeks. However, if she were fully evolved, this might not be the case.
So Alpha obtains a Firestone and evolves Parafox with it. Parafox comments on how she feels her powers grow even greater. She confirms that she can now grant him the power of time travel across multiple decades. She instructs him on how to use his powers, and Alpha is now nearly ready to begin his quest. He puts on a disguise, cutting and dying his hair and changing his clothes, just to be sure no additional time-trouble will happen. Since he plans on going alone to minimize the risks, and what he read from Shengdu suggests that it’s not the safest region out there, he acquires a gun for self-defense.
Alpha examines the historical records numerous times more and finally chooses the best time to go back to. Parafox wishes him luck and emphasizes on how he should use his powers sparingly for, despite her impressive knowledge of time, travelling through time is always somewhat unpredictable. Every jump back or forwards is a risk, and he should try to complete his mission with as few jumps as possible. With an acknowledging nod, Alpha is off to set right what once went wrong.
4. Alpha arrives in the past. He checks himself and is relieved to find no major harm caused to his body. He repeats his mission to himself: locate Miss Baba and convince her not to give the green light to the nuke. And so he finds her, and at first everything seems to be going according to plan. He stops her in the underground passage and requests her to listen. Baba first appears frightened, but then lets her guard down and hears him out. She agrees to withhold the planned attack on Orre, and the meeting ends. Baba walks away with her signature odd and wobbly gait, and Alpha’s elated. “That was easier than I expected”, he thinks to himself.
He’s sure of his success as the following few days no news of a nuclear attack is heard, but he decides to wait around for a while longer. After all, he’s in the past, so why not have fun. He heads to the Game Corner, and while he ends up not being so lucky and losing most of his cash, he at least wins a level 10 Slowpoke.
Now being short on money, he decides it might be wise to go back to the future now. But as he checks the Shengdu news one last time, he’s devastated to find that the nuclear strike had just been fired on the president’s request.
He realizes that Baba had lied, of course she had lied. Why else would she have been so accepting. He had been blinded by his enthusiasm, and now his region was aflame once more. However, he soon pulls himself together, and decides that he just has to try again. He stands up, concentrates and sends himself back to when he first appeared in the past.
Upon arrival, he’s surprised to find that he apparently forgot to take the Slowpoke’s Pokeball out of his pocket. Fearing the worst, he lets it out, but luckily it seems to have survived the jump just fine. Alpha’s intrigued by this for a while, but then he shrugs it off – after all, he has a job to do.
He meets Baba in the tunnel for a second time, a bit bitter about her lying to him the first time around, but he tries his best to not make it show. He and Baba talk, just like last time, but this time Alpha is more calm and collected and tries to make her understand his cause better. She leaves with a ‘yes’, and Alpha’s hopeful. The conversation had gone well in his opinion.
He knows he has to wait again this time to see if it had worked, but he also realizes something else. Now that he’s back, he knows how to win that Slowpoke on that certain day. He’s well aware that he has to leave his Pokemon this time to avoid putting them in risk, but he’s curious. And indeed, he enters Game Corner on the same day and does the same things to win, and he soon finds himself with another Slowpoke friend. He goes outside and lets both out. They don’t seem to react to each other. “Well, they’re Slowpokes. I don’t know what I expected”, Alpha thinks to himself.
Alpha waits around, following the news vigilantly, and again, there is no word of any attack. He waits even longer, and still nothing. He’s hesitant to leave, but after another week, he’s certain that the attack isn’t happening. In fact, it looks like the president is resigning.
He’s about to turn off the TV, but then out of the blue, a special news report. A nuclear bomb unexpectedly dropped onto Orre, with no word to the public beforehand.
Alpha is enraged. He immediately sends himself backwards, but this time a day before the original time. He wants time to think, to plan. He’s about to leave for the tunnel, when he realized that he’s brought the Pokeballs with himself again. He checks them, but no damage has been done. He calls them back, but as he has put them in his pockets, he feels something. Something is… off. He pauses to look at his hands. They look normal. But they don’t feel normal.
But suddenly, the feeling is gone. Everything’s back to the way it was, and now he’s just standing there, in the middle of the street, looking at his palms like an idiot. He sighs and goes to find his usual place to stay the night again.
Alpha spends the rest of the day like he had planned, thinking about the best way to approach Baba. He finds and pinpoints the mistakes he had done before and constructs another strategy. The following day he puts this strategy to use, and the outcome turns out different after all. Just not the outcome he was hoping for; Baba says no. And as Alpha suspected, the nuke is fired even sooner than ever. “At least she didn’t lie to me this time”, Alpha sneers. He finds himself not only disappointed but also out of money, so he decides to sell the Slowpokes. “I can just get a new one on my next try”, he thinks to himself.
And so he tries again, with another extra day of planning, another strategy, another Slowpoke to sell… and another failure… and another jump backwards.
And another try.
And another try.
And another try.
He arrives once more on that street of Shengdu, and then he stops himself in his tracks. “This can’t go on”, he thinks. “This isn’t working. I have to try something else.”
He reaches for his pocket, and something cold and heavy touches his hand. He moves himself somewhere more hidden, and takes out the gun. “I don’t want to use this, but…”
“If I just scare her…”
Alpha takes a deep breath, and leaves the street. He waits for the time of the meeting, then enters the underground and watches.
Soon she appears, staggering forwards from the entrance. Alpha walks to her, seizes her by the arm and tries to sound as intimidating as possible. “You’re gonna listen to me this time.”
“What the…” Baba exclaims, trying to struggle, but Alpha raises the gun and she freezes in place.
Alpha threatens to ‘do something’ to her unless she complies, and fearful of the stranger with the gun, she does. He lets her go, remarking that ‘he’ll be watching’, which he won’t be doing but he thought it sounded frightening enough.
Afterwards, Alpha goes to the Game Corner to calm himself down. He decides to try his luck with the other games again, and what do you know, he wins. It brightens his mood, and after going and winning another Slowpoke, he goes back to his room with a smile on his face. He closes the door and lets himself fall on the bed. “You know”, he says to his new-but-technically-old friend, “I have high hopes for this timeline.”
Just then, the door is busted open and the police barges in, accompanied by Miss Baba. “That’s the guy!” she says. “That’s the guy who threatened me!”
“No, no, wait-” Alpha tries to say, but he’s handcuffed before he can say anything more. He feels his heart pounding fast, his blood pumping through his body – and then something strange. There’s a flash, and he suddenly finds himself outside the room, the handcuffs nowhere to be found. For just a few seconds, he stands there, but then he realizes this was his chance to escape. He runs to the janitor’s closet to hide himself, and concentrates yet again. A split second before he gets away, he sees the door swiftly open and someone yell “He’s here!”
As the asphalt makes contact with his feet and he smells the smog of the familiar street, he finds himself blind. All he can see is black and brief flashes of bright colors. Alpha falls on his knees and tries to rub his eyes, but finds that he has no clue where his arms are. He is just about to scream for someone’s help, when his vision clears. He can feel his hands again. He fixes his eyes on the surrounding gray cityscape, trying to relax himself. In some time, he feels well enough to get up and walk away from the street to catch his breath in peace. “What was that…”
He checks his pockets, finding his wallet and the gun, but no Slowpoke. Well, of course not. It was out of its Pokeball when the cops came in. Why even question it.
He is frustrated, but knows that he has to try again. And this time he’ll hide better. And try a different strategy. And meet her in a different place. Yeah. That’s it.
5. Alpha waits in the tunnel again as usual, but when Baba appears, he doesn’t move a muscle. Instead, he waits until she’s gone past him, and then slips after her. He follows her around for a while, until they’re alone in a small passageway between buildings. Alpha decides now would be a good opportunity to confront her. This time he doesn’t wait. He immediately whips out his gun and starts to talk. “Not a word, Baba”, he hisses. She turns around. “You’re gonna do what I say this time.” Baba looks both startled and confused, as Alpha makes his demands clear, inching a bit closer with every sentence. Then, when Alpha’s standing right next to her, she sees her chance and tries to knock off the gun. It doesn’t work. A struggle follows, and somewhere amidst it all the gun goes off. Baba falls to the ground. Alpha backs off, panicking. “But it’s alright”, he soon thinks, “I’ll just go back, and then she’ll be alive again.” He waits no longer and prepares to jump, but finds himself unable. Instead, he realizes that everything’s gone silent. He walks around the corner to see people still moving, and the people see him. They see his gun, and then they see her, there on the ground. Alpha sees them shift about, and then his hearing comes back. A commotion had formed, and he knew he had to get out. He tries again, shutting out the noise of the street and the people, and succeeds.
No flashes this time, perfect vision, but the feeling… it’s back. And this time it didn’t go away. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s there.
He still moves away from the street and goes to find his place. He still waits in the tunnel. He follows her again, he approaches her, he threatens her. But he makes sure his hood is on, stays further away this time and when he’s done, lets her go. He knows it’s not much different from the time before the last time, but he’ll stay hidden this time. After visiting Game Corner. He’s deserved that.
He goes and wins again, along with another Slowpoke. He doesn’t go back to his room, however, and instead finds another place to stay. He waits a night, constantly checking the hallway and his window, but no one comes. And nothing is said in the news.
He waits another night, and no one comes. And nothing is said in the news.
He waits another week, and no one comes. And nothing is said in the news.
“Maybe this time?” he dares to hope. But no, just the next day, Orre nuked. Again.
And so it’s back to the past, again. Back to the street. Back to the room. Back to planning. But what good will it do? The feeling’s still there, too.
Alpha recaps all the different times he’s come back. Somewhere in there, there’s a mistake he keeps making every time. Every time has led to the nuclear strike. Except… not every time.
He never waited around to see if the strike was fired when Baba was shot.
No, of course it wouldn’t have been fired. The president is who triggered it. And with no president, no one will be there to push the button.
But that’s horrible. He couldn’t just go and… murder someone like that, in cold blood. But if he didn’t? An entire region of people, their children, their grandchildren would pay the price.
What’s worth more? Millions of innocents, or one cold-hearted, lying, corrupt girl?
We all have to die someday.
The next day, he’s there in the tunnel. He spots Baba and he follows her. They enter and leave many empty streets, but Alpha doesn’t stop them once. “Not yet… I’m not ready.” He tries to gather courage with every passing building, but as ‘the right moment’ just never seems to come, he decides he just has to go through with it. But how to do it? Talk to her first? Apologize? Just pull the trigger now, when she’s unaware of his presence? Maybe. He doesn’t feel like talking.
“Hey, miss!” he shouts anyway. Why? He didn’t feel like talking.
Baba turns around and flinches like before. Just shoot her now. Don’t make this harder for yourself.
“I’ve got something to say…” He tried to pull the trigger, but he can’t. It’s like it isn’t even there.
He continues to talk, to mock, to torment her. This wasn’t the plan. Where’s the trigger? There, he can finally feel it again. He’s mid-sentence, but he wants out. A gunshot. Another gunshot. Another…? What are you doing? Stop!
Bullet after bullet, he couldn’t stop. He pulled the trigger over and over again. Too many times, this gun doesn’t even has this many rounds. What is happening?
Finally, after what must have been the twentieth shot, he stops himself. He swiftly puts the gun away and tries his best not to look at it. Baba is on the ground, deader than dead. He’s standing there. Nobody’s around. Did nobody hear?
Minutes pass, and no one arrives. Seems like he’s in the clear.
“…Well”, he thinks, “I did what I came here to do.” What else is there. Now is the time to hide and wait.
He goes back to his room. Not even Game Corner is worth it now. He’s too tired. He switches on the news. Nothing about a nuke, yet. While it plays in the background, he checks his gun. All the ammunition is still there. It’s like it was never fired. Did he get a new one somehow and just forget? Did any of that even happen?
He then hears a familiar name in the newscast. President Baba. They found her?
Well, yes and no. Baba’s certainly onscreen, but she’s… alive?
That’s right, there she is. Standing upright, no wounds, no worries. Not a single mention of him. Everything seems completely normal, like nothing had even happened. Maybe nothing had indeed happened.
But that’s crazy. He was there. He fired those shots. He saw her die. He killed her.
Alpha checks the clock on the wall. The time sure had passed like normal. The time hasn’t been reset. So what gives? Who cares. He had a mission and he failed. He has to try again.
He bears in mind the scene of the newscast, and goes out to look for her. She is still there at the scene, but there are people around her. He waits for her to leave, and follows her again. They enter another empty passageway, and Alpha takes the gun. This time he’ll just shoot, no chatter. Then suddenly, Baba turns around. “You again”, she mutters.
“Y-you recognize me?” Alpha stutters. “But I-”
“Make it quick, bettor boy. I ain’t got all day. I’m the president, you see.”
“How do you know I b-” Alpha started, but stopped himself. No chatter. He raised the gun. Baba acquired an impatient expression.
“Do it.”
“…No”, Alpha said, lowering the gun. “I want answers.”
“So now you get curious”, she mocked. “Well, alright, boy. You see-”
Her sentence was cut short by a gunshot. She fell on the ground, and looking at his hands, Alpha saw the gun raised again. He quickly dropped it. “Wha-”
He then fell to his knees in pain, as a loud, high-pitched noise pierced his ears. He covered them with his hands, but it made no difference. This noise was inside his head.
And then, just like that, it’s gone. He looks around and sees that so is Baba. She’s nowhere to be found. There isn’t even blood anywhere. He checks the gun. No rounds missing.
Alpha runs to the street. She’s not there. He has to find her again. He enters a bar where there’s a TV. He waits for the news to come on, and there she is. The radio tower.
He runs to the tower, and finds Baba there, being interviewed. He stays there until the interview is over, and Baba is on her way, along with some bodyguards this time. Alpha assesses the situation. He could wait for them to leave as well, but then again, what would happen if there were witnesses? She can’t just disappear, they’d see it.
He follows, watches them stop, secures a clear shot, and bang. She’s down, and the guards see him. He refuses to put the gun down. They come closer. He doesn’t take his gaze off Baba for a single second.
Then, when one of the guards is lunging to tackle him, all the weight of his body disappears. He doesn’t feel the street beneath his feet anymore – in fact, it feels like the only thing keeping him in that place is the fact that he wants to stay there.
Alpha takes note of this, and using only his will, he finds himself next to Baba. The bodyguard flops on the pavement. Alpha takes out his gun. It still feels solid. He raises it and aims. The other guard puts his hands in the air. He shoots. Wait, why? He didn’t need to. He just wants to get away now.
Having thought that, suddenly he’s back on the street. In the past. No guards, no Baba, only the past like it was time and time again, the same way.
But he’s not the same. He’s not there. He sees this place, hears this place, smells this place, but he’s somewhere else entirely.
Keep going?
Keep going.
6. He keeps going.
He tries shooting her, threatening her, battling her with his Slowpokes, doing all of these in different places and different times, but the outcome is never the one he’s hoping for. It’s always either a nuke or the time restarting. The few and far between oddities - flashes, noises, unwanted actions - become more frequent. He remembers doing things that couldn’t have taken place. The gun is fired again and again, but the number of rounds never decreases.
He never succeeds, but he has to keep going. He knows what price he has to pay if he gives up. He came here to save his region’s future and he will not stop before he completes that mission.
He tries and tries and tries, time after time again. The cycle never stops. And when he’s deep enough, he can’t even remember what he did last time, and repeats his actions exactly, thinking they’re a brand new idea.
And what’s most tragic, the thought never occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, he’s the one who caused the nuclear attack to begin with.
The amazing thing about the XD run is how what ended up being our final team was at first just this scrappy group of shadow Pokemon from the Rainbow Cipher Power Rangers, who constantly attacked each other and were all completely unevolved. When we first got this team a lot of people just wanted Eevee back (including myself) and didn't want to start caring about a whole new group of mons that would probably be gone tomorrow. People didn't think our team was ever going to evolve, much less be the final team. But somehow, the team stuck, and with a lot of grinding, powered through Cipher. One by one they each evolved. That clutch little Seedot became the seed throwing DatShiftry. Screaming Carvanha evolved and screamed even louder. Cute little Zippy became the badass powerhouse of the team. SheepRage evolved into Flaafy and got back her lost Thunder, then eventually became Ampharos. And even Baltoy and Lady Gulp got their chance to evolve in the end. What had once been a temporary team, hastily scrambled together when the first team was deposited, had become a this amazing, unified team, ready to wreck the shit out of Greevil. In Season 2 we've had lots of team switches, most notably in Anniversary Red and RAS, and to a lesser extent in TM/MM. In Colosseum we mostly stuck with the same team, but it was a well planned team with mons we knew would be great without even evolving like Mr. Dreauvus and Quagsire. But XD was the perfect end to the season, because we took a mess of a team and worked hard to make it successful. We combatted the team known for making Pokemon heartless to gain power by giving love to even the Pokemon without the most power and winning despite the odds. And that's what I love about this run.
It’s hard to even think about what it was like being trapped in the shadows.
Constant battling, taking orders from the Cipher grunts like a machine, forgetting I was even a living breathing organism.
Shuffling from one Cipher grunt to another, each a different name, a different color. But it all always seemed the same. ATTACK ATTACK. Destroy the opponent. Forget the past. This is what you are now. ATTACK.
And then I was passed on to another trainer. It was just another trainer, it seemed nothing would change. He still used me to battle, to take down his enemies. He wasn’t Cipher, but still a trainer, using me for his means.
But then he yelled to me, and for just one second, cut through the shadows, reminded me who I really was.
“CARVANHA!”
As time went on, the shadows seemed to become less and less powerful. And I began to hear more voices than just my trainer’s. Lots of voices, contradicting each other, hating, loving, incessantly talking. My trainer could hear them too, and all of his other mon, all pure at this point. They seemed to confuse everything. My trainer didn’t know where to go, wasn’t even sure of his own name. ABC? Alpha? Michael? The only thing he seemed sure of was that he needed to purify as many Pokemon as he could. And even in purifying he hesitated and shouted incoherent gibberish when trying to name us.
When the shadows became weak, when I became more aware of myself again, I was taken to Agate to be purified completely. The place was strange and distorted, but I was relieved to be rid of the shadows, finally. Still, something felt off. I had the feeling that it was all about to go wrong. And unfortunately, I was right.
It happened in Pyrite Town, the place where the voices always talked about “Snappas”. My trainer was making his way into the town when he suddenly froze. Everything froze. And and that moment I felt true terror. Because the shadows were back. They were reclaiming me and everything we had done had been undone and I had no name again not even a gibberish nonsense name and my heart was still open they couldn’t close it again but they were trying and maybe you can never escape the shadows I was falling back into them falling-
And we were in Agate again. When my trainer realized what had happened, he rushed me to the Relic Stone. Everyone was confused, even the voices. But my trainer got me purified, and when the time came to naming, all he could do was scream. In frustration, in confusion. And I screamed too, hoping to scare away the shadows once and for all, but so scared they would return.
And all went back to the way it was. I had more time to adjust to being a pure mon on the team. I was still a newcomer, an outsider. I was the last to join in, and the last to be purified. At first I was shocked and angry when one of my own teammates attacked me, now that I wasn’t a shadow pokemon anymore. But I realized in time that it was hard for all of them to get over the shadows. Sometimes they felt they had to assert their strength. Sometimes it still seemed to them like they were in one big battle against everyone, even their own teammates. Gulpin woke up from sleep and confusion to attack the first mon she saw, which just happened to be Seedot. Mareep got angry and shocked Gulpin because the battle wasn’t going well. Incidents like this were common. And the confusing commands of the voices certainly didn’t help keep the peace.
I also had my moments of violence. I had escaped the shadows not once but twice, and sometimes I found it hard to believe I had escaped at all. I was a dark type too, and sometimes my dark attacks felt awfully close to my old shadow attacks.
Not to mention the fact that sometimes it felt like I’d just been transferred from one hell to another. The shadows were gone, but the demanding voices were there, yelling and criticizing. They never seemed to let us grow and evolve past the immature state we were all in. And our team didn’t feel like a team most of the time. We had no leader, really, no one certain enough of themselves to carry us through danger. We just tried to work together, to not fall into the urge to attack each other and even that didn’t always work. We did care about each other though, that was always there beneath the frenzied attacks. We all cheered when Seedot finally evolved. And there were times when we combined our force very well to take down our old trainers, Cipher.
As for our trainer, he too was plagued by the voices and by uncertainty. Sometimes he seemed as uncaring as Cipher had been, only focused on one goal, on what the voices told him. But at the most difficult times, when me and my teammates were all over each other instead of our opponents, when it all seemed horrible and hopeless, he would stop commanding us to attack. And he would call out to one of us. Even though the shadows were gone now, even though we were purified, he would call. Sometimes he called me, and it just sounded like a scream, a release of emotion.
“AAAAAAAAAA!”
And that scream always comforted me. Because it reminded me that I was still here, and he still cared.
