Power Hungry

Attempted Capture: Phantump
Character Count: 10,838
For Secret Santa

What a world we live in. Pokémon are extremely good beings but some of them are bad. Really bad. I suppose I should introduce myself. I am Cornelius ll, elder of the Snowbelle City leaders. We look after everyone and thing in the city. But enough about me, I suppose you want to hear about the ghost girl and how she came to be.

Well, it was a dark and stormy day. It was winter, so it was snowing (hence the name for our city, Snowbelle City.) The ghost girl was new to the city. She came in, went immediately to the door of the Snowbelle gym, the battle arena of Snowbelle City, and shouted "Show me your power, Snowbelle Pokémon Duelist champion! Who's me what you can do. For I am homeless and just want power. Let's duel!"

Nobody came out of the gym. By the way, the ghost girl was normal back then, not possessed and angry. Well, maybe a little bit angry. She continued, "My name is Katrina, trainer of fairy types. And I challenge you, Snowbelle Gym Leader to a battle!"

Someone walked over and said, "I'm no gym leader, but I can put up a grand fight."

"Good," she said. "I will be the greatest trainer of all time. The noobs in the other city were no match for my fairies. So you'll be perfect."

Another person walked by and said, "I'll ref this battle for you guys. Alright, send out your Pokémon!"

Katrina exclaimed, "Alright, go Wigglytuff, let's go battle!"

The man battling him said, “You should never have challenged me. I am Lanny, the strongest trainer in the world. And I choose Emboar as my Pokémon.”

“Battle begin!” shouted the ref.

“Okay Wigglytuff, summon your bright shining blast that will hopefully kill that giant fire pig!” yelled Katrina.

“Otherwise known as Moonblast. If you don’t even know the names of the moves your Pokémon are using, you don’t have the right to own a Pokémon. But anyway, Emboar, use Fire Blast!” shouted Lanny.

The fire and white energy collided and destroyed each other.

“That’s better than I thought you would be able to do. No matter, use Steel Punch.” said Lanny.

“I won’t give up. Use your punch that sorta looks like it has to do something to do with electricity!” exclaimed Katrina.

“Electric Punch!” screamed Lanny as the two Pokémon collided. Smoke surrounded the two competing Pokémon. Both somehow got up.

“I will not lose to a cotton-headed ninnymuggins such as you! Emboar, use all your moves at the same time!” screamed Lanny.

Emboar was suddenly surrounded in fire, shot an extreme amount of fire out of its mouth, and its fist turned to steel.

“Uh, isn’t that illegal in Pokémon battles? Who cares, Wigglytuff, use all YOUR moves at once!” Katrina exclaimed.

Wigglytuff shot a white light out of its mouth, and its fist turned into a combination of fire, ice, and electricity. The end result was ugly. Emboar was standing still, but Wigglytuff was laying down on the ground, looking dizzy and burned.

“Wigglytuff!” shouted Katrina as she gave Lanny a foul look. “Are you alright?”

Wigglytuff nodded and went to sleep. Katrina then turned towards Lanny. “I didn’t want you to severely hurt Wigglytuff! You’re a jerk!” Then Katrina ran into the woods with Wigglytuff somehow running along with her. And I decided to follow her.

“I need to get stronger,” I heard her say. “Maybe I should go the route of another type, like fire, water or electric. That might be a good idea. I’m not saying you’re a bad partner Wigglytuff. I’m saying that I might need a stronger Pokémon to come along with us to help us be stronger.” Wigglytuff looked a little sad, but nodded in agreement. “So, what do you say Wigglytuff. Shall we go looking for a new friend?”

Wigglytuff jumped up in the air, and said “Wigglytuff!”

“Good I’m glad you agree. Let’s go!” And I decided to be an idiot and follow her once again.

“This forest seems creepy, right Wigglytuff?” said Katrina.

Wigglytuff once again nodded in agreement and walked on.

Katrina, Wigglytuff, and me, the one who decided to be an ultra idiot finally came out of the forest. We were in a garden full of weak-looking Pokémon.

“Oh, come on! Are any of you little guys even the least bit strong?” asked Katrina angrily.

Suddenly, a purple looking Pokémon stalked out of a nearby cave.

“Yes, you must be the one I need. You look strong. Wigglytuff, weaken it! Use your punch attacks!” Katrina screamed eagerly.

The purple looking Pokémon stood there and took the punches. Katrina then threw a red and white ball, a Pokéball that would catch any Pokémon as long as it was weak enough, right at the purple looking Pokémon. The ball shook once. Twice. Thrice. The ball stopped moving.

“Well that seemed a little too easy if that Pokémon is going to help me be powerful, but alright, I captured a purple Pokémon that will help me be powerful!"

That was when I decided to make my move. “Girl, release that Pokémon. It is Mewtwo, the strongest Pokémon on earth. If you battle with it too many times, it will destroy your sanity. It will destroy you,” I said.

“I really don’t care about that destroying me stuff. As long as I get power, I’m happy,” said Katrina brashly.

“I do care. Hand over that ball. NOW!” I screamed at the girl.

“NO!” she screamed back.

“If you won’t give it to me, then I guess I’ll have to force it from you. Go Haxorus!” I shouted.

“Alright Mewtwo, let’s go!” Katrina shouted back.

“Haxorus, use Draco Meteor, but hold the meteors in the sky a sec. Katrina, do you know why Mewtwo was so easy to catch? It wants to corrupt someone so bad, that it is willing to do the person that they will corrupts bidding until that person is ready.” I said.

“I don’t care! Show him what you’ve got Mewtwo!” Katrina shouted.

Mewtwo sent psychic energy at Haxorus while the meteors fell. Both Pokémon looked injured, but ready to keep fighting.

“Girl, do you know HOW Mewtwo corrupts people?”

“Don’t want to hear it.”

“Mewtwo sends ghost types that are near into the body of the one he wants to corrupt, and they possess the corrupted person. So, with that I feel I have two choices: take Mewtwo from you, or destroy Mewtwo. Haxorus, Draco Meteor!” I shouted.

“Mewtwo, do it again!” screamed Katrina. Her eyes started to glow with purple energy.

Once again, the meteor hit, and the psychic energy hit. Neither Pokémon looked any different. Haxorus was fighting for me, so even though it wasn’t as powerful as Mewtwo, it battled extremely well for me. Mewtwo was fighting to corrupt Katrina, and therefore didn’t fight its hardest. So Haxorus was even with Mewtwo.

“I WILL be the very strongest, you got that old geezer. Mewtwo use all your moves!” Destroy that geezer and his Pokémon!” screamed Katrina.

I knew it was over. Mewtwo would kill me, and Katrina would be possessed. But I’m standing here in front of you right now, so you know something else happened, right. Well you were right. Haxorus died for me. I know, you didn’t know Haxorus very much, and don’t feel sympathy for it. But it was my prized Pokémon and it died for me. And at that moment when Haxorus died, Katrina’s eyes got really purple. And ghosts started appearing. They were in the form of floating tree roots. Their eyes were evil, and looked ready to destroy anything in sight. They all looked around, looked at Mewtwo, looked at Katrina, and charged at Katrina. Her eyes suddenly turned bright green.

“Destroy, Destroy, DESTROY!” shouted the possessed Katrina. “I am the ghost girl, and I must DESTROY! I feast on power!”

Well, what did I tell her, that little brat, wanting power more than anything. But you may have noticed the ghost girl is actually sane. So the rest of my story is describing how she’s sane. And I’ll start with this: Wigglytuff got out of its ball.

The ghost girl looked hurt at having her kind and faithful partner by her. Mewtwo started to attack Wigglytuff. Wigglytuff fought back. Wigglytuff used Moonblast while Mewtwo used Psychic. I knew I was going to have to intervene, Mewtwo would kill Wigglytuff. Katrina looked like she was fighting the floating roots, which I think they were called Phantump, and Mewtwo. But Mewtwo had its mind on something else: destroying Wigglytuff.

That left me no choice. I would have to battle with Wigglytuff. I would have to be its trainer for some time. This would be my last battle. My last stand. Then all of a sudden out of the woods, I heard “Emboar, Heat Crash on Wigglytuff!”

If you were actually listening to the beginning of my story, you will know that the voice commanding Emboar was Lanny’s voice. I never thought much of the young wipper-snapper during his battle with Katrina, just that he was probably a jerk. But when commanded Emboar to attack Wigglytuff, I knew that he was somehow in cahoots with Mewtwo. I can’t explain it, not even now. All I knew back then was that I needed to fight Lanny.

“Wigglytuff, listen to me. To save Katrina, we have to first fight this Emboar. And quickly knock it out. So use Moonblast!” I said

Emboar bounced on Wigglytuff, but not before it was weakened by Wigglytuff’s Moonblast. Emboar looked dazed, sat down, and went to sleep. Lanny looked surprised that the Pokémon that he had defeated earlier so easily took down Emboar now.

“How did you..” asked Lanny

“Wigglytuff is fighting for its trainer’s life. It’s going to put a lot more effort into this battle against your Emboar. Please Lanny, don’t fight for Mewtwo. It causes destruction, and corruption. You don’t want that to happen, do you?” I asked Lanny.

“I do want that. But I’ll leave this fight to you, Mewtwo, and the ghosts,” said Lanny.

So it was down to Mewtwo and me. The extreme underdog versus the most powerful Pokémon on earth. Great. And even better, Mewtwo had increased Katrina’s instability to extreme levels. It would be almost impossible to try to make her better. But then suddenly, an idea popped into mind.

“Wigglytuff, use Moonblast on Katrina to cleanse her of all the ghosts in her!” I screamed.

Mewtwo looked terrified. I knew I had chosen the right thing to do. Mewtwo tried to block the hit, but not in time. The Moonblast had hit Katrina, and cleansed her. The Phantump flew everywhere. Mewtwo turned into solid stone. I knew I was going to have to do something about it, but my attention was on Katrina at the moment.

“Katrina, are you alright?!?” I excitedly asked.

“I am. But I need a bit more cleansing,” she said weakly.

I was ready to command Wigglytuff to use Moonblast again, when she stopped me. “It is I who brought this upon myself. I will take Wigglytuff and search for one who will properly be able to fully cleanse me. Thanks for all you have done though, old geezer. See you later.”

I stood there in awe, while a little Phantump walked up to me. And I swear, it wanted be to become its partner. And I accepted that plea. And I give you, listener this plea. Please accept the offspring of my partner. Please accept this baby Phantump.

Ready for Checking

 

Claiming! =D

 

Introduction:

Ah, I do like the creative way you began your story! The first-person raconteur had a holly, jolly feel to him, as if we were being told this story around a campfire or something. It's fine to have your narrator talk to the audience, a technique called "breaking the fourth wall," but I want you to consider for future stories why it is that you would want to utilize this technique. Why should this narrator talk to the audience, and why does he care about the audience? The gesture of him giving us the Phantump at the end is sweet, but why does he do it? Without an inherent reason to care about the audience, it seems sort of chaotic because the audience is so unused to being directly addressed. It's usually easier to just continue your story in first person (I this, me, talking from the self) or third person (omniscient) without talking to the audience. Some tips on that technique following if you want to keep on using it:

For future "breaking the wall" scenarios, I want to suggest two tidbits that hopefully help: avoid redundancy and avoid making assumptions of the reader. The narrator says, "But you may have noticed the ghost girl is actually sane. So the rest of my story is describing how she’s sane." It's unnecessary for the narrator to explain to us he's going to proceed telling the story because... well, he's already telling it. This is redundancy and we want to avoid it for more mature writing. The narrator says at one point, "if you were actually listening to the beginning of my story," which is problematic because it assumes your reader is not paying attention, doesn't care, etc. This is a bit problematic as it detracts from the focus of the story and instead challenges the audience in a subtly hostile way that offers little in substance.

Regardless, your first-person narrator was intriguing! In the introduction, it may be helpful to establish some important background information about this character or any character who appears in the story. Who is he, why does he care about Katrina, and why does he follow her? Good job of establishing the setting! We also want to do that for characters too.

Plot:

Good job on writing an interesting story! There's a lot going on here, and I'm very happy that the battle in the beginning with Katrina and Lanny had relevance towards the end as well. One of the first steps in writing a good story is designing a plot that has events that all connect back together / cohesively operate as one smooth story, so good job here, and keep it up as you head towards the higher ranks of stories. Also, I really liked your twist with the Haxorus dying! I was not expecting that, and those types of bends in the story are great to catch the reader off-guard and interest them further. I thought that the narrator assuming that we don't care about his Haxorus was another example of the fourth-wall being a bad technique because it makes harmful assumptions of the reader. I think it will be most effective to communicate these sentiments by describing how important Haxorus was to the narrator, thereby eliciting more sympathy from the readers, opposed to assuming that they don't care.

On this idea of describing sentiments, there were some unrealistic elements here that could have been more believable had they been described to us instead of told to us. This is the idea of showing vs. telling, where describing something to the reader is so much more effective than just telling us because an argument is much more believable with emotion and description (evidence). For example:

I do appreciate that you took the time to explain why things were happening! But it would be much more effective here to show that equality of Mewtwo and Haxorus through the actual battle, perhaps seeing Mewtwo's eyes clouded over to show why his focus was on Karina, that sort of thing. It makes for a much more effective argument, or in this case better storytelling. More unrealistic elements, such as Wigglytuff using all of its attacks at once or beating Mewtwo with a Moonblast, are definitely a lot more believable if some serious description and showing is put into place opposed to just telling the audience. It's the age-old adage, "seeing is believing."

Description:

Ah, description was a little bit lacking. Going back to the show vs. tell idea, we definitely want to make sure we put physical or sensory description (sound, sight, smell, touch) in opposed to words that don't serve to describe as much. As an exercise, I want you to consider how you can replace the words, "good, bad, possessed, angry, ugly, injured' in this story with more active description. The nice thing about "showing" is that you can show while you also tell us about what a character looks like, which was a description that also needed a little work for future stories. For example, maybe Katrina's green eyes are rocking wildly back and forth and her hair is getting tangled all over her face or something. Combine description to both show that she is possessed and show what she looks like.

The colors are really good! If it helps to describe Pokemon, I suggest starting at the basic shape: Mewtwo is purple-looking, but there's a lot of stuff in the world that's also purple. When describing Pokemon, start with shapes, colors, perhaps comparisons to real animals, and then just let your mind run free with description! Even if it's silly, any description is better than no description. We want to see all the Pokemon, all the people, etc, feel what the forest feels like, etc.

Grammar:

We want to capitalize proper nouns, such as Snowbelle City Gym. We know that a noun is proper if it's the name of a person, place, or thing, or if it just seems important. XD In the URPG, we also traditionally capitalize the names of Pokemon (so good job!), as well as their types. We'd say Fairy-Type or Ghost-Type with that little hyphen in between.

A slight error with commas here:

Ah, so this can be tricky! The bolded above are called appositive phrases. They rename the subject before them, and that renaming is enclosed by another comma. So if me is also "the one who decided to be an ultra idiot," then you want a comma following that.

Otherwise, just make sure you proofread before submitting any story. There were mostly no problems here, so good job! ^^

Length:

We're a little bit on the lower end here. I feel as if more description would have easily bumped this up, so that's another positive of description!

Outcome:

Phantump Captured! My only qualms here revolved around making sure that you showed us with strong description what was happening vs. telling us. Consider what you want your narrator to look like or sound like, and why you tell the story the way you do, and always keep on proofreading! Hope you return to this section, and MERRY CHRISTMAS! n~n

 

Thanks @Smiles; I'll be claiming this Phantump to give to my Secret Santa.