Trial by Star-Fire — A Write-A-Roll Story

Trial by Star-Fire
A Write-A-Roll & Art Collab Story by Magikchicken


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Glossary of Terms:

Aperturism: a centuries-old religion that claims magic is real and humanity is not native to the Pokémon world. The counting of years remains based on this religion, but it is no longer widely believed in.

Aperturist: a believer in Aperturism.

control hub: a palm-sized touchscreen with a myriad of functions including mobile phone, computer, and universal remote control for wireless-enabled devices within a small range (Bluetooth-style.) Uses large quantities of battery power when actively controlling wireless devices, due to needing to boost a signal through the delta stream.

delta stream: the continuous electromagnetic and air current interference that prevents wireless signals and other electromagnetic waves from propagating well in the atmosphere and environs of the Pokémon world. Seems to be a property of the planet itself; mysteriously does not affect the visible spectrum.

moon-length: the distance from the Pokémon world to its moon; in all of recorded history, 1.2 moon-lengths is the greatest distance any electromagnetic signal outside the visible spectrum has ever been transmitted intact.

Legendary Pokémon: a category of Pokémon that are defined by incredible power, extremely high intelligence, and that only one of each kind appears to exist at once; they have bonded to humans and been studied in the past, but are vanishingly rare and have never been successfully bred.

P.A.: an acronym meaning Post Aperture, marking the beginning of recorded history. The name originates from Aperturist beliefs which hold that humanity first arrived in the Pokémon world in 0 Post Aperture.

Pokémon: a category of creatures that are neither inert plants nor humans. Largely wild, with some individuals domesticated, they have historically been powerful allies to humanity. The popularity of Pokémon battling is at an all-time low in the year 560 P.A., though their use in research is still common.

Pokémon world: the planet on which Pokémon originated; it is debated whether or not humanity also originated here. No other place in the known universe is populated by human beings or Pokémon.


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Trial by Star-Fire — Chapter 1
Target Pokémon (Recommended minimum characters):
Phantump (Medium, 10k-20k characters) - Art-writer collab event target (Collab with Juliorain here!)
Abra (Complex, 30k-40k characters)

Write-a-Roll Prompt:
Fantasy // Space // Pokémon Main Character(s)

~~~~~~~~~~


In the beginning, there existed only heat and cold. Only these. Naught changed, except to rearrange itself. Do you know the terror and the beauty of Eternity, little Pokémon?

Alfie the Phantump awoke in his habitat sphere, amongst its leafy plants, deciduous trees, and loamy soil, with the distinct but fleeting impression of having just been dreaming about something very important. But, as will often happen with such dreams, all memory of it fled like sand running through a sieve; and with the memory gone, the impression of importance swiftly faded and was lost.

Morning sunlight flooded through the glass ceiling and walls of the spacious arboretum bubble that served as his living and sleeping quarters. The phantom turned sleepy eyes to regard the northern wall. Projected from nanoscale LED's embedded in the glass, a digital display read:

07:56
May 19th
Year 560 P.A.
Slateport City
Slateport Space Centre
Weather: Clear
Temperature: 27ºC

Thinking and decision-making were not Alfie's strong suits— he was happy to leave such things to the humans— but he knew his Training: 07:58 was time to leave for the day's Reassignment.

Drifting towards the sliding glass doors of his habitat sphere, Alfie scanned his surroundings absently, as he'd been Trained to do. Health of trees: 97.70% of optimal. Health of underbrush: 98.55% of optimal. Water content of soil: 100.00% of optimal. All well within margin of acceptability. There was no reason to believe anything would be otherwise, of course, since the upkeep of his habitat sphere was automated... but such analyses were his life, and Alfie performed them as a matter of second nature.

Alfie's full title— a title earned soon after hatching based on a high score on Individual Aptitude tests and a placid and serious temperament (rare for a Phantump)— was Pht-Alpha14 Biosphere Management System. "Alpha14" meant that he was one of only fourteen Pokémon ever to be placed in the highest category of optimal fit for his job. This comparison to other Pokémon meant little to Alfie, but he was proud of how it made humans smile and congratulate him when his Trainers mentioned it, so he worked extra hard to stay vigilant about everything his Training taught him.

Sterile white hallways connected his habitat sphere to Reassignment. The ceilings of each hallway bore full-spectrum LED lights that felt good on his photosynthetic leaves and filled him with morning vigor. Wide, heavy windows of thick graphene-reinforced glass looked out over Slateport City: the glittering blue of the ocean dominated the horizon, its waters kept carefully pristine by litter-collecting automatons. Industrial pollution had long since been banned: for hundreds of years, ever since the nautical trades gave way to flying vehicles and sea-going hovercraft, Slateport had been a centre for two things: research on the latest in ultra-clean technology, and the study of outer space. Closer to the Slateport Space Centre where Alfie lived and worked, he could see the orderly parks, apartments, and recreational facilities of Slateport City proper. Over them all soared the occasional car, its solar-cell 'wings' spread wide to collect the morning sunlight.

Alfie arrived at Reassignment with roughly thirty seconds remaining before 08:00. Reassignment was an oval room with a large screen built into the north wall and windows lining the east and west. The door Alfie had come through was in the northeastern corner of the room, and Reassignment's other doorway— a large set of sliding glass doors— was set into the south wall.

It wasn't long before the humans arrived: his beloved Trainers. The three of them— two women and one man— were all clad in the slate-grey uniforms of the Slateport Space Centre, and were chatting animatedly back and forth as they entered through the sliding doors. They were part of a staff of ten Pokémon Trainers assigned to make sure that Alfie was ready for his duties, every one of them a professional accredited by the International Pokémon Trainers Association.

"Look, Alpha-fourteen's here early," noted one of the two women, who Alfie was pretty sure was named Emera.

"That's unusual; he's usually here at eight on the dot," murmured the man, a new member of the team whose name Alfie hadn't yet memorized in the couple of weeks since the newcomer had arrived. "Is that cause for concern?"

"No, he picks up on stuff occasionally," said the last woman with a warm smile that encompassed her co-workers and Alfie all at once. That one, Crysta, was Alfie's favourite. She always had a kind word for everyone, and she sometimes shared her lunch-time snacks with Alfie when she knew no one was watching. "I'm guessing Alfie knows something's up today, even if he doesn't know what."

As it happened, Crysta was right. Alfie had hurried to Reassignment this morning, because something in the air had felt charged with intensity. The sensation reminded him of the feeling he always got from saplings that were just about to enter the first week of a growth spurt. Something was going to happen today, and the humans were giddy as freshly watered fronds!

The newcomer, the only one Alfie didn't know yet, cleared his throat. "Good morning, P-h-t Alpha-Fourteen Biosphere Management System."

Alfie hovered over to float in front of the man and gave a careful midair dip— almost like a bow— of greeting, as he'd been Trained to do when called by his full title. Then, on a whim, Alfie gave his body a little twirl and brushed one of the leaves growing from his head playfully across the Trainer's brow.

Despite his efforts to be professional, the human Trainer's stern mouth curled into a slight smile; Crysta watched calmly, but Emera let out a little snrk of laughter.

"Alpha-fourteen, don't be fresh," Crysta told him calmly. "Just because he's new doesn't mean you can break protocol. Especially today." Alfie took care to cast his gaze downward with the appropriate amount of remorse, but to the Phantump, it sounded like Crysta's voice also had a distinct tone of amusement to it. During the years of his training, Alfie had grown much better at reading the humans he was familiar with: once you got past all the differences, they were a lot like very complicated plants.

"The broadcast is for oh-eight-hundred five," Emera said, schooling her expression and then glancing at her two co-workers. "Evan, let's fill Alpha-fourteen in; we can all watch."

"Right. Uh, Alpha-fourteen, we're pleased to announce that you've been reassigned to the upcoming research mission." Something in the man's voice sounded odd to Alfie, and it took him a moment to realize the human was absolutely brimming with suppressed excitement. Alfie himself didn't get excited over much, but when he did, he didn't bottle it up.

Tokk-tokk tokk? Alfie responded querulously, his voice as always resembling the sound of someone knocking on the solid wood of his stump-like body.

"This isn't your usual research mission," Crystal responded, a twinkle in her eye as she took Alfie's meaning. "You're most accustomed to missions where you go out into the wild and investigate plants with potentially useful qualities, to engineer those qualities into plants for technology or self-sufficiency studies. This isn't a ground-based research mission."

By Crysta's side, Emera was positively vibrating with that strange excitement that seemed to have infected all three humans. "It's eight-oh-five! Crystal, shall we watch the press release? Please?"

"Oh, all right," Crysta said with an indulgent smile. "You pay attention too, Alfie: this will make things a whole lot clearer."

Crysta withdrew a control hub from her pocket and pressed a few buttons on the device's touchscreen, activating the large flat-screen television set on the north wall of Reassignment. The television flickered to life, displaying a chrome podium bristling with microphones, behind which stood a vigorous-looking man in his late forties and dressed in a tailored black suit that went oddly well with his colourful Alolan floral-print tie. His black hair was carefully arranged into a long ponytail that tumbled down his back, and he bore an easy, charismatic grin. The man's voice, when he spoke, was deep and calm, reassuring in a way that inspired a listener rather than invoking lassitude. A scroll bar at the bottom of the screen declared this man Jun Toshinobu, Grand Minister of Hoenn & Mayor of Slateport City.

"...Good morning, people of Slateport, of Hoenn, and of the whole world. It is my pleasure to announce, as the Hoenn's elected Grand Minister, that today is a day when history will be made. But first, I must stress that none of this would be possible if we had not already come so far.

"Hoenn's society, and human society as a whole, have long since overcome problems such as overpopulation, pollution, and the clutter of urban sprawl. We build downward into the earth for work-space, and upward for living space. The latest in material technologies, reverse-engineered from Steel-type Pokémon by our partners in science across the Pokémon world, have ensured that even our tallest buildings stand fast in the face of disaster. Renewable energy and self-supplying industry have replaced the economy of waste and excess of which our history books tell.

"As a society, we want for nothing. Food is plentiful, thanks to farms using the latest in Pokémon-inspired growth systems and nutrient-rich modifications to crops. Large portions of land within city limits are now kept as pristine forest and meadow biomes, to serve as Pokémon habitats and recreational space. This is in accordance with international agreements informed by science; evidence has long told us that access to nature is necessary for ideal human and Pokémon health. Machines perform most of our labour; human beings have the freedom and leisure to pursue their interests individually or with Pokémon partners.

"We have learned to live in harmony with the world around us; we are not perfect, but our ecosystem is alive and well, and most of all sustainable. We have evaded the dark warnings of early centuries' doomsday prophets, who told of a planet destroyed by human pollution and greed. We know our impact on the world around us, and we have sought and found balance. Now, there is nowhere we need set our sights other than upward.

"It is, therefore, with great pride not only in the researchers at Slateport Space Centre, but in the people of Hoenn and the citizens of the entire Pokémon world, that I announce the readiness of Exploratory Station-Vessel Unity, the first manned foray into the space beyond the moon! Crew drawn from every nation on the planet will be embarking on this historic journey: a year spent in orbit around the moon, gathering information about what might lie beyond. Preparations are nearly complete, and the launch will take place in one month's time. I will now receive questions from the press."

The Reassignment room's speakers burst out with the sound of wild applause and an explosion of chatter from a crowd that had not been pictured in the broadcast; on the edges of the wide screen, media representatives could be seen lining up on both sides of the podium, ready to ask questions. Then Crysta turned off the livestream, leaving only the light of the LEDs and the sunlight spilling through the windows.

Alfie turned to stare at Crysta, only partially understanding; Crysta met the Phantump's eyes with that calm, warm smile of hers playing about her lips, but Alfie was pretty sure there was a hint of excitement in her expression.

"Alfie. Or, should I say, P-h-t Alpha-fourteen. After almost seven years of training... You're going to space!"


~~~~~~~~~~


Amidst the chaos before time, We grew tired of the eternal, meaningless interplay of heat and cold. So we fashioned a new arrangement to reality. From cold We made the void: the space between one thing that is and another thing that is: the emptiness that gives their separation meaning. From heat We fashioned the rest: raw power became simple gas, then with yet more power came fusion, producing more complicated and delightfully strange things: liquids, then solids, coming together at the core of Our furnaces. The cooling waste of the star-forges turned to jewels of fire and ice amidst the void, and We were pleased. For a time, We watched as world after world came to be, each one a unique arrangement of the star-dust, ever-changing and fascinating to gaze upon.

Alfie rose hazily out of the strange dream he'd been having. He could almost remember the words being spoken, but... who had been talking?

"What do you reckon we'll find out there? Once we launch, I mean?"

"Aside from the sun and moon? Who knows? Maybe we'll find out more about what exactly the stars are. Sensors don't give us jack squat past one-point-two moonlengths, thanks to the delta stream... Only the oldest legends say anything about what's really beyond the atmosphere."

The new conversation pushed its way into Alfie's awareness, and the words of whoever had been speaking to him in his dream were lost. All that was left behind was a feeling of faint unease somewhere in the back of Alfie's consciousness.

"Legends? Wait, you mean... you don't really believe in that ancient baloney, do you?" asked the human who had spoken first, a short man whose head was just about level with where Alfie was floating. Neither of them seemed to have noticed that the Phantump was awake.

"...Baloney? There's no evidence to the contrary, Grant," retorted the other, who was taller by about a foot. "Not that I'd make any decisions based on it, it's just... The theories are scientifically sound, at the very least."

The two humans speaking to each other were wearing the form-fitting, one piece grey-and-white jumpsuits of the spaceship's engineering crew. Exploratory Station-Vessel Unity, or just Unity as the humans had taken to calling her, was less than twenty-four hours from launch, and everyone was on board performing the last double-, triple-, and quadruple-checks of the systems. Alfie didn't understand any of the technology— it was all advanced stuff, that's all he knew— but those on board were professionals who'd trained their entire lives to do this.

"Don't make me laugh, Tenn!" the shorter human— Grant— exclaimed, a note of scorn to his voice. "How can you claim any of that is science if there's no evidence? You said it yourself, man, the instruments have never gotten a reading from anything beyond the moon... and seeing farther without a telescope is impossible. Everyone knows there isn't a sensor out there powerful enough to detect more than a moon-length and a half through the delta stream..."

Alfie was in his glass enclosure on board Unity. The habitat capsule— which was barely five cubic metres in volume, and felt tiny and cramped compared to his habitat sphere in the Space Centre— that was calibrated to feed him the oxygen and nutrients he needed. A tiny display, like a scaled-down version of the large one he was used to, displayed the time and date:

08:01
June 18th
Year 560 P.A.
Exploratory Station-Vessel Unity
Weather: Overcast
Temperature: 20ºC

The two men were toiling over a machine set into the wall of the corridor, directly across from Alfie.

"How do you explain the old teachings that predicted space was a vacuum, centuries before it was confirmed by the first unmanned probe in 254 P.A.?" asked the one named Tenn, exasperation so evident in his tone that Alfie— who still had trouble reading the moods of unfamiliar humans— couldn't miss it.

"Written into the books years later," responded the other one, with a roll of his eyes as he tightened a bolt somewhere on the device the two were working on. "Like any good propaganda."

The taller of the two, Tenn— who seemed to Alfie to be growing more agitated— opened his mouth to respond, but Grant held up a hand to forestall any further argument. Alfie, paying close attention, noticed that the shorter Grant human was frowning.

"Listen, Tenn, I'd never have pegged you for an Aperturist. I've got nothing against your beliefs, so think what you like... but be careful what superstitions you spread around here, or the Captain'll have you reassigned straight off Unity! He's no fan of hokey religions, and if he hears, well..."

"...Right." Alfie wasn't quite adept enough at reading unfamiliar humans to understand the complex emotions behind the voice of this Tenn person, but he knew something was there. "I'll consider myself warned, then."

The two humans, who had now finished checking the inner workings of the machine they had come here to inspect, departed amidst an uncomfortable silence.

Alfie was now well and truly awake, even though he hadn't really understood the majority of this conversation. Since he was up, Alfie's Training told him he had some checking up of his own to do. A series of tubes made of reinforced glass, just large enough for the Phantump himself to pass through comfortably, connected almost every part of the Station to the central Life Support unit. Every once in a while, an airlock stood open midway through one of these tubes, ready to slam shut if the Station's advanced systems detected a vacuum on one side of the lock.

After a half-minute's travel through the maze of tunnels, with which he had spent much of the last month familiarizing himself, the Phantump emerged into one of his new places of work on Unity Station.

This room was shaped like a cylinder lying on its side; its entire ceiling was a bank of LED lights emitting the full-spectrum illumination of a simulated Sun. The trees here grew in carefully formulated soil (moisture content: 100.00% optimal; nutrient content: 100.00% optimal; and so on) but they were very different from anything that might be found in nature. Each individual plant was about three metres high and had a narrow, two-metre-long trunk like a living plank of wood. From each plant's trunk grew a perfectly uniform fan of flat leaves with crinkly surfaces, designed to maximize surface area.

These plants were not merely modified to resist disease and be aesthetically pleasing, like the ones that populated his habitat sphere at home. Instead, these plants were the kind that his Training had prepared him to monitor: as best Alfie understood it, they were genetically engineered to turn human breath into the oxygen humans needed. They did so swiftly and efficiently, and produced a fuel the humans called "ethanol" as a byproduct.

The rows upon rows of plants stood in their places amidst a steady wind: a hidden pump somewhere was moving air into one end of the chamber and out the other. Amongst them was a single human, wearing a grey-and-green jumpsuit with an ultraviolet-protective helmet covering her face (apparently the unfiltered light of the sun could burn humans.) This human was Greene, who had been introduced to Alfie on his first day on board Unity nearly a month ago. An expert in bioengineering and botany, she was the human in charge of Unity's biosphere; she would most likely be the person who gave Alfie any instructions he'd need. Greene caught sight of the Phantump and gave him a cheerful wave, which he returned with one of the leafy branches growing from his head— the tiny arms of his ghostly root-like body were usually too small for humans to see clearly— as he dove down amongst the plants and began checking them for disease or damage.

These plants, which the humans called carbon scrubs, were his most important charge should the automated systems monitoring them cease to function. With his specialized training, Alfie could use his power as a Grass-type Pokémon to maintain their growth in the absence of other nutrients; in an extended emergency, he was even authorized to use the ethereal side of his nature (the side humans would describe as ghostly or 'dimensionally phased') to sustain that growth with small traces of power drawn from the life energy of the humans on board.

There were other plants on the Station, many of which were almost as vital as the carbon scrubs: in the bio-cycling sector, there were bushes designed to use human or Pokémon waste as fertilizer to quickly produce highly nutritious berries that could be processed into rations; yet another category of plants was designed to grow and regrow tough vines to use as rope.

Alfie was distantly aware of all these plants: at hatching, he'd only been able to detect small growing things within a few metres, but after years of Training he had extended the range of his sixth sense to a thousand times that. The Station— a spaceship designed to house and provide for five hundred human crew and seven Pokémon in the vacuum of space— was three kilometres across, and from this place in the centre, Alfie could faintly feel the weeds and bushes of the scrubland outside.

A single chime, like a metal bell, from somewhere above Alfie called his attention to the ship-wide intercom. "All crew," barked a voice that the Phantump had come to recognize as the Captain's. "Return to your assigned habitations in preparation for twenty-hour pre-launch lockdown. Launch-essential personnel, report to your stations. Captain Reginald Thorn, out."

Alfie knew that if a human was the Captain, it meant that all instructions from that human should be treated as being of prime importance. So he turned and headed back in the direction of his tiny habitat sphere. It would be a long day of receiving instructions from the Captain and his crew, and he intended to be ready for it!

~~~~~~~~~~



Aeons passed, and the patterns of the planets' births and deaths grew stale in Our sight. There were a billion billion and more possibilities for the arrangement of a stardust-jewel, but despite this each one was essentially the same: from the moment of its formation in molten glory to the moment of its destruction in star-fire or its shattering under the hail of other bodies, each planet had the same ultimate pattern, the same fate. We sought greater complexity, greater dynamism.

Thus We selected one jewel of ice and fire from amongst the untold vastness, and set upon it a watcher, Arceus. To this world We sent the unformed spirits of the three Firstborn Eternal, which are now called Legendary in whispered tones. We created them to embody the concepts by which We know Our creations: Fire as heat; Ice as cold; and Lightning as the tension that builds and discharges when the two seek to come together. Arriving at their destination, these spirits took rudimentary forms from their surroundings— molten rock, frozen water, and the primordial thunderstorms of your planet— and their interactions and conflict further shaped them.

But once fully shaped, these, too, fell into a pattern: drawing near to one another out of desire for closeness, they were driven apart by the catastrophic conflict of their differing natures. Thus complete, their cycle grew predictable and repetitive: alone, they were not sufficient to sustain Our interest. In response, We created and sent more beings to embody other concepts: Our Secondborn Eternal were the five beings that embody Space as the juxtaposition of void and existence; Time as the movement of heat between what-is; Distortion from the imperfect interactions of Time and Space; the Sun-fire of the forges from which We built all that is; and the Moon-stone as that fire's reflection from these planets that had once so amused Us.

Alfie was jolted awake by a chime from the ship intercom. The Phantump's moment of crossness at the interruption to his dream (a dream he could almost, almost remember!) quickly faded as he realized that it was time for the launch: an event the humans were exceedingly excited about, and which he was therefore excited about too!

"All crew, prepare for launch. Once you are strapped in and otherwise prepared, please check your control hub or activate the nearest networked panel."

Alfie wasn't sure what was meant to happen next, but his Training told him to follow the Captain's orders and then wait for further instruction. He turned to the small screen in the wall of his habitat sphere, which read:

04:00
June 19th
Year 560 P.A.
Exploratory Station-Vessel Unity
Weather: Clear
Temperature: 16ºC

Then the display shifted to a message, which was gone too quickly for Alfie to read. He didn't mind, though, because the words were replaced with the face of Crysta, his favourite Trainer!

Tokktokktokk tokk-tokktokk creeeeeak tokk! Alfie exclaimed, happy to see her. Then his excitement shifted to confusion. Why was she talking to him from inside the screen instead of from the Station corridor outside his habitat sphere?

"Hello, Alfie," Crysta said, her voice and her smile warm as always. "Ready for the trip?

Tokktokk! Tokk, tokk tokk-tokk?

"What?" Crysta's smile faltered for a moment, then returned. "No, of course we aren't coming along! We're Pokémon Trainers, not astronauts."

Alfie emitted another series of distressed knocking noises and wooden creaks. He didn't want to leave Crysta or any of the others behind! He'd been so wrapped up in the interesting task of learning his way around the inside of Unity Station-Vessel, that he'd never given a thought to the fact he hadn't seen any of his Trainers in a month. They weren't on board, not even Crysta, who had spent so long telling Alfie about how much she loved the idea of going to space? He was going away without them??

Crysta extended a hand in Alfie's direction, out past the field of view of the screen; gently, carefully, she shifted the camera to show the entire group of all ten Trainers— actually, eleven, with the new one— and two of Alfie's Pokémon friends from elsewhere in the research facility: Bless the Bellsprout, full title Bls-Beta695 Nutrient Renewal Technician; and Fives the Magneton, full title Mgn-Gamma55575 Universal Electron Motive Support.

"Alfie, all we've ever wanted is for you to be ready for this. And you did it! You've worked so hard, and now you're one of only seven Pokémon to be selected for the Unity mission!" Crysta was smiling, but Alfie was concerned to see tears beginning to run down her face. This was totally wrong, and contrary to everything Alfie had ever known. Crysta was always cheerful!

"We've done all we can: you are our contribution to this amazing opportunity for humanity and Pokémon together to achieve something that's never been done before! We're counting on you to make us proud. Everyone, give Alfie a hip hip..."

"Hooray!" shouted all the humans on the screen, and Bless and Fives added their cries.

Alfie didn't know what to do. He was overwhelmed, and taken aback, and most of all sad. He wanted them all to come with him; they'd been so excited for this! A tiny timer in the bottom right of the video was ticking down... Five seconds left...

"Goodbye, Alfie! Take care of everyone for us, and we'll see you in a year!" called Crysta.

Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeak!! Alfie creaked, emitting his version of a wail. Partway through it, the screen went black.

"All crew, prepare for liftoff," said the Captain's voice over the intercom. "Ship's pilots, engage main thrusters on my command."

Alfie hesitated. His Training warred with his instinct to flee this place, phase right through the walls and go find Crysta, somehow make the humans let her come with him. But...

Training won. Seven years of knowing his job, of being told how important it was that he do exactly as he'd been trained, kept him floating right where he was in that habitat bubble, distressed but stable. He felt a tug at his mind and a sudden wave of sleepiness...

And then out of nowhere the dream took over, obliterating his waking thoughts with a new message.

We are masters of the space between the stars, the space that your humans and their technology seek to invade. You were brought to aid them, as an afterthought; We will make you instead into something greater. You shall be Our eyes and Our ears: Our means of seeing if they are worthy to travel Our domain.

Bear witness, little Pokémon, to the trials that the humans shall now endure. For it is now that they enter the cosmos, a realm where Our magic begins: where human ingenuity fails and human hubris shatters. Without these, will they live? Or will they die? Now, sleep and forget.

"Slateport, we have liftoff," said the Captain over the ship's intercom, but Alfie wasn't awake to hear it. The vessel lifted off with a gradual upward acceleration: everything Alfie had ever known was left behind, and the Unity's trial by star-fire was only just about to begin.


~~~~~~~~~~One Hour Later~~~~~~~~~~


Through the perfectly transparent graphene-glass of Station-Vessel Unity's dorsal observation pod and auxiliary communications bridge, an Abra watched the world recede into the distance, and felt only professional satisfaction at the successful launch. It bothered her not a bit to be leaving the Pokémon world behind.

Abr-Alpha4 Supraneural Communicator and Monitor, or "SCM" as most called her for brevity when communicating at slower-than-thought speeds, had seen the worst and the best of that planet. Illegally abandoned in the mountain forests of western Kanto by a disappointed breeder when her aptitude tests revealed sub-par fitness for battle, the newly hatched Abra had survived in the unforgiving wild for weeks, until a science expedition from the Pewter Museum of Geology followed her psychic mayday signals across hundreds of kilometres. Upon rescuing her, the researchers determined that she was in the upper hundredth of the hundredth percentile of aptitude for empathic-telepathic communications, making her only the fourth Alpha-level SCM in recorded history.

Which was how she'd ended up here. SCM's duty was to serve as a backup to the Unity's communications systems, as well as a means of monitoring the crew for unusual neural activity.

One panel amongst the bank of sensors, communicators, and controllers arrayed around SCM hummed to life, and the Captain's voice spoke from a small speaker in the centre of that module. "Captain to A-b-r-Alpha four S-c-m, commence post-launch supraneural scan."

SCM pressed a button to switch the communicator to 'transmit,' and hissed out an affirmative "Aaaaab." Then she closed her eyes and reached out with her psychic senses to touch every last mind on board Station-Vessel Unity.

This was her main function, one of the few that humans had not yet made a machine advanced enough to perform: to scan the psyches of all onboard for: unusual distress that might indicate ill health or injury; conflict of a more-than ordinary kind that might affect Unity's function; or for abnormalities such as unconsciousness outside of the usual sleep cycle—

Wait.

SCM left off her monitoring of the mistrust-dislike-respect-conflict between two crewmen (SCM's flawless memory for detail identified them as Engineer First Class Tenn and Engineer First Class Grant) who were at that moment studiously avoiding talking to each other. She did so because just then, she detected exactly such an unusual instance of unconsciousness. Even had SCM not memorized the sleep schedule of every human and Pokémon on board over the past month, she would still have noticed this: no individual was meant to be asleep so soon after launch, as the entire crew was expected to be available in case of an anomaly or emergency following the exit from the Pokémon world's atmosphere.

Pht-Alpha14 Biosphere Management System, colloquial name "Alfie," was not only asleep but dreaming— a deep part of the sleep cycle that should have been inaccessible to anyone in less than three hours of dormancy. Pushing her way into the Phantump's consciousness, SCM was almost overwhelmed by an immense presence imposing itself upon the Grass-type's psyche. The presence was imparting a series of units of meaning, each one so specific and coherent that the Phantump's consciousness was automatically parsing them into human language. SCM tried to comprehend the original meaning-units, but their true shape bent her mind so painfully that she settled for listening in on the Phantump's perceptions...

The first test is even now upon the humans. Rest easy: you will remember none of this until the time comes... Go, and watch.

And as for you, little Pokémon who so embraces the human-given role of eavesdropper... Begone, for you shall not be spared this Trial of Isolation.

And with that, SCM was suddenly back within her own body, mind reeling as it absorbed the impact of her forcible ejection from the Phantump's unnatural dream.

Immediately, she could feel something intangible and impossible approaching Station-Vessel Unity: a wall of invisible force whose immense strength and all-encompassing breadth defied every one of her panicked attempts to identify or halt it. This was no psychic power— it was something else, something that even her extensive mental library of human language could not identify as any scientific phenomenon.

She scrambled to reach out to the Captain's mind, to do as her training demanded and inform him directly of the impending disaster; but in the second she made contact, the wall struck, and her mind was left grasping at nothing.

SCM had never before experienced such utter psychic silence. For a moment, cold horror gripped the Abra as the absence of any other minds told her without a doubt that everyone else on board had been destroyed in a split second. Then her swift analytical mind processed the evidence around her: the communicators in her control panel displaying ERROR messages on all screens; the sudden invisibility of the marble-sized Pokémon World amidst the void behind the ship; and the cryptic sequence of ideas that had indicated some sort of 'Trial of Isolation...'

SCM was not the only living thing left on board Unity: no, this was the psychic equivalent of sensory deprivation. It terrified SCM that a subtle psychic power such as hers, which only the most advanced of human technology had ever been able to deny passage into a person's mind, was so easily blocked from functioning. Just what was that thing speaking in Pht-Alpha14's mind?

SCM's gaze swept over the controls, and she tried, without much hope, to press the correct buttons to achieve a direct connection to the Captain or the Station-Vessel's intercom systems. Nothing but the continued flashing ERROR messages resulted. The young Abra's fear began to mount further as she realized that she had no idea what to do in this situation, though she was too disciplined to let it manifest in erratic behaviour.

For all her flawless memory and unrivaled mental computing power, SCM was still a Pokémon... and it was generally accepted that the ability to make executive decisions outside of instinctual behaviours and human-granted training was a skill possessed only by Legendary Pokémon. Scramble as she might through every mental gymnastic available to her, SCM couldn't envision what she could possibly do next. In the event of a comms failure, she was meant to establish a mental link to the Captain or, in his absence, to the next available member of the chain of command (the acting Captain.) But she couldn't do either of those things with the psychic blackout preventing her from even detecting Station-Vessel Unity's crew. She needed instructions, she needed the Captain or one of the communications engineers to tell her how to do this!

Wrapping her clawed hands around herself, SCM began to rock back and forth, paralyzed and waiting for something, anything, to happen that her training had prepared her for.


~~~~~~~~~~Elsewhere On Board~~~~~~~~~~


Alfie awoke, feeling groggy and ill-rested. He was resting atop the soil of his tiny habitat capsule, where he had landed amongst the small leafy plants. But why had he fallen asleep here? What had he just been doing? Was he ill?

He checked the biological systems of his own body in the same way he would check any plant or Grass-type Pokémon that he suspected was ill. Carefully and in-depth, he took stock of anything that might be wrong with him: but his nutrient stores were all above the minimum required for optimal function; there was no damage to any living wooden tissues or his leaves; his sap was free of any toxins; and there was no evidence of bacterial or viral infections. There was nothing to explain why he felt so woozy.

Absently, as he always did when he awoke, Alfie absently checked the display on the side of his habitat bubble.

05:02
June 19th
Year 560 P.A.
Exploratory Station-Vessel Unity
Weather: Vacuum
Temperature of Local Space: 120ºC (393K)
Communications System Error — Please Reboot

He had no context for this last part, and since it didn't relate to his Training, it wasn't Alfie's concern. He suspected someone would fix whatever error was occurring soon enough. In the meantime, maybe some movement would help him feel a little more like himself. Alfie supposed he would take a look around, and see how launch had affected Unity as a whole.

With a slight effort of will, Alfie drew on the dimensionally out-of-phase properties of his species and passed through the glass wall of his habitat bubble. A moment later, he had to duck out of the way as a brown-haired woman in the slate-grey jumpsuit of an astronaut raced past him down the hallway at full speed. Curious, and aware that he didn't need to perform any duties until he was called upon by the humans in charge of Unity's biosphere, Alfie decided to follow her, picking up speed and whistling his way down the stainless-steel-paneled corridors that the humans used to get around Unity.

Eventually, the astronaut began to grow tired, and she slowed to a jog, looking around wildly as though searching for something. Alfie was perplexed; what could she be on the lookout for, that she couldn't merely ask another human about it? He approached her with a cheery wave of his branches, but she ignored him.

A little offended, Alfie watched as the woman approached a T intersection where this corridor met another: at that moment, another human, this one wearing the grey-and-brown jumpsuit of a communications engineer and tapping frustratedly at a control hub in his hand, stepped around the corner. To Alfie's astonishment, the astronaut woman didn't acknowledge this man either, instead continuing to barrel straight towards him on a collision course!

Tokk tokk toktokk!! he clacked, trying to warn the two humans before they smashed into one another.

For a moment, it looked like the engineer had heard Alfie, because he looked up from his device; then, incredibly, he ignored the woman who was mere steps away and still at a full sprint down the narrow hallway, and went back to his frenzied tapping at his device...

A moment later, Alfie watched with disbelief as the astronaut woman simply phased through the other man, as though he weren't even there... or as if she were a ghost like Alfie. He stretched out his senses for living things, and confirmed that both of them were definitely all there: living, breathing human beings, one of them receding very quickly out of Alfie's limited range of detection for non-plants.

"Can't make head nor tail of this," muttered the communications specialist, who had stopped in the intersection and was still tapping away at his control hub with an expression on his face that even Alfie was able to recognize as the human way of displaying bewilderment. The man raised the hub to his ear, still muttering to himself. "And where is everyone...? Come in, this is Diam, Communications Specialist First Class... Hello? Anyone? Damnit."

The man walked away, passing right by another man walking the opposite direction wearing the same uniform and similarly engrossed in a control hub. The two humans ignored each other completely and went their separate ways, leaving Alfie floating in the intersection, even more confused than he had been before. What in the world was going on? Couldn't the humans see each other?

Alfie turned and raced through the metal corridors, following his sense of direction to where he knew the command room for the whole station was. He came to a security door where several humans were standing, sitting, or pounding on the surface; some of them were casually standing with an arm or a shoulder phasing through another human's torso, further confusing and concerning Alfie.

Alfie passed through the security door and came to a new room, where screens displaying the blackness of space covered every wall, and the rest of the room was filled by banks of computers, switches and levers. At these stations sat sixteen people in four rows of four, most of whom were muttering to themselves and hunching over the complicated-looking controls.

On a raised dais in the centre, standing in front of a chair and tapping away furiously at a keyboard in front of a drop-down screen that extended from the ceiling, was a man in a jet-black jumpsuit with several metallic patches sewn into the shoulder to indicate rank. This could only be the Captain: he was a stern-faced man with a bushy black moustache and beard, who Alfie could only assume was somewhere between the ages of thirty and fifty (human age escaped him a lot of the time.) Right now, his features were contorted into a look of deep concern as he tried to run scans of the ship and found the technology unwilling or unable to do its proper job.

"Unity to Slateport, I repeat, Unity to Slateport, come in, we have an emergency," the Captain said, briefly freeing one hand from his frenzied typing to press a button marked "TRANSMIT". "This is Captain Reginald Thorn, please respond. Damnit, where's my crew? And communications to planetside weren't supposed to be interrupted till at least a moon-length and a half! This can't be the delta stream, I've already engaged optic-transmission backup system to transmit in duplicate... Unity to Slateport, do you read??"

The other humans at their computer terminals were all muttering similar things to themselves, occasionally glancing fearfully at the other chairs without seeing their compatriots sitting in them. Alfie was growing very afraid now. What was wrong with the humans? And what would happen if their affliction became worse? Panic began to creep through his body like the insidious tendrils of a fungus, threatening to smother his limited reasoning skills and send him into panicked flight.

At that moment, cutting through his confusion like a knife, a clarion call struck Alfie: a psychic wail of terror that spoke to his very mind and carried with it a wordless plea for help. Instead of frightening the Phantump, though, this silent scream invoked the protective instinct he had been Trained to act upon in a situation of emergency. Plants were his purview, yes, but Crysta and the others hadn't let him leave without a clear idea of what to do if someone was crying out for help!

Alfie whirled and phased back through the door of the command centre, then located and passed through the nearest wall through which lay the graphene-glass tubing of his air-circulation warrens. Racing through the narrow spaces at a breakneck pace, with the pressure of the oxygenated air pumping in behind him and whirling him onward faster than he could have gone on his own, Alfie followed the soundless cry all the way to the dorsal surface of the ship, where he found his way blocked by the ship's hull: a layer of steel armour far too thick for even Alfie to phase through. Strangely enough, the psychic wailing seemed to be coming from somewhere slightly beyond that armour...

Alfie phased back into the human corridors— ignoring one or two humans who were frantically tapping at control hubs or prying open the steel walls with tool kits, he had no idea how to help them— and swept his gaze across the wall of the ship, looking for whatever it was he was missing. Then he saw it: in the ceiling, there was a small Pokémon-sized hatch with the look of an airlock to it. Whoever was frightened, they were definitely on the other side of that...


~~~~~~~~~~Station-Vessel Unity: Dorsal Observation Pod & Auxiliary Comms Bridge~~~~~~~~~~


SCM's claws dug furrows into the chitinous layer of skin that protected the fragile inner workings of her shoulders. The terror of her sudden isolation and helplessness had long since worn away her self-control, and all that passed through her normally cogent thoughts was a silent keening of fright and confusion: she was once again an abandoned newborn, stranded far away from any who might help, crying for someone, anyone to acknowledge her terror.

And then, without warning, something was touching her foot: a vine-like tendril that extended from a shadowy shape, a shape which was even now rising from the sealed-shut airlock separating SCM from the empty ship! Panicking, the Abra lashed out with a blade of psychic power, but with no discipline binding her thoughts together and an entire lifetime of avoiding combat, the sloppily executed Psycho Cut technique broke apart before it could even strike.

Then, for the first time in the nearly thirty minutes since everything had gone silent, SCM realized she could feel someone's mind! Not only that, but it was one she recognized, if only distantly: she had of course familiarized herself with the neural signatures of all crew, including the other six Pokémon on board. This was Pht-Alpha14 Biosphere Management System, or Alfie: she'd recognize this earthy, somehow unwholesome mind-feel anywhere.

"Tokktokk tokk tokk-tokk-tokk tokk!" thrummed out the Phantump, hovering up in front of her. She could read his mind, sort of: he was a simplistic creature, one that (like most Pokémon not of the category known as Psychic-types) did not think in language so much as in nebulous concepts and impulses. The ideas running through his wooden head told her that she had been unable to perceive him until he'd made contact with her via that vine, and that he'd had the good sense to startle her from far away instead of up close where her panic could have harmed him.

SCM remembered thinking, when she'd first made contact with this Pokémon's simple little mind, that she wouldn't like him much; but in this moment, she was simply overjoyed to once again not be alone in the universe.

Thank goodness you're here, she sent, mind-to-mind. What in the world is going on out there?

"Tokk-tokk, tokktokk—"

No, don't try to explain. Just let me... SCM began to sift through the Phantump's memories, ignoring a few "speed bumps" of repressed memories that she somehow couldn't crack open (time enough for that later.) She reached his memories of the past half-hour, and... Oh. Oh dear.

The crew was afflicted with some kind of sensory deprivation. They seemed unable to perceive one another, and whatever had done this had also deactivated all the ship's communications systems... but it went further than that. Something powerful and very strange was at work here, to cause the humans to also cease to interact physically with one another, and to make them imperceptible to SCM's own psychic senses.

Just then, SCM had to react quickly, using her telekinetic powers to violently shove herself and Alfie out of the way of the wall as the ship abruptly began to experience an unscheduled acceleration. What...?

With surprising speed, concepts came through her mental link to the Phantump: the men and women in the command centre, desperately poring over controls; the fact that they couldn't see each other. From that she concluded easily that these highly trained professionals, each one thinking they were the last person on board, had started to make executive decisions to turn the ship around and attempt a landing, or maneuver out of whatever field was causing the comms failure, or whatever their logic brought them to.

What she didn't expect from the Phantump were the concepts that followed: empathy for the crew's confusion; desire to help, even if he had no idea how to do so; and concern, overwhelming concern. SCM was surprised by how much this Phantump cared for the crew of Unity: he cared far more than she did, and they were her job. Vibrating anxiously in place with a series of repetitive tokktokktokktokktokk noises emanating from him, Alfie's incoherent thoughts beseeched her to do something, anything, to help those humans.

All right, all right, I'm on it, she mind-spoke placatingly. I know how I can reach the Captain, but I'll need your help. She transmitted a message for clarity: a mental image of the Captain as viewed from the door of the ship's command centre.

"Tokktokk tokk!" Alfie responded, and SCM gleaned from his thoughts that he would do whatever it took.

All right, brace yourself, SCM told him, then dove into his mind.

After a brief instinctual struggle against her invasion of his everything, the Phantump let go and drifted into unconsciousness, leaving SCM in complete control. She marvelled at his trust: she could never have allowed someone to take ownership of her mind so completely. Then again, she possessed the skills to resist, whereas she supposed he did not.

Now, though, viewing the psychic landscape through his mind as though through a green-tinted lens, she was pleased to see that her guess had been correct: whoever or whatever had left the Phantump the power to see and interact with the rest of Unity had unwittingly left a loophole. The mind of SCM was subject to the filtered perceptions; but the mind of Alfie, with SCM in control, was not. She could feel every human and Pokémon on board once again; as a side effect, the plants in their various sections of the ship were like beacons calling to her, helping her to orient herself and determine exactly which parts of the ship were which.

She singled out the command centre, then reached into the mess of minds inside it and made contact with the Captain. Captain, this is Abr-Alpha4 Supraneural Communicator and Monitor, herein SCM. I've made contact through a relay. Please transmit orders, over.

Captain to SCM, the Captain thought, and SCM could feel his relief, Report on exactly what in the blazes we're dealing with right now, over!

It took a matter of seconds for SCM to transmit the fully-formed idea of what was going on, but the Captain's mind took nearly half a minute to fully parse it. Such were the limitations of a slower-processing mind, but SCM was used to it— few minds were quicker than hers.

Captain to SCM, contact all bridge crew and relay orders to return to scheduled course; contact all engineering and relay orders to open up the damn walls and get our comms online. Make sure to coordinate even distribution of labour so we don't get sixty people on one damn wall panel, got that? Over.

Copy that, Captain, SCM transmitted with relief, then set to giving the orders she'd been instructed to give. She could do this— it was what she'd been Trained... uhh, taught, to do. SCM's thoughts turned upward in the mental equivalent of a wry smile. Being in Alfie's mind was having some side effects, and the simple creature valued his Training very, very much. Ah well, not much longer...

And then suddenly everything was normal again. A wave of confusion followed by relief hit SCM from every mind she was connected to, as the humans began to see and hear each other again.

The ship's comms flickered to life, and the Captain spoke through them, the lights on SCM's banks of controls indicating that he was broadcasting ship-wide: "This is your Captain speaking. Whatever that was, crew, we've come out the other side. Well done; and start checking these communications systems for damage. I want to know what caused this. Command centre, start taking reports. Over and out."

SCM withdrew from Alfie's mind so that he could wake up; then tried to reestablish a connection, wanting to thank him for his help. But instead of the Phantump, her questing mental probe found a forbidding wall of... something. Then the wall spoke, in all-encompassing more-than-words that made SCM's mind tremble and threaten to shake itself to pieces.

You have trespassed upon Our Trials, little Pokémon. We applaud your creativity. Cross not this boundary again: your zeal on the humans' behalf is not useful to Us. We hereby remove this creature of Life and Death from your grasp; do not seek him, or interfere again, lest you die.

And then Alfie was gone, and SCM was left with only a cold sense of loss in his place. Somehow, she felt more alone now, with the teeming thoughts of five hundred humans and five other Pokémon battering at her mind, than she had felt when they had all been gone.

Alfie's mind was nowhere she could detect; and she somehow knew that, try as she might, she would not find the Phantump again until it was too late.

SCM, come in. Set up a mental link: I need to consult with several onboard experts on what just happened, over, came the Captain's thought through the still-established mental link. And so SCM, unsure what else to do, fell uneasily back into the usual pattern of receive order, establish contact, et cetera, hoping against hope that soon, someone would give her an order that would turn up Alfie's location. Because she had a feeling— no, a hollow and sourceless certainty— that this was only the beginning.


=====END OF CHAPTER 1 =====


Character Count: 55,566

 

you're next! ^^ claiming!

 

Story

Kudos on writing an exemplar and engaging first chapter! From the very beginning of this, I was drawn in by what the story would offer. The glossary hints to some major mythology happening behind the scenes, and while I found that intertwined nicely with your WaR fantasy prompt, it also did a great job of creating possibility in the reader's imagination. Right off the bat, we've got a heretic religion, some humans who've crashed the Pokemon planet, an odd voice in italics, and the best part: good old, unassuming, kind Alfie. He became my favorite character from the very beginning!

I cherished Alfie and SCM throughout this. The story does a wondrous job of portraying them as Pokemon trained to be strong, to love their Trainers and we see that in some heart breaking moments - SCM panicking about what to do next, Alfie's disappointment that Crysta won't come with him to space, the meticulous attention to detail and regiment Alfie demonstrates. I thoroughly enjoyed our secondary twist to the story: SCM "hacking" into Alfie to shut out the voice blocking the 505 minds on board Unity. Very good stuff there. I rooted for them, wanted them to be friends, and found their introduction to this wider story to be absolutely fantastic.

Now, for our antagonists! The first line of this story threw me off slightly. I sorta tilted my head, thinking "but how many ways can you rearrange the substance matter of heat and cold? Are these not constructs of sensation rather than substance itself?" and I kept thinking about that as the story unraveled with "Their" voice. The creationist myth building up behind the scenes was very cool, and I am personally a huge fan of people examining the purpose and intent behind Legendary Pokemon existing in the world.

Going into a little of what I talked about above, I think my biggest piece of advice for the story would be this: don't worry too much about explaining every tidbit of your world's functioning. You're very thorough with your descriptions, which is fantastic! However, too much can, in some places, slow your story down and also create room for contradictions. Besides the above, my biggest example would be the explanation of why SCM started panicking by herself. The paragraph going into "because she was a Pokemon" sort of made me back track, because right before that we received her backstory detailing her extreme intelligence, albeit in empathic communications. Then I started contemplating how executive decision making in the prefrontal cortex taps into the amygdala and basically you don't want your readers going down this path lol. Fear and hesitation are ubiquitous emotions. Explaining them sort of takes away from the raw power that we feel reading about characters who experience it.

Anyway, that's a very small critique! Overall, this was a fabulous story. We've got a slow build here that casually builds to panic on board the ship. Even if the beginning for your wider story unfurled very slowly, I thought the pacing was just right - we get a good understanding of the world we're in, and the speech that Jun Toshinobu gives is particularly potent for setting the scene of humans' arrival and expansion. I wasn't expecting the first trial, the whole "we can't see each other" on board the ship and really liked the ending we got to in this. I'm excited to see where this goes, and if Alfie ever comes back!

As a reader, my questions for this story, that you certainly in no way have to answer in further chapters, are: 1) Why did They wait until humans got into space for their trial? Since They created the planets, couldn't They have also wiped away the Planet whenever they felt like it? 2) Will Crysta and the crew ever come back to Alfie's side? 3) How can the world beyond Slateport react to what's happening on board, if things accelerate like I imagine they will? I'm also foreshadowing the religious lore tying into They, as well as a mutiny on board between all the recruits! Anyway, that's all just my hunch of the ongoing story!

Description

AHH! This is very good stuff! Like quoted in the above passage, your story takes its time explaining everything exhaustively. You do a wondrous job of setting the scene, letting us know where we are and what things look like and move like, but what I'd love to see next is how you describe panic. When the first incident happens aboard the ship, we mostly get descriptions of fear and curiosity from Alfie's side - these are fantastic, but I'm curious to see how you take your approach to describing everything else as applied to panic / emotions holistically. What does unease, anxiety, and confusion look like from a mass level, instead of just Alfie's perspective? I think that would make an exciting avenue to journey down while you write the next installment of this story.

Grammar

We're mostly clear here - there's two cases of repeated words, one of them being "billion" if you want to go back and revise that. On the topic of double question marks hmm... I personally don't mind them though they're grammatically incorrect, but some of your other readers might. Just something to consider, and like all things in this grade, you don't have to take to heart.

Outcome

Abra and Phantump Captured! Yup, everything checks out just right in this! This was a fun first chapter and I'm excited to see what else you have in store! Whoops, hopefully Alfie's alright, too!

WaR

Space - Yup, the story and all the little details suggest this. They're training to go into space and I appreciate that our introduction ended with the line, "You're going to space!" that's exciting! The hour / location / etc format of the digital displays also rings up space for the readers. In some ways, those logs have almost too much information; but in others, they're a neat device to locate us, to foreshadow a major time skip or something gone wrong, and just generally remind one of being somewhere far, far away.

Fantasy - this definitely fits! the opening glossary, the mythology of the world, the line in the WaR prompt about fantasy being "realistic" - we get all of that. GREAT JOB. GO SCI-FI.

Pokemon Main - I could contest this, but honestly Alfie and SCM stole the show as the main characters of this and that's all that really matters. It's their actions that save the ship at the end of their day, even given both of their somewhat small roles aboard the ship. Yup, they're the story's heroes and they're great! This is definitely a pass.

Good job! You may claim a Complex mon! ^^

 

Graded and deleted for Collab!

 

@Magikchicken !

Your grade has been released! Your partner's piece has passed, so you may overall claim Abra and Phantump, a Complex mon, and $17,000 ^^ (10,000 from Medium mon part and 7,000 for WaR / Collab bonus!) Congratulations!