Wow, this actually updated! I was half expecting it to be another that was on hiatus forever, hence me not commenting when I first binged it, but in retrospect I should have known better since this has been going since 2014... bodes badly for update speed, but fantastic for not getting suddenly permanently ended. Then again, Dungeon Keeper Ami was apparently started back in 2009, so who knows...
"I was ten years old!" Brendan shouted, throwing his hands up. "And someone told me that they saw an Alakazam with five spoons in the Granite Caves! So I went to go look, broke my flashlight, and got lost in the dark for six hours!"
Just because you couldn't
find the Mega Alakazam doesn't mean it wasn't there! Even non-Mega-Evolved ones are extremely powerful psychics who are one of the few Pokemon to be explicitly definitely smarter than humans; you being unable to find a superpowered one means nothing. Incidentally: Astra, you should search the caves to see if they have any more excess spoons they'd be willing to give you. I gave my own Gardevoir in Emerald a Twisted Spoon, and it was awesome. She used that spoon as a utensil to eat the dreams of Groudon itself!
"I'm studying up on the upcoming craze known as CORRECT PSYDUCK," the man at the table explained, turning around the book on the table. An image of a rotund, vaguely aquatic yellow creature with a wide bill and glassy eyes looked out at Astra from the pages. "Do you believe there is any connection between CORRECT PSYDUCK and literature? My intuition tells me there's a relation, but I can't figure it out. Perhaps there's a book that can tell me exactly which PSYDUCK is CORRECT..."
"Er, sorry, what...is 'Correct Psyduck', exactly?"
"CORRECT PSYDUCK," the man stated, as if she'd somehow messed up the words (though, the way he said it was...odd), "is the newest and hippest trend in Hoenn! It's just getting off the ground, but the whole world will know about it soon enough! We're on the cutting edge of popularity!"
"...But what is it?" Astra asked.
The man hesitated. "We're...figuring it out!" he claimed, not meeting Astra's gaze. "But it's sure to sweep the nation quicker than every tidal wave in the last decade combined!"
oh my god seeing Dewford Hall trends in a story like this is even better than I could have imagined
"Oh, it's a Galarian myth—"
Another elderly lady across the table snorted. "Galarian? You absolute boghead, that myth's from Tir'nog. Just 'cause the islands are close doesn't mean they're interchangeable!"
"Tir'nog, then," the first woman corrected. "In any case, it's about this ghostly woman who shows up outside the homes of people who're about to kick the bucket and starts wailing."
Regional variant of Misdreavus that then evolved (in the
non-Pokemon sense) further into a whole new species. Gotcha.
Astra paused, slowly lowering her scone. "...Ghostly? Is...is it haunted?"
I WISH. But no, sadly, aside from the occasional rare Sableye in Granite Cave, no sources of Ghost pokemon in Hoenn until Mt. Pyre and the routes near it. They don't even have
Gastlies, man. I'm not sure if
any other region is devoid of Gastly! Unova I guess, but that goes way out of its way to not include anything from gens 1-4. If only Rotom had been made one Generation sooner, New Mauville would have been
perfect for them...
"According to my brother, it might be! He took a look himself, but he couldn't get inside—the whole thing has been blocked off for ages, though you still see some people go in and out sometimes. Said he saw a lot of flickering lights, and then when the screaming started he hightailed it out of there. Apparently it sounded like someone was torturing sheet metal. He reported it, but apparently the Jennies aren't doing anything."
Oh no... whatever's going on, protect the Magnemites!
Those devils and their blasted pokemon ate my little sister's dreams! I watched her waste away from terminal insomnia
what kind of sick battle necessitated sealing away someone's ability to sleep?
...
speaking of that thing I did to Groudon to counter its constant Resting... just you wait until you reach Level 60, Astra. Or even just Level 54 if you hold off on evolving for a long while even once you can. Bring a spoon.
Humanity had built rockets which flew at impossible speeds that were purpose-built to explode and would annihilate a solid square mile of damn near anything. And they had built a lot of them.
Hmm, oddly dark that they'd actually still have things like nuclear warheads and M.A.D. in the Pokemon Wo-
"—But they've been steadily disarming those things for decades. I think Hoenn has...actually they might all be gone, though who knows for sure. Well, eventually we'll only have the ones made to transport things into orbit or beyond,"
The pokemon world is one that is, generally speaking, several shades lighter than our own. Unfortunately, that isn't quite enough shades for it to not be grey.
-alright, nevermind, carry on.
...
Actually no, it's still odd, though for different reasons. Humans in the world of Pokemon building apocalyptic superweapons is understandable for multiple reasons, but rather than nukes, they seem to gravitate more to things like... giant glowy Pokemon-powered deathrays. Maybe it's a bows-vs-primitive-guns situation? One is just plain better on a small scale, but the other is better logistically and strategically when you're equipping entire armies to fight against other entire armies. So criminal gangs get the deathrays, regions get the nukes.
Eighty years. They'd figured out how to fly only eighty years ago. Barely any time at all, really. A few cycles of hatchlings growing into mothers and their hatchlings growing to have eggs of their own. Astra didn't know if her village had really done anything within that time. They'd made new songs and dances and that sort of thing, sure, but humanity...they'd built weapons that could destroy expanses of land and machines that roamed around the stars and spied on people. Did the village's protections even work on something without a mind!? How were they ever supposed to catch up with that!?
If it's any consolation, this prooobably ain't specifically a
human thing, at least not in this version of the Pokemon universe. The rate of technological progression generally accelerates with both the current advancement of techology, and the number of people available to work on it. You have
one small village, while humans have countless large cities all around the entire world. And the
reason that more people equals faster progression is because... new inventors are able to copy and build off of what the old inventors did. By impersonating a human trainer, you now have access to pretty much all of human technology; if Ralts/Kirlias can learn how it works, they can copy it and theoretically build upon it. Infrastructure is still a problem, but not an insurmountable one, especially with superpowers like telekinesis. Also, this is only an issue if
independence is one of your goals alongside just freedom; if you were to integrate your village with human society instead, this would instantly become a non-issue.
OOF. Poor Brendan, always gets stuck with the
worst Astra questions.
...though not as poor as Astra herself, of course. Yeesh. This whole damn chapter was pretty hard on her, even more than usual.
