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Parker Cerise

Chloe's younger brother, who is into Pokémon and also share some of the same interests as his sister, essentially being her Number 1 fan. Although, he might have been a bit too supportive...

Unmarked Spoilers for Blossoming Trail


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    In General 
  • Arc Villain: They're collectively the main threats of the Pokémon side of the Cyan Desert Car saga, though only Parker and UnChloe are present for the most part, with Zeno showing up afterwards to give Goh one final kick in the teeth.
  • Bias Steamroller: All three of them let their own anger and biases completely overwrite their intentions: Parker as a result of being horribly mentally unprepared to handle complex moral situations, and the Unown characters as a consequence of being extensions of Parker.
  • The Bully: This is either what they are to begin with or what they become as the story goes on.
    • Parker initially wasn't like this, just incredibly violent and easy to trigger. But once he gets the Unown, any restraint or decency he has is slowly withered away until he becomes a monster, using their power to torture everyone who has ever slighted him, under the pretense of doing it in Chloe's name.
    • UnChloe, having been created during Parker's tenure with the Unown, shares his devotion to torture everyone until they're broken. However, she's slightly worse due to first imprinting on Sara's memory, which causes her already volatile personality to become even more wicked.
    • Finally, Zeno is a more cerebral type of bully, using the nightmare therapy Goh's stuck in to destroy the boy mentally and psychologically over his inability to be a good friend to Chloe.
  • Plot-Irrelevant Villain: In theory, their actions shake the status quo of the Pokémon side of the crossover, and make the Cyan Desert Car saga one of the darkest in the whole trilogy. In practice, their actions don't actually do that much to move the plot forward; outside of getting Chloe to realize how badly she messed up, which could've been done by any other similarly traumatic event, their only contribution to the ongoing plot is UnChloe/UnSara tricking Parker into pulling a Mind Rape on Goh so severe that he gets Trainnapped at the end, which could've also been done by Mrs. Turner kidnapping him during the next act.

    # - B 
  • Adaptational Angst Upgrade: He positively takes Chloe's disappearance the hardest out of his entire family, and after the Unown incident, his angst only keeps on piling and piling up.
  • Adaptational Badass: Eventually gains the power of the Unown, something his canon counterpart never did.
  • Ad Hominem: His bread and butter. Whether it's calling people out over how they treated Chloe, or trying to shame everybody for not worshipping the ground his sister walked on, Parker will immediately do a personal attack on whoever he feels has slighted him until they're nothing but broken, sobbing wrecks on the floor. He even continues doing this after the Unown are dispatched, and thus when he no longer has any moral high ground to stand on.
  • Adaptational Jerkass: He's much more temperamental and snippy than in canon. Which quickly gets the Unown's attention...
  • Adaptational Personality Change: Was essentially like Max in the anime — a young boy who is into Pokémon — but this one has him as a Nightmare Fetishist like his sister and that the two had a pretty close bond who encouraged and would stand up for her. Word of God stated that she wanted to make sure that she did not make Parker just another copy of Max.
  • Adaptational Villainy: Eventually becomes one of the main antagonists of Arc 2, alongside his creation. Even before that, he shows himself far more willing to commit horrible acts of violence upon those who slight him than his canon self.
  • Aesop Collateral Damage: After the Cyan Desert Car/Unown Arc, Parker realizes how he had done more harm than good and vows to be a good boy from now on. But this came at the cost of his family's reputation destroyed, them possibly losing their house and Chloe losing a lot of self-confidence just before she has to stop a cult.
  • Ambiguous Innocence: Parker knows what is "Good" and "Bad" on what he feels and how he's seen his sister react. So he bases people who are "good" and "bad" based on those actions. For example, Ash is a good person at heart, but Parker sees him as "bad" for not making his sister feel like she was a person and never doing anything more to help her. And then the Unown factors in.
  • Ambiguous Situation: Would Parker have actually been willing to help Ash connect with Chloe? He repeatedly claims that Ash could've come to him for information about his sister, but then it's later revealed that he hated him for allegedly taking everything away from him and Chloe, and was afraid of Ash taking Chloe herself away from him too.
  • All for Nothing:
    • Parker did all of the horrible, unspeakable things he did in Act 2 to try and get the catharsis that he thinks Chloe deserves. As a result, his family is in ruins, the campaign made in Chloe's name has been tarnished along with Chloe's reputation, and just about everybody hates him for what he's done. Even Chloe is disappointed in him and calls him out on his actions while visiting him in juvie.
    • Parker's "therapy" session with Goh to prevent him from getting worse is also pointless as well, since a single conversation with Ash under normal circumstances would've stopped him from crossing the line. Even when he does end up breaking the guy, Goh is sent to the Train shortly after, and the action only gives people even more incentive to despise him.
  • And Then What?: One of the reasons the Unown fiasco causes so much damage is that Parker never stops for a moment to ask himself this question. The Unown may have granted him unbelievable power, but it would be too much to hope that no one in the Pokémon world would be able to interfere, so those powers couldn’t last forever. Since Parker was convinced that he was just a good little brother clearing the way for Chloe’s return and all his victims deserved what they got, it’s possible he never thought of what would happen when the world learned about the dozens of children he’d mind controlled and mutilated.
  • Anger Born of Worry: After Chloe sends her devastating message about potentially staying on the Train to him, worry and fear become yet another source of anger for him, especially because nobody's doing anything about it.
  • Anger Is Not Enough: His wrath and inability to both deal with it and know when to stop sends his family spiraling into infamy.
  • Annoying Younger Sibling: Apparently likes to tease his sister about her dislike of curry. That said, he doesn't hate her enough that he wants her gone. Later chapters reveal he was the only person in Chloe's life who shared her interests and was essentially the closest thing she had to a friend, which makes his line that he loved her harder to look at. Of course, then he becomes this again with his use of the Unown...
  • Armor-Piercing Question:
    • During his Shaming the Mob speech at his court trial, he tearfully begs to know why everyone in Vermillion City hates his sister's guts and what she has done to deserve such hatred. Nobody answers.
    • He also gets several of these after the Unown are dispatched, primarily dealing with whether he thinks everything he did was worth it for his revenge. In particular, his response to his father's question doesn't even answer it, instead being made to personally attack the professor... which he doesn't buy.
  • Ascended Extra: Has even less screen time than his sister in the anime, but in this fanfic, he has a storyline when he's trying to become more mature and be Yamper's trainer in his sister's place and also revealing that he knew more about Chloe's Hidden Depths than anyone else did. A comment from the author says that starting at Chapter 13, he'll have a bigger role, and that role is to be the one to unleash the Unown.
  • The Atoner: He wishes to become this after the Unown attack but the damage done was so extensive, and Parker is so unable to accept his role in everything, that the only thing he can really do at this current point is not make things worse. He does take a few steps in the right direction, giving Ash critical information about Goh's kidnapper and warning Chloe to stay close, but even he realizes that it won't make much difference for him.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Tragically deconstructed. Being five, his mind can shift into different directions with little stimulation. This is not good for Professor Cerise because when Parker gains terrible power and starts abusing it even when someone can get Parker to start coming down from it it doesn't take much to make his mind leave self-reflection and go to topics like sleepovers and amusement parks.
  • Barbaric Bully: Once he gets the Unown at his side, he proves to be an even bigger monster than Sara, who was responsible for much of Chloe's misery prior to her Heel Realization.
  • Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: While UnSara had been assaulted by a million Pokémon moves beforehand, Parker is ultimately the one to defeat the apparition for good, not only wishing for the Bad things she did to be followed by good things, but make sure those good things remain long after she's gone.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: One of his main objectives with his use of the Unown was to break Goh over not being a good friend to Chloe. Come the end of Act 2, he succeeded.
  • Batter Up!: Carries his sister's softball bat...and was about to use it to crack someone's head open. He starts carrying it in future chapters, mostly as a way of using it to fight back bullies. And he puts it to good use to beat Yeardley up four chapters after he nearly crushed the bully's skull in.
  • Be as Unhelpful as Possible: Parker repeatedly claims that Ash could've come to him to learn more about Chloe. But then it's later revealed that he hated him for how he took everything away from and his sister, and was afraid of losing Chloe to Ash as well. This gives the implication that he would've refused to actually be of help out of spite, only to later use this as an excuse to blame Ash for "not doing more" to help his sister as per usual.
  • Became Their Own Antithesis: Parker was originally someone who destested bullies, and would hunt them down if they went too far, especially if Chloe was involved. His Unown-empowered rampage sees him not only turn into The Bully himself, but a Barbaric Bully, causing far more damage than Chloe's bullies ever did.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: He loves his sister's stories and wishes to be in one. Zeno gives him what he wanted...and learns there's a difference between reading a book or seeing a horror show compared to living in a nightmare.
    • He wanted Vermillion City to pay for not loving Chloe, all under the guise of letting out his frustrations on everybody else. Once the Unown are dealt with and he's left with no power, Parker's forced to confront the colossal damage he has caused not only to his family, but to Chloe as well.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Insult Chloe at your own peril around him, else he will either get his sister's softball bat to break your bones, or perhaps you'd like the Unown to prepare your punishments for you.
    • Mentioning Goh is another one too since the boy stopped caring for Chloe after he became obsessed with Mew.
  • Best Served Cold: Parker felt slighted at the paint can incident, and spent several years unable to take revenge against the perpetrators. Come to him gaining the power of the Unown, and he goes all out in ensuring they don't just feel the same pain he did, but much more.
  • Big Bad Slippage: Parker grows progressively angrier and angrier as the events of Act 1 and 2 go on, with not only Goh worsening and Chloe still nowhere to be found, but with everybody either throwing blame or denying it. And once the Unown appear, he evolves into the Big Bad of the arc.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: For all of his alleged power with the Unown it becomes clear that UnChloe is the one running the deranged circus show that is Act 2 Vermillion City.
  • Big Sister Worship: Looked up to his big sister and found her horror stories to be the best thing ever. He feels horrible upon learning that she ran away and felt like it was because he didn't love her enough. According to the author notes in Chapter 11, it's thanks to Chloe that Parker is more confident in being okay with his interests. He also stands up to his sister's bullies when they start gloating about how they harassed her. This isn't without issues, however - he doesn't acknowledge Chloe's flaws and defaults to thinking the absolute worst of everyone who didn't support her as he did.
  • Bitch Slap: Once the Unown is dealt with and he is left defenseless, Ash furiously approaches Parker and slaps him so hard that the boy falls to the ground, his face stinging from the impact. While Chryssa and Renji are shocked by the act, no one really interferes as Parker deserved it for horrifically tormenting people out of both vengeful sadism and misguided love for Chloe.
  • Black-and-White Insanity: White to him is "being there for his sister". What's black to him is "those who hurt his sister be it bullying her or ignoring her". Combine this with the power of the Unown and you have a child who will unleash hell on everybody in Vermillion City for leaving his sister behind.
  • Blinded by Rage: Parker's wrath completely blinds him not only of the consequences of his actions, but how he's responsible for those consequences in the first place.
  • Blame Game: Has a very bad habit of blaming others for their faults while assuming he's innocent. He does make good points, but ultimately him not telling anyone about his sister's problems prevented them from doing more to help her. When he's asked why he never told this to his parents sooner, Parker points out that he heard them argue the night of the paint-can incident and it convinced him that telling them about Chloe would just make them hate her.
  • Blessed with Suck: Being able to see possible futures would normally be pretty cool... if it wasn't for the fact that most of them are actually terrible, none of them are set in stone, and he can only see them if he himself is present to witness them. It also doesn't help that he's presently stuck in Juvie for the foreseeable future: all his context for what will happen outside is based on what he learns from secondhand sources, such as what his few visitors will shout at him about.
  • Break the Cutie: Combined with Rage Breaking Point when faced with Sara and the other bullies' Evil Gloating, as they make clear just how much they relished hurting his sister, and are clearly enjoying seeing him in pain as well. Seeing them in the lab under punishment by their parents makes his anger boil over and he triggers the Unown in response.
  • Break the Haughty: Parker had been given all the reason to believe he was superior to everybody else: he understood Chloe, she shared her secrets with him, he didn't anger or humiliate her, and he didn't try to force her to follow in their father's footsteps. So after the Unown are released and he gains their power, he flaunts his superiority while making everybody pay gruesomely. When that gets dealt with, however, he's left to face the consequences of his actions, culminating in Zeno sending him on a nightmare to prove that no, he can't deal with it.
  • Brutal Honesty: Is very blunt at Ash finally showing up at the Cerise house after Chloe ran away and only arriving to ask for help about what type of person she was now instead of when she was still at the Cerise Lab. In fact he honestly has no qualms telling others how they were apathetic and uncaring for Chloe's problems. All this does is make talking with him even more frustrating, since he has no filter to avoid making people wanna punch him in the face.
  • The Bully: Once the Unown get involved Parker wastes no time flaunting his superiority by tormenting and torturing everybody around him, whether they like it or not, whether they deserve it or not.
  • Bullying a Dragon: He finds himself on both ends of this trope.
    • He's the Dragon when Sara just doesn't stop talking and bragging about what she did, even when Parker's not only about to explode, but there's a peculiar box nearby...
    • On the flip side, he becomes the Bully when the Unown are dealt with, seeing it fit to blame everybody around him, which includes the Champion of Alola, his cluster of Pokémon, and his family, the only people who can actually save his sorry ass after what he did.

    C - E 
  • Child Prodigy: He is able to write a re-telling of The Little Match Girl at age 5. And on a darker edge, his use of the Unown is rather extensive...
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: It's literally impossible to call what he does to Chloe's classmates and Goh with the power of the Unown anything but this.
  • Composite Character: As the younger sibling figure, he combines Max and Bonnie — being cheerful children that don't have a problem with horrifying stuff and are unable to have a Pokémon as of yet — but Part 2's author notes have him also gain the role of Laura as they are bratty kids who have a hatred towards the James Sunderland (Goh) figure due to blaming them for what happened to Mary (Chloe).
  • The Corruptible: He was already pretty bad with his untreated anger issues, but once UnChloe enters the picture, Parker devolves into an absolute monster who'll torture everyone under the pretense of helping Chloe just to satisfy his thirst for revenge.
  • Corrupt the Cutie: Parker had anger issues, sure, but he was still a normal boy. Chloe introducing him to horror, however, brought the way for his mind to not only grow twisted, but make his control of the Unown even more horrifying than when Molly did it.
  • The Confidant: He's the only member of the family that Chloe spoke with regarding her secrets, which is something he kept to himself all this time. Even when doing so would've avoided a lot of pain.
  • Confidence Sabotage: Twice.
    • His therapy for Goh is reduced to this. The pretense of helping him grow as a person are quickly undermined when Goh is subjected to a brutal nightmare where Failure Is the Only Option and his mind is constantly turned to shreds. It gets so bad, Goh's sent to a suicide ward.
    • He also acts as this to Chloe, since she discovers his heinous actions during a time where she needs to stand strong in order to face The Apex.
  • Cruel to Be Kind: Subverted. He thinks this is the case with him wishing Goh would suffer through nightmares so that he can finally develop as a person and learn his mistake. However, given what happens during the event, it becomes clear rather quickly Parker's only trying to hurt Goh to make himself feel better.
  • Cruel Mercy: Gives this to Sara and Yeardley, letting them live purely so they can suffer from everything he and UnChloe made them confess to.
    • Eventually, he's subjected to one of these as well, being left to simmer and process how everything he did has not only ruined his family's reputation, but Chloe's reputation as well.
  • The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: The longer the Unown are under his control, the faster his mind and motivation deteriorate from "make Chloe happy again" to "make everyone suffer for my benefit." Astonishingly, even after they're dealt with, Parker still believes he's in the right for what he did.
  • Death Glare: Gives one to Patricia when she tries to explain that all the bullying on his sister stemmed from jealousy issues.
  • Deconstructed Character Archetype: If Chloe takes apart the Betrayal Fic protagonist, then Parker does the same for a Revenge Fic protagonist. When his Rage Breaking Point is hit, he unleashes his wrath on everybody around, but this includes people who already got their comeuppance, like Sara, and those who've been nothing but nice to him, like Ash and Serena. His actions also render everything done to get Chloe back pointless, since as she can be traced as the source of his rampage, everybody grows to hate her for it.
  • Demoted to Extra: After being an Ascended Extra in Blossoming Trail, Voyage of Wisteria all but outright removes him from the story, barely giving him a few scenes in Act 1 before he leaves the narrative entirely.
  • Disappointed by the Motive: Everybody who hears his reason for his actions in Act 2 is either dumbfounded or enraged that he believed Chloe's happiness was worth torturing all of Vermillion City beyond repair. The disappointment only grows when the true reason comes to light, painting him as just another bully who wanted people to suffer because they didn't act like his sister's mind-readers.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Started when he attempted to bash Yeardley's skull in, but firmly crosses into this when he gleefully has UnChloe Mind Rape and torture the two bullies ater their lives were pretty much ruined — albeit it did reveal more as to why said bullies tortured his sister — and then starts working on everyone else...
  • The Dreaded: A kindergarten class runs away from him in fear when he stands up for a student, Jinny, they were picking on. And now everyone is afraid of him after he uses the Unown. Well, assuming they're not furious instead.
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: The Unown give him such a power high that he becomes a sadistic, giggling madman intent on torturing everybody for Chloe's honor.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Let's just say everything he does in Act 2 makes things worse for everybody involved, including Chloe.
    • Out of all the scenes Parker could have asked Talia to illustrate for Chloe, he chose a Revenge via Storytelling scenario of Goh being drained to death by Chloe’s creations and posted it online, never considering the possibility that that aspect might tip the narrative about Chloe from "misunderstood creative genius" to "Creepy Child who’s harboring major resentment against her Childhood Friend for petty reasons". Parker then compounds the issue by putting Goh through a brutal session of Mind Rape with the aid of the Unown's power. As Professor Cerise bluntly explains afterwards, from that point on, that illustration came across as Talia encouraging a sadist.
    • One of the reasons Parker thought that his final plan for Goh was a "kind and helpful" punishment lay in the fact that it was a dream. He expected Goh to wake up, realize that his nightmares weren't real, and just take his second chance and be a better person. As Zeno coldly explains after the fact, Parker failed to consider a couple factors in this.
      • First, Parker had neglected to include any sort of failsafe to wake Goh up, or an "alarm clock", as Zeno put it. With no time limit or way to wake Goh up from the outside, the "Nightmare Therapy" would only end when Zeno was satisfied; or, as it so happened, when Zeno was forced to acknowledge after ten subjective hours that he'd broken Goh so badly, there was no way he could fix him within the mindscape.
      • Second, Parker never considered the fact that the "Nightmare Therapy" consisted of brutally drilling it into Goh's skull that every single complaint Chloe and Parker had about his character was completely valid. Every time Goh tried to protest that Zeno's accusations were unfair, the Nightmare Weaver responded by subjecting him to more horrific imagery, blaming him for all of it, and Gaslighting him about how he was a selfish monster who couldn't do anything but hurt the people around him. Goh would never have been allowed to brush his experience off as "unreal", and simply knowing his torture took place inside his own head wouldn't do anything to mitigate the trauma he endured.
  • Easily Forgiven: Completely averted. After everything he has done in the Unown Arc, there is no way in Hades that people are going to forgive him so quickly. Delia and Ash, two of the kindest people in story, spell out that they'll never forgive him for what he did.
  • Enfant Terrible: A 5-year-old Reality Warper with a sadistic streak spells doom for everybody.
  • Evil Counterpart: After gaining control of the Unown he becomes one to Molly. Both of them make a wish that the Unown catch and intend to fulfill, which creates an entity that not only serves as their enforcer, but also warps the area around them to make it a reality, and they're both Obliviously Evil regarding what they're doing. However while Molly never intended to hurt anybody, Parker did and relished in it.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: While he hates everyone in Vermillion City with a burning passion, his love and admiration for Chloe, and his sympathy towards her situation, are entirely genuine.
  • Evil Is Petty: When you have god-like power, getting upset at the idea that Goh gets a gift card when he 'doesn't deserve it' in your eyes is a bit petty.
  • Eviler than Thou: After the Unown are in his control, he proves himself to be this to Sara, not only traumatizing her and a dozen more students, but turning Vermillion City into a living hell and driving Miss April and Goh to near-suicide, causing much more damage to everyone around him in a few days than Sara did in her high school career.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: While his rage and extremism are legitimate issues, the Unown's power is the only reason he manages to do as much damage as he achieves in Act 2. So naturally, when they are dealt with, Parker goes back to the little kid with anger issues that's now surrounded by the people he hurt.

    F - I 
  • Fatal Flaw: Wrath. His rage against anyone who ignored or hurt his older sister — regardless of whether they're good people at heart — causes Ash's guilt complex to worsen and nearly gets Parker in trouble when he attacks Yeardley. The fact that he's convinced he's completely justified in lashing out blinds him to others' feelings or the consequences of his actions. This later just stems to those who pick on others. And in his anger, he unleashes the full wrath of the Unown.
    • A lack of consideration for how people handle fear. He seems to believe that if he can handle something scary, everyone else can. This compromises his ability to feel guilt at what he did to Goh and the class...if he could come out the other side of a really scary story unscathed, why can't they? Besides, it's not like they feel bad for what they did to his sister and how they made her afraid to raise her voice.
    • Revenge Before Reason. Just about everything he does after getting control of the Unown is fueled by his desire to get revenge on everybody who hurt Chloe, regardless of how guilty the person is or if they've already been punished.
    • Silence. He's just as guilty as Chloe for not speaking up about her interests until it was far, far too late.
    • A need to justify himself. He always plays the Blame Game, coming up with some sort of justification for his actions, whether they actually justify them or not.
    • Extremism. Just like Goh, Parker goes above and beyond necessary in order to achieve a goal, whether it is making people pay for hurting his sister, or ensuring Vermillion City's a paradise for when she returns.
    • Fear. Most of the previous tropes can be linked back to this: he was scared of his parents rejecting Chloe for being different, Ash taking away everything he loved, Chloe going through with her poorly worded ultimatum, and he was so terrified of things never changing that he felt like he had to do something about it.
  • The Farmer and the Viper: Serena was nothing but kind to him, trying to cheer him up and steer him in the right way. He repays her by assaulting her mind and brainwashing her to become Chloe's friend.
  • The Final Temptation: He is given this at the end of the Unown arc involving Goh. He fails it, choosing to torture Goh and giving UnSara the final laugh overall.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: Just before he goes to watch The Noctowl House, the game he was playing depicted a boy in the dark woods who just had his neck pierced by the leg of a giant Ariados, hinting that Chloe's not the only child in the Cerise family who likes dark stuff.
  • Five Stages of Grief: Goes through Denial and Bargaining, the former when Professor Cerise tells the truth of Chloe disappearing and the latter when he convinces Yamper to take food from him in the hopes of making Chloe return. Quickly defaults to Anger, against Ash, Goh, the school bullies, and everyone who did not help his sister. This leads him to unleash the Unown in retaliation.
  • Freudian Excuse: As revealed during his talk with Delia, everything he did at the Unown arc was fueled by resentment towards Ash and Pokémon supposedly taking everything away from him and Chloe, and how nobody did anything to help them, especially as Chloe only ever talked to Parker about her interests as if she could only trust him.
  • Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: However, Delia counters that this doesn't excuse the things he did out of his own volition, and makes it clear that not only will he have to face the consequences of his actions, but she and Ash will never forgive him for what he did.
  • Freaky Is Cool: His reaction to his sister reading one of her stories was that he loved it. It's deconstructed as it's made clear that he only enjoys horror stories like his sister does if the things he reads about are happening to other people, and as Zeno points out, reading about something is completely different from actually experiencing it. This is why he saw nothing wrong with showing other people his horror stories regardless what they thought of it, and looks down on those who don't like horror, making him no different from those who bullied his sister for not liking Pokemon. Once Zeno takes him into a simulation straight of a horror story, he gets excited, only to quickly change his tune and be reduced to tearfully begging Zeno to stop when Zeno warps it so he'll get to see exactly what he put Goh through for himself.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Parker in Act 1 was a little brother who was shocked to learn his sister ran away from home and revealed himself to be very supportive of her, with Chloe's classmates believing he couldn't do anything to stop them and barely anyone paying attention to his growing anger problems. Parker in Act 2 shows off his rage at everyone who harmed said older sister and then gives him the power of the Unown to unleash hell in the name of his sister and ends up causing a lot of damage in the process.
  • Fury-Fueled Foolishness: Just like Chloe, most of his dumber decisions are done by him being too blinded by rage to think rationally. Unlike Chloe, he lacks the emotional maturity to tell proper right and wrong, which only makes dealing with him even harder.
  • Goo-Goo-Godlike: A five year old child given theoretically infinite wish-making abilities, made even more dangerous by his inability to control his emotions and lack of sympathy for other people who aren't Chloe in general.
  • Hated by All: By the end of the Unown Saga nobody wants anything to do with Parker: Ash is planning to stay as far away from him as possible, he and his mother will never forgive him, Ash's friends won't give him the time of day, his parents ground him and have to face the consequences of his actions, and even Chloe has some select words for him when she returns.
  • Hates Being Alone: Just like his big sister, ending up alone with nobody by his side is one of his biggest fears. And after Act 2, it could very well become a reality.
  • Heel Realization: After Chloe reveals that Miss April cutting her wrists would lead her to die if no one arrived on time — thankfully Mr. Bradbury did — it starts a slow realization on how his catharsis is not worth it. Later chapters as Zeno make him go through scenarios to show how much damage he did to others, especially Goh.
  • Hidden Depths:
  • Hope Spot: Parker ends up giving himself a really nasty one. Just when he felt powerless to help Chloe, the Unown arrive to grant him anything he wants- from an extravagant Unbirthday party to swift vengeance towards his sister's bullies. For a few days, Parker indulges in his "games" and believes that everything is going to work itself out, as the Unown open up the possibility of fulfilling his sister's Power Fantasy of a repentant Vermilion City and finally getting her back. But then he discovers the hard way that Reality Warping Is Not a Toy. His and UnChloe's actions weren't just harmless fantasies- they caused real pain to a lot of real people. As a result, Ash and his friends never want to see him again, Chloe’s reputation takes an instant nosedive, and Parker is banished from the city he grew up in for good.
  • Hypocrite: He chastises his family for not noticing Chloe's issues and doing something about them earlier... while he knew about them and kept them to himself rather than try to bring attention to the problem.
    • Says that he hates bullies like Sara who relish in the pain and suffering they cause, but he himself is quite giddy at what UnChloe has in store for them.
    • When tricking said bullies into a recorded confession, he chastises them for 'not knowing what it's like to lose someone you love for good', seemingly forgetting that Sara lost her father to a car accident.
    • He claims that those who hurt Chloe, whether physically or mentally, deserve to be punished and accept the blame, and yet when he's left powerless when the Unown are dealt with, he plays the Blame Game, unwilling to admit his fault in anything.
    • While Parker is still scrambling to deny his responsibility in the aftermath of his rampage, he admits to Zeno, "Yeah…maybe I should've paid more attention to the rooms we were making... but how was I supposed to know about Gard and Neil's problems?" He apparently neglected to remember that "not knowing about Chloe's problems" formed the crux of his hatred of half the cast, especially Ash and Goh. The difference is, when Ash, Goh, and the others discovered how much they had unwittingly harmed Chloe, they were horrified, and proceeded to do everything they could to make amends - even if Chloe and Parker declared their efforts "too little, too late." When Parker learned that he had given Neil an Impossible Task by attacking his color-blindness, and that Gard was having flashbacks to when he'd nearly died at the age of seven, his instinct was to make the rooms even worse, just to be sure that the "lessons" sunk in!
  • Insane Equals Violent: Parker has a bucket list of issues of which his anger is at the forefront, and he's not shy of getting physical if needed. And then the Unown get involved...
  • Irrational Hatred: Downplayed. His hatred is mostly focused on Chloe's classmates and Goh, who are responsible for many of her issues, but then he decides to add Ash, Serena, Trip, and Pikachu to the mix, despite the latter three not having done anything to hurt her.
  • I'll Kill You!: Like his sister, he declares this to her bullies. And it's this declaration that activates the Unown.
  • Inferiority Superiority Complex: Being Chloe's sole confidant, as well as the general incompetence around his family, has lead Parker to believe that he's better than them and that only he alone knows what's best for Chloe. Deep inside, however, his self-esteem isn't any better than his sister's, which is saying a lot.
  • Irony:
    • He is the last person in Chloe's circle of family and friends to learn about the Infinity Train, yet was the first person to actually know who Chloe was as a person.
    • For all of his desires to do the right thing for Chloe, he may be doing the most damage with the Unown and UnChloe's actions and is missing the mark on a lot of what Chloe actually wanted.
    • As lampshaded at the end, the last horrible thing he does with the Unown, putting Goh into mental torture, is actually motivated as much by empathy, a positive emotion that his parents encouraged, as the wrath and anger issues his parents missed.
    • Between Parker and Chloe, he's the one with the Brutal Honesty and lack of a filter, and will say whatever's on his mind no matter what. And yet, just like Chloe, he kept her interests and insecurities a secret until things spiraled beyond their control and exploded.
    • Hates Goh for being obsessed with Pokémon that it drove others away. He has an obsession with Chloe and his actions drove others away.
    • The atrocities in Act 2 done by him were (at least initially) motivated by making sure Chloe wouldn't be driven away again, and she would be accepted. Him doing it in her name ensures that people ''will'' reject her, seeing her as partially responsible for what happened.
    • He lambasts everybody around him for sitting on their butts and not doing anything to fix the situation. Parker's proactivity, however, ends up causing much more damage than everyone's apathy combined, and he's forced to stay put lest he makes things even worse.
  • It Is Beyond Saving: How he sees Vermillion City as the situation with Chloe fails to improve fast enough for his liking, and people feel more interested blaming each other rather than fixing it. The Unown decide to help him fix it...and they only ensure that it happens for real.
  • It's Personal: Deconstructed. His grudges against even those who had little to no involvement in Chloe's misery at home motivated him to unleash the Unown on Vermillion City, leading to many innocents getting hurt and psychologically traumatized in the name of "justice" for his sister. While it does give him catharsis, it also makes everyone hate him for what he did, yet being a young child with a black-and-white mindset, he can't and refuses to understand how his actions had the opposite effect of what he wanted.

    J - O 
  • Jerkass to One: Barring Chloe's classmates, Parker is nice and friendly to everyone and warms up to Ash after the Pallet Town trainer wows him with a ghost story. The person Parker hates is Goh, for abandoning his sister for Mew. Or not... it turns out he never truly forgave Ash for leaving his sister behind. Goh is just the one person he hates most.
  • Just a Kid: He was mocked by Class 5-E for being unable to stop them since he was too little and Parker feels so insignificant since barely anyone notices his problems. He then gets attention when he uses the Unown but in the worst possible way.
  • Knight Templar Big Brother: Inverted, as he's only five, but he shows increasing signs of becoming this, lashing out at Ash when he tries to make amends and trying to outright murder Yeardley after he's already gotten his confession and publicly humiliated him. Heaven help Goh when Parker sets his sights on him...and then to everyone else after Parker unleashes the Unown.
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Even after the extensive damage he did, Parker not only fails to see how he's responsible, but has the nerve to snap at his father about how he should've done more about the situation. Professor Cerise wisely refuses to waste his time with him and leaves Parker to process what he did.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: For his using the Unown as torture instruments to "punish" everyone for harming his sister, Parker has to watch as everyone turns against him and his family, with his parents facing lawsuits and his father facing potential unemployment for what he did. The Calling Chloe movement, the one good thing that spawned from Chloe's disappearance, is now reviled as a symbol of the destruction the Unown caused. His attempts to have Goh go through Epiphany Therapy only succeeds in making the older boy suicidal since his attempts to "help" were born out of vengeful sadism, and he is forced by Zeno to both see and experience the horrors of what he put Goh through. He also gets slapped hard in the face by Ash for his actions, with no one interfering.
  • Long List: He brings up a huge list of horror shows that his sister loves from the mainstream (Are You Afraid of the Dark?) to somewhat obscure (Phantom Investigators). He makes a new to-do list when he starts using UnChloe to check off everything he wants to do to everyone.
  • Master of Delusion: Whether it's Chloe being a perfect big sister or Parker being better than everybody else, he'll always find, or at least look for, a way to delude himself into thinking it's the truth.
  • Meaningful Name: His name means "Park keeper" which relates to how he protected Chloe from others by keeping her secrets for her. It could also refer to his desire to turn Vermillion City into a park for Chloe, where she can be completely safe and never run away again...no matter what he has to do to create it.
  • Motive Decay: He originally wanted to make Vermillion City an actual decent place to live so that when Chloe returned, she wouldn't leave him again. The longer the Unown are in his control, however, the more his mind moves away from what Chloe wants and more into what he wants.
  • Motive Rant: Parker's need to justify himself is so great that Zeno needs to teach him not to do this at his trial, lest he loses the one and only chance to not prove himself a lost cause. He does give in eventually, but by then he's already said his piece so it doesn't change much.
  • Mr. Imagination: Being five and around a sister who loves writing horror stories gives him a lot of ideas for his own. Then you combine it with the power of the Unown...
  • Never My Fault: A tragic case as he's only five, and from a background that made him unable to process morality.
    • While he isn't without remorse after the Unown incident, it's quite clear that he still blames the others for not 'doing enough' first. This attitude doesn't earn him any favors.
    • He doesn't show that much sympathy for the torture he put Goh through as he felt like Goh needed some Tough Love for all that he did to Chloe. He changes his tune quickly when he sees firsthand just what Goh went through.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Parker's actions with the Unown are ultimately what causes Ash to merge his Journeys team with his reserves, as Gary sends them to Ash via his Alakazam during the arc and they stay with Ash until the Cerise staff move to Oak's lab in Wisteria, at which point that is the base of operations for Ash going forward. So Parker is pretty much responsible for everything that Ash accomplished with one of his reserve Pokemon specifically for the rest of the series, from demolishing Bede with Infernape to beating Raihan and the Raihan's Rival Returns Cup and everything in between and beyond.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: Turns out he also had the same love of macabre things like his sister. In particular, he loved Chloe's story of the Specter of the Black Forest. He himself likes horror stories that take place at a summer camp: his favorite horror series was Scaredy Camp and he loved the "Dreamcatcher" episode of The Haunting Hour. And he really enjoys watching the horrors UnChloe unleashes on his behalf.
    • Deconstructed when Zeno decides to place Parker in one of Chloe's stories. At first, Parker is excited to actually see all of the characters Chloe made...then Zeno shows off the new and improved Revolver, Playmaker and Soulburner. He only enjoys scary things if they're happening to other people, be it imaginary characters in fiction or people he feels deserve it. As soon as he's living a situation that actually terrifies him, the fun abruptly stops.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His Disproportionate Retribution all but invalidates everyone's efforts to improve things for when Chloe returns and traumatized Chloe just before she needed to be strong to fight the Apex. His father spells out that he's risked their future and Chloe's well-being with his actions.
  • Non-Action Big Bad: Even after becoming Act 2's Big Bad, Parker himself never throws a punch nor does he fight anybody, preferring to let the Unown and UnChloe deal with it instead.
  • Not Brainwashed: Easily the most horrible thing about his rampage is that the Unown haven't messed with his mind in the slightest: he's perfectly aware of everything that he's doing, including the atrocities and tortures he inflicts on everyone.
  • Not Helping Your Case: When the Unown are dispelled, the first thing Parker does is blame everybody for not doing anything about it earlier, while ignoring his own role in the chaos that ensued. He then has the gall to try justify everything he did to Ash and friends, to his own mother, by saying how Ash took everything away from him, again, conveniently ignoring not only his, but Chloe's role in it. Finally, when his father comes to tell him about his court date, he decides to snap at his father how he should've done more so this wouldn't have happened.
  • Not Quite the Right Thing: Asking his mother to do an illustration combining her cute aesthetic with Chloe's spine-chilling creations was a harmless and clever gesture that could've been the first step to reconciling with Chloe. When he asked Talia to depict Goh, a real-life child, being drained to death by Chloe's creations, and proceeded to post it on the internet, that ended up being the first strike against Chloe in the court of public opinion. When he followed up by putting Goh through a session of "Nightmare Therapy", that illustration became an In-Universe example of Harsher in Hindsight, and sank his mother's reputation by association.
  • Not So Above It All: Not only is he just as capable of going how it's Never My Fault like his father and sister, but he's just as willing to play the Blame Game and act like he's superior just because he's technically Wise Beyond Their Years. This doesn't help him in the slightest.
  • The Only One I Trust: Out of her entire family, Parker was the only person Chloe felt comfortable sharing her interests with, as she wasn't comfortable with everybody else. This only furthered his delusions that he knew what was best for Chloe, unlike everybody else.
  • Only Sane by Comparison: He appears to be this in regards to Chloe, being the only one in her immediate circle who supported and gave her the love and attention she needed. This feeds into his justifications for lashing out at everyone else and it soon becomes clear he isn't so sane after all.

    P - S 
  • Parental Favoritism: Chloe assumes that her little brother is the favorite in the family because he's extroverted and likes Pokémon, two traits she doesn't have. Turns out that it's not true at all as Professor Cerise himself was shocked to learn about his son's love of girly things.
  • Persona Non Grata: As part of his sentence, he's banned from setting foot on Vermillion City for all the horrors he unleashed on the city.
  • The Power of Hate: His control of the Unown is powered as much by his imagination as by his hatred. And he has a lot of hatred.
  • Pinky Swear: Did this with his sister to not tell anyone about her entering a horror writing contest. Unfortunately, he's had to break that promise if it means there's a chance of finding her (his sister messaged Parker that it's okay as she knew that he was going to break it eventually).
  • Precision F-Strike: Calls one of Chloe's classmates a "dumbass" for thinking that Chloe is into Pokémon like they are. Making this more notable, he's only five.
  • Psychological Projection: Thinks Chloe wants her bullies to suffer painfully, and uses UnChloe to echo this belief, because that's what he wants to do.
    • He also assumes that Goh and everyone else should be able to handle the nightmares he put them through because he could. In general, he suffers from the assumption that children in general are more mature than they really are since he assumes that his own taste in horror makes him wiser.
  • Pure Is Not Good: At age 5, he is shown to be the most innocent character in the Pokémon world with wisdom about Chloe being okay. At the same time though, this blinds him to the more complicated relationships others have and he takes a black and white view when it comes to his sister. If you're like him and were concerned and took care of her, he's on your side. If you aren't, then he's just a few seconds away from bashing your head in with his sister's softball bat. And then he gets his hands on the Unown...
  • Put on a Bus: He's sent to juvie after his trial, with the added caveat that he's not to go anywhere in Vermillion City or even returns to his parents until he proves he's not a danger to society anymore. At the very end, he's to move to New Hisui in Sinnoh with his grandparents and make a fresh start.
  • Rage Breaking Point: Just like his sister, but he's quicker to give in to his rage due to his youth.
    • Parker snaps after hearing everything that Chloe's classmates did to his sister and would've broken someone's skull with a bat if Ash and Gengar didn't intervene in time.
    • Then he snaps even more in when the Unown senses his anguish at how he wants Sara and Yeardley to pay for all they did to his sister.
  • Reality Warper: He obtains the powers of the Unown and he uses it to create a copy of his sister in Arc 2.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: He loves his sister's spooky stories and is also familiar with the Pokémon world's equivalent of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic as he quoted two lines from the episode "Luna Eclipsed". The author notes confirmed that he's a fan of My Little Ponyta: Friendship is Magic. It's also revealed he loves Sofia the First as well.
  • Rejected Apology: He cannot accept anyone's apologies as long as Chloe is gone, since they cannot fix anything without Chloe being present so they can prove that they're sincere. But since Chloe can't come back at the moment due to the fact that she still has a number, this makes Parker view every apology as hollow, regardless of whether or not they truly are. And every single one makes him angrier and angrier...
    • Eventually, he gets A Taste Of His Own Medicine, as people absolutely refuse to be sympathetic to his plight after what he did, with Parker's attitude not helping in the slightest.
  • Revenge Before Reason: He's so furious when he gets his hand on the Unown that once he begins going on a rampage, he prioritizes getting revenge on everybody before doing anything to help Chloe.
  • Revenge Is Not Justice: Parker goes SO damn far in his quest for revenge that not only does he practically invalidate everyone's efforts to make things better, but once he's stopped and the Unown are defeated, he's forced to confront the fact his actions have made everything worse and people won't let him off easy.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Initiates one when he obtains the power of the Unown in an attempt to avenge his sister on every single person who hurt her.
  • Sadist: He admits to Serena that the bullies suffering would make him happy, and very much enjoys watching the Mind Rape UnChloe puts Sara and Yeardley through and is quite happy to do similar tortures to other classmates of hers.
  • Seers: After his rampage, a residue of the Unown's power has gifted him the ability to see potential futures. As noted in Blessed with Suck, though, this isn't necessarily good...
  • Secret-Keeper: He was the only one who knew about his sister's Nightmare Fetishist tendencies and is horrified at having to break that promise if it means finding out where she's gone. The Intermission has Chloe email her father that she forgives Parker for revealing everything. This gets deconstructed; he had all the chances to tell what was going on with Chloe and not doing so made it even harder for his parents to do something. He was afraid of telling them because he felt like his parents wouldn't like how Chloe was "different" because the were arguing over whose fault it was for Chloe's anger issues. Talia had to reassure the boy that they would always love Chloe.
  • Selective Obliviousness: Tunes out anything that would mess up his perfect image of Chloe.
    • During the Unown incident, when Renji points out that Chloe did less to make a connection than Ash had and he wasn't punishing her by 'making her dance like a freak', all Parker hears is his sister being called a "freak".
    • He acts as though the class hadn't been punished for their actions and that nobody was doing anything to make amends in order to justify his actions with UnChloe...ignoring how they were punished and Ash and co. were doing everything they could to make amends. He is harshly called out on this when the Unown are dealt with.
  • Shadow Archetype:
    • He's practically what Goh would be if his obsession centered on Chloe rather than Mew, but retained his bucket list of mental issues and eventually went off the deep end, maintaining enough anger and spite unleash an ancient, powerful, reality-warping Pokemon onto an entire city and beyond in the name of 'justice'.
    • He's also what Chloe herself could've become had she never been picked up by the Train and continued to fester in her anger and been the one to unleash the Unown.
  • Shaming the Mob: During his court trial, after explaining to Judge Powell everything about the Unown incident and the circumstances that were involved in leading up to that point, he outs several people - friends, classmates, teachers, and parents alike - who all contributed to his sister's misery. Towards the end of the trial, he breaks down sobbing, begging to know why everyone in Vermillion City hated his sister so much. No one in the jury has the courage to answer him because they all feel ashamed over what they've done, directly or indirectly.
  • So Proud of You: Talia praises Parker for actually trying to understand his sister when everyone else failed to do so. Professor Cerise also expresses this once he realizes how horrible he had been to both his children. Well, until the Unown attack...
  • Spiders Are Scary: As part of his love of the macabre, he's into spiders. He just got to the part in Limbo when the boy got attacked by a giant Ariados, and the "Dreamcatcher" episode had a giant demon spider as the antagonist.
  • Stealth Pun: Parker is into spiders, huh?

    T - Z 
  • This Is Unforgivable!: Insists that everyone's treatment of Chloe is this, and refuses to acknowledge either apologies or acts of atonement since they came too late. In turn, after he goes too far in retribution thanks to the Unown, his father acknowledges that he will not go without punishment or be forgiven by the people he's hurt.
    • That said, Ash and Goh point out that it isn't entirely hopeless for him, so long as he is sincere and puts in the work. While it's up to others as well as him if he's to be forgiven, it's still possible for him to move forward.
  • Touched by Vorlons: His encounter with the Unown give him a minor ability to predict the future, or at least "possible futures" that carried on with an idea in his head. This is demonstrated when he considers what he'd have done to Bede had Ash not stopped him...despite not knowing Bede's name at first, he's still able to perceive what his punishment would've been had his plans gone on as normal.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Napolitan pasta with extra peas, especially if Chloe makes it.
  • Utopia Justifies the Means: He wants to make Vermillion City the perfect place to live for Chloe so that she never runs away again. To this end, he uses the Unown and inflicts psychological torment on everybody in order to make them comply.
  • Unstoppable Rage: After hearing all of his sister's classmates reveal how they bullied her, Parker is ready to send them to Hell by beating them up with Chloe's softball bat. It's his anger and rage at them that gets the Unown's attention.
  • Useless Superpowers: Because of his use of the Unown, he gains the ability to see potential futures. While this wouldn't sound like it fit this trope, two important reasons place these powers here:
    • He can only see a potential future if he's there when it happens, turning these powers rather situational.
    • He gains the powers after the moment when they would've been useful, as in seeing what he could do to help get Chloe back and fix the situation in Vermillion City, and long after he has essentially undone all the goodwill that's been done in her name.
    • They're so useless that Parker willingly gives them up after he sees a vision of what would've been his tenth birthday.
  • Vengeance Feels Empty: After all is said and done, Act 2 was nothing but a giant campaign of revenge against Vermillion City. However, the resulting damage to both the city and his family's reputation ensures that by the end of it, Parker has nothing left, not even Chloe.
  • Walking Spoiler: You better believe it. They're related to him obtaining the power of the Unown which changes Blossoming Trail and its sequel.
  • Was It Really Worth It?: The events of Act 2 were entirely of his own doing, and they were all done for Chloe's sake. Needless to say, given all the damage he caused in the process, it's safe to say he doesn't think it was worth it.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Claims that he wants to ensure that Chloe returns home to a better, kinder Vermillion City with no 'monsters' waiting for her. To that end, he attempts to kill Yeardley with a bat, and uses the Unown's power to give what he thinks are fitting punishments to everyone who hurt Chloe. Thing is...
    • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He admits to Serena that he wants to hurt everyone who he blames for Chloe's disappearance because it will make him feel good. His visible glee at everything UnChloe does to Sara and Yeardley, and him attacking the people who were honestly trying to make things right or who had nothing to do with Chloe's disappearance make it clear that he's doing this for himself, not Chloe. And he later confesses that he was less afraid of Chloe being hurt by Ash than he was of Ash taking Chloe away from him.
  • Western Zodiac: The author notes that he's a Sagittarius (born Nov. 28) and that they're all about being optimistic and supportive, reflecting his bond with Chloe.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Gives several of these across the story, though how valid they are starts to weaken as the story progresses. His final appearance has him given a hefty one by Ash and Goh when they finally visit him in the Calla House.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: Despite being only five years old, according to the anime, he's shown to be the most insightful character outside Trip.
    • When he learns that his big sister ran away from home, he asks if it was because she thought he didn't love her enough. The fact that he gets it on his first try compared to how Chloe had to spell it out to their father (who still doesn't get the memo) shows how observant he is. He also points out that his dad never noticed Chloe's talents because he's so busy with his work.
    • He embraced his sister's macabre tastes and became her confidant, seeing nothing wrong with her compared to how their father is struggling to understand this new world of horror and considers learning about her like he was studying Pokémon instead of just accepting it. He also knows Chloe well enough to state what type of phrase she'd speak if their mom brought up this "monster phase" she was in.
    • He knows well enough that Goh and Chloe aren't friends since Goh never comes to visit them anymore.
    • However, he is still five: Part 2 makes it very clear that for all of his awareness he is still a five-year-old and that wisdom cannot change that and that he also was held responsible for not addressing Chloe's problems sooner.
    • Eventually, it ends up both Deconstructed and Defied: Being more insightful than his parents doesn't automatically make him smarter than anybody else, and when the Unown are dealt with, he proves to be just as selfish, blame throwing, and spiteful as everybody else, if not even more so.
    • In "Visitors of Achilles", it's speculated that he and Chloe getting interested in horror at such a young age gave them unrealistic assumptions about the maturity of themselves and others.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Arc 2 showed him with the power of the Unown and knowing his anger, he's about to lash out at everyone, but deep down he's a little boy who just really wants his big sister back.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Parker confirms that part of the 'nightmare therapy' was based off his assumptions about A Christmas Carol, particularly the Bad Future that pushed Scrooge into bettering himself. Thing is, Goh is nothing like Scrooge.
  • Yaoi Fangirl: Gender-flipped, he thinks seeing Ash and Trip together as "cool". Then again, he's only a child and probably doesn't understand the troubled waters of same-sex relationships.
  • You Are What You Hate: As Renji points out Parker looks down on people that don't like horror the same way people look down on Chloe for not liking Pokémon, the very people he hates with a passion.
  • "You!" Exclamation: States this to Sara and Yeardley when he sees them in the Cerise Lab.
  • Younger Than They Look: The author assumed Parker was 7 when she wrote him; she was shocked to learn in the anime that he's in kindergarten, making him 5.

    SPOILER CHARACTER / The Wish 

UnChloe

A copy of Chloe Cerise created by the Unown, who represents how Parker sees her his older sister and his desire to have everyone punished for how they treated her. She will be the main focus of Arc 2 for Vermillion City.
  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Most of the time when she's not doting on Parker or being maliciously cruel, she barely pays attention to anyone, reflecting Chloe's formally cold attitude towards anything new and how everyone else paid little attention to her.
  • Anthropomorphic Personification: Of not only Parker's idealized version of Chloe but his hatred and desire to make everyone in Vermillion City pay for what they did to her.
  • Artificial Human: Was created from Parker's wish to the Unown, although she only looks human...
  • Artificial Family Member: The Unown created her so Parker could finally see his sister again, and indeed, Parker doesn't seem to mind her existence. It's averted with Professor Cerise, though, who can tell she's not his daughter.
  • Ambiguous Situation: While it's true that her form fluctuates, the exact means of what she appears like isn't quite so black and white. Yamper, who both knows Chloe the best out of everyone, even Parker, clearly sees her as something that isn't Chloe while Renji notices details about her change as his own feelings about the Chloe situation come out. One of Chloe's classmates who was very deliberately not close with anyone (due to his Asperger's) sees her as just a bored Chloe, despite knowing her even less well than Yamper and Parker. Professor Cerise speculates that how UnChloe may be a bit more complicated than the initial thematic suggestions offered. It’s possible that the whole thing might be more like a Shapeshifter Guilt Trip than any reflection on the viewers - just one more way she and Parker can rub in how allegedly terrible Chloe’s friends and family are.
  • Ambiguous Innocence: UnChloe was created as a response to Parker's wish, who simply wanted his sister back, nothing more, nothing less. Therefore, exactly how much of her deplorable actions are her own fault is debatable, since everything she does is done in order to appease Parker, who's not in his best state of mind currently.
  • A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Able to look into the memories of others, enabling her to see firsthand how Sara and the others tormented Chloe and how much this impacted Parker.
  • Antagonist Abilities: Reality Warper, Mind Control, Black Magic, we'd be here all day if we listed them all.
  • Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Her appearance largely depends on the person seeing her, which ties to how they saw the real Chloe.
    • To Parker: Resembles the real Chloe in a black witch garb for the convention she was supposed to go to along with a crown because he sees her like a princess. But when he finally realizes what she's made him do, he sees her as a monstrous version of Sara with skin warping like wallpaper.
    • To Yeardley and Sara: Appears as Chloe did back at the talent show, albeit covered in blood rather than red paint.
    • To Professor Cerise: Appears as a faded and out-of-focus version of Chloe because he clearly didn't see her.
    • To Ash: Resembles an emotionless yet lifelike statue because he never got to know her past the surface.
    • To Trip: Resembles a stilted photograph with darkened areas because he didn't get the entire picture of her.
    • To Serena and Pikachu: Is a transparent figure sporting different Kalosian hairstyles as Serena doesn't have a solid picture of who Chloe is. (Although Pikachu only sees the transparent part.)
    • To Yamper: Something coated in black hellfire.
    • To Renji: Resembles an ice statue for her cold and distant personality.
    • To Chryssa: Looks like she is made of cracked porcelain as she is a fragile flower.
    • To Franklin: Just like Chloe, but with a neutral expression. (Justified in this case due to his Asperger's syndrome)
    • To other students: Just like how Yeardley and Sara saw her. A few had additional features like obsidian eyes and feathers that looked like sharp knives.
    • To Miss April: Chloe in her school outfit but her mouth stitched shut representing how she saw Chloe unable to speak up for herself (and doing nothing about it).
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: After she's created, she uses her powers to utterly destroy Yeardley and Sara (who deserved it), then Ash, Trip, Pikachu, and Serena (who didn't deserve it), turn the Cerise Lab into an amusement park (It Makes Sense in Context) and made Pikachu eat mustard.
  • Ax-Crazy: You just need to see what she does to Yeardley and Sara for proof.
  • Badass Fingersnap: She casts most of her "spells" like this.
  • Bad Powers, Bad People: She's a sadistic, sociopathic shadow of who Chloe really is, and has access to an assortment of Black Magic spells capable of rendering even the toughest of people into crying wrecks.
  • Big Sister Instinct: Since she's based on Chloe, she's very protective of Parker.
  • Black Magician Girl: Is a feisty Witch Princess version of Chloe and uses the powers of the Unown (and Parker's imagination) to cast lots of powerful spells.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Much like Entei for Molly, she only cares about what Parker wants. What's actually fair, warranted, or healthy to others is of no concern to her.
  • Black-and-White Insanity: You could argue she embodies this for Parker, her creator: simply put, anybody who didn't idolize Chloe is evil, while everyone who did so is good. And since Parker's will is her own, and he saw practically EVERYONE as evil...
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Specializes in this with her Akuma Butterflies, which she uses on Ash and his friends.
  • Breaking Speech:
    • Gives one to Sara about how the bully should just kill herself for everything she's done and for all that she tried to put on Chloe. She later extends this to everyone for how they did nothing to help Parker and Chloe or how they were stupidly continuing the bullying for no reason either than being jerks. Only Yamper is immune to this because of his simplistic mind.
    • She also gives one to the real Chloe over her inability to do things on her own and still being The Ditherer.
  • The Bully: Boiled down to the barest parts, she herself is just a big a bully as Sara was, particularly in how she threatens to harm Ash by skinning him alive and prevents Chloe from trying to reach out to her brother.
  • The Corruptor: Parker was already going off the deep end when Chloe's bullies opened their mouths. Once UnChloe comes into existence, she not only enables his darker instincts but encourages them, causing Parker to become even worse. She even attempts to get Parker to punish everyone in Vermillion, including his own mother.
  • Cool Crown: Her head is topped with a black crown decorated with garnets.
  • Color Motif: Black. Beyond the Cool Crown example above, she wears a black dress, specializes in Black Magic, Yamper sees her covered in black fire, and her flower motif is the black rose.
  • Cute Witch: Wears a black dress like one of a witch; justified as the outfit is based on an outfit Chloe herself was going to wear. Yeardley, Sara, and her classmates (barring Frank) see her in Chloe's talent show attire while drenched in blood.
  • The Dark Arts: Can utilize Black Magic, as well as an entire gallery of mind-destroying nastiness.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: It doesn't matter what you did, UnChloe will Mind Rape you to death regardless. And even if you can't register that you did wrong (Franklin via his Asperger's syndrome) you're still a target.
  • Evil Counterpart:
    • To Chloe, surprise surprise. They both hold hatred over everyone in Vermillion City over their treatment of her, get along well with Parker, and have a love of the macabre. But Chloe also has a lot of baggage and layers that make her more than she seems, while UnChloe doesn't even bother to hide the fact she's a lunatic whose sole reason to exist is to please Parker and make everyone's life a living hell.
    • To Movie 3 Entei, who was as truly loyal to Molly as she claims she is to Parker and was an Anti-Villain and not an active sadist.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Downplayed; as she's based on Parker's idealized vision of Chloe, she's deeply protective and caring towards her brother, even while cruelly tormenting the bullies who once terrorized her. Note that she only cares for Parker; she could care less for Professor Cerise. However, if she did love Parker, she would've let the real Chloe talk to him...
  • Evil Wears Black: While technically holding Blue-and-Orange Morality, her actions and sheer delight in said actions paint her as nothing but evil, and her main attire is all shades of black.
  • Failed a Spot Check: She blocked Chloe from texting Parker, but she didn’t account for her emailing him. This oversight later leads to her downfall.
  • Fiery Redhead: Just like the normal Chloe, she has red hair and is very feisty. Unfortunately, instead of warm and loving, she's wicked and cruel.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Her calm facade hides a very evil mind. The only time her kindness is genuine is with Parker, but even than blocking the real Chloe to talk to her brother doesn't seem very kind...
  • Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: She's just as pretty as the real Chloe, but her mind is filled with so many disturbing and terrifying thoughts that even Chloe herself would be horrified if she met her.
  • Fertile Feet: Flowers grow whenever she walks. Black roses, to be precise.
  • Flower Motif: Black roses, representing her dark nature. More specifically, in the language of flowers (which this story takes inspiration from), the black rose represents hatred, death, and despair, which represents what Chloe felt during her stay in Vermillion City (Hatred), what those who learn what happened to wish upon the transgressors (Death), and what everyone suffered after she disappeared (Despair).
  • Four Is Death: Parker made three more wishes before asking her to disappear forever which she obliges. But he quickly makes a fourth wish that truly ends her: to do good deeds that will actually have a lasting effect after she's gone. In a meta-sense, she exists for four chapters.
  • Green Thumb: Summons thorny vines and black roses as part of her power.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: UnChloe, later UnSara, doesn't know when to stop talking to save face. This ends up ruining her when Parker makes a wish to make her do good things throughout the city. Parker even notes how she picked the trait up from the real Sara.
  • Humanoid Abomination: She looks just like Chloe would, but is the product of the Unown and can change reality as she sees fit. Combine this with a boy with a huge imagination and you can see Vermillion City is screwed.
  • Hyper-Competent Sidekick: She's Parker's partner in crime, but she's infinitely more dangerous than he is, the only reason he's more dangerous being that she's subservient to him.
  • Irony:
    • Chloe dislikes being seen as a princess; however, the Unown's version of her adopts the appearance of a princess to reflect how much her brother adores her.
    • She wears an onyx broach; onyx are usually about protecting those from evil. That's not the case here...
    • UnChloe tried to block Chloe from texting Parker as a way to distance the siblings. Too bad she forgot about email and when Chloe confesses what was going on, all this does is Parker distancing himself from her.
  • Judge, Jury, and Executioner: She judges everyone in Vermillion City as guilty of not getting to know Chloe, so she executes them by using Mind Rape to completely destroy them.
  • Kick the Dog:
    • Suggests that killing Sara (who has already been broken and is now being thoroughly abused by her) would actually be beneficial since it would reunite her with her deceased father.
    • Forces Miss April to watch her students be tortured and then smugly taunts her that she can't tell anyone the truth about what happened, reminding how the teacher did nothing to help Chloe when she needed her the most. This causes her to almost be Driven to Suicide.
    • Laughs at Parker's attempts to fix things, calling him a monster and trying to make him kill everyone.
  • Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Deconstructed. Yeardley and Sara really had punishments coming to them and it did reveal the deeper reasons why they bullied Chloe. But the thing is, for all intents and purposes, they had been punished with the destruction of their social lives and futures. But since they weren't punished in a way that would make Parker feel good, UnChloe feels that she can torture and Mind Rape them without remorse. And since it feels completely justified and satisfactory, Parker and UnChloe feel encouraged to continue their brand of punishments on people who are far less deserving than the two bullies...
  • Kill and Replace: When things start derailing for her, she plans to quietly kill Chloe if she returns so she can be the only sister in Parker's life.
  • Lady Macbeth: While Parker commands her, she certainly exerts her fair share of control over his malleable thoughts and mind, encouraging him to act more sadistically and trying to coax him into ultimately forgetting his real sister entirely.
  • Little Black Dress: Fitting for a girl who loved macabre things and witches, she wears a black dress.
  • Loving a Shadow: A sibling variant. While Parker does know his sister better than anyone else in Vermillion, the false Chloe is still based on his own idealized view of her. And that idealized view just so happens to confirm his beliefs about justice and punishment.
  • Man on Fire: Yamper sees her covered in black flames.
  • Mask of Sanity: She looks like a calm Gothic princess version of Chloe...and then she reveals that she loves hearing people scream.
  • Meaningful Name: UnChloe is a mix between "Unown", the Pokémon who created her, and Chloe, who she's based after. It also brings to mind how she's practically a Shadow Archetype to the real Chloe.
  • Meaningful Rename: After realizing her true nature, Parker starts calling her UnSara instead. This helps him realize how to defeat her with his final wish: forcing her to act like the opposite of Sara, just like how UnChloe was the opposite of his sister.
  • Mind Rape: Inflicts this on Sara by bombarding her with mental voices repeating all of the criticism she's received, forcing her to hear others tearing her down until she's begging for them to stop.
  • Mirror Self: Going with the Alice in Wonderland vibe, UnChloe is the opposite of the real one: confident, calm, proud but holds none of Chloe's kindness or forgiveness onto others or lack of restraint when it comes to hurting those who attacked her. Later, Parker sees her more like the opposite of Sara and uses a wish so that UnSara does good things and yet no one will ever know it was her, whereas the real Sara would've loved soaking in all the attention.
  • Moth Menace: Has a black butterfly motif to contrast Chloe's white Macabre Moth Motif, and she uses said butterflies to make everyone's life a living hell.
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: Parker's will is her life. If he says you're evil and need to be punished, UnChloe will gladly obey. But it soon becomes clear that she's operating independently of her master, and may have her own plans.
  • Near-Villain Victory: Even as she's dying, she gets the last laugh...until Parker asks for one more wish to make a World-Healing Wave of good things that no one will ever find out that this came from her that causes her to look like she'd rather die (which she does).
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • By blocking Chloe from texting Parker, it spurred Chloe to email him what's going on — and have Parker wish that he could get an email from his sister — and reveal how Chloe was unable to message him because of a certain someone. This unleashes a chain of events that has Parker come to realize what he did and how horrible he's been.
    • Once Parker sees her as Sara and realizes that UnSara had the original Sara's problems of not knowing when to shut up, he quickly makes one more wish to make her be the opposite of the haughty princess and be a good princess that does kind things to everyone.
  • No Sympathy: She does not care who she hurts or if they are actually sorry to the point of begging on their knees. When Parker realizes what he's done and tries to force her to fix things, she spitefully tells him that he'll never make things right.
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Cutting the real Chloe off from talking to Parker makes it clear that she has darker goals than just 'making her little brother happy'. Sure enough, she's intending on pulling a Kill and Replace with Chloe so she can continue making everyone around her suffer. Her sadism is her only real goal, and Parker is just a tool to give her ideas and support while pretending that it's all for a noble cause.
  • Outside-Context Problem: Twofold; not only does she resemble, when nearly every other threat in the Pokémon World is a Pokémon, but she's not part of a team, which is common among human antagonist, and she holds the ability to use Black Magic, something that's rarely seen in this world.
  • Personality Powers: An Anthropomorphic Personification of Parker's vision of Chloe, who likes Black Magic, and serves as a living toxic influence to allow Parker to destroy everybody who ever hurt Chloe, intentionally or not? She'd obviously have Black Magic and Mind Manipulation powers.
  • Pet the Dog: Maybe. Franklin's punishment is just to be swapped with his shadow, but it's actually the most painless of the punishments seeing as he couldn't perceive the bullying due to his Asperger's and thus really couldn't do anything about it.
  • Pretty Princess Powerhouse: Has the look of a princess yet enough strength and magic backed by the Unown to wreck shit up.
  • Psychological Projection: Tries to manipulate Parker into hurting Ash further by claiming that the trainer will replace him as Chloe's brother, leaving Parker behind. This is her plan with Chloe, replacing the real Chloe Cerise and staying as Parker's "real" sister forever.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: Red hair and black clothing, and is an incredibly cruel individual to everyone except Parker. Since she's based on Parker's vision of her, she is shown to be caring and loving towards the boy while she unleashes sadistic punishments on the bullies who made this boy cry.
  • Rejected Apology: Much like Parker, she cannot see any apology whatsoever as sincere so long as Chloe is still gone. And when Parker realizes what he's done and tries to make amends, she tells him that he never will.
  • Rule of Symbolism: The way she looks depending on who is seeing her reflects how Chloe was never seen as a person; just some thing that nobody paid close attention to. Parker sees her as a princess even though Chloe herself hates being seen as one, her father sees her clouded, Ash saw her as a statue, etc.. The real Chloe comments on this, furious that no one saw her as a person who was in sore need of help. The only ones who even see her as herself are Frank and Miss April (but even then there are some differences like Frank sees her with a blank face because of his Asperger's syndrome and Miss April sees her with her mouth shut). Chloe is not' happy to learn about this as it proves her point that no one cared enough to see her.
  • Satellite Character: Given that she exists thanks to Parker's wish, she's never seen away from him. But she can work without Parker's input or orders...
  • Saying Too Much: She boasts that everything that happens will last even after she's gone...so Parker decides to make a wish so that yes it happens but they're all good things. Parker remarks that she picked this up from Sara, her first victim.
  • Secretly Selfish: She claims to have Parker's interests in heart, but the fact that she blocked Chloe's attempts to message Parker reveals that what she wants is to be the complete center of Parker's world and not have the real one return.
  • Shadow Archetype: If the real Chloe wears white, is pure-hearted, fights with a donut holer and is a Martial Pacifist, this Chloe wears black with a wicked heart, uses black magic, and relishes in seeing Sara and Yeardley suffer. Moreover, she's associated with black butterflies while Chloe herself has a white moth motif.
  • Small Role, Big Impact: Only lasts for four chapters (the equivalent of around two days) but the ramifications of her actions are going to be felt for a long time.
  • Sock Puppet: A real-life version of one, letting Parker justify and rationalize his worst actions as being in the name of 'helping Chloe'.
  • Soft-Spoken Sadist: Can be calm and sweet and utterly willing to break you into pieces if she (or Parker) finds it fun.
  • Something about a Rose: Black roses start to bloom once her feet touch the ground.
  • Stealth Pun: A version of Chloe based on a witch who summons black roses. That would make her a black rose witch, right?
  • Submissive Badass: She has enough power to wipe out Vermillion City, but she prefers to obey Parker's will and make the Cerise Lab into a funhouse...for the time being.
  • Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She's only sugar to Parker; to everyone else she's ice cold.
  • Technicolor Fire: When Yamper sees her, she's said to look like she's surrounded in black hellfire.
  • Toxic Friend Influence: The longer she hangs around Parker, the more he goes down the deep end...kinda like what Sara did to be honest.
  • Uncanny Valley Girl: A recurring trait in how everyone but Parker sees her is that she doesn't look fully human due to how little they saw the real Chloe barring Chloe's classroom teacher and a student with Asperger's syndrome. Instead of flesh and blood, she's usually fogged up, a statue or even transparent. Chloe even lampshades how unfair it is that everyone can't see her as a normal girl.
  • Villain Has a Point:
    • Her Breaking Speech to Chloe is harsh, but she’s not wrong in saying that, in spite of all the progress and growth Chloe had made while on the Train, her actions were never truly her own, and that she always needed some outside force to tell her what to do.
    • She also correctly points out to Parker that after everything he's done, he has no business claiming to be a 'good boy' and won't be forgiven easily.
  • Walking Spoiler: Everything about this character changes Vermillion City for the second arc, and also reveals just how off the deep end Parker goes.
  • Wicked Heart Symbol: Wears a silver and onyx heart broach.
  • Wicked Witch: She's basically Chloe if she was a Black Magician Girl, and she's one nasty piece of work.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Young, old, right, wrong, none of these things mean anything to UnChloe. If she believes you're guilty, she will put you through the wringer and enjoy every second of it. Just look at what she did to at least 20+ students.

    SPOILER CHARACTER # 2 / Zeno 
A dream construct that acts like a guide for Goh's nightmares and later stays around to help him and Parker.
  • Accentuate the Negative: For someone whose reason for creation was to help Goh develop as a person, he sure has no problem rubbing his faults in his face while ignoring what little good he had. This eventually causes his therapy to backfire, leaving Goh as an empty shell of his former self.
  • Accidental Hero: Trip suggests that his presence was what prevented Goh from boarding the train when he was left alone.
  • Ambiguous Innocence: He was created from Parker's wish for Goh to finally learn what a terrible friend he's been and develop as a person. So his morality is less "right and wrong" and more "whatever will get Goh to take the dang hint."
  • Anti-Villain: He torments Goh with all of his mistakes, yes, but he's only doing it so Goh can heal and make amends with Chloe. He's no longer a villain after his first therapy session fails.
  • The Atoner: Becomes this to try and help Goh truly recover and get him out of his predicament.
  • Author Appeal: The fact he transforms into Specter half-way through the nightmare therapy is due to the author lampshading how she will not stop gushing about this character. And it also makes sense in-universe since the "Specter" character was how Parker got into horror from his sister.
  • Badass Fingersnap: A Character Tic of his.
  • Be as Unhelpful as Possible: A fact he has to accept by the end of the nightmare. He was created to help Goh develop as a person, but his methods are so extreme and sadistic, focusing more on Goh's faults and how he sucks rather than a middle ground, that his therapy ends a total failure: Goh does learn his lesson but at the expense of his sanity. He later becomes helpful before he fades away for good, giving Goh the advice that he really was a good friend, and that Chloe needed to do her part to be better.
    • Interestingly, his biggest help was accidental, keeping Goh and Parker from boarding the train.
  • Big Eater: He's shown snacking and eating a lot. Justified in that he's not actually real.
  • Color Motifs: Silver, white and grey to reflect how he's a ghost/"specter".
  • Creepy Good: Just imagine Specter if he had Peter Maximoff's wardrobe who will put you into terrifying nightmares if it'll teach you a lesson.
  • Cruel to Be Kind: His nightmare therapy was horrible, but it was so Goh understood what his thinking would get him. It failed and the cruelty is all Goh can think about.
  • Everybody Has Standards: He may be a construct made to force Goh to learn his lesson through very traumatizing scenarios, but even he is sick and tired of Goh's inability to accept his faults and how he constantly runs away from problems, only wanting the boy to just apologize and learn to understand Chloe's point of view.
    • He calls Parker (his "creator") out on how this "nightmare therapy" was utterly wrong, and puts him through a similar scenario in order to show the extent of the pain Goh went through.
    • For all the nightmares he put Goh into, he tells Goh that his situation (kidnapped, tied to a chair and said kidnapper wielding a gun) is not a dream and that he's in real danger.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Wanted Goh to understand his responsibility in driving Chloe away and see what could've happened if he had something called empathy. He succeeded...
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: But he did it while throwing Goh completely under the bus, withering at his mind and self-confidence so thoroughly, he's left as a broken Empty Shell who believes he can't do anything right, and will never do anything right.
  • Horrifying the Horror: Even he finds Grapploct creepy.
  • Inner Monologue: Essentially become Goh's, helping the boy try to get back on his feet... except he still works by the Be as Unhelpful as Possible angle.
  • Insane Troll Logic: Zeno is not above using this in his efforts to break Goh's self-confidence. At various points in his chapter-long "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Zeno painted Goh as the primary culprit of basically every mistake and wrongdoing committed in Vermillion City, from Ash's inability to reach Chloe, to the bullying Chloe endured. In the nightmare therapist's book, it was Goh's responsibility to be Chloe's defender, advocate, and translator, and so anything that went wrong was a case of Accomplice by Inaction.
    • This went double for the horrible scenarios that Goh was Forced to Watch inside the nightmare. This included Chloe committing suicide and Dream!Goh not caring, Ash and Raboot being murdered, and Tokio melting- and Zeno acted as if all of these tragedies were logical consequences of Goh's failings.
    • At one point, Zeno calls Goh out for swearing with the Parker simulation within earshot. When Goh fires back that Zeno had just melted Tokio with Parker looking on, Zeno claims that Parker is five whole years old and plays horror games, so that was totally fine. He then launched into yet another spiel about how horrible Goh was, this time for "forgetting how old Parker is" and not knowing his preferred genres.
  • Invisible to Normals: Only visible to Goh and Parker to the point that Yamper is wondering why Parker suddenly started talking to a wall. Justified as he is a manifestation created by Parker in order to help Goh. The only others who can perceive his presence is Yamper and Raboot, and even then they don't actually see him, just feel him.
  • Insistent Terminology: No he's not a ghost, he's a "nightmare therapist".
  • Irony: Turns out for all his actions, he was the one that was preventing the Infinity Train from picking Goh and Parker up. So when he's gone and no one is looking...
  • It's All My Fault: Glumly admits that his attempts to help Goh out instead broke him, and has become The Atoner in order to try fix this mistake.
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: After Zeno sees that his efforts at "Nightmare Therapy" only served to convince Goh that everyone would be better off without him, the Nightmare Weaver realizes that the only way he could actually help his patient is to throw in the towel and let him wake up. Goh had been shattered to the point that Zeno's only hope of improving things inside the dream would be to "reboot the scenario," plastering over the hours of Mind Rape with some feel-good simulations... and Zeno is well aware that that would be a short-term solution at best, priming Goh for a Freak Out the instant reality didn’t match the best-case scenario Zeno concocted.
  • Leitmotif: Becomes associated with Mad Hatter.
  • Light Is Not Good: Starts off wearing Goh's school uniform then turns into a tall man with silver hair and a white suit. Oh and he's making Goh go through scenarios in which Goh must face his mistakes with his friends. However, these are all in the name of helping Goh become a better person. He later shifts into Light Is Good.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • As UnGoh, he is the opposite of his counterpart in several critical ways — chief among them his self-proclaimed willingness to apologize, showing sympathy and empathy for others.
    • He gives himself the name Zeno, which the author notes reveal serves as both a reference to Goh's English VA Zeno Robinson and 'Zeno's Paradox', which is mostly about the illusion of motion. Fitting for someone attempting to show Goh that he's not making any real progress.
    • Replace the 'Z' with 'X' gives you "Xeno", the prefix for "strange" or "different" to contrast how Goh is not willing to try anything new.
    • "Ze" can mean a gender-neutral pronoun, reflecting how Zeno is really just a dream construct to help Goh out and he has no true form of his own.
  • Must Make Amends: Because of Parker's final wish to have "good things that last long after UnChloe has vanished", he's stuck as a manifestation in Goh and Parker's heads hoping to fix the mistakes made by those nightmares. He completes his job when he communicates critical details about Goh's location to Parker and Ash, and is gone forever after that.
  • Nightmare Weaver: He creates not only nightmares for Goh to see the consequences of his actions and what he could've done to fix them, but he gives Parker a nightmare as well to show him how badly he messed up.
  • No Sympathy: He refuses to take Goh's side during his nightmares, and absolutely relishes in not only calling him out but rubbing it in his face how it would be simple to fix everything. This only further breaks Goh into giving up on everything, which Zeno realizes too late.
  • Oh, Crap!: Zeno nearly chokes on his curry when Goh hits the final epiphany of his "Nightmare Therapy"- "Everything would be better if I was just… gone."
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If Zeno is not joking at all, you know that something bad is happening.
  • Pass the Popcorn: Zeno is constantly snacking on something. He goes through a bag of kettle-cooked chips, a box of chocolates, a bowl of curry, and a box of popcorn in one sitting.
  • Psychotic Smirk: His smile when he first shifts into his "Specter" form is described as this. Given how the real Specter relished in giving these, and that it's part of Parker's desire to see Goh suffer, it's justified.
  • Rule of Symbolism:
    • He first manifests as an exact copy of Goh save for one detail: he's wearing his school uniform. Not only does this contrast with the real Goh's outfit, but it also symbolizes how Chloe wanted a Goh who was actually around, and would be there when she needed it most... such as when she was getting bullied at school.
    • His second appearance is Specter in all but "name", focusing on what Chloe desires now: her imaginary world and characters, along with her friends and experiences on the Infinity Train, since Goh essentially abandoned her. He's also much older than Goh, reflecting the type of figure who would be perfect to give Chloe the advice she needs to move forward. The fact that "specter" is another word for "ghost" also represents how Zeno isn't actually real. Since he also is seen talking to Parker, it reflects how much Parker has a big impact on why Goh gets broken, since the "Specter" was the first thing he learned of his sister's interests.
    • His appearance constantly fluctuates: of course, that's what happens in dreams. They change.
  • Slippery Slope Fallacy: This is shown to be one of the many faults of "Nightmare Therapy." Over the course of the "session," Zeno used his Nightmare Weaver powers to demonstrate to Goh how continuing on his path of catching Pokémon and pursuing Mew would lead to him alienating everyone he knows and his grandmother dying of grief, and that actually reaching his goal would be absolutely pointless and could never bring him happiness or fulfillment. It's only after Goh takes Zeno at his word and gives up on his dream and life in general that the specter backtracks and admits that that was only one possible future, and it's totally feasible to pursue Mew while still maintaining friendships.
  • Sunglasses at Night: Starts wearing a pair of silver goggles when he reappears.
  • Sympathy for the Hero: After the nightmare therapy is over and Goh is essentially broken, he feels sorry for what Goh has gone through and that he's basically beyond repair.
  • The Thing That Would Not Leave: For Goh at least, due to him not knowing of Parker's wish, since he's going to be the inner voice in his head motivating him to be better. This is due to Parker's wishes and a combination of the Unown leaving some sort of "psychic gift". After Zeno helps alert Parker to M Rs. Turner's scheme, he vanishes for good.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Knows how bad things will get when he releases Goh from his nightmare, but there's nothing else he can do.
  • Tough Love: The nightmares and What If? scenarios are only for Goh to learn his lesson and repent. Deconstructed, however - it's still Parker's excuse to cause Goh pain, and it hurts far more than it helps.
  • Unreliable Expositor: From the moment of his creation Zeno inherited plenty of information that UnChloe had gleaned from the minds of those she encountered. He was happy to share much of this information with Goh as part of his "Nightmare Therapy," giving the young Trainer insight that Ash wasn't giving him and Raboot couldn't. The one issue with that was that Zeno's purpose was to hurt Goh, so all these "insights" were presented to further that goal. Telling Goh that Ash and Raboot were close to despising him was actually the least of it- At one point Zeno had Ash Ketchum go out of his way to show off how many girls were in love with him just to drive home how much more socially adept he was than Goh.
  • Unwinnable Training Simulation: This is basically what Parker and Zeno's "Nightmare Therapy" boiled down to. No matter how much they might claim the "therapy" was made in Goh's best interest, it was never going to end well, because that wasn't really the point: Zeno might have expressed frustration at how long it took Goh to "learn his lessons"- but that was a bit difficult, considering some of the "lessons" Goh was meant to learn. During his "therapy," Goh was taught that he didn't care about anyone but himself, to that point that he would just not care if Chloe was Driven to Suicide. He was forced to accept that he was a False Friend, and that their crumbling relationship was entirely his fault. He learned that pursuing Mew was inherently wrong, because it took his attention away from Chloe, and that forgetting about the curry promise was an unforgivable slight. He was also told that he was a similarly horrible friend to Ash and Raboot, and that both of them were ready to leave him for the sort of friends that they deserved. While not every lesson was totally wrong, even Chloe was horrified to see the sum total. But, since Chloe had previously made Goh out to be the source of most of her misery, Parker believed every word. As his creation, Zeno either honestly believed every accusation he hurled at Goh, or thought that his hyperbole was excusable to get Goh to take a hint. Naturally, the therapy session went horribly right, and in the aftermath Zeno was forced to either walk back a lot of his earlier points, or outright contradict them.
    • Of particular note, there was Zeno's frustration that Goh kept messing up the "simple scenarios" he was given. While it's true that Goh did mess up several times, he was also playing a game that was rigged against him. Every other character in the scenario was little more than a Sock Puppet for Zeno- Chloe would take offense at Goh's olive branches, contradict any of his points, and move on from him entirely whenever Zeno thought it "more realistic." He might have taken "Perfect Goh's" easy success at the scenario as evidence of how much Goh had to learn… but it isn't exactly difficult to talk someone down from a rage when you were created by the person who knows them best in the world- and you have the ability to ensure that whatever you say is the exact right thing to calm her down. When Goh rushes off not twenty minutes later, the "Nightmare Therapist" does not do nearly as well.
  • Verbal Tic: Tends to repeat "ever" four times.
  • Was It Really Worth It?: Asks this not only to himself, but to Parker, once the nightmares result in Goh being completely broken and sent to a suicide watch.
  • Waxing Lyrical: Briefly quotes a line from "Oh No" when he tries to stop Goh from running away from his problems.
  • What If?: He presents Goh with various tableaus. These range from tragedies like Chloe being Driven to Suicide to glimpses of what might have happened if Goh showed more empathy and care towards others. He also can use this ability with Parker.
  • Xtremely Kool Letterz: Invoked by Zeno who states he's going to call himself "Xeno" with a "Z". Goh lampshades this.

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