Short Version: Resonance is a Pokémon Fanfic set in the Anime continuity, about a group travelers going back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
Long Version: In the year 1998 ACnote , the world was ravaged by a horrible virus that turned humans into powerful Pokémon/human hybrids. Ten years later, the last surviving humans struggle for survival, and flee from an enigmatic being known only as the Ivory Queen. Max Maple is one such human, and his life's goal is to get revenge on The Philosophers, an organization of psychics that kidnapped his sister May shortly after the cataclysm. But instead of getting revenge, he ends up joining a man named Oracle on an ambitious quest; to change the future, and prevent the cataclysm from happening. Their destination, 1998, the year a boy name Ash Ketchum begun his Pokémon journey...
Also, has nothing to do with the Wadjet Eye Games adventure.
Future!Max
- Future Badass
- It's Personal: His entire motivation for trying to kill Oracle was to rescue May, but it turns out she's too far gone that none of her original personality remains. Not a spoiler, it's all part of the first chapter.
- The Musketeer: Subverted. While he owns a Katana, he's terrible at using it. Doesn't hesitate to use his assault rifle, however.
Future!Caitlin
- Continuity Snarl: Future!Caitlin uses the same design as the one from Pokémon Black and White, despite the fact that this design has already shown up in the anime. The reason given is that the canon timeline's future!Caitlin also used time travel.
- Psychic Powers
- Person of Mass Destruction
- Time-Travel Tense Trouble: There are no less than three Caitlins running around; present!Caitlin, future!Caitlin, and canon future!Caitlin.
Ash
- Battle Aura: His aura powers have four main uses.
- Ki Manipulation
- Hard Light, though it's limited to creating solid objects with no moving parts.
- Healing Flames, which heal wounds and provide a boost physical ability.
- Aura Vision
- Mid-Season Upgrade: After beating him during the fight club arc, Mao teaches Ash how to perform Magichange.
- Swiss-Army Superpower: Oracle's recording explains in detail what Ash's powers can actually do, and encourages him to experiment.
- Out of Focus: Deconstructed in regards to Ash's Pokémon. Ash relies more on his own powers for protection than his Pokémon, causing him to realize he only has three Pokémon by the time he reaches Vermillion City, and hasn't had a chance to practice battling very much. Luckily for Ash, part of Koga's Training From Hell before the tournament involves going back to catch the Pokémon he missed the first time around.
Misty
- Dead All Along
- Death-Activated Superpower
- Elemental Embodiment: Her entire family turns out to be these, herself included.
- First-Episode Twist: Jade kills her early on in the story, inadvertently triggering her elemental powers.
- Mega Manning: She can gain new elemental forms by consuming feral elementals.
- Mode Lock: While her sisters can transform between human and elemental states, Misty can't return to her a human form. It turns out that this is because she's actually dead, and hasn't realized it yet.
- Red Herring: Hints are dropped early on that she could become the Ivory Queen, and later on hints are dropped that she's a Devourer, or at the very least that Elementals inspired legends of the Devourers. Both of these turn out to be untrue, though The Devourers were all once Elementals.
Brock
- Non-Action Guy: Though he remains indispensable to the team.
N
- Enemy Mine: Works with Max and Caitlin to save the future mostly out of his own self-interest at first.
- Future Badass: Oracle was undoubtedly this, but present-day N is no slouch either.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: As in canon though he mellows down after a while.
Colress
- Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: He starts out (supposedly) on N's side, turns out to be working for Ghetsis, but then works with N for real once the stakes are high enough.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Points out that people can easily capture and control Pokemon, meaning that Pokemorph super-soldiers wouldn't actually be all that practical.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Supports Ghetsis over N because he thinks N is too whimsical and unfocused to be the King of Team Plasma. Changes his mind after he realizes that Ghetsis is insane enough to turn his minions into Pokemorph super-soldiers despite protests that it would be a bad idea.
Ghetsis
Jade
An extraordinarily tall human girl from the future responsible for (almost) killing Ash.- Badass Normal
- ...Except, that not.
- Bilingual Dialogue:
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Played with. She's never been in a real fight, so of course she doesn't have any battle scars. But even if she did, the technology to remove them exists, and is incredibly cheap at that.
- Cosplay Otaku Girl: Likes to dress up in Pokémon costumes and designed Titan's, John's, and Tin's outfits.
- Charles Atlas Superpower
- The Dark Side: After being possessed by Ma'Rissu
- The Dragon
- Deal with the Devil: While Ma'rissu has no direct control over Jade, it repeatedly tempts Jade over to The Dark Side.
- Deconstruction:
- Impractically Fancy Outfit: Learns very quickly that, while possible, fighting in what is essentially a ballgown is not very practical.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Pretends to be one for Brock so she can set up traps around his Gym. The charade falls apart pretty quickly, however.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Subverted; Jade actually has no idea what her "sister" is saying, though she knows her well enough to kind of get the idea.
- Does Not Know Her Own Strength: Used to be a problem for her, so she took up sewing as a way to learn better self-control.
- Demonic Possession: After breaking the Cerulian Cave's seal, Jade is possessed by Ma'rissu.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Averted. She can't even understand what her own sister is saying.
- Statuesque Stunner: 6'7'', and if her mother was any indication, likely still growing.
- Happily Adopted: Both she and her sister love their adoptive father very much, though Jade hates her biological father for abandoning her. Titan also hates him, but for very different reasons.
- Multi-Melee Master
- Mysterious Parent: Her biological father is N.
- Parental Abandonment: Her mother died of gigantism-related health complications, and her father gave her to his best friend, since he felt he didn't understand humans well enough to raise her.
Opal
A Gardevior who was raised alongside Jade as her sister.- Actual Pacifist: Gardeviors can sense the emotions of others, and the emotions she read after her first battle long ago traumatized her. So Jade promised she would do all the fighting from now on.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Subverted, while she can understand Jade, she can't speak back.
- Happily Adopted: Has nothing but the utmost adoration for her and Jade's adoptive father.
- Interspecies Adoption: Titan raised her like she was his own daughter.
- The Empath
Iron Titan
A time traveling superhero who went back in time to stop the Ivory Queen from taking over the world. Or not. He actually went back in time to try and make a future where he could be the hero that saved the world instead of Ash. That, and release a virus that would turn everyone into Pokemorphs. The Ivory Queen was just something he made up.- Big Bad
- Bare-Fisted Monk: in Powered Armor
- Future Me Scares Me: He's an alternate future Gabriel.
- Half-Human Hybrid: He's a half-slugma Pokémorph.
- Shock and Awe
- Powered Armor
- Playing with Fire In his alternate Reshiram armor, as well as without armor.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He plans to release a mutagenic virus that will turn the entire world into Pokemorphs, so that his past self will never feel alone. Unfortunantly, he didn't count on it driving people insane...
Dr. Chandler
- Expy: Of Christian Weston Chalnder
- Mad Scientist
- Fat Bastard
- Psychopathic Manchild
- Grimdark Villain, Gritty Yet Optimistic Show: Yes, this is a Dark Fic since the cast is fighting for their lives and there's a lot of violence, but while most of the villains are of the Card Carrying or Well-Intentioned variety, The Power of Friendship still saves the day, and Oracle and Issac Danels are the only characters who actually die. By comparison, Dr. Chandler is completely fucking insane. How bad is he? The Pokemorph virus he created drives women irrovecibly insane... unless they have sex with him. Since he doesn't tell anyone about this last part untill it's too late, this make him THE SOLE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING THE BAD FUTURE.
Tin Smith
Iron Titan's sidekick, a Gadgeteer Genius who claims to have built Titan's suit.- Generation Xerox: Averted, he's almost nothing like his parents, Jessie and James.
- The Evil Genius
Tyrian real name John Smith
A purple-haired prettyboy supervillain sent back in time by the Ivory Queen to destroy the Iron Titan. In reality he's just an actor playing the role of a lifetime. Though he really is a time traveler.- Affectionate Parody: Of Caius Ballad.
- The Brute: His Genesect acts as this.
- Generation Xerox: Averted, he's almost nothing like his parents, Jessie and James.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: purposefully invoked.
Io
An assassin under Tyrian's employ. Seeks to kill N and dismantle Team Plasma.- Cold Sniper
- The Mole: As a descendant of the Shadow Triad, she has been on Ghetsis side the entire time, and planned to betray Titan as soon as feasibly possible.
- Eye Scream: At a young age, her eyes were removed and replaced with crystals that grant Aura Vision.
- Flat Character
Mariette
Jade's mother, and the owner of Opal's mother.- Artistic License – Biology: Apparently being nearly eight feet tall gives you super-strength. The real reason is that, like Jade, her Aura is constantly on overdrive.
- Posthumous Character: Though she's still alive in the current timeline, her past self never appears.
- Purity Sue: Would be a straight example, but she never appears "on screen", and what descriptions we have of her are secondhand at best.
- Gentle Giant
- Does Not Know Her Own Strength: Was apparently a frequent source of angst.
- Death by Childbirth: Died of cardiac arrest shortly after giving birth to Jade.
- Friend to All Living Things
- Statuesque Stunner: Deconstructed. Before her death, she was reportedly 7'10'', extremely beautiful, and had a list of health problems a mile long.
Ma'rissu
- Parody Sue: The Anthropomorphic Personification of this concept.
Oracle
- Combat Clairvoyance
- Future Badass: He's the Bad Future's version of N.
- Too Cool to Live
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He kidnapped May and turned her into a living computer in order to amplify her latent psychic powers, allowing him to pinpoint exactly what needs to be changed in order to save the future.
Gabriel
- Dogged Nice Guy: Sure, maybe he's not being held hostage by a religious nut who wants to kill him and his family this time around, but he still gets kidnapped by Max, N and Caitlin, gets dragged around all over the planet by said kidnappers, has his life put on the line more times than he can count, and he's really susceptible to Teleportation Sickness.
- Non-Action Guy.
- Odd Friendship: Develops one with N. His future self was also friends with N at one point, and even went so far as to adopt his daughter.
- Superpower Lottery: A very good example of what happens when you lose; gooey orange skin, lots of health problems, little else.
- Magikarp Power: Tin figured out how to power a suit of Powered Armor using Future!Gabriel's body heat, eventually leading to Titan's Zekrom suit.
- For Want Of A Nail: Given that he's an artificially created Pokemorph, Max assumes he has something to do with The Virus. He doesn't, but his alternate future self does.
- Unfazed Everyman: After a while Gabriel just kinda runs with it.
Jean
- Out of Focus: Like a lot of Morphic's cast.
- Sequel Hook: In the epilogue, she becomes Ma'Rissu's new host in hopes of preserving her youth and beauty.
Issac Danels
- Alas, Poor Villain: Titan incinerates early on in the story.
- External Retcon: Issac Danels' motivation for wanting the morphs dead is elaborated upon; according to the church's teachings, the netherworld is ruled by a being called Devourers, humans who consumed the souls of Pokémon to steal their powers. Note that this doesn't attempt to justify Issac's viewpoint, as this would be akin to trying to murder the president because you thought he was the Anticrhist.
- The Extremist Was Right: Half-right, anyway. The Devourers exist, and they do rule the netherworld. But none of the Pokémorphs were ever meant to be used as vessels for their rebirth. In fact, in a very, very indirect way, Issac himself ends up being responsible for setting them free.
Mao
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath
- Inexplicably Awesome: Justified, as he comes from an entirely different franchise.
- Our Demons Are Different: And he want's to know why the Pokemon World doesn't seem to have any.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall
- Mad Scientist
- Unexpected Character: His appearing in the fic at all was unexpected. But sticking around afterwards? Chance are you didn't expect that.
Almaz
- Animal Motifs: Pokemon Motifs: Most of the Original Characters have one of these going for them.
- Jade is represented by Gardevior, an empathetic pokemon who's personality is almost complete opposite of her. In addition, it represents the fusion of human and Pokemon, which is both Titan and Jade's ideal.
- Tin's costume resembles Pawniard, which represents his role as a willing lackey to Titan's plan, and his inner moral conflict.
- Titan's Powered Armor resembles Zekrom, representing his hope to make the world a better place and his friendship with L.
- Tyrian's costume resembles Nidoking, which is a heavy-handed way of showing that he wants to take over the world. Of course the symbolism was entirely deliberate; he doesn't actually want to take over the world, he just wants people to think he does.
- The Cameo: Mao, Scout, Tyler Durden, Saber, Sho Minamimoto, Yoshimitsu, M. Bison, and Gilgamesh all show up as opponents during the Fight Club arc. Mao sticks around for his own subplot, however.
- Recursive Fanfiction: Though set in the Anime's world, it borrows characters and story elements from Morphic. Of course the author isn't even pretending this is in continuity with Moprhic, and even points out that this story is pretty much it's own canon.
- Reimagining the Artifact: Team Rocket being able to recover from their Amusing Injuries is given the justification that all those RPG healing potions you can buy in the games work just as well on humans.
- Shout-Out
- Oracle developed a way to turn people with psychic potnetial into living computers. He decided to call them "Mentats" beacuse he's a fan of the Dune series and nobody's around to sue him for using that term.
- Stations of the Canon: Played with. Oracle makes it abundantly clear that Ash must continue his Pokemon journey no matter what, but the little changes pile up over time. Things go completely Off the Rails by the time they reach Cerulean City.
- We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: Used as a plot point: the same medical technology that heals Pokemon injuries also heals humans. Dr. Chandler takes advantage of this technology to create the Pokemorph virus.