Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Heroes of the Past is a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers fic by InfamousVenous.
Set roughly 30 years after the events of Explorers of Sky, the story follows an amnesiac Silvally and the adoptive Ninetales daughter of the hero and their partner.
Can be read on FanFiction.Net (here
), Archive of Our Own (here), Royal Road (here), SpaceBattles.com (here), and Sufficient Velocity.com (here).
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Heroes of the Past provides examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: In the story, Silvally is able to change his type at will, unlike his anime and game counterparts. However, at the start he doesn't know how to control the type change well, hasn't managed to change to every types, and tends to change type without trying to.
- Amnesiac Hero: Silvally forgot everything about his past life, including his name, and only chose his current name because it was written on his helmet. He however hasn't forgotten the skills he had prior, such as how to read (although not the Pokémon script).
- Covered in Gunge: In one mission, Artemis and Silvally are trying to rescue a young Grimer. The problem is that said kid is a Cuddle Bug and insists on being carried on top. By the time they're back in town, the duo is covered in intensely foul-smelling, toxic sludge.
- Crime of Self-Defense: Despite being branded as an Outcast, it is revealed that most of Silvally's "crimes" were just this. From his point of view, he was just defending himself from explorer teams hunting him down For the Evulz (or so he thought).
- Face of a Thug: Silvally, being an artificial chimera, looks very intimidating to other Pokémon, even though in practice he wouldn't ever hurt anyone except in retaliation.
- Friend to All Children: Silvally has a big soft spot for kids of all kinds, as shown when he accepts to play with a ball with them, and when he accepts to carry Grimer.
- Happily Adopted: Artemis was adopted as a vulpix kit by the protagonist of Explorers of Sky and their partner.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Sivally starts the fic as an Outcast despite never having done anything except defending himself. Thankfully, as the truth of his "crimes" is slowly revealed after his capture, his reputation among other Pokémon slowly starts improving.
- In Medias Res: The story opens with Silvally in a fight with Artemis and a team of explorers trying to capture him.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Artemis is horrified when she reads Silvally's case and understands that she has been viciously hunting him down and at several points grieviously injuring him despite him being innocent. She immediately feels ashamed to have felt pride at him being scared of her, as it wasn't the reaction of a criminal scared by justice but rather him being traumatized by his abuser.
- Name Amnesia: Silvally chose his name because it was written on his helmet as a Type: Null. He doesn't know his true name.
- Poor Communication Kills: How did Silvally end up branded a four-star outcast? The chain went something like this: Silvally (then still a Type: Null) stumbled upon Team Dusk (the successor to Team Skull), but since it happened in a Mystery Dungeon, and his helmet rendered him The Unintelligible, this was interpreted as hostility. After their defeat, Team Dusk warned everyone of a new Outcast, resulting in ever more exploration teams going after him. With him never being given the opportunity to explain his viewpoint, he had no choice but to keep defending himself for two years against ever-stronger teams.
