TRINITY
is a Pokémon Fan Fic written by Shrike Flamestar. Despite being a Pokemon fanfic, it is set in The Future! 423 years after anything recognizable, to be specific. And even then, is still technically an Alternate Universe Fic as said 423 years ago, any characters named Ash or having an array of rather colorful names never existed. Indeed, the author's other major (AU) fanfic, The Flamestar Chronicles, took place way back then.
The story takes place in the year 2465, 423 years after a great cataclysm befell the Earth in 2042. The cataclysm? In one swift moment, all Pokeballs in the world ceased to function. Any Pokemon currently contained burst free, and trainers found they could no longer recall or capture Pokemon. As so much of the world's economy had grown to be dependent on Pokemon training and battles, chaos quickly descended. The world was thrust into a dark age that saw mass rioting over the upheaval. Only after over a century of rioting and all around general chaos did everyone finally began to settle back down. Of course, Pokemon weren't gone, and the ruins of the various companies and organizations that had been focused around Pokemon were prime for the picking. Out of the looting came one massive discovery: a Pokemon translator that had been in development but never announced before its creators when out of business. Instantly, the divide between humans and Pokemon came crashing down as the translator technology was put into mass production.
Even more centuries later and the world has reached a state where humans and Pokemon are, roughly, considered to be equals. At least, that's what it looks like on the surface. Humans and Pokemon live together, work together, and so on, with most no longer recognizing Pokemon as any different than you or I. The history surrounding Pokemon is getting progressively diluted and forgotten as the years progress, though. Some people now see Pokemon as always having been, and even now, being little more than animal slaves to humans. Such people regard the coexistence of human and Pokemon societies to be an affront to human superiority, leading to racists at best and radical terrorists at worst. As time marches on, such feelings are only growing in strength.
Of course, none of that matters to lowly Tashima Navara. Abandoned with a family at an early age, he befriended a Typhlosion named Havoc as a result of an incident that resulted in the amputation of both Tashima's left arm and leg. Not having the money to afford the necessary prosthetics to allow him to live a normal life, Tashima was coerced into signing a contract with the Cybernetic Pokemon and Human Enhancement Research Corporation, or CYPHER Corp for short. While the contract would give him the prosthetics he needed, it also forced him to work for CYPHER until the prosthetics are paid off. Due to CYPHER's dirty, underhanded tactics, that day would be about the moment he dies and not a second sooner. Over his years working for CYPHER as a programmer, Tashima naturally begins to grow a disdain for his employer and begins to acquire some less-than legal equipment and weapons and familiarize himself with hacking CYPHER's computers. This all finally becomes useful when his best friend, Hali Summers, frantically contacts him about a discovery she and her Gardevoir life partner Fae made: the titular TRINITY Cybernetics suite. In development by CYPHER, TRINITY promises to make use of a radical new source of energy called Phase to provide near infinite supplies of power. While on its own this is nothing of note, something about it is so secret that Fae was killed while retrieving more information on it, only for Hali herself to be apparently murdered after CYPHER tracked her down.
Everything spirals downhill from there as Tashima and Havoc race to uncover what exactly is going on, joining up with a group of rebels calling themselves Icarus who seek to expose CYPHER's dirty practices. As it turns out, there may be a lot more to CYPHER than there appears...
Despite not updating for months, is not a Dead Fic. The author simply hit a hard time where he lost all writing inspiration, but it's slowly coming back to him and he has vowed to get back on track sometime...
Provides Examples Of:
- Badass Longcoat: Tashima wears one of the black leather trench coat variety, channeling the spirit of The Matrix.
- Cool Car: Tashima and Havoc's aerocar is a flying hot rod with an invisibility cloak generator in the trunk. If that doesn't count, what does?
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Cygnus Alvaron, CEO of CYPHER. While he isn't interested so much in money for personal gain, he does see acquiring as much control over the cybernetics industry as possible a vital step to his goal. That goal? To return the world to the state it was in decades ago, with Pokemon subservient to humans.
- Cyborg: Almost every main characters counts in one way or another, but the two most notable extremes are Kyle and Zeta. Kyle is the only main character who has absolutely no augmentations at all and thus the only non-cyborg, while Zeta is the only main character who is entirely a cyborg, with his whole body having been replaced. Even Pokemon are not excused from this, especially after Havoc is upgraded with the TRINITY suite in the beginning.
- Dual Wielding: The classic, primarily used within the Cybernet by Tashima, where one of his favored weapon sets in mock battles are dual blades. Also is used by Hali with twin plasma-nanoblade daggers.
- Famous Ancestor: Cygnus Alvaron is, in fact, a distant descendant of Shrike Flamestar (aka, Michael Alvaron) from the author's other fanfic. While Shrike was a hero, Cygnus is a villain who has completely misinterpreted Shrike's goals throughout the course of his journey decades ago.
- Fantastic Racism: In spades, between humans and Pokemon as mentioned in the summary above. The struggle between Pokemon and humans serves as one of the main driving forces of the story.
- Guns Akimbo: Ava' primary form of combat. Specifically, she wields twin plasma pistols.
- Holographic Terminal: Pretty much every computer is one of these. Those which aren't actually floating hologram-based use glass in which a hologram is projected. Once in a while there may be an actual physical button or two, or even a full keyboard, but floating holograms reign king when it comes to interfaces.
- Hollywood Hacking: Varies depending on just who is hacking what, but for the most part is firmly in place. This is especially prominent in the Cybernet, where "hacking" essentially means making your way through a video game-like maze that represents the computer being hacked.
- Homoerotic Subtext: While not outright stated, there are some heavy suggestions pointing to Hali and Fae being more than just roommates... Of course, this also leads to Interspecies Romance...
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: While energy weapons do exist, projectile-based guns are far more common, especially aboard spaceships where energy weapons are impractical. The Avalon, Valhalla, and Valkyrie are all inversions of this as they feature heavy usage of Phase weaponry.
- Laser Blade: Plasma-nanoblades sort of qualify. They do actually have a solid core that is pretty much like any other knife, the difference being that the blade is constructed on demand by self-replicating nanites. The plasma then comes in by being run through an electromagnetic "channel" that runs along the blade's cutting edge. When the blade comes in contact with something, the field is broken allowing the plasma to literally burn through whatever it came in contact with, while the actual blade cuts through the softened material.
- Magnetic Weapons: Related to Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better up above, all kinetic weapons in the future are apparently scaled-down railguns. Presumably, sometime in the intervening years the issue of reliability and power consumption was solved.
- Post Cyber Punk: Exists somewhere between those two, with the characters being rebels outside society as in classic Cyberpunk but with the world actually being a fairly nice place to live when you get past the Fantastic Racism, ala Post Cyber Punk.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Operator drones, which are specifically design to look as close to humans as possible to make interacting with them easier. In terms of looks, they've managed to climb out of the Uncanny Valley, although their monotonous speech and lack of personality drives them right back into it.
- Robo Cam: Tashima and everyone else with sufficient augmentations is able to overlay their vision with a Heads-Up Display that provides various information and features.
- Swiss-Army Weapon: Tashima's VF-EMRP (Variable Fire Electromagnetic-Rail Pistol) has the ability to switch between pistol, submachine gun, and rifle modes.
- Sword and Gun: One of Tashima's favored fighting styles later on in the story after acquiring a nanoblade.
- Translator Microbes: The Pokemon translators. Most commonly, they take the form of cybernetic implants, however exterior mechanical versions and actual nanomachine-based versions are available.
