Infinity Train Blossoming Trail / Tropes H to O

H

• Hated Hometown: Chloe shows no love for Vermilion City as it's filled with people who absolutely show no love for her. She even says farewell before she enters the train, and hopes that she can stay on said train for as long as she wants. When she learns about the Internet campaign in Arc 2, she dismisses it as the love and support came too late to mean anything. Parker feels the same way, as the citizens there never showed his sister any sort of love when she needed it the most.
• Headdesk: In Chapter 5, Chloe does one of these (just like Hiro Hamada) when she can't think of a good story to write.
  Chloe: Dumb brain! Got nothing! Stupid! Useless! No good!
• Heroic Canines, Villainous Felines: Atticus is The Good King who accompanies the Red Lotus Trio, while The Cat is depicted as a slimy coward who'd rather run away than face her problems.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • One of the things the Apex did during their visit to the Plush Penguin Car was throw sea salt in Nico's eyes. Cara used the same trick to escape.
  • A Flashback in Chapter 11 reveals that Sara was once exceptionally cruel to Chloe, dumping red paint on her costume for the talent show and later directly onto Chloe herself. She also used the paint bucket to hurt Parker. That same bucket ended up in Chloe's hands when she retaliated, using it to bludgeon her bully in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • Sara and the other bullies decide to mock Parker by sarcastically listing all the things they like about Chloe — specifically, all the ways she reacts to their cruelty. Trip records the whole thing, as do several other students.
  • Goh posts a long diatribe on the #CallingChloe page, slandering her in order to make himself look like the bigger victim. Suffice to say, this doesn't garner the sort of sympathetic response he was hoping for.
  • The Apex's philosophy gets turned against them by Amelia, who takes advantage of the fact that she still has an incredibly high number to help convince them that she's The Conductor and get them to listen to what they've got to say.
  • UnChloe not being able to shut up when she's gloating gives Parker the courage to not only stand up to her but create a wish, just as she's about to die, to create good things with the Unown.
• Holding Hands:
  • After they forgive each other for getting Chloe's shoulder hit with hot water, Lexi and Chloe are shown to be holding hands all the time when together.
  • Trip and Ash hold hands after they decide to get together as a sign of reassurance.
• Hope Spot:
  • In the Flashback to the talent show, Chloe rallies after finding her ruined costume, improvising a new outfit from what she has on hand, and going on to perform. Sara and the rest of her bullies respond by escalating their behavior, confronting her after the show and dumping paint on her directly, making a mockery of her efforts.
  • After that incident, Professor Cerise was finally aware of what his daughter was going through, and resolved to help her... by making her come straight to the lab after school. This turned out to be Not Quite the Right Thing, especially as it gave Chloe a front-row seat to how much he appeared to favor and fawn over Goh and Ash.
  • In Miss April's eyes, her troublesome students seemed to shape up after being punished for the incident and started including Chloe more, engaging her in more conversations. What she didn't realize was that this was just a new form of torment — they kept asking her about Pokémon out of mockery rather than actual interest in her thoughts and opinions.
  • By the climax of Act 1, Chloe's bullies have been exposed and punished, Ash and the Professor are working to better themselves, and a swell of public support in response to her disappearance seems to ensure that Chloe will come home to a better situation than the one she left. It seems like that's the end of the issues in Vermillion... until Goh starts sinking into vicious denial and Parker unleashes the Unown to make everyone suffer on his terms and when Chloe finds out, sends her into a Heroic BSoD just before she's supposed to fight off the Apex.
  • Yamper was the closest to helping Parker see the errors of his ways. But when Parker wishes to create a safe place for Chloe so she can be herself without being judged, Yamper replying that the boy wants an amusement park makes him shift gears into making such a thing.
  • Afterh his Nightmare Therapy, Goh wakes up in his apartment room and it looks like he's going to learn to be a better person, right? Well, he instead starts tearing up the graphs and charts on his wall, shatter the monitors and Mew-tracking device and loses any semblance of sanity to the point of being sent to the hospital.
• Hourglass Plot:
  • With Chloe's sudden disappearance, Goh finds himself in the same position she once was in: left behind while his friend chases her dreams without giving him a second glance and without any way to reach out to her. Moreover, while Goh is constantly messaging her with apologies, Chloe is acting just like he is by basically ignoring his pleas to return home and deleting the messages before downright saying goodbye to him.
  • And while Chloe is shown to be growing and blooming into a new version of herself, Goh and her father are becoming her: stagnant and actually regressing, along with refusing to confront their troubles and flaws.
  • Though Professor Cerise pulls himself out of his spiral, Goh strengthens the Plot Parallels in Act 2, convincing himself that Chloe is completely to blame for their friendship falling apart and that everybody is aligned against him... much like how she felt backed into a corner without anyone to turn to. However, Goh is much more passive-aggressive about it.
  • Yeardley and Sara got away with bullying Chloe and Chloe just withdrew into herself. In Act 2, Chloe has become more outgoing and a leader while those two bullies are now forced into hiding.
  • Upon learning about what's happening back in Vermillion, Chloe finds herself in the same position as Ash and the others were in Act 1: aware that her friends and family are in danger but largely unable to act upon that knowledge.
• How We Got Here: The Prelude to Arc 2 begins with the events that got Hop onto the Infinity Train.
• Humans Are Flawed:
  • The Infinity Train only goes after people who have some sort of flaw or going through troubled times, but the story also highlights how most of the people in Chloe's life aren't perfect and contributed to Chloe's problems, most notably for being ignorant of who she really is or not doing more to support her. The only person in Chloe's life that is essentially flawless is her brother and his only flaw was just keeping Chloe's likes a secret (but given how their father reacted, he had a good reason to) until it shows that he has quite a temper that will let him lash out at people for how they treated his sister. And then Arc 2 reveals that he also has a Fatal Flaw of his own...
  • This is even discussed in Act 2 in that people can and will make mistakes because they're human.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Both on and off the train, humans can be real jerks.
  • On the train, there's the Apex who have destroyed many cars and traumatized numerous denizens. They also have attacked passengers who don't follow their philosophy, with Trip having his eye hit with a sledgehammer and then his wrist tattooed by Simon and Tokio was hit across the face with a guitar by an Apex member.
  • In the Pokémon world, Chloe's classmates relished in making Chloe miserable and laughed at all the times they were happy in bullying her. It gets to the point where Parker and Professor Cerise specifically call them "monsters". Parker himself becomes just as monstrous as her classmates when he gets the Unown to enact vengeance in his sister's name.
• Hurricane of Puns: The Infinity Train has numerous apps based on its name: Infinet (The wi-fi service), Infinotification (The messaging system to talk to other passengers), Infinitube (which is where one can watch all of One-One documentary videos), Infinitime (the clock system), Infinitalk (Translator), Infinigram, etc.

I

• I Call It "Vera": Chloe gives her donut holer the name of "Cheshire" because of how Randall started selling them thanks to The Cat. It's revealed in a later chapter that she did this to her softball bat, "Silver Night" and her umbrella is called "Riddle".
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
  • Most chapters in Arc 1, save for the first, have two titles, reflecting the split nature of the narrative. The first half of each title comes from an Ability Pokémon can have, which symbolizes something about that chapter's events. The second half follows the Infinity Train trend of being the name of the train car the character is visiting.
  • Starting with Arc 2, barring the Prelude, there will be three titles: one that is named after a song from Silent Hill, one that is about the name of the train car, and one in parenthesis that is based off one of the lyrics in Alex's Theme.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: Trip brings this up in Chapter 9 when he tells Ash to make sure Goh never learns about the Infinity Train.
  Trip: If he learns about the Train, he’s going to become obsessed with it, like he became obsessed with Mew, with Pokémon and you [Ash]. And if he becomes obsessed with it, he’ll try to enter it. And if he enters it, then that’s two children that have disappeared completely and there’ll be even less of a chance of finding Chloe if Chloe is adamant about never wanting to see him ever again.
  Ash: But...that’s just like lying to him!
  Trip: Ignorance is bliss in this case. Have him do what he loved even when Chloe was still in this city and he’ll never ever have to know. I mean, it’s not like it’s going to make a difference, right? He wasn’t thinking of Chloe then and he shouldn’t be thinking of her now if he knows what’s good for him.
  • Jinny is completely ignorant as to what happened in the Unown Arc, which Trip and Serena hope to maintain.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • In Chapter 5, Goh chews out Chloe's classmates for how they treated her and they seem guilty about it, but in Chapter 13, they are not ashamed to bring up all the cruel things they did to her and keep calling her names, citing that Chloe isn't there to stop them. They pay for their ignorance.
  • Goh himself is guilty of this; after getting grounded for writing a smear letter on Facedex, his mother tires to tell him that he can be better than all those bullies. But Goh is stewing in anger and rejecting any notion that he's at fault for Chloe running off.
• Innocently Insensitive: Has its own page.
• Insistent Terminology: No, Randall did not gift Chloe an L-Bend steel pipe. It's a donut holer. For making things into donuts.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • The author confirms that most of the episodes of Pokémon Journeys still play out (particularly episodes 29 and 31) even though Chloe doesn't play a part in them. However, they don't play out chronologically as Episode 32's events are shown before Episode 31 starts.
  • Ash questions if anything could've happened if he actually did more for Chloe. Trip can sadly note that given how deep these problems were, it wouldn't have changed much.
  • Parker's anger issues against Sara and Yeardley wouldn't have changed even if he knew they were to be staying in the Cerise Laboratory for their actions.
  • While the circumstances are different, the Apex's plotline plays out exactly like it does in Book 3: Grace befriends Hazel and gains empathy, Simon falls off deeper and deeper into the deep end until he meets a grizzly end, and the Apex come to find out that their quest was All for Nothing. About the only thing that changes is that instead of opting to change and get better, the children, understandably, start throwing blame at each other and want nothing to do with Grace afterwards.
• Internal Deconstruction:
  • Act 2 begins seriously dissecting the concept of an Accusation Fic, as the punishments being doled out in response to the situation start crossing the line from justified to increasingly disproportionate. What began as Laser-Guided Karma snowballs into anything but.
  • The dramatic turning point of Act 2 kicks off with another long, detailed lecture about how horribly Chloe was mistreated, followed by another harsh punishment being meted out. Except this time, the one making the speech and doling out the punishments isn't as justified as they believe, and their actions cross the line over into monstrous. From here, the story explores what kind of horrible things can happen when somebody decides that their personal catharsis overrides more measured or appropriate responses, or is more concerned with vengeance than healing.
  • Chloe as a character is increasingly dissected as the story delves into the roots of her issues, showing that many of her problems stemmed from mounting self-hatred over the bullying she faced, along with her personal biases and resentments growing deeply ingrained. More and more, the choices she made are called into question, brought into harsher scrutiny over time.
  • The same applies to Parker, particularly after the Unown come into play, as the darker aspects of his relationship with Chloe come into play. His insistence that everything is clearly black and white, with his sister as a clear-cut victim and everyone else aligned against her, gives way to Black-and-White Insanity and mounting anger issues at any display of injustice, real, imagined, or exaggerated.
  • The amount of lectures and rants directed at the characters in story eventually gets to a point that both Cerise parents are sick of hearing them. When Talia sends a Tough Love email to Chloe, she bluntly tells Chloe that at this point they'd been told everything there is possible to say a ton of times already while the parents mentally snark that everyone seems to think they were the first to tell them both how they failed as parents.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In the first chapter Chloe and Goh learn that Ash is the Alola League Champion.
  • In Chapter 6, Chloe and Atticus learn of Grace and Simon.
  • In Chapter 7, Professor Cerise, Ash, Chryssa, and Renji learn of the Infinity Train and of the Apex from Trip.
  • In Chapter 11, Goh learns that Tokio was taken onto the Infinity Train and Ash and Trip learn in the following chapter that Goh knows of the Train's existence.
  • In Chapter 15, Goh learns about Trip being a former passenger on the Train after he just told Leon and Professor Sycamore about said Train.
  • Chapter 17 has Amelia recognizing Hazel as one of her creations. Professor Cerise learns more about the Unown, while Sara and Yeardley learn that 'No-Show Goh' was the one going on all the adventures while Chloe was left at the lab. Reggie also learns about the Infinity Train and Trip and Ash learn what happened to their brother.
  • Chapter 18 has The Red Lotus Trio learning about Hazel and they and Amelia have a conversation with Walter and Henry about the plan known as "The Cage of Flauros".
  • Chapters 19 and 20 has Grace and Simon learn about Chloe and about the Apex kid who drowned in the Fog Car.
• Irony: See here.
• It's All My Fault:
  • Goh spends Chapter 3 unable to sleep and thinking that Chloe running away is all his fault and spends the next few chapters blaming himself entirely for this mess.
    "Chloe's gone because of me, Chloe's gone because of me..."
  • Professor Cerise looks in horror when Chloe unleashes her outburst at him, eating the curry Mr. Mime cooked before weeping.
  • Parker thinks that Chloe ran away because he didn't love her enough.
  • Ash beats himself up for not doing anything more to help Chloe. As time goes on, this extends to blaming himself for others ending up on the Train as well. By Act 2, he starts letting go of the Guilt Complex he put upon himself.
  • After learning about Parker's Unown-fueled rampage, Chloe is overcome with remorse and blames herself for everything that unfolded back in Vermillion. This eventually culminates in her ranting about how she's at fault in the middle of Act 3.
• It's a Long Story: When Goh mentions that the only train station in town is nowhere near the alleyway where Chloe's hair scrunchie was found, Ash also agrees on this.
  Ash: I mean, my old friends Iris and Cilan took the Magnet Train there to the Johto region—
  Goh: Iris and Cilan?
  Ash: Long story.
• It's the Journey That Counts: When Chloe asks Atticus the possibility of never wanting to go back home, Atticus states that she'll eventually find that she wants to go return.
  Atticus: All journeys come to an end eventually, but we must learn to accept what the journey has taught us and to make changes to our worldview when need be. Failure to do so can have dire consequences.

J

• Jackass Genie: The wish-granter in Chloe's story gleefully twists the protagonist's words around (to let them see their friend again) to ensure that their wish is effectively wasted, rendering his quest All for Nothing.
• Journey to Find Oneself: Chloe decides to take one of these on the train in the hopes of her experimenting and trying new things without being pressured by everyone.

K

• Karmic Twist Ending:
  • In Chloe's story about the wish-granter, the protagonist grows so obsessed with capturing the creature that he's willing to kill his rival. However, in doing so, he accidentally strikes down his best friend, setting the stage for the wish-granter to twist his desire and curse him to chase the wish-granter for all eternity.
  • Parker rewrites The Little Match Girl that has the girl not seeing her grandma take her to heaven, but instead she summons a demon (Marchosias) to help kill her abusive father and older sisters.
• Kids Are Cruel: A recurring theme of the story.
  • The majority of Chloe's classmates mock her and belittle her for her love of the macabre and not being into Pokémon, being more interested in her actually battling the Alola League Champion than the fact that she vanished into thin air. Even Goh is somewhat guilty of this, stating that Chloe has no right to call him out for abandoning her since he has a dream and she doesn't. While they are called out for their cruelty, later chapters reveal just how far their bullying has gone in the past, and that they shifted to teasing her about Pokémon because it was a 'safer' way of continuing their bullying after being punished before. Chapter 13 has them recount nearly every single act of bullying they did to her.
  • The Apex are a bunch of hellions who were raised to hurt and destroy things under the "guidance" that it makes them powerful.
  • While Goh isn't cruel, he had been ignoring Chloe in favor of Mew, even telling her that she didn't have any right to call him out on this neglect because she didn't have any dreams of her own and thus couldn't understand what drove him. However, Part 2 shows him becoming more and more of a jerk as he lashes out at everyone. He sees what kind of monster he becomes in Chapter 21 and he hates it.
  • In Act 2, Parker Cerise proves to have quite the wicked streak themselves once the Unown get involved, using their power to gleefully attack everyone he sees as having slighted him and his sister.

L

• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • In Chapter 13, Chloe's tormenters get a boatload of this when they find out that Parker, Ash, and Trip did an Engineered Public Confession about all the bullying they did to Chloe, and many of their peers recorded this too. The Intermission expands that they are not only suspended for a week, but they are essentially grounded by their parents and must confess to their deeds via Livestream. Sara and Yeardley are forced to not only write letters for every single crime they committed, but they will work with at the Lab as "Chloe" until she comes home.
  • Chapter 17 has Parker think he's invoking this when he unleashes the Unown and sadistically punishes Sara and Yeardley with the help of an Unown copy of Chloe with black magic. He isn't.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • Like most Infinity Train crossover fics, the author assumes the reader has at least watched Book One before reading the story, as the first thing that Chloe sees when she wakes up on the train is the intro message One-One gives every passenger as of Book 2. Atticus also explains everything that occurred that season in Chapter 3. On a lesser note, it reveals that Ash finally won a Pokémon League, having become the Alola League Champion at the end of the Sun & Moon anime.
  • Chapter 4 briefly mentions how Faba was related to why Lillie couldn't touch Pokémon from the Pokémon Sun and Moon season. Jaden's story in the same chapter drops hints about the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX anime (particular of the Supreme King of Darkness).
  • Chapter 13 spoils the story of how Shio was abandoned by her mother and adopted by Satou.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: After a pep talk from Atticus in Chapter 3, Chloe goes "This is my story..." in the pretense that this is her taking her life into her own hands, but also mentioning that this fanfic is about her.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Trip believes that Goh should be when it comes to the Train, so that he doesn't potentially get drawn on board in hopes of tracking Chloe down, risking two children being stuck for who knows how long and probably making Chloe never return if they ever meet. Unfortunately for him, Goh learns about the Train anyway from Tokio.
  • Played for Drama regarding the Infinity Train. Those inside it don't know anything about what's happening outside it, and vice versa with those outside. Because of this, endless drama ensues as everybody immediately believes the worst case scenario in both senses.

M

• Magic A Is Magic A: It's noted that Aura and Psychic energy are wildly different, and it's a struggle for Ash to interface the two when he has to call Mr. Mime for help.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone in the Cerise Lab reacts like this in Chapter 17 when Parker unleashes the Unown.
• Mirror Character: Chloe Cerise to three Infinity Train characters.
  • Tulip Olsen: Both of them are Fiery Redheads who run away from home for different reasons — Chloe because she doesn't want to be in a city where no one cares for her and everyone expects her to like Pokémon and Tulip runs away to Coding Camp when her parents can't take her (and to get far away from the fact her parents are divorced) — and their family lives are the opposite. Chloe has a good relationship with her mom and little brother but is closed off from her dad, while Tulip has problems with both her parents due to the divorce. They both blame someone else for their problems — Tulip blamed her parents for the divorce, Chloe blames Ash and Goh for her horrible friendship problems (even though Goh points out that Chloe refused every offer to join them) and her father for being absolutely ignorant of her troubles.
    • Tulip has an efficiency for coding and gaming while Chloe is a reader and is skilled in writing macabre stories. Tulip has one good friend in Mikayla while Chloe's Childhood Friend Goh is distant and doesn't really notice her in favor of Pokémon. Tulip was embarrassed in having to sing (since she found the song she had to sing "embarrassing"), whereas Chloe gains the courage to sing and quote lyrics and literary passages without hesitation. Tuip only used the donut holer against the Conductor (and only bought it in exchange for Randall helping her retrieve One-One), whereas Chloe is gifted her donut holer, names it and uses it as her go-to weapon.
    • Also, Chloe was 10 when she entered the train with '151' as her starting number while Tulip was 13 with '115'. Tulip is an only child, while Chloe has a little brother. Tulip constantly questioned the Train's logic, Chloe goes along with it. Last, Tulip is Famed In-Story by Atticus who helped end Amelia's reign, while Chloe is a newcomer on the Train itself and later tasked by One-One to end The Apex.
    • Tulip was analytical and usually wrote notes about the Train as a means of keeping her alive, while Chloe sees the Train as a journey and keeps a diary of her experiences with each car. Tulip was initially afraid of her number going down — because One-One stated she'd be "gone forever", which she mistook for dying — while Chloe is indifferent about it (since she arrived after One-One became Conductor again) mostly because since she knows that she'll leave if it drops to 0, it means that she'll have to go back home to face her crappy hometown.
  • Jesse Cosay: He's a 14-year-old swimmer, Chloe is a 10-year-old writer. His flaw was being indecisive and a doormat in regards to being pushed around by his "friends" while Chloe's main flaw is also being pushed around by her classmates and peers and feeling inadequate to her friend and family. Jesse was into sports, whereas Chloe feels ignored in the subject (except for softball, which is her favorite). His starting number was 31; Chloe's was five times larger. He liked to nickname animals he came across with "Dracula", while Chloe names anything she uses as weapons (her softball bat at home, her donut holer and umbrella. Both of them have little brothers who idolize them, but Nate was injured because of Jesse's passivity while Parker only got injured because of his attempts to protect his sister. Jesse was happy to sing along without a care, while it took some time for Chloe to feel comfortable again.
  • MT:
    • She was a reflection of Tulip and had to do everything Tulip did much to her annoyance, while Chloe is essentially looked at as the successor to her father's research. MT wanted to leave the train, Chloe wants to stay on it. The new look she gives herself is a black sleeveless top and completely shaving all her hair in order to make her harder to find by the Mirror Cops, while Chloe gains a white flowing dress and lets her hair down to symbolize the freedom of being herself. MT was being pursued by the Mirror Cops who wanted to essentially kill her, Chloe isn't being chased by anyone on the Train, but back in her hometown, her friends and family are wondering where the heck she's gone.
    • MT was bullied and looked down because she wasn't a human, Chloe was mocked because of her interests and that she wasn't into Pokémon or following in her father's footsteps. They were also called insulting names: MT was called "Sliver" by the Mirror Cops and "Null" by Simon while Chloe is monikered "Klutzy Chloe" and "Monster Lover" by her classmates. Both of them also have different temperaments: MT has a Hair-Trigger Temper while Chloe is known to be a slow burn until she hits her Rage Breaking Point.
    • ( They also had a moment where they attacked one of their assailants and were covered in blood: MT grinded Mace into one of the Train wheels, while Chloe beat her bully with a paint can with red paint drenching head to toe.
• Mirror Self: Discussed. Atticus tells the adventure of the Chrome Car that acts as a portal to the Mirror World and looks at his reflection in the river, wondering what his counterpart is thinking. Chloe also thinks of what happened if she became her mirror self: outgoing, positive, confident, speaks her mind and everyone gets the hint that she will not get a job involving Pokémon. As the story progresses, she's becoming just like said mirror version. UnChloe is a different take on this trope since she's everything Chloe's mirror-self should be but lacks Chloe's kindness, compassion, empathy and restraint on violence.
• Missing White Woman Syndrome: The best way to describe the way Act 1 handles Chloe's disappearance; once she gets trainnapped, most of the Cerise Institute enters a panic trying to figure out where she went and whether she's still alive or not, with Goh driving himself sick looking for her for three days straight. It gets to the point where a hastag is created in order to bring more attention to Chloe's disappearance and try to change things in Vermillion City so she won't run off again. It takes Parker going insane with the power of the Unown and going into a rampage on Chloe's name in Act 2 for the syndrome to finally die down.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Chapter 14's Hidden Temple Car is a fun romp in a temple with some puzzles and Red Versus Blue references ("I am Chloe Cerise and I. hate. TEMPLE GUARDS!!!") while the ending has Leon getting an email from his brother and the reveal that Alain once passed by The Fog Car.
  • Chapter 16 has the Red Lotus Trio having dinner and performing a rousing video to Ava Max's "Kings and Queens". Then the chapter ends in Silent Hill where Hop is given a present in an Apex harpoon-pack, Paul is imprisoned and tortured by Walter and it's revealed that he is the cause for the death of an Apex member.
• Moral Myopia: Julie yells at Parker for going after Yeardley with a bat, completely ignoring that she and her peers provoked him by gleefully bragging about all the ways they made his sister suffer.
  • Parker has a pretty bad case of this too, especially if it involves Chloe in a less-than-flattering light.
• More than Mind Control: Chapter 17 features Sara's confession; while this wasn't made willingly, the sentiments revealed are very much her own.
• Morton's Fork:
  • Ash finds himself in one such situation when Trip wants to hide the existence of the Train from Goh. On one hand, Trip is rightly worried that revealing the truth will cause Goh to try and figure out some way of boarding the Train himself. On the other, Ash fears that keeping Goh Locked Out of the Loop will have a similarly negative impact on his psyche. Ultimately, Goh learns about the Train from Tokio; he's not pleased upon discovering that Ash and the others already knew about it.
  • During the second arc, Ash and Trip find themselves in a similar debate about whether or not to inform Chloe about what's been happening with Parker and the Unown during her absence. Telling her would likely distract her, which could be incredibly dangerous on the Train, but leaving her in the dark won't help anyone either and would make her 'utterly furious'' when she gets home. They did the right thing by telling her as this would spur Chloe to write an email to bait Parker into talking to her after UnChloe blocked her attempts to text him.]
  • Chloe's stuck on one of these after the events of Act 2: she either stays on the Train and keeps avoiding her problems, or she returns to a home that hates her for prompting Parker to unleash the Unown and hurt a lot of people. And she has nobody to blame but herself.
• Moving the Goalposts:
  • Downplayed with the curry Chloe makes in Home Ec. Mr. Pepper wanted his students to 'make the recipe their own', and decides that Chloe following the recipe precisely simply isn't good enough.
  • When Goh accuses Ash of not doing enough to help track down Chloe, Ash responds that he's been calling everyone he can think of, spreading the word far and wide. Goh then mulishly insists that he still hasn't done enough, and dismisses the idea that she could have gotten far enough for such wide-spread efforts to have any real effect.
  • Parker has this issue when it comes to Chloe's bullies, with his anger issues further compounding it: Even after the bullies have their bullying revealed, he refuses to see this as being enough, so he unleashes the Unown to reach what he believes to be enough.
  • Chloe's also got a bad case of this. People begin to notice her after she goes missing? She sticks to the fact that they only did so after she went missing. Her father's starting to notice he wasn't the best parent? He should've realized it before she left. A campaign is made to bring awareness to her situation regarding her disinterest in Pokémon? She, once again, sticks to the fact that this only happened after she went missing. It gets so bad that her mother calls her out on this near the end of Act 2.
• The Multiverse: Over time this has been expanded to a point of being a minor reoccuring theme of the Infinity Train segments. Worlds ranging from Pokemon to Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS, to Transformers: Prime, One Piece, and more exist and all can be visited by the multiverse.
• Mutually Fictional: There are two Chloe's on the Infinity Train that we know of: Chloe the former Superheroine Queen Bee, and Chloe Cerise who has her own thoughts on the 'Ledyba Hero' of her own universe's fiction.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Goh quickly realizes what he said to Chloe was absolutely hurtful and chases her out into the night. Unfortunately, he misses her being caught by the train and finds only her hair scrunchie left behind. Chapters show him being completely eaten up by the guilt of what he did but he doesn't realize that he needs to change.
  • Professor Cerise has this realization after Chloe runs away from the lab, as it dawns upon him that he's been completely unaware of his daughter's insecurities. Word of God is that the author was really annoyed and believed that Professor Cerise was oblivious to his daughter's worries until the anime showed otherwise. Chapter 12 makes him fully realize how, in the eyes of his children, he can't be trusted to actually be there for them. Then Chapter 19 has him learn from Yamper that by not telling Chloe to "try again", all he did was make her feel as if no one truly wanted to be by her side or help her.
  • Some of Chloe's classmates look horrified when Goh chews them out for how they're responsible for Chloe running away...and then go back to their bullying ways as they gloat to Parker how much they loved tormenting his sister. They have a much more sincere reaction when they learn just how much Sara had manipulated them and how they ruined Chloe's life and traumatized their family with their actions.
  • Parker has this reaction when he learns about Miss April's suicide attempt, and how he's hurting the real Chloe.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: As Chloe prepares to continue her journey through the Cyan Desert Car, she's struck by a sudden feeling that things aren't quite right. Cut to the scene in the Cerise Lab that culminates in her brother unleashing the Unown.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When she realizes that she's stuck on the train and Yamper is unaware of where she's gone, Chloe thinks that he will be like the Ninetales who waited two hundred years for their master. This was the plot of one of the Johto episodes, "Just Waiting For A Friend".
  • In Chapter 10, Chloe remarks that she knows an old man who uses a Houndoom to deliver mail and likes babysitting Baby Pokémon, which is another Johto episode, "Houndoom's Special Delivery".
  • Upon learning of a malasada shop in the Canals of Fondue Car, Chloe questions if these malasadas are triangle-shaped and filled with jelly, referencing that infamous line of riceballs in the original anime.
  • Goh's captor threatens him with a gun, commenting that he never got why people don't use them anymore. This references an infamous banned episode of the series where Ash is similarly held at gunpoint.

N

• Never My Fault:
  • Yeardley and the rest of Chloe's shallower classmates refuse to acknowledge that they played any part in driving her away, turning the blame back onto Goh and insisting that he hurt her far more than they did. That said, some of them prove more willing to admit that they aren't completely blameless, and Yeardley acknowledges that he's not the only "work in progress"...until Chapter 13 has them not learning a thing and have them go back to gloating on their evil ways.
  • Professor Cerise starts blaming others — like Renji — for Chloe's problems instead of noting that, as her father, he should've been more aware of what was going on.
  • For all of their concerns, Kurune and Ikuo never seriously tried encouraging their son to build more of a social life. When Goh calls them out on this, his mother refuses to accept any blame, calling attention to his own reluctance to own his mistakes in the nastiest possible way.
  • Goh regresses into this attitude in Part 2 once he's no longer able to deny that Chloe doesn't want to be friends anymore and keeps stating it's Chloe's fault for not speaking up more. He regrets this attitude later on..
  • Subverted with Parker, while he is horrified at what he's done, he felt like he needed to something since all the adults and teenagers in his life barely did anything to help Chloe prior to her running away.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Subverted and Played With when a furious Chloe brings up Sara's father. In this case, rather than speaking out against the deceased, she's focused on why he died: Sara had demanded he replace the Hi Skitty doll he'd bought her with something "cuter".
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Played With in the Plush Penguin Car. Atticus asks Bubblegum how she would feel if her efforts to share new recipes were ignored by her peers. This sets off a stream of arguments as more and more penguins reveal their problems with the way the Potluck is held. Emperor Neapolitan blames Atticus for this, only for Atticus to retort that he's exposed the underlying issues with his methods.
  • Similarly Played With when Trip berates Ash for his failure to connect with Chloe. Not only does Ash come away convinced that he didn't do enough, he later shows signs of a burgeoning Guilt Complex, blaming himself for everything going wrong with the situation and Trip realizing that he just made his boyfriend go through unneeded angst.
  • Ash attempts to get Parker to call off UnChloe by telling him about Leon and how he'll notice if anything happens to Ash and his friends since he'd promised the champion that he'd confront Bede about what happened to Hop. Unfortunately, Parker just folds "Avenging Leon's Brother" into his plans for the geas he puts Ash and co. under.
  • Mr. Bradbury brings up the time he told Professor Cerise to get Chloe to a counselor. Seeing as the Professor didn't heed his advice, look at what happened next.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Trip first encountered the Apex when he defended the denizens of a car from their savagery, calling out his Pokémon to fight. Simon and Grace promptly proved that they have no qualms about hurting anyone who gets in their way, with Simon taking a sledgehammer to Trip's face and forcibly tattooing their mark onto him.
  • Happens twice in the finale of the Plush Penguin Car: a Flashback reveals that Cara caught the eyes of the Apex by stepping in to defend her best friend from their cruelty, while the denizen who helped her escape from them was severely injured for his troubles.
  • Parker once attempted to defend Chloe from her bullies, only to get backhanded with a paint bucket.
  • After Parker unleashes the Unown, Cerise, Ash, and his friends run back into the lab to help Yeardley and Sara, feeling that they are responsible for the two regardless of what they've done. This leads to them getting captured by UnChloe.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: A flashback in Chapter 11 has Chloe finally snapping after Sara decides to dump red paint all over her, attack Parker when he tried to defend his sister, and then mock how Professor Cerise doesn't love her. She charges towards Sara, tackles her to the ground and beats her with the very same paint can, the red paint covering her so it looks like blood, and has Chloe scream in Sara's face that her dad is dead because of her and that her mom doesn't give a shit. After she's done beating the ever-living daylights out of this bully, she threatens to kill her classmates if they ever do a stunt like that again, hurt her brother or call her "Monster Lover".
• "No More Holding Back" Speech: Given by Ash during Chapter 18, as he faces his Guilt Complex head-on and declares that he won't blame himself for Parker hating him anymore. He also makes clear that he will take whatever advantage he can get against the Unown, even if it means putting his own life on the line.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Chapter 10 has Atticus remark that he, Chloe, and Lexi were sent to goblin jail. Chloe remarks that it wasn't her fault that happened.
  • A pre-story noodle incident involving one of Ash and Goh's adventures was mentioned in Chapter 18 in which an attempt to catch a Jigglypuff led to "a roller derby, free movie tickets for a year for the both of them, and Dragonite entering and winning a Pokeringer competition". It is used specifically in relation to how frustrated Chloe gets when she refuses to go on adventures with Ash and Goh and misses out on things she'd want to do because of her issues pre-story.
  • Charizard missed being around for the events of the Unown arc due to being off getting Ash a birthday present. What and why Charizard is doing this isn't clear, with the only hint being him being in Kalos to get it.
• Not Helping Your Case:
  • When Parker accuses her and Yeardley of wanting his sister to starve, Sara admits that she once stole Chloe's lunch while she was distracted with other students tossing her backpack to the dirt. This nearly gets her to lose her head from Silver Night...and lose much more after Parker unleashes the Unown.
  • Parker would probably get a bit less yelling at if, after the Unown are banished, he didn't blame others for not doing enough before the Unown gave him the power to do it himself.
• Not Quite the Right Thing:
  • Professor Cerise tried protecting his daughter from her bullies by having her work at his lab after school. This unintentionally ensured she couldn't join any after-school clubs and had less free time, intensifying her resentment of his research and her belief that he just wanted her to conform.
  • Despite their concerns, Goh's parents took a hands-off approach with their son, not wanting to curtail his dreams... and in the process, enabled the behavioral patterns they were worried about to get much, much worse.
  • Goh's plans to 'save' Chloe also run headlong into this due to his dramatic inability to understand that their argument was not the cause of their issues, but the result of them building up for so long unaddressed.
  • During the Intermission after Act 1, Lexi tells Chloe that she really should answer Goh's texts, if only to make a clean break with him and her father. Unfortunately, Goh is in no condition to listen to her, and the things Chloe says and does as part of her farewells proceed to haunt her throughout the following Arc.
  • Part of Yeardley and Sara's punishment is being forced to work at Professor Cerise's lab to get a taste of what her life was really like. This doesn't go over well with Parker.
  • Goh finds himself repeatedly running into this while repeating the day that Chloe ran away. Every move he makes to try and prevent her from leaving fails until he has Gengar physically restrain her, something which does nothing to address the actual issues and just makes her feel even more trapped. And in general the Epiphany Therapy does make Goh realize his actions...except now he can't even start trying to improve.
• Oh, Crap!: Plenty occur in Chapter 17, with the first coming when Amelia sees footage of Hazel with Grace, Simon and Tuba in the Debutante Ball Car and realizes that she's one of the denizens she created,, meaning that Hazel is triggering the pulse sending cars to quarantine and she's at high risk of being wheeled by the sociopaths.

O

• Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date: Downplayed in that it's not a date, but the Red Lotus Trio take a boat across the lake during their stay in The Crayon Car, with Chloe holding her parasol and Lexi doing the rowing. Also, the one doing the serenading is Chloe, and Lexi's feelings for her have been shown to be platonic.
• Ominous Fog: As its name suggests, the Fog Car — the one Hop ended up in — is filled with this. Given that this is Silent Hill does not help matters.
• Once an Episode:
  • There's always going to be at least one scene of food being described in each chapter.
  • Nearly every chapter has a flashback to expand more on characters.
• Outside-Context Problem: The titular Infinity Train is this to the Pokémon world since it's an otherworldly train that picks up people who are going through serious problems in their lives, and has no connection with any Legendaries. It also has caused a lot of havoc in their personal lives all while trying to help Chloe's own since the only way to enter the Train is if they have issues and the only way for Chloe to leave is when she no longer has any.

---