History Fanfic / DragonsDance

''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/24081346/chapters/57959182 Dragon's Dance]]'' is a ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' fanfic by [[https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Pen/pseuds/A_Pen A_Pen]]. It tells the story of the future Kanto/Joto league champion Lance- how he became such a powerful trainer, why he left his home and family in the Dragon's Den, and why he hates Team Rocket so much. It takes place in a universe that is mostly inspired by the videogames, but draws heavy inspiration from the manga in some spots, and is much closer in tone to it than the games.

Wataru is a young boy from the small mountain village of Ryu's Gift, the only place left in Joto where wild dragonites, dragonairs, and dratinis can be found. He and his dratini, Toku, are banished after breaking the village's law by revealing the mountain's secret to the son of a visiting trader. Their only hope of being allowed to return is to evolve Toku into a dragonite, a feat that would prove him to be a master dragon tamer.

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: ''No one'' likes Kikuko, Kanto's champion. The older generations regard her fearfully as a witch (not helped by her specialty being ghost type pokemon), while the younger generations resent her for doing nothing to help deal with the numerous issues in Kanto- the danger and lack of job options other than mining in in Pewter, the poverty in Viridian, the rise of Team Rocket, etc. Even casual battle fans don't like her, since her battles are boring to watch.

* BearyFriendly: While powerful, Archer tells Lance that wild ursaring are gentle by nature and will not attack unprovoked. This is why later Lance thinks that Proton threatening a man with his ursaring is just a bluff. [[spoiler: It isn't. ]]
* BewareTheMindReader: A kadabra is employed by the Grand Royale Casino to monitor the thoughts of everyone who enters and to warn the guards if someone is planning on trying to rob it. Wataru realizes that while the casino employs burly humans and tough-looking pokemon like machokes and charmelon as bouncers, the kababra is the ''real'' security.

* BookDumb: Wataru frequently skips his lessons on his village's history in favor of training with Toku, which he has a natural talent for. Because of this he only has a vague knowledge of major events in their history, and thus doesn't realize why keeping the dragonite who live in the valley secret from outsiders is such a big deal to the elders.
* ChekhovsGun: Early in his journey, Wataru battles Monu, who is out of badges due to his gym being destroyed by a cave-in and who gives him a piece of a moonstone instead. Much later, Hunter is trying to evolve her nidorina before her final test, but wasn't able to afford more than a moonstone fragment herself, which isn't enough. Combining the two pieces allows the nidorina to evolve into nidoqueen.
* CombatPragmatist: Hunter lays poisoned barbs around the approach to the tower to weaken any other recruits as they approach, and steals their pokeballs so that she doesn't have to fight them at full strength if they refuse her demands to turn over their tokens to her. When she knows she's outmatched in a fight against Lance and [[spoiler: his newly evolved charizard]], she has her nidoqueen attack him directly and try to knock him out.

** Lance's battle against Jiro is hilariously onesided. Toku only managed to hit his persian with a single attack that did little damage while the persian easily demolished Toku. The battle ending with her casually grooming her fur while sitting on top of Toku's prone body just added insult to injury. Despite that, Jiro is impressed- [[spoiler: after all, most people can't land a single blow against the ace pokemon of one of the Elite Four.]]
** Lance's battle with Kikuko in her old gym ends very quickly, with the only attack Toku is able to land being thunderwave. She's swiftly outmaneuvered, overpowered, and rendered unconscious from gengar's psychic attacks. While Jiro tries to encourage him afterwards by saying that Kikuko will be overconfident in their next battle because of it, Lance is left very disheartened.

** Jiro's past is also implied to have been very unpleasant. He grew up too poor to afford pokeballs, and his starter pokemon was a street cat that he found in an alley. He tells Lance that the only family he has that matters to him are his pokemon, and implies that his blood family only cared about him when he made it big.
* DebtDetester: Hunter hates that she owes Lance for giving her the moonstone piece that let her nidorina evolve. To make them even, she offers uncharacteristically offers to [[spoiler: let him go with his own token and one other to ensure that he makes it onto the command track of Team Rocket when she had Ibuki's pokeball at her mercy and could've demanded ''all'' his tokens in exchange for her safe return. When he initially refuses, she increases the offer to let him keep his token and two others.]]
* DefeatMeansFriendship: The sneasel that Archer gives to Lance initially shuns his other pokemon and enjoys sneaking behind him to poke him in the back to remind him of how she'd sliced him during the battle where she was captured. Him managing to feint ''her'' and get her in the same manner that she'd gotten him finally earns her respect, and from that point onward she became willing to train with the rest of his pokemon and even treat him with a degree of friendliness.

* DieOrFly: Stuck in a 3-on-1 fight against a nidoqueen, fearow, and scyther, Kana evolves into a charizard to even the fight- if she hadn't, she would've quickly lost.
* EvilDetectingDog: Archer is willing to hear Wataru out about having raised a dratini despite how impossible it sounds because his houndoom Acova likes him, and she doesn't like liars.
* EvilVirtues: [[spoiler:Executive Archer]] may one of the heads of Team Rocket, a murderer and a criminal, but he keeps his word. [[spoiler: When Lance surpasses all other trainees by obtaining the most tokens in their final test, he gives him the Grand Royale Casino's dratini just as he promised he would.]]

* FailureToSaveMurder: During a mission with Team Rocket, Lance stands guard outside the door while a high-ranking member threatens a wealthy man with his ursaring if he doesn't renew his business contracts with Team Rocket. The man refuses, and [[spoiler: the ursaring mauls him to death]]. Lance, frozen with shock and horror, doesn't do anything to save him, and considers himself just as guilty of the man's death as the rocket member who ordered the ursaring to attack. For that reason doesn't feel worthy of returning home [[spoiler: even though the experience causes Toku to evolve and become able to fly him away.]]
* FatalFlaw: Hunter points out that Lance's biggest flaw is that he expects battles to be straightforward and fair, even when its clear that they won't be, and is thus constantly caught off-guard by sneak attacks and foul play. [[spoiler: She uses this to her advantage when she ambushes him and steals Ibuki's pokeball in order to extort his tokens from him instead of facing him in a fair fight.]]
* FixingTheGame: According to Archer, the Grand Royale Casino's jackpot can never be won- the slots are rigged so that they will never produce the right combination. It's never confirmed either way, but it's heavily implied that he's correct.

* HeroicSacrifice: The former Cinnabar gym leader, Isami, stayed on the island during the volcano's eruption to divert the lava flow away from the islanders who weren't warned in enough time to evacuate. She and her pokemon saved many, but she was killed in the process.

* OffScreenMomentOfAwesome: Because Lance got hit by Sleep Powder and passed out, we don't get to see how Toku took out Opal's whole team ''and'' the beedrill swarm by herself to rescue him and Kana.

* PintSizedPowerhouse: Giovanni's marowak is only three feet tall, but is strong enough to bring down a full-grown charizard large enough for Lance to comfortably ride on.
* PoliceAreUseless: When he sees how badly the Grand Royale Casino's dratini is being treated, Wataru tries to go to the police and file charges of pokemon abuse/neglect. While initially interested, the officer he talks to immediately becomes cold and tells him to stop stirring up trouble when he says who the dratini is owned by, forcing Wataru to try and find a way to rescue the dratini himself.

* RopeBridge: Lance encounters one over a chasm that's already been broken, forcing him to rely on Delphin's dewgong to a make an ice bridge across.

* SatisfiedStreetRat: Jiro grew up too poor to even afford a pokeball for Kintsugi, his meowth that he found curled inside a broken flower pot. How he went from that to [[spoiler: a member of the Kanto Elite Four]] isn't something he goes into detail on, but he takes pride in how far he and his pokemon have come against the expectations of everyone who'd looked down on him.

* ThemeNaming: Lance names all the pokemon he obtains during his journey after people he admires. Ibuki the gyarados is named after his cousin, Kana the charmander is named after a master dragon tamer in Ryu's Gift, Kaisho the dratini is named after a legendary dragon master, Hunter the sneasel is named for his former friend, and Archer the aerodactyl is named for [[spoiler: his mentor in Team Rocket, Executive Archer.]]
* ThrowingTheFight: Downplayed; the exhibition match between Jiro and the Joto champion Akane is close-fought and ultimately ends in a draw. Afterwards, Jiro tells Lance that if she'd really wanted to, Akane could've won but it's an unspoken rule that exhibition matches between Kanto and Joto have to end in draws.
* UnnecessaryRoughness: Lance is disturbed by how unnecessarily painful Giovanni's takedowns are during his gym battle with him, including [[spoiler: having his nidoking force Archer to swallow poison and having his marowak dislocate the bones in Kana's wings to stop her from flying]]. He never breaks any rules for the matches, as all the damage is non-permanent, but Lance realizes it's an intimidation tactic, intended to show him just how easy it would be for Giovanni to cause that permanent damage.
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Airi, the merchant's son is a very minor character who isn't seen after the first couple chapters. Him innocently asking if he can see the dragonites after Wataru tells him they live in the valley ultimately leads to Wataru's banishment and completely changing the course of his and Toku's lives.
* UnwittingPawn: Lance spends a good chunk of the story following Archer's orders with little idea what of end goal he's actually advancing. Crashing the league president's party with a 'rampaging gyarados' to humiliate him? [[spoiler: The party was held in Cerulean City, and it had the side effect of accelerating Hamako's political decline, causing her to ultimately resign as gym leader and be replaced with someone less opposed to Team Rocket's business interests in Cerulean.]]
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: Giovanni Fiorelli is widely admired by the citizens of Viridian City for growing up poor like many of them and returning after making his fortune to build the city's pokemon gym, raising workers out of poverty with the jobs the project created. Even outside of Viridian he's widely respected for his skill as both a pokemon trainer and a businessman. What no one knows is that he's the leader of Team Rocket, the notorious criminal organization who will not hesitate to steal, extort, and kill in order to get what they want.
* YouAreWorthHell: Despite knowing that they're unlikely to ever be able to return, Toku chooses to come with Wataru on his exile rather than remain behind in the only home the two of them have ever known. Even after she evolves into a dragonite and ''could'' return on her own, she refuses to return without him.

* CurbStompBattle: Lance's battle against Jiro is hilariously onesided. Toku only managed to hit his persian with a single attack that did little damage while the persian easily demolished Toku. The battle ending with her casually grooming her fur while sitting on top of Toku's prone body just added insult to injury. Despite that, Jiro is impressed- [[spoiler: after all, most people can't land a single blow against the ace pokemon of one of the Elite Four.]]

* SkilledButNaive: While Lance is a gifted trainer and strategist who can think quickly under pressure in order to win battles, he's shockingly naive when it comes to other people and often doesn't look deeper at a situation than the surface. Even when warned that the other trainees will be free to (and even expected to) attack each other in order to steal their tokens, he doesn't repeatedly fall for traps and ambushes, nearly getting taken out multiple times by opponents who wouldn't have been able to match him in a fair fight.

''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/24081346/chapters/57959182 Dragon's Dance]]'' is a ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' fanfic by [[https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Pen/pseuds/A_Pen A_Pen]]. It tells the story of the future Kanto/Joto league champion Lance- how he became such a powerful trainer, why he left his home and family in the Dragon's Den, and why he hates Team Rocket so much. It takes place in a universe that is mostly inspired by the videogames, but draws heavy inspiration from the manga in some spots, and is much closer in tone it than the games.

* BavarianFireDrill: When an unfamiliar but well-dressed man walks into the casino and goes straight towards the door labled 'staff only', Wataru (who's been working at the casino for months and is familiar with the rest of the regular employees) immediately thinks that he's attempting to bluff him when he says that he ''is'' staff and is just so far above Wataru's paygrade that Wataru has never seen him before, and insists that the man show him his ID or he'll have him removed. [[spoiler: He actually ''is'' authorized to be there, but is impressed enough by Wataru's intelligence and refusal to back down that he offers him a better job instead of getting him into trouble.]]

* ChekhovsGun: Early in his journey, Wataru battles Monu, who is out of badges due to his gym being destroyed by a cave-in and who gives him a piece of a moonstone instead. Much later, Hunter is trying to evolve her nidorina before her final test, but wasn't able to afford more than a moonstone fragment herself, which isn't enough. Combining the two pieces allows the nidorina evolve into nidoqueen.

* SkilledButNaive: While Lance is a gifted trainer and strategist who can think quickly under pressure in order to win battles, he's shockingly naive when it comes to other people and often doesn't look deeper at a situation than the surface. Even when warned that the other trainees will be free to (and even expected to) attack each other in order to steal their tokens, he doesn't repeatedly falls for traps and ambushes, nearly getting taken out multiple times by opponents who wouldn't have been able to match him in a fair fight.

* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: The Grand Royale Casino is a corrupt business that doesn't have a problem with employing young teenagers under the table so that they can underpay them, is heavily implied to have bribed the police, and has significant business dealings with Team Rocket. The first tip off that they're not on the up and up is that the dratini they have on display as a prize is very sickly due to being kept in an improper tank and they rebuff Wataru's attempts to tell them how to help it.