Imagine you took the world of Pokémon — and put it into a very Studio Gainax style direction and narrative. With bits that seem to be a mixture of Chuck Palahniuk's writing mixed with Cory Doctorow's own style. The result might be close enough to the Fan Fiction Pokémon Sepia, but only if you also added Doctor Who into the mix.
The pitch line is that there is a meteor headed on a path to destroy all of Earth. In fact, it has done so, a few times already. With the recent death of George Grau, president of Cyren (the Capital region in the nation of Spectrum), Vice-President Jon Weiss steps into his shoes as de-facto President, nominating Stephen Schwarz, CEO of a supposed Freight Company, Rocket Logistics. In order to bring about the kind of funding to stop the Meteor headed straight to Earth, he starts a war, to justify more militant expenses.
Though, what nobody expects is for Team Temporal to appear. Driving the timeline, from The Loop, into one referred to as The Failure, Team Temporal is mostly just a confused group of teens that just happened to be near by when a city wide genocide occured, an enraged Moltres turned on its trainer and several buildings exploding. Which only a minority of them were actually their own fault. Things get even weirder when Daebi/Celetwo shows up. A clone of Celebi, with an insatiable capacity and desire to learn. Add a few Mad Gods, genetic engineering, Time Travel, computer hacking, corporate espionage, Send in the Clones and you are about halfway through. Somewhat World of Weirdness mostly because Word of God says Daebi is modelled after the Discordian view of Eris.
You can still see the story at its Protagonize location: http://www.protagonize.com/story/pokemon-sepia-team-temporal-war-of-origins
(provided the originally posting author hasn't gotten banned again)
This series provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: A mental glitch people suffer after reading Daemon's Notebook too often. With Samual referring reservation in referring to people of importants by their Daemon's Notebook handle next to other people's normal names.
- A God Am I: Krystal Spectrum (due to being a little too close to a mass psionic incident caused by herself, Lady Kiss Void and Schwartz), Lady Kiss Void, Pearl and Schwatz.
- Alternate Universe Fic: Considering that they Destroy The Universe to save the universe from being destroyed this is typically a good assumption.
- Apocalypse How:
- Starting with Colony Drop-caused Class 3 — Planetary Scale, Species Extinction.
- Meteor appears to have caused Class 6 — Planetary Scale, Total Extinction of Organic Life.
- The Stable Time Loop is caused by a Class Z (Omniversal Scale, Metaphysical Annihilation), which resulted from the Class 6.
- They end up breaking the Stable Time Loop with a Class Z Logic Bomb.
- Back from the Dead: Arguably Daebi/Celetwo's puppeteering of Perfection. Though Daebi/Celetwo does have access to a Time Abyss so it is hard to say, really.
- In Miasma Forest The President of Attara Television Station finds he is alive again, and takes the pseudonym Wehc Notselrahc.
- Badass Normal: Roy, Wehc, Fuschia, Lavender, and pretty much any other average Joe who finds their way into Team Temporal.
- Berserk Button:
- Sepia gets slavery / pretty much anything which can be seen as a violation of human rights.
- Celadon gets her sister.
- Lady Kiss Void gets anyone she risk becoming close to.
- Roy's Ego has improper handling of Pokemon as one... and cruel behaviour to Krystal Spectrum
- Bride and Switch: Roy and Krystal MacKealan... er... Roy and Constance MacKealan. At least a legal name change is not needed here.
- Broken Bird: Lady Kiss Void due to attempted controls on her person Perfection attempted to put into place on her creation. Lady Kiss Void becomes The Starscream because of these controls.
- Brother–Sister Incest : Inverted. Used to torment Roy after a case of Bride and Switch with Krystal Spectrum and Roy's Sister.
- Captured Super-Entity: While the exact nature of how it was done is not entirely known. Rocket Logistics somehow captures Daebi/Celetwo and uses her to bring Deoxys to the world all while causing the Kanto Incident one year prior.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Starts off fairly light... then by the end of Hounds it just is frighteningly depressing, scary and dark.
- Combat Commentator: Ego tends to start narrating out loud, and very abrasively every now and then. With the others near by (who are aware of him) telling him to shut up.
- Combat Referee: Mr. Stringy Shirt... shows up exactly once. During the Awesome Land Gym Battle.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
- Maximillion wins a fight with a God of Spacial Dimensions... in the God's own pocket dimension.
- The appearance of any legendary Pokemon also fits the trope, given that the Great Chain of Being that gets established puts Legendaries above anything not available en masse, including humans.
- Dr. Feelgood: Krystal Spectrum is on the run from the authorities, and gets shot by Perfection. This was who they got to patch her up. She chose extreme pain instead of addiction.
- Eldritch Abomination: Daebi/Celetwo, a genetially engineered monstrosity that decided the time line is her own personal play ground
- Enemy Civil War: The Starscream vs. The Elite Four vs. Rocket Logistics vs. Team Temporal vs. Team Temporal vs. Daebi/Celetwo it kind of is the whole of the story at times.
- ET Gave Us Wifi: The Daemon's Notebook was handed to Krystal at the age of five by Daebi/Celetwo with technologies not invented yet, to try to boost the situation.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: Rocket Logistics Headquarters. Started popping up when Lady Kiss Void did not want her picture taken, but was running a Propraganda Machine.
- Evil Knock Off: Zigzagged with Lady Kiss Void for Krystal Spectrum. Mostly via application of Clone Angst early on, and Lady Kiss Void deciding she does not WANT to be Krystal Spectrum.
- Evolving Weapon: The Pokemon to a certain extent. Krystal was using her Starmie, Espeon and Roselia as ways to augment her personal self... when she was coating herself in stopal to deal with Perfection's gun shot wound.
- Fetishized Abuse:
- Celetwo/Daebi and Lady Kiss Void are abusive yet portrayed in a sexualized manner.
- Genki Girl: Krystal Spectrum until about of a third way through. The events kind of took the Genki Girl's energy out of her.
- God Is Evil: Played straight AND inverted, when it turns out that the six Pokemon described as 'Gods' are pretty evenly split into good and bad.
- Hallucinations: Constant makes a reference to being a Mankey then Primeape the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series. Blaming it on lack of oxygen to her brain.
- Hollywood Hacking: Zigzagged. Krystal worked on most of the technology—and it was not up to 100% at the start.
- Lady Kiss Void and the Daemon Army screwed this up... a glitch involving "removing use of a program from the log file" which had certain programs deleted after they appeared in the log file. resulting in a lot of people stuck in The Pokemon Box at the end of Dragons Arc
- Insane Equals Violent: Subverted. Usually the really insane people are the least violent. The sane ones usually go violent when hit with too much stress, a Berserk Button or what not.
- Daebi/Celetwo never attacks anything directly.
- Lady Kiss Void again, never actually gets physical in her Yandere tendancies
- Perfection shoots Krystal Spectrum to try to stall the madness. After his madness hits, he merely starts shouting about Trozie!, the Phoebos Battlion while waving the gun around. Followed by Empty Shell status.
- Lady Kiss Void pushes the ill girl out of her bed, when waking up next to her.
- Law Enforcement, Inc. : Zigzagged. Most of the Police appears owned by Rocket Logistics... or completely controlled. Until investigators started noticing that Team Temporal's profiles did not match their acts. Making them suspicious of Rocket Logistics.
- Little Miss Badass: Celadon. In a fit of rage, Celadon nearly slaughters a Charizard.
- Pokemon Sepia's explanation for Pokemon Trozei! (Which Perfection gets trapped in—albeit with Daebi puppeting his comatose body around. When the Reset occurs, the puppeteering from a temporal being is arguably one of the few things to not be erased).
- Machiavelli Was Wrong : Shwartz ends up with his The Dragon nearly going The Starscream, The Baroness actually going The Starscream and posing a good threat. The Eldritch Abomination that The Dragon and The Baroness worked on as the last resort attack not wanting to follow him (The Eldritch Abomination not wanting to bother with The Baroness or The Dragon), and his own admins not want to follow him any more. His solution was to try to remove free will to question his orders.
- Made of Explodium : Stoenn Spectrum says this, when describing Krystal's Daemon Balls—which were presented as a fix to the Pokeball malfunctions. These balls do nothing to catch monsters - they merely explode upon use. Which may lead to Wild Mass Guessing as to the REAL origins of Voltorb.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Krystal Spectrum to both Roy MacKaelan and Fujitsu.
- Krystal's daughter from the future to Fujitsu
- Master of Illusion: Lady Kiss Void, Leader, Team Network, Daebi/Celetwo, Krystal Spectrum, Private Dwayne Spectrum and many others.
- Merged Reality: Two. One being the driving purpose of story, and the other in the form of Pewter's construction of the Pokemon Box as a fully functioning world inside a computer.
- The Men in Black: Team Network, and played straight. While not an enemy, they are allied more to information dispersal, than anything else.
- Morality Chain: Zigzagged with Lady Kiss Void and her pet human. The girl dies, Lady Kiss Void becomes The Starscream
- No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: Daebi/Celetwo sends Team Temporal to a past where humans are not welcome in amongst the Pokemon
- No Periods, Period: Krystal Spectrum... who is pregnant one and a half times over the plot. Palkia creates a pocket dimension two years in the future for Roy. So Roy could view his Wedding... and bait Roy into giving the lifeless doll to be Krystal in the Pocket Dimension the soul of his sister, to Squink Roy big time. That technically counts as half a pregnancy for Krystal.
- Though the pregnancy during the final battle arc, it is revealed she just doesn't talk about it with others (and may possibly be on birth control that limits how this time affects her over all).
- People Puppets: Krystal Spectrum did this on herself to deal with her legs having gotten a lack of exercise and needed to be used again.
- Please Put Some Clothes On: Often the result of Clothing Damage and Wardrobe Malfunction... all too often targeting Krystal Spectrum
- The Plot Reaper:
- Lady Kiss Void Is moved to The Starscream after the Sycophantic Servant / Morality Chain dies.
- Gym Leader Nick ends up dying. Which explains in a
Fridge Brilliance sense how Krystal Spectrum was wondering around his gym so easily. - Daebi/Celetwo dies to help break Sealed Evil in a Can out of its home... and causes the Kanto Incident a year prior. She got better, Back from the Dead
- Wehc is the dead president of Attara Television Station.
- Pocket Dimension: Each member of Team Temporal gets put into one of these as their private hell.
- Psychic Static: Hari comments this is actually part of Krystal Spectrum's Psychic Signature that is trackable.
- Punny Name the entire Spectrum Family is named after solid rock like substances. Krystal Spectrum, Stoenn Spectrum, Minerval Spectrum, Private Dwayne Spectrum, etc.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: Inverted. By the time the final big bad is running around, The Star Scream is already near his equal, as are several members of Team Temporal.
- Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: "When you could make it so that Ronald Reagan ruled Soviet Russia, as the greatest communist leader of all time, as easily as I could... well, you really cannot. So that is why I don't take orders from you." "Who is Ronald Reagan?"
- Room Full of Crazy: The Boss Fight room for Lady Kiss Void which is a mausoleum to [[Yandere her Pet ]]
- Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: Inverted as Lady Kiss Void usually is dressed fairly sensible. Whereas Krystal Spectrum has gotten other comments on her outfits.
- Daebi/Celetwo operates under the rules of Dialga (whom she refers to not wanting to tick off a few times) and still will do what she can to not only create Temporal Paradoxes—but even wander around Timelines she is not even suppose to exist in.
- Slave Collar: Lady Kiss Void on her pet human. It is merely symbolic. Jezibelle would likely grab it back on, if it were removed from her.
- Spell My Name With An S: Royal MacKealan / MacKealan / MacKealen / MacKaelen
- There Are No Girls on the Internet: Subverted... the Internet seems to have been invented and solely consist of female members at times.
- There Are No Good Executives: Subverted. They can be just as bad as anybody else. The Board of Directors of Rocket Logistics even called Schwartz insane
- Timeline-Altering MacGuffin: Daebi/Celetwo hands this to a young Krystal Spectrum to try to Temporal Paradox history enough.
- Too Funny to Be Evil: Daebi/Celetwo attempts this... but it just never seems right.
- Villainous Break Down: This ends up happening to Perfection, after Team Temporal keeps surviving his Impossible Task.
- Villainous BSoD: Lady Kiss Void does not take it well whenYandere her pet human dies.
- Voice of the Resistance: Arguably Team Network. Though, they are more allied to just getting information than really any resistance.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Zigzaged when Leader comments on how poor Lady Kiss Void's chosen name is. Leader also being another example.
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Lady Kiss Void pretended to be Stoenn Spectrum after Rocket Logistics took over. Citing grave errors in Rocket Logistics take over—that Titan Co. must return to "his" control. She pulled this while in her Highly-Conspicuous Uniform without anybody noticing too Flat "What".
- Yandere: Somewhat applicable to Lady Kiss Void, particularly with how her motive was about her pet human (and her pet human dying)
