Fanfic / The Greatest There Was or Ever Will Be

Commissioned cover created by djanubis on DeviantArt.

The Greatest There Was or Ever Will Be is a Pokémon: The Series fanfic written by Forever United Never We Fall on FanFiction.Net.

We've all seen this before... a writer attempts to "fix" the story by rewriting the whole anime so that Ash is smarter or more competent, but 90% of the time succeeds only in making Ash boring and unlikeable. ...This is not one of those. Instead, Ash is so much more powerful than his canon self that it Crosses the Line Twice into pure, unadulterated awesome. The best comparison is most likely Pokémon: The Series meets Medaka Box. At times, it reads like a parody of Overpowered Ash stories, and at other times like a deconstruction, but in truth, it is neither. As long as you don't take it too seriously, it's an enjoyable read.

Has nothing to do with former professional wrestler Bret Hart's Red Baron.

---

The Greatest There Was Or Ever Will Be contains examples of:

• Adaptational Villainy: In the anime, there's a gang of bikers who appear in one episode and cause some trouble on a suspension bridge, but that's it. This fic upgrades them into an organized crime syndicate that rivals Team Rocket and whose leader (who has no hint of existing in canon) is worse.
• Age Lift: Misty is 12 instead of 10, like in The Electric Tale of Pikachu.
• The Alcatraz: DeadHeat Prison heavily mistreats its inmates, yet none of the heroes have a problem with the way it is run.
• Alpha Bitch: In Chapter 10, Misty and Giselle are harassed by a rich girl from Saffron City and her lackey, who believe that the two of them are filthy farm girls who have no shot at defeating them in a Pokémon battle. They actually come pretty close to beating them, before Misty and Giselle learn to work together.
• Arc Welding: What are standalone Filler episodes with no connection to one another in canon tend to be tied together in a logical way here. Notably, the entire stretch between Vermilion City and Maiden's Peak becomes a single coherent plot.
• Ascended Extra: Giselle was originally an One-Shot Character, but here she becomes one of Ash's traveling companions and his Love Interest.
• Bait-and-Switch: Ash and Brock tour Silph Co., and are on edge because they previously heard that Team Rocket is going to target the place. At the end of the tour, a man in a trench coat looks as if he is going to attack the place, but it turns out he is just a streaker.
• Blofeld Ploy: After Ash defeats Sabrina, she takes out her anger on her referee, even while he is begging for mercy. It is later revealed that said referee is just a construct created from Sabrina's psychic energy, but it still appeared to have some level of self-awareness.
• Breather Episode: Chapter 11 doesn't have any conflict with Team Rocket, and the antagonist is easily dispatched.
• Cherry Tapping: Ash's MO when facing a really cocky Trainer is to teach them humility by using his weakest Pokémon to curb-stomp them.
• Darker and Edgier: Compare to the original anime, the fic has more darker moments and displays the dangers of criminal syndicates.
• A Day in the Limelight: Chapter 11 gives a lot of focus to Weepinbell and Parasect.
• Dead Fic: Hasn't been updated since April 2020.
• Deconstruction Fic:
  • At times the story reads like a deconstruction of the "make Ash a total badass" plot rather than playing it straight. Not only is Ash only the way he is in the first place because of Arceus's intervention to motivate him to learn everything he could about Pokémon before even starting his journey, meaning that the only reason everything goes his way is that Arceus (read: the author) is favoring him, but this has resulted in him developing a Superpowered Evil Side, making his friends and him terrified that he will eventually lose control meaning that he needs his True Companions around to remain sane.
  • The Rocket Trio's Paper-Thin Disguise doesn't fool Ash at all in chapter 8, as Jessie and James don't bother to change their hair colors or their accessories, and no effort is put into hiding that Meowth is a Pokémon.
  • "Bad guys" like Team Rocket are not portrayed as major chumps who won't harm children here. This is why Ash had to handle his "war on crime" against the Team Rocket anonymously, less they get wind of his identity and kill him and everyone he knows who's involved.
• Dirty Coward: When Haunter No Sells an attack from the remains of Black Fog, the aforementioned villain immediately tries to run away. The heroes are not amused.
• Doorstopper: The fic sits at a whopping 985,543 words long despite only having seventeen chapters. This means the average chapter length is roughly 58 thousand words long, or the size of a decently-long novel.
• Does Not Like Spam: Due to how much of a health nut Ash is, he and his Pokémon have a strong intolerance for unhealthy food, which his girlfriend and his friends have taken up. During their visit to Maiden's Peak, they leave the food district early due to being overwhelmed by the smell of grease.
• Easily Forgiven: Goes both ways— Ash will forgive anyone who wronged him or a Pokémon instantly if they admit their mistakes, and no one ever holds anything he does against him. Lampshaded in Chapter 10.
• Easy Evangelism: Every Trainer who Ash criticizes quickly takes it to heart and becomes a better person.
• Eye Beams: When Ash is particularly upset, he can psychically link with his Pokémon while under the influence of his Superpowered Evil Side. This allows them to fire beams of pure aura from their eyes.
• Foregone Conclusion: Even from the beginning, one can guess that Giselle will play a greater role than in canon because her name is listed in the character filter with Ash.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Sabrina demands that Ash become her plaything forever if he loses. Even though he wins, she still uses her powers to trap him and his friends in an illusionary world.
• I Lied: Even though Ash asks Sabrina to leave his friends out of her demands if he loses his gym battle with her, Sabrina traps them along with him, despite his protests.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite Ash winning against Sabrina the first time, he still incurs her wrath because he does not use Haunter and therefore cannot purify her soul.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Ash describes Gary as this while growing up, as the latter had always focused on being the "cool kid" that he had never bother to learn anything that wasn't going to help him be better than everyone else, and even said that anything that Gary knows about "winning over the opposite sex" is almost entirely from self-instruction. Even in the present day, there're still certain gaps in Gary's knowledge of Pokémon despite his own natural talent.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: After she's defeated by Ash in her debut and has her Jerkass Realization, Giselle states that, if her life was a story and someone was reading it, the reader would find her Easy Evangelism as unrealistic.
• Mission from God: Arceus has declared Ash to be her destined Chosen One since his birth, and Ash is aware of this.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Jeremiah has this reaction when he thinks he killed Ash's Weepinbell in a Pokémon battle. He is very relieved to learn that it evolved instead.
• Mythology Gag:
  • It is a plot point that Ash has a crush on Gary's sister. She doesn't exist in the anime but she does exist in the manga adaptation of the anime, where Ash's counterpart does have a crush on her. The character of Black Fog is also inspired by this manga.
  • In the anime, Ash assumes that the man who saves him and his friends from Sabrina knows her life story because he is her family photographer. In this fic, the man explains that he is Sabrina's father from the beginning, and adds that he used to have a photography business before Sabrina's powers manifested.
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • Unlike the anime, Misty and Brock have last names; "Waterflower" and "Stone" respectively.
  • Giselle on the other hand has her Japanese last name, Yuto (優藤). Thus making her name sound like, Excel Honor Student.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The author's note at the end of Chapter 7 claims that the next chapter will focus more on developing Ash's romantic relationship, but in fact, Chapter 8 is the most action-packed chapter yet.
• Obligatory Swearing: Special mention goes to Misty in Chapter 10:
  "Shut your collagen-filled, herpes-infested mouth, [...] you hooker!"
• The Reveal: This fic gives a hypothesis for what Dugtrio's full body looks like.
• Rouge Angles of Satin/Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: Unfortunately, the author has some trouble with spelling and grammar, frequently mixing up noun cases or using commas incorrectly. It usually does not detract from the story, but can get annoying at times. Fortunately, the author has gotten much better about this starting in Chapter 10.
• Secondhand Storytelling: Happens a lot, as characters Ash meets on his journey will often tell him their whole life story up to that point. Chapter 9 in particular has many instances of this.
• Serial Escalation: Every chapter is even more over-the-top and awesome than the last.
• Shout-Out:
  • Ash's comment when Dragonite nods her head upon being told to destroy the mechas and the control building? "Dragonite... Smash!" A practically word-for-word shout-out to The Avengers (2012) when Captain America tells the Hulk to do the same thing.
  • Ash name-drops Johnny Cash at one point in Chapter 11.
  • Boulder Town, where the buildings are carved into a rock, maybe a homage to the ancient city of Petra.
• Show, Don't Tell: Averted. Even when the action is very clear about what is happening, the author will make sure to tell the readers about how great a trainer Ash is and how righteous he and his comrades are, despite this not being necessary.
• Showy Invincible Hero: To date, Ash has never lost a battle, and the readers love him for it.
• Swiper, No Swiping!: Ash can talk down Primeape even when it has gone berserk from Anger Point.
• Theme Naming: Erika's employees are all named after flowers.
• Training from Hell: Ash puts both his Pokémon and himself through training so severe that their bodies are only barely able to recover from the strain, and Ash actually calls it cruel.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Pokémon can evolve when under extreme stress, even when they would usually be incapable of it. Black Fog's Start of Darkness involves evolving after humans killed the woman who took care of him and then killing them in turn. So far, two of Ash's Pokémon has evolved while close to death, though both would ordinarily require a stone to do so: Staryu and Weepinbell.
• True Companions: Ash and his friends are this even more than in canon, which is particularly evident at Pokémon Land and the Tentacruel incident. It's at that point that Brock, Misty, and Giselle decide that they aren't just going to be bystanders to Ash's heroics.
• We Used to Be Friends: At least on Gary's end, but Ash never once gave up on his friend and is looking forward to fixing that soon.
• Worldbuilding: Much of the Narrative Filigree is devoted to the author fleshing out his interpretation of the Pokémon World, which often wildly diverges from canon.
• Younger Than They Look: Ash is only ten years old at the start of his journey, but after intensive body and martial training for five years, he looks like a teenager with a height of 5'2" and having lean muscular stature. Couple with his emotional and intellectual maturity for a boy older than his actual age relatively brings him to around Brock's age (himself being only 15, but is already a Parental Substitute for his siblings).

---