The Quest for the Legends

Coke.

It may not be very obvious just how much I love writing Chaletwo, but I do. Seriously.

Chaletwo: In separate universes, maybe.

Mark: Um, I can't exactly do that. We're trying to keep this secret and all, and even in the legendary battles he's been saying he needs to save his powers for other things.

Chaletwo: He can't just "use me" in battle. I've already explained to everyone several times why I can't battle with them, and it's not as if any of them have the power to force me to do anything.

Chaletwo: I'm not Chalenor, and I am trying to save everyone, not just myself. Hiding in soul gems is all fine and dandy if you personally just want to be safe, but to prevent it altogether, you have to get everyone out of the influence of the Destroyer, which means forcibly capturing them since nobody agreed to do it willingly. So Pokéballs it is.

I admit I didn't personally think of soul gems back then, but it amounts to the same thing; I can't exactly force them all to create soul gems. Besides that it's a lot less convenient thanks to the part where the body dies. With Pokéballs, the body can be restored easily.

Mark: Um, not really. I just… draw, you know?

Chaletwo: They're all different types, and yes, they can fly. I don't know how hard it's going to be to try to catch them, but hopefully it will be possible. And who the hell is Lady Gaga? Somebody from your world?

Chaletwo: If one of them is caught and the others get away for some length of time, uh, supposedly the balance of the world will be skewed and all sorts of disasters will happen. But that's most likely just stories. They are very tight-knit, though; I don't think they'd ever be content with taking us on one at a time.

Chaletwo: That doesn't make any sense to me, but we don't really know a thing about the Destroyer, so technically it could be, yes. If it is, that's probably a good thing, since then we're unlikely to encounter it.

Chaletwo: Feels perfectly real to me. It doesn't make any difference whether I'm fictional as far as some people in another world are concerned. It doesn't stop me from dying in the War if it happens.

Mrs. Grodski: I haven't been watching it. The regional Leagues are only children trying to be the first to knock out one another's Pokémon. The only battles that are worth watching and studying are those in the Old-Timers' League.

Chaletwo: They'll do whatever they want. It's not as if I would continue to need them running errands for me.

I didn't pay much attention to the battle. It's insignificant in the long run who wins; I liked the idea of them going to the League because it means plenty of training, but who is the Champion doesn't change anything. Looking at Mewtwo^2 makes me wince, but otherwise I don't personally have much of a problem with that Taylor.

Chaletwo: I don't see any need to erase their memories. I'd trust them to keep quiet about it after all this.

The clones can't be caught. They're a worrying factor in the equation, yes, but we'll just have to hope that at the moment of truth they'll be in their Pokéballs. There aren't a lot of Gym battles going on except in the summer, so the chance they won't be is at least reasonably small.

Chaletwo: Think, mostly.

Chaletwo: There's a lot to think about when you've lived for a thousand years. Stuff in the past, stuff in the more distant past, what to do in the near future. Recently I've thought a lot about things Mew said shortly after the last War.

Chaletwo: We'd hardly know it was the Destroyer until it's killed us all, would we? And of course, using Master Balls isn't as simple as just throwing them. A healthy legendary will just dodge it or attack it, let alone a superpowerful one that's been draining the power of all the others for a thousand years.

Chaletwo: Well, the thing is, we don't actually know anything about the Destroyer. Technically it's only an assumption that it has the power it's been draining in a form it can actually use itself. Maybe it has no particular power of its own. Maybe even without the draining it would be more powerful than all the other legendaries. I can't make predictions about a battle where one participant is a great big question mark.

Chaletwo: Well, then it would slaughter us.

Chaletwo: It's hard to get a gauge on it. You feel it draining but you don't have a very clear image of exactly how much power you had before it all started. I couldn't say.

Chaletwo: No. They were straining against it even while already asleep and I could hardly keep them down; putting them back to sleep once awake would have required a lot more power which I simply don't have right now.

Robert Witham: It's a disgrace. That's all I can say. I'm done working for the League.

Chaletwo: The others need to eat, yes, but not Mew and I.

Chaletwo: Smeargle can paint, but it's not very original. Usually it can only paint what it sees or has seen.

Gyarados: I always had powers other Magikarp didn't. I hung out with Carvanha and could hold my own against them, and eventually that made me evolve.

May isn't in any state to be answering questions right now, but basically, seeing him made her remember that he died, even though she hadn't remembered it before. The same would happen with his parents and anyone else who knew him well; without specifically being reminded of him, they don't give him any real thought and just think "Yeah, he's out on a journey", but if their memories were jolted, they would connect it together. People who didn't know him well just don't make any connection between him and the kid who was killed at all, even if they see him, and need that connection to be evoked specifically, as with the inhabitants of Crater Town. Once that memory-jolt has happened, however, there is nothing left of the memory modification; all it does is file these things away where they aren't looked at.

It's much the same with Alan, though it's not like he actually knows all these details.

Chaletwo: Thing is, there is evidence that somebody was killed. There are records, photos, files. We can't just magically eliminate all that; even if we made everyone forget somebody was killed at all, there would be a great risk of people discovering the evidence, which would immediately bring all those memories back. Worse still, a death is something people remember - a much more extensive memory modification would be needed to completely eliminate that than just to prevent people from recognizing the face of the one who died, and the moment anyone remembered it, it wouldn't just slip away again the way the dead trainers' identities do. There is also evidence that Mark was the one who was killed, of course, but there is less of it and it is more periodical - the only reason those Crater Town people found out at all is that some crazy old woman was reading a two-week-old newspaper at exactly the time Mark came in. Otherwise it would never have happened.