The Quest for the Legends

Mark's Sandslash: How do you feel about May and her methods? How do you feel about Alan?

Sandslash: May is just confused. I wouldn't want to be her Pokémon, but I doubt she means anything by it, and if they don't mind, I suppose that's their choice. Tyranitar was a special case, but the others seem healthy to me - well, I suppose Floatzel is eccentric, but she was eccentric from the beginning and I doubt anything like Taylor's death will happen again.

Alan is all right. He's very nice, and I'd much rather be his Pokémon than May's, but he's just too argumentative and easily worked up. I don't think he should have left.

Mark: Well, I've never tried one, but it sounds like it could be fun, I guess.

May: It's a bit too much if you ask me. Many-on-many battles are kind of hectic.

Alan: They're pretty cool. Nothing against them.

Mrs. Grodski: Hmph. In my day, Pokémon just battled each other one on one.

Mark: Which oneof your Pokemon is your favorite?

May: Same.

Alan: Same.

Mark: Well, they're all different individuals. I can't exactly just pick a favorite.

May: Skarmory, but Skarmory's my favorite Pokémon in general.

Alan: They're living creatures! Having a favorite is like having a favorite family member. It's demeaning.

Anyone who can answer: Has Champion Cave changed at all since, oh, say, a month and a half before the league battles started?

Chaletwo: I don't think so. It may be that the Nevermeltice crystals that grew in Polaryu's presence are keeping it cold now.

Chaletwo: Assuming everything goes well and the war is avoided, what are you going to do about your dragon trio afterward? Do you have a better idea than having them stuck inside pokéballs for all eternity?

Chaletwo: I… guess I can try to reprogram them somehow, if I'm back at full power.

EDIT: Oops, forgot these, it looks like.

Mark's Charizard: Do Pokémon become depressed or are capable of experiencing appropriately similar symptoms to the affliction humans call "depression?"

Charizard: I think so. I wouldn't know how humans experience it, but…

Scyther: When eating prey, do you have any favorite portion of its body?

Scyther: Depends on the prey. Some parts are tastier on one Pokémon than another.

Rick: Where is Mewtwo2 now?

Rick: That's none of your business.

May: Is there anything specific you hope to find in the Ouen Safari? If so, what?

May: I… don't know. Nothing special, I think.

Mark: What is your favorite type?(Fire, Water, Dragon, etc…)

May: Same.

Alan: Same.

Mark: Probably Fire. A lot of Pokémon I like are Fire-types.

May: Dark.

Alan: I like them all. I don't really have a favorite.

Mark: What do you think would force you into a mental breakdown worse than any other you might have experienced previously? And what do you think an illusion world forcibly set up by your own mind to keep you happy (perhaps indefinitely), feature?

Mark: Um… that's a disturbing question. o_O I don't really know.

Mark: Hypothetically, if you were to enter a tournament that was to force you to only use one of your Pokemon, which would you choose?

May: See above.

Mark: I guess Dragonite. I mean, he's really strong and knows a lot of versatile moves.

May: Maybe Floatzel.

Taylor (while being mauled): Could you please describe what's going through your mind right now?

You can't ask dead characters, even if you specify "while they were still alive"; furthermore, I imagine all that was going through his head was pure terror and he'd have been a bit too preoccupied to explain it to you.

Tyranitar: …

May: …Can we not talk about this right now?

Sorry, but they're not very cooperative.

Incidentally, the League presides over Pokémon-related misconduct, and most cases don't go to court, especially because most trainers are juveniles and Pokémon themselves aren't exactly big on court systems. Usually Pokémon abuse cases simply involve the Pokémon being released and going on its merry way and the trainer's license being revoked, with particularly bad cases getting rehabilitation. After the age of infancy, however, they're considered fully responsible for their actions and can be tried criminally for very serious Pokémon abuse. That would be a trial by jury, but no, they don't have the death penalty.

If either Mark, May or Alan had to die, who would it be?

Alan. Mark dying would be boring and May dying would just be a waste when she has all this character development to go through.

And how do I get the picture on my signature to not have a white background?

By making a picture that doesn't have a white background. Get a good paint program that can create transparent images, if you're using Paint.

Speaking of Colosseum and XD, what are your thoughts on them?

They were fun, atmospheric and had awesome music. I'd have liked them to be a little more properly story-based and I hated Poké Spots, but otherwise I liked them. Though I never got around to finishing XD; it was one of those games I went through training everything I got and I was somewhere on Citadark Isle with grossly underleveled Pokémon and kept losing to one of the Cipher guys. I'd like to see Genius Sonority make another Pokémon console RPG.

Oh, one other thing. What was your team on your first playthrough of Diamond / Pearl?

Something like Infernape, Staraptor, Luxray, Scyther, Gastrodon and Roserade. Later I added several more and started to rotate them (Butterfree, Leafeon, Charizard, Jolteon, Espeon, Lucario…).

Boy, I really need to catch up with these questions.

Mark: What Pokemon do you plan on catching once you arrive at the Ouen Safari?

May: Same.

Mark: I don't really know. Something good against the remaining legendaries, I suppose.

May: I… don't know.

Mark: If you could be any Pokemon, what Pokemon would you be?

May: Same.

Alan: Same.

Mark: If I had to choose? Uh, I don't know. I think I like being human. Maybe a bird Pokémon. I like them.

May: …a Psychic-type, I guess. Telepathy and teleportation would be useful.

Alan: Some Flying-type. I'd love to be able to fly on my own wings.

Mewtwo(squared): So, what's been going on with you since Taylor died? Has Rick taken you back? Does he use you? Were you released, instead? Also, similarly, how do you feel about Taylor's death?

Mewtwo^2: …

(If you just want to know, Rick has taken him back and he was not released, but he is not being used either because by now he's way too high-leveled for a first Gym of the region. And Mewtwo^2 is a bit too mind-controlled to have much in the way of opinions on Taylor's death.)

Charlie: How do you feel about the evolution/devolution?

Alan: How do you feel about Charlie's evolution/devolution?

Charlie: I'm pretty neutral about it. It can be convenient, but I don't really like to flaunt it.

Alan: It doesn't really matter to me what his physical form is, so long as he is himself.

chaletwo: how do you exactly know that you're in a fan-fic and if you know, how come mew doesn't?

Because his eyes see through the fourth wall. Look, these sorts of questions are just annoying. He nominally knows he's in a fic for convenience so that some character will be able to make fourth-wall-breaking comments in this thread. That does not mean it's some interesting canonical property of his you ought to be scrutinizing.

Mark: what would you have preffered eevee to evolve into if he didnt evolve into jolteon?

Mark: I don't know. Whatever he wanted, really.

mew: if you used future sight to see what would happen when the war would start, what do you see?

This question is nonsensical; Future Sight does not work that way.

mewtark: ~ gives bowl of milk and bowl of blood ~ what do you prefer?

Mutark: *sniffs at the milk, then eagerly goes for the blood*

may: what do you hope to replace tyranitar with?

May: I don't know, okay? Stop asking me that.

Tyranitar: ~Gives may doll~ how do you feel? ~gets female tyranitar and uses attract~ hmm?

Tyranitar: *growls suspiciously*

mark (again): do you plan on visiting the other regions just as a travvaler?

Mark: Sure, sometime when this is all over.

Rob: Have you found a pokemon to replace Scyther?

Rob: That's none of your business.

Leah: I know a guy you can call for help with Mew.

Leah: Really, who?

(No, you can't actually tell her. See the rule in the first post of the thread about not giving the characters important information they don't know in-story.)

Mark: Just a thought, but if you never formally released Mew, won't that make it impossible for anyone else to capture it? Since it's already 'marked' by a Pokéball.

Again, no giving characters important information they don't actually know in the story (or, in this case, make them think about information they haven't actually thought about). This is intentional.

Ignore the nature bit in chapter five. It makes no sense and is just another one of those goofs.

@the ditto(the one Mark battled)
how does transforming work and did it hurt as much as it would for the "real" thing when you were charizard and your tail flame got wet? oh and if you transformed into eevee would another eevees attract "make" you "love" it?

Aaron's Ditto: You just… transform. It's easy. The body transforms completely, so what's painful to them will be equally painful to me while transformed. It doesn't affect the mind, though.

@chaletwo then…how does it feel to know your not real?lol(well hey he SAID it himself;he knows)

See this answer.

Are any of the character information tidbits that occur to you, to provide answers to the questions in the Ask the Characters topic, of vague importance in the fic?

Occasionally it's something I already knew and was going to be significant. Occasionally the question makes me think about something I hadn't thought about before, find it interesting and then possibly make something of it. So yes, sometimes.

Was there a special signifigance in May choosing a type of Pokemon that was not especially helpful to her? Don't answer this if it involves spoilers.

"Special significance"? You make it sound like you're thinking of plot significance or symbolism or something. As it happens my characters generally only ever do things for exactly one reason: because that's what they choose to do. You can read plenty of interesting things into the fact May chose to capture a Stantler, but I'm not sure I'd call that "special significance".

Have you finished Black/White yet?

Well, I finished my Japanese White ages ago (though it depends on what you mean by "finish"). As for my English Black, I'm currently trying to get a Reshiram that does not suck epically.

Ugh. Been letting this rot for way too long.

If I forget anybody's questions, by the way, it's not because I'm deliberately ignoring them or something; it's just a mistake because I didn't see it or accidentally skipped past the post when I was looking through for questions.

Mitch and Sparky: What makes rainbows?

Mitch: Light refracting from raindrops in the air.

Sparky: Anyone who wants to! 8D

May's Blaziken: Could you briefly summarize your oldest / first memories, please?

Blaziken: Being in the nest with my mother and siblings. It was warm and comfortable, but not very interesting.

Mark's Gyarados: How did you make/learn/get your Dragon Beam attack?

Gyarados: One day as I was trying to get to Suicune, I felt something charging inside me and released a beam. At first it was weak, but once I'd discovered it I started to train myself to do it better. It came to me naturally.

May's Stantler: Do you think you will miss your herd in the Safari Zone, traveling around with May to defeat legendaries? Or were you always solitary?

Stantler: I've been solitary since my calf grew up. I was in the Safari because I wanted a new trainer, so I was prepared for leaving that behind.

Mark's Sneasel: Since becoming stronger is important, do you think you will train at hours that one would think you would normally sleep?

Sneasel: I'll train whenever I can. I don't care what time it is. You lose your sense of time in the Pokéball.

Stantler: What are your first impressions of the group, May in particular?

Stantler: My first impressions were that she was acting a little strange, but I suppose I know why now. I don't think she's a bad person. She just needs some help.

Sneasel: If you come across a pokemon obviously much smarter and stronger than you, would you still fight it?

Sneasel: Why not? Fighting a stronger opponent makes you powerful.

May's Stantler: What was life like for you in the Safari Zone?

Stantler: It was all right. Sometimes I was lonely. Sometimes it reminded me too much of Ruxido. But I wanted a trainer and I got one.

Mark's Sneasel: Same.

Sneasel: There weren't a lot of strong opponents around. I spent most of it waiting for a powerful trainer to come around.

May: Have you ever broken a bone?

May: No.

Mark: Do you think that if you let a ditto transform into a person, and tried to break a bone, would you succeed?

Mark: Um, probably? I don't know a lot about Ditto but I think they're supposed to just copy the whole body.

(I remind you yet again that Ask the Characters is not a good place to just find out some factual information about the world of the story that you're curious about. If you don't want a particular character's take on something, it's better to ask in Ask the Author - especially since I answer those much quicker than questions in Ask the Characters. I can tell you that if you broke a bone in a transformed Ditto, the bone would be broken and the Ditto would feel exactly like a person who just had their bone broken. If it transformed back into its own shape, it would stop feeling like a bone has been broken specifically, but it would still be painful for a little while afterwards. Asking Mark, though, is just kind of counterproductive.)

I have a question to May:
Have you ever considered using some kind of strategy
Moves? EG: Skarmory can learn Stealth rock if you find the TM, Butterfree can learn Tailwind, and possibly Mutark can learn Sucker Punch.

May: What are you talking about? Butterfree uses Tailwind all the time, one of Mutark's main moves is Sucker Punch, and Skarmory was rocking a Stealth Rock/Whirlwind combo in my second preliminary match. Have you been paying attention?

(Note that entry hazards are considerably less useful in most of this fic's battles than in competitive battling as we know it. You never saw May's preliminaries, but using Stealth Rock in any of the matches you did see wouldn't have made much sense since they were switchless and in fanfic battles being sent out into Stealth Rock once is not going to take away even close to half of a Charizard's stamina. Good strategy in the games is not necessarily good strategy in a fanfic.)

Mark, how do you think Charmander (the Charmander you trained, not Alan's) has matured on the course on your journey-interrupted-by-Chaletwo? Specifically, what are the signs of his increased maturity, if there are any?

Mark: Well, when he was a Charmander he was kind of grudging and easily annoyed, and once he'd evolved that redoubled into this obsessive thing against Scyther. Once he became a Charizard he got a lot more sympathetic and laid-back.

May's Stantler: Did it make you sad seeing that your former Trainer inexplicably hung himself? (I was wondering if you mourned for a while, or was simply stunned, shocked or flabbergasted, or if you shrugged your shoulders and left with only a little regret. I am sorry if I seem callous asking this, but the minds of Pokémon may be different from that of humans'.)

Stantler: It shook me when it happened, but perhaps most of all that it had never occurred to me there was anything wrong. He seemed cheerful and ordinary, the whole time I was with him, and then…

We weren't especially close. It saddened me that he died, like it would sadden me that anyone I knew had died, but more than that it was the unexpectedness that got to me. I felt like perhaps I could have helped him if I'd known. That, I think, is what hit me the hardest.

Mark: I just realized we have the same favorite Pokemon! *High fives*

Mark: Huh, really? Cool. Lugia and Articuno are pretty awesome, aren't they?

To any character: Would you rather catch a Wobbuffet or an Absol?

May: I like Absol, but Wobbuffet is a well-known powerhouse and I've already got a Dark-type, so I guess I'd rather have a Wobbuffet.

mark n' may's pokemon: if you could be anywhere at this exact moment outside of your pokeballs, where would you be (note:including letalligon)

You can't ask ridiculous numbers of characters a question like that. Pick three or four at the most.

(Oh, one more thing: Butterfree, did you watched the DP series? In other words, can I assk a question about characters from that season?)

Uh, I've seen the D/P movies? I don't really know why you'd want to ask questions about random anime characters who don't appear in the fic, though.

mays quilava: how did it feel to be picked by may?

Quilava: It didn't feel any particular way, at first. I'd volunteered to be a starter so I was ready for anything. It turned out pretty quickly that she wasn't especially fond of me, though, and it was all downhill from there.

any of marks pokemon minus sandslash: how did it feel to be caught/picked by mark?

Charizard: Better than rotting in a Pokéball all my life. He was nice and I liked him.

Sparky: why are jolly jolteons so damn fragile?

Sparky: Don't go around breaking them!

Allen: what do you think of my team of venasaur, rapidash, jolteon, omastar, rotation between onix and tyranitar and rotation between xatu and farfetch'd (note:optional)

Alan: As long as you love them all and they love you, it doesn't matter what Pokémon are on your team.

Dosnt May remind you anything about Paul?

Ash: Huh? May? She was nothing like Paul. o_O

(Ash has never met TQftL-May, so he could not possibly have an opinion on her.)

They met in the sense that she was there while they were deciding Alan was going to go with them rather than Ash, but he never heard her name or exchanged any words with her whatsoever; ergo, as I said, he has no clue who you're talking about and can't possibly have an opinion on her or her training methods.

Alan: Did your father tell you anything about Paul? If so, do you think he and May have something in common?

Alan: I'd… rather not talk about May right now. Sorry.

Mark & May: Why dont you nickname your Pokemon?

Mark: Um, well, I'm not very good at names, and their species' names become their names when you use them for them, you know? It's not like they're not individuals because their name is the same as the name of their species. It's still their name.

May: I nicknamed Spirit, because she was unique - she wasn't just a Vulpix. But otherwise nicknames aren't necessary. They don't care what you call them, so long as they know what it is.

Thought I'd write a bit of an update. I'm on the seventh page of chapter sixty, as my signature says, and the going's pretty fast when I'm actually working on it. I don't know when I'll finish, exactly, because I'm still not quite sure how long it's going to be (I'm going to wait for how things evolve organically to decide whether and how certain things should happen), but I'm at least definitely more than halfway done.

I quite like this chapter so far. Writing it feels like writing Scyther's Story/The Fall of a Leader. I'm a little worried about how this chapter will come across to people who haven't read the spin-offs, though; maybe it'll just seem to be introducing a bunch of tangential stuff without going into it properly. Oh, well. It all does serve a purpose and I don't think it's confusing without having read the spin-offs, so it should be okay.

I dreamt something about Mark and May being engaged for an arranged marriage or something (it could also be that they somehow got engaged by accident or that it was necessary to save the world or whatever; either way, they were still twelve). They were having lunch somewhere talking about how annoying that was and how they're kinda friends and all but why do they have to get married? I really enjoyed that dream because they were delightfully in character about it and I just generally love dreaming about my characters. Also, it just amused me that even in a dream where they're somehow engaged, they're just there going "yeahhh no".

*late!*

Butterfree & raichu: What are your favorite moves?

Butterfree: I like Sleep Powder. Putting opponents to sleep helps me a lot.

Raichu: I'd have to go with Thunderbolt. It's fast and does a lot of damage.

Mark's Dragonite: Are you designated the "legendary substitute" in training exercises more often than the others because you are a Dragon-type?

Dragonite: Well, we try to take turns, but I do think I've landed the role a bit more often than the others, probably because of that.

May's Stantler: Do you think May's other Pokémon care as much for her mental health as you do?

Stantler: It doesn't seem like it, from what I've seen. Most are focused on her abilities as a strategist. I don't blame them; it's how most Pokémon think.

Alan: Did your father tell you anything about Paul? If so, do you think he and May have something in common?

Alan: I… suppose so. From what he told me Paul was very focused on having the strongest Pokémon possible, and May has shades of that… or had, at least. I really don't know how she's changed by now, though.

May: Why did you release Quilava? Even if she didn't want to evolve, wouldn't she still be useful in the legendary battles?

May: Unevolved Pokémon just aren't very powerful. The time that would have gone into training her was better spent training a new Fire Pokémon who would end up in a stronger form. She was better off in the wild.

to all willing to answer: if there was a movie based off of your lives, who do you think would play you?

This question doesn't really make any sense. Why would the characters know contemporary real-world actors that you'd recognize?

There have been a lot of queries regarding the fact Mew is referred to by both 'he' and 'she' in chapter 61 - most of them noticing one instance and assuming it's some kind of a typo.

It is not a typo: Mewtwo consistently uses 'she', while Chaletwo and Mark's narration consistently use 'he'. (And May, you may also notice, uses 'it' - which means in this chapter the same character is referred to by all three standard English third-person singular personal pronouns, something I quite enjoy.) This is because in the world of this fic, all legendaries who are genderless in the games are biologically sexless single-individual species that don't have a gender as we know it. Some of them - like Chaletwo - prefer to be referred to by one particular pronoun anyway; others don't, and much like with Pokémon nicknames, the pronoun used in any given instance is up to the speaker. Mew is one such legendary.

This is not a new thing; I've been consciously writing it that way since at least the beginning of the HMMRCIG if not longer, and outside the fic I've been explaining this to readers for about that amount of time. The first time I found occasion to actually bring it up in-story, however, was the first time the opposite of the usual pronoun was actually used for a legendary: chapter 51, where Entei used 'she' for Mew. I threw in a paragraph of Mark remembering that Mew has no grammatical gender preference - kind of out of nowhere, but it was at least intended to introduce the concept to readers so they wouldn't be confused. And it seemed to work: I can't recall anyone expressing confusion over it then, so I actually was kind of surprised by how many people were completely puzzled when the same thing happened in chapter 61.

Now, I said I'd been consciously writing it this way since at least the beginning of the HMMRCIG. If this were a newer concept, it would probably be a bit more refined and informed by modern ideas about gender - but the fact it is old means that pronoun use has been an active part of the characterization for ages. So now that I've found an excuse to ramble about that, I will! :D

If you were to reread chapters nine and ten or Mew's random appearance in chapter 13 (but please don't), for instance, you'd notice Mark's narration awkwardly avoids using any pronouns for Mew as far as possible but goes with "it" where a pronoun is absolutely necessary. However, Chaletwo has always referred to Mew as 'him' - in fact, Chaletwo uses 'he' for every legendary that doesn't expressly prefer the feminine. It just seemed like what he'd do: he wants things to be simple and easy and doesn't like to think about them too much, so he made a rule - using the same pronoun he prefers for himself - and just sticks with that. And Mark, since chapter 25, has simply gone along with Chaletwo's pronouns for everyone, including Mew. (When he started not going along with everything Chaletwo said and did, it didn't occur to him to change his pronoun use in protest, but on reflection that would have been rather amusing.)

May, meanwhile, uses 'it' for all such legendaries, because as far as she's concerned that's just the correct pronoun for something genderless. Its potentially 'dehumanizing' properties don't bother her because she's not the most tone-sensitive person in the world. (Who would've thought?) I don't think anybody has ever commented on May's use of 'it' for legendaries Mark and Chaletwo are calling 'him', which just goes to show that people are perfectly capable of seeing the same character referred to by two different pronouns as long as they don't happen to be 'he' and 'she'.

Entei was an interesting case - it felt like he would refer to Mew as 'her', but as I wrote him I started to realize that as part of his general condescension he has shades of a kind of pseudo-sexism - he uses 'she' for smaller, less imposing legendaries. Although Suicune for instance also has no preference, my mental simulation of Entei found it absurd to call him 'her', because Suicune is his equal. He goes through all the motions of respecting Mew, but doesn't think anything of just going and making a plan to stop the thing that Mew doesn't want to be stopped - where Chaletwo keeps justifying his decision to disobey Mew with the greater good and Mew just being tired and not wanting to live anymore, Entei has no real impulse to care about Mew's opinion in the first place. In some way, calling Mew 'her' is because he doesn't think much of her and uses it as a kind of way to designate her as a different class from himself that he can be elitist towards.

Mewtwo, on the other hand, began to use 'she' for Mew to differentiate himself from her as part of his journey towards realizing that he was his own person with a right to exist independently of Mew. (Side note: I really liked writing Mewtwo and how he's dealt with his issues in the twenty-seven years since he was created.)

I've also written some backstory material from Mew's point of view that alternates between using 'he' and 'she' in the narration between scenes. If you found it confusing in chapter 61, just wait until you read that.

Oh, God, why do I keep forgetting about this thread.

Raichu: During the Thunderyu battle, you and Jolteon teamed up to sap the electricity from the funnel cloud, but you don't have the Volt Absorb ability. How could you do it? Is this a trait that all Electric Pokémon possess, or does your absorption differ from Jolteon's? If it does, how?

Raichu: We were just gathering the electrical energy to be able to use it to power our own attacks. Any Electric Pokémon can do that.

(Volt Absorb is the ability to use absorbed electricity for healing and had nothing to do with what they were doing there.)

Scyther/Razor: You mentioned in Ruxido that you used to slash through tall grass for fun (or training, I can't remember which). Did you ever accidentally slash a wild Pokémon? What happened if you did?

Scyther: Slashing grass is loud; normally the wild Pokémon would have plenty of time to get out of the way. But if you did accidentally hit something, you'd eat it, or take it back to the swarm and share it if you weren't hungry.

Racko: Have you chosen to stay as a Grovyle, or are you not powerful enough to evolve into a Sceptile?

Racko: I just like this form! I'd feel naked without my wrist leaves.

(IALCOTN) Mark: The school you go to has a Porygon to help with grading tests; how can it stay in Sailance without becoming debilitated and tired? Or can it avoid this by converting itself to computer code?

Mark: The Porygon are just in the computers, and presumably the Effect wouldn't reach them there. I don't think they ever take physical form.

Mark's Sandshrew: How many moves do you know?

Sandslash: I don't keep count. Fifteen, twenty?

(As I keep saying, asking the characters is not the best way to find out factual information. He knows Sandslash's natural level-up moveset plus Rock Slide and Aerial Ace, unless I've forgotten some off-hand mention at some point.)

Pamela: Do you use ranged moves (Thunderbolt, Shadow Ball, Round…) often?

Pamela: Sometimes. Alan likes Swift and Power Gem.

Victor: Do you think Mutark's ability to grow in size and power is a way of making up for it's lack of evolution? And I don't recall, is yours male or female?

Victor: Precious is male. I wouldn't say it's a substitute for evolution, per se; its utility is quite different, since it relies on enticing the opponent to underestimate it before it grows.

May's Stantler: You said you're a mother, how long ago did you have your baby? And have you had more than one?

Stantler: I had one calf, some five years ago, after my trainer died.

to Mark, May and Alan: What's your favorite species of Pokemon and why?

Mark: Lugia and Articuno.

May: Skarmory.

Alan: All Pokémon have their own strengths and weaknesses, and they're all their own individuals to be judged on their own merits, not their species. The idea of having a favorite Pokémon rubs me the wrong way - like having a favorite race of people.

(Mark's) Charizard: In the event of a battle between Charlie and yourself, who would be the victor?

Charizard: Probably Charlie. He is older and has more experience.

Mark/May: Have you considered buying or stealing a Pocket Healer? Seems that it would be awfully convenient.

Mark: Well, they're really hard to get and limited in scope, since they can only heal mild injuries - they're basically like a Max Revive and Full Restore in one. Serious damage like legendaries can do mandates proper Pokémon Center care.

May: Is it possible to hold a normal conversation with Mutark in any of her forms?

May: Kind of, but she only transforms during battle, so there isn't much of an opportunity for it.

Female Color Dragons: What do you suppose your male siblings are up to?

Raudra: They're scheming to leave us powerless and have us grovel before them as they rob us of our homes and mock us and slowly kill us!

You can't ask the male color dragons or the Destroyer, because they haven't appeared on-screen in the story (or, in the Destroyer's case, you at least don't know that he has), one of the requirements for being able to ask questions. Furthermore, all information I'll answer regarding the Destroyer in Ask the Author, etc. is basically channeled through Chaletwo - I'm basically telling you his beliefs about the Destroyer - and even if you could in fact ask the Destroyer questions, this would still violate the rule about not giving characters important information they may not actually know in the story.

Although I'm a little confused as to how Chaletwo can't tell what's bothering May if he's all up in her thoughts and all, unless he's just being polite and pretending not to know.

The way telepathy works in this universe, Chaletwo only has access to what she's consciously thinking at any given moment. So he definitely knows "grr get out of my head this is awful", but May doesn't want him much deeper than that, so she's not exactly inclined to introspect about why she really doesn't want him in her head at the moment.

It's a sentence where I attempt to imply a lot of things in the space of time it would take May to start to think something and then not continue that train of thought. It's a tricky thing to manage. But I'm closing in on it!

Glad to see some people are still here!