The Quest for the Legends

Ash: I don't remember him very well from when I was a kid - I was pretty small then, after all. I really looked up to him, though.

Flygon: It's nice. It's a kind of freedom you don't feel when you're a Trapinch, you know? Suddenly you can move in three dimensions instead of two. It's an entirely different way of thinking.

May: Have you told Flygon, Mutark and Blaziken about the mission to capture the legendaries yet? If not, when are you going to?

May: Well, we had to tell them - otherwise if Chaletwo suddenly whips us off to help Alan, they'd be pretty confused.

Flygon: Do you enjoy battling?

Flygon: It can be fun when I win, but I don't like getting hurt too much. I just want to do my best.

Flygon, how did you feel about being told to battle against a powerful legendary without properly knowing what it was all about, and has May explained everything to you yet?

Flygon: Oh, she'd told me all about it before. After the Suicune fight, I think. Battling Volcaryu was scary, but we have to be brave to keep going.

That would depend on the situation; generally I'd only kill off a character when it makes sense for that character to die.

If I just specifically wanted to kill off one of each of their Pokémon and would engineer the situation once I'd chosen the Pokémon, I'd probably pick Sandslash from Mark's team because he is nice and loyal and his loss would be tragic without being quite as downright cruel as if it were Jolteon, plus that he is the least interesting to write and so as the author I'd miss his presence the least. May would probably lose Spirit because I'm mean like that and it's the one that would affect her the most by far, though Floatzel would also be a possibility in that regard if I didn't want to give Spirit the axe, and Flygon would be a possibility if I wanted to go for the nice-and-loyal-and-didn't-deserve-it death. For Alan it would be Charlie, because he would be so utterly crushed and horrified and it would be adorable and fun to write.

May: You know, I'm not even going to bother anymore. You're just going to insist on antagonizing me no matter what I say.

Flygon: She's okay. She helps me win a lot of battles now and she's happy with me.

Lapras: I did not really want to be a trainer's Pokémon, but I gave it a chance. I do not know if I would still be giving it a chance with Mark. I never knew him that well.

Flygon: It's too bad we lost, but it happened, so we can't really do anything about it…

Haha, yeah, sometimes I'd see people expecting this fic to end super-tragically and it always kind of amused me because, yeah, I tend to be a pretty depressing writer (look at Morphic). But this story was always meant to have a pretty nice, satisfying ending, and I never felt the urge to change that fundamentally. Mark and May and Alan were always going to make it out. I only ever considered killing like two of the Pokémon. (Flygon narrowly escaped the axe here, and there was a time I was considering killing Weavile, mostly to have it established that you can't detect a Dark-type ghost. But nah, Floatzel and Weavile deserved to ride off into the sunset together.)

I'm curious though how May's life plays out after she talks to the police, though. Do you have anything thought for that / are you willing to elaborate? This specific resolution is something I've been waiting for for a while so I'm a little disappointed we don't learn more about the outcome. I recognize it's useless as far as her character arc and ending go but I'm still curious to see how the bureaucracy takes it, I guess.

That's something I really wanted to just leave open. What matters is May's decision to confess and confront what happened; establishing a canonical version of exactly how that turns out would distract from it by inviting concerns about exactly how fair/just/realistic that outcome was, and every reader would probably have a different idea of exactly what that balance should be, and I'm just not particularly interested in trying to definitively draw that line myself. As far as I'm concerned, you should imagine whatever feels right to you there.

I can tell you she definitely loses her license (but will have a chance to reapply later, and will probably get it), and that she is a juvenile and the legal system is not unreasonable. Like, she's not looking at anything horrific and life-destroying. She will be okay. She probably takes up drawing and diversifies her life a bit and eventually returns to Pokémon training as a healthier, more balanced person.