diary

ok hi i’m mobile zoned and waiting for lunch but. thoughts

spinch’s favorite teacher is dendra, the pokemon battle studies teacher! dendra makes shitty meat sandwiches that nobody can tolerate but spinch likes them.

because spinch likes to visit her after class, and because spinch boosts her sandwich ego, dendra has taken extra effort to teach spinch special techniques they wouldn’t normally know. dendra is not aware that spinch is a funny fox and is just under the assumptions that they’re a preteen furry

as spinch trains more, they get closer to evolving. but spinch isn’t really aware of what’s happening and ends up freaking out and delaying it, causing the energy associated to build up. it ends up making spinch irritable and they start paying less attention in class and eventually start skipping altogether.

dendra gets worried, because spinch is her star student and this is super unlike them. so she asks ruby, who shares a dorm room with spinch, to check in on them… but spinch left earlier in the day and hasn’t come back

so dendra and ruby go out to look for spinch. they find some trainers who voice concerns about an upset, pitch black pokemon scaring them

dendra is like ‘boy i hope spinch is ok’ and ruby is like oh no

tldr spinch is having a identity crisis and it’s manifesting unintentionally violently. thankfully ruby and dendra are able to ground them and bring them back to the academy safe

ok brb good

*food

after learning of spinch’s other form, dendra makes an effort to try and teach them how to harness their powers better and give personalized tips

daji was originally gonna help with this but i feel like after playing the game that the whole babysitters idea would fizzle out quickly after enrollment. so daji and charlie are up to their own nonsense i havent thought of much

ruby's favorite teacher is raifort, the history teacher. she's a quiet student in class yet preforms astoundingly and actually listens. raifort told a story about 4 cursed vessels, and said to meet her after class in anyone wanted to hear the end. ruby was the only student who came, which gave an opportunity for the two to formally talk. they talk about ruby's interest in history, and ruby is like 'yea well its an important thing in my family'. raifort is aware that ruby is from hoenn, and knows the basics rounds about the region.

it takes some more talking for ruby to spill that she's intended to become a 'lorekeeper', though she isn't quite aware of what it even means. and thats when raifort is like [JAW DROP EMOJI] bc she is very well acquainted with orchid's works (translated and published by zinnia)

its at this point ruby kind of realizes that her 'aunt' is her maternal parent and she's conflicted over it, but at the same time ruby is a smart kid and understands why it was kept vague from her.

ruby asks raifort if she can do extracurricular activities to help learn more about various legends and divines, which leads raifort sending ruby out to unseal some demons. you know how it is

im still trying to decide on what ruby's 'power' is..... something relating to legends maybe

speaking of ruby facts. lets talk about pokemon!

unfortunately due to koraidon/miraidon not actually being legends im probably gonna scrap / repurpose sonyo and zoe as the emissaries :{ however there are 4 'legends' (the cursed demon artifacts) so we'll see if i can work them into the system

also im scrapping the weed smoking girlfriends as giijinkas idea rip

ruby's team is as follows;

bibi - florges, does not have a flower crest however wears a gem beaded shawl in it's place

patchouli - pachurisu

mary - jumpluff

jane - sawsbuck

dandelion - floragato, who seems to be unable to evolve (the real reason is i like floragato's designmore than the final evo's lol)

spinch? - not a real member of the team per say, but spinch did indeed fight alongside ruby during the league and other battles. they do not utilize illusion for the purpose of disguise and trickery in battle, and instead choose to focus their energy into brute force. they know a fighting type move due to training with dendra and it leaves people like 'WTF'

ooh im thinking. maybe daji could know something about the cursed demon artifacts. pokeau china doesnt exist but we can pretend it does

timeline wise idk how this all takes place. i feel like for the initial timeskip to the treasure hunt is 1 year (which makes ruby 11 and spinch 13)

like....... it feels weird making ruby a champ at 11 but a) others did it before albeit ~50 years ago b) theres literally an infant in the elite 4 whats going on

anyways. great crater time

like the peak of mt coronet, the great crater is considered to be the western continent's 'weak spot between worlds'. this is essentially where the border between the normal plane and divine/spirit plane is the thinnest

its kind of reversed. mt coronet's peak is closest to the distortion world (lowest point), while the great crater is closest to the hall of origin (highest point)

you can still access the distortion world and hall of origin by the others, but its just easier to breach what's closest

anniel is not fancy and generally keeps her hands out of thing. arceus, especially pre-human arceus, however...

anyways thats why theres huge crystals that eat things up the further you go down. perhaps a manifestation of arceus's despair leading up to them severing their emotions?

anyways. the school club goes into the crater and im thinking ruby has a Moment relating to her powers however again, idk what exactly they are but it feels like an appropriate place for your divine-related powers to get kicked into overdrive

anyways spinch is very, very freaked out by the whole situation. colress is a bit distant as a parent and always surrounded at computers in an automated lab (also mikoto is there) so spinch is like O__O when ai sada starts freaking out

this isnt to say that spinch believes colress is an ai at all, of course not. however just the uncanny-ness of it as someone who grew up so close to labs and machines is definitely there. the thought of something going horribly wrong in an experiment and a parent being replaced... its not fun.

im thinking to raise the stakes a teensy bit. sada (and her ai that outlived her) didnt want to just unleash ancient pokemon on the present. she wanted to turn the clock back entirely

similar to how the original mt coronet incident weakened the dimensional barrier and allowed for communication with ultra space, ridley's meltdown that sent them into the past 10 years ago weakened the barrier of time - allowing sada's time machine to work on a preliminary level. ridley never noticed the disturbance because ridley doesnt do their legendary duties lol

turn the clock back 3,000 years or more, to when society was in it's cradle

the fate of 3,000 years

i just realized the paralell with them being crystals/stones too. fuck me

anyways spinch (and ruby's other pokemon) are able to send her to the shadow realm. aka the past and cause the time machine to have a critical meltdown and stop working

in spinch's mind, ruby has done so much for them when they did barely anything in return - so it's only natural they attempt to repay the favor, as foxes do

idk the two of them grow from where they were as sheltered kids together through their journey

ruby was a quiet kid who'd cry at any major infraction. now shes confident and a bit gutsy, a bit rude, and ever curious into her history

spinch was a wild child who'd get into all sorts of trouble, but they've mellowed down a bit and gained a solid sense of identity between two forms

okthats. it. good lird