I think the author has been throwing in a bunch of references to the relative immaturity of Ash's team to give him some room to work with for future growth. Didn't he manage to take down one of Lance's less experienced team members during his training arc with him? I'm guessing Metagross is supposed to be pretty outstanding even among Champion-class pokemon.

Steven's line about a win being impossible at this point irked me though. Like Hugplx said, that's pretty much the worst way of getting your point across. Ash isn't starting out as some disrespectful hothead, so demonstrating what he should be aiming for would have been a better use of time than just crushing him.

 

Iirc, Lance boasted that nobody in the Elite Four managed to take down his main Dragonite. As in he swept their entire teams 6-0. Metagross is most likely Steven's strongest pokemon. I'd have liked for Ash to come a bit closer to beating it, but I wasn't expecting him to actually beat it. In this fic, Champion level is way above Elite level.

 

Not to mention, Ash only managed to take down one of Lance's pokemon in a 7-vs-1 battle or however many pokemon Ash was using at the time. That's a pretty significant advantage compared to the seven 1-vs-1 battles in a row that Metagross participated in.

 

Its chapters like these that make me wish Straight Elf would keep things more compact. The first three-quarters of the chapter could have easily be done away with even though gotta admit Aron's antics were amusing especially the part where he

Spoiler

makes friends with the Wrumple that Plume gifted him.

That being said the chapter also gives you a lot to look forward to even if one excludes the power-up that's sure to follow his training. Can hardly wait for him to get that Anorith.

As for the battle, I didn't mind him losing as he did. It just shows he has a long way to go and it will be fun to see him get there.

 

I've got the same problem with his chapters lately. There's so much unnecessary fluff that really should be cut. I ended up skimming most of the first half just out of boredom.

 

I need to reiterate. I've no problem with Ash losing. He should lose. Convincingly.

I've a problem with Steven's methods, lecturing how Ash is basically getting by on raw power and no strategy, that he's a 'Sledgehammer' - right after he roflstomped his team with raw power.

What's the lesson, really? That Steven's Metagross is way more powerful than Ash's pokemon? Oh, thanks sensei.

The teacher needed to demonstrate in that fight what Ash was lacking, not wave his massive cock around.

 

I think the point was that Metagross wasn't using brute force in his defence, but technique.

It was explicitly mentioned that rather than the dome, or pane, that you'd normally expect with a shield-type move, Metagross instead just used a small dish big enough for the attack.

And then when Metagross shot at Plume, it wasn't a beamspam, filling the entire sky with fire, but a single shot at a time. Tracking the enemy carefully, and making sure not to waste a shot.

To be honest though, I like the long chapters filled with fluff. Yes, this is a pretty good pokemon story, but the team interactions are, I feel, what makes it so good. It isn't just endless fight scenes, with the infrequent dash to the pokecenter for healing.

 

This is pure gold compared to Pokemon anime and previous written Pokemon fanfiction. Great battle scenes and plot ideas. However I'm not sure how it will go after Indigo Conference. Feel less than thrilled with Hoenn so far. Give it 4.5/5 if the next chapters don't gain the epic proportions of Indigo.

 

I don't mind the fluff in general, the real problem is that the author insists on specifically referencing every single member of his team, often in row, which gets incredibly grating by the fourth paragraph expounding on how much he loves his team. Some of the actions of his pokemon are genuinely sweet, he just needs to get more confident using that sort of thing rather than pages of Ash's internal monologue.

 

Check out Game of Champions if you think this is the peak of Pokemon fan fiction.

 

Game of Champions is good, but this feels more like pokemon somehow. Game of Champions is darker, more refined, perhaps even objectively better but I think it loses something without the lightheartedness this story displays. Does the author need to cut down on the chaff of his stories to a certain degree? Yes. But somehow I still enjoyed it more than any other pokemon fic.

 

Game of Champions is better but this story is much longer and we can see more of its plot, as opposed to GoC, which feels barely out of its prologue.

 

As per usual, a massive 30k word chapter just dropped randomly.

 

Eh, I miss the League chapters and its epic battles, but this one was a good time waster if anything else. My only nitpick is how often Ash snorts, goddamn, does he have a breath problem or something? I don't really remember that happening in the older chapters.

 

Man, every time this updates I feel like I've got to set aside a good chunk of time to dedicate to catching up and then reading the next massive chapter.

Love the story, so it's not like it's a horrible thing, but it's not the easiest fic to read.

 

I'm really glad this updated, but there was a lot of unnecessary exposition and training montages without any real plot development until the very end of the chapter. I like the world that's been built in this story, but it'd be nice if it was more spread out between plot points like it used to be pre-conference. Ever since the end of the conference and Shamouti, there hasn't been much forward movement in the story even though there's been several chapters. At least it seems like the pace will be picking up if the last section is any indication.

 

Love the fic as always, glad it's been updated, since it's been quite a few months since the predicted update date. I've honestly been thinking that the fic could end up abandoned for the past year or so.

Not a huge fan of child soldier Ash, however. I completely understand the realism, but it's still a direction that feels incredibly wrong in a Pokemon fc.

 

I've always been of a mind that if you want to go the dark route in pokemon, you gotta make the protagonist at least sixteen.

I can only take pre-teens so seriously...

 

It's been a while since I read the whole thing, so excuse any mistakes...

It is interesting that Ash's age essentially never comes into issue. Nobody really questions the fact that a 12 year old boy is getting secret agent training, or is one of the best trainers in the country. I'm sure there's mention early on, or an interaction with the two forgettable friends or his mother... But that's about it. Ash being 12 isn't important to the story. It's normal for kids to go on their pokemon adventure. He doesn't act like a real world 12 year old, but he isn't from the real world either.

So just read 12 as 17, or whatever. It doesn't make much difference.

 

Good times done come again!

This one was super intense and a fun read, even if all of the psychic communication made for some clunky passages where I lost who was speaking.

I can't wait to learn more about Jacqueline.

And heh: