Ardos, Cipher's Grand Master, is in jail. Over 20 years have passed since Snag Machines and the Purify Chamber were needed. A land where the sun outshines the gale of darkness seems too hostile for evil to thrive.
When two International Police offic...
⚠️ Spoilers ahead! These notes should be read after the story. ⚠️
Timeline
This story happens 67 years after Pokémon Colosseum and 62 years after Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. It's 26 years after my last story, Pokémon Bloodstone.
Locations
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As usual, I've expanded Orre to a realistic scale for a story, basing it on its real life inspiration, Arizona. If you've read my other stories, you already know some of this, but if you haven't, here are the real life equivalents of locations:
Canon locations Gateon Port = Lake Havasu City. Agate Village = Flagstaff. Pyrite Town/The Under = Old mining towns like Aguila and Wickenberg. Phenac City = Phoenix. Mt. Battle = San Francisco volcanic field. Eclo Canyon = Grand Canyon. Outskirt Stand = Isolated gas stations common throughout the US.
Original locations Laztaz Highlands = Mazatzal Mountains, though I've mostly just used the name and otherwise based the area on Arizona's greener highlands. Laztaz Town = Prescott. Quartz Town = Sedona. The name is from Sedona's famous red rock formations, which are partly composed of quartz. Eclo Town = Small towns surrounding the Grand Canyon. Phenac Desert = Sonoran Desert. Nascott City = Tucson. Selenite Resort = American desert resorts.
I added airports and highways based on the roads we can see on the Colosseum world map.
Since Orre borders California, Sunset City is based on Los Angeles. The name comes from the Sunset Strip. Gatas Prison is Alcatraz and the name comes from its Arabic origin 'al-gattas,' meaning 'the diver.' Perhaps obviously, the city it's in with the suspension bridge is San Francisco. A 'city of neon signs and casinos' is also mentioned, which is Poké-Vegas. I came up with these original locations because I didn't think it would be as realistic to just refer to Unova, which is pretty far away if the continent is as big as the real life North America. We can also see borders on the Colosseum world map, so we can assume they might be Poké-California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Mexico.
Similarly, I expanded Saffron City based on its real life counterpart, the Marunouchi area of Tokyo.
My portrayal of Hoenn is based on a hypothetical Pokémon Emerald remake. The Battle Frontier exists, Wallace was Champion at some point and Team Magma's HQ is in Jagged Pass, not Lilycove City.
The 'distant land' in the epilogue is based on Morocco and the city on Casablanca. The biggest stadium in Morocco is there so I figured that's where they'd host the Pokémon World Championships. I was going to use Galar or Kalos or something, but I thought it'd be nice to see Wisteria and Jamie battling in the land of their ancestors. My reasoning for them being of (the Pokémon world equivalent of) north African descent is covered in the author's notes for Pokémon Homecoming.
Natalya's homeland is Poké-Russia. Justy's family are of the Pokémon world equivalent of Georgian descent.
Battles
My battles are mostly games-based, but with a more realistic twist where Pokémon sometimes end up in hospital or even die, especially when Shadow Pokémon are involved.
Languages
Kantonian = Japanese, chosen because Kanto was the first Japan-based region. Galarian = English, spoken in all regions with English-speaking real life equivalents (Galar, Orre, Alola, Unova and my original California-based region where Sunset City is). Kalosian = French. Alolan = Hawaiian.
The language of the Hawthorn Fayed family's ancestors is Arabic. I've just referred to it as the 'language of their ancestors' because we don't have the Pokémon world equivalent of an Arabic-speaking region yet.
Recent Pokémon games have moved on from using the Latin alphabet to a fantasy one, but since the Orre games used the Latin alphabet, I've stuck with that in drawings for ease of reading.
Time travel
Canon Pokédex entries about Celebi say it 'exists simultaneously across time.' To save myself (and my readers) the headache of how someone gets to the point where they go back in time to change the past (aren't there two pasts in that case and does anyone remember the first one?), I had Celebi temporarily duplicate whoever it time travelled with. So that's how Jamie was able to fight himself as GoD – he was existing 'simultaneously across time.'
I did get into the 'are there two pasts?' question a bit with Alfie suddenly having a memory of a battle at Orre Colosseum. In other words, I'm going to hate myself if I have to explain that in the sequel.
The 'warp space' that opened at Orre Colosseum was as much as projection of thoughts, realised by a Shadow Celebi, as it was a time travel hole. Visually, it was inspired by that bit at the end of Mystic Mansion in Sonic Heroes. I think I was also subconsciously inspired by the last episode of Beyblade G-Revolution. You should totally watch the three original seasons of Beyblade if you haven't. It's my favourite TV show.
When time stops, I couldn't resist some references to one of my favourite obscure video games, Tombi (known as Tomba outside of Europe). An Evil Pig stops time and everything turns black and white. I made Jamie's dialogue quite similar to his. You should also play that game if you ever get the chance.
Other things
If you've ever wondered what Impidimp Ready Dinner is all about, it's inspired by an obscure brand of dire British convenience food, Goblin Ready Dinner. My grandpa used to go around raiding every bargain shop in town and often bestowed Goblin upon my mum and me. When my mum couldn't afford to feed us both decent food, she'd give me the edible stuff and accept her Goblin fate, but for some reason we both found it hilarious and had inside jokes about various musicians and fictional characters having secret Goblin Ready Dinner obsessions. Cail is THE Goblin Man. He even looks a bit goblin-esque in Colosseum with his massive ears that were curiously removed in XD. There aren't any goblins in Pokémon, though, so Impidimp seemed like a good substitute. I once had a crush on Cail, so the real joke here is me.
A general note
A massive thank you to everyone who's read this far! I love all of you and it makes me so happy if anyone enjoys my stories. I've said this before, but I started writing about Leon and now I'm just Cipher's biographer. A sequel, Pokémon Azurite, is coming! I'll leave a link to it in the comments below when I've published the first chapter. There'll also be a prequel, but that will spoiler some of the stuff in Azurite, so I'll write that one first.
