Introduction:
Quote:
Deep in the regions of the world, there exist sheltered havens where only Ralts and their evolutions reside. Nestled away from humans and their destructive habits, they live in peace and serenity. While there are many such havens with varied rules and regulations, each maintains the same rule: Never leave the Haven. Those who leave are never allowed to return.
This tale is about one such Ralts.
I really have no complaints about this section. Your introduction both drew me into the story and gave me an idea of what was to come without being overly fanciful or wordy about it. That's a strong introduction in my book.
Good job with this. Moving on!
Plot:
In one of the corner regions of the world, there exists a haven where Ralts and (most of) their evolutions live in peace. One such Ralts, Zen, is haunted by dreams of places and people unfamiliar to him. Naturally, he is also an outcast in this haven; people have no trouble spotting him among the identical-looking other Ralts that reside in the haven, and he is often late for lectures at the Lesson Rock, the place of learning for the Ralts residing in the haven. In one such lesson, he is alerted of an alternate evolution: Gallade, depicted as a savage being of crude telepathic power and scoffed at by most of the class. Zen, however, is fascinated by it, and spends the next few weeks combing the edges of the haven for the fabled Dawn Stone, which will allow him to change into this alternate evolution.
On one such night, he is caught doing so by the Elder, who allows him to take a Stone in exchange for leaving the haven. Zen agrees, and spends the next few days wandering the roads outside of the haven. On the third night, he is interrupted by a violent storm and the mental outcry of a certain woman. He recognizes this voice, and follows it to stumble upon the very same scene from his dreams. He attempts to defend this woman, but to no avail; the antagonizing man's Porygon swiftly defeats him. Zen loses consciousness, giving up on his thoughts of protecting her. He wakes up sometime later, in a hospital with the girl. She managed to spirit the man away thanks to the Ralts' distraction, and offers him a place on her team in gratitude.
I have to hand it to you, this is a pretty complex plot with all things considered. It's original and well thought out, much more so than any molds that some writers may still be struggling to shake off in their second story.
I really liked how you fleshed out the haven far away from civilization; though I felt that it could have been developed further in order to give me an idea of how life moves around there instead of solely focusing on Zen's perspective, it was given enough detail to keep from interrupting the pace of the story. It also reminded me of a certain favorite book of mine from my childhood - The Giver. I don't know if this was done intentionally or not, but that was the feeling I was getting until Zen left the haven.
Good job with this section, as well!
Dialogue:
Your dialogue was also done well; having seen all of the exchanges, I could really understand Zen's point of view and personality. I also got a feel for the Elder's stern attitude, though I could tell he showed sympathy and maybe even compassion for our little hero; it's my opinion that this is because Zen reminds the Elder of his brother (more on that later), but it wasn't explicitly mentioned. I like it better that way, though, since it lets me draw my own conclusion. You don't always have to reveal everything to the reader exactly as you see it, since sometimes, letting the reader draw their own conclusions is its own reward. I'm sure you know this by now, though.
On the other hand, I didn't get much about Sere from her conversation, other than the fact that she is compassionate about her Pokemon. This is justified because she's really only in two scenes and she isn't the main focus of the story. However, if you decide to continue this, it would be a good idea to give her some more lines (especially since she can apparently converse with her Pokemon) to give some more depth to her personality.
Again, good job with this section.
Grammar:
There were a few things that I noticed in this section that are worth mentioning.
First and foremost, it might be a good idea to include a text break when there's a scene shift or a significant amount of time has passed. This makes the transition more smooth, and it doesn't leave anyone confused as to how the transition came about. One example of this came early on in the story, immediately after the introduction:
Quote:
Deep in the regions of the world, there exist sheltered havens where only Ralts and their evolutions reside. Nestled away from humans and their destructive habits, they live in peace and serenity. While there are many such havens with varied rules and regulations, each maintains the same rule: Never leave the Haven. Those who leave are never allowed to return.
This tale is about one such Ralts.
Tonight he had the dream again.
Between the second and third "paragraphs", there's a scene shift and a narrator shift from a generalized third-person perspective to a focus on Zen specifically. This warrants a text break, like so:
Quote:
This tale is about one such Ralts.
* ~ *
Tonight he had the dream again.
Something like that will do. Other examples in this story include after the conclusion of the lesson, after Zen left the haven, and after Zen falls into unconsciousness defending Sere.
A major thing that I noticed was how you wrote the dialogue for the Ralts and their evolutions:
Quote:
“Now that everyone is here, we can begin. As all of you know. Pokemon evolve as they get older in age or experience. Some of you have already made that discovery yourselves”
Because you put their dialogue in both italics (generally reserved for emphasis, sounds, and, more specifically, thoughts) and quotes (generally reserved for dialogue), I couldn't really tell if they were speaking in thought-speak or if it was an intelligible translation of their cries (though I'm inclined to believe it's the former). If you want to make a Pokemon's spoken words more distinguished, try using a different bracket on the dialogue to avoid any confusion, like so:
Quote:
<Now that everyone is here, we can begin. As all of you know. Pokemon evolve as they get older in age or experience. Some of you have already made that discovery yourselves>
Use colored text for bonus points if you know the coding. I'm pretty sure it's [font color="whatever"]the text[/color], but I've never used it myself, so I'm not exactly the most reliable source. xD
Also, when you write dialogue and you have changes in facial expressions, stances, or whatnot in between the lines in quotes, it's best to use commas and other such appropriate marks to bridge this change to the dialogue itself. For example, these:
Quote:
"Now that everyone is here, we can begin. As all of you know. Pokemon evolve as they get older in age or experience. Some of you have already made that discovery yourselves” He gave a respectful nod to the Kirlia in the back.
The penalty for evolving into a Gallade…” Sensei gave a dramatic pause before finishing “Is death. That concludes today’s lesson, be safe traveling home.”
Would become these:
Quote:
"Now that everyone is here, we can begin. As all of you know. Pokemon evolve as they get older in age or experience. Some of you have already made that discovery yourselves." He gave a respectful nod to the Kirlia in the back.
"The penalty for evolving into a Gallade...." Sensei gave a dramatic pause before finishing. "...Is death.
"That concludes today’s lesson, be safe traveling home."
You'll notice that I didn't place a quote on the end of the line in the second example above; that's because, when the conversation lasts for more than one paragraph, you end the first paragraph without ending the quotes, and, upon beginning the next paragraph, you begin the quotes anew. Repeat this until the quote is finished.
Lastly, I'd like to point out something about your use of semicolons, colons, and ellipses (...) in this story. Whenever you use these punctuation marks and intend to connect them to another part of the sentence, you don't capitalize the word that comes after them. For example, this:
Quote:
While there are many such havens with varied rules and regulations, each maintains the same rule: Never leave the Haven.
Would be this:
Quote:
While there are many such havens with varied rules and regulations, each maintains the same rule: never leave the Haven.
In the case of an ellipsis, if you want to end a sentence off with one, but don't want to end the paragraph with that sentence, you place an additional period at the end of the ellipsis, place a space between that mark and the next sentence, and then continue with the paragraph, like so:
Quote:
A home.... It’s possible he could sneak back into the Haven if he left the Dawn Stone behind.
Practice with these suggestions in your future stories so that you can get the hang of them easier. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me via PM, VM, or AIM.
Detail and Description:
For the most part, your details were well done. I could really get a feel for the serene atmosphere of the haven from your description of the younger Ralts playing by the lake, and Zen's position as an outcast of the haven was further emphasized by the thoughts of the students around him.
I felt that some things could have been described better; for example, as I said above, you could have fleshed out the haven a little more and given the readers a more detailed view of what generally goes on in there daily. Another section that deserved some detail was the traveling aspect; a paragraph describing the various places that Zen passed on his route away from the haven would have been adequate for this, because as it is now, it just seems like he was walking on a straight dirt road which sometimes passes into a forest.
A final thing that I noticed, though it is a bit of nitpicking:
Quote:
Deep in the regions of the world, there exist sheltered havens where only Ralts and their evolutions reside.
It was too dark to search for anything, any faint light that could be seen were glowing from Volbeat flying in the sky or the odd Chinchou swimming lazily in the lake.
Only Ralts and their evolutions, huh? :P
Like I said, it's nitpicking, but it's worth watching out for those sorts of details that end up in your story like this one did. You don't want to contradict yourself, right?
Battle:
I noticed that, in your first story, you mentioned that you have trouble with this part; HKim gave you some suggestions for the future, since the battle you included there was a bit lacking. This one's a little better: you described the Porygon's attack with detail, and gave the readers an idea of the adverse effects that Zen was feeling from it. However, the battle was still very one-sided (in the opposite direction this time, though). In the future, I'd definitely recommend trying to expand upon these battles, because long, detailed battles always receive high marks (that's becoming my trendy saying lately xD).
Here's a suggestion on how to write longer battles: since all of the Pokemon are considered Level 100 in the Battles section, consider all of the Pokemon in your story to be about the same level in order to balance out the power (unless you're going for a one-hit knockout, but that's different). When the battle begins, describe the attack as the Pokemon uses it, and then show what the attack is doing to the opponent. Repeat for the opponent Pokemon. Then simply keep this up until you feel that the battle has gone on long enough to warrant throwing the Ball. Keep in mind the power of the attacks, as well: having a Pokemon use Giga Impact is going to hurt a whole lot more than a Tackle, so measure the strength of the Pokemon accordingly based on the attacks.
Again, if you have any questions, or would like a critique on your battles in the future, feel free to get in contact with me about it. I'm always willing to help. :)
Length:
Ralts is in the Medium category; the suggested length for Pokemon in this category is 10,000 to 20,000 characters. Your story is 16,843 characters; this is right around the middle, which is generally where you want to aim. Good job!
Outcome:
Drum roll, please...
...
<I choose...I choose a new home. I shall accompany you.>
Gotcha! Ralts was caught!
This is one of those cases where the Grade looks worse than it actually is. While there's a lot of suggestions up there, I thoroughly enjoyed the complex plot that you came up with and the excellent introduction. Plus, I can see that you have potential as a writer from both of the stories you've written, so I think that this capture is warranted.
Enjoy your catch!