Thread: Peter’s Rocking Tales (Chapter 2 and 3 Ready to be Graded)

Introduction



I wanted to make a new series to deal with all the Unova Pokémon. I didn’t want my other character to have to travel all the way over to Unova just to catch a few Pokémon. I'm going to write this series-style, but let a grader grade after each chapter, unlike my Babel Boy story.

My one request to the grader is to put the claim and grade post in spoiler tags, so that a reader won't be biased towards the story as a whole, if I decide to continue the story.

Chapter 1 – The Big Climb




I loved the feeling of the cool breeze against my tanned skin when I’m hanging off the side of a cliff. My father and I were climbing up the side of Twist Mountain, which looms over Icirrus City. Dad worked there as a manager of an excavation team, but he loved to be near the dirt and rocks, probably more than his workers.

My dad was strong. He had muscles that rippled against his brown long-sleeved shirt, a long brown beard that seemed to stay in shape even when climbing during the high wind seasons, and a bald head. He was awesome.

I wish that I was half the man he was. I’m still just a teenager, but I had a decent body. I wouldn’t be turning any heads, but I was fit with little body fat. I had short unkempt brown hair, but no facial hair yet. My eyes were green like my mom’s. She would always worry about me, climbing at a young age. But I was fine. I had my climbing gear strapped around my waist and extra harnesses and karabiners in my brown vest that I wore over my green sweater.

My father and I didn’t just use the standard climbing equipment. We had Pokémon to help up. Father had two: a Tranquill and a Gurdurr. Tranquill was a bird-like Pokémon with gray to black colored feathers, a yellow beak and a pink cere creating an eyebrow like marking over her yellow eyes. Gurdurr was a bipedal human-like gray Pokémon with a clown nose and what looked like curly hair, but was really just bulbous formations on the top of his head. He was also covered in pink veins that weren’t as impressive as my fathers. He usually carried a girder from the first construction site that my father worked at, but he doesn’t bring it with him all the time.

Tranquill would plant bolt anchors on the side of the mountain, which helped us secure our position up the mountainside. She could fly against the harshes of winds. She’s been training with my dad for six years. Gurdurr was a natural climber, but helped us belay most of the time. While dad never fell, I sometimes lost my grip, but I was light, so Gurdurr would be able support me. Gurdurr has been with dad for four years.

Today was special, because one of dad’s employees said that he saw a few Boldore and Roggenrola climbing to the top of the mountain. Dad announced that he was going to take me up to find a nest and capture a Roggenrola as my Starter Pokémon.

I’ve always wanted a strong Roggenrola as my starter, but it was said that they were usually protected by Boldore and didn’t wander far from their nests. So I waited until I heard of any sighting, but nothing came up. I didn’t mind waiting. Like the Roggenrola, I was strong and unmoving. I wouldn’t let something like time get in the way. Even after three years of waiting, I still wanted a Roggenrola.

My friends always wondered, “Why don’t you just order a Roggenrola bred for beginner trainers.

My response to them was always, “It’s just not the same.”

I clipped my harness to the next anchor point and placed a foot on the next safe rock, pushing myself upwards to grasp the next ledge. It wasn’t the toughest climb of my life, but it was starting to become the longest. About a half hour up, though, we found a nice little cave. Dad and I sat against the cavern wall, while Tranquill and Gurdurr started setting up the equipment so we could belay down safely.

My father pulled out some fruit sandwiches from our pack. It was midday, so we stropped for lunch. I pulled out the Pokémon food and got it ready for Tranquill and Gurdurr. In addition to being a great trainer, my mother was a great cook. She was a Gym Trainer that worked for Brycen at Icirrus. She helped weed out unworthy trainers from wasting the leader’s time.

While I ate the Nomel-Belue berry sandwich, I checked my pack once more. I had three Dusk Balls, forest green Pokéballs with lighter green spots around it like a volley ball and red highlighted band. They were excellent for use during the night and in caves like this. I also had some Potions. It was a long vertical drop to the nearest Pokémon Center.

Tranquill and Gurdurr came up and started scarfing down their food.

“So, are you sure you want to catch it on your own?” Dad asked, mouth half full with his sandwich.

“Yes, dad, for the fifth time I don’t want your help,” I annoyingly said.

“Except you want…”

“Except I want to use Gertrude.” I cut him off. I was a teenager. I was allowed to do that, right?

He leaned forward to reach the back of his belt and pulled out Gertrude’s Pokéball. The front and back of the ball was mostly white, while a red band colored between the two sides. On the top there was a grey circle with numbers around the perimeter and a large rectangular knob. It was a Timer Ball, which was better to use if the Pokémon was taking too long to capture.

As dad handed it to me, he asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to use… another Pokémon?”

“No, I told you from the beginning that I wanted to use her for this.” I snatched the ball from his hand, placing it in my pack.

“Come on. You could use Gurdurr. He’s a Fighting-type, which would do much better against a Rock-type like Roggenrola. Or maybe Panpour...”

“No, no, no! Not that stupid monkey!” I interrupted. Even though Panpour had a type advantage, he was always… difficult for anyone but dad to control. “No, Gertrude is the one for me. Plus, Gurdurr has to stay and watch the equipment. You remember the last time we left them unguarded.”

“Fine.” Dad gave up. He knew how stubborn I was getting.

Gurdurr and Tranquill waved us off as we entered the cavern. They are more than capable of fighting on their own. We pulled out our flashlights and lit up the pathway. There wasn’t a Pokémon in sight. The cave leaked a bit, probably because the winter had just passed, and the snow had melted.

“Hold on,” my dad said, placing his hand on my shoulder. He shifted his flashlight from bright to dim, and I did the same. “I thought I heard some rumbling this way.” He led me down a path that started to get much narrower as we continued.

I could feel the jagged rocks snag on my climbing clothes. I clung my pack close to my side, as the path became smaller and smaller.

“I can’t fit through the rest of the way. You’ll have to go ahead without me.” He shuffled back around me, letting me go by him.

It was tight maneuver, but I was able to get around him. I could see the small hole about three feet tall, tall enough for a Boldore to burrow through. Clenching the flashlight in my mouth, I scrunched down on all fours and crawled through the small tunnel. It was rough, but I used the surrounding clumps of rock and soil to pull myself through the last few feet.

The flashlight fell out of my mouth, rolled through the rest of tunnel and revealed a small cavern. I threw my pack in front of me first so I could squeeze through the final few inches. I stood up, trying to clean the grime off my face and clothes.

That’s when I heard it, the gruff cry of a Roggenrola.

I quickly picked my flashlight up and searched for the origin of the sound. And that is when I saw it. The one foot tall geode was “staring” right at me. It had a dark-blue body, with a hexagonal, yellow cut that looked like the iris of an eye. However, a true Rock-type master would know that it was actually Roggenrola’s ear. It also had two feet like brown rocks for feet, with a similar, but different functioning rock on the top of its head. I didn’t see any Boldore around, which was odd, but this meant this little one was ripe for the picking.

I was so excited that I didn’t notice it charging towards me. The small rock used Headbutt at my stomach. I just barely dodge out of the way, avoiding the horn-like rock, but still feeling the bruise created by the rock hard body. It turned towards me again and dragged its foot against the ground, like a Bouffalant ready to charge.

I ran towards my pack, but Roggenrola already jumped towards me. I ducked down, slid towards and grabbed my pack. Roggenrola smashed into the cave wall behind me, raining debris over me. I quickly reached into the pack and pulled out…

“This isn’t Gertrude’s ball!” I exclaimed. In my hand was a Lure Ball. The top half of the ball was a cyan color with a red double diamond pattern with three streaks in the middle of the front diamond. Dad must have switched them when he let me passed him. It couldn’t be helped. “Let’s go Panpour!”

The blue monkey materialized in front of me. Even though I say “blue,” most of his body was a creamy-yellow fur. He had a cyan clover tip on his tail, a wave-like frill around his neck and shoulders, big cyan ears and a puffy cook’s hat-like puff on his head. His eyes creeped me out, closed all the time.

While it would be much easier to use a Water-type like Panpour, it wasn’t going to be a challenge, like using Gertrude.

Roggenrola jumped head first towards its new opponent. The Mantle Pokémon hit straight into Panpour’s gut, but dad’s Panpour was tough. He was pushed back a few inches, feet dragging through the ground.

“Panpour, Lick it!” I commanded, not trying to use Panpour’s Water-type moves.

Panpour grabbed onto Roggenrola’s sides, lowered his head and licked Roggenrola’s head. Roggenrola tried struggling, but was paralyzed by the attack. It wasn’t fair. Dad’s Panpour had trained with him for three years. He was just too strong. Maybe if I use…

“Panpour use Scratch!”

Panpour scrunched his eyes at me. I don’t think he understand why I was calling upon his weakest attacks. Panpour nodded his head, though. He lifted up his mitten-like hand and swiped at the Roggenrola’s ear.

The wild Pokémon cried out in pain, but it seemed to be able to move now.

“That’s enough, Panpour. It’s had enough.”

But Panpour just grinned and attacked him again.

“Hey, I said stop!”

The fight was one-sided. Panpour was far to experienced, and Roggenrola was still young and weak. I just had to something about this.

I ran up to Panpour, planning on knocking Roggenrola out of his hands, but he quickly turned towards me and fired off a Water Gun. The blast of water hit me in the side of the face; Panpour was really strong for it knocked me onto my back.

Panpour laughed and started to punch the injured Pokémon. I just had to stop him somehow; Roggenrolla didn’t know what to do. Wait!

“Roggenrolla, use Rock Blast!”

For some reason, something in me knew that Roggenrolla would listen to me. It jumped out of Panpour’s hands and its ear started to glow red. The rocks around it started to shake and glow with a white brilliance. They started to rotate around Roggenrolla as three rings.

Panpour jumped back and scowled at me. He took things into his own hands. He inhaled, expanding his chest.

Roggenrolla focused one ring into a big clump of glowing white rock and blasted it towards Panpour.

Panpour released a Water Gun, which pushed back the first blast. However, it gave Roggenrola enough time to dodge out of the way. The blast would have been fatal to Roggenrola.

Roggenrola was able to release a second ring towards Panpour. Panpour just used Water Gun and didn’t have enough time to dodge. Panpour was pushed back a bit. But it wasn’t until the third blast made contact that Panpour was knocked down.

“Good job!” I exclaimed, turning to Roggenrolla. I didn’t know why, but I felt a connection to this Pokémon.

It faced me and squeaked. It was odd, but I think that it was trying to smile.

In our distraction, a stream of hot water struck Roggenrolla in the side, pushing it into the wall. Panpour wasn’t just going to take this sitting down. He kept the Scald up, releasing it stream by stream. Roggenrolla cried out in pain. The water was just too much for it.

I ran behind Panpour and stuck my arms underneath his. I pulled my weight back and arched pulling Panpour with me. His head smashed against the floor as I finished the Full Nelson Bulldog technique. Panpour fell back gasping for breath.

Roggenrola wasn’t moving. I rushed to its side, cradling it in my arms.

“Are you ok? Answer me!”

I couldn’t tell if it was breathing or not, being a giant rock and all. It didn’t matter. I had to help it. I pulled the Dusk Ball from my pack and brought it to Roggenrola’s side. I knew that Pokémon rested better in a Pokéball, and Roggenrola was injured, so I couldn’t resist. But somehow it didn’t seem right.

I sharp pain cut through my back. I yelped in pain. Turning around, I saw Panpour with his claws extended, huffing and puffing.

“What are you doing? You’re supposed to obey me!”

Even with his constantly shut eyes, his wicked grin and dominant posture was enough to tell my body to start shaking. I hate monkey Pokémon. They were so creepy.

I looked around for his Pokéball, but I couldn’t find it.

“Pour, pour,” he said in a mocking tone, clenching his own Pokéball in his hand. In his other hand, there was a Dusk Ball.

It couldn’t be.

Panpour gathered up his energy, and I knew that I had to run. I picked up Roggenrola and ran to the tunnel. Panpour released a large jet stream of glowing water with white rings around it. I stopped, seeing the Hydro Pump strike in front of me. Before I could turn around, though, Panpour turned his head and stuck me in the head. I lost my grip on Roggenrola and bashed into the cavern wall.

After the stream stopped, I had trouble getting up. The constant pulses of water left me in a daze. I could barely stand when I saw it.

Panpour flung the Dusk Ball towards Roggenrola. The Dusk Ball opened up and drew the Rock-type Pokémon into itself. I was shocked. I didn’t know that Pokéballs could be activated by Pokémon. If Roggenrola could escape, that would mean that it would obey Panpour. How is that even possible?

The ball shook once. I crawled towards it. The ball shook twice. I reached out my hand for the ball. The ball shook thrice. I picked up the ball and tried to manually open it. The ball rang out.

I was too late.

Panpour stomped his foot on my back, causing the ball to roll out of my hand. Panpour picked up the Pokéball and then reached into my pack. He pulled out a Super Potion and released Roggenrola in front of him. He sprayed the liquid gas on it, and the bruises and scratches flashed with a green light. The bruises returned to its natural dark blue color, and the scratches closed in on itself.

“Pour, pour, pan, panpour!” he commanded Roggenrola.

“No…” I coughed blood on the dirt in front of me. Somehow this day started with my simply wanting to catch a Pokémon and was going to end with some renegade Pokémon trying to put me in my place.

Roggenrola cried out, white rings forming around itself, though they molded together to create sharp gray rocks. It was going to skewer me with a Stealth Rock attack. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the pain.

But then I heard Panpour screaming out instead. I opened my eyes and saw that Roggenrola turned around and shot the dagger-sharp rocks at Panpour, piercing through his yellow skin and sticking him to the cave wall arms out.

Roggenrola nodded towards me, shuffling its Dusk Ball towards my hand.

“Rola, rogg, roggen, rola,” it said.

I picked up the ball and pushed myself off the ground. I walked over to Panpour’s Pokéball and activated the return function. Panpour was converted into energy and absorbed into the Lure Ball.

“What happened?” I asked myself.

“Gen, gen, rola!”

Roggenrola said something like, “You are my master” or “You own the ball.” Either way, Roggenrola was on my side.

“Come on, my new friend. Let’s get out of here.” I stored Roggenrola back in his Dusk Ball and started crawling back through the small tunnel.


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Story Notes - Please do not read until after story.

Pokémon attempted: Roggenrola, Panpour
Characters Need: 15k - 30k
Character Count: 15,116


Next time on Peter's Rocking Tales: Who is Gertrude? Why did the ball activate when a Pokemon flung it? Why is Panpour such an angry monkey? Stay tuned.

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Introduction/Plot:

Introduction ~ Wasn’t exciting or vivid because it didn’t contain that hook moment. But it was fine for such a low ranked story. You introduced us to the Pokemon and both main characters early on so I have no complaints.

Now it was adequate, but I felt you could have improved on a couple things or try something different for next time. To start, I think it’s always a good idea to have some sort of hook or something else that grabs the reader’s attention and keeps them interested in what you have to say.

For your story in terms of a hook, you could have started with the boy facing death in the face from the Stealth Rocks attack. Then you could have flashed to the beginning. Now I’m not saying you have to do that, just consider it an example of what I mean by a hook.

Something else is the vivid image. The first sentence of the first paragraph is vivid because you just aren’t describing the physical aspects, but the sensations also. By including more description then transitioning into the characters would have served as a good image for the reader to latch onto.

Obviously there are other means to catch the eye of a reader, but these two are the common ones I see. All that said, you had a good enough intro for these guys.


Plot ~ For me this was a miss on your end. I understand that you are going for mon of a low rank, simple and medium, but your plot didn’t have much substance to it. Yours basically consisted of two men climbing a mountain then a Pokemon fight. This would have been easily sufficient for each mon separately, but because you are going for them together you’ll want something more.

What I mean by more is that you have boy walks into mountain and finds a Pokemon. It’s fine for some captures, but when you go for multi captures the bar gets raised. The easiest solution to this type of plot is to add something that is unexpected or provides a different path than one straight forward. Something that pops out to me that might be a viable path is that the father gets hurt because a line gave way and he fell like twenty feet ot break a leg or something and the boy has to use his new Pokemon to save him. You don’t have to do something exactly like that, but for future attempts you should try to have something that is not so common as the cliched version.

One other problem that stuck out at me is during the Pokemon battle between Panpour and Roggenrola. Panpour doing what it did was just odd to say the least. Throughout the series and game there are instances where Pokemon don’t obey their trainers, but I’ve never seem them capture and Pokemon and attack their proxy master. My mind conjured up Planets of the Ape movies, which I hate. But I digress, my point is that you should keep away from things like this because they just don’t happen like that. (I didn’t deduct you for this, just watch out for this type of stuff).


Grammar: Meh, I didn’t spot anything outside of a dialogue tag that was misused, but I’m sure it was just a typo. So good job here.

Detail: One of your strong points of the story. The description wasn’t mind boggling in that it was like I was there, but yours was enough that I saw everything and everyone without wondering why a blank spot appeared. Your human, Pokeball, and Pokemon details were spot on and I have no complaints.

But as writers there are things we can always work on so I’ll delve into that. What I would have like to seen was more first person perspective details that aren’t so much a physical, but sensations and emotion.

Your first opportunity for this comes when they are scaling the cliff. Your first sentence hinted at this when you described the cool breeze, but you went no further than that. You could have described the sensation of being so high up that it felt like her was flying, or the feel of the hard rocks beneath his skin. Something that you would feel if you were up there. Finally, you could have done this during the battle when Panpour started to attack him. From the feel of the water attack from Panpour to the wet and warm feel of the blood when Panpour attacked him.

Good job, but remember we can always improve on things.


Length: Meep, you could have had more but it was enough.


Battle: You didn’t need anything spectacular because of the low ranked mon. You had the basics down: varying attacks and no God-mode. I have no complaints in this department as it was good enough. For next time, try combos or how the environment plays a role into the battle. That cave environment would have made an interesting arena for some good rock attacks.


Conclusion: This was real borderline. So much so that I changed my mind about the capture rate three different times. I decided on:

Not captured...

Nah, I kid. Both Captured

. Although I was borderline your strength in detail, grammar and the battle section outweighed the reservations about the plot aspect. Keep watch for what I pointed out though for future attempts. Btw, who was Gertrude?

@sorocoroto

Chapter 2 – Tales of the Past




“It was three years ago when dad had encountered Panpour beating up some random Pokémon in the alleyway next to his office, his old office in Castelia City that is. Dad noticed that Panpour looked malnourished, had blood on his fur and was wearing a tight, spiked collar around his neck. The little Patrat was bruised and bleeding, but it seemed like it wasn’t fighting back.

“When my dad approached him, Panpour immediately jumped off the injured Pokémon and rushed towards him. Panpour slashed dad’s chest with a few Fury Swipes. Dad had great reflexes and managed to back away with only a torn shirt. The second time Panpour charged at him, though, dad was able to sidestep out of the way, reach under the monkey’s arms and subdue him in a Sleeper Hold.”

Roggenrola listened intently with his eye-like ear. When we arrived back home, I took my dinner up to my room so I could pack supplies for my journey and talk to Roggenrola, getting to know him better. As I was telling him about the whole Trainer-Pokémon journey spiel, I emptied it out my climbing bag, and Panpour’s Lure Ball rolled onto my bed. I got the feeling that Roggenrola wanted to know why Panpour was so crazy, so I started to tell him this story.

“So then, dad brought Panpour to Officer Jenny, and it just so happened that they were looking for the injured Spray Pokémon. Apparently, he belonged to a man that was charged for the abuse and murder of countless Pokémon. This man was sick. He’d force his Pokémon to battle each other…”

Roggenrola turned his head to the side in confusion, clearly seeing the irony.

I tried to explain. “Well, he’d lock them in a cage and force them to kill each other for his pleasure. If they didn’t comply, he’d either starve them or sick his most loyal Pokémon on them, a Bisharp, a Pokémon who resembled villains from animes and mangas covered in blades. Yeah, scary. The police said that when they raided the place, they found many Pokémon, including Panpour, locked in cages. When they went to let Panpour out, he bit one of the officers in the leg before running out of the man’s house.

“The police told my dad that in cases such as this, they’d have to send Panpour away to some facility to rehabilitate him. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to be, I’ve heard, but it was what they needed in order to get over all the abuse. You don’t even want to know what they did to the Bisharp.

“However, after three months, dad got a call from Officer Jenny. They said that Panpour was being too much of a liability, constantly picking fights with the other Pokémon they were trying to help. So, Panpour was going to be put down. Dad didn’t like the sound of that and said that he’d offered to train Panpour personally. Dad was always a sucker for injured Pokémon. I think that he actually wanted to become a Pokémon doctor, not one that worked at a Pokémon Center, though, but at a real hospital. When Officer Jenny refused, dad actually pleaded his case to the mayor of Castelia City.

“Needless to say, he got his wish. But, Panpour was just as chaotic as he had been when they first met. The monkey fired scalding hot water at dad’s face, slashed at him, punched and strangled him. But dad just did the same thing to Panpour. He fought back every time, and when Panpour was pinned down or seemed like he was giving up, dad would just stop. Panpour was confused at first, especially when dad started to take care of Panpour’s wounds right after a scuffle.

“My dad’s idea was that Panpour just needed to get the extra fight out of his system, but needed to do it to someone who could keep up with him. Eventually, Panpour started to calm down, ending his tendency to attack my dad whenever he was taken out of his Pokéball.

“But I don’t think Panpour would ever recover from what happened to him, as you could tell when he went off on you and me. Dad says that he’s getting better, but he doesn’t understand that Panpour will only obey him. I guess that he wanted Panpour to be able to start trusting other people. That’s why he switched Panpour’s ball with Gertrude.”

At the sound of Gertrude, Roggenrola made a noise. “Who’s Gertrude?” I imagined him asking.

“That’s right. I wanted to use Gertrude to battle you. Gertrude is a family Pokémon, but she likes me in particular since I was the first thing she saw when she was hatched. You know what? I should just introduce you two.”

After we returned to our house, dad returned Gertrude’s ball to me. I pulled out the Timer Ball and released the small purple and black Pokémon onto the bed next to Roggenrola. She looked like a small baby girl with big blue eyes, two red lips, white ribbon-like feelers on the side of her head and a small tuft of hair sticking up. Her black body had a white diamond pattern that ran horizontally around her chest and a big white ribbon on her neck.

“Gertrude, this is our new friend, Roggenrola. Roggenrola, this is Gertrude.”

Roggenrola extended the horn-like rock on his head like a hand. Gertrude, like most Gothita, just stared over Roggenrola, as if looking at some invisible object connected to Roggenrola.

“Don’t worry; she does this all the time.”

Roggenrola waddled closer to Gertrude and poked her with his “hand.” Bad move. Gertude started to scream, causing Roggenrola to flinch back. Gertrude flailed her right hand towards the Mantle Pokémon and released a beam of violent, jagged, rainbow-colored light, hitting Roggenrola directly in the middle of his ear.

“Hey, Gertrude, come on!” I yelled, picking her up like a doll.

Roggenrola shook off the Psybeam and stomped angrily on the bed.

“Sorry about that. I forgot to mention that she doesn’t like it when strangers touch her.” I cradled her in my arms, trying to calm her down.

She eventually stopped, but not without snuggling up against my climbing vest for comfort. She was still just like a baby, which I guess is why my dad didn’t want her battling yet.

“Gertrude, you know that you need to start behaving better if you want me to take you with me.”

She immediately perked up widening her eyes. “Thita?” she asked as her lips formed a big smile.

“Yes, of course you can come. But you need to start acting more like a grownup Pokémon, like Roggenrola here.”

Gertrude pouted when I said Roggenrola.

“Hey, don’t be upset. I tell you what: since dad didn’t let me battle Roggenrola with you like I wanted, how about the two of you battle first thing tomorrow morning?”

Gertrude perked up when she heard this and hugged me. You see, when I told Gertrude that we were going to go up to Twist Mountain to catch a Roggenrola, she really wanted to come. She didn’t have any battle experience, but she was really persistent.

“Alright, first thing in the morning, we’ll go in the backyard. It was a long day, so I’m going to get some sleep.”

I put Gertrude back down on the bed and got my pajamas. I went to the bathroom and washed the grime and filth out of my hair and skin. Even though I loved climbing, I didn’t really like having all the dirt on me. I brushed my teeth and got dressed. When I got back to my room, Gertrude was staring at Roggenrola, who found rest atop my pillow.

“Gertrude, it’s ok. You both can sleep in my bed tonight.”

My Gothita puffed her cheeks in anger. She would always be the one to sleep on the pillow next to me. But Roggenrola needed to feel at home too if we were going to go out into the world together.

I lay down on my cushiony tan bed and moved the pillow Roggenrola was lying on next to me. I patted a spot right next to Roggenrola for Gertrude to rest. She crawled up to it and snuggled into a comfortable position. She then did her usual bed time routine of using Confusion to flick off the light switch, turn on the fan (I couldn’t ever sleep without some noise in the background) and close the door quietly.

As my mind started to shut down for the day, I realized something.

“Hey, Roggenrola, I think I need to give you a nickname, like Gertrude. How about Duncan?” I had always been a fan on Bill Shakespeare’s works.

I heard him squeak in approval before I lulled to sleep.

Chapter 3 – Gertrude and Duncan




“Dad! Have you seen Gertrude or Duncan?” I yelled as I ran through the house.

I woke up this morning clenching my side pillow, and I had noticed that my two Pokémon weren’t on it. I had looked all around the room and out the window to see if they might have started battling already. I couldn’t even find Duncan’s Pokéball.

“Who’s Duncan, Peter?” my dad groggily asked as he shuffled out of his and mom’s bedroom. It was Saturday so they both liked to sleep in. Mom was just a heavier sleeper.

“Roggenrola. That’s what I named him.”

“I don’t know, son. We would have heard the security alarm if someone broke in. Maybe they’re just playing.”

“What if someone hacked it or something?”

I ran downstairs to the security pad by the door. It didn’t look like it was tampered with, but then again, burglars were crafty. I looked to the side of the pad, below and above it too. I started tinkering with the casing and all of a sudden the alarm went off.

“Peter!” my mom yelled.

Crap. I started pressing random buttons, but it just increased the intensity of the siren. I tried smacking it a few times, but nothing.

“Hey, let me!” a voice yelled from behind me.

I turned to see my best friend, Ian, close the front door behind him and pull out some tools from his duck-tape backpack that I didn’t recognize. They weren’t like a saw or a screwdriver, but then again, I couldn’t comprehend half of the things that Ian invented.

He wrapped a wire around the casing, which connected to a small handheld device in his hand. It seemed like there weren’t any buttons on it, but the device lit up revealing a sort of touch screen. Ian hit a few buttons that popped up and the alarm magically stopped.

“Thanks, man,” I said as I placed my hand on his shoulder.

“Yes, thank you Ian.” The coldness in my mom’s voice was as frigid as the Ice-type Pokémon she used at the Gym. She was definitely not a morning person.

“No problem, Mrs. H,” Ian said as he pushed his large onyx glasses up his nose.

“What you doing here?” I asked Ian. “I thought you were at your internship at your father’s company.”

“Well, I got a call from your dad saying that you FINALLY captured a Roggenrola. So you know what that means, right?”

“Yeah, we can start our journey together… though, right now, I can’t seem to find either of my Pokémon. I think that someone might have snuck into the house and stolen them.”

“Wait, are you saying that Gertrude is missing too?”

“Yeah, do you have a gizmo in your bag of yours that can help me?”

“Actually I do. Do you have something of one of them?”

“I have Gertrude’s Timer Ball back in my room.”

“Perfect, lead the way.”

Ian and I have been best friends for the past couple years, though, when people see us next to each other, they can’t believe it. See, Ian is a scrawny kid with a brown bowl cut and black rimmed glasses. He dresses himself in an assortment of long-sleeved shirts and work pants. In other words, he looked like a dork. But he was my friend, so I didn’t care. He even postponed starting his journey to wait for me. What a pal. Plus, he always found a way to fix my messes.

We went to my room, and I handed him the Timer Ball.

“So what kinda gadget do you have for missing Pokémon?”

He reached into his big-bag-o-machines and pulled out a simple Pokéball. He released the Pokémon inside onto my clothes-ridden floor. After the red light dissipated, a small tan-colored dog appeared. Its face looked like a big cream dust-bunny was smothering it. It was cute, though, with its big black eyes, red nose, and large ears.

I reached down and brushed the small black spiky fur on its back.

“So how is this little guy going to help us?” I asked. I didn’t know much about Lillipup, or many other Pokémon that weren’t Rock-types for that manner.

“Well, first off, he’s a she, and her name is Lily, my parent named her when they gave her to me. Secondly, she can help sense subtle changes around the room and pick up on trails.”

Lily sniffed the ball and then sniffed while walking around the room. She ducked underneath my bed for a little bit.

“What happened to your Klink?” I asked wondering about Ian’s Starter Pokémon. The Steel-type Pokémon that looked like to gears winding together always seemed like a great fit for him.

“Oh, you mean Dalek? I still have him. My parents were getting worried since I’ve been postponing the start of my journey, so they have been giving me Pokémon to train with.”

“Hey, I’m sorry. You could have just – “

“A promise is a promise.”

The problem with starting your journey late is that usually all your friends leave you behind. When I turned ten, I already knew that I wanted a Roggenrola as my first Pokémon. When all my friends left, I met Ian. I was just hanging out at the Pokémon Center when I heard some kids picking on him, holding his bag away from him and stealing his glasses. It just made me so mad, so I ran right for the kids and started wailing on them.

However, there were more of them than me, so they were able to pin me down. That’s when Ian came in and started to whack the back of their knees with a nearby chair. It really surprised me, since I didn’t think a kid like him had it in him. The kids ran off, and he and I became good friends.

We hung out for an entire year, just him and me; but then I remembered that he was turning ten and would be starting his journey. I tried to lessen the sting by keeping away from him, but he reassured me by saying that he’ll wait until I found a Roggenrola. I couldn’t believe it, but he was truly my best friend.

“Hey, I think Lily found something.”

Ian’s Lillipup popped from under my bed with a small blue object. He picked it up, and I noticed that it was a Lure Ball and that it was open.

“Hey, isn’t this your dad’s crazy Panpour’s ball?” Ian asked as he knew Panpour well. “Where’s the PokéLock covering?”

We usually kept Panpour’s ball in a PokéLock, which is a clear casing that prevented Pokémon from leaving their Pokéballs. Wait. I remembered now that Ian opened the door earlier, which means that it wasn’t locked. Of course…

“He must have escaped and kidnapped Duncan and Gertrude for revenge. Can Lily pick up his scent?”

“Yeah, here, girl. Find Panpour’s scent.” He reached down and let Lillipup get a good whiff of Panpour’s monkey stench.

Before long, Lily bolted out of the room, and we followed in tow. The little puppy ran down the stairs and out the front door before pausing in the sidewalk. We caught up to her, but then she started her hunt again, heading for the windmills outside the city. You see, Ian and I lived in the suburbs of Icirrus City. The city was atop of elevated ground with valley between which sometimes flooded when it rained.

As we followed, I told Ian what had happened up in Twist Mountain and how Panpour was able to capture Roggenrola in a Pokéball.

“Wait,” I said, “do you think Panpour was able to control Duncan and then led him wherever we’re going?”

“No. You see, anything can activate a Pokéball. The little button in front just needs to be pushed and then the Pokéball would start the capturing process. There have been cases of Pokémon capturing themselves in balls too.”

“But then, why wasn’t Panpour sucked into the ball?”

“Well, the company I was working for, Silph Co., has been developing a coding so that a Pokémon can only be captured in one Pokémon at a time. But still, the activation process has a slight lag, which is why it usually bounces off a Pokémon before capturing it.”

“Huh, I guess that’s good enough of an explanation for me. Hey look!”

We reached the edge of one of the high ground and saw that the valley slightly flooded from the winter snow. But, Lily turned and ran towards one of the bridges that had been built so that people could get over the unpredictable terrain. As we passed, we saw the array of windmills that littered the outskirts of the city, though I never really knew what they were for. They were large, wooden and froze in the winter, so you could see water dripping from the tops of them.

Lily led us passed one, two and then three mills before heading to the door of fourth. She barked and jumped, pointed at something high up. I could see the silhouette of Panpour running passed it.

“There!” I said as I pointed up towards the monkey. I tried the door. “It’s locked.” I backed up and tried to ram it, but it held strong. I tried once more before my arm started to hurt.

“Allow me,” Ian said moving me aside. He reached into his backpack once again and pulled out what looked like to be a large hand-sized key.

“What’s that, a skeleton key?” I asked.

“Kinda.” He pushed a small button on the side of it, and the teeth marks started to glow a fiery orange. Then it started to vibrate, and Ian lifted it up to the side of the door. As it connected, the “key” started to cut against the door like a blow torch or a saw, causing chunks of wood, metal and sparks to fly out. About a minute later, the lock broke and the door was opened.

“It does open doors.” Ian laughed.

I ran inside. Everything was dusty and seemed like no one visited in a long time. I saw a punch of small foot prints imprinted in the dust leading to the stairs. I climbed them and heard the sounds of battling upstairs.

I poked my head up and saw Panpour fly passed me, a trail of purple light pushing him through the air. I saw the Gertrude was the origin of the attack. She walked up and picked up something green off the floor. It was Duncan’s Dusk Ball.

“Gertrude!” I announced as I walked up. “You’re ok!”

But Panpour rushed passed me and crunched down his teeth on one of Gertude’s white bows. She yelled out in pain as the forest green ball flung out of her hands. Panpour took this chance to flip backwards and land right where the ball was rolling to.

“I see now. Come on, Gertrude; let’s do this.”

I could see Gertrude’s eyes light up as we were about to be in our first battle together. Panpour had to be stopped. He had kidnapped my Roggenrola, and stuffed him back into his Pokéball. And then Gertrude must have come to rescue him. It all made perfect sense.

Panpour grinned and placed the ball between the three blue clovers at then end of his tail. He held his paws in front of him and extended his claws, which began to glow with a dark purple energy.

“He’s using Hone Claws, quick get in a Psybeam attack.”

Gertrude twirled on her foot as she extended her right arm. She gathered up some of her psychic energy and released it as a purple band of force towards Panpour.

Panpour ran towards it, ducking to the side and avoiding the attack. Panpour then raised his body and used Slash at Gertrude. She was so preoccupied with her attack that she couldn’t dodge, and red gashes appeared on her bowtie and the white diamond pattern on her body. She started to cry. I guess that she wasn’t ready for battling yet.

Panpour gave a confused looked and actually looked sorry for a moment. That is until it was knocked back by another Psywave.

“I get it now. You were using Fake Tears!”

Gertrude turned to me and gave me a thumbs-up. It looked like she was better than I thought.

Panpour was blasted into an old wooden bookshelf that broke on impact. Panpour climbed out of the wreckage covered in splinters. He huffed air into his chest, and I could tell he was about to use Water Gun.

“Gertrude, block his attack with a Light Screen.”

Panpour released his column of water at Gertrude, but she created a glowing, yellow, glass screen between them. The water sprayed off of the screen, but Panpour was really strong and so was his Water Gun. The Light Screen was started to get pushed back closer and closer to Gertrude.

“You can’t keep it up, run out of the way.”

Gertrude jumped to the side as she released the screen, but the column of water struck her in the side, causing her to spin around. Panpour took this opportunity to draw closer to Gertrude and stared flipping around. He jumped off of the ceiling, walls and various objects in the room. He was attempting an Acrobatics move. It was hard to keep up with him as he kept jumping from one place to another. Gertrude finally stopped spinning and stumbled to the ground. Panpour then jumped feet first and landed on my Gothita.

“No!” I screamed as Panpour opened his mouth wide for another Crunch attack.

Then I heard a crackling sound as a Thundershock struck Panpour in the face, causing Panpour fall back. I turned to see Ian standing on the stairs and his Klink floating above him.

“What took you so long?” I asked.

“Hey, we were running a long time; I needed to take a break.”

If I was carrying around a bag of gadgets around I’d be tired too.

Panpour got up slowly. Since he was a Water-type and weak against Electric moves like Thunderschock, he was really feeling the pain now. I guess Ian had really been training his Klink. I mean he got it two years ago.

“Dalek, use Thunderbolt.”

Ian’s Klink started winding up, creating static electricity where the two gears met. An orb of electricity bunched up towards Klink’s faces. The bolt of electricity fired out towards Panpour. He jumped up and down with rage and flung the Pokéball in the way of the large bolt. The Dusk Ball was knocked away easily, though, and Panpour struck by lightning the coursed through his entire furry body. After it subsided he fell to the floor defeated.

I rushed to Gertrude’s side and cradled her in my arms. “Hey, are you ok?”

Gertrude smiled at me and started to cry.

“Panpour is down; you don’t have to worry about him.”

As I held her closer, she started resisting and then jumped out of my arms. She ran over to Duncan’s Pokéball and brought it back over to me. There was a warm, sticky, melted coat of something clear around it.

“What happened? Ian did the Thunderbolt do this?” I handed it to him, and he adjusted his glasses, a mannerism he had whenever he contemplated something.

“Well, Pokéballs are made for wear and tear, but it appears to me that your Roggenrola’s ball was covered in the PokéLock, and that is what had melted.”

“That stupid monkey was keeping Duncan trapped inside his Pokéball. How cruel.”

Gertrude shook her head and continued to cry.

“Hey, Peter. How could have Panpour gotten out of his Pokéball to put his OWN PokéLock onto Roggenrola’s ball?”

“Wait, so Gertrude… you did this?”

Gertrude hugged my leg and soaked it with her tears. It was true.

“Why did you do it, Gertrude?” I just didn’t get why she would do this.

Ian placed his hand on my shoulder. “I think I know. Gertrude was jealous that you finally captured a Roggenrola. I know how much you like to talk about Rock-type Pokémon and Roggenrola, and so I can imagine that Gertrude hears a lot more of it at home. You’ve had her for as long as I’ve known you, but you didn’t want to start your journey with her. So I can see how she would take it out on Duncan.”

Gertrude nodded at every point of Ian’s explanation. How could I be so blind?

I reached down and picked Gertrude up under her arms. “I’m sorry. I was caught up with my obsession with Rock Pokémon that I didn’t see what a great Pokémon I had with me this whole time. I’ll tell you what. When Ian and I register for the Unova Pokémon League, I’ll list you as my Starter Pokémon.”

Gertrude hugged me tightly at this. I knew that would make her happy, and to be honest, I really wanted her to come along on my journey to begin with.

I placed her on the floor and walked over to Panpour. “I guess I need to apologize. I’m sorry. You were just trying to get Roggenrola back safely.”

I helped Panpour sit up, and he turned to me and nodded.

“I think I’ve misjudged you too. You are getting better.” I pulled out his Pokéball and continued, “Let’s get home.”

We all headed back to my house, and I told my parent what had happened. Rather than freaking out like had about what happened at Twist Mountain, my dad congratulated me on connecting with Panpour.

“Hey, maybe you can bring him along in your journey too!”

Panpour released himself from his Pokéball and slapped my dad in the face. Dad just looked really surprised, because it wasn’t a forceful punch, but a “don’t you dare” kind of slap.

I started to laugh, and soon Dad, Mom and Ian joined in too. We all went silent, though, as Panpour started to chuckle. He lifted his head and smiled as he laughed. I think that was the first time any of us heard Panpour laugh or seen him smile since dad brought him home.

“Do you want to come along with me?” I asked him sincerely.

He slapped me in face, and we all started to laugh as a family.



------------------------------
Story Notes - Please do not read until after story.

Pokémon attempted: Gothorita, Lillipup
Characters Need: 15k - 30k
Character Count: CHP2: 8,121 + CHP3: 16,548 = 24669

-- I separated the two chapters, because I felt like I needed to explain Panpour’s background, but it didn’t really fit with what happened in Chapter 3. --

Next time on Peter’s Rocking Tales: The start of the journey. What other Pokémon might have Ian received from his parents during the two years waiting for Pater? Is Duncan going to be resentful against Gertrude? Is Panpour going to join Peter and Ian on their quest? Am I now going to get slapped by an angry yellow and blue monkey? Stay tuned!

------------------------------

Sorocoroto
Sad that graders overlook his stories

...d'awww... uh, as supreme second junior underlord to the story thread, I totally didn't know that this was the one story in the backlog and had opted not to grade it for reasons not to be discussed... mostly my laziness... heheh.

Er, by all of that I mean claimed. Might take me a few days to read chapter one and whatnot, but I'll try not to take forever. D:


^mfw it took forever. Eep.

@sorocoroto

Oh, god, this is so late for me that it’s embarrassing. I’d like to say that this is in a radical format or something to excuse the astronomical tardiness of this grade… but I got nothing. I had a virus at some point during this time, if that counts?
Although, in my defense, there was that massive pukefest at the end of this grade that I tried waiting for your verdict on, gave up, and kept on my merry little way?

Introduction: Since this is a chapter-based story, the introductions are a little different. Obviously, it gets hard and even irritating to start with an action packed hook for every chapter, since there are just going to be some chapters where you don’t need action happening. I’m not really in the body of thought that each chapter of a serial should be graded as an individual story, because, frankly, stories don’t work like that. I would actually be perturbed it I could turn to the beginning of a random chapter in a book I hadn’t read yet and been able to read that chapter as its own individual story and critique it as such. With that in mind, I won’t be grading this chapter like a story in itself, and the requirements are going to be a bit different than those for a normal one-shot would be, because I’m going to view each chapter as a smaller piece of an overarching plot. If I’ve said something so far that you don’t like, stop reading and request that I rewrite this. Now. Because everything else is going to be going in that mindset.
…
Moving on.

“It was three years ago when dad had encountered Panpour beating up some random Pokémon in the alleyway next to his office, his old office in Castelia City that is.

Huh. Interesting. That’s the first sentence of your story, by the way, in case it’s been so long that you can’t recognize it and while it doesn’t serve to grab my attention particularly well, it doesn’t fail at it, either. It’s a narration, too, meaning you start with dialogue, but it’s dialogue about something that happened in the past. I’m mildly interested as to why Panpour was beating up this random Pokémon, and it sort of ties in with the last chapter (as in, explaining why Panpour was such a poor, twisted creature), but it seems like there’s supposed to be a hook there that just… wasn’t. I’m not sure how I feel about this one, but it didn’t seem like the best way to draw me into the story.

As it is, though, a good portion of this chapter was dialogue detailing a past, so I guess a pseudo-suspenseful statement about said past was the best way for you to go here. You weren’t introducing your characters or setting, per say, but you didn’t really have to due to this story’s nature. While I do wish that your hook was a bit hook-ier, that doesn’t really seem to be something that your introduction and story absolutely need, in this situation. I think you’re good here.

Plot: You’ve got a burgeoning story here which is beginning to pike my interest. Seeing as I don’t really enjoy reading journey-fics, that’s an excellent start.

However, there are a couple of things I want to address, some of which are minor and a few that are major.

We’ll start off with Duncan. The only Shakespeare character by his name of which I know happens to be King Duncan, from Macbeth. The same King Duncan who gets slaughtered by his cousin-ish/the man whom he trusts dearly, and then does nothing else for the rest of the play. ‘cause he’s dead. Although he does cause some quite interesting character developments in the other members of the cast. In your story, Duncan the Roggenrola gets kidnapped by a friend-ish/the Gothita whom he somewhat trusts. In this case, though, he gets saved by some other friends before anything bad happens, and everyone goes happily into the sunset here. I’m not sure if you were trying to draw a parallel with this story and Macbeth (TREES!), and I’m also not sure why you named him Duncan. ‘course, most of this is purely for my interest, although I’m not sure if the naming is important to the story…?

You seem to portray Panpour as this poor (cwutididthar?) little monkey whose wickedness is caused only because people tend to think that he’s wicked. And then you portray him as a demon who tries to harm Peter. And then he’s a misunderstood monkey again, people hug him and feel sorry for him, and everything seems right with the world. And then he starts slapping people. Even for a dynamic character, Panpour takes so many moodshifts that it’s practically dizzying to track his actual character development. Most of this problem springs from the fact that Peter is already pre-disposed to disliking him, but then Peter has a moodswing and starts feeling sorry for Panpour, too… it just gets odd when you do that.

Speaking of moodswings, Gothita and Peter take the cake for this one. Gothita has some hints at being an evil character at some point, or at least slightly malicious (what with the, you know, incessant pouting, attacking Duncan, and whatnot), so her sudden “gah I’m evil I hate Duncan” moment seems justified. However, Peter’s really doesn’t. He doesn’t really seem shocked or disappointed that Gothita tried to kill his starter Pokémon out of jealousy, and whatever sentiments he does have quickly vanish after about thirty seconds. Instead of being offended that the Pokémon who had been his friend since he was a child quite literally just broke into his house and stole his actual starter Pokémon, Peter kinda just takes the blame on himself and is all “oh noes, I should have felt sorry for you sooner”. In a realistic situation, most people (especially those with what I assume to be Peter’s character) would be a bit more distraught at this large breach in trust. Perhaps that’s just me. However, it really, really wouldn’t have hurt to explain Peter’s feelings a bit more. Not so much to the point of angst, but more just to get inside of his head better so we don’t have to assume what he’s thinking.

Mostly, your plot is pretty solid, with a few exceptions that I’ve pointed out. You’ll really want to focus on keeping your characters in character and making their reactions realistic and possible, though, so that your plot makes sense.

Detail/Description: You’ve got mostly solid description here, although it is lacking in a few places. That’s where I come in to tear it apart.

Lily sniffed the ball and then sniffed while walking around the room.

In this instance, you use ‘sniff’ one time too many in a sentence. Sniff is one of those strong-ish verbs that will leave an impression on a reader, which is a good thing—we can picture exactly what a sniff is, and how Lily is doing it. However, the problem there is that the word ‘sniff’ is going to stay in our minds for a lot longer than a weaker verb, like ‘smelled’, because we’re so used to seeing smelled over sniffed. It’s kinda a psychological thing, but readers are more prone to recognizing more foreign words when they’re used too many times than they are with more common words. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t use more exotic, stronger words, but you’ve also got to be careful not to repeat them whenever you can.

The next thing I’d like to point out is something that I can’t quote. Your description is a bit obnoxious at points, in the kindest way possible. Most of the time, you say something like “<blank> was a <blank>, which meant that <blank> <description>”. It happens a lot, and your <description> tends to be a massive block of text that gets a bit boring to trek through. Again, I don’t mean to sound rude when I say this; if you prefer having your description like this, by all means leave it like that. However, you can easily overwhelm and/or bore the reader when you talk about how the plains of Iccirus City flood when it rains after describing Iccirus for several sentences (to me, this smells like subtle foreshadowing and I’m waiting for a moment where the city flood with water, but hey), because such information seems redundant. Instead of this:

After we returned to our house, dad returned Gertrude’s ball to me. I pulled out the Timer Ball and released the small purple and black Pokémon onto the bed next to Roggenrola. She looked like a small baby girl with big blue eyes, two red lips, white ribbon-like feelers on the side of her head and a small tuft of hair sticking up. Her black body had a white diamond pattern that ran horizontally around her chest and a big white ribbon on her neck.

…which personally starts feeling long right when the final sentence begins, you can try to work it in more subtly. You don’t have to spout everything in one go. Instead, try having a baseline description, and then describe things in pieces as you go on. In essence, you’d say something like “Gothita hopped down from the bed, her white, ribbon-like feelers bouncing around on the sides of her head as she landed and wobbled”, ‘r perhaps something a little less obvious sounding than that. The point is, readers don’t like getting descriptions thrown in their face, but too little is also hard to deal with. You’ll have to work a bit harder until you can find that perfect middle ground, but when you do, you’ll be set.

Can I see what’s going on in your story, even if I think it’s a bit much? Yes. Therefore, you’re definitely set here on description. For a Medium/Simple capture. At higher levels… not so much. Eep.

Grammar/Dialogue: You speak perty. Most of the time. And your grammar is well. But sometimes, things go wrong, eh?

When we arrived back home, I took my dinner up to my room so I could pack supplies for my journey and talk to Roggenrola, getting to know him better.

Most of your story is narrated in past tense, but this section read a little awkwardly. Like I said, your story runs in a past-tense timeframe, but this little bit of explanation takes place in a time before the past-tense timeframe, meaning you’ve got to phrase it differently so that you can note that. Otherwise, it looks like Peter and Duncan are arriving home and taking dinner up to their room at the same time as they’re saying this, even though it seems like they’re not and those actions were things that they had done before this dialogue had commenced. Confusing, no? Instead, you’d want to word it more like:
“When we had arrived back home, I had taken my dinner…” and so forth. Leave it all to good ‘ole past perfect to screw things up.

When I got back to my room, Gertrude was staring at Roggenrola, who found rest atop my pillow.

This sentence is grammatically correct. Roggenrola is finding rest, and he’s found it on top of Peter’s pillow. However, I’m flagging this for another reason entirely—Peter is somewhat of an imperfect narrator. He gives the details and the events, but he doesn’t always give them from all points of view. That’s okay, because you’re not using omniscient third tense here, but up until this point, Peter’s shown himself to be a fairly simple person in his words; his use of “finding rest atop my pillow” just seems out of character for him. He’s still a teenager, after all; I always imagined him as a young kid, but he might be a bit older. Either way, Peter usually uses simpler constructs in his speaking, so this seemed a bit out of place. Uh.

They weren’t like a saw or a screwdriver

Perhaps this goes into description, but it feels odd thinking of someone going “Oh noes, a broken alarm pad… better go get me my saw!” sort of thing. Word usage. And then:

It just made me so mad, so I ran right for the kids and started wailing on them.

I just wanted to point this out because I found it amusing. Whaling vs wailing. From what I know, whaling is what you’re going for—‘s kinda like slugging people repeatedly, with the grace and finesse of a whale. Meaning not much. Whereas wailing… ‘s like “I DON’T LIKE YOU STOP HURTING HIM GIVE HIM BACK HIS GLASSES I’M AN IDIOT THIS IS A RUN-ON SENTENCE WAH WAH WAH…”
Basically, watch your wording a bit. Sometimes it ends up getting a wee bit awkward.

First off, he’s a she, and her name is Lily, my parent named her when they gave her to me.

Two things here. Firstly, “parent” is an awkward word. I’m pretty sure that Ian has both of his parents, although even if he didn’t, you wouldn’t want to use parent: you’d just use mom or dad. However, the main thing here is that you’ve joined your two independent clauses with a comma, which is grammatically incorrect (le comma splice!). Either change that comma to a semicolon or add in a coordinating conjunction.

“What happened to your Klink?” I asked wondering about Ian’s Starter Pokémon.

This actually comes up quite a few times in the course of your chapters. When you’ve got a participle modifying your main subject, you’ve got to make sure that it’s separated by a comma to denote that it’s not quite part of the main sentence. So instead, your sentence would look more like:
I asked, wondering about Ian’s…
Watch those participles. I know that you hate having them dangle, but you also have to make sure that they’ve got commas with them. Those two ideas aren’t really connected, but I feel confident using grammar jargon when I’m talking to the guy whose usertitle was “the dangling participle” for several months. XD

Panpour struck by lightning the coursed through his entire furry body

This is one of the few instances of it, but in this case… your sentence kidna made no sense. Eep.

[quote]Thunderschock[quote]
Teehee.

All in all, you’ve got a good grasp of grammar. That participle thing came up enough times that I felt right mentioning it, but you’re not aiming for a difficulty so that I’d have to delve too far into either of them at this point. So huzzah.

Length: I have 24,781; you have 24,669. I counted chapter titles and stuff, so that’s probably why the difference existed, but that’s really not all that important, honestly. You seemed a bit rushed at the end with the whole “Le gasp! Gothita is actually a traitor!” sort of thing, and it seemed a bit unfair to Duncan… eh. You might want to look in to your pacing in the future, although this is small—for moments like that, which have the option of being incredibly confusing, you’ll want to explain things a bit more thoroughly—I’m still not quite sure what went on in there.

But, for a Medium/Simple capture, your length is fine. I’ll explain the italics in about twenty seconds, I promise.

Personal Feelings/Outcome: You know, after so many hours and hours of grimdark, this is a cheery change from what I normally end up reading. It was still a bit dark in places (bad Gertrude! D:), but it was in a good way. Somehow. Yeah. Kudos here, though, for creating an uppity story that still has an interesting plot.

God, I’m going to feel like such a jerk for this, you know? I think I know what you were trying to capture, but you effed up the last part a bit… this is gonna be a bit complicated of a capture statement-y sort of thing. RESPOND TO MY VM’S ‘N IM’S NEXT TIME… KAY? :3

Lillipup: captured. Regardless of whatever else happens, you are guaranteed this Lillipup, courtesy of me. Go throw a part or something.
Gothorita: not captured; however, if you were aiming for a Gothita, it will be captured

…yeah. Even though I’m 95% sure that you were trying to capture Gothita, not Gothorita, those two letters right there at the end really, really screwed you over. I’m obliged to judge you on what you implicitly stated that you wanted to capture, being Gothorita, and I’m not sure if your plot/length/details were really up to standard for a Hard Pokémon. The story was definitely borderline for a good portion of it, but those inconsistencies, coupled with the fact that there wasn’t a Gothorita in the story at all, period, did sway me in the direction of a solely partial capture here.

Before I ramble into tl;dr, ‘s pretty simple for what you have to do. You’ll either 1) state here that you’re claiming your Gothita, in which case it’ll be captured (which should take you about five seconds… ten if you have laggy internet), or 2) state here that you’re aiming for a Gothorita, in which case it won’t be captured. Advice for capturing the Gothorita is in the spoiler below, because I’ve got a giant freaking hunch that you were trying to go for a Gothita so ‘s all irrelevant.

Firstly… this is a spoiler. Inside of a spoiler. Inside of a spoiler.
…spoilerception.

Should you chose to rewrite for a Gothorita (in this case, I wouldn’t suggest it, for a reason I’ll mention in a bit) is to kick everything up to eleven. Your story was good enough for a Medium, but perhaps you’re one of those overachiever writers who wants to surpass absolutely everything. Perhaps you’re a perfectionist or something. Iunno. If that’s the case, then you might want to actually get the Gothorita. Fix up those silly commas, develop your characters a bit more, and actually incorporate a Gothorita into your plot, and generally make this story the increased level that a Hard/Simple capture would entail. One of the main reasons that you wouldn’t want to do this, besides the obvious one of time/effort (which might not even be obvious to you, lol), is that you might want Gertrude to be a Gothita for the next chapter, due to this story’s nature as a serial. As an ongoing story, it’s quite likely that you’ve got something planned out for her arc, and you might not want her to be a Gothorita for a bit longer, amirite?

I’ve got a 95% hunch that you’re really aiming for a Gothita, so I’ll put that shiz inside of another spoiler. Next time… just state what you want next time…. XD

For a Medium/Simple capture, you’re in the right area. You’ve got some plotty bits and some description that you’ll want to polish up (try using that subtle thing where you don’t have to monologue for paragraphs about what things look like, but instead you write it in naturally for the story), and sometimes your characters go a wee bit out of whack, but that’s fine at this level. Medium captures are exactly what they say—medium (<anticlimactic)—and you’re actually slightly above the median here. A good deal, really. I know you’re a skilled writer who could easily write for Demanding if you so chose, but this story didn’t quite entail the vast effort that you normally put in. I’m not saying that you weren’t trying on this one (I know that in a lot of chapter-stories, each individual chapter is less than the entire arc as a whole), but the fact that this is a part in many made the story a little less appealing to me. Iunno.

Tl;dr (again): you’ve got the requirements for the Medium/Simple capture. You’ll want to fix up the description/plot things I pointed out, if you feel that my statements have reason, but besides that, you’re pretty much golden for this level.

Either way, you’ve got a solid chapter here. I’m really sorry for taking this long, again, and I hope that this makes sense to you. If the whole double spoiler/two endings capture bit kinda blew your mind/made no sense at all, IM/PM me about it and I’ll try to clear it up. I look forward to seeing you continue this and hope that nothing here (like, say, the massive lag I took in posting this) discourages you from writing more.

HE CLAIMED GOTHITA. GRATS ON THAT CAPTURE, 'CAUSE I'M VALIDATING IT. WOOH.