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Fullmental's Junk Drawer

Thread Description
Maybe some of this will come back and be useful one day?


*Fódlan Winds intensifies*
Team Omega
Pokédex No.
May 13, 2019
That one building with no door for a hero to open.
Pokémon Type
Rock, Clever
Pokédex Entry
This Pokemon can sometimes be found meticulously editing and re-editing it's own content, never satisfied with the results.
I will post things I want to maybe revisit later in here. Feel free to peruse my indefinite hiatus projects if you wish, but I make no promises as to if or when any of these get my attention again.

Hi everyone! Fullmental here with Pokemon Liberation Front! PLF is a storylocke originally conceptualized for the UCL Season 1 event, but due to inadequate time I've decided to withdraw from that event.

That said, I still want to tell this story in a nuzlocke! Instead of 8 games though, we'll condense everything into one. Our story begins with the tale of a trainer that can speak to and understand Pokemon, a highly uncommon talent in the world. We'll follow him throughout the region of Sinnoh as he meets with a mysterious character that hails from the Unova region. What troubles and challenges await him? Read on to find out.

But first, the rules!

A standard Nuzlocke challenge. Designed to follow the most basic rules of the challenge.

1. Only catch the first Pokemon in each Route or Area. Caves count as one area and gifts count in the area they are received. All starter Pokemon however count as the area in which you can first nickname them. Some routes based on game have a Pinwheel Forest Clause applied to them.
1a. Dupes clause, you can skip any encounter of a Pokemon from a family you already have caught. This is your choice. If you want two Pidgeot on your team be my guest~
1b. Shiny Clause: Shiny Pokemon may be caught and used regardless of any other rule. This includes the Red Gyarados
1c. HM slaves can be caught and used if none of the Pokemon you own can learn an HM to continue progress. HM slaves have to be released once you catch a Pokemon that can learn this move.
1d. Rule 1 applies only once poke balls become available to you in the game for the first time.

2. Faint =Dead. If it reaches 0 HP, it's dead and must be boxed or released. Regardless of any factor.

3. Nickname all Pokemon, they are your partners and need the love of a name.

4. No boxed Pokemon allowed, except for HM slaves. Once you hit 6 party pokemon, each new catch must replace an old catch, and that old catch must be released permanently.

With that out of the way, let's begin! If you caught my early UCL thread, I began my story very similarly in Fire Red. This has been rewritten to accommodate the Sinnoh region. I present to you "Pokemon Liberation Front" chapter 1!

I broke my promise...

It hadn't even been a day. How did I let it come to this? How could I possibly let myself get so worked up over something so stupid?! I looked around at the crowd that had gathered between us. There was no getting out. No getting away. Everyone saw. Everyone heard.

"Hey, kid!" The voice came from a nearby brush, as a Bidoof slowly emerged. It twitched its nose at me and pointed its large, fuzzy tail at the throng surrounding me. "My trainer and I can help you out of this, but promise me you'll do exactly what I say."

Your trainer? I spoke out silently to the creature, careful to break eye contact as soon as I realized what it wanted to do. Glancing around at the crowd and the helpless man on the ground didn't do much to help me calm down.


For what it's worth I projected, I promise

"Okay kid. When I give the signal, you jump and throw your hands in the air."

Wait, you want me to what?

"Just do it. Ready...NOW!"

This was stupid. I was stupid. If anyone thought I was less than a complete and total idiot, this would convince them. But then again, what choice did I have? I could stay here, get questioned by the police, and at best lose my license. Or I could take a chance...

I made my mind up. In an act of complete desperation, I leapt into the air and threw my hands up in front of the battered, unconscious old man...

~~~One Day Earlier~~~

"Fio!" my mom's excited voice echoed faintly through the wall. I could barely make out what she was saying. "Fio, come here! You have a visitor."

"Tell Barry to come back later," I murmured back through my blanket as I sulked in bed. Daylight was streaming in through the curtains, but I didn't care to go outside and enjoy the view, or waste my time with idle conversation. I was so disappointed in myself for failing my honors license exam.

I shouldn't be shutting out Barry too, but I just wasn't in the mood. We were good friends, or at least we understood each other. Even though Barry was the most eccentric student in class - always getting in trouble or coming up with hairbrained schemes - he was also the smartest, much to the rest of the students' disappointment. Barry's outward persona leaned ever so slightly towards "asshole", so he wasn't exactly well-liked by his peers. He was kind of like me in that regard, always sort of the odd one out unless the rest of the class had a specific reason to take advantage of us. I knew he was actually a pretty good guy, if a little naïve. That's why we made perfect friends.

He probably came around to tell me the good news about how he placed top of the class, and was so excited to be traveling the world. I was the only person that could accept that at face value too, much like he was the only person to accept my strange ability to talk to and understand Pokemon at face value. Everyone else just seemed to regard as some strange kid play at best, or an odd form of witchcraft at worst. I just wasn't ready to talk to him now. Moreover, I wasn't ready for my only good friend to disappear while I was left behind to drag myself through the regular Pokemon license course until I reached the "standard" trainer age of 18.

"It's not one of your school friends, dear." Mom replied, louder this time. "The Professor is here!"

"...Professor? Professor Rowan? He's back?!"

I threw the covers off my bed and scrambled to my mirror, trying my best to hand-flatten the stubborn strands of dark brown hair on my head. It was a fruitless effort, so I threw on the nicest hat in my immediate reach. I dashed down the stairs and nearly ran straight into my poor mom, who was shuffling away to put Professor Rowan's jacket on the hangar by the kitchen.

"Careful, Fio!" She said in surprise, then grabbed the hat off my head with a shake of her head "Don't wear that inside dear," she said softly, then dropped her voice even lower to a faint whisper, "They're here to discuss your exam results. Did you do something wrong?"

A wave of shock shook my body as the implications of a bad visit coursed through my brain. "I-I don't think so?" Did I get dinged for plagiarism or something? Was I too precise in my answers? It was the only possible explanation I could think of. Why else would the professor show up personally if I did something wrong? I barely placed in the middle of the class!

I had to take a moment to compose myself, but I did my best to shake off the terrible feeling and entered the room to find not one, but two people waiting patiently for me.

"Ah, hello Fio!" Ms. Johanna, my teacher for the past 8 years, was accompanying the professor. They seem happy enough, or at least Ms. Johanna did. Professor Rowan just sort of stood there. Maybe this is good news? I politely greeted them both and we sat down at the table.

"Thank you for meeting with us, Fio," Ms. Johanna said as she sat down alongside Professor Rowan. I was on the other side of the table, nervously trying not to glance from one to the other as I waited to hear why we were there. "As you might know, we recently sent out the exam results from your early trainer's license exam. I think the questions stumped you a bit and the results were less than stellar."

Another wave of disappointment came over me. I still couldn't believe my awful results. I may have been better off writing what I knew in the first place than trying to be perfect about it!

"But I do have good news!" Ms. Johanna continued quickly, cheery as ever. She probably sensed my mood, I wasn't doing a very good job of hiding it. "You are going to be admitted to the Pokedex program on a personal recommendation!"

"I-what?..." I couldn't believe what I heard. I had no close friends at the lab, no one to personally vouch for me. I had completely written off the recommendation as a possibility. "H-how?!"

"Well, the professor here has-," she began, but Professor Rowan quickly put up his free hand to interrupt.

"I can answer that, Jo." His voice was coarse, but kind. Nowhere near the stubborn old man voice I expected.

"O-oh," Ms. Johanna could barely get her voice to work. "Y-yes of course sir. Please g-go on."

A stoic old man of few words, even among the town's residents it was considered an honor to just have a conversation with the world's top Pokemon researcher. His time was just too valuable to waste on chitchat. To think he would take the time to come to my house and explain a recommendation to me? I wasn't sure I could get a full sentence out either.

"Thank you. Fiorenzo Marciano, was it?" Professor Rowan glanced down at his notes, rolling over my name as if he had pronounced it a thousand times.

"...Yes, sir!" I finally broke out. He even pronounced it right with a smooth "ch" sound through the middle. Impressive...

"First try, eh? I guessed your family was originally from the Fiore region." Rowan let out a small chuckle as he fumbled through a few papers and placed them down on the table in front of me. "You see Fiorenzo, usually, the top student in the graduating class at each town's honor program would normally have the privilege of earning a Pokedex. As you know this is a relatively expensive technology, so devices are extremely limited. Recommendations are even more rare, with only one recommendation allowed per region. I'm sure you know the Pokedex is the ultimate encyclopedia on Pokemon, but it's also so much more than that, it's a status symbol. Students that are given these Pokedexes actually get the opportunity to contribute their own entries for each Pokemon they encounter or catch. It helps old men like myself who have neither the time nor the energy to go out and explore the regions they report to, haha!"

"...Yes sir?"

"It was a joke, son." Professor Rowan let out a sigh. "Maybe I'm losing my touch, I rarely get the chance to have a casual conversation! Anyway, despite you doing poorly in the written exam, you handled your mock battles extremely well. Not only that, but there have been some rumors about an uncanny ability of yours that will benefit our research." I looked at the professor in shock. How?!

"You've heard about that??" I never thought it would reach the professor of all people. Particularly since nobody took me seriously when I told the town I could talk to Pokemon! Was this some sort of joke? A prank? No, they'd never do that...But still, how?!

"Yes. Your friend and my aide, Barry, was the one to tell me."

"Barry?! Your aide?!?!"

"Hah, I guess he never told you. Barry has actually been working as an aide for me these past few years along with Dawn, who I believe is in another class in your school. I'm not surprised he kept it a secret. There's so much going on in the Rowan Laboratory that must be kept from the public until we are ready to reveal our findings to the world. Barry and Dawn are just children, so we ask that they keep their involvement a secret to avoid unnecessary attention from prying eyes.

"It's a pain to deal with, honestly," Rowan continued. "Why, this past year I had to go incognito on my own research trip around the region, all to avoid the constant pestering from reporters and fans! Anyway," he waved his hands in the air, as if to dismiss the whole thing. "That aside, there's a good reason why we want someone like you to be on the Pokedex team."

I let out a weak smile. This guy was nothing like what I expected. Him, annoyed by his own prestige? So much so that his grandson doesn't even go by the same last name? I thought I had it bad by being labeled as "The Pokemon Whisperer" among my peers. At least that was just an annoying tease among classmates, and not something that followed me into conversations with complete strangers!

"Your ability," Professor Rowan continued, "is that you can talk to and understand Pokemon, both from a linguistic and an emotional standpoint, correct? You seem to be able to manage pokemon on a level that would take most their whole lifetime to develop."

"Yes, sir." I still couldn't believe my ears. I couldn't believe my eyes. I could get out of this tiny town once and for all!

"Excellent. One of the problems our team has been experiencing with our program is that many students are unable to understand the complex dynamics of Pokemon behavior in the wild. It's no good for our encyclopedia entries if the data is bad. This is where you come in. I have made a personal recommendation for you to join our team of researchers in order to focus on the behavior of Pokemon in the wild and in captivity. For this specific role, there is no need to try and capture these Pokemon you encounter to send back to us for research. In fact," he said, pulling a few sheets of paper out of the stack on the table and placing it in front of me, "we have enough Pokemon in our storage facilities already, so much so that we barely have any idea what to do with them!"

I glanced at the stack of paper in front of me. It was a status report of the Pokemon on each laboratory throughout the world. The numbers were overwhelmingly large! ~15,000 Magikarp, 6,835 Tauros, nearly 50,000 Ditto, the list went on and on. At the bottom was a final tally: 2,234,686 Pokemon.

"These numbers..." I asked. "How do you manage to store all of these?"

"Well, that's part of the problem," Professor Rowan replied. "We don't have nearly enough room at the various laboratories, so most of these Pokemon are placed in the digital storage system for safekeeping, never to be recalled by their trainers again. It is disrupting our ecosystem. We have begun limiting the number of boxes available to each registered trainer, but as you can imagine the litigation is slow to go into effect. As a person of interest in studying Pokemon communities, I would rather you not contribute to the problem. Therefore, as a condition of this recommendation, I would request that you only use a single storage box for temporary use during your internship for the next four years, understand?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. There is one more condition though, and this is very important: I don't want you to tell anyone about your ability outside of the research team anymore."

"I-You want me to what?"

"Do not," Professor Rowan repeated, "tell anyone about your ability to talk to Pokemon. As far as we know you are the only person in the world with this capability, and while you've not hidden it among the town, very few of them are likely to actually believe you. Additionally, outside of my research group people almost never come through this town. As such - and partially by my personal request to my team to keep quiet on this recommendation - news of your ability has never reached any mainstream news outlets."

"I'm sure you know," Professor Rowan continued, stacking the sheets of paper into a neat pile once more, "the ability to understand Pokemon is somewhat common among those with telepathy with an occurrence rate of about 1 in 25 among the community. Certain people - such as Kanto's famous gym leader, Sabrina - are well known, but even among them it has always been known as a one-way communication method. There are certain people in the world that try to take advantage of that, and as a result many telepathic trainers have found themselves to be the target of organized crime operations. The Saffron gym has a full armed guard, even.

"Your ability is not only understanding Pokemon speech, but you can also understand the more animalistic side of Pokemon, something that most telepathic trainers don't do well with. Additionally, you can even project your own speech and raw emotion to Pokemon. I'm sure you know this means you can influence them easier than others. If you thought speech was enough to attract organized crime, if this sort of news got out you would be target #1, understand?"

My whole body was stiff. I could barely bring myself to breathe. I had no idea such complications could ever come from my natural gift. Bad people? Criminal organizations? Target #1?!

"Uh-Hey, kid! Snap out of it!" Professor Rowan, quite concerned, reached across the table and placed both hands on my shoulders and gave me a light shake. It didn't help anything. "This is for your own safety, if you can keep a secret no one will be the wiser, understand? Jo and I are the only ones that know the full details of your ability, so you are safe. Besides, Sinnoh is pretty quiet right now, relatively speaking. Crime rates have been down for decades. You have nothing to worry about it you are careful."

"Y-yes sir!" It was true, while I wasn't necessarily secretive about my abilities, most adults in town dismissed them as child's play.

"Promise me you can keep it a secret?" Ms. Johanna asked, the smile temporarily drained from her permanently blissful face.

"I...Yes." Keep a secret? I could do that, easy.

"Great! Now, let's get down to business on your job duties..."


First I would like to thank Lord Ninjax for their help with this story! Lord Ninjax is my beta reader for this story so far, and has been extremely helpful throughout this process. I can't stress enough how much an extra set of eyes can catch things that I'd never see myself.

Second, I'd like to note that while I have N written in a Fio's mentor (N will be introduced in the next chapter), our story is taking place in Sinnoh. This is not a mistake, rather it is a major part of the plot. How does it influence the story? I guess we'll have to find out later!
