This ending was just precious. Beaming throughout. Thank you.

Aw, this was actually a sweet chapter. I did have to refresh myself since it's been a while, but I enjoyed the interactions of the characters.

To be fair to Zinnia, if I were trapped in a containment field indefinitely with only two peaches, I would probably eat them myself too. Interesting to see a Scorbunny appear, though! How did it get inside Zinnia's cell? Also surprised the URS didn't bother to remove Zinnia's Mega Anklet. That will probably come back to bite them in the butt...

And wow, didn't see Chrysalis as Mars coming. In hindsight it's really obvious, lol, but I guess that's 20/20. I like how she went from battling Santurn and attempting to hurt Lucas to literally having a breakdown over manuals and then asking Santurn on another date, lol. Santurn's dialogue was really well written, so nice job.

Looking forward to the next one!

Whoah, this chapter was wild from start to finish. Loved Saturn's heart-to-heart with Mars.

Forget the smoking; what about those Combusken legs?!

Great chapter, as usual. It was fun seeing Lucas, Weavile and Maylene have some fun together, espcially after last chapter. It'll be interesting to see how Maylene's date with Candice goes.

Zinnia's description was pretty unnecessary; if you read Pokémon fic you already likely know who she is, and if not, her official artwork is only a Google away and already shows what she wears in detail. The boob comment was even more unnecessary. We already know by the first paragraph that it's Zinnia so the attempt to build up some mystery about her identity falls flat. But it's interesting to see some split between her and Aster, and that she's going through her ORAS arc of dealing with the meteor. Wonder what happened to Aster if Zinnia remembers screams and stuff when she thinks of it...

Have no idea who our mystery person is. It's probably really obvious but I can't think right now. If they're wearing a helmet and visor over the eyes, how can a strand of their hair be visible?

Keep writing!

This isn’t the type of story I’d usually read but yours has me so weirdly invested. You establish the characters so well, from the aloof and commanding presence of Saturn to Maylene’s rough and ready attitude to Zinnia’s mad but also ingenious scheming. As a Pokémon Weavile is great and has a personality of its own. Even Lucas, who is obviously vanilla in the games, really works his rundown millennial vibe.

Your writing could do with a spot of work, is probably my only critique. When Maylene offers the bar to Lucario, for example; it’s okay just to say “She broke off half the chocolate bar and gave it to Lucario”, instead of going into detail about it separating from the wrapper. Readers are intuitive; we’ll know it’s free from the wrapper if she’s given half to Lucario! Overuse of epithets as well; “he”, “she”, “it” and the respective character’s names are fine to use repetitively as pronouns. You might benefit from having a beta reader just to sharpen your prose.

I can’t tell where this is going either. Is this Lucas/ Saturn? You aged up the characters. But then the genre says friendship and Lucas/ Saturn is so crack I can’t hardly believe people ship it. I mean, either way I’m down for whatever as long as it doesn’t get too raunchy or OOC (from your current interpretation of course) lol.

Overall, you’ve done a great job introducing these authentic characters, character arcs to explore and plot and conflict to develop. Looking forward to next chapter. Keep writing! :D

Seeing how you are new to the Pokemon fanfiction section (your first one) it will be targeted by a group of egomaniac jerks who preach a twisted idea of how fanfiction should be. St Elmo's Fire is very likely to be this user who will post a review and not care one bit about you're story. They literally do it to everyone and never really follow or read it.

St Elmo's Fire and his friends go around being just a bunxh of jerks to users. In short I suspect he would complain about your summaey, capitalixing the name of your Pokemon, and writing the story in a way that isn't prose or some other nonsense.

Thsts not counting what he does to other users. Demanding you use a tag that doesn't really fit, yell at you for not explaining everything in the first chapter, using speach phases other then said, making aus or just as simple as having your characters say "Oh Arceus".

The guys group (Farla, Talarc, The Reeds of Enki) is best to ignore or block as they really don't help and are bettered blocked. Now with that said outside the group of jerks we are rather nice so Welcome to Pokemon fandom

It's getting readers! And it's a good work, too. Now getting heartfelt reviews seems to be a rarity among fics nowadays, unfortunately. This story of yours has Lots of passion and this is the first I've read someone give one of the protags a Sneasel/Weavile on their team. They arrive mid-to-late game so it's rather unusual.

Ouch, the flashback to the red scarf is a tearjerker. I think you're stretching the suspension of disbelief for a bit at Lucas understanding the complexity of what Weavile is saying (in pokespeech?)

Surely there's someone Lucas could reach out to? Maybe he thinks he's in too deep with Galactic for anyone to help him out.

Yeah just ignore St Elmo's Fire. The guys a jerk and all his advice is really him yelling hos personal beliefs and nonsense about this made up thing called prose.

As you can see with a look no one really listens to him.

You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor. Or champion. Before you message me about this, please look at fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/55376155/1/Capitalization-Thread to make sure your argument hasn’t already been addressed.

[his boss, whom there is more to than meets the eye…]

This needs a “to whom”.

The chapter dropdown menu pushes the first line of the story body over a bit, messing up your neat centering here. You can try adding a blank line break above it, but FFN’s text parser is nonsensically tyrannical and it may not be accepted.

[azure haired]

This should be hyphenated.

[Team Galactic had come a long way from being a criminal organisation bent on achieving the goals of one deeply troubled man. Now operating under Commander Saturn, the organisation was now putting its pursuits in the field of energy research towards the good of Sinnoh's future]

Uh… Saturn was totally complicit in Galactic’s crimes. I know he ends up somehow not in jail at the end of the game, but “I was just following orders” is not actually a valid excuse. He still committed terrorist acts, attacked citizens, and tortured pokemon for the interests of Team Galactic. If anything, the fact he did all that without even knowing Cyrus’ plans makes him even less trustworthy, since it means he was willing to commit atrocities without even questioning what it was for. I would not trust any of his claims of “reform” for one second, and neither should Lucas, who was personally there for all of it.

[Of course, much like Lucas with his once profitable Pokémon egg farming scheme (which had led him to be stripped of his title of Sinnoh League Champion), the police had Team Galactic under watchful eyes, just waiting for them to step out of line again so that the long arm of the law could quickly apply a tight strangle hold to suppress any sort of new uprising of organised criminal activity.]

Again, they already committed organized criminal activity. It’s possible that maybe this is after Saturn’s already served his prison term, or he made some kind of bargain to preserve some of his holdings, but I cannot see why any government official in their right mind would let him go back to having any position of authority. At the very least, they ought to rebrand.

He also shouldn’t still be holding the rank of commander if this is no longer a military organization.

[there were times when he felt like a real Magikarp out of water around here]

The concept of fish in general still exists in the pokeworld. This is one case where you do not have to use the tortured alternative.

[It was only after facing the repercussions of his actions - namely, seeing his Ditto get taken into protective custody and having all remaining unhatched Pokémon eggs in his possession confiscated by the authorities - that he had been forced to wake up... and grow up.]

Hmm. This raises some interesting questions about law enforcement. You say his eggs were confiscated, but not his battling pokemon. Was he truly “forced” to do anything, then? If he had chosen to fight off the police with his epic-level battling team, what would have happened? Looker and Anabel do have champion-level teams in SuMo, but you can push pokemon much higher than that if we’re going by game mechanics. Lucas also has, you know, a god, which is still quite powerful even if we accept the conceit that pokeballs weaken its power. What does this society look like when impulsive teenagers have access to such godlike power?

I’m also wondering why this was his option for employment. Even if the authorities did take away his battling team, the games insist that the player characters have incredible natural talent even beyond their technical strength. The egg hatching scheme also implies he has a mind for business and exploiting cracks in the system, so it’s not like battling is even his only skill. Why is his talent being wasted as a lowly errand boy for this company? Was the scandal so widespread that absolutely no one else was willing to hire him despite his obvious talent? Even if so, if PR is a concern, I doubt the company of totally reformed definitely not plotting anything former terrorists would want to get anywhere near him. Why couldn’t he have moved to another country, or just laid low with his no-doubt substantial winnings from championing, as many celebrities do in real life? I would appreciate some more backstory here – what other options did he consider or attempt, why was he forced into this unlikely and specific situation?

This is too insubstantial for a first chapter. Remember that your first chapter is your opportunity to hook your reader – you don’t need to put all your cards on the table, but you need to have something to show. Abruptly ending in the middle of a scene isn’t a cliffhanger, it’s just annoying. See here for more information: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/142411850/1/First-Chapters

Their banter is excellent. Zinnia is a nice addition! Curious to see where it goes from here.