Fanfic / Celestia's Rocket Adventures

Celestia's Rocket Adventures is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Pokémon: The Series crossover by Snake Staff, also author of Friendship Is Grievous and Winter Storm.

Midway through Ash's journey through the Kalos region, Princess Celestia winds up flung through dimensions in a freak accident. Transformed by the magic of her journey, she winds up as a Pokémon captured by James of Team Rocket. But even as she adapts to her new circumstances, the trio is assigned a new mission: take down the mysterious Team Flare.

Tropes in this story include:

• Adaptational Badass: Celestia in this story proves considerably more competent than she comes off in canon, quickly becoming Team Rocket's most powerful Pokémon. During the assault on the Ultimate Weapon, she even shows herself capable of Mega Evolution.
  • Also applies to Lysandre. In the games, he's a disappointing Zero-Effort Boss with a team extremely vulnerable to sweeping and doesn't engage the player until near the end. In this story he takes the field considerably earlier and more often, handing out defeats to Celestia, Butch and Cassidy, AZ, and even Xerneas and Yveltal personally.
  • Celosia's Manectric proves able to Mega Evolve, something she was never shown to be capable of in any other media.
• Adaptational Villainy: Team Flare in the games weren't good guys to begin with, but there was nothing to suggest they used the likes of Dark Balls to enslave Pokémon.
  • In the anime, Malva never did anything particularly villainous and eventually turned against Lysandre when she saw his true goals. In this version, she's the one to throw the Dark Ball that captures Yveltal. However, it does resemble her portrayal in the manga.
• Affably Evil: If Jessie, James, and Meowth can even be considered evil. They're shown to care greatly for one another and their own Pokemon.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Twilight rattles off Team Rocket's list of misdeeds:
  "Theft, sabotage, racketeering, black marketeering, vandalism, the kidnap and sale of trained Pokémon, failure to pay library fines…"
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Luna is able to assume command of a flock of Spearow and Fearow by beating anyone who challenges her authority into a pulp. It seems like this trope is averted at one point when she gets poisoned and believes that they would strike against her in her moment of weakness, but one of the Fearow defies her expectations by bringing her a Pecha Berry and helping her back to full strength.
• Badass Adorable: All of the alicorns are noted to look a lot like stuffed animals, which doesn't stop them from kicking serious ass. Ash's Pikachu is also small and adorable, yet able to go toe-to-toe with those same alicorns.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Twilight is too nice a person to attack Aliana and Bryony while they're already unconscious and helpless. Giovanni has no such qualms.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Despite all three alicorns being visually appealing, intelligent and powerful in their own ways, each one fits in their own category:
  • Celestia qualifies as the Beauty, as her appearance and good looks serve as a cover for her power and experience, something which even fools Giovanni.
  • Twilight, being what she is, serves as the Brains of the trio; she is quick to devour any knowledge that this new world has to offer and is able to put that knowledge to practical use.
  • Luna, being highly active against Team Flare and even leading a small army of Pokémon at the time she was reunited with her fellow princesses, acts as the Brawn.
• Berserk Button: Seeing Luna struggling under the control of a Dark Ball serves as this for Celestia.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The Dark Balls, returning from Pokémon 4Ever, enslave the mind of a captured Pokémon and increase its power to the highest level. However, this story adds that they inevitably kill the occupant by overtaxing its body; and if the Pokémon has the willpower to spare, it can break their control and ignore its captor's commands.
• The Bus Came Back: Giovanni sends Seviper, Yanmega, and Carnivine, who'd previously been sent to Team Rocket's headquarters after their final appearances in the anime, back to the trio when it becomes clear that they'll need all the help they can get to stop Team Flare.
• Big Bad: Lysandre.
• Buried Alive: Malva's implied fate at the hooves of Luna.
• The Cameo: A performer heavily implied to be Duplica is casually mentioned in one chapter.
• Cassandra Truth: Celestia outright tells Team Rocket who and what she is right away, but they laugh it off.
  • Averted for Professor Oak, who believes Twilight's own claims very quickly. Ash and his friends similarly accept that the weird Pokémon he caught in a forest is a dimension-hopping princess with little difficulty.
• Casting a Shadow: As a part-Dark Pokémon, Luna favors Dark Pulse as her attack of choice.
• Combat Pragmatist: Multiple sides have been shown to attempt direct attacks on trainers during especially serious Pokémon battles.
• Death by Adaptation: In contrast to their appearances in official media, neither Malva nor any of the Team Flare scientists survive the events of the story.
• Defiant to the End: Even when utterly defeated, Mable refuses to surrender or cooperate in any way no matter the alternative.
• Die, Chair, Die!: During the attack on Team Flare's hideout at Geosenge, a wild Houndour was noted to be torching a chair for no discernible reason.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even Giovanni seems to find the concept of Dark Balls, revealed in this story to drastically shorten a Pokémon's lifespan, distasteful. In addition, he states that if he ever possessed Kalos's ultimate weapon, he'd use it for extortion—but never mass genocide.
• Evil Is Hammy: Jessie, James, and Meowth are certainly prone to showboating. Eventually, even Celestia wants in on it.
• Evil vs. Evil: Giovanni and Team Rocket vs. Lysandre and Team Flare is the story's central conflict.
• The Fair Folk: How the Pokémon universe seems to translate "alicorn", as Celestia, Twilight, and Luna all end up as part-Fairy. Doubles as Our Fairies Are Different, considering that most would likely not associate fairies with human-sized winged ponies.
• Idiot Hero: Ash is pretty easily duped by both Lysandre and Team Rocket's disguises, but all the same is big-hearted and instantly drops everything to try and help Twilight and Celestia reunite.
• Irony: Celestia of all people is given a lecture on the virtues of friendship by the story's primary villain.
• Jerkass: Butch and Cassidy mock Celestia's appearance and Jessie, James, and Meowth in general before ordering them off to spend their own money on a victory party for the duo.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The Team Rocket trio as a whole are remarkably nice for thieves, such that Celestia doesn't even realize they are on a villainous team until informed outright by Twilight.
• Kick the Dog: It's heavily implied Celosia had her Drapion outright kill a wild Stunky offscreen, just to punctuate her challenge to Luna.
• Killed Offscreen: Mable and Celosia.
• Kill It with Fire: Bye-bye, Celosia.
• Large Ham: Luna's first act on assuming command of a flock is to cheerfully proclaim herself dictator and make a loud speech that none of them understand.
• Make an Example of Them: Giovanni has his Tyranitar incinerate the already-unconscious Aliana and Bryony to terrify the rest of Team Flare's men into abandoning the monoliths powering the ultimate weapon.
• Mooks: Team Flare always seems to have plenty of faceless personnel to go around, though it does them little good against a full invasion. Team Rocket are also given some by their boss but they are frozen alongside Cassidy and Butch.
• Minion with an F in Evil: The Team Rocket trio, per the anime, aren't really any good at being bad.
• Nice Guy: Both James and Ash are shown to be good natured.
• No-Sell: Celestia is eventually revealed to be part-Fairy, allowing her to withstand Dragon-type attacks without harm.
• Old Master: An aged Alakazam that Celestia meets in Laverre City has no problems in helping her better understand her new abilities.
• One-Hit Kill: Team Rocket's Robo Mega Meowth, which had previously tanked everything that groups of Pokémon could throw at it, gets ripped apart with a single low-powered shot from the ultimate weapon.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Team Rocket's tendency towards this is lampshaded by Twilight, who instantly sees through one of these while Ash and his friends can't.
• Pet the Dog: James captures Celestia in the first place by offering her food, then a Poké Ball (which she mistook for something else).
• The Power of the Sun: Where this trope focused on moving the sun and utilizing light-based magic back in Equestria, Celestia is eventually able to throw around Solar Beams after she joins the Team Rocket trio. This is also the rationale for her part-Fire typing.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Team Rocket aborted the Dark Ball project and destroyed (seemingly) all samples because they eventually kill their occupants. Stolen Pokémon are too valuable for that. In addition, Giovanni feels that extortion would have been a much better use for the ultimate weapon than the complete annihilation of all life.
• Pokémon Speak: Celestia, Luna, and Twilight are all only able to speak their own names, at least to human hearing.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: All three of the princesses shown in this fic don't hesitate to get involved with the Pokémon world.
• The Strategist: Celestia winds up playing this role for Team Rocket, planning their successful heist of Team Flare's computer data.
• Super Mode: Lysandre's Gyarados, Malva's Houndoom, and Celosia's Manectric all demonstrate the ability to Mega Evolve.
• Surrounded by Idiots:
  • Luna is able to take over a flock of Spearow, none of whom really understand her flowery speech or archaic codes of behavior.
  • Lysandre wonders if he's the only competent person in Team Flare after three of his best followers experience serious failures.
• Tempting Fate: Celosia tells Lysandre at one point that if she couldn't accomplish her mission—in this case, capturing Luna or otherwise removing her from the equation—then maybe she didn't deserve to be a part of her leader's new world. One of the Houndoom under Luna's command sees her reduced to ash by night's end.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: Luna works to gather an army of wild Pokemon to battle Team Flare.
• Translator Buddy: Since Celestia is now a Pokémon and subject to the verbal limitations thereof, Meowth translates when she wishes to say something. A Gardevoir at Professor Oak's lab serves the same purpose when Twilight first arrives there.
• Twinkle in the Sky: It wouldn't be Team Rocket if they didn't blast off once or twice.
• Underestimating Badassery:
  • Even despite warnings to the contrary, Team Flare repeatedly makes this mistake against Celestia and Luna, who look like they walked out of a children's storybook. Lysandre eventually decides not to risk Malva or any of his other agents against them, deciding that the ultimate weapon would be much better suited for the task.
  • Malva severely underestimates what Luna is capable of. Despite being in the thrall of a Dark Ball, Luna scarcely even listened to any of the Elite Four member's commands and is eventually able to spare the strength and fury to turn against her.
  • Giovanni himself muses that Celestia couldn't have been more than a pretty curiosity, and since James, Jessie, and Meowth had been the ones to catch it, it couldn't possibly be very impressive.
• Undying Loyalty: Lysandre confides to his Gyarados at one point that he doesn't want to lose his Pokémon to the ultimate weapon, but the giant serpent tells him in its own way that it will stick with him until the end. For a Pokémon capable of Mega Evolution, nothing less could be expected.
• Unwitting Pawn: Ash, Serena, and Clemont are tricked into helping Team Flare use Laverre's Poke Ball Factory to produce Dark Balls, by thwarting Team Rocket's attempt to sabotage it.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Lysandre makes good use of his to manipulate people into doing his bidding or supplying information.
• Villainous Friendship: Lysandre and his Gyarados have a strong bond, as evidenced by the latter being able to Mega Evolve.
• Villainous Rescue: During the battle outside Team Flare's base, Giovanni's Pokémon steamroll a group of attackers that have Twilight nearing the end of her rope.
• Villains Out Shopping: Twilight, upon finding out Celestia seems to be working for Team Rocket, panics and wonders what horrible tortures they must have inflicted to corrupt her. Cut to Team Rocket... cooking s'mores for their Pokémon.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Lysandre sincerely believes that everything he does is necessary and will be worth it in the end.