Fanfic / Latias' Journey

Latias' Journey by Ri2 is a 67 chapter, 1,000,000+ words Pokémon fan fiction.

Obviously, the star is Latias. When the Ghost King destroys her home city of Alto Mare and kills all of her friends after she spurns his advances, she is forced to embark on a long journey that takes her across the Pokémon world, at first to find Ash Ketchum and protect him from the King's wrath, aided by Mewtwo. However, the story soon turns into an epic, where the Unown gather a number of characters including Latias, revealing they are the Chosen, destined to save the world from the Beast, the embodiment of chaos, and it is only a matter of time before the end of the world comes.

It's absurdly long, surreal and bizarre to extremes, interspersed with plenty of lightheartedness, and plenty of fight sequences. And sometimes it's really, really dark, squicky, messy, and all kinds of disturbing.

Oh sorry, we should've mentioned this is rated M. Pack your security blanket and Brain Bleach.

The much shorter prequel is here. It has a sequel of similar length called Brave New World (Pokémon).

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This fanfic provides examples of:

• A Million Is a Statistic: Judging by the city it is based on, Altomare has over 800,000 people living in it. The Ghost King destroys the whole city. Not even Latias, the sole survivor, holds this against him for more than a few months.
• Accidental Innuendo: After Crawdaunt blocks Gyarados' Bite attack with Harden, Phanphy shouts that he's the "hardest one of all." The older Pokemon just stare at him awkwardly.invoked
• Adaptational Self-Defense: The final chapter Retcons the beginning of the story as Kyogre forcing the Ghost King to destroy Alto Mare via mind control.
• After the End: Several times. When the Mother arrived on Earth, civilization had already been wiped out by a nuclear war. The current Pokemon world takes place after the cataclysmic battle between the Mother and the Beast. The Birth Island arc takes place after Mother was defeated by Deoxys, the universe getting destroyed immediately after.
• The Alcatraz: The Hoenn Region Maximum Security Penitentiary, which most of Team Rocket crashes into.
  • Locked in the Dungeon: After Mewgle corrupts it, it becomes a combination of this and the Dark World.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Besides Deoxys, a random group of travelling aliens are used as a Running Gag mid-story. They like to abduct people and give them anal probes. They also had an unhealthy interest in Bayleef and Latias.
• Anyone Can Die: Many major characters fail to survive the final arc.
• Appeal to Force: Tate and Liza wield an array of powerful psychic-based attacks. When Ash threatens to report them to the League, they tell him not to bother because the League fears them too much to do anything about them.
• Ascended Glitch: Missingno, the glitch-er, Darklord Pokemon
• The Bet: Wobbuffet's Goth phase turns out to be just a bet with Meowth.
• Battle of the Bands:
  • The Pokerockers have one against Miror B in Chapter 44, in which they win pretty easily.
  • They later have one with him again during the final battle arc that's a bit trickier, as Miror B has brainwashed a bunch of innocent people. Lombre has to fight his way to the stage and destroy the mind control device, and the Pokerockers wake everybody up by singing a song. They then hunt Miror B down and beat the crap out of him.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: Constantly.
  "It's like the laws of reality are being repealed or something, allowing impossible things to happen," the intelligent talking yellow rodent who had the ability to generate thunderbolts speculated.
• Black Comedy Rape:
  • Implied to have happened to Shedinja in Chapter 26. He tries to run away from the wild Misdreavus, but she manages to catch him, cover him in Forceful Kisses, and then drag him off to her "living quarters."
  • At the end of Chapter 53, Sadic wants to "race" Pikachu back to the hotel...and by "race" she means stalk him until she catches him and either eats or mates with him. She also tells him he doesn't have a choice.
• Bloody Hilarious: Black Comedy is often applied to particularly Gorn-filled scenes.
• Body Horror: Happens a lot during the final arc with the legions of undead monsters. Many of them are multiple characters fused together. And then there's the torture scenes...
• Bound and Gagged: During the Pokemon Tournament ball, Max and Jirachi are told to stay behind at the hotel so that they don't cause trouble. In order to make sure that they stay put, they're both tied to chairs and Max's mouth is taped shut so that he can't make a wish. Absol stays behind to make sure they won't get loose.
• Brainwashed: Tate and Liza do this to Latias. It is actually a test to see how strong the bonds between Ash and his Pokémon are.
• Bring My Brown Pants:
  • Happens to the Murkrow at Wing Fortress when Latias incinerates them and a good portion of the forest.
  • Happens to the remaining Pichu brother when he meets Deoxys.
  • Also happens to Maxie when the three Regis effortlessly kill all his trainers and their Mons.
  • Phanpy has this occur to to him several times.
• The Cameo: At one point, Ash battles Zorro and Mr. T. Zorro joins the recurring cast.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: The fanfic started out serious, then became humorous around Chapter 11. It then goes back and forth between being serious and humorous depending on the situation. Special note goes to Chapters 43 - 50, which go back and forth between Ash's wacky hijinks at the championships and incredibly violent strikes by the villains.
• Chekhov's News: During the Pokemon League arc, the evening news keeps reporting about dreadful things happening in other parts of the world. The vast majority of them are Deoxys and his crew building an army for the Final Battle.
• The Chosen Many: There's twenty-eight Chosen Ones. During the climax, more are added.
• Contemplate Our Navels: The Birth Island arc. It's largely full of infodumps about the island and Rayquaza undergoing a long test of character in order to purify Dark Latias. The final chapter, written a good deal after the fact, tries to blame it all on Mewgle being pretentious.
• Contractual Immortality: Jessie and James have a contract with the show's producers which guarantees their survival. In order to get around it, Deoxys has their souls transferred to his name.invoked
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Played for Laughs when a random Murkrow swoops down and steals Latias' Dragon Flute. Even Crawdaunt comments on what a cheap plot convenience that was.
  • Just before the Chosen enter Deoxys' lair, Papa, Mama, and Oniisan pop out of nowhere to tell them that there are a few more additional Chosen that the Unown kept a secret. And they all happen to be right with them!
• The Corruption: The plague released by the dark meteor, the Beast, and later, Deoxys turn living things into (usually undead) mutant monsters, and dead bodies into zombies.
• Costume Porn: Latias in her Songstress outfit.
  She was wearing a blue bodice with white lace around the collar that ran down her chest to a set of light blue silk skirts. Black straps were crisscrossed across her thin upper arms, and blue velvet cloths were wrapped around her lower arms.
  • There's also the description of her wedding dress in her dreams.
• Creation Story: Regice and Regirock tell the story of how the Pokemon World was created by the Mother and how it was almost destroyed several times by the Beast.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: There are countless in this series. Some are subtle and some are just diabolical Gorn. Most notably are:
  • About 99% of Earth's population are turned into undead monsters by Deoxys' plague.
  • Most members of Team Rocket get grizzly ends at the hands of Deoxys, Mewgle, or their minions.
  • Just before the final battle, Deoxys gathers up almost all the world leaders in all categories, crams into a giant crystal crusher, and kills them all.
  • May's Munchlax was shot to death by Alpha. Later, May and her remaining Pokemon would get brutally killed by Dark Latias.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: No shortage of these.
  • Deoxys easily kills the Pichu brothers, dragging out beating one of them to death For the Evulz
  • Regirock and Regice effortlessly wipe out Team Magma and Aqua
  • Berry Stoo and Mariah do this to anybody who gets in a Pokemon battle with them. They can only be defeated via Loophole Abuse.
  • All of Team Rocket except for Jessie and James are curb-stomped by either Deoxys, Mewgle, or their minions.
  • The Pokerockers win pretty easily against Miror B and his goons.
  • The Shining Ranger, the Alpha Ranger, and Phoenetrice are all curbstomped (offscreen) by Mewtwo, the Ever Grande police, and the survivors of Alpha's last battle.
• Cyberpunk: The region of Silica is described as this.
  Rukario: A desolate wasteland devoid of Pokemon or plant life, a hollow kingdom of neon and twisted metal populated by people who hungered more for short-lived pleasures and comforts than the simple pleasures of living.
• Dark Fic: When it's not trying to be funny. Or sometimes both at the same time.
• Darker and Edgier: Way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way ,way more than the source material. As well as Bloodier and Gorier.
• Dashing Hispanic: Zorro and his entire team.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Some Pokemon tend to be pretty direct about certain things, and it often weirds out their human trainers or species Pokemon with different customs.
• Doomed Hometown: Alto Mare as early as the prequel.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: Deoxys announces his horrific plans to the entire world by taking over all television and radio signals.
• Door Stopper: 1,186,409 words of text. For comparison, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is around 525,000.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Lucy, the Frontier Brain of the Battle Pike. She later turns out to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Full force. Our heroes have to fight an army of demons and their Eldritch Abomination masters. They get brutalized, tortured, or flat out killed at every turn in an attempt to save the world, or what's left of it. And keep in mind the "happy ending" Unown are offering the good guys if they win is basically a Reset Button.
• Eccentric Millionaire: Horatio Nimsy-Porpington De-Mented XXIII in Chapter 26. He hears voices and makes his contestants have Pokemon battles in silly costumes.
• Eldritch Abomination: Our line-up of villains are essentially this, all transformed into such monstrosities by Deoxys. The rogues gallery includes Deoxys himself, who is the alien personification of chaos and evil; Mewgle, a reality warping Killer Game Master; Omega, the fused form of Giovanni and Mr. Ford the Shining Ranger; Meowth (yes, really!); Alpha Ranger, Ash's evil, soulless alter ego; Cerberus, the undead fusion of Entei, Suicune, and Raikou; Lugia's corrupted wife and child; Leviathan, an enormous Ghost Pokemon-devouring serpent who is actually Latias' undead mother; and Deoxys' "son" Dark Latios.
• Eldritch Location: Deoxys' lair is entirely made of dark purple crystals that branch out in Alien Geometries. These crystals can absorb spilled body fluids.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: The Mother gives this to the entire cast before the second half of the final battle.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: Anyone and anything that goes over to The Dark Side, whether by choice or by force^note And it usually IS by force generally suffers a lot of Body Horror.

• Fate Worse than Death: Several are shown in the series, including the Master Ball and Dark Latios' Black Karma attack.

• From Bad to Worse: Goes from Latias trying to hide from the Ghost King's forces to having to fight armies of the undead, which are controlled by utterly heinous abominations.
• Fun with Acronyms: Poke Rangers Astro Squad Sigma. Lampshaded by Bayleef.
  Bayleef: "What is it with people and stupid acronyms these days!"
• Gainax Ending: Twice.
  • The first one results in a relatively small fraction of the cast still alive, the good goddess heavily wounded, all of them setting up a last stand, while the Big Bad has just destroyed the entire universe around them. And some three chapters of navel gazing.
  • The second one was added two years after the book's completion. The whole "universe ending" thing was Mewgle screwing with everyone and trying to brainwash both dueling gods under his control. He's stopped by Squirtle (who is thoroughly pissed off that he hasn't been in the story yet) coming out of nowhere.
• Gambit Pileup: On a cosmic level by the end. The sheer amount of contingencies and unspoken plans both sides have in play is staggering.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot:
  • In Chapter 43, a mutant watchman orders Annie and Oakley to make out, or else he'll force them to fight a bunch of Mirror Bosses. They comply, and he starts recording it on the video camera embedded in his head.
  • In Chapter 53, the Shining Ranger summons all his minions who went through the HERO system - this includes the two Soldier Scouts, who were busy having sex at the time. They accidentally induce quite a few nosebleeds.

• Gorn: The torture scenes and final battle chapters are quite gory. Exaggerated in the final arc.
• Gratuitous Rape: Not only is there a lot of rapes in this story, but a lot of them can be removed/replaced AND they make the villains look pretty stupid for doing so. Fearow is a good example. If his modus operandi is to eat other Pokemon and take their power, why is he stopping to rape Latias?
• Groin Attack: Not just kicks to the jumblies either; the story contains quite a bit of genital mutilation. For example, Oniichan who is Eusine transformed into a Raikou uses his spiked tail to rip out the undead Raikou's genitals in a fight.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Many examples:
  • Various inhabitants on Mewgle's fake version of Birth Island, including "Raiki," Ash and Pikachu's fake father.
  • Misty becomes a Deep One-like mermaid and May becomes a sphinx during the final story arcs, via 11th-Hour Superpower.

• Healing Factor: Most of Deoxys's armies of shambling horrors regenerate endlessly. Dark Latios gets totally vaporized and comes back.

• Infodump: The most common way background information is explained. A random character, usually one that's just been introduced, will go on a long-winded story about a particular plot point, usually with Latias as the Little Jimmy.
  • Pidgeot's explanation of the Wing Fortress
  • Mewtwo's exposition about the nature of Pokeballs
  • Mew and Celebi's explanation of Lady Ho-Oh's Start of Darkness
• Horror Comedy: Goes back and forth between horror dominant and comedy dominant...when it's not trying to do both simultaneously.
• Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: The story throws in a bunch of Humongous Mecha due to Rule of Cool.
  • Team Cipher/Rocket's Tyranitron, a giant robot Tyranitar equipped with a magic shield generator, mass snag devices, and the Induced Evolution Wave. It was nigh invulnerable and had to be destroyed from the inside.
  • The Pokerangers' A.S.S. Megaloid.
  • Drew- er, Tuxedo Masquerain's Senshibot
  • Jirachi himself turns into one when Max wishes that they had something to fight the Tyranitron with.
  • Jigglypuff has two Humongous Mechas, the Exploudrematic (an upgraded version of a mech she stole from Jessie and James), and Garuda (a Yanma-shaped Transforming Mecha). These two can combine together to form the Gigabot.
• Interspecies Romance: What kicks off the plot. It's exactly as awkward a topic for all parties involved as it sounds.
  • And Delia Ketchum's fiancée at one point is Mr. Mime. She may or may not be even paired up with him at the end.
• Karmic Death: Lance and Drake are killed by the Glalie that live in the ice tunnel that they sent Ash and Latias through earlier.
• Legion of Doom:
  • After Giovanni's death, Team Rocket is merged with Team Cipher to become one evil syndicate.
  • Deoxys slowly builds one over the course of the story.
• Lemony Narrator: Progressively more so over the course of the book.
• Loophole Abuse: One half of Ash's strategy against Berry, confusing both him and his team.
  • Phanpy challenges an Oliphan to stand on his beloved ball. Oliphan, however, is too heavy and winds up popping the ball, causing Phanphy to cry and the audience to throw food at Oliphan.
  • Bayleef fires a Solar Beam into a cloud of Sweet Scent. The combination gives her opponent a seizure.
  • Charizard was hypnotised back to his childhood. His opponent tries to copy this, but ends up crashing its own brain since it did not have a childhood.
  • Corphish distracts his opponent with a Bawdy Song and repeatedly punches him in the privates.
  • Latias and the Pokerockers sing a death metal song to keep her opponent from hearing Berry's Commands.
  • Pikachu draws his sword and defeats his opponent in a straight battle.
• Loose Lips: The elder Wynaut reveals everything about what the Lord Wobbaku statue does, and what would happen if it were ever moved. And how to move it. Right in front of Jessie and James.
• Lost World
  • Mirage Island, which is protected by a barrier that shields it from invaders as well as keeps it invisible.
  • Birth Island, which will only appear to those who have certain ancient artifacts, or know of its existence ahead of time.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: A lot of the villains of the story, but most the noticeable is Deoxys.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Wing Fortress massacre for one. The entirety of the final act for another.
• Mind Rape: A few times. A most heinous example is by Latias, in probably the Squickiest part of the fanfic.
• Mind Screw: There is quite a bit of allegory and symbolism in the story and some of the elements in the story are quite bizarre. Indeed, many reviewers have commented on this.
• Mood Whiplash: From a greater-story standpoint, entire lighthearted and easygoing story arcs can go very quickly to hell. Sometimes they go literally to Hell.
  • On a smaller scale, comedic and disturbing moments can and will occur in the same paragraph.
• Not in Front of the Kid: Ash's party takes great care not to curse in front of Phanphy.
• Overly Long Gag: One could consider the whole book one such, but the author is rather fond of these on the whole.
• Pair the Spares: Ri2 gleefully sticks characters together throughout the book. During the epilogue, an Overly Long Gag recaps all the pairings he's made. It lasts over two pages and has a Running Gag within itself.
• Parody Sue: Three, explicitly by name. The first is...uh, Mary Sue, who captures Latias and a bunch of other Olympus Mons with a ton of Master Balls. She turns out to be a normal girl who's just under the influence of the demons in the Master Balls. Another one is Mariah Susanson, an Humanoid Abomination that creates more via The Corruption.
• Power Crystal: The purple crystal shards found throughout the story. They are all part of the meteor that caused the Mystical Plague and later became the Beast. They are also a part of Deoxys' core.
• The Power of Rock:
  • Jigglypuff and the Pokerockers defeating Miror B the first time with Breaking Benjamin's "Blow Me Away."
  • Latias bringing down an Eldritch Abomination while singing "Otherworld" — not the kind of song you'd expect her to be singing.
  • The Pokerockers' Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann-style charge against Mewgle draws its power from "Live and Learn."
• Psychic Powers:
  • Psychic humans are mentioned in this story but they pay some serious costs for their power.
  • And of course Psychic Pokémon.
• Rated M for Manly: There's no shortage of action and violence in here. Oddly enough, the main character is female!
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Deoxys delivers a very long one to Mewtwo.
• Reference Overdosed: This story has Shout Outs to everything from PokeRangers to Tentacthulhu.
• Reincarnation Romance: Most notably Latias and Rayquaza, but this is also hinted at for other couples.
• Reset Button: The Unown offer this to the good guys if they can stop the upcoming cataclysm, though they had no intention of actually following through with it, as they expected the universe to end no matter who won. Fortunately, thanks to Mewgle's botched attempt at a universal takeover, the universe is intact at the end. The local deities at this point basically shrug and implement the Reset Button anyway.
• Retcon: The fic originally ended on a huge cliffhanger with the majority of the cast dead and the entire universe annihilated, and the remaining people set up for a last stand on a flying island. Two years later, Ri2 added a sequel that undid the entire last chunk of the story. A good quarter of the way into the sequel, he added a second epilogue that revealed the entire ending sequence was just Mewgle screwing with everyone, including the two gods duking it out, in a Starscream gambit. He gets his ass handed to him by Squirtle, who comes out of absolutely nowhere and earns everyone's happy ending.
• Secret Test of Character: Tate and Liza's sadism, jerkass behavior and illusions are a test to see how strong the bonds between a trainer and their pokémon are.
• Serial Escalation: Gets pretty epic fairly early on, proceeds to top itself repeatedly. The sequel starts off somewhere around the level of epic of the first book's penultimate arc, and just keeps running from there.
• Show, Don't Tell: The natural consequences of the Infodumps. There's a lot of background information that characters tells us about, but we never see.
  • Both Lady Ho-Oh's Start of Darkness and Mewtwo's first encounter with Deoxys - thanks to the Infodumps, they're reduced to Offstage Villainy.
  • An extremely infuriating example deals with an important plot point: how the Ghost King's minions manage to track down Ash. They searched Alto Mare's rubble and manage to find one of Latias' notebooks that has Ash's name written in it. This was all explained in an author's note!
  • How the Ghost King's minions manage to find Registeel, awaken him, and convince him to awaken the weather trio is never told. All we get is a "Good thing we found Registeel!" at the end of Chapter 42.
  • Shalor's conquest of Wynaut Island was only vaguely hinted at in Chapter 47, then explained in a conversation in Chapter 55.
  • Even key story arcs like Latias and Rayquaza's questionble Reincarnation Romance are mostly told through exposition, while the more gruesome elements of the story, like the Body Horror, Squick, and repeated used of rape are described in excruciating detail.
• Sneeze Cut:
  • Crawdaunt demands to know what kind of idiot would install a giant, obvious self-destruct button on the back of a giant robot. Cue Robotnik sneezing.
  • Later, May berates Mariah for screwing around with the natural laws. Cue Molly sneezing.
• Spell My Name With An S: Weavile and Lucario are referred to as Manyula and Rukario respectively. These two were cameo appearances before Gen 4's English names/romanizations were finalized.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Crawdaunt's 'Assumption,' which he uses to coordinate his extremely dirty fighting in order to defeat an Eldritch Abomination.

• Take That!:
  • Ash's encounters with Mariah Susanson and friends is one big ol' "Take That" against Mary Sues in general.
  • As is Latias' encounter with the first such character early on, who captures most of the legendaries in the world.invoked
  • And in a flashback in Chapter 6, when Latias is told to "go to Hell" by a member of a cult that thinks Pokemon are satanic, a stab at the people in the real world that think Pokemon is satanic.
• Team Rocket Wins:
  • With their new Shadow Pokemon, Jessie and James capture Ash's Grovyle and almost take down Ash himself in Chapter 15.
  • At the end of Chapter 36, Jessie and James successfully steal the Lord Wobakku statue from Mirage Isle, which takes down its cloaking shield.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Repeatedly, and almost always from the bad guys. Deoxys uses this to psych out his opponents through sheer Gorn.
• Took a Level in Badass: Anyone in the cast who doesn't die soon after introduction is likely to take several.
• Training from Hell: Lance and Drake force Ash and Latias to journey through an ice cavern with no winter clothing to toughen them up for the Hoenn League Championships. A bunch of hungry Glalie nearly kill them..
• Translator Microbes:
  • After Ash is is selected as an honorary Chosen, he is fully capable of understanding Pokéspeak thanks to the Unown.
  • Latias's translation extends to anyone who considers her a friend, thereby subconsciously giving her freer psychic access to their perception. She still has to write things out for everyone else prior to her 11th-Hour Superpower, and had to convince Misty that she wasn't a rival for Ash's affections anymore before she could be let in on it.
• Translation Convention: Word of God says "For convenience's sake all Pokéspeak will be written in English. Just pretend the humans can't hear them, though."
  • And then subverted when Chimecho's dialogue is translated...identically to his Pokémon Speak.
    Chimecho: CHIIIIIIIIIIII!
• Troperiffic: By the time the sequel rolls around, Ri2 is a confirmed troper.
  • And up until the sequel, just look at the percentage of this page coated in blue.
• Virgin Sacrifice: Team Aqua brings in a naked woman to sacrifice to Kyogre. For Groudon, Team Magma brings in a fat, nerdy, unattractive man who is far more embarrassed about his status than worried about being chucked into a lava pit.
• White Void Room: The Unown bring all the Chosen into one of these. It makes some of the wonder how they can all stand around when there's no ground under them.

• Would Hurt a Child: Fearow's minions kill all the children in the Wing Fortress in order to demoralize his enemies.
• World of Badass: Almost all the main characters are given some kind of epic scene or learn an epic ability.
• Wretched Hive: Lilycove City is portrayed as an utterly lawless hellhole as a result of Team Magma and Team Aqua fighting each other.

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