Chapter Text
The scientist stared at Mewtwo as he approached with deadly intent in his eyes. "Great, my only role in this whole story is to die while giving foreshadowing."
Meanwhile, in Pallet Town, a young man woke up from a brief coma. Shawn stared at his surroundings and recognized them immediately. "Oh no... not this again. I'm not doing this TL;DR Editi-"
Abridged version.
"Abridged version again. No friggin' way! It was bad enough for Fractured Actuality what with all the stolen jokes and meme spam and blatant references to other runs and-"
A giant hammer from on high struck him in the head and knocked him out cold. Guess I didn't hit him hard enough the first time.
The next day, he reawoke. "Ugh... what happened? Where am I? I kinda remember who I am, but oddly not the past couple of years." Much better. "Hey wait, isn't that like... how amnesia doesn't work? Come on, I know this is fiction, but neither form of amnesia functions like this!"
But, since there was nobody there to respond to him-
"But you're here-"
No I'm not, now stop breaking the fourth wall.
AHEM!
Now, as I was saying, with nobody there to respond to him, Shawn got up and walked into the main part of the laboratory, where Professor Oak was waiting for him.
"Hello, and welcome to the world of the living! Again!" the old man greeted happily. "Now, what is your name?"
Shawn paused. "Excuse me? You can see it right at the start of this line..."
"Ah, so your name is 'Excuse me? You can see it right at the start of this line...'! Good good, are you a boy or a girl?"
"...yeah, no, we're not doing this way overused joke." Shawn approached the table and snatched Rusty, the evolved by plot hax wartortle's, pokeball.
"Ah, you're a Tumblr user!" At that moment, another man, Cole, came through the door and Shawn experienced a sense of obvious foreshadowing apprehension. "Now this is my grandson. You've been rivals since right about now. Errr... what was his name again?"
The so-called rival blinked. "Okay, Gramps? I hate to tell you, but I really think it's time we put you in a home. You've been getting nuttier and nuttier with every passing year. I'm really starting to think you have dementia or something. I know a really good place near Celadon that's nice and quiet I've been looking into. Real friendly staff. I think you'll love it and they'll take great care of you."
Professor Oak's eyes suddenly brightened. "Yes, that's right, how could I forget? This is my grandson, 'Okay, Gramps? I hate to tell you, but I really think it's time we put you in a home. You've been getting nuttier and nuttier with every passing year. I'm really starting-"
Shawn tuned him out and turned to Cole. "Let's just leave."
The two stepped out of the lab and into the poor, backwater town of Pallet that was pretty much way back in the woods and had no cellular or internet connection save for Professor Oak's lab, all in an attempt to keep our protagonist from simply calling someone or using the internet to solve his problem.
Shawn paused. "Well dang. They're really crapifying Kanto this time around, aren't they? Well, guess I can call Sinnoh from Viridian..."
And Pallet's only cellular, landline, or internet connection to other regions was via the GTS in Johto.
"Gonna be a long walk to Goldenrod from here. Luckily the League is not too far and there's that route to New Bark..."
And the routes to Johto were overly long and dangerous now. And walking straight to Celadon from here would get you outright killed deader than dead before you even think about trying. And there's no ferry in Pallet to Cinnabar. And Diglett's Cave is horrible. And every other route besides Mt. Moon you can think of is blocked by men who are dancing for no reason.
Cole glanced at his so-called rival. "Shawn... you shoulda kept your mouth shut."
Shawn sighed. "Yeah... guess I'm going to have to remember major events in sequential order while somehow recovering my trainer skill slightly out of order. Like how I went to college in Canalave and my starter was a Chimchar given to me by Rowan and I had a Nidoran egg and-"
"I AM THE MOST BADASS PIDGEOTTO OF VIRIDIAN FORE-"
"-and that I just caught a pidgeotto with one of your ultra balls I stole."
"Dude! Seriously, I would have just given you one if you had asked!"
Shawn held up a second ball containing a mankey. "You mean two."
Cole sighed. "Screw this, I'm out of here. I will get an olfactory whiff of your aromatic emanations at a proximate date!"
The so-called rival whipped out a small disc from his pocket labeled HMO2 Fly. He then threw it like a frisbee and chased after it. When he caught up, he leapt up to grab it and held on with both hands while it carried him up and off into the horizon.
"...okay, I am so trying that when I get one!"
As Shawn reached Viridian City, he released his three Pokemon. "All right, introductions and then training montage."
"Rusty, laid back wartortle. I'm here because I was bored."
"Sonya, most badass pidgeotto of Viridian Forest."
"Alex, friendly and nice mankey. And I wanna be strong."
"Okay, cool. We're on a very roundabout journey that really should be straightforward to get my memories back, because I'm too impatient to wait for them to return on their own, despite the fact that he-who-shall-not-be-addressed-from-this-side-of-the-fourth-wall probably has about as many memories to insert into chapters as he does for chapters to actually reach Goldenrod. Everyone cool with that? Good, let's train."
The three of them spent the next few days copying techniques off of notSmogon, notBulbapedia, and notSerebii that were all conveniently on Shawn's Pokedex.
They then traveled north through Viridian Forest, where they were assailed by menacing children armed with deadly metapods and kakunas. While such opponents would have been trivial, the threats of possible lawsuits and litigation thrown at them for adults beating up children meant they had to forfeit every single battle!
"Well, dang bro, we're already through chapter 3!" Rusty remarked.
"Not quite. You forgot this..." Alex lifted up Cedric, the caterpie, by the tail.
"But... but... I was trying to hide until I evolved..." Cedric whined.
As they entered Pewter City, Brock approached the group. Immediately, Rusty and Alex punched out his Geodude and Onix.
Shawn slapped his forehead. "Guys, seriously? We're not here to collect badges in this story!"
Both grinned sheepishly. "Sorry, force of habit."
Brock shrugged. "Eh, I'm just here to make a cameo, really. Oh, and Cole is champion of Kanto. Now that the odds are heavily stacked against you, good luck!"
A shiny grovyle also appeared. Immediately, sixty masterballs were thrown at it, all of which bounced off. "Sorry, I'm not wild." She shrugged. "Anyway, very slight introduction of myself here since my appearance in the next chapter wasn't planned when this moment was written and I didn't want to come out of nowhere like last time. See you later."
"Wait, wait... before you go..." Shawn paused... "Didn't you have a hissing lisp?"
"Oh, you mean thisssss hisssssssssing lisssssp? The one that isssss asssss annoying to type assssss it isssss to read?" The grovyle sssssighed. "There's a reason why that got dropped. Now leave me alone, you weren't supposed to have noticed me."
As they left Pewter, a ratatta ran up to them. "Fang's the name and feeds-" the ratatta paused. "...feeds my game? Fpeeds? ...huh, I should have gotten a name that began with an 'S'. Welp, no more ripping off of Sonic lines for the rest of the story for me!"
"Fang's not your real name!" Sonya remarked.
"Yes it is!"
Shawn looked at his Pokedex and then showed it to the rodent. "No, your name is Joey. See?"
"And it says your name is Locke." Joey tapped the screen with a paw. "See?"
Locke looked at the screen again and frowned. "Okay... if we forget that's my name, we'll forget this is your name. Deal?"
Fang nodded. "Deal!"
Shawn relaxed. "Good, let's go to Mt. Moon, which is supposed to be super dangerous or something for some reason. Yet the Kanto government is too cheap to make a safer path."
As they arrived at the Pokemon Center that had somehow exploded into a small, entirely unimportant town, Cedric evolved.
"Yay, finally!" The butterfree did thirty back-flips in joy. "...okay, now I'm dizzy."
With only one bottle of repel around, Shawn withdrew his team and went into the cave system. Instead of... you know, over on mountain roads like reasonable people in a reasonable region who aren't stuck in a plot hole would do.
"Hell, even Fractured Actuality had the 'Mt. Moon Pass' to bypass all this..." Shawn muttered, shaking his head. Shawn then encountered a minor character! He gasped. "Ah, crap! It's Team Rocket!"
"Huh?" The man looked up. "What? No! We're Rocket Science and Research, which is a bad pun and also a peaceful resea-"
He didn't get to finish before he was arrested and hauled off by a conveniently placed Officer Jenny.
"I didn't think the anime was canon to this story..." Shawn remarked.
It's not.
He paused. "Then why was Officer Jenny here?"
Well, you see because... HEY LOOK! IT'S AN ARMY OF POSSESSED GEODUDES!
A bunch of geodude with glowing blue eyes appeared. Shawn grinned and sent out Rusty. "Sweet, free XP!"
"Ummm, bro?" Rusty glanced at his trainer. "I don't know Surf yet. I can only hit one at a time..."
"Oh come on!" He recalled the Pokemon and fled to Cerulean.
Meanwhile in the cave, Lethe approached Mewtwo standing on a pile of dead Team Rocket members. "Ummm, Mewtwo?"
The pokemon glared at her. "That's not my name!"
"Yes, I know you're Giovanni and SOMEONE took super heavy inspiration from The Sacrifice in Warframe to have you tortured and transformed into a Pokemon in a memory I don't feel like stealing from you right now like I do in the actual plot." She sighed. "But, what I'm saying is... you killed the wrong Rockets. You wanted Rocket Science and Research, not these Team Rockets."
Giovanni stood frozen for a moment. "Oh. Ummm... you think anyone will notice the difference?"
"Yes. Yes they will."
"Darn it. Well uhh... guess I better go hide, bye!" And then Giovanni vanished into thin air.
Lethe sighed. "This is gonna take a while to tie back to the main plot, isn't it?"
Meanwhile, back at the excuse-plot in Cerulean, Shawn was eating ordinary, real world fish for lunch with Cole.
"Wait? Where did you come from? And how did I get here?" Shawn exclaimed in surprise.
Cole shrugged. "I dunno. Wanna get sidetracked on your trip and dragged to the S.S. Anne?"
"No."
"I'll show you some world building!"
"...fine."
The two traveled back to Mt. Moon, but stopped halfway and went towards the... Unknown Dungeon? Cerulean Cave? ...hey uhh... what was the canon name of the place now? Wait, what's the Japanese say, it'll clear it up... Hanada Cave? Well, what the heck?
Once they got close to the Cerulada Dungeon, they had to stop as very dangerous things were blocking the way.
"Uhhh... Cole?" Shawn asked. "Ummm... why are there decayed guardians from Breath of the Wild here?"
"Oh, ummm, one moment. I forget to load their reskin." Cole whipped out his cellphone and pressed some buttons. Everything was replaced with a loading screen with a pokeball logo outlined by the words "Loading! Please wait!" before their view returned to normal. The guardians were now wrecked sigilyph. "Ok, yeah, these guys... they're the plot excuse as to why western and eastern Kanto isn't directly connected why it should be. They're also weapons made by people in the old world that are still active and kill lots of people if they get too close. Which, with phrases like 'old world', it's a hint that this version of the pokemon world is actually post-"
He was silenced by a Hyper Beam.
"Oh, so that's what those were..." Shawn remarked. "I thought they were Psybeams the first time..."
"COLE! YOU KNOW SPOILERS WILL SET THE SIGILYPH OFF YOU IDIOT!" Misty shouted in anger as she came to see what the noise was.
Cole jumped and turned around. "Oh, hey there Misty! Wasn't expecting you to make a cameo here! Ummm, wanna go on a date?"
She shook her head. "Sorry, but I'm dating a generic NPC."
"Ummm... Misty?" Cole paused for a moment. "That's not until Gen IV. We're still in Gen III here. Well, technically anyway, since I do have a Hydrei-" Another laser interrupted him.
"Ohhh, right. Well ummm, you see I can't because..." Misty then suddenly threw an HM02 and sailed off into the distance on it.
Cole was quick to throw his to fly after her. "You will not escape me, Misty! I will date you even if it's the last thing I doooooooooo~!"
Shawn stared after them in silence for a few moments. "...it's a really good thing she's an adult in this story. Otherwise that would have been creepy as hell."
He went back to Cerulean and let his team out to train. "Okay guys, I'm gonna go buy an HM02 of my own. Someone better evolve before I get back."
Fang stared at him. "But I already did!"
Shawn glared at the raticate. "Well fine, go develop Cedric's character some then. It's vitally important he gets some ASAP."
"I don't like the sound of that..." Cedric remarked.
After a few minutes, Cedric was a somewhat more well-rounded character and Shawn had his own HM02. He sized up the butterfree. "It'll have to do. Let's go."
He threw the disc and watched it sail in the air a short distance. He then sprinted after it like he had seen the other two do, jumped up, and grabbed a hold of it. He continued to gain altitude afterwards once he had a grip.
"I'm flying! I'm really flying! This is friggin' awesome! We'll make it to Vermilion in no time and-" Suddenly, the disc stopped and he started to plummet out of the air. "NOOOOOOOOOOO!"
His team watched him crash in the distance. Rusty glanced at the others. "We should probably go see if he's okay."
"He's fine. Unlike us, he actually has plot armor," Alex replied with a shrug, but followed the team anyway.
Meanwhile, Cole crashed through a hotel room and tumbled across the floor, landing at Archer's feet. "Darn it, I take one wrong turn and, not only do I lose Misty, now I have to do plot and character development with you!"
Archer sighed. "Yeah, so let's get this over with. Mewtwo got free, I blame Shawn, you aren't willing to do that because you're friends-"
"So-called rivals."
"Okay, you're so-called rivals with him since before he lost his memory-"
"Since page one."
"...okay, fine, since page one! Now will you stop interrupting me?"
Cole leaned against the wall. "No promises, now go on."
"Anyway, Cinnabar Lab was destroyed and you're only just now finding out because a certain author had to dismantle Kanto's communication and travel infrastructures to make this plot work. Mewtwo causes some memory loss and is probably getting better at it. He's also killing people and I'm unaware that he's Giovanni even though Lethe flat out stated it a little bit ago. You'll want Proton to contain him and for me to meet you in Saffron to work the Master Ball into the plot."
Arianna nodded. "And I have the most important role in making these sound thingies for the Lake of Rage and giving them to Saturn for Rock-"
OFF THE SCREEN, NOW!
"But I-"
NO, THOSE ARE PLOT ELEMENTS AND CHARACTERS THAT HAVE BEEN DROPPED IN THIS REWRITE! NOW GET OFF MY SCREEN BEFORE I KILL YOU OFF OF IT!"
As she left, Cole nodded. "Okay, that all sounds about right. I'll see you next episode. I gotta go battle Shawn because this story still hasn't had a major battle in it, somehow, despite Fractured Actuality having them as one of it's main draws."
"But, we have better plot though," Archer countered.
Cole shook his head. "Not with a story name like Convalesce! How do you even pronounce that?"
"It was changed to Stolen Dreams right around now."
"Oh right, yeah, that was a thing, never mind." Cole threw his HM02 out the window. "Anyway, see you in about ten to fifteen weeks!"
Back at the plot, Shawn climbed aboard the S.S. Anne. A storyline was thrown at him, lassoed him, and dragged him into a battle arena on the boat.
"Seriously? I just want to nap so tomorrow comes sooner and I can go to Goldenrod.
Cole dropped down from his HM02 into the arena. "Nope, time to battle! Let's send starters first!"
"Wait, but you have an Ivysaur! That's not a fair fight!"
"No, it's not!" Cole grinned as Rusty was already slammed into a wall and knocked out. "How about birds next?"
Both Sonya and Shrike appeared in the arena. The latter pidgeotto sighed. "Oh great... are we going to try to compress our on-going rivalry from Fractured Actuality into a single fight?"
Sonya nodded. "Yup! Now it's time for me to kick your butt, brother!"
"Wait, since when were we related? When did that-" Shrike was silenced as he was knocked over the horizon by his new sister.
Cole grabbed another ball and hesitated. "...okay, I'm a little hesitant about this one."
"Why?" Shawn tilted his head. "Is it dangerous?"
"Well... you'll see..." Cole released his kadabra, Marquis, into the arena. He then braced himself as...
"MEGA KICK!"
...as Shawn leapt high into the air and then drove his foot into the pokemon's face, sending it into the floor unconscious.
"Seriously Shawn. Nobody's going to remember that running joke from Fractured Actuality TL;DR Edition. It wasn't even that funny to begin with!"
Shawn waved him off. "Relaaaax. Nobody's gonna care because nobody's reading this story anyway. I mean, we just hit the two month anniversary of our last comment a couple of days ago before this was written! Heck, that was even the last indication of anyone even bothering to read this! So, we can do whatever the hell we want and get away with it, because nobody's gonna complain or report us! Chapter 11 can be a super graphic, violent, and gorey porn scene full of drugs and language and nobody would ever notice!"
"No, we have way too much dignity for that!" Cole's anger simmered just beneath the surface. He growled and, unable to contain himself, punched out Cedric. "Now you see what you made me do? I just did as much senseless violence as you did!"
"Whatever, let's just have our next ones fight and-" Shawn stopped as he stared at the next two Pokemon. "Alex, what are you doing!?"
The mankey was rubbing Lace's, the growlithe, belly while the dog panted and thumped its leg happily. She looked at her trainer sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I can't help it! She's just so floofy and adorable!"
Cole sighed. "Well crap, I'm out of usable Pokemon then. Well, aside from my champion team, but that'd be no fun."
"You're not done yet! It's my turn now!" Lt. Surge jumped into the arena in a flash of lightning to make his cameo. He sent out a pikachu, crossed his arms, and grinned. "All right, Shawn. It's time for you to meet the real trial! You ain't seen a battle like this! For you are about to face the Apikalypse!"
Shawn said nothing.
"...you... you get it, right?" Lt Surge asked hesitantly. "The Apikalypse? A pun of apocalypse and pikachu?"
The trainer sighed. "Tristan, use Earthquake so we can leave."
The diglett created a fissure that tore the ship apart. "I don't even exist anymore in this rewrite! Which is awesome because I no longer have to die in Rock Tunnel!"
As the boat began to sink, Shawn left to go sleep in his cabin for the night. However, he was interrupted by Looker knocking on the door. He grudgingly opened it. "What?"
The officer stared for a moment. "Your original team is dead. Except maybe Mayra."
"Thanks, dick. That's just what I needed to learn from a stranger." He slammed the door in the officer's face.
Meanwhile, Lethe was over at Cerulean's sigilyph when a small, green pokemon appeared before her.
"Oh, aren't you Ae-" A laser interrupted her.
"Okay, aren't you a cel-" Another laser interrupted her.
"Well... weren't you the hidden easter egg nobody noticed on the old Convalesce lo-" A third laser greeted her in the face.
The spoiler sighed. "Just shut up and go to Rock Tunnel."
Meanmeanwhile, Cole was meeting with a sceptile that was most likely related to Lethe.
"Yup, Shawn let Mewtwo go free. Want me to kill him?" Styx asked.
Cole sighed. "Of course, Archer was right. No, don't do it because, even though it might make sense to do so, the story would end right here and now." He paused. "Besides, his plot armor is active until the last few chapters. And as strong as you are, you're no match for plot armor."
Styx nodded and held up a spearow by the throat. "Okay, what about Lucy here since your own ratatta, Spot, got written out of the plot and you can no longer force me to kill him?"
"Yeah, sure, go for it."
The sceptile stabbed with with a leaf and threw her off the boat. "Done!"
Lucy sighed as she sank. "I had such a bigger role in Fractured Actuality, but now ALL I get to do is die. Just because I was first death doesn't mean I have to show up to ONLY DIE! COME ON, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS STORY! Well, you know what? Lemme spoil the third and fourth deaths then! COMING SOON, ONE OF SHAW-"
A long-range laser shot silenced her.
The next day, Looker stared down at the Power Plant and all the sigilyph around it. "Huh, more world building, kinda."
Markuu, the Zapdos, looked up at him from his perch on top. "Wait, why am I here?"
"To tie you better to the plot when you show up," Looker replied.
"BUT I DON'T EVEN APPEAR UNTIL THE SANGUINE GOSPEL!!!!"
Both were interrupted as a loud scream from on high landed at Looker's feet. Shawn was in a crumpled heap and his HM02 dropped from above and bopped his head. "How do you guys land these things?"
Looker glanced at him. "I told you not to come."
"No you didn't," Shawn replied as he popped all of his dislocated limbs back into place.
"Yes, I did," Looker crossed his arms. "I did it offscreen."
"Looker, seriously... offscreen doesn't count for anything! Now come on, let's go hunt Mewtwo, because that is not a bad idea!"
The two men went inside Rock Tunnel. It was perfectly dark. Looker dug an HM05, Flash, out of his pocket and shook it a few times. Suddenly, the whole cave was lit up as if the sun itself was shining inside.
"Oh dang... that one's cool too." Shawn thought for a moment. "Oh, oh! I really need to get HM03 so I can push boulders and trucks with it! And... ohhhh, would HM08 let me breathe underwater?"
"Shut up and come here!"
Shawn obeyed the injured and dying Team Rocket member among the piles of Team Rocket corpses. "What?"
He handed Shawn a pokeball. "Here, have a free sandslash!"
"That was random." He paused. "Wait wait wait, we didn't mention Holly's species in Chapter 10. So, isn't that a spoiler?"
The injured Rocket's eyes went wide in shock as he realized his mistake. A laser blast sealed his fate.
"Welp, now I'm short a kill." Mewtwo sighed. "Mind if I borrow your butterfree?" He stabbed Cedric with a psychic blade. "Cool, thanks."
Lethe suddenly appeared with an epic sigh. "You two humans? Exit conveniently to the south please." As they took off, Lethe turned to Mewtwo. "Seriously Giovanni? YOU KILLED THE WRONG GUYS AGAIN!"
Giovanni stared at the bodies for a few moments before facepalming. "I'm awful as this..." He then vanished leaving Lethe alone to end the episode on her own.
"Wait wait wait!" Cedric cried. "Aren't we going to say if I lived or not?"
Nah, we need a cliffhanger. Readers will find out in Episode 2!
"That'll be months! MONTHS! YOU MEAN I HAVE TO SPEND THE NEXT FEW MONTHS BLEEDING OUT FROM FRIGGIN' MASSIVE HOLE IN MY CHEST? THIS IS ABSOLUTE BULLSHI-"
Will Cedric survive his mortal injuries? What will happen in Lavender Town? Will the word "sandslash" be safe to say without getting shot by a Hyper Beam? Tune in next time on Stolen Dreams Abridged!