More thoughts up to this point:
- The Brandon factory bit was interesting. I like Brandon.
- There is...a lot of swallowing and mouth-focus in this story.
- Ugh, the use of chess bothered me in the scene with Owen and Rim. I'll admit the twist was super cool.
- Owen finally evolving (for good?) and staying stable was satisfying. Good build-up, good finish. Will add I still think there's a mismatch between his entire life focus and dream as a Charmander being to finally evolve to a Charizard, and his reaction once he is one a couple weeks or whatever in-story from the beginning.
- I liked the LGBT representation in the story; it was present, not merely token representation, not in-your-face, and not a big deal. As it should be, perhaps. (Both Lucario aren't straight, though?)
- Can spirits commit suicide? Like, there are some parts in this story that touch on what it's like to be a spirit. You sit in this endless elemental void hanging out with the same folks for eternity. The only connection with the outside world is through the Guardian, and statistically speaking, there's a good chance you won't identify with him/her. You may not even like him/her. Unless you're a Main Character you're probably not going to be summoned for years, assuming your Guardian can even get to god-tier power level to summon an army at will. It kinda sounds like mental torture. Maybe there could be a mention that some of them sleep/meditate to wile away the years? There's a vague implication that spirits are always observing the Guardian's life.
- Given the length of this story, it might help readers to sometimes remind them of high-level important story elements. For example, it's been a long time since Star (or was it Rhys) explained the objectives of the Hunters and the Heroes. Maybe 220,000 words, at the point I'm at. I've begun to forget some things, like what exactly the difference is between the two groups. They both want to assemble all the Orbs in one Pokemon right? I'm not looking for an explanation. I instead want there to sometimes be a view of the forest instead of the trees.
- The struggle between Owen and feral Gahi was good. Fusion...I have learned from this story is not something I enjoy, for a few reasons. I understand it's essential to the story and it seems to be done in a suitably engaging, interesting way.
- Lugia's personality is delightful. Her functionality is super cool, in a body horror kinda way.
- It was nice to finally see Quartz, this place where the ultimate being was developed. Seemed like a modern prison/testing facility without including elements that would have you questioning the world too deeply, like computers. Now that I think about it, Mew killing the full alloy with ease makes me concerned about their relative power levels. As if this story needed more DBZ comparison in my head, haha. The flying between mission areas, the fusion, the Lucario x 2 fight scene...

Overarching Thoughts
I have considered, and I intend to stop reading this story now. I suppose it is helpful to say why despite sounding whiny and dramatic. In short, length. This story is very long. Yet it does not have huge narrative ups and downs to impart satisfaction upon completing these so-called Acts. It's more of a continuous steady stream that isn't satisfying for me to consume. (Wow, that's a sentence.) For others, I'm sure it is. I have read maybe 2 or 3 typically-lengthed fantasy novels at this point. Those novels would have given closure to many characters, to plots, to areas, to themes. Those novels would have featured climactic struggles, a sense of catharsis after a build-up. Hands of Creation has had its moments, but it's paced so differently.
For one, there's this sloooow pull-back of the curtain. One might see this as a positive element to the story. ~280k words in, I see it as a problem. It's almost exhausting. When I've invested this much reading, I want to feel like I know what's going on, and that I'm approaching something BIG. I don't feel that way at all. I feel like I've walked 50 miles through a pleasant trench knowing that there's 70 miles more. (And that I'll reach a signpost saying "50 more miles of trench Under Construction, come back in 3 years!" but that's a separate matter.) The only Big Reveal so far in my mind was Owen's memory being continually reset.
Second, the continual addition of characters that often soon fade to the background. I get that sometimes characters are necessary to fulfill certain roles. You need the Stone Guardian to exist. You need a character to appear to cause Owen and Gahi to fuse. That doesn't mean they need to awkwardly continue to exist in the story, I guess? It feels like a slideshow. I wonder which character's gonna pop up next to have some arc, or contribute to Owen's? Then they go back in the stack. Couldn't the Stone Guardian have come into the story, been interesting, then gone into a remote Hot Spot cave to be immobile? Then we wouldn't get random quips from him at meal times, or him being gratuitously present in the ocean sky fight. Couldn't we have had a big focus for 3-5 chapters of Owen noticing how sad Zena is, her finally cathartically opening up and saying they used to be romantically involved, Owen coming to terms with it, and Zena tragically slithering into the ocean to maybe come back at the end of the story? I think these examples might have given these characters MUCH more of a punch, AND done away with the awkwardness of this massive cast that's always there but not there.
To top it off, I can't imagine a better plot structure to allow this: orbs. Manny comes in. He's fresh, new, and captivating. He has a cool juxtaposition with Rhys. He talks to Owen, fights him, trains him a bit, passes on what he knows. It's revealed that other spirits can take control of a Guardian's body. Manny's lived a buhgillion years, he likes Owen, he decides to give up his orb. Rhys holds onto it for safe-keeping, or maybe Owen gets it. The character gets stronger, the plot can advance because they can take on more challenges, the combats get more interesting since the character has access to a new type/form, and best of all, Manny has expended his character juice and can retire/die/leave. I'm sure the plot could have been written to accommodate orbs changing hands early on.
Third, main plot staleness. This isn't that big a point. I have a feeling there will be a lot more of this story after all the orbs are finally gathered. However that's what the story's been working toward this whoooole time. Yes, there have been hurdles and mini-plots along the way, like Owen needing to evolve stably. I just feel like one single goal can't be comfortably sustained for readers for this long? I know that's not right because the huge Game of Thrones series is all about the ice zombie people invading and who will reign, and Lord of the Rings is all about destroying one dang ring. I don't know. It's probably that I don't feel like the progress is satisfactory.
Let's (totally subjectively) rate the characters!
S tier - Eon/Deca?
A tier - Arceus, Star, Manny, that Aerodactyl man he was comically evil it was great, Rim. (I guess the villains are great!)
B tier - Owen, Rhys (he got better), Stone Guardian, Archer Owl, Anam, Gahi, Nevren, feral-ish Zoroark.
C tier - Owen's dad (he is a robot programmed to express concern then bump his cannon-hands together), Mispy, Demitri, Willow (got better).
F tier - Zena. I want some reasonable character like Rhys to go up to her, slap her stupid ribbons a couple of times, and tell her "You are a parasite. You need to develop some other reason for living. Stop being melodramatic."
Characters not included above are minor or are probably low-tier since I forgot them. The above is based on how interesting a character I found them combined with how much I hated them. For example I like Demitri but he seems very bland. And I feel like the 'world' of Hands of Creation works well with characters bursting with personality.
What other high level stuff is there to talk about? I noticed maybe 10 typos during my entire reading. I already touched on how ridiculously dialogue-heavy this story is. I did notice the proportion of dialogue did decrease as it went on. For example I could actually picture Quartz reasonably well. Would love to see some POV change-ups and corresponding narrative voice change-ups in a story this length. The amount of story planning and plot has to be the story's greatest strength. I think the characters are pretty up there too, but the aforementioned issues with their implementation soured that for me. General story element weaknesses as perceived by me would include pacing and narrative tension, worldbuilding, length, bloat especially with unnecessary dialogue, and repeated words and phrases.
The video game vibes I felt long ago greatly improved, though they aren't completely absent. It's a video game fan-fiction after all. The assemblage of this huge fighting team gives off those vibes. Reviver seeds in case someone gets knocked out. Discussions of Type effectiveness for dungeon preparation. Everyone being generally cheerful and ready to commit their daily lives to this orb and Guardian business. What can you do?

I'm sure I've forgotten some things. It's been a good read. I sincerely hope you finish it. Thank you for writing.

More thoughts up to this point:
- Points previously made still stand, in my mind, up to this chapter. The perhaps lackadaisical attitude toward death. More understandable but getting-stale Owen breakdowns. Everything in the universe ties in with 'aura' or spirits. (To be fair there was at last that Manny-spirit mechanics tutorial, dense as it was.)
- Love ADAM's quips. I'm guessing they enable the author to nerd out a bit, and I like that they seem legit instead of 'I have backtraced the user's IP address to the mainframe through the proxy firewall.' I wonder if there is a good in-universe explanation as to why an artificial technological Pokemon like that exists, and I am guessing there will be more support for its existence as we explore mutant creation.
- Bit confused about one timeline thing. Owen has memories of flying as a reasonable Charizard with the Flygon. This implies in the past he has been able to keep his mind fully evolved...?
- The DBZ battle between Rhys and Manny was great. 'I guess I'll have to use THAT technique.'
- I was disgruntled at Owen's subdued reaction to being a Charizard during Mew's spirit tour. This is literally his dream. Even if it's only in the spirit world(s), it reads like it feels quite real. So why did he only show modest excitement? We get a single grin (instead of Owen testing Star's patience after flying around and screaming and breathing fire for thirty minutes).
- Speaking of that whole segment, it bothers me that either a) I still don't understand how orbs and spirits and deities and the spirit world works, or b) It's all played fast and loose. Arceus can just pull Owen into his realm for a little chat whenever he's asleep, and perhaps literally kill him if he doesn't agree to something? Are there some Ancient Laws that prevent Arceus from doing this any night of the week, with or without Owen first refusing an ultimatum? Mew can just appear there as well, sensing what was happening, or something? Ra's dying spirit can be controlled by Star?...and sent to the Ice orb, or revived to be teleported to the 'Ice Realm'?
I want to believe that there are reasonable explanations, rules, and systems for everything of consequence in this story. Even if initially mysterious, I think that has been the case so far. The spirit stuff (which is quite an umbrella I know) does seem pretty soft/malleable/situational to me I fear. As it stands, next time there are any dream sequences or traversals of the aura sea and whatnot, I'm just gonna buckle up and assume anything's possible.
- Small side note: I like that everyone trains and trains and trains. In a lot of stories both within and outside Pokemon, the characters could accomplish their goals if they were only stronger. Yet even when there are no external forces like a time pressure, they won't simply train all day every day. I am glad that that isn't the case here.
- A Signal Beam dangerous enough to incapacitate Enet, a powerful Electric Guardian, can be "neutralized...completely" by the very tip of Owen's little vine-shot? It was a cool moment of fast thinking but I wish he'd...infused the tip with Mystic energy, or something. Or the shot had gone awry instead of being negated.
- Special Episode 2 was loooong. Good though. In particular, I thought the Orb maze chase segment dragged. Very cool framing with the two timelines. I love interesting, brief meta choices like that. Really liked the relationship between Ra and Step. Loved the depiction of Ra's immortality. The deteriorating relationship with his kids tugged on my heartstrings. Why the name Ra?
- I like Enet, however I think her characterization is a bit loose. She's playful since she's giggled at silly things a couple of times. She's lonely, sure. Then she's proud or irritable wither her growling at any use of complex language, which makes sense but just doesn't fit for me. And there was that scene of the communal meal where she's respectfully or cautiously holding off on eating, then goes totally feral gung-ho after being granted permission, with everyone kinda patronizingly watch her go at it. It's like she alternates between being shy and bold, light-hearted and cautious. She's only been around for a couple of chapters, and I enjoy that she's so different, but I can't say that I can assign her a personality or predict how she would react in any situation.
- There is this weird recurrence of Owen getting encircled/smothered/hugged by other characters and I don't know if it's meant to be a running gag or not hehe.
- Owen lies so much to cover his embarrassment hehe. Sometimes he seems like a compulsive liar which isn't a very sympathetic trait.
- I was taken aback by the couple of mentions that Owen's senses feel dulled as a Charmander, now that he can recall being a Charmeleon. For the first few chapters, he sure was doing a disturbingly marvelous job at being a lie detector with eagle eyes. Put those facts together, and I have to believe that as a Charmeleon he's meant to be even better, despite my inability to recall any stand-out moments where he was ultra perceptive as a Charmeleon. The trend's unsustainable toward being a Charizard, too.
- Worldbuilding: I think there has been a small but significant shift away from the artificial toybox vibes I received from early HoC. Don't know what it is exactly though I suspect the memory alteration business being dialed back has helped.
The little slice of life from the spice shop had a disproportionately large and positive impact to me. Taking a step away from all the Special characters to see what life is like as an ordinary Heart with her...sister? partner? who simply runs a shop. I wish there were more excerpts like this, or they could be incorporated into the Special characters' adventures. Micro events, to use D&D terminology. There is almost nothing that happens 'on screen' that isn't pertinent to the plot. I think it would do wonders to have some micro events to show that there are other people and places in this world. On the way to a waypoint, Owen and Zena pass some hopeful Bulbasaur who wants to be a Heart, eyes shining. While meditating with Rhys, Owen hears the ordered, rhythmic flaps of a formation of Pelipper delivering mail all across Kilo. An especially cold day arrives, and Owen wonders how such-and-such-irrelevant-place is doing since they were growing Pecha berries; he'd read they were sensitive to cold. Some off-the-cuff ideas for how the world to possibly feel more like a place that you could travel to, and less like a stringently guided tour for Owen & Co.
Another big reason why some might say this story is very deficient in worldbuilding is the emphasis on dialogue. There's so muuuuuch! Aghh. The conversations - they don't stop coming and they don't stop coming and they don't stop coming. 97% of the story is characters (usually Owen) talking, or reacting to/thinking about what someone is saying. There's very little 'setting the scene', like the sunlight revealing the multi-colored fungus in the Enet Rim chase. (Which was quite nice might I add.) We also don't get, I think, much long lines of thought or reflection from other characters. Maybe here and there we could see what Rhys thinks about the rate of inflation in Kilo's economy, or talk about where the Stone Guardian grew up. I know I'd enjoy the story more if these moments were fleshed out. If we could stop to smell the roses.
Ultimately though, there are some (perhaps questionable?) decisions made before Chapter 1 that I suspect make it really difficult to easily flesh out the world in a way that many fantasy stories can. It seems at this point that Kilo Village is the only city in the universe. You won't have New Yorkers meeting Parisians, or Australians discussing pancakes with Canadians. It's like having a story that takes place on a tiny tropical island, with various sections of the ocean being mystery dungeons. Plus, waypoints. There's no travel of substance, so it's difficult to showcase other people and places, or to have micro events or similar.
Talked more about this elsewhere too so I won't elaborate further.
- Cliffhangers. I don't have a strong feeling on these, though I will say many of them fall flat. It feels contrived to end on a cliffhanger that is reversed or lightened immediately at the next chapter. Examples: Owen having to venture as a Grass alone to save Enet...and then Amia and Anam are talking by his side seven sentences later. "Manny fired directly at the Garchomp's head."...and then it was okay because the Garchomp is still breathing and we're going to ignore him now.
I'd venture to say it would be an improvement to have flat chapter endings except for the rare, actual cliffhanger, that will have significant consequences with its resolution next chapter.
- Things I am enjoying most: Owen's werewolf struggle, sprinklings of Deca, making steady progress on Orb-gathering, obvious amount of heavy planning from author, revelation/development of fun and creative new powers, tie-ins between special episode and normal chapters.
Thanks for the read so far!

So. Many. Questions.

CLIFFHANGER
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AHHHHH

- I think the mechanics of the orbs, their inner worlds / the spirit world, and spirits could be reinforced more prior to this point in the story. We got the info dump around the time or shortly after Owen touches the Grass Orb. Then it's not really explored again until this chapter, except as Star being summoned for meetings. I still don't understand well and I wonder if other readers feel/felt the same. How does one get to that inner/spirit world? Does each Guardian have their own isolated one, or are they all in the same other dimension? What determines which 'mon end up in this place? How did all these 'mon end up in the Grass orb? Can a Guardian let these folks pass on?
And I can imagine some of these questions have yet to be answered, but I have no way of telling if they will be. I wonder if it would assuage that worry I have if Owen or someone raises these questions (and is told to focus on things one at a time or something), at least to acknowledge the lack of information.
- I appreciate that once Owen's memories got reset again a couple chapters ago, then again, the whole process of recognizing something was wrong seemed to be abbreviated. However that appreciation soured when the Voice of God straight up says at the end of Chapter 19 that it's because his Guardian power is growing. Feel like that could have been written more cleverly as is much of this story. Or maybe it wasn't Voice of God - POV in this story is rather freeform and can thus sometimes be hard to follow.
- Owen sure does have a lot of emotional breakdowns. Perhaps understandably. It can be trying at times to read through.
- So, that Torterra got murdered. There was a moment of pause, regret, tears. Then everyone moved on. I think this was the first significant encounter with death, if not the only one. I didn't realize 'mon could die in this world (spirit cheating aside). If I were in Team Alloy, I would be really, really second-guessing what my role in all of this business was. The same if I were anyone else told of this encounter at the following meeting. It seems like most or every single character is motivated by the opinion 'We can't let the bad guys get the Orbs first, or else bad things will happen!' which feels rather nebulous and is certainly insufficient for me to believe that everyone would keep putting their lives on the line. Especially for those who are less Mystic than others.
This story is certainly not one to delve into the grim reality of death and loss like a WW2 film. I like that, and I like that there are real consequences (again, spirits and other cheating aside) for being in the Bad Guys' way. I want to see the characters take that to heart. There are so many characters and it feels like so many of them are just along for the ride, maybe as a direct consequence of this? Don't be a happy-go-lucky go-getter gee-whiz-guys like Owen; nobody wants that. (Mild exaggeration.)
- I think it's safe to say that meditation is like water in this world. Everyone loves it, everyone says you don't do get enough of it, and it makes you feel better when you're not feeling great. I would be irritated with the word count for "meditation" and "meditate" if I hadn't chosen to laugh it off instead.
- I dislike Zena, Rhys, Willow, Klent, Mispy. Fine, to elaborate briefly... Zena feels too perfect, she's this wounded tragic beauty, gentle but powerful. Rhys...I just don't like him. Willow, obvious reasons. Klent appears to have no character (which is quite a contrast in this story). The only memorable feature about Mispy I think is that she's romantically interested in Demitri, maybe? And she's quiet?
- Special Episode 1 has easily taken the cake for best read so far, even though I wish the first third or so without Deca had been a bit shorter.
- Still enjoying a good deal. I can't get super into it though. I don't know what's holding me back. The feeling that the world doesn't exist outside of these Magical Special Characters' bubble? The lack of a character I can really identify with? The lack of a buizel character? I suspect the main reason is the unshakable sentiment that the world and its inhabitants are artificial. I hope but don't think that will change; it's just how the story leaps off the page to me personally.

The further you get in this story the more and more impressed I am in your ability to explain so much and then still have so very much left to question. Right when I start to get a feel for everything you suddenly reveal that there's a lot more shit I don't know. And this all feels organic too! It never feels like Kingdom Hearts where you can clearly tell it's all being made up as you go.

- Pretty savage to inform a kiddo that his entire community is dead. That's rough, buddy.
- I'm irritated that the entire cast is super powerful, immortal or already dead, has extra special powers, or is otherwise Important (the rest of Team Alloy I assume). That, in combination with the glorious sweeping memory erasures and rewrites that seem to have made the plot and society possible thus far, really strains plausibility to its limits. There's this resultant feeling I can't shake that this world and its inhabitants are a toybox. All prettied-up artifice, with each special (read: every) character chugging along manufactured tracks.
- I don't like Rhys or Zena.
- Nonetheless, it's good.

Strong thoughts in brief:
- Aura appears to govern just about everything about how Pokemon work in this universe. Moves, move...cooldowns?, Owen's senses, evolution, and apparently a lot more that remains mysterious so far. And it was barely even mentioned until this chapter, unless I'm mistaken. Rather abrupt. Might have been nice to ease the audience into this revelation.
- I enjoyed the 'Will he or won't he' enter the Hearts. It's cliche for protagonists at ceremonies like this to experience interruptions that prevent their formal admission into a group. Even though there was an interruption, right on cue, he still got in. Good awareness.
- Gahi's shaking himself into the sand abruptly was great.
- I hate Rhys. I like everyone else. I must admit, these characters are great.

crosspost part 2!

[Owen turned down the corridor, but then skidded to a stop. “W-wait! That’s not fair!” he shouted.]
[Owen stared at the path—or, rather, the lack of a path—ahead of him. He had run into a dead end. There was no way out but to backtrack, and that was where Aerodactyl was rapidly closing in.]
To me this is another effect-before-action when it doesn't have to be - we immediately get the answer to "what's not fair", so it's not like there's really any payoff. Instead I just felt temporary confusion? I think in this case it's also a bit tricky since Owen actively knows more than the narrator in this instance, so it feels like information is being hidden for no reason.

[He stopped advancing if only to taunt, but it was clear that he was looking for a good way to strike without dealing with more of Owen’s tricks.]
"as if only to taunt" I think

[“Th-those are illegal! You can’t use those without Heart permission!” But Owen realized shortly after that this was an outlaw. What was one broken rule if they already cast the law aside?]
hahaha what a cute little bean. Love the thought process.

[He was bumbling where he stood, wobbling horribly. His jaws opened wide and he fired—unexpectedly—a set of rocky pellets toward Owen. Rock Blast—Owen was sure his species wasn’t capable of such a technique normally.]
I guess for me this falls flat - a big "um akshually you can't learn that" in the face of a more dire situation.

A lot of the times in this world it feels like the exact semantics are fleshed out in extreme detail: Owen has two Elixirs, three two apples, Aerodactyl can't learn Rock Blast, Hypnosis can't do X, Eviolite works in this exact way. But the bigger questions I have about how the world remain unanswered. What are ferals supposed to be/does anyone know? Same with dungeons? Why did Owen even want to go to the dungeon in the first place, why did he go alone? I left this chapter knowing more about Aerodactyl learnsets than I did about why Owen wants to be a Heart (which does get answered later), I think - for me the priorities felt off.

But also! That's sort of a hallmark of an isekai/game-esque genre, so this is probably personal preference. Make of it what you will.

[He couldn’t use his Badge. He didn’t have time, anyway; it needed a few seconds to activate. Seconds he didn’t have. The moment he made a move, Aerodactyl would attack.]
I think the tension here is described well, and you do a good job of laying out the stakes, but - after the Warp Seed it feels like he's got a lot of time to poke around the dungeon. Can't he activate his Badge then?

[If he’d wake up at all at the entrance, or if he’d just be there, too weak to fight, left for the ferals to eat.]
yeah shit Owen it's almost like beating up someone in a dungeon *does* have life-threatening consequences for them

[“Goodra Anam said that a ranked system isn’t good for morale, so we aren’t the worst or the best!]
haha this line of dialogue is great too

[Owen had to shut his eyes again. He saw a blinding beam of light, and it was simply too much.
]
[“Eep—! O-oh, it’s you,” Owen said, spotting Mispy, clearly the healer of the team. Her vines gently rubbed at his spine.]
[“Nng, that’s the spot,” he said. “Was that Heal Pulse? You know Heal Pulse?”]
Also confusing imo - she enters with a really strong attack, but she's *clearly* the healer, but then he's surprised that she's able to heal him?

[He shut his eyes, thinking happier thoughts, like when he had cut his arm on a rock when he fell, and how his mother used the very same technique to patch him up.]
The way that "he cut his arm on a rock" immediately follows "happier thoughts" doesn't make it sound like a happier thought. Maybe something like "he shut his eyes, thinking happier thoughts, like how his mother had used the very same technique to patch him up when he had cut his arm on a rock"

[“I—I kinda feel like we met before, too,” Demitri admitted. “That’s crazy! We must have good chemistry.”]
oh nice they all have amnesia

[“Hey, self-defense,” Gahi said. “Besides, this place is overpopulated with those pests anyway. Isn’t enough food fer ‘em ter all survive.”]
"Because they might've died anyway" isn't really a good justification to attack someone though. Are we supposed to side with Gahi here?

Like. A feral cat might get hit by a car later, or it might starve to death. I'd still be a dick for punching it in the face - there's a difference between acknowledging that something else might harm someone and actively harming them. Self-defense is a much more sound argument for Gahi to push here, but even that's a bit unclear.

[“Hypnosis puts Pokémon to sleep. It doesn’t control them.”]
Seems like a needlessly stupid point to push given that there are Pokemon capable of mind control. Like "oh, you can't shoot someone with a sword" doesn't necessarily mean that the person didn't get shot, it just means the shooter didn't use a sword.

[Mispy closed her eyes, breathing out. “Ahead,” she announced.]
Didn't quite follow - is she supposed to be psychic? Good memory?

[“I guess y’did beat ‘em up kinda bad,” Gahi said. “Didn’t think they looked that bad when we passed ‘em by the first time. Maybe these’re just the ones that got roughed up the most.”

“To be honest, a lot of these don’t actually look like your flames, Owen,” Demitri said, pointing at the Paras. “Looks like some of these guys got hit by something a lot worse. But at least the burns are gone.”

Owen rubbed his head. Foggy as his memory was, Demitri did have a point. He hadn’t fought too many of them. He couldn’t have burned these all. Still, it was a good thing he came when he did. “Either way, I’m glad I came to undo some damage.”]
And again - feels like this is viewed as a really Good Guy moment when it's almost barely the bare minimum, especially since Owen has now seen and felt the potential terror of being abandoned in the middle of the woods with the imminent threat of being devoured.

I think a lot of this could be alleviated with a more explicit reasoning for what ferals are, what they do, how they're different from non-ferals. It's usually seen as morally acceptable to kill a zombie or something that's explicitly "brain-dead", but the way ferals behave here, where they can accept food from Owen and interact with him, suggests they're more like wild animals - in which case it feels incredibly blase. Like if I wandered into the woods and was surprised that a bear attacked me; yes, it'd be acceptable to act in self-defense, but if I *kept* wandering into woods and *kept* being surprised that bears attacked me and *kept* injuring them in self-defense but not even mercy killing them, just leaving them to be cannibalized - why am I going into the woods in the first place, I guess?

[“Meditating?” Owen said. “You guys meditate, too? I do it all the time! It’s really nice to clear your head.”]
oh sweet so it really is all group self-induced amnesiac groundhog day loop

[“I’m—sorry,” Rhys said. “I was thinking about what I could prepare for a Charmander.”]
yes and hannibal lecter is having you over for dinner

[“Pink? No, usually greens and yellows,” Demitri said.

Rhys sighed, pausing his food prep. “I am the one who is most in tune with the aura,” he said. “And I say that whatever phenomenon it is, it’s nothing to worry about. Now, enough talk of spirits. Dinner is ready.”]
100% good guy only vibes, absolutely nothing wrong here, super okay, everything is fine

[“Of where your parents live?” Rhys asked. “Revealing this to me will change nothing.”]
sweet lil' naive owen

[He saw the pink mist again. Oh, Mew in the stars, he thought, taking his final bite. Can’t I have just one normal day?]
oh lol the pink mist is Mew isn't it

I think overall this story is interesting - the characters are fun, you have good dialogue, and there's definitely something going on under the seams. The banter/humor is definitely a highlight. For me I found the prose a bit muddled and I would've loved to understand some of the broader strokes of the worldbuilding - the latter is probably something that gets expanded upon at some point in the next, you know, 615k words. Feels kind of weird to redline something so closely while only reading such a small percentage of it, but I also wanted to give you a detailed review with what I've read.

And I don't think you need to explain the entire world right away, either. For example, I think that the scene in Town describing the various buildings was cute, but it didn't really add things to the story at the time, and given that we immediately switch settings, it didn't really feel necessary. I think it's far more helpful to describe things as they come up - so concepts such as ferals, dungeons, etc and the way that characters react to them made it feel a lot more convoluted than I think you intended. Am I supposed to side with Gahi re: ferals? Is Owen supposed to be a uniquely good guy for healing the hurt he created? Does Owen's bag have a hole in it, causing his apples to slowly fall out? I think those are character questions that rely on the worldbuilding to answer, but I don't have enough of a basis in the setting to fully understand what those answers are supposed to be.

Still! Fun concept, probably wasn't meant for this much side-eyeing of what goes on beneath the hood. I did enjoy reading!

Hey, crosspost real quick!

[Owen walked with a spring in his step, tail flame blazing happily.]
I thought this was a really cute bit of description.

[Not that it mattered; complete darkness was a foreign concept to most Charmander.]
Is it? I feel like the constant light from their tails means that they're never in total darkness unless they're about to die.

[“Aw, thanks!” Owen graciously took them, counting them for inventory, and slipped the three apples into his pouch.]
The "counting them for inventory" phrase was unclear to me - because we don't yet know there are three, it feels like he's sitting there counting out a lot of items in front of the gift-giver, which made this feel like a dick move, not a gracious one. But if there's just three, he can probably count them just by looking at them since the group is so small, so it seems strange to call out that he counts them. I think something like "mentally counting" would imply the visual/non-physical counting if that's what you were going for.
[He had two Oran Berries, two elixirs, two apples, a Pecha Berry, a Heal Seed, a Totter Orb, and—just in case—an Escape Orb]
And like ... does he eat one between scenes here?

[Owen left at a full sprint, too full of energy to go any slower, and only looked back to wave her goodbye.]
This is commenting on really old prose from a long story, so I don't really think it's reasonable to ask you to change the style, but - you tend to list clauses in a non-intuitive order, which makes the sentence hard to parse. Example above. For me it's how much information is here and how it keeps getting contradicted/qualified. In my head:
"Owen left at a full sprint" - action
"too full of energy to go any slower" - cause
"and only looked back to wave her goodbye" - action that directly contradicts the first
So reading through, we see a thing, and then we learn why the thing happened, and then we actually learn that he didn't do the thing in the way that we were led to believe that he did - the sentence feels kind of awkward as a result.

Maybe rewrite as: "He looked back to wave her goodbye, and then-too full of energy to go any slower-he left at a full sprint." This to me conveys the same ideas in a much more clear order.

[Muscle weighed more than fat. Owen worriedly pinched at his gut, wondering if his chubby Charizard genes were coming through before the rest.]
Salamanders typically store fat in their tails! Belly fat is a pretty mammalian thing since they're warm blooded and don't need to worry about temperature regulating their organs as much.

[The ground rumbled, the boulder that had led to the opening of his hidden village rolling back into place, blending in with the rest of the hill.]
This is a sentence splice; you need either "the ground rumbled; the boulder that had led [...]" or "the ground rumbled. The boulder that had led [...]", etc - can't join two complete sentences with a comma.

[summer breeze tickling his flame]
cute bit of description here!

[Owen decided not to think too hard about it.]
I didn't really follow what he was trying not to think about here.

[
The Golem sighed and wobbled away.

“Kid… not a kid… I’m just a little late, is all. I bet I’m way stronger than even the average Charmeleon! Stronger than that Golem, too, if he didn’t have an advantage.” Owen mumbled more to himself, the rest incomprehensible, clutching his bag.]
This scene break seems weird since the ideas in the new scene directly follow the end of the previous scene. Maybe add something about how Owen was still fuming even after he reached his destination.

[He put his two spoons in his left hand and shook Owen’s with his right.]
This feels like another human-behavior thing, like the belly fat - would a society that has many non-handed members (I'm thinking birds and fish) even evolve handshaking as a greeting in the first place? Maybe some sort of head motion instead, since that's a much more common denominator?

[Nevren continued. “Ahh, I see you have a Provisionary Heart Badge. Training to become one of the Thousand, are you? There are quite a few open slots coming up soon, you know. Sixteen official retirements.”]
This suggested that the name is literal, and there are indeed exactly 1,000 people with this job. Which to me seems strange I guess? What if the population grows and they need more? What if they find a different way to do this job and they realize they don't need a thousand members?

[Owen had no idea why Nevren would want to give him a gift so randomly. But he wasn’t going to question a freebie!]
[I, of course, have no use for it, but you certainly do.]
yeah he's definitely evil lol

[He knew the answer. He knew these three were his students. Trapinch Gahi, Axew Demitri, Chikorita Mispy. It was obvious to him! But why?]
A lot of "he" here - unclear if Owen is deja-vu'ing that Gahi/Demitri/Mispy are his own students in a different timeline, or if Owen knew they were Rhys's students and just forgot.

[Their entire conversation felt like one giant déjà vu. Everything today did.]
Oh, is this groundhog's day but with memory wipe? Interesting take on the PMD amnesia.

[He felt a little bad about hurting those Pokémon, but they were the ones attacking him.]
[Getting ejected from a Dungeon often left the victim exhausted… but ferals like those were resilient.]
The concept of ferals here is a bit unclear to me - why are they attacking? Are they really mindless? It's interesting to see how Owen sees them as "resilient" when he later ends up taking a lot of abuse and is suddenly horrified at the idea of being left for dead, as if he hadn't just done that.

It's admittedly been a while since I've played PMD, but - I thought the pokemon in dungeons were just regular pokemon that got driven to aggression by the dungeon, not a separate species? Once you recruit them, they stop attacking you/will talk to you/behave just like other pokemon in town, so they definitely don't seem "feral" in the canon I remember. I feel like this is more with PMD fanon but I'm not fully immersed in how it functions?

[A strange gravity prevented him from climbing the walls, let alone flying over them if he ever sprouted wings. Perhaps in his dreams he could.]
And this is a fun take on the strangeness of dungeons, but I don't really have a good idea of the environment. Aerodactyl seem pretty big, so are the walls even taller than that? Why is there a strange gravity? Why are there even these dungeons in the first place?

And I think it's fine if the answer is "they're fucking mysterious kint calm down"; it just feels like Owen isn't viewing them as an inhabitant of this world, rather than an inhabitant of Kilo. If it's common knowledge that these things are weird twisted labyrinths that no one understands but everyone just accepts, then I think it's okay to mention that.

[Muscles bulged unnaturally. It wasn’t a normal Snorlax—and Owen wasn’t prepared for whatever it had in store.]
This picture didn't really work for me: Snorlax are mostly pudge, so is this trying to say that it's all muscle instead of fat?

[Owen didn’t like those eyes. Trained, focused. Malevolent. What did this one have in mind? He saw that look often in town—outlaws that were captured, still bitter with defeat. But this one wasn’t defeated.]
Interesting that he's bitter with defeat without having been defeated. So this is the tie-in to Prayers Unheard?

[“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?”]
Their dialogue here was pretty fun!

[All that was left behind were a few stray embers from his tail; Owen bolted.]
Embers are usually burning coals or bits of wood - without a source of carbon or some external power source, combustion doesn't really occur on its own and the fire would just vanish immediately.

Really starting to get some Death Stranding vibes near the end of the chapter. I’m excited to see what’s next!

Looks like things sure are getting stranger and stranger (or maybe that’s just because Owen seems to be losing it)

I’ve gotta say I really didn’t expect Oren berries to show up, though hopefully that little hard truth Jerry just gave him doesn’t traumatize the poor guy yet another time

I have some theories of what may be going on with the crystals and whatnot but I’m really interested to see what exactly happens with them and what exactly this place is and why some characters seem effected in it differently

At least Owen and Zenna have met again, but it would seem that their meeting now is reminiscent of something that happened earlier on. I wonder what exactly they’ll do now that they met back up?

Though by this point I have started to forget characters a bit...don’t get me wrong, your world does feel large due to how many characters there are and the characters are memorable however by this point there are just so many around it’s hard to keep track of them all

With so much happening in the story’s world as well as to the characters I’m on the edge of my seat so to speak and am excited to see what happens next (of course don’t rush with the next chapter though). Great job on the chapter!

Review of Chapters 20 – 31

I’ll say it straight off the bat – a good portion of this review is going to be me theorizing about which characters in HoC are trustworthy. I think that speaks to the unsettling nature of this story very well. In PMD: Hands of Creation no one piece of knowledge is to be taken for granted… not even the things that look like accidents.

The next set of chapters immediately begins with a bang – the introduction of the Fighting-Type Guardian Manny. The accent’s thick, and Manny knows Gahi back from when he was ‘evolved’. Manny immediately becomes one of your more standout characters, if only for his connection to spirits (Which is interesting, given he’s the Fighting-Type Guardian and not Ghost). He’s also in a very interesting exposition scene, in which his body is overtaken by a lucario spirit named ‘Yen’. (Which… I am immediately associating with Japanese currency plz halp). But aside from that he doesn’t actually do much – he’s got an interesting battle with Rhys, but not much screentime outside of that. Soon, he fades into the background with the other side guardians (RIP ADAM, who was regulated to extra status after his segment of the plot was through… :’( …And I haven’t even seen Valle for a bit.), and the plot moves on to a much more interesting character: Enet. More on her below.

Hmm, a dubious Arceus who’s not the deity he’s cracked up to be… reminds me very much of a certain other story, although HoC is much more up-front about it than that one is. Whatever long game Star is playing doesn’t seem to be Arceus’ style, because right away he’s all ‘I am your ultimate better; OBEY MEH’ instead of settling for more subtle manipulation tactics. I can’t really get a good read on him, seeing as he’s been given all of one scene: what was shown seems to line up with what Star keeps telling everyone, but I’m hesitant to say that’s all it is because I don’t trust Star either. In fact, I’ll go into that now.

I really want to trust Star, but… at the same time, I just can’t shake the feeling she’s hiding things, and hiding them for not-so-honorable purposes. And when she’s nice, it’s always with a motive: maybe she wants to slowly regain Owen’s trust, or get him back under control so he doesn’t go haywire and become mutant, or have him make a divine promise. Most of her actions really seem geared towards gaining Owen’s trust, now that I look at it. She has the trust of basically all the Guardians in the Hearts Organization (Anam; Rhys; Amia), and the rest of them are hit-and-miss. But in particular she seems to be building a relationship with Owen. I just somehow don’t think she has a relationship with the other guardians to the point where she would have all the one-on-one conversations she has with Owen, and it’s very convenient since Owen is such an important piece on the board. I don’t think Star is *evil*, persay, but she’s definitely got personal stake in this. My verdict on her as of Chapter 31 (by the FFN counter) is that she’s out to do everything she said to do – she’s gathering all the guardians in one place so that the Hunters don’t get them. But she’s also gonna go on her own little drama-fueled crusade on the side as a ‘bonus’ – no matter how many other people that hurts, Star Knows Best.

A wild Deca appeared! What will Owen do?

…Just stand there confused, I guess. Deca confuses me too, both times he’s appeared. I’m pretty sure Star had something to do with him, but I can’t make heads or tails of it – why does he look like Owen? And what’s with the blindfold? It’s stated that he looks *exactly* like Owen, so is it some kind of move or trick and he’s copying Owen somehow? But I don’t understand why he’d be using the blindfold, though… if he’s copying Owen, he’d need a reference, not a mental image of some sort – presumably what the blindfold is for.

…

…But if he’s covering the eyes specifically, I wonder…

…

…Is Deca a ditto?

Now… Special Episode Two. This chapter was quite a trip, so I think it deserves its own section. I don’t usually enjoy Special Episodes randomly inserted into PMD stories, as they break up the pacing by cutting away to other random scenes and a few epics/large stories just use them as filler/fluff for word-padding. That is seemingly not the case here. Something I really appreciated is that instead of being another random cutaway, the second special episode takes us back to the devastation of Nightshade Forest that SE I focused on, instead showing the events from a different perspective that adds more context to it. We are signaled that this event is a very important happening – not just a random scene from one of Owen’s many ‘lives’. We learn that Ra caused the storm that burned Nightshade Forest (although that Jolteon is still unexplained… Perhaps I’m too thick to get it), all as part of his plan to uncouple himself from the Electric Orb and move on to the spirit realm to join his family. It’s a mystery at the beginning and a tragedy in hindsight, only augmented by where Hecto takes Ra after all is said and done. Here we see Star finally snap and show her true colors – when things don’t go to plan, she’s very not-nice – and we also learn how Enet gained the power of the Electric Orb. All in all, these events explain and add many layers to the Nightshade Forest Incident, but I still feel like there’s another layer of mystery here (and I see one more Special Episode before the beginning of Act II)… will be waiting to see if that clears up or not. (I also wonder what happened to Yveltal as well, but I imagine that’s for later…)

As for Enet… Enet is by far (in my opinion) the most interesting of the Guardian characters so far. Mostly because of your decision to make her a Feral Pokemon. The concept is quite similar to another fic I’ve read, but it’s handled much differently here – Enet can speak and understand rudimentary vocabulary, which allows you to do far more with her character than you’d be able to if you restricted her to grunts and growls. She also has a very interesting personality; you mesh the feral characteristics of a wild animal with signs of intelligence very well. Unfortunately, I also notice another running trend with your guardian characters – they get one or two big scenes, and then they’re sort of just regulated to the background. ADAM hasn’t been heard from, except in passing. Valle is just chilling somewhere, but hasn’t been plot relevant for amost ten chapters now? Cara just completely disappeared after her spirit appearance, and the torterra guardian didn’t even get a chance to shine. Manny and Enet seem more plot-significant than the others, but I’m worried they’ll eventually fade into the background too. Which would be a shame, because they are fairly interesting characters I’d like to see more of. I’m hopeful they’ll stay, because otherwise it seems a lot like wasted potential for all the guardians…

Eon has been namedropped several times in the last twenty chapters, like all the characters suddenly know what Eon is, but the readers haven’t gotten any explanation at all. Given that they contact Rym on her way back from a rather unsettling shopping trip, it’s probably safe to assume they’re one of the five Hunters. Which makes four of their identities known (Rhys, Nevren, Rym, Eon(?))… and that means there’s only one left. I have a feeling the fifth has either already been introduced, or is just about to be.

I feel like that off-hand section about Zena not being able to fight Owen is either because she’ infatuated with him, or some plot thing that’s gonna be important later. Star’s reaction makes me want to say the former, but then wouldn’t Zena know that already? So why would *she* ask?
And then there’s the half-reveal about Nevren, which… I’d already kind of caught onto at this point? I shan’t lie; there are several reasons to suspect him of something fishy by now. Firstly there’s that thing about him being into genetics and therefore likely responsible for the Mutants, which was confirmed just a few chapters after I theorized about it. And also that even though both he and Rhys were Hunters at one point, Rhys has had and taken ample opportunity to prove himself trustworthy, while Nevren just kinda disappeared after the main base became the Hot Spot caverns. I also don’t believe it was directly stated whether he was a Mystic or not (and I’m erring on the side of ‘not’, since he remains in Kilo Village), so Star probably couldn’t get into his head as easily as she could one of her Guardians. Which gives him much more freedom to go behind her back. But the largest thing about it that sets me off is really more of a meta thing than anything else – I’m noticing a recurring trend with all your characters. The ones presented as ‘heroes’ (Rhys; Amia; Owen, etc.) are all fairly blatant, and only lie when it’s absolutely necessary, with motives that are explained. But all your characters that are dubious/villains (Rym, Deca, Star) are presented in a way that you can’t ever tell what they’re really all about. There’s always some part of the story that you don’t know when it comes to Hands of Creation’s more dubious characters, and Nevren falls clean into that spot. He’s shady; he’s reserved; he’s obviously hiding things – he’s just been out of the camera eye for so long the average reader will gloss over it entirely. It’s easy to forget about him when his movements are regulated to radio calls and backhanded mentions in the prose. But something’s very clearly off here, and I’ve been noticing for a while – for now, I’m very much in Owen’s boat of ‘don’t’ trust Nevren’.

But overall, these were a very interesting set of chapters to read. It might just be my love of stories that are unsettling and twisty by default, but something I’m already liking very much about this story is that it takes a lot of tropes that PMD stories build off of, and subvert them. Special Episodes used as fluff and filler? Here they’re plot important and build on one another. The resident Guild Establishment promptly becoming the home base once the story kicks into gear? Here it’s abandoned for Owen’s ‘hometown’. Legendaries as creatures to be revered? Here they’re dubious, if they even exist. All of it builds up to a story that I think I can confidently say is truly unique, even for the Pokemon genre. I genuinely haven’t seen anything like it in all my time browsing this site, and I’m very eager to see more.

Until next time!

~SparklingEspeon

Listening to: The Voice in the Vault – Bear McCreary

Hey there XD001, it's been a hot minute. Let me go set up the Purify Chamber real quick

Review of Chapters 11 – 20

I guess I’m back?

I think that I have a better idea of the story, now that I’ve read all the way to Chapter 20 (by the FFN Counter). It’s very interesting, but it’s also layered and I can tell that we *still* aren’t really getting things handed to us straight yet. Everyone is keeping secrets here, and those secrets are in no shortage, it seems.

So, I’m gonna start off with something that I noticed about your prose, but for some reason only affects one chapter? I’m talking about the Special Episode. Something I noticed is that while you tend to have shorter, snappy sentences, there are usually enough of them that they form paragraphs instead of just being one line per line. Not so with the special chapter. It might be because it’s just a really long chapter, but I noticed that a lot of the lines in the middle – especially after Deca is introduced – tended to be non-descriptive one-liners. Moreso, it seems like you were trying to be vague on purpose, because a lot of things after that are rather muddled in how you show them – it’s a bit hard to figure it all out. UNTIL Owen starts coming up with a plan to stop the fires. Then it begins to return to normal. I’m wondering why this is. Were you just trying to simulate Owen’s confusion, or was it unintentional, or… ?

The Guardians are kind of weird. You made good choices and used some pokemon that are very ‘not-common’ to PMD (In particular Porygon-Z, which I believe I have only seen in one other PMD fic), but they’re still weird. I get that they were already pretty eccentric to begin with and probably a bit kooky from being cooped up all those centuries, but you’d think most of them would just make a place like Hotspot Village for themselves, instead of going into permanent meditation like Valle or just becoming outright demented like Willow. (On Willow: I wonder if her inspiration and association with mushrooms came from the twisted fairies of Irish folklore…) I get that they’re hiding but they’re going crazy from being cooped up *that* long and I’m not sure I see why they couldn’t use the spirit orbs for company.

Is it because they’re all trying to shut out Star? (But Cara wasn’t…)

I know that ADAM wants his name pronounced A-D-A-M, but whenever someone says ‘ADAM’ in your story, I just imagine them yelling out ‘ADAM!’ really loud instead of actually saying the letters one-by-one. I think something along the lines of ‘A-D-A-M’ might strive closer to the effect you’re going for?

I think Rim found them by chance, really. We already know that they had their sights on Cara long before Anam’s team found her, and it didn’t seem like she was hunting them specifically. We also know that she can teleport because she has the psychic orb, so I think that she was just doing a blanket sweep of areas and found them by chance. I assume her priorities were the Guardians anyway.

But I also think it’s a good change of pace that the Hunters are actually becoming a threat now, because they’ve been absent for a while and Star’s teams finding all those Guardians without any troubles at all is just *too* easy. I think that’s the point where I began to actually get interested in this story, rather than just reading along and waiting for it to pick up.

So, I wanna talk about the mutants for a bit. I’ve been confused over these things ever since the story began. Where do they come from? Why do they exist? And if they’re such a big problem, even being able to plow their way through entire towns or eliminate a pokemon completely with a single thunderbolt, why aren’t they as big a problem as they are?

The story seem to connect them to the hunters. All the times the Mutants have appeared in Hands of Creation it’s accompanying in the hunters. Particularly Rim in chapter 17, but the prologue shows a mutant going after Amia as well (at least I *assume* it was Amia) and Star completely disowns them as any of her creations, so they must have been created with a purpose.

The second thing I want to cover is that all the Mutants thus far have been artificial in nature. A bulked-up snorlax; a luxray with a raichu tail; a ninjask with scyther arms… these aren’t natural creations; these are mishmashes of other pokemon all rolled up into one big monster. I’d go so far as to say they can’t reproduce either, meaning that they’re one and done. Someone, somewhere, must still be creating these things.

And the third thing I want to cover (and possibly the thing that ties this all together) is that Nevren is involved with genetics. Which makes me think that he is responsible for them, at least in some capacity. When you think about it all the mutants are like frankenstein’s monsters – they’re made my mishmashing pokemon together, much like you would in a laboratory. And if Star – the only pokemon introduced in the story who can actually create pokemon – isn’t involved, then the only logical conclusion (barring some story element that hasn’t been introduced yet making waves and upsetting the dynamic) is that Nevren created them. And the Hunters have found a way to utilize his old techniques/have found another pokemon to make mutants for them. Or… Nevren is *still* making them. And I could see this being a possibility because he is just *never* there. He’s the only one not actively searching for Guardians along with the rest of the team, and even if someone needs to stay behind in Kilo Village for appearances, that would be either Anam or Rhys, not Nevren. So my theory at this point of time is that Nevren is involved with the Mutants in some way, whether that be from in the past or in the present.

Star’s waterworks… IDK what to think yet. Like, I really *want* to believe her, but at the same I still have doubts. Something isn’t lining up yet. Namely, Deca, and his lines to Star at the end of the special chapter. He mentions that he’s ‘waiting’ for Star to make her move, and even threatens to steal the orb and give it to the Hunters if she doesn’t ‘move soon’. Which makes me feel like there’s a larger plot on Star’s part here (And this can’t be from before Star split off from the Hunters, because they’re clearly opposing parties at this point and Star is trapped in the Spirit Realm).

I also want to talk about Deca for a little while. The fact that he’s a complete doppelganger of Owen made me think he was like a twin sibling and Owen was just ‘chosen’ for something back when I read the chapter, but with the new revelations that came with Star’s confession, I wonder if he was the prototype Owen. Something that Star created as a test/the original Owen, but didn’t work out like Star had planned, and so Owen was born as the refined version. Assuming that’s true (and considering all the factors that point towards it I *really* think it is), then all that’s left to be unveiled is how Deca took it, and where he stands now. Star hasn’t tried to collect him yet (even if it’s just for the purposes of keeping her secret), so that makes me wonder if he’s joined the Hunters,..

So the black sparks *were* messing up their evolutions. That’s what I felt it was from the beginning, but initially I thought it was a result of some attack or something interfering. Now, it’s seemingly because Owen and Rhys’ students were created by Star much in the same way that Rhys was. And perhaps something goes wrong in them when they evolve? I’ve also noticed that they *only* evolve when they go through a major trauma of some sort, like Owen realizing his whole life was a lie, or Mispy, Gahi, and Demetri almost being crushed by rocks in their battle with Valle. I wonder if their evolutions like use up their energy or something (As evidenced by the circumstances that Owen evolved into a charizard under), and that’s why they have to be reset. As well as the crisis that Owen went into after a few of his memories were revealed.

So Owen killed Klent. I’ll be honest; I never saw that coming. Like, it was *there*, but it was *reeeeaally* subtle and the kind of thing you just don’t get until it happens. I don’t think I have much to say on that because I don’t know enough yet, but assuming my theory on why Owen can’t evolve is correct I think it might just have been an accident of some kind? Unless Owen and Deca are like split personalities personifi- Nooope I’m beginning to get too crazy with my theories again.

Seriously, those mushrooms are nightmare fuel.

So Star died. I had a feeling it might have been something like that, to be honest. I wonder who did it, though. Was it the Hunters, after she fell out with them? Did they murder her for being a traitor, or what? What makes me think that’s wrong, though, is the fact that Arceus is dead as well. That makes me think something completely different went down, because Arceus being dead changes the goalposts for all the parties. If the original point of the Hunters was the get the orbs and challenge Arceus, then if the Hunters were still true to their goal then Arceus would still be alive. But it isn’t. So I think something else happened. I think that Star and the Hunters *did* succeed in killing Arceus. And I think that they didn’t disband. They became more power-hungry with all the orbs they had, and that began to conflict with Star’s motives (since she was only looking to settle her drama thing with Arceus). They fought, and it ended with Star’s death. But she had the last laugh, because she found a way to separate them from the orbs. She assigned new Guardians to all the orbs, and told them to hide so that the Hunters could never find them again. But now the Hunters *are* finding them again, which is why Star moved her pieces on the chessboard. The only thing that doesn’t explain is why she created Owen, Deca (presumably), Mispy, Gahi, and all the others. Were they her failsafes? Seems a bit too pre-emptive, to be frank. I still think there’s something off.

But overall, I think these chapters were very good! They were paced nicely, and like I said in the beginning I’m getting a better idea of the story now. It’s very… different than I imagined, but not any worse. It seems to revel in building up this goofy, anime-esque exterior, and then tearing it down and showing the readers that no, it’s not like that at *all*. Which is interesting, but I still feel like I’m not far in enough to truly understand it yet. Especially given all the things that have changed in ten chapters alone…

Until next time!

~SparklingEspeon

Listening to: Vision of War – James Newton Howard