I love this opening! The way you go about wild Pokémon interactions is so cool and really adds to the realistic feel. Barry is kept in character really well too. I’m already a Piplup stan and happy to see it as the chosen starter.

Can Dawn catch a female Buizel or a female Driftloon? I think she needs one or two females, just to add a little bit to the team(and I may or may not be hoping to see Crest fall in love with one... Crest deserves all the love. He is best boi.)

Dawn is certainly brave, with good intentions, but she's still a relatively new trainer and she's up against some very nasty customers. Things are NOT going to go well for her at first. Good thing Looker arrived when he did.

Congrats on the new job!

Truly loved the Sinnoh origin tale there, it was awesome to read, and truly felt like a myth. I just really love all the little worldbuilding tidbits you put in here in general; it makes the world feel so much more fleshed out, and as a Sinnoh fan in particular, it's music to the ears. Really excited to see where this goes!

Hey man! Glad to see another chapter from you, and sorry for my radio silence over the past year.

Floaroma was great! You described it really well and I liked how you talked about how each pokemon interacted with the environment, and I could picture Ion trodding through the streets very easily. The ceremony/shrine interaction seemed to come very fast - as a suggestion, try to throw in a few lines of shorter description before slipping into dialogue, as that makes it harder for readers to skim past too long of paragraphs.

Shaymin's story was nice - I like the interaction of Shaymin and Xerneas, as well as the worship from the "regular" pokemon. And her personality being that she wanted green beauty in the world once again was really cool.

I'm not familiar with Sinnoh but Nando seems like he's going to be a reoccurring character - an older rival in a different field than just battling? I can't see her first three pokemon being too into contesting, but maybe Aries? His growth ability could be interesting to play up to.

Dawn gets her first pokemon through something other than battling - and skiddo is definitely an excellent choice. A strong rideable type - including if you still get than Alolan ground type - and while I never really noticed it through its in-game sprite, having a grass coat does make a ton of sense. Man, he's not going to like fire types lol. His first battle was great - if only he could learn headbutt with those horns lol. Also, for some reason, I really liked how you kept mentioning hooves, another good reminder that these are all unique creatures instead of just smaller humans.

Valley Windworks sounds fun!

A few notes of concrit - I feel like you're making Dawn too mature for some things. She was able to convince Nando in one conversation about a plan for his future, she didn't panic when facing down Team Galatic other than when nearly attacked. I'd suggest adding a little more "kid" to her personality, just enough she seems to blend in with her world.

I really like Aries - he's a great character for your story, and a milder personality to be the voice of reason amongst Zephyr and Crest is sorely needed lol. A physical terrestrial force is also good, and my fingers are crossed for zen headbutt for those horns.

Good luck with your writing!

I like how studious and hard working Dawn is in her training. I'm curious to see how that develops over time. I also appreciate that you're actually, you know, showing realistic training methods. I also love Zephyr's personality.

Having Dawn lose the battle with Lucas was a really good move. I was just thinking, "Dawn is really talented, but it'll feel over the top if she keeps being this prepared and good at training" and then you had her lose. Good timing for her first loss, I think.

Normally, I'd think catching two team members in the same chapter would feel rushed, but it actually doesn't feel super rushed here. You've done a nice job giving each of the pokemon distinct enough personalities and screen time so far. Really liked the look into shinx group dynamics, btw.

You know, you can tell a lot about a journey fic from its first battle. I'm absolutely no pro at writing battles myself, so for me it's more about the effort put in. I can tell you put a lot of effort into trying to make your battle creative, and I appreciate that. It made me curious to see how they will progress as your characters become more experienced.

Your characters are off to a decent start, and I can see that you at least have a distinctive personality in mind for all of them. I appreciate that the pokemon feel alive in this, and not like tack ons. For a bit of criticism, I think Dawn's dialogue occasionally sounded like something from the game or anime, which... fair enough, it's a pokemon fic, but sometimes the over the top declarations don't translate well into written word. It's personal preference, but I am definitely on the side of more natural dialogue. It may be an aspect of her character you're going for, though, so I won't fixate on it for now. So far, I think all feel true to the baseline we were given in the games while also not feeling too flat

I think your writing is good overall (Definitely above average for fics in this fandom), but sometimes I got caught up in the wordiness of it. Don't be afraid to shorten some descriptions and add in some shorter sentence variation. Description is wonderful, but if it takes away from the action in a scene or what the character is feeling, it's overdone.

What do you know, this story is actually really good! A very likeable cast with good chemistry, intriguing worldbuilding, good battles, all wrapped in a very well written narrative. I like where this is going, be sure to keep it up!

It also helps that I really like fanfics that dive into the training and practicing aspect, and you do it very well without killing the pace. Good job!

Again, there was some very nice worldbuilding in this chapter. And you mentioned rips in the space-time continuum so casually!

I was not expecting Nando to show up - or for Dawn to catch a Skiddo. Maybe it would be a good idea for her to listen to the feeling of foreboding...

Have you thought of doing a TV Tropes page for 'Ascension'? If it's going the same way 'Traveler' and 'Challenger' are, it could be very interesting!

Nice read.

Aaaaand now I'm caught up. Which is sad, but at least I get to look forward to new chapters and read them as they come out, which is cool.

Anyway, this was a very tightly packed chapter. Lots of stuff happened.

You put more thought and focus more in the actual training of Pokemon and how they change and get better than any other author I've read, which is definitely not a bad thing. Sometimes it's nice to see step by step how a new move is learned, or how Pokemon prepare themselves to evolve. It feels a lot more real, I think.

And on that note, you do come up with good justifications for the new attacks and everything else. And you do it while having Dawn relate to and become a better friend to her Pokemon.

I am itching for a bit more conflict, however, and I'm excited because I know we might get more of that soon, considering who else is dwelling in Floaroma, waiting for her :D That's definitely gonna be interesting; I wanna know how Dawn reacts to stuff interfering with her journey. She definitely has a lot of grwoing up to do.

Also, the fight with Exploud and the Worldbuilding you did with those legends? Awesome stuff right there. I'm a huge fan of including legends into my fic and I'm glad others are too. And I recognized some stuff from the Arceus movie there :D

Anyway, looking forward to more!

I love the worldbuilding you've put into this chapter!

Dawn certainly knows what she wants, doesn't she?

Not sure I like the look of that second clipper - or the mention of Hunter J. She's one of the nastiest, most ruthless characters in the anime.

Can't wait for the next chapter!

Well god damn. You continue your streak of very good fights every chapter, sprinkled around with Dawn bonding with her team and being a pretty damn good trainer in the process. I like it.

I'm more used to group journey fics, so reading one with a more solitary protagonist whose only company most of the time are her Pokemon is a nice change of pace, and you're doing a great job so far.

Some nice worldbuilding on this one too. Interesting interpretation of both Roark and his town; the whole thing about the underground and the glowing rocks add a lot to the world and make me care, because you clearly do.

In any case, that was one hell of a battle and a great way to get our two protagonists to become good friends. I'm excited for the next one :D

Nice to see Dawn continuing to fight and improve at such a fast pace; she's definitely a natural at this and it shows :D

I'm a big fan of the team you've got set up here, not much different than in my own fic but you have Piplup which always makes things both more complicated and more interesting. A very prideful fellow, that one. And Zephyr isn't much easier to deal with, to be honest. A team full of temperamental Pokemon.

Both trainer fights in this chapter were very well done and thought out, and I'm glad you left a little space for us to wonder before giving us the answer as to why Crest hesitated against Atlas. Dawn is very smart and she seems like the kind of person to always be working on her problems, which I love.

Also... damn, that Cyrus appearance, I knew he was in this city but I forgot until you revealed that :D a very interesting description of him...

In any case, the team's looking good and so are the battles! Looking forward to what'll happen next.

Geez, you weren't kidding when you said you write fast!

This chapter was also great. I feel like I've gotten a much better feel for both the characters as well as the character of Sinnoh itself, which is really important in the more underused regions that don't have every aspect of them diligantly explored. I'm going to jump into some concrit to get that out of the way, but let me be clear: this was a great chapter, and I seriously enjoyed it!

One problem with the travel/train chapter is that often, there's not a driving force throughout the words, and unfortunately that came up here. We knew she was traveling, that she was getting stronger, but without a more obvious, pressing goal to keep repeating itself in the pages, the scenes can feel somewhat mismatched. An example of this would be the exploud encounter - while it was well written and exciting, because there wasn't anything building up to it (foreshadowing, preparing for a walk through a mountain, mentions of dangerous pokemon) until a few paragraphs before. While I definitely see why you wanted it to be a surprise, the end result was that it felt thrown in, and then almost forgotten as you skipped to the next part and cut to Ion instead of Zephyr after his evolution. What I think could have fixed this was mentioning the Ravaged Path well before, gearing Zephyr up for it in advance, stopping with another trainer who mentions strange things in the cave, feeling of forebodding before going in. Not all of those, but some sort of mismatch. That would help get rid of the dropped in feeling I got, me thinks.

A few minor things, like the forgetting of the grunts targeting Professor Rowan as well as why he didn't have a pokemon of his own, but they were pretty minor in the scheme of things.

Loved the worldbuilding, seriously. Constellations are such an underused but immersize part of a world, and tying in a punch of other regions made it seem all the more realistic. Your Moltres story was brilliant, and I would not at all be surprised if the Lily of the Valley was canon - the way you described made it sound effortless and beautiful. And having her pokemon all be as absorbed as she no doubt was when learning about it was great too - brilliant bonding moment.

The mentions of how strong Floaroma's smell was cool too, would not want to be there.

Grass-catching tournament, yes! That's a really underused way to get a new pokemon instead fo just winning one, and with - again - the majority of her team at a disadvantage, I'm really curious how she's going to go for the big one. I'm putting my vote down for either a budew, carnivine, or snover, though I guess I'll have to wait to see, lol.

Thanks for the chapter, good luck for your future ones!