Hanging out at my BFF’s place for the New Year’s and binge-playing Pokemon X led us to many discussions about the culture/society/physics of the Pokemon universe–which, in a world-building way would be a fun post to make, but in particular this post is for a story idea. More specifically, the story for what would ideally be the last Pokemon Movie–the movies revolving around Ash Ketchum/Satoshi, at least.
Not really creepy past, but does include character death. But considering how horrifying the Ghost Pokemon’s descriptions have been lately, it’s not too bad.
So here goes:
Birth of a Legend (Death of a Hero)
A scientist tries to discover the origins of the only Ghost-type Legendary Pokemon, a trainer follows the footsteps of a Champion long-passed. But secrets are kept for a reason–the truth of one solves the mystery of the other.
Basically I were to write the screenplay for the final Pokemon movie, it would be something like this.
An ambiguous amount of time (think decades if not centuries) after Ash’s adventures, a trainer who wants to be the very best or has already become Champion and is looking for something to do, tries to complete what is now called the Ketchum challenge. That is: encounter every Legendary Pokemon (and battle if possible). This causes them to cross paths with a scientist–either accidentally or on purpose–with a scientist whose specialty includes the only Ghost Legendary, whose existence is mostly unknown and whose records are fairly sporadic. Unlike most other Legendaries, there isn’t much in the way of myths and stories about it, and it doesn’t really like to be seen.
But there have been a few encounters, and the scientist and trainer–now working together–follow the trail. Finally, they uncover what they believe to be a first hand account of the Ghost Legendary, a witness’ diary or a very old person who was a child during the encounter. The first sighting of the Ghost legendary, and the last of Ash Ketchum.
Then it flashbacks to Ash’s adventure–and it seems that he, too, is looking for a mysteriously strong Ghost Pokemon. The witness, a child at the time, is probably the younger sibling of one of his companions or a local of the town, near which the Pokemon is said to reside and which is terrorizes/pranks frequently.
Ash does his usual charmingly naive blustering about how he’ll find the Pokemon and make it stop messing with the town. The adults don’t really believe him, but the kids do–at least, the witness does. And so the witness trails after, sees Ash’s search and the way he fends off wild Pokemon. No doubt, without a Pokemon of their own, the witness is vulnerable to a wild Pokemon attack of their own. But Ash saves them, obviously, earning himself another disciple of sorts. Because they are so far from the town, it’s decided that the witness will stay with the camp overnight–especially since the nature is so dangerous at night.
And that’s when the first brief encounter with the Ghost occurs. Ash tries to battle, but the Ghost disappears, and when the sun comes up, everyone goes back to the town. The town is more welcoming now that they’ve brought back the missing child/witness, and so they begin telling tales of the Ghost’s previous attacks.
Ash and companions are unsure as to which Ghost Pokemon it might be since there’s conflicting evidence in the stories. They continue their search come nightfall, and return still confused.
This goes on [… I’ll be honest I’m not too sure about this part but…] until one by one, the companions leave–they signed up to travel with Ash, not stay in one tiny town that isn’t even being terrorized by Pokemon anymore. Ash considers leaving, too, but the townspeople/witness are afraid that if Ash leaves then the Ghost will come back and resume its reign of terror. So Ash, being the quintessential hero, decides to stay until he can figure it out.
Then, one day, Ash doesn’t come back from his night time search. Neither does the Ghost. But Pikachu does. And he never leaves the town, waiting for Ash until, finally, he dies from old age, and a monument is created for him.
Return to unnamed scientist and trainer duo, standing in front of the eroded/rusted remains of said Pikachu monument, after having finished the memory.
Now it’s their turn to encounter the Ghost, and they make a pact that neither of them will leave until they figure out the truth. And so they set out on a search of their own.
And history starts to repeat itself. They see glimpses of the Ghost, but can never catch up to it. It messes with their camp/stuff/research/Pokemon/remains of the town in conflicting ways so as not to be any known Ghost Pokemon, but still they remain determined.
Finally, during a new moon, the actually confront the Ghost. The scientist is quick to confirm that it is in fact the Ghost Legendary they seek. The trainer follows with their own (honestly unsurprising, but cinematic “plot twist”) confirmation–the Ghost legendary is Ash Ketchum.
But Ash hasn’t been human in a long time, and he’s mad. Mad that his companions abandoned him, mad that these two people won’t leave him alone, mad that no one bothered to do something like this much earlier. He had tried, earlier–his other sporadic appearances in other places–trying to get people to follow him and, essentially, lay him to rest. But no one would come. And so now that he’s been awakened, he just wants to make the world burn (turn everything to ash, one might say).
The scientist and trainer cooperate to try and stop him. No doubt some stuff about friendship and loyalty and their promise to each other, etc. etc. Ash doesn’t really care because he’s been betrayed. Or so he thinks: because right before Ash can kill the pair (during a dramatic night time storm), lightning strikes the Pikachu monument. The spirit of Pikachu is released, and Ash remembers all the good times and, essentially, lets go of his grudge. The storm abates, the scientist and trainer are not killed, and the number of Ghost Legendary Pokemon increases to two.
The scientist and trainer promise to keep the events a secret and remain companions, Ash and Pikachu resume roaming around having adventures as it should be, and somewhat happy endings all around.
The end?
—
So yup. This came from yet another rehashing about how Ash is somehow forever young, has probably met every Legendary Pokemon, is ridiculously strong, apparently has Aura powers (which look exactly like the powers of certain Pokemon), etc. etc.
But then we remembered that in Pokemon 2000 (the one with the Mew/Mewtwo thing) Ash got turned into a statue. He probably actually died from that.
Given how strange and, frankly, terrifying the latest Ghost Pokemon are, we figured that. Hey, what if Ash is actually a Ghost possessing his own body. It would explain a lot–his eternal youth, his powers, and his inability to defeat the Normal type Gym leaders since Ghost-type attacks can’t affect Normal-type Pokemon (I am only partially kidding about this last one).
And then, given a previous still unsolved debate regarding human-Pokemon relationships (as in, why do Pokemon listen to humans. Are humans actually Psychic Pokemon, etc) we figured that a Ghost capable of possessing a human body–to the point of basically being human–would probably have to be a Legendary. And given that Ash has met most if not all of the Legendaries, wouldn’t that be interesting if it’s because the Legendaries sensed something about him–a sort of potential to match their rank.
I’m frankly unsure how Ash’s “true nature” as a Ghost Pokemon was revealed to himself. But the Ghost that he was chasing was actually a group of multiple Pokemon, overlapping their skills in order to seem like one singular powerful Ghost. Possibly their was a fight of some sort and he and his team got overwhelmed, and so he put himself in harms way to protect them and sort of got… exorcised out of his own body. Maybe?
As for the scientist and trainer–depending on how much time has passed, I would like for them to be descendants of Ash’s companions–either the ones that were with him last or the ones that were with him first. But not obviously? Like, if it were Gary’s grandchild, I would want it to be another scientist Oak. If the Oak kid is the trainer, then I would want the scientist to be Misty’s grandchild. I dunno.
~
A/N: Anyway… that’s about it. Happy 2016!
JackSGreyson Says 