#maxdestructionshipping

- Her partner is a Misdreavus! She was obviously too young in Unova to have a pokemon, and they aren’t natural in Galar, so how did they end up together?

- It belonged to one of her older siblings. He rarely took it out of its ball, and actively talked about how he didn’t like it compared to his other mons

- Maxine would sneakily hang out with it nearly every night, and they got on well, sharing a bond in being the unwanted child basically

- So when Max ran away, she stole Misdreavus to come with her

- (Still haven’t worked out the logistics of it, but Max can understand her pokemon. It’s friendship based, like, she gets close enough with a pokemon and eventually she can actually converse with them to a certain degree? Not with literal words or anything. Idk. She just Gets Them)

- She did some odd jobs, but mostly made her cash off underground pokemon battles. The stakes were higher (making them illegal lol), like.. it was intense gambling basically.

- Misdreavus didn’t want to evolve, so they hustled >:3 They went from venue to venue pretending Max was a new trainer with a new pokemon. Sometimes they lost on purpose before a win streak that they claimed as “beginner’s luck”

- It was absolutely exhausting though. She was constantly putting herself in tons of danger by doing this

- At the time she was like 145cm tall (by the time she’s done growing she’s only like 149cm lol), malnourished, and didn’t have any real way to defend herself if someone got mad enough to harm her

- Plus, Max is a little anxious mess and all the people + risk + acting wasn’t great for her. Kinda led to her being too tired to really care for herself

- Eventually met Piers and Marnie when she was, like, 17 or so - they were out on a walk, Marnie dropped a toy, and it rolled into Max’s tent

- Piers was surprised to see someone around his age open the flap to hand it back, and Marnie (who was like 6 at that point) was interested bc of her childish wonder or whatever

- They became fast friends, because I’m a sucker for giving Max the love she deserves damnit!! (BIG contrast from her old lore lol)

- Piers and Marnie would visit regularly. They would all mess with each other’s hair, paint each other’s nails, they’d play handheld games and read comics together and listen to music together - anything they could do from the confines of basically a little camp

- Piers would often come without Marnie, like if she was away at a play date or something, which is how Max and Piers’ bond grew as strong as it is

- Eventually Piers invited Max over, and when he realized she barely knew how to act in someone else’s home, let alone really, like.. take care of herself beyond the bare minimum, he pieced together that she’d been on her own far longer than he’d thought - not just in the physical sense.

- Piers’ and Marnie’s parents were gone, but they’d at least had some stability due to inheritances. So to try and offer that to Max, he started to sneakily feed her more, would subtly convince her to shower at his place when she needed to, offered to let her sleep on their couch…

- Once Max caught on, things got a little weird. She didn’t like the help, and being autistic, took it personally; like he pitied her for her shortcomings and executive dysfunction, and wanted to help because of that, rather than because he cared about her

- But by now Marnie was becoming more aware of herself and the world around her too, and her concern tugged at Max’s heartstrings a ton. She and Piers both managed to convince Max that they just wanted her to be happy and safe

- Fast forward a little, and now Max and Piers are renting a place and caring for Marnie together

- Piers found out about Max’s illegal battling habits and, now being a gym leader and rockstar, let her be part of the staff

- With a more stable lifestyle and also with age, Max started to be able to pull herself together

- Previously skin and bone - not in a healthy or natural way, but rather the ‘hadn’t been sleeping much, was horribly depressed and was extremely malnourished’ sort of way - she started to put on weight

- Needing new clothes, it gave her the chance to change her style to something closer to what it is now - very cute and cozy, rather than the weird mix of emo and athletic-wear she had worked with previously

- Along with the style change, she cut her hair!! Or at least tried to. Piers had to fix it lol

- By 23, she was ready to get her own place

- Wanting a change of pace, she moved out of town - decided on Circhester because she and Misdreavus like the cold, and also because it’s right next to Spikemuth, so she and her closest friends could still see each other often

- She started working at the Circhester gym, not wanting to commute back to Spikemuth so often, and Melony became a bit of a mother figure for her

- They went on cute lunch dates frequently, went for strolls around town with hot cocoa, and Melony even took Max shopping sometimes. It was the closest thing to a mom-like figure Max had ever experienced

- This made work more enjoyable too. She was worried that, upon changing venues, she’d have a hard time. Going from working with friends to working with strangers was scary as hell at first

- Eventually Melony tried to convince Max to do the gym challenge, thus starting that whole saga. She only decided to actually join in when Marnie decided to give it a shot too, encouraging Max to go along with her

- Melony and Piers both wanted to endorse Max SO badly lol. Since Piers had already endorsed his sister though, they decided on having Melony do it

- (This never happened I don't think, BUT I love the idea of Piers and Melony bickering over who gets to endorse Max jkrengdrge)

- While Max specializes in ghost types, she does have a few non-ghost pokemon (a low-key form toxtricity and a musharna, as well as her dark and ice teams from her gym trainer work: bisharp, umbreon, sneasel, frosmoth, glaceon, and froslass)

- That said, she doesn’t use a set team for the gym challenge - she just swaps her mons out situationally. She breezes through aside from a few hiccups here and there

- She is super anxious about all the attention though. Her fans dub her DynaMax at some point and it’s her worst nightmare to be called out in the streets that way

- She has a fling with Leon during the gym challenge

- They break up before she even makes it to the end, agreeing it’s probably for the best (from an ethics standpoint as well as just for each other. They stay friends though)

- She doesn’t win! She made it to the finals and then got her ass whooped by Allister.

- (Sorry for the Champion Gloria and Victor erasure. Maybe another year was better to them)

- Because she didn’t win, things go back to normal for a bit

- Only abnormal thing is that after the gym challenge, her and Piers start dating

- They had been interested in each other for a long time - even shared their first kisses with each other, amongst plenty more after the fact - but didn’t want to mess things up

- It was Max dating Leon that made them both realize they should give each other a shot romantically

- Max didn’t feel the same butterfrees and whatnot with anyone else, and she realized she’d never truly get that same spark as long as her feelings for Piers stuck around

- Meanwhile, Piers got jealous as fuck (although he wanted Max to be happy so he didn’t say anything) and, like Max, just knew she was the only person who could make him feel the way he did

- Things go amazingly with them actually, but they wind up breaking up on friendly terms when she decides to move to Paldea a few years later. It’s less actually wanting to break up, more just thinking the distance might be too hard to manage

- When she leaves for Paldea it’s because she wants to go to school, something she’d never gotten to do before

- She got homeschooled by a few older women in her “tent village” as a tween and did tons of studying on her own time, but she wanted to know what it was like to be a student taking classes and doing homework and whatnot

- Knowing it’s prestigious and wanting a challenge, she enrolls in Uva

- My HC is that Scarlet/Letty from the manga takes the place of the protag here. So while Max does befriend Arven (and ~canoodles~ him a bit as well), Penny and Nemona, and while she does get a little involved in the main storyline, she isn’t like super inevolved.

- Canoodle context! It’s a slow burn. At first, Max HATES Arven — why is he so mean?

- When he asks for her help with the herbs and what have you, she goes along for the sake of being helpful. She has to find a treasure of sorts, maybe that would happen while adventuring?

- Plus she unfortunately can’t help but find Arven’s overconfidence kind of endearing

- In the process they go camping together, do a lot of just walking around and battling together. They open up to each other and find they have more in common than they’d thought. They’re very close friends before anything even remotely romantic happens

- Regarding all the other stuff that happens in the game: Max doesn’t become a champion, but does hang around Scarlet and Nemona to support them during the gym challenge

- Since gym trainers aren’t as prevalent in Paldea, Max has to go into a new line of work. She turns out to actually do really well in her studies with some extra effort, so she winds up being an assistant researcher and TA for Jacq and his classes

- Fast forward a while, she’s explicitly told by him that black Tera crystals are not worth the research, please don’t go, etc. the whole spiel he gives you in the game

- She doesn’t listen because of her almost childlike sense of wonder and new love for academia, thus going with Nemona and Letty to take one on.

- Unfortunately, their opponent is a messed up, dummy strong, super pissed off electric-tera type Gyarados. They struggle a LOT.

- At one point it shoots a bolt at Nemona, rather than at her pokemon, but Max runs over to block it. She gets fucked up, because obviously.

- Max thinks she’s dead. In reality, she goes into a coma. She doesn’t know that though as she gets an isekai to Hisui

- Here’s her design hehe

- Hisui-era Max follows mostly the same plot as PLA, with a few tweaks

- When Laventon finds her on the beach, rather than being worried but going with the flow like the game protag does, she simply goes to sit at the shoreline and cries for a while

- When she’s sent out to begin her initiation thing for the survey corps, she’s got no memory of her arthritis or anything, so she has no clue why she’s constantly struggling so much with pain… thus more crying

- Btw she remembers NOTHING. All she knows is her name, age, and she remembers almost instinctively how to bond with pokemon. That’s it

- Unlike in the game where she has support from a few people and eventually the whole village, they all just see her as some weak freak of nature. Why does she look like that? Why does she cry so much? Why does she talk so little? Is she really an adult, or just some weird kid? Etc

- All the field research piques her interest despite how much physical strain it causes. She loves to learn - even if she didn’t remember that, she still feels it. The corps is just eager to have a new and willing member, and a talented one at that, so they ignore her shortcomings and let her keep at it anyway

- She and Volo have a romance, because of course they do. More than half of my OCs’ backstories are ship-driven ciwjvodkckd

- He accompanies her on harder tasks sometimes

- They camp out and have meals and even just relax and cloud/stargaze together just for fun when they run into each other in the wild

- He’s there to help her when she’s exiled, but makes it a point to take some detours on the way to Cogita to just show her that life outside of the village wouldn’t be all that bad

- Despite how bonkers he is, he genuinely does care for her, in his own fucked up way. It’s possessive, and it’s a little obsessive, but he doesn’t see it that way. She’s weak, she needs him, and he needs her, so they’re obviously destined for each other or whatever, sure.

- It’s only on Mount Coronet she realizes there’s the slightest chance he was just using her all along - and mentally, she snaps

- The one person who she had other than maybe Cogita, who she barely even knew, wasn’t even someone she could trust anymore

- With literally nothing to lose, Max accepts his offer to simply rule his brand new world alongside him. Couldn’t possibly get any worse than it was

- If he lied, whatever, she’d be free from her mortal coil; and if he wasn’t lying, at least if she was gonna be stuck with anyone it would be someone she loves

- Arceus’ whole deal with sending her to Hisui in the first place e was that, if she succeeded in her grand mission, she’d stay there. If not, she’d be sent back. No harm no foul (at least to a godly being such as them)

- But Arceus is PISSED that she was gonna follow through with not only failing, but with helping the enemy - so they retract her from Hisui before she can hand the plates over as punishment, and also as a way to prevent themself from being flicked out of existence

- From Volo’s POV, Max simply vanished, plates included. So obviously he conspires that she has some sorta power and it was on purpose and he got Punk’dtm. Because obviously that’s the only logical explanation in his very normal and sane and sound mind. We’ll come back to this.

- In present day, Piers — being Max’s emergency contact — was informed of the situation right away. He started packing for Paldea before the nurse even got off the phone with him. Marnie would come on her own later once the gym challenge ended

- Max wakes up. She was out for about 3 months in real time, but was in Hisui for about 3 years. Don’t ask me how this works idfk

- She now thinks everything in Hisui was just a really fucked up dream

- A lot of crying happens. She’s scared of her dream, she’s mourning the loss of a “fictional” lover, and she’s scared of her future. That “dream” messed her UP

- Some of the tears are because she’s so happy to see all the people she’d spent that isekai totally oblivious to, too

- Feeling overwhelmed and confused by everything that just happened, she decides to move back to Galar. She wants the comfort of what she considered her true home, plus she doesn’t want to be reminded of her Incident every time she sees a tera crystal

- Piers is elated she’s coming back, but they both agree to take things slow. No dating resumes for a long while, but it does resume. First loves, still best friends, etc, it makes sense (I know irl it doesn’t always make sense BUT MINMAXSHIPPING IS MY OTPPPPPP)

- Okay so. You know how I said the isekai was real and Max really did time travel back to Hisui?

- Volo is real. Volo is immortal.

- He’s posing as a traveling merchant in modern-day, and just happens to be in Galar

- So, a few months-a year after Max wakes up, she runs into him while perusing a holiday market in Circhester with Piers

- She’s terrified. How is he here? Wasn’t he just a figment from her dream? What was going on? Now she doesn’t know what was real and what wasn’t

- Volo? He’s PISSED. He remembers everything: his heart being broken, his plan being ruined, his accomplice vanishing before his eyes. He puts on a facade though, for his own safety.

- Volo pretends to not recognize Max. When Max addresses him by name, he plays it coy, like, “Oh wow my goods are so popular in Galar that you know my name without me saying it? Pshh that’s weird, I’m flattered” etcetera

- She plays it off like “oh no, sorry, you reminded me of an old friend”

- He only finds out the truth when he inevitably gets a little creepy and follows them, thus hearing her retelling of the whole Situation(tm) to Piers