#rwbymon

PYRRHA NIKOS / YANG

For reference, what finally got me and @alexkablob to sit down and start writing this fic that had lived rent-free in our heads for years is literally that the Pokemon AU for it was so good, and we couldn’t tell y’all about it until the fic was out there in the world.

This is actually only Part 1; Part 2 is about the endgame of Aquarius, so, that one will have to wait.

So. In this universe.

It starts out just as it did in canon. It ends that way as well.

Pyrrha chases Cinder to the tower. It’s not a battle, not really. Her well-honed competition team, the six long-time partners who have only so recently become friends, throw themselves at the maelstrom and die at her feet.

Six and one. Her battle team--and her starter. Milo, who was never meant to see real combat, the smaller and more honest soul who alone among a team of elite arena fighters lands a clean blow against an enslaved god.

Bound and controlled by the Maiden bond that should never have been Cinder’s, unable to stop the slaughter of a team of brave, loyal Pokemon who knew when they stepped onto this battlefield that there was no chance, and fought with everything they had regardless-- Ho-Oh keens for the wasted courage of this bright, kindhearted little Oracorio as he strikes.

Milo dies anyway, of course. 

Pyrrha is, briefly, the only creature on Remnant in more agony than Ho-Oh. 

And then, to her horror, Pyrrha wakes up.

Instinctively, she reaches for a pokeball that isn’t there.

In this setting where Pyrrha’s sword and shield were her pokemon, it’s not the remnants of Akouo that are melted down and forged into a collar.

Now here’s where the divergence really begins. Because Cinder had a starter, too.

Cinder’s starter was a Houndour.

The Houndour’s name is Midnight; and once upon a time, in a far-off kingdom, she was Cinder’s pride and joy.

Cinder’s opinion of her first and best weapon soured quickly.

Midnight, you see, was meant to be a Houndoom. A big, fierce, intimidating presence. Salem gave her the Houndour so that she could evolve it herself.

Here’s the thing, though. Pokemon evolve when they’re ready--they evolve because they’ve reached their full potential in this form, and evolving will help them become what they want to be.

Cinder can’t do that.

Cinder doesn’t know how to take something strong but vulnerable and help it grow. No one ever taught her. All she knows how to do is find weaknesses and use them to break something down. Midnight can’t evolve with Cinder here.

Even if Midnight were the most powerful, intimidating Mega-Houndoom in history, she would be irrelevant to Cinder now--Cinder has Ho-Oh. She doesn’t need a broken starter pokemon, any more than Cinder in canon thought she needed her old bowswords once she had the Maiden powers.

Since even Cinder differentiates between burning a weapon and setting fire to a puppy, Midnight is still...around. Literally a kicked dog.

Midnight is wary, even aggressive, toward Cinder; she has to be. And because she’s scared and insecure, she lashes out at the other pokemon in Evernight--make herself not worth it to deal with, and they’ll leave her alone.

For fun, one day, Cinder leaves Midnight alone with Pyrrha--expecting the fear-aggressive Houndour to treat Pyrrha the same way, savage her a bit.

Midnight, wary and pissed at first, takes only a few seconds to realize: Oh.

She hurts you, too.

Midnight, starting and stopping in jerks, terrified, inches close enough to lick Pyrrha’s fingers, and Pyrrha shatters.

Eventually, Emerald can’t bear it anymore. Eventually, she snaps and decides they have to run, and they have to bring Pyrrha Nikos with them, because they owe her a lot more than that.

She quietly adds that they’re bringing the Houndour too, and Mercury about loses his shit.

We’re ALREADY GONNA GET MURDERED and you want to STEAL HER STARTER right out from UNDER HER NOSE--

Emerald’s logic is simple. Pyrrha clings to that Houndour like a lifeline whenever Cinder isn’t around to see and interfere. And after everything she’s lost, everything they’ve helped do to her, we’re not taking her fucking dog away, Mercury.

They steal Midnight’s pokeball.

Mercury complains the whole time.

They get out, barely.

They make it to Patch, barely.

A final entry in The Required Reading Of This Post, Apparently: Taiyang Xiao Long and the Dog-Type Gym.

They make it to Patch, barely.

As always, Tai nurses Pyrrha back to health, puts the fear of Arceus into Em and Merc and then feeds them soup and makes sure they have a safe place to sleep because they’re scared kids and he’s responsible for them.

Eventually, they’re ready to move on--at which point he asks what they plan to do with the Houndour.

He has a Dog-Type gym, you know. She’d be more than welcome to stay.

It is, objectively, the best option. There’s no need to drag the poor thing into this fight.

Pyrrha and the Houndour still flinch away from the suggestion before agreeing.

They say their goodbyes.

The trio is about to leave when Pyrrha--stops. Spins on her heel. Calls out that--or you could come with us. If you wanted to stay together. I--you could be my partner. My...my new starter. We could do this together.

The answer is--emphatic.

Pokemon evolve because they’ve reached the end of what they feel they can learn and accomplish in their current form. They evolve when their trainer has helped them reach their full potential, and inspired them to go even further. When they’re ready to change and grow together and feel confident stepping into the unknown.

A Houndour races across no-man’s land from Tai’s side. Midstride, the flash of light barely fading, a Houndoom with flashing, backswept horns slams into Pyrrha’s chest and sends them both flying down the dirt road.

Well, says Tai, somewhat unnecessarily. That’s certainly an answer.

What’s her name, anyway?

And Pyrrha comes up short. 

She knows the answer, but it suddenly seems too cruel. She may not know the full history of “Midnight” as a name, but she knows that what Cinder was projecting onto this sweet, scared little dog wasn’t--right. Wasn’t fair.

She knows that whatever Cinder’s plans were for her pokemon, the little Houndour who risked everything to offer comfort and compassion to a tortured prisoner doesn’t want any part of it. That it isn’t what Cinder wanted it to be.

Dawn, she answers.

Her name is Dawn.

It’s...not the classic Pokemon Journey. Not anymore. That’s beyond either of them now. But it is, though. A young woman and her...friends, striking out alone, with a pokemon at her side that she doesn’t know very well yet, but would like to. Somehow, they love each other already.

Pyrrha doesn’t put together a full competition team again, not yet. But she does get her pokemon journey; she has a trio at her back when she arrives on Menagerie.

COCO ADEL / VELVET

JAUNE ARC / WEISS

NORA VALKYRIE / RUBY

LIE REN / BLAKE

RWBYMON (DIGITAL MONSTERS)

I have THOUGHTS and y’all are gonna HEAR them.

Qrow:

Obviously, Qrow has a Corviknight. Let’s get THAT out of the way.

Actually, both Branwen twins have Corviknights. We’re not talking about Raven right now okay.

The Corviknight was technically Qrow’s starter, but as it was chosen for him, they had...a strained relationship, when they were younger. It’s better now. They’re adults, they’ve grown up, they’ve forgiven each other for the petty shit they pulled when they were resentful teenagers struggling to form a bond beyond that of strictly trainer and powerful tournament pokemon.

They care about more than being the best, now.

Qrow’s bonded more genuinely with his Corviknight by now--but his partner Pokemon, the one with whom his emotional relationship is the least complicated--not the one he’s “closest to” exactly, because like any good Huntsman he has a close bond with his whole team, but--

The bond that’s simplest, easiest, the one that’s never in a pokeball except for safety reasons...

Equally obviously, Qrow has an Absol.

And the last member of his team is one of my incredibly rare exceptions to the “no Legendaries” rule, because Qrow is Ozpin’s spy, his left hand, Qrow is in the inner circle.

Qrow has faced off with Salem’s minions a million times before. Qrow has seen some shit. It makes sense for Qrow to have had the opportunity to bond with some extremely powerful pokemon.

He knows better than to reject a Pokemon outright out of fear or a frightening appearance--his existing team consisted of a Corviknight and an Absol.

Qrow has rescued the victims of some of Salem’s twisted experiments before.

Qrow’s #3 is Silvally. 

Very few people actually understand what that means.

Ruby adores Silvally and thinks it’s the coolest weird dogbird Pokemon she’s ever seen, she gives it belly scritches. Anyone not in the inner circle just sort of goes “wow, high-ranking Huntsmen go to such exotic places with such rare Pokemon! fascinating” and moves on.

Raven:

Corviknight, obviously.

Raven’s situation is actually complicated by my theories about Maidens in a RWBY/Pokemon fusion so I’ll cover her later.

Summer:

Most of what the kids know about Summer’s team is that she had an Eevee she never evolved. The adults don’t like talking about it otherwise.

Qrow gets moody and quiet whenever Tai says she “never” evolved her Eevee. Yang and Ruby are pretty sure she evolved it into something right before she left and that their dad leaves that out because it’s too painful.

Summer absolutely had some kind of fuckoff-powerful Legendary on hand that they just sort of kept quiet about but they can’t tell the KIDS that.

Tai:

OKAY LISTEN THIS ONE IS GONNA BE NICE. On god we’re leaving this on a high note. It’s gonna be fine.

Tai has a Yamper named Zwei. Obviously. Obviously he has this.

Zwei is more than high enough level to evolve, but neither of them want him to, so he’s just an adorable, deceptively OP little Yamper and thus shall he remain.

Once upon a time he had a Boltund, and Qrow says affectionately that they were always his favorite Pokemon.

He sent the Boltund after Summer when she left; it was the only one they had with a chance of catching up to her before it was too late.

Tai’s Boltund was a very, very good dog. They think it must have succeeded, must have caught up to her. because it never came back.

He’s never had another Boltund.

NO COME BACK I SWEAR THIS ONE IS HAPPY

Tai, who is canonically a teacher, is obviously, in this universe, a gym leader. So he actually gets a full team, because obviously you can’t run a proper gym with only three pokemon, you have to be able to adjust on the fly to whatever fledgling kid walks in.

Tai runs a Dog-Type gym.

“Daaaaaaad! That’s not even a real thiiiiing!”

Sure it is!

He has a Houndoom, a Stoutland, Zwei, a Furfrou, a Manectric, and an Arcanine!

You know, Dog Types!

”DAD WHYYYYYY”

(The Arcanine is a sleepy, good-natured darling who is mostly seen hitched to a trailer to be ridden/driven around because it’s just better than a car. Its soft eyes and slow, gentle personality are...deceptive. His starter was a Growlithe. That Arcanine has been with him since he was ten years old, and Tai is still an active Huntsman. It’s probably the single most powerful Pokemon on the island of Patch.)

Tai’s gym is considered a must-do by trainers in Vale. The Dog Badge--

[Ruby voice] UUUUUUUUGH DAAAAAAD

--the Dog Badge is not League-recognized, but it does give you bragging rights; and more to the point, it’s a genuinely good learning experience. Tai is a friendly and patient teacher to anyone who comes in with a good attitude and you’ll definitely be better at battling as a result.

It’s a great learning experience in a controlled environment; he provides a wide variety of Pokemon types that you can learn to fight against, but with a level of predictability so that, as with other gyms, you can actually prepare for it. It’s not a straight-up League match where you could face ANYTHING and can’t really prep or build a team specifically to face him; you know that whatever he throws out, it will be a Dog Type.

[Tai grins smugly into the news camera as he accepts his fifth Pillar Of The Community Trainer’s Choice Award while his daughters wail in the background that DOG TYPE isn’t a THING]

Ruby and Yang were given Dog Badges before being sent off to Beacon

OBVIOUSLY they keep the badge