Live, Laugh, Les Mis

Valjean is a pokemon professor with a dark secret past that specializes in grass pokemon (tree pruner/gardener), and doesn’t like talking to people. His neighbor in this small town is Fantine (who lives in this AU), and she does odd jobs for him when Cosette is young. There’s also a shady pokemon center run by the Thenardiers in town. One day Fantine leaves a note that she has gone to search for work elsewhere and has left Cosette with the Thenardiers. Valjean feels guilty that he never took the time to get to know her and help her. He rescues Cosette from the Thenardiers to care for her until Fantine returns.

If this was a game the player would play as Cosette and their rival/friend would be Eponine. Cosette has a Swablu (castle on a cloud ref, plus she gets compared to birds a lot) that her mom left her, but she prefers ghost and bug types (is this in character??? idk). I think Cosette would have a Shuppet as well (a ghost that feeds on negative/envious feelings, made from a doll), that started hanging around when she was with the Thenardiers but she has come to love. Eponine has one too, for parallels! Eponine’s main pokemon is a Purrloin, which I’m sure her parents thought would be useful for stealing but Eponine pampers it. Idk what Valjean’s main pokemon is. I’m leaning towards Sawsbuck? Maybe he has a Seedot sidekick because I think it would be cute.

Maybe the Thenardiers skip town with their money after Valjean pays them off. Years go by and Fantine is still missing. When Cosette is 10-13 Eponine comes back into town, having run away from her parents to look for her missing brother, Gavroche. Cosette wants to look for Fantine, somehow convinces Valjean to let her start her pokemon journey, and the two kids team up to go search for their family members. Maybe Eponine got news that Fantine was last seen near the Elite Four so Cosette is determined to become a pokemon master to find her.

Maybe the Patron-Minette is the evil team in this AU (Team Twilight? Team Dusk?? I’ll say Team PM for now). I’m thinking the ABC Friends are another team that people think are evil at first because they occupy the Elite Four or the gyms or something after Champion Lamarque dies because the whole pokemon master/gym leader system is corrupt and maybe Champion Lamarque was about to expose it but he died??? And Javert is part of the International Police like Looker, and has a Mightyena (get it, dog-son of a wolf) as his main pokemon. My husband suggested he have a Shednja (because it can only be hit by super effective attacks, foreshadowing his derailment), which I liked too. Javert is against both Team PM and Team ABC, and wants to uphold the current system. Is having 3 opposing forces too complicated for a pokemon game? Probably.

Eponine finds Gavroche, who had joined with Team ABC. Idk where Fantine is, but Cosette eventually finds her. Maybe she was stranded somewhere and ran out of money because the Thenardiers continued to extort her with their Team PM grunts. They have a happy reunion, and maybe Cosette and Eponine have to join Team ABC to take down Team PM and fix everything and it’s a happy ending somehow. And of course at the end Eponine and Cosette have to awaken some pair of ancient legendary pokemon that give them the power to save the day.

If I had to give Team ABC poketypes to specialize in, no overlaps:

Enjolras – Fire (perhaps a secondary typing of Ice)

Courfeyrac – Grass (his “radiance” quality is represented by the Solar Beam attack)

Combeferre – Water (these first three types balance each other out see) (also he has a Combee)

Feuilly – Ground (almost made Combeferre Ground)

Bahorel – Fighting

Prouvaire – Ghost

Joly -Psychic

Bossuet – either Normal or Dark (Dark for bad luck, could have a Murkrow as well as an Absol to mitigate disaster)