The Quest for the Legends

"Death is not to be feared, for it is the only thing we all have in common."

The Quest for the Legends is a Pokémon fanfic. It has been rewritten many times over its nine-year lifespan (11 revisions and counting!), but as the best-known, currently ongoing and to be finished version is version 3.2 (the ILCOE), all tropes on this page will be assumed to apply to that version until otherwise stated.

Mark Greenlet is a normal eleven-year-old boy with a passionate interest in legendary Pokémon living in the region of Ouen, except that he hasn't been allowed to go out on a Pokémon journey like all his friends. After finding a Charmander and persuading his parents to let him out, he's ecstatic to finally be a Pokémon trainer, but things quickly go downhill as he discovers a Gym leader's secret cloning lab, accidentally frees Mew from said Gym leader, is subsequently nearly murdered by a madman obsessed with Mew, and eventually gets entangled in a couple of desperate legendaries' nigh-impossible attempt to stop The End of the World As We Know It.

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Tropes used in The Quest for the Legends:
"May: I wonder how long it will take us to set a world record as causes of natural disasters."
 * Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: The revisions of the fic from 2.0 on are all acronyms:
 * 2.0: UMR (Ultra-Mega-Revised); 3.x: HMMRCIG (How Much More Revised Can It Get?), YAR (Yet Another Revision), ILCOE (I've Lost Count Of 'Em), ILCOTEM (I've Lost Count Of Them Even More)
 * 4.x: IALCOTN (I've Absolutely Lost Count Of Them Now), APO (Another Pointless One), WTHAIRTSTA (Why The Hell Am I Rewriting This Stupid Thing Again?)
 * The Artifact: Molzapart and Rainteicune.
 * Artifact Title: The legendary plot was thought up to avert this.
 * Alphabetical Theme Naming: All of Victor's Pokémon's names end in "ious".
 * Back From the Dead: Mark.  gets brought back by.
 * The Bad Guy Wins: Not the main conflict (yet), but.
 * Berserk Button: Spirit, while normally stuck-up and serene, will kick your ass if you slander the legendaries or being "chosen" when she's around.
 * Bloodless Carnage: Averted.
 * Chekhov's Gunman: Megan Hayfield (at the Cleanwater Pokémon Center), Aaron White (at Ash's starter Pokémon giveaway), and Michael Willows (the Scizor's trainer at the Pokémon Frenzy Tournament) are all Trainers that Mark meets within the first 25 chapters, and also happen to be the first three Trainers Mark battles at the Ouen League twenty chapters later.
 * It's never explicitly stated where Mark remembered Aaron from, only that he looked "irritatingly familiar".
 * : Crater Town is built in the crater of a dormant volcano.
 * Crossing the Desert is a bad idea...
 * Curtains Match the Window: May and Mitch.
 * Cute Kitten: Mutark, though only in its base form.
 * Destructive Savior: Mark, May, and Alan, although it's more of the latter group's fault, with the battle being the most destructive. Lampshaded by May in Chapter 43:

"[May] refused to be interviewed, telling the journalists who approached her that she had better things to do, such as actually training for the battle (unlike a certain someone, said with an irritated glare). Mark figured that was probably a good thing; May’s actual personality wasn’t very conductive to being held up as a paragon of hope and justice."
 * Distaff Counterpart: Each of the Color Dragons has an opposing sibling, who happens to be the opposite sex.
 * Elemental Powers: Most of the Ouen legendaries.
 * Color Dragons (sans Dragoreen and Preciure):
 * An Ice Person: Puragon
 * Poisonous Person: Venoir
 * Making a Splash: Dracobalt
 * Playing With Fire: Raudra
 * Waraider's Herd:
 * Casting a Shadow: Darkhan
 * Green Thumb: Natruler
 * An Ice Person: Freezaroy
 * Making a Splash: Seasar
 * Non-Elemental: Waraider
 * Psychic Powers: Mysticrown
 * Playing With Fire: Emphire
 * Shock and Awe: Electhrone
 * Expy: Taylor is one of Silver.
 * Fire, Ice, Lightning:.
 * Good Is Not Nice: May, whose determination to win Pokémon battles makes her a sore loser and borderline-abusive to her team . Lampshaded by Mark in Chapter 52.

""Skarmory, use a Rock Slide!"
 * Halfway Plot Switch: In the first part, the plot is Mark's Pokémon journey and the various adventures on the way; then in chapter 25, Chaletwo comes along and explains the main plot, and while the Pokémon journey then continues, it is eventually completed and leaves the main plot alone.
 * Horse of a Different Color: Word of God says Letal's line was based off of horses.
 * Immortality: Legendaries are normally The Ageless (though like all Pokémon, they recover unusually quickly from injuries), but Mew, Chaletwo, and (probably) the Destroyer have Complete Immortality through ridiculously fast regeneration.
 * Irony:  were shattered with fire and electricity.
 * Just Between You and Me: The Mew Hunter randomly decides to tell Mark his entire life story when he's captured him in chapter ten.
 * Kiss of Distraction: Carl's (female) Charizard pulls this on Mark's Charizard during their Gym battle, in order to get him to relax his grip on her while she simultaneously climbs out of the lava pit and pushes him below the surface.
 * Man Child:.
 * Neologism: Chapter 48 refers to blue-haired girls as "bluettes".
 * Oh Crap: A few of these moments happen during the League arc. May has one right before Taylor's Sciztwo delivers a Superpower on a Roosting Skarmory. Mark names the trope when Megan's Delibird is about to hit Letal with a Brick Break; he has another moment when May's Skarmory is about to land a Rock Slide on Charizard.

"What?" Mark blurted out in a panic. Skarmory weren't supposed to know Rock attacks! How did everything have Rock attacks when he had Charizard out?"


 * Pokémon Speak: Humans are able to learn to understand it, including the body language, syllable stress, and changes in voice tones the language relies on. Averted with Gyarados, who is able to speak human.
 * Punny Name: Lampshaded by Flora.
 * Retcon: Sinnoh Pokémon were always in Ouen, they just weren't mentioned until chapter 40.
 * And Word of God says the same is planned for Unova Pokémon.
 * Scary Scorpions: Scorplack.
 * Send in The Clones: The trainers of Cleanwater Gym have cloned legendaries.
 * Shout Out: The Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer.
 * Soul Jar: The soul gems that.
 * This Cannot Be!: A variation: May screams "You can't do that!" at Taylor when.
 * Tournament Arc: The Ouen League chapters.
 * Translation Convention: Employed for Pokémon speech.
 * Underwater City: Aquarium City.
 * Unskilled but Strong: Mutark, according to the forum's Ask the Characters thread; most of her moves have low strength in the Pokémon games, several being Night Slash, Sucker Punch, and the elemental fangs. May believes that Mutark can compensate for her poor moveset through sheer power.
 * Wham Episode: Chapter 35, when, and Chapter 53, when.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: May, Marge, and Sparky have blue, and Mitch has silver. Sparky's is justified, as it's dyed.
 * Younger Than They Look: Mitch looks about three or four years older than he actually is.