Tales of Flame

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Tales Of Flame is a Pokémon Elsewhere Fic based upon the Firered/Leafgreen games. Partially an Alternate Universe Fanfic as it makes the occasional reference to the Pokemon Anime such as Sabrina and Haunter but largely considers itself separate.

Notable in that the story's Main Character isn't the trainer, rather following the eponymous Flame; a grumpy Charmander Deadpan Snarker who, after being captured in Viridian Forest, is seemingly stuck on the typical trainer's journey across Kanto. It doesn't take long for him to get caught up in numerous misadventures, everything from territorial disputes between wild Pokemon up to Team Rocket's machinations.

The story is a hybrid of humour and action, able to switch between tense combat and slapstick at the drop of a hat, largely due to the eccentric and colourful cast which varies from the cheerful and optimistic Lancer Squirt to the Tsundere Pika. Many of whom have had considerable Character Development throughout the story.

Shares the same Fan Verse with Anomaly and Hoenn Chronicles, although both are currently on hiatus.

Tropes used in Tales of Flame include:
  • Action Girl: Both Pika and Scarlet are quite willing to get stuck into a fight, occasionally with each other
  • Action Bomb: Anti, his body being made of pure energy, can use a more powerful version of Explosion, at the cost of vaporising.
  • Amusing Injuries: Fervo, much to his chagrin.
  • Apologetic Attacker: Oddly enough, Flame does this during Vermilion before a brief Heel Face Turn
  • Archive Panic: I mean, look at the size of that thing!
  • Axe Crazy: Pika, again, dips into this occasionally when pushed too far and has been known to attack people with lawnmowers and hedge shears.
    • Ryuu is this on a good day.
  • Badass: Pretty much everyone in the main cast. Special mention goes to Scyther, who is willing to go one-on-one with a tank, and Grovyle; who has had a Sword Fight with a different Scyther, while only armed with a broom, and wins.
  • Badass Normal: Could be given to Squirt, who lacks the fire power or agility of the rest of the cast, and yet can hold his own in fights with major villains including being the only one left standing after fighting a Legendary
    • Also Moron and Joanne, the trainers, who have gotten stuck into fights when they're just ordinary Humans.
  • Battle Aura: Combined with Power Glows. Whenever Flame or Fervo see it, expect the phrase: "this is going to hurt"
  • Battle Butler: The aforementioned Grovyle is the head grounds-keeper of a mansion.
  • Battle Cry: Scout always announces his arrival with one of these.
  • Barrier Warrior: Squirt and Karen make good use of Protect, although it can't withstand a repeated pounding it can usually take at least one or two shots from the Big Bad. Karen is even able to make a ramp with hers, allowing Grovyle to use it for Motorcycle Fu
  • Berserk Button: Most of the cast has at least one. Setting it off in a battle is usually a really bad idea.
    • Setting it off outside of battle isn't smart either.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Do not make Blacky angry, ever. You won't even live long enough to regret that mistake. Likewise when Mew stops goofing off, bad things happen
  • Blessed with Suck: Mew certainly thinks his extremely long existence is a bit of a strain on his past relations.
  • Bring My Red Jacket: Flame is a dark orange and tends to take horrible beatings fairly often. Avoided with Scyther and Fervo, who are both green and take to take the beatings left over.
  • Charm Person: Esteria knows Attract and is willing to use it to her advantage. It doesn't work quite as well as she'd hoped.
  • Chekhov's Boomerang: The Nidoran horn Flame wears around his neck. Shows up again in the second Cerulean arc, and again in Sevii. Where Esteria manages to impale him with it. He recovered Is now in the possession of Eve, from Anomaly.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The Charmander Armour Flame wore, and eventually trashed, during Vermilion. He summons another set during the Nightmare Arc
  • Cheerful Child: Blacky couldn't be any more cheerful and innocent if he tried. His sister, however, tends to swing more to the cynical Deadpan Snarker side.
    • Flame is implied to have been this when he was a kit. One Arbok later and, well, he got broken
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Blacky, sometimes it's amazing he remembers how to breathe. Fervo also shows a tendency to ramble and gets side tracked easily during his narrations.
  • Combat Tentacles: Both Tentacruel and Tangela use these.
  • Complete Monster: Hypno, from literally the moment he first appears. His very existance is one long string of dog kicking in the most vile and sick means he has to him.
  • Crazy Awesome: Mew practically lives off of this trope. transforming into Mewtwo and doing a hula dance, actually right in front of Mewtwo, anyone? His Alternate Universe counterpart, while a little more serious, still dives into this with gusto too.
  • Crazy Enough to Work: Oddly enough, it's Scyther who tends to invoke this instead of the crazier members of the cast. Highlights include surfing down a street on a satellite dish and taking a Sword Fight underwater, by jumping off of a bridge, when he was outnumbered.
  • Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: Anytime Flame's parental side comes out around Spiral and Blacky.
  • Cry Cute: Bizarrely, Pika gets a moment like this, completely breaking down in front of unbeknownst to her, Fervo
  • Death Glare: Sabrina has a very powerful one that's capable of causing Jenny, her friend and normally completely unflappable, to start stammering.
  • Determinator: Most of the cast. But the three most prone to this are Flame, Scyther and Fervo.
    • Fervo having proven himself an absolute master of this by facing down Mew, a fight he knows for a fact he can't win, takes the worst No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in the story and still gets up for round two the moment Mew turns to attack someone else.
  • Disguised in Drag: Squirt's extended time in a maid costume at the mansion.
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap: Often applies to Scyther, either from injuries obtained battles with Mooks or sheer exhaustion.
  • Drives Like Crazy: Both Grovyle and Jenny have managed to reduce passengers to nervous wrecks. Even Sabrina is unsettled by having to ride in Jenny's car.
  • Dual Wield: Sofia/Sophia dual wields her species' bone clubs.
  • Dynamic Entry: Forms up over half of the Big Damn Heroes moments. A recent chapter was even titled this, and featured two of them in a row.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Expect squees whenever Alpha or Scout show up. If it's also considered a Big Damn Heroes moment, get some popcorn!
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Flame is very, very aware of this and frequently lampshades the fact that he can't go anywhere without something trying to kill him.
  • Face Palm of Doom: Fervo gives one to Frank's Machop. Subverted in that the point blank Shadowball does just as much damage to his arm as it did the Machop's face.
  • Five-Man Band: Moron's team fills this.
  • Flash Step: Scyther is the capable of doing this without using Teleport Spam. It proves very effective against Celes
    • Grovyle combines Agility and Quick Attack to pull these off during a recent flashback
  • Genre Savvy: Flame and Fervo are prone to commenting on various things, like Flame's Nigh Invulnerability.
    • Played with in the case of Erika; she's savvy enough to take advantage of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors having her first Pokemon be part water type, taking Flame out of the fight near instantly. But then loses her last two Pokemon to Squirt, the water type.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Ryuu and Antimew, Flame and Mew's Alternate Universe counterparts were captured by Team Rocket for an undetermined amount of time, pumped full of drugs and chemicals and put into stasis. When they're awoken by Flame, Ryuu mutates and promptly goes on a Rocket killing spree. It takes Flame, Mew and Anti to bring him down. Both he and Anti reappear in the real 'verse as nigh-unkillable phantoms.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Flame has a large scar on the bridge of his face, but he's a good guy. Most of the time. Usually.
    • Asmodeus gained a scar around his throat after his first appearence it proves to be an effective Glamour Failure as it stays even when he shapeshifts.
  • Heroic BSOD: Just about all of the main cast have suffered from mild variants of these at some point or another.
  • Holy Hand Grenade: The higher powers are all capable of a purifying attack, which proves nasty against phantoms like Anti.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Happens to the Ariados Tank in Sevii, using it's own leg. And in Saffron; Scyther manages to take down his Evil Counterpart Celes via an explosive Back Stab
    • How Blacky killed that tentacruel by using himself comes to mind.
  • Improvised Weapon: Most of the cast won't shy away from using makeshift weapons in a fight. Egregious examples include the use of a tree and a cliff
  • Lady of War: Alice, racking up a pretty large body count in very little time.
  • Large Ham: Mew and Anti. Fervo has shades of this too, although everyone has their moments.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters: So, so many.
  • Memetic Badass: Scyther and Dione. One is a ninja bug, the other is an Absol explosives expert. They fight bad guys.
    • Sabrina has gained this status in the more recent chapters.
  • Mind Screw: The entire evilMew plotline took this to ridiculous lengths, managing to continue messing with reader's heads even after The Reveal.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Asmodeus.
  • No Name Given: Played for laughs with the trainer Moron, where even the third person narrator will avoid revealing his name and Flame just doesn't care. Played straight with Scyther.
    • Subverted with Grovyle, as we do eventually find out his name. Gawain
  • Not So Harmless: Squirt, when the chips are down, can prove that even turtles are capable of being utter badasses.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: Ryuu on a bad day.
  • Papa Wolf: Don't go anywhere near Blacky or Spiral with the intent to harm.
    • Threatening kids in general is a sure fire way to get Dione to turn on you.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: The main sign that Blacky's stopped being nice and is about to start ripping things apart.
  • Running Gag: Scout crashing into trees, Flame falling out of them on his quest for apples, Treechu.
  • Schedule Slip: The update speed has slowly gotten worse and worse over the last year, currently averaging one update a month. The author claims Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny as the excuse.
  • Shipper on Deck: Fervo and Squirt teamed up in an attempt to set up Flame and Scarlet.
  • Ship Tease: Fervo/Pika gets teased regularly, even if it's only by proxy via Pika/Roderick Fervo's mild-mannered, polite and less Jerkass alter-ego
  • Shirtless Scene: While Grovyle is the only one of the Pokemon cast to wear a shirt, he has lost it during the most recent arc.
  • Stealth Hi Bye: Blacky manages to pull Stealth Hi's regularly, much to the bafflement of everyone else.
    • Scyther's pretty fond of them too.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Pretty much par for the course whenever Dione is in town. Or Mew, for that matter. It's pretty much how they say hi.
  • Spider Tank: One shows up in Sevii and proves Nigh Invulnerable even when Mewtwo gets involved.
    • A second shows up during the Nightmare Arc and eventually pulls a Heel Face Turn.
  • Super-Powered Evil Side: Blacky has one that sets off whenever he gets really upset. Although it doesn't attempt to hurt any of the Nakama and has shades of Deadly Upgrade, little consolation to the poor Monster of the Week on the receiving end of a beatdown.
  • Inner Dialogue: Flame when he occasionally has conversations with the personality in his mind, Sarah.
  • Tempting Fate: Despite the usual Genre Savvy of most of the cast, they still do this. Usually lampshaded though.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Grovyle gives one to a Medicham in a flashback, finishing just before busting out the Kamehame Hadoken
  • Third Person Person: Scyther talks like this normally, even referring to others in the third person. However he does slip back into normal speech whenever his emotions get the best of him. Typically, when this happens, much asskickery is about to ensure.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Flame loves his apples and Fervo is fond of Oran berries.
  • Unusual Euphemism: After uttering an F-Bomb in front of Eve and Blacky (a girl who hasn't gotten out much and an extremely young Umbreon), Flame begins to explain what it means:

Flame: "It means-"
Mew: "If you don't tell her, I'll bring some creamy chocolate cake back from Hoenn for you.
Flame: "Cake!"

    • After Blacky is told that most people prefer you call it "cake" instead, he corrects the other characters until they start using "cake" themselves.
  • Wave Motion Gun: Alpha's Hyper Beam is treated as one, being powerful enough when fully charged to melt through a blast door that withstood molten rock.
  • We Need a Distraction: Becomes a Running Gag during Saffron. Blacky's not very good at this.
    • "I'm being a distraction!"
    • Squirt, however, is an excellent distraction. as Mewthree finds out to its cost when Alpha and Flame get the jump on it
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Flame really doesn't like snakes after one nearly ate him when he was a kit, until his sister pulled a Heroic Sacrifice However, he can temporarily overcome that fear if bigger problems are around. Like Hypno.
    • He also really hates Psychics. The only real exception to this is Spiral.
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