The Darkness Within

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Darkness Within is an Elsewhere Fic set in the Pokemon universe. It focuses on Pokemon characters as opposed to a human or trainer, the main character being an cheeky and sarcastic Dragonair (who is actually named Dragonair).

Dragonair is introduced as a high-ranking Team Rocket Pokemon with a condescending and snarking attitude towards humans and their culture, drawing amusement from the relative incompetence and perceived idiocy of the specie in general. He is given a experimental collar that translates his Poke-speak for humans to understand, giving him the opportunity to share his true thoughts with his human 'underlings' during the next Rocket assignment that he placed in charge of.

During the mission, Dragonair rescues a lost and hyperactive Pichu child and quickly earns its trust, discovering that his parents were captured, presumably by a different group of Team Rocket members, and he returns from the mission with a new one: to try and figure out what happened to the parents of the Pichu and hopefully reunite them. He is joined on this endeavor by Ember, a Charmander friend of his, and so the adventure begins, drawing them past the simple task into an epic series of misadventures.

By sheer bad fortune, the small group comes across a diabolical phantom, Diablos, who quickly sets his sights on Dragonair when a possession attempt fails, and returns to plague their lives from then on. Opposing this phantom, and unofficial allies to the group, is a small group of Eevee evolutions, half of whom have personal grievances against Diablos.

Over time, has assembled a very large cast of recurring characters. A large fic, it remains steadily updated is currently undergoing a reboot to better polish and clean up the story.


Tropes used in The Darkness Within include:


  • Anti-Hero
  • Ax Crazy: Volt
  • Baby Talk: Spark. Most notable is his use of "Me" over any pronoun referring to himself.
  • Bi the Way: Frost
  • Body Surf: Diablos is fond of doing this
  • Calling Your Attacks: Tryce
  • Casanova: Frost, although he is rather close to being a Kavorka Man
  • Continuity Reboot: The author is currently rewriting the fic from scratch under the title "TDW: Phoenix Version". Reasons can be found here. The original is still up so that anyone can read it.
  • Curb Stomp Battle: Sapphire fighting Fang, Blaze fighting Frost, Frost fighting pretty much anyone Except Narc, and Diablos fighting Fear.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Volt
  • Dead Little Sister: Blaze's sister
  • Deadpan Snarker: Dragonair, to the point where people often claim that snarks "sound like something Dragonair would say"
  • Deal with the Devil
  • Doorstopper: the fic is over 650,000 words long and 290 chapters with little indication that it's anywhere near the ending.
  • Enemy Within
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Most notable with Blaze, whose darker personality uses a harsh, forceful tone (sharply contrasting Blaze's normal, whiny tone). Psycho also uses a monotone a majority of the time.
  • 555: Leaf's formula to figure out Frost's cellphone number was "5-5-5" and then the numbers corresponding to the letters in the caller's name. In this case, 555-LEAF Somehow he's right.
  • Freaky Friday: Frost and Dragonair's minds get switched temporarily. Frost manages to imitate Dragonair's personality and mannerisms almost perfectly. Dragonair has a much harder time, to Frost's annoyance.
  • Hannibal Lecture: Diablos is very fond of these.
  • Heroic BSOD
  • Hurricane of Puns: If Doom is in the vicinity.
  • Insufferable Genius: Frost
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Dragonair
  • Lampshade Hanging: Just about anything Dragonair says about trainers
  • Loads and Loads of Characters
  • Love Triangle: Aura/Blaze/Crystal.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Diablos.
  • Mismatched Eyes: Blaze had these after he Took a Level in Badass, but they got fixed later.
  • Nigh Invulnerability: Diablos seems to follow the Made of Air version, with his preference for possessing others. When he was seen in his "true" phantom form, he was shown to be completely invulnerable. A better example is Fear, who used the combo of Conversion, Conversion 2, Trace, and Recover to negate damage.
  • Not Quite Dead: Almost all the villains, Fang being notable as surviving an absurd number of times. It's considered unusual if any of the villains die the first time around.
  • One Steve Limit: Volt's name is shared by an Electabuzz. Said Electabuzz died a terrible death for this offense.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Psycho. Only Leaf is "allowed" to refer to him as his name, Shadow.
  • Parental Abandonment: Almost all the characters lost their parents, but Ember's mother literally abandoned her
  • Playful Hacker: Chaos
  • Precision F-Strike
  • Prophetic Names: Pretty much every evolved Eevee. Lampshaded
  • Punch Clock Villain: Many of Diablos' underlings
  • Punny Name: Ember. The author is fond of giving these names to almost all the characters.
  • Running Gag: Blaze getting his fur drenched may fall into this.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Averted with Dragonair, who claims to have memorized a dictionary and enjoys defining words. Despite this, he rarely uses complex terms, and prefers needlessly defining simple words.
  • Shout-Out: Quite a few. One of the more obvious ones is to Yu-Gi-Oh: the names of the "Guardians" in the Cave Army arc(s)- Elma, Tryce, Ceal. To make this more obvious, Elma is a Beautifly, Tryce calls an attack "Twin Swords", which involves flashing light, and Ceal uses Swift (Shooting Stars).
  • Special Guest: Narc from Until Dawn. Saphire and Leaf have both made appearences on Until Dawn.
  • Sssssnaketalk: Fang before evolution
  • Stalker with a Crush: Rosa to Blaze.
  • The Gambler: Gamble.
  • Villains Never Lie: Toyed with occasionally. While Diablos seems to say mostly accurate things, telling Dragonair that Gamble killed Spark turned out to be a lie.
  • Wild Card: Frost, especially in his first appearances.

The reboot contains examples of:

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