Ron the True Fan: Important notice at the bottom. But still, you know the best way to support the work in general.
Takeshi Yamato: Subscribe to Housecoat Gaming on YouTube. Watch his vids. And if you play Star Trek Adventures, GIVE US FEEDBACK ON THE TETHYS SHIPYARDS, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY!
Goldenrod City - Johto Region - 1302 hours local time - Day 412 of Ash Ketchum's Journey
Red Ketchum was looking forward to this. A bug catching contest was a good thing.
Unknown to him, he was being watched as Kyoji watched from…a cardboard box. Ash was fine now: still needed to get the whole… dating situation done, but Serena was a slam dunk.
"I'd ask what you're doing…" came a surprising voice before a pretty lady looked in through the handle. "But I'm pretty sure I already know."
"Sabrina?" Kyoji asked, lifting the box, revealing himself and his friendly land shark sidekick hiding under it. "What are you doing here?"
"Whitney asked for help in 'undoing her crappy personality'. Her words, not mine." Sabrina answered. "And you're spying on my uncle… why?"
Kyoji grinned. "I'm shipping." he declared proudly. "Ash finally got over himself-"
Sabrina clapped her hands at that declaration. "About time!" she cried, Kyoji putting a finger to his mouth to tell her to be quieter.
"So I'm trying to help Red build his own harem." Kyoji finished. "You noticed those three girls like him? I'm trying to make situations where… you know…"
"Romantic encounters?" the psychic finished with a light grin. "I don't mind lending a hand…"
He caught a Beedrill! That'd win him the contest for sure!
Red's feet suddenly lost their footing as he tripped, falling onto someone.
Someone who had… cushioning.
Red had fallen on top of a familiar, frickled purplette wearing a black and yellow jacket.
Casey's face turned from normal to red as she saw the young man's head nestled between her not-quite-fully-developed assets.
And the worst part was, in her mind… she didn't mind it.
…That was a lie. She didn't mind it was RED, she DID mind it was in public.
But all good things must come to an end as Red yelped and got off the semi-embarrassed girl.
"C-Casey! I'm sorry, I didn't-" Red started before Casely shook her head.
"N-Nah, it's good! You just tripped is all!" she said, blushing.
"Reader to Guardian. Stage One complete." Sabrina said, speaking into a radio. This was FUN.
"Guardian copies. Begin stage two. Fin deployed!" Kyoji said, as the little yellow shark did his thing.
Casey liked Red. he was a nice, honest trainer. Like his big brother, but less… broken.
And while he didn't like the Electabuzz baseball team - she wouldn't deny their win-loss rate was TERRIBLE, but they had heart and who could hate that - he wasn't going to give her anything other than lighthearted complaints for it.
Then the ground dipped and she fell on Red, her modest bust, once again, shoved into his face.
This HAD to be something else. …That or fate was saying 'he's your soulmate, it's high time you two started acting like it!'.
Gible surfaced, doing his sharky smile.
"Good shark." Kyoji praised, giving him a nice back scratching.
"Gible!" 'The ship must sail!' declared the land shark.
Kyoji chuckled. "Yes. It must." he said.
Fifteen minutes later
Red won the contest.
But instead of keeping the Beedrill, he gave it to Casey.
"Hey, Reddy!" called Yang, who was waiting at the entrance. "Did you win?"
He guessed it was a two-prong question. "The bug catching contest, sure." Red answered, not sure about the other part.
"Wasn't asking about that, but sure, great news." said the blonde. "Your brother's taking a nap. Figured we'd take a walk."
"Again?" Red asked. "Tell me Serena didn't drop sleeping pills in his drink again."
Yang snorted. "Hey, until he gets a court-mandated 56 hours of sleep unaided, he's getting knocked out as long as we're in town." she said, somewhat sympathetically. "He never sleeps unless he's forced to."
And he never wanted to. Serena had to go to the bathroom once. The nightmares woke them all up.
It took drugs to knock him out.
So there it was.
"RED!" cried Ruby, running over and waving with Weiss in tow.
Nearby, watching, Sabrina and Kyoji grinned.
"Flawless victory." she declared.
CHOMP!
Kyoji pet the land shark that attached himself to his head. "Gibtality." he added, Gible eyesmiling.
Goldenrod Radio Tower - 1336 hours local
Mary Karumi was two steps from getting fired.
She had a DISASTROUS interview with Ash Ketchum the day before. Tried grilling him about Greenfield… until he asked her back 'were you there?', implying she had NO right to judge him for what happened.
And the people in charge of the station were NOT happy about the calls and letters coming in, calling for her head for going after someone that risked his life multiple times over in two different warzones, recovered the Purify Chamber specs, stopped the whole Shamouti thing and did what he could to stop the Greenfield thing. So what if he failed?
Better that he tried to save the day and only failed because Giratina's absentminded servants didn't take no for an answer then not bothering.
Ratings were dropping like a rock. And she was on the cusp of losing her job. One more screwup and her show would be canceled.
Then a hand clapped on her shoulder.
"Hello, dear." said a violet haired man… wearing a Team Rocket uniform. "You mind giving me a hand?"
The first hint something was wrong was the screaming over the airwaves.
THe SECOND was the announcement that Team Rocket was in control of the radio station.
Ash was out cold, so it was up to Red to help, rushing into the building, finding a LOT of hurt people.
"Bad guys!" he heard Ruby cry, finding her hot on his heels.
"Ruby, what are you doing here?!" Red demanded. "It's dangerous."
"I can say the same for you!" the perky redhead exclaimed. "Let Cow Lady handle it! Her city!"
Red had to resist laughing at Ruby's nickname for Whitney. "Ash made that impossible. So we gotta do it for her." he said, running to the elevator.
"Hey! Wait for us!" called Yang, Weiss following behind somewhat.
Dolts." she muttered.
Whitney brought up her second-badge belt, which had another Miltank, a Bidoof and a Tauros.
She never used them. Because getting past her starter was impossible.
Until a Charizard crippled the cow for life. To be perfectly fair, Whitney was a whiny brat when she shouldn't've been. She was in her early thirties: a grown woman in every sense of the term. It was time to act like a grown adult.
And she was the gym leader of her city: it was high time she did her job OUTSIDE of running people over with a cow until someone decided enough was enough.
Meanwhile
"You know-"
"No."
"Serena, come on, Red's going to need help." Max insisted.
"And Ash needs to sleep." insisted Serena, keeping Ash, who was also out cold, nestled in her bosom and listening to her heartbeat. "You know what he normally dreams about."
Max shuddered. Yes. He did.
And spending two hours a night sleeping without help to mitigate that was not healthy.
Still, Red was not equipped to stop a crazy Rocket admin. And half of Ash's team that would obey his brother weren't there.
Patel was enjoying this. Soon, Ash would be drawn into his web of madness and they would join forces to take over Johto, then the rest of Nihon!
…That was the PLAN.
Instead, he was facing down four children and a woman-child who was the pinup girl in hundreds of lockers.
He'd know. He'd looked into them.
It appeared, though, that Cow Lady's skills were due to her now-retired starter and her tactic of using Rollout.
"Is that your best?" demanded the spymaster of Team Rocket. "You're the undefeated gym leader! Or you were."
"You shut your mouth, asshole!" Whitney snapped before Petel felt… talons.
"Natu." said the bird. …Uh oh.
An armored fist slammed into his face.
"I think it is time for you to face judgment." said Mei Sukone, glaring at him.
Armor-plated, armed with a grenade launcher and in no mood for playing around.
Even the crazy one knew when to fuck off. He ran off the roof, releasing an abra.
"GET BACK HERE, YOU HERETIC!" Mei screamed as Petel teleported away.
Better the Lake of Rage than the religious nut.
Ron the True Fan: Yes. It's filler. Loathe as I am to say this, my focus is… divided. Originally, this was going to be a longer chapter, but the pacing wouldn't work. But you know my policy: if I make a filler chapter, it will actually have meaning later on.
Takeshi Yamato: Yes. Ron does not do pointless filler for the sake of filler. So, here we go. Team Rocket's doing an attempted takeover of the radio station, and Red's the one dealing with it, alongside his fledgling harem… and Whitney.
Ron the True Fan: Now… as for why the attention is divided - don't worry, it's not being put on hiatus, progress will just be a LITTLE slower - why don't we show you a preview?
"Stardate 43999.9." he said hauntingly, answering all of their questions.
December 31st, 2366. The eve of the end of an era.
Where 40 starships, led by a man who believed that Picard would never help their enemy, never realizing he had zero say in the matter, would be walked into a slaughter.
A battle that changed history and led to the deaths of trillions over the next 45 years.
A battle that was a mere 18 hours away.
Corpse Z'kellion stood to attention. "Orders, sir?" she asked, agreeing with his sentiments.
Ron looked at the Andorian at tactical. "Red Alert!" he declared, the lights going to red as alarms went off. "Stand to battlestations! Riza, take us out of the cloaking field, Z-plus twenty-five hundred meters!"
His sister spun in her chair, working the console and moving the superdreadnought.
"Corpsa, arm weapons, raise shields." he continued. "Target Cube 632. Weapons at one-quarter power. Knock out their shields. I want Picard in sickbay, not floating in the vacuum."
"Yamato to Pinkerton."
Ron tapped his commbadge. "Pinkerton here."
"Ron, we're gonna need you to look for a divergence point. This is a vastly different timeline than ours."
Ron raised an eyebrow. "How?"
"Every single ship in Starfleet over here has an AI. They call them shipgirls. And apparently they have a digital space that lets them communicate in subspace on similar frequencies to the Borg subspace network. I imagine you've probably been hearing them over the past few hours."
His answer to that was to facepalm.
Takeshi Yamato: We were… heavily inspired by Paint and Powder, here. Seriously. Read it. It's a good fic.
Ron the True Fan: In short, it's Azur Lane, KanColle and Andromeda mixed with Trek. The new fic, which we have titled Star Trek: Ship and Soul, is all of the above with the addition of The Final Countdown - the movie. thank Gible Jorn's not here, I fucking HATE that song - and of course, Star Trek Online. With a LOT of recent elements from Picard. That said-
Both: FUCK STD!
Takeshi Yamato: Discovery is a bad attempt at doing Trek and Kurtzman needs to go back to what he does best. Which is NOT Star Trek! Or any form of science fiction!
Ron the True Fan: SOMEWHAT debatable on the sci-fi one, but only somewhat. Do what you're good at, jackass.
Takeshi Yamato: Leave Star Trek to Terry Matalas. HE knows what he's doing, and above that, he LOVES Trek! Like we do!
Ron the True Fan: And his shit makes SENSE. I mean… Picard Season 3. All you need is a few sentences and you know EXACTLY how something goes down with minimal exposition, trusting THE AUDIENCE to know what's going on and figure it out themselves without having it shoved down their throats. Like the Enterprise-D's return. …It's been eight months: you had PLENTY of time to learn about that. All you need is a little extra context and you can handle the rest with ease.
Takeshi Yamato: So! To sum it up: Kurtzman, leave Trek to Matalas, and go back to the things you do best! …Sorry for the rant there, people.
Ron the True Fan: We are PASSIONATE Trekkies. We LOVE Trek. And we are NOT happy with recent events. Picard S3 was the only exception. Most are terrible, some are mediocre, some are questionable. But what works and is not a problem - or completely insulting - will be used. …Forgive the rant. I mean… you guys have mentioned you love the author's notes for being informative AND funny, but… this was LENGTHY.
Ja Ne!