The End of CottonGreen

If you’ve been following my nuzlocke comic, you’ve probably noted the lack of updates, and have probably wondered if I’ve discontinued the comic. Well, now I’m giving you a formal, belated answer to that question: yes. Unfortunately, I won’t be adding any new pages to CottonGreen. I bit off way more than I could chew with that comic, and looking back on it I can’t say I’m all that satisfied with it. But it was fun. And knowing that so many people really liked this comic made it worth doing. I know some of you might want to know where the story was supposed to go, so I typed up a basic summary of the rest of the plot, as well as some character profiles/backstories of the main cast. It’s a hastily typed summary, and a lot of the subplots are either skimmed over or omitted, but I hope it gives you some sense of closure.

Thank you for reading!  

• Team Cotton enters the Pokemon Tower where they encounter Gary. His Raticate has passed away. Cotton tries to comfort him, but Gary challenges her to a battle, desperately wanting to prove his strength before his dead Pokemon’s grave. He loses the battle magnificently, and in his grief lashes out at Cotton. This incident reminds the team of its mortality and sort of kills the positive vibe they’d had going. It also causes Cotton to wonder if her relationship with Gary really is beyond saving.

• Eevee (Pine) added to Cotton’s party in Celadon, is evolved to Jolteon. He’s pretty much a baby and gets flustered easily. He latches onto Jasmine and Bramble as parental/protector figures.

• Game Corner happens. So does the Pokemon Tower stuff. The team beats Erika. Then Silph stuff happens and shit gets real.

• Jasmine dies to a Weezing’s Self-Destruct. Silph mission abandoned. Cotton and team go on major sabbatical, training, but not doing any major battling. Basically just trying to recover from Jasmine’s death.

• Cotton contemplates quitting training. She doesn’t really like battling as much as she feels like it’s something she has to do. She doesn’t even fight to win as much as she fights not to lose because for some reason she intrinsically knows that if they lose, her Pokemon will die.

• After maybe a month, Lilac and Bramble convince the team to go back and save Saffron. Which they do. Think Simba’s return in The Lion King.

• I was actually planning to have an intermission between Cotton leaving and going back to Silph featuring Gary and his party navigating the Silph building??? And maybe focusing on Gary’s past relationship with Cotton??? That stuff boils down to her and Gary having been best friends before Gary developed this inferiority complex and pushed her away. Since then he’s developed romantic feelings for her, but is torn between liking, resenting, and respecting her, which results in really erratic, confused behavior. Anyway, Gary tries to solo the Silph building and gets badly injured in a battle with a certain Team Rocket member.

• Team Cotton returns to Silph to find the building mostly cleared out thanks to Gary. They find a Lapras (Quince) who joins the party. He’s tough and shows promise as a battler, but he’s got a pretty warped personality and tries to hit on everyone, which is annoying and obnoxious.

• Gary is a dumbass and tries to battle Cotton while hiding his own injuries. He loses. Then Cotton battles Giovanni, who also loses. Got the Masterball.

• Gym battle with Sabrina, no casualties. Cotton angrily confronts Sabrina about why she did nothing to combat Team Rocket when Saffron was taken over, and she responds by saying she knew that Team Rocket would be driven out of Saffron, and that she was not supposed to have a hand in it. Sabrina also unloads all this physic stuff on Cotton and gets her confused about her visions and even her own existence. Being a powerful psychic, Sabrina knows the results of predetermined events, but she cannot make out anything about Cotton’s future. It is as if, out of the whole world, only the terms of Cotton’s future existence are uncertain. It sort of freaks both of them out.

• Speaking of which, what’s the deal with that girl in Glitch City and Mew? Okay bear with me on this. So basically there was a universe where Red, Green, and Blue all grew up together as kids right until the point Red and Green became trainers. At that point, Blue disappeared and everyone forgot about her. She just stopped existing in that world. This is due to interference by Arceus.

• So in this run, Arceus is god-like in most ways, but not all. It has some powers of creation, and although it maintains the pretense of omnipotence, it really isn’t. It can only meddle so much in human affairs, although it tries to. Arceus knows that a heroic soul was destined appear in the Kanto region and manifest in a hero whose deeds would shape the fate of Pokemon and people alike. What it doesn’t expect was the appearance of two worthy souls: Red and Blue. Arceus is convinced that only one hero can be allowed to rise and that two souls appearing in the same time and place must be some universal fluke. Acknowledging this as something it doesn’t understand, Arceus finds the façade of its omnipresence threatened and feels compelled to take matters into its own hands.

• After observing Red and Blue’s childhoods, Arceus decides that Red is more suited to the role of hero and gets rid of Blue. He doesn’t kill her (he doesn’t have the power to completely destroy her soul) so much as he erases every trace of her existence from that universe. As a result, she ends up in Glitch City.
• While all this is going on, Arceus is threatened by a manifestation of chaos—Missingno. While Arceus brings order to its established universe, Missingno is its antithesis, and as a result cannot be conquered by Arceus and its “heavenly host” of legendaries. Instead, it is sealed in the “abyss of chaos” that is Glitch City. However, in that climactic battle, Mew, Arceus’s first creation and closest friend, is pulled in along with Missingno.

• Mew meets Blue in Glitch City and recognizes her as the disposed heroic soul. Mew knows that Arceus will do everything within its power to save it, and it also knows that Blue will not be saved. Mew knows that her fate is to spend an eternity trapped in Glitch City, and now with Missingno there she will spend that eternity being hunted by it. However, Mew distinctly separates itself from her existence, and is hardly sympathetic. Its only goal is to avoid Missingno until it can be saved, and as a result its interactions with her are purely motivated by curiosity rather than empathy. As Mew is powerless in a dimension ruled by chaos, it plans to stick with Blue and use her to distract Missingno from itself if it has to, misleading her to think that they can both be saved. Mew is totally prepared to throw her under the bus. But Mew isn’t completely unfeeling towards her. After spending time in Glitch City with Blue, it starts to pity her situation. This feeling is multiplied when Arceus succeeds in temporarily tearing open a portal out of Glitch City. Pursued by Missingno, Blue sacrifices herself to give Mew its chance to escape, hoping that once free it’ll be able to save her from the other side.

• Moved by Blue’s actions and ashamed by its own, Mew asks Arceus to save Blue from her eternal hell. Arceus refuses, unwilling to admit unfairness or fault in its judgment. Mew adopts a bitter, accusatory attitude toward its maker, convinced that Arceus overstepped its bounds and preemptively condemned Blue to a cruel fate in order to feed its own god complex. Wishing to be on better terms with Mew, Arceus finally relents and promises to give Blue’s soul another chance. On its own terms.

• Before it admits it’s wrong, Arceus needs to know that Blue could not only equal Red, but be even better. She could prove this by duplicating Red’s journey under harsher conditions once she becomes a trainer. These are the Nuzloke rules. Blue must never allow her Pokemon to lose. If they lose, they die. She also is limited in the Pokemon she can use. Only a handful of Pokemon souls will be drawn to her throughout her journey. She must use them and no others. If she can complete the hero’s journey under these conditions, she will win her existence. Arceus creates a new universe similar to Blue’s original world, but this time there is no Red. Blue‘s soul is reborn as Cotton, but she loses all the memories from her life as “Blue.”

• Mew observes Cotton’s life, but is not allowed to interfere. It realizes that Cotton is a totally different person from Blue, and this realization leads to another: the girl Mew was attached to no longer exists. Mew identifies his feelings towards Blue as that as a budding friendship markedly different from its relationship with Arceus. Mew begins to try to restore Blue’s consciousness to Cotton’s body and starts to psychically give her visions of her “past life.” Once Cotton’s Pokedex ID is entered into the Pokemon League system, Mew transforms her Pokedex into a replica of Red’s in an attempt to get her to question the state of her existence. Arceus warns against this meddling, saying that Mew’s attempts will be fruitless and that he is chasing a ghost. However, Mew is adamant in its desire to bring back Blue.

• Okay back to Cotton’s story. Safari Zone happens and Koga is defeated. Character drama starts to happen. Bramble has still not recovered from losing Jasmine, and his lovable, naïve personality has become battle hardened and slightly revenge oriented. He’s toughest on himself, pushing his training to dangerous levels in a desperate attempt to get stronger to compensate for what he sees as his natural weaknesses. While the team is worried for him, they’re also preoccupied with dealing with their newest teammate, Quince. Quince’s personality initially clashes with most of the team, and it doesn’t help that he’s marked as Jasmine’s replacement. While Jasmine was a peacemaker, Quince intentionally tries to get a rise out of others, especially Pine, who is an easy target. Being protective or Pine, this leads to conflict between Bramble and Quince, and basically things end up exploding between the two. However, Pine unexpectedly urges them both to resolve things, they share their tragic backstories, and the team comes out stronger than before.

• Cinnibar happens. Cotton learns about the existence of Mew and Mewtwo. Team Cotton returns to Viridian to challenge the final gym leader. It’s Giovanni. Big surprise.

• It’s a tough battle, but the team makes it through alright. They finally have Giovanni cornered. Bramble blames Jasmine’s death on Giovanni and has been out for his blood since Silph, but at the last minute decides to spare him. Although he wants revenge, he remembers that Jasmine hated violence and feared becoming an instinct-driven, bloodthirsty monster more than anything. Bramble recognizes that killing Giovanni would desecrate Jasmine’s memory, not honor it, and he shows him mercy.

• Cotton runs into Gary on her way out of Viridian. They discuss their impending E4 challenges and Gary confesses his feelings to Cotton. It doesn’t go well. Not only does Cotton reject him, she rails on him for having the audacity to treat her like shit for years and then say that he likes her. She admits that she used to have a crush on him before he distanced himself from her, and after getting over that had hoped that they could at least go back to being friends, but now she’s not even sure if she wants that. They part on bad terms, with Gary going ahead to challenge the E4 and Cotton opting to spend some extra time training first.

• Upon reflection, Cotton finds that she doesn’t really know what she’ll do if she does defeat the E4. She won’t allow herself to lose, but even if she wins, she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life battling and worrying about losing teammates. Most of all she wants to know what her weird visions mean and why she feels so compelled to complete this journey. In a team meeting, she lets everyone know the stakes of their battles, but the team has her back and really want to win the league with her.

• The E4 battles start. The most plot-worthy thing to happen is the fight against Lorelei, whose Lapras knows Quince. Some major Quince subplot stuff happens and his character arc gets resolved. Refer to the character outlines at the end of this summary. Anyway, Cotton beats the E4 and goes to face Gary, the current Champion.

• Seeing each other again is pretty awkward, but Cotton’s sense of purpose is stronger than ever. She’s here to defeat Gary and is finally able to battle him without any hesitation. This is actually a welcome change for Gary, who had always been frustrated by the fact that Cotton never took him seriously enough. They give the battle everything they’ve got, and it’s immensely cathartic for both of them. Cotton wins, but Gary no longer needs to define her victories as his failures. Of course, not everything is resolved between them, and they still have a lot of stuff to work out, but at the end of the battle they have hope for starting over. Cotton is the Indigo League Champion.

• Despite proving herself to be the strongest trainer, Cotton still feels she lacks a sense of closure. The cause of her visions is still a mystery to her, and the things Sabrina told her in Saffron still haunt her. Cotton decides that she needs to find out what she is. Even Sabrina, the most powerful human psychic, couldn’t see where Cotton belonged in the grand scale of things, so Cotton decides to find the most powerful psychic she knows to exist. She decides to search for Mewtwo.

• She tracks Mewtwo to Cerulean Cave. When she finds it, Mewtwo is ready to fight her, but Cotton doesn’t try to engage him in battle. She shows it the Master Ball she got at Silph and destroys it. She says that she thinks that Mewtwo can tell her what she wants to know, and she doesn’t mean to harm it. After some initial hesitation, Mewtwo agrees, able to sympathize with Cotton’s position of carelessly created and manipulated by her makers. Mewtwo’s psychic abilities apparently allow it to know of Arceus’s grand designs. Mewtwo explains everything to Cotton, who, although overwhelmed by these revelations, feels that it’s the truth. She asks Mewtwo if she’s finished with her journey, if she’s finally followed Red’s footsteps to the end. She has. The continued existence of her and her world are proof that Arceus has held up its end of the bargain. However, Cotton’s “curse” cannot be undone. Cotton says that she understands and thanks Mewtwo before leaving the cave.

• Once she leaves, Mewtwo asks if “you’re really alright with this.” It’s revealed that Mew has been present throughout the conversation, hiding itself from Cotton. Mew responds by saying that yes, everything’s alright. Cotton has won her place in the world, and the rest of her life is hers to live. Mewtwo wonders if Mew would till try to “revive” Blue, which Mew denies. Mew realized that Cotton’s fight for her survival was the same fight he’d once seen in Blue, and that trading one existence for another would be no better than what Arceus had done. Mew’s only regret is that it kept itself so distant from both Blue and Cotton, and wonders at its own loneliness. Mewtwo suggests that it’s this loneliness that motivates “true legends” like Mew and Arceus to involve themselves with mortal affairs.

• Cotton returns to Pallet Town for a short while. She officially resigns from training and returns her Pokedex, now restored, to Professor Oak. Her team, though released, chooses to stick together. They’ve become a family. For the first time in her life, Cotton feels free to think about what she wants to do rather than what she has to do. However, her soul is exhausted from her journey, and when rumors begin to spread about the new Champion quitting training, she decides that she needs to get away for a bit, to start a new journey. Gary sees her off. Things have gotten better between them, and they’re learning to be friends again. Gary briefly worries that Cotton will like being away too much and stay gone forever, but Cotton promises to come home.

• Red is standing alone on top of Mt. Silver. It’s snowing. Green drops in for a visit, and before long is bugging Red about when he’s going to come down off his damn mountain, reminding him that he promised to come home. Red doesn’t give any concrete answers and tries to avoid the conversation. When he looks away from Green, he thinks he sees a brown haired girl standing among the snowdrifts, but the vision fades. Red comments that it’s been awhile since they’ve all been together like this, which confuses Green, who reminds him that he visited just last week. Still, Red can’t help but feeling as if he’s been reunited with someone. The final scene is of Cotton reaching the summit of Mt. Silver in her world and looking out at the sprawling Kanto region below.

END

…Except for the following character profiles, which outline some backstories and subplots I couldn’t really fit into the main summary.

Cotton/Gary relationship backstory, or two profiles for the price of one:

They’re childhood friends, obviously. Cotton moves to Pallet Town when she is very young. At that time she was having recurring nightmares about being trapped in a horrible, empty space and being chased by a shapeless monster. She is a fearful child, and would hardly even go outside. One day Gary’s mom brings him over to visit, and he is immediately interested in his new neighbor and moved by the childish impulse to protect her and cheer her up. He proudly shows her a Pokeball he’d sneaked out of his grandpa’s lab. When it releases a baby Bulbasaur, Cotton gets pretty spooked. Gary finds it incredible that Cotton had never seen a Pokemon up close before, and shows her that Pokemon and people can be friends. This begins Gary and Cotton’s friendship, as well as Cotton’s experience with Pokemon.

Gary and Cotton are pretty much inseparable throughout their childhood. Cotton meets Professor Oak through Gary, as well as many other Pokemon. Both she and Gary have a natural way with them, and they eagerly look forward to going on their Pokemon journeys together when they’re older. However, as their tenth birthdays approach, Cotton becomes more and more anxious about her ability to be a good trainer. She decides that she’d rather learn theory first, and chooses to go to a pre-trainer academy. When she tells Gary about her decision, she tells him that she doesn’t want to hold him back, even though they’d promised to start their journeys together. She’s genuinely pretty upset, but Gary brushes it off with a smile. He reminds her that a promise is a promise, and decides to go to the academy with her.

The academy is where things start to go sour. At first things are fine. They go to classes together and are really excited about everything they’re learning. However, Gary begins to feel a gap growing between them. Cotton and Gary both excel in class, but Gary notices that Cotton always does just a little better. He begins to think about his own reputation as the great Professor Oak’s grandson, and panics at the thought of being outshined and left behind. For her part, Cotton is oblivious to Gary’s feelings. Things are made worse when Cotton is invited to participate in an advanced course and Gary isn’t. Because the advanced course requires a lot more work, Cotton is unable to spend as much time with Gary as she used to. Not only that, but Gary begins to actively push her away. Before long they drift apart, and by the time Cotton calls Gary out, it’s too late. Bitter about Cotton’s success and his own perceived failure, Gary uses the opportunity to get back at her, confessing that he no longer considers Cotton as a friend. Stunned and hurt, Cotton avoids Gary throughout the rest of their time at the academy. Gary finds a new group of friends, and Cotton isolates herself by single-mindedly applying herself to her studies. When they graduate from the academy, they both start their Pokemon journeys, ironically fulfilling the promise they’d made despite no longer being friends. The comic picks up here.

Clover (Venusaur):

Clover is raised in Professor Oak’s lab for the purpose of someday being a rookie trainer’s starter. She is still pretty young when she was given to Cotton, and is full of youthful zeal that stays with her even when she grows up. Knowing that she’d be assigned to a trainer during her time in the lab, it’s her dream to be the best partner her trainer could imagine. Out of the whole team, she has the strongest bond with Cotton, and is always there to help her get through tough times. Despite being the starter Pokemon, she’s not so much the team leader as much as she is the team’s spirit. She’s dang peppy, and has an amazing fighting spirit. However, if she senses a threat to her team, she won’t hesitate to throw her weight around. She ends up butting heads with Quince a lot after he initially joins the team, and is one of the only Pokemon on the team physically able to go toe-to-toe with him.

Gary’s Charizard has a major crush on her that she hasn’t noticed. Also, she really wanted Gary and Cotton to get together before things get extra bad between them.

Jasmine (Primeape):

Jasmine comes from a pretty average colony of Mankeys. However, her mellow disposition is rather abnormal for her species. She doesn’t like violence much, but her colony thrives on it. When they’re not fighting each other, they’re fighting other colonies. Jasmine has no choice but to be brutal if she wants to be a part of her colony. Before joining Cotton’s team, she had never battled for sport, only fought to survive. Despite disliking violence, Jasmine sees trainer battles as nobler than the squabbles she’s accustomed to, and thinks that they’ll allow her to do what comes naturally to her (fighting) without having to be “violent.” She fears being controlled by her violent instincts more than anything.

Jasmine’s quiet, but she always gets the final word when she does speak. She’s pretty much the de facto team leader and also serves as a peacekeeper.

Jasmine accepts Bramble’s feelings for her because of his gentleness and genuineness, and begins to really fall in love with him after he accepts her despite seeing her snap. When Jasmine learns that Gary’s Raticate has passed away, her first thoughts are of Bramble. She resolves to never let anything happen to him. When Pine joins the team, Jasmine’s maternal instinct kick in and she and Bramble sort of become surrogate parents for him.

Jasmine is this run’s only casualty. When a Weezing tries to take out Cotton’s team at Silph with Self-Destruct, Cotton desperately tries to recall her team into their Pokeballs before the Weezing can detonate. Jasmine realizes that Cotton and then team will get caught in the blast regardless, and evades her Pokeball in favor of delivering a Mega Punch to the Weezing, knocking it far away enough to spare Cotton from the brunt of the explosion. She doesn’t survive, but protects Bramble and the rest of the team, just as she’d promised herself she would.

Crown (Butterfree):

Before meeting Cotton, Crown lived her entire life in Viridian Forest. Because of the forest’s location, a lot of big-shot trainers would pass through on their way to the Pokemon League. Crown hated being looked down on for being a “weak little Caterpie,” and after hearing things from trainers passing through the forest, she figured that taking on the Pokemon League would be the best way to prove her strength. However, she couldn’t get on a team she’d be satisfied with. League-aspiring trainers mostly didn’t want a Caterpie on their team, and most of the other trainers in the forest were bug catchers, more interested in adding to their collections that training any one Pokemon. Frustrated, she decided to get stronger on her own, challenging pretty much anyone she could find. Getting caught by Cotton wasn’t exactly part of her plan. At first, she thinks that Cotton is an amateur trainer just in it for kicks like bug catchers, and decides to break away from the team once she’s evolved. However, when she learns that Cotton’s actually aiming for the League, she has to reconsider her plans. She finds it hard to imagine that a trainer would keep her on their team, and feels the need to fight every battle tooth and nail in order to secure her place. However, after spending more time with Cotton, she starts to trust her enough not toss her aside.

Crown seems really tough, but once you get to know her…she’s still really tough. She can be kind to her friends, and she has her share of insecurities, but neither of these things can make her soften up. There is no sweet under her salty. She actually knows a lot about the technical aspect of training due to paying attention to the trainers passing through Viridian Forest. Once she opens up a little more to the team, she becomes very reliable, and takes over the role of team leader after Jasmine dies. After Cotton quits training, any battle directions the team needs are given by Crown.

Lilac (Pidgeot):

Before joining Team Cotton, Lilac had a mate and nest a little outside of Pewter City. She had one chick—an oddly colored Pidgey. Besides its color, her chick was completely healthy, and Lilac and her mate were doing a good job of raising it. One day when her mate was away from the nest, a trainer tried to catch her still unfledged chick. Lilac tried to fight the trainer off, getting into a fight with their Pidgeot. Having no battling experience, Lilac was easily defeated and badly injured in the fight, breaking one of her wings. Her chick was captured. Hurt as badly as she was, Lilac might have died if not for some good Samaritan passersby who took her to the Pewter City Pokemon Center. Lilac’s recovery process was relatively long, and it was awhile before she could fly well enough to be released again. When she returned to her nest, she found that her mate had thought her dead and had started a new family while she was gone.

Lilac didn’t really know what she was supposed to do with herself after that, and was confused about a lot of things. Was she supposed to hate humans for taking her chick? What about the humans who had saved her? How was she supposed to feel about her own species, which had played a role in hurting her and taking her chick away? She felt that she’d need to see more of the world before deciding how to feel and to heal her spirit, and joining Cotton’s team gave her that perfect opportunity.

Lilac is a natural mother hen and has a bright, resilient personality. Despite that, she makes it clear that her actual mothering days are over, and when Pine joins the team she’s very cautious about him, not wanting to project her feelings for her lost chick onto a stranger. She’s probably the most empathetic team member and the best shoulder to cry on. Lilac and Crown pretty much end up as life partners, and Lilac’s sweetness balances out Crown’s personality. Lilac remains optimistic about the fate of her chick. Knowing that the trainer was after it for its color, Lilac hopes that it will be looked after and cherished. Perhaps they will even meet on the battlefield someday.

Bramble (Raticate):

Bramble joins Cotton’s team as a young, inexperienced Rattata. His life with his colony had been pretty routine and boring for him, and joining a trainer’s team was pretty much the most exciting thing he could have imagined. He develops his crush on Jasmine pretty early, and trains hard to get her attention as well as to earn his place on the team roster.

Bramble starts off pretty naïve, which contributes to his honest and open personality. He and Jasmine suit each other well, even though he largely ends up just following her lead. He becomes very protective of Pine, and helps him deal with his nervousness.

Bramble changes a lot after Jasmine’s death. He loses a lot of his liveliness, and his attitude darkens. He develops an intense hatred of Team Rocket, and when Cotton temporarily leaves Saffron, he is the most adamant about going back. The strength of his grief keeps him from understanding Cotton’s, and he holds her inaction against her. Once Giovanni is defeated, Bramble is able to start healing. He reconnects with Cotton, and the two of them grow closer in the time spent training for the E4. Also, he learns Hyper Beam, which is pretty cool.

Pine (Jolteon):

Pine is an Eevee kit that Cotton gets from a breeder in Celadon. He’s the last of his litter to get adopted because he gets very shy and very nervous around strangers. Cotton evolves him into a Jolteon right away, hoping that his evolved form will give him more confidence. It doesn’t. But he does become very powerful, and adds a lot to the team. Turns out that Pine is a fearless fighter, and that he can stand up to Pokemon way bigger than himself as long as he doesn’t have to talk to them or anything.

Once Pine gets adjusted to the team, he sort of becomes its baby. Everyone has a soft spot for him. As he grows he slowly comes into his confidence. This largely comes out of his relationship with Quince, who babies him the least out of the entire team. Pine and Quince have a strange, but special relationship. Quince teases Pine a lot at first because he’s sensitive enough to be an easy target. Still, Pine manages to be the most sympathetic toward Quince, sticking up for him even when he has a falling out with the rest of the team. Quince comes to appreciate Pine’s friendship, and eventually the two become inseparable.

Quince (Lapras):

At first glance, Quince seems like a self-centered playboy whose only goal in life seems to be to rile others up. Of course, he’s got a bucket full of issues.

Quince used to live with a wild pod of Lapras. He was a bit of a playboy and daredevil back then too, but outside the normal youthful recklessness he was still well balanced. Quince was courting the pod leader’s younger sister, and he was sort of the golden boy of his pod.

One day Quince was trying to impress his mate by playfully provoking a Gyarados. It didn’t end well. Quince pushed them too far and, enraged, the Gyrados attacked. Realizing his recklessness had endangered his mate, Quince had the Gyarados target and chase him. He led it far away from his pod and was able to lose it, but not before sustaining some injuries. Exhausted, Quince passed out for a bit. When he came to some time had passed, and he tried to find his way back to his pod. When he found himself in familiar waters, he began to call out to his pod, but nobody responded. Confused, he continued to search the area. He didn’t find his pod. Instead, he found ice and sea washed red with blood and the scents of his friends and family. In shock, he ended up wandering the area for days until a research vessel found and saved him. The humans on board turned out to be Silph Co. scientists, who had been monitoring Quince’s pod. They informed him that his pod had likely fallen prey to poachers that killed Larpas for their shells and captured them to sell on the black market. They sympathized with Quince, but were also professionally interested in him. They asked if they could take him back to their labs in Saffron for study, as he was one of the last surviving Larpas. Without a reason to stay in the wild, Quince hollowly agreed to go with them.

The Silph scientists certainly did not treat Quince poorly, but without his home and family, Quince became a shell of his former self. His personality warped. Part of the scientists’ research was on move inheritance, and Quince ended up siring many Pokemon as a result of that research. Of course, he never personally knew any of his offspring. The scientists were also interested in restoring the Lapras population through Ditto breeding, but Quince refused to participate in that. By that point, he believed his species better off extinct than hunted.

He joins Cotton’s team and immediately starts pissing everybody off. But he’s really strong, and the team needs another member, so he gets to stick around. He and Bramble have an especially hard time getting along, and constantly antagonize each other. Tensions get to the point where Quince crosses the line and takes a jab at Jasmine. This turns not only Bramble, but the rest of the team against him, with the exception of Pine. Pine tries to get the team to give Quince a second chance and to get Quince to apologize. Once he talks things out with Bramble, the to find that they actually have a lot in common, and are able to get along.

When the team gets to the E4 and Cotton battles Lorelei, Quince is shocked to recognize his old pod’s leader on her team. The leader remembers Quince, and has wrongly blamed him for what happened to their pod. The pod had been nomadic, and was about to continue its migration when Quince pulled his stunt with the Gyrados. With Quince missing, Quince’s mate begged her brother to wait for his return, which he agreed to do. The pod was then ambushed by poachers. Most of the pod was killed or captured, with only a few escaping with the leader. They found their way to Four Island, where the leader met Lorelei. Since then, the pod has been able to reestablish itself in Icefall Cave, but the leader still grieves for the loss most of his pod, including his sister. If Quince had been there, it’s possible that the pod might have been able to evade the poachers. This thought has mellowed in the leaders mind throughout the years, and he now blames Quince for what happened because it’s easier than blaming himself for delaying the pod’s movements.

Quince and the leader fight it out, and after a long, strenuous battle, Quince is victorious. After Team Cotton beats the rest of Lorelei’s team, Pine tries to cheer Quince up, thinking that he must be hurt by the fact that one of his old friends blames him for something so horrible. However, Quince says he’s never been happier. For years he’d thought that nobody from his pod had survived, but now he knows that some of them made it out and that the pod is recovering. He thinks that maybe in the future, when the leader has forgiven him, he’d like to visit his pod again someday.