Plausibility - Altering time lines in a fic

[ZephyrAM]

I'm working on a story that involves Team Rocket gaining power over legendary pokemon, but I wonder what would be the most believable method. With the power he gains, Giovanni stops his own aging and disables pokemon tech everywhere. Pokeballs, pokecenters - all of it. Now some of that can be explained through TR's own efforts at destroying the tech, but the pokeballs ceasing to work is more difficult.

Edited to reflect post title:
'The concept is that the timeline in the story is an alternate timeline, in that it's one that never should've happened. By capturing the pokemon in question (whichever is captured), TR creates this wrong world, and once the pokemon is freed, they revert the world back to its proper state - the time when they were captured - so it can proceed as it should. The timeline of the story is considered wrong because of the manipulations the controlled legendary enacts on it.'

Originally, I was going with him capturing Palkia and Dialga, but I switched to Arceus himself later. My main question is this - what makes the most sense/is the most believable? Not only that the pokemon themselves could do these things, but that they could be contained by TR.

Appreciate any input!

 

[Negrek]

tbh given the kinds of evil team plots that get thrown around in canon, I don't think it would come across totally unreasonable for TR to come up with a way to capture and control Arceus, Dialga, etc. I mean, they already were able to capture/restraing Mewtwo, for example, the Arceus has Arceus nearly getting defeated by humans, and so on. There's totally precedent both for humans bringing incredible forces of nature under their control and for those forces to be able to do completely crazy things. So I think if you wanted to have TR nab Dialga or something and shut down all high tech everywhere and make Giovanni immortal, it will be fine. How it comes across is going to depend a lot more on how exactly you plan to execute it than the idea itself, I think.

 

[ZephyrAM]

That's much of what I imagined. However, the story isn't about that, that's just the setting, so I want to nail the basics as well as I can. TR captures Arceus (let's say), thus winning against Ash and Co, then rules the world for the next hundred years. The story starts after that.

I'll look into the more recent movies more, since those involve the canon legendaries the most. Thanks!

 

[Venia Silente]

Simple question: if TR controls say Arceus, or any of the Creation Trio: why is there even a story? Have messianich hero trying to rise up? Just portal whoopass him to the orbit of Mercury, or reroll the calendar and retcon him out of existence, that's what you have any of the Creation Trio for.


Another thing (and I could see the story coming up from that) is that while in Pokémon canon humans are shown as able to subdue really powerful Pokémon, 1.- in the canons where they get to, those "powerful" Pokémon suck eg.: Arceus can apparently be easily be killed by showering him with some water pasta or chugging a small space pebble at him, and 2.- even if they get to "win", humans horribadly suck at controlling the powers those Pokémon use: Archie and Maxie lose their shit to Groudon and Kyogre; Cyrus despite having control of two of the Creation Trio and the entirely of the Lake Trio gets wacked in the head by Giratina and forcefully dragged for a psychidellic technicolor wormhole trip; the only one who more or less does things right is Zero against Giratina.

And a final thing: I don't see the actual title of your thread being a subject. If TR has the power to alter timelines, then it has already retroactively won, because unless there's another Dialga around for the hero to use, he is, functionally speaking, acting in an already erased timeline as the command to Dialga to retroactively erase the hero from time can always be said to have already taken place.

 

[ZephyrAM]

Ah, yeah, the thread title didn't come across in my main point.

The concept is that the timeline in the story is an alternate timeline, in that it's one that never should've happened. By capturing the pokemon in question (whichever is captured), TR creates this wrong world, and once the pokemon is freed, they revert the world back to its proper state - the time when they were captured - so it can proceed as it should. The timeline of the story is considered wrong because of the manipulations the controlled legendary enacts on it.

Ideally, at least.

And yes, there is the issue that, if Giovanni has control of such a power, how could he possibly lose? Thankfully, as you say, humans are bad at actually using most of that power. I'm trying hard not to make him, or TR in general, into a stupid villain, while also creating a way for a young person to win against them. Powers or not, he's still a human though, which helps.

 

[VisualJae]

Use Giratina and the concept of anti-matter.

Cancel cancel, topsy-turvy. Hit reset button. Different dimension. You play with it.

Or just have someone use EMP and break technology.