[Pokémon] Pokemon: Rocket Force

Chapter 1

Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, I could remember it like it was yesterday. The day I got selected to join the most powerful crime syndicate in the universe, Team Rocket. The training was rigorous when they were selecting us. We'd be awoken at sunrise, the crack of dawn, each and every day for six months. The day would start out with breakfast, and then we'd hit the obstacle courses. "An aware mind is a Rocket mind," they used to always say, and we'd always have to be on our toes, because not only was our obstacle course just like every other, with the tyre hops, climbing frames, frame of barbed wire to be crawled under, the whole sha-bang, we had different additional obstacles thrown at us each day, and they weren't getting any easier. I remember the first day out, shortly after the tyre jump, two punch bags were being swung from side to side, and I had to slide down to get underneath them and pass them. I was unable to slow down because of the speed I was running to the next obstacle, and after that day, I was unable to sit down for a whole week because of the friction burn. That wasn't the hardest it got, about four weeks in, they said we'd be doing the same obstacles that we did the very first day, but they replaced the punching bags with blades, the type of which, you would most commonly find in a haunted mansion of sorts. That was the day Old Harry lost his ear.

The training wasn't all bad, the afternoons saw us battling Pokemon, with the weakest trainer of these "elites" being dropped from the 300 number until there was only 100 left who would join Team Rocket. In the evenings we'd be made to do "fundamental" tasks, it started with shining our boots, but changed into things such as pottery and sewing.

"Well, that seems a little out-of-character," I said, when asked with the task of using a sewing machine to make 30 Team Rocket standard uniforms, being handed an example. "You ignorant fool, you have no right to say what is out-of-character, to be part of our team, you must be mentally stimulated to all possibilities of challenges that get thrown in your path, and you will also need the audacity to make up your own uniforms to stay incognito when in the general public, we cannot have a repeat of what happened with those infamous fools from ten years ago," replied General Schwartz.

General Schwartz was referring to ten years ago when two Team Rocket members and their talking Meowth had almost cost the entire organisation to go out of business. Not only had they owed a large enough loan to make Bill Gates middle-class, but they had also been responsible for many of the failures in Team Rocket's plans.

However, there had been change in the air for the last six months, Team Rocket have managed to rise back up to power in the last two years, and are close to reforming the super elite that had been left behind them almost ten years ago, and the problems of the past were gone, no more Jessie, no more James, no more Meowth, no more Ash Ketchum and his Pikachu. It was finally bliss here for a Team Rocket member, and tomorrow would be my graduation, my ultimate day, the day when I became a full-time member of Team Rocket.

Zzzz. Drifting off to sleep, I was rudely awakened, by a clutter at my window, I looked at the clock wearily to realise it was 2am, we got a longer lie in on the day of the graduation, we had to be at the mess hall for 9am, as opposed to the regular 7am, but I was unable to get to sleep despite being ordered to bed by the General at 9pm. "Psssttt… you awake?" I heard a faint voice from outside, so I sat up in the bed that I had grown accustomed to over the six months slowly, and waited until I heard the voice again. "Mark, you there?". I rose slowly and walked over to the window and opened it up to reveal my best friend from training, Scott to be below. "Hey buddy, you excited?" he waved up to me while whispering enthusiastically. The scene kind of reminded me like something from Romeo and Juliet, except from Scott was an absolute jackass, and whether or not he was gay, I'd definitely never be his maiden, there was a girl back home that I'd left behind when I joined Team Rocket, she was really upset but I really had no choice, I was picked for the job by Giovanni's recruiters.

"Dude, you're dazing into space, you alright?" Just then, I snapped back into reality, "Yeah man, I'm cool, coming up for a chat where you won't get shot down by the Grunts?" I asked. He smiled menacingly back at me, "Damn right."

Back upstairs, we sat down in the small room that had not much more than a fold-out bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. "Well mate, tomorrow is the biggest day of our careers," Scott laughed as he sighed, I chuckled a little, "I'm not sure about that one, Scott, it is just the beginning of our careers,". "Think about the opportunities, Mark, we'll have power and control, strong Pokemon, we'll be able to walk into any shop and take whatever we want, and it won't cost us anything." The moment he said that, it made me think of how hard the past really was for us, before we started this journey to Team Rocket.

There were a few things that I liked about this, but I'll get to that later. For starters, there's a major, recurring grammar issue that needs to be addressed.

"You ignorant fool, you have no right to say what is out-of-character, to be part of our team, you must be mentally stimulated to all possibilities of challenges that get thrown in your path, and you will also need the audacity to make up your own uniforms to stay incognito when in the general public, we cannot have a repeat of what happened with those infamous fools from ten years ago,"

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That's all written as one sentence, when it should be at least three. "You have no right to say what is out-of-character" and "to be part of our team, you must..." are both independent statements with their own subject and verb, so there needs to be a period in between them.

Also, grammar aside, "mentally stimulated to all possibilities" doesn't make much sense, and I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Did you mean "mentally prepared for all possibilities" ? Also, how does making one's own uniform qualify as "audacity" ? Audacious means bold or daring, whereas I'd call making one's own clothes for the sake of being inconspicuous resourceful or competent.

Scott laughed as he sighed, I chuckled a little, "I'm not sure about that one, Scott, it is just the beginning of our careers."

"Think about the opportunities, Mark, we'll have power and control, strong Pokemon, we'll be able to walk into any shop and take whatever we want, and it won't cost us anything."​

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Salve

Since anon's already done a grammar critique, and since I've done little grammar reviewing for the past month and do not intend to start, I'll focus on the other miscellaneous aspects of storytelling and what I liked about the whole piece as a whole.

To begin with, let's talk plot. Story-wise, I've seen a number of anti-hero fics, and quite a number of military-based, soldier-perspective fics, so I won't say that the story's quite original in that respect. I'm not, however, here to judge; I'm here to help you improve, so I'll only point out really obvious clichés as opposed to the trope or two, which I don't mind, because they're as much a part of fiction as the words on the page. Anyway, from the outset I can see that you don't have much a plot beside the rags-to-riches, or soldier-success story here, but I could be wrong seeing as you haven't introduced any other conflicts to the story besides a potential love-based conflict by use of a subtle throwaway statement. Additionally, there's also Scott and Mark's ambitions which, again, kind of foreshadow the soldier-success story mentioned earlier, and also leave me having some doubts about how you're going to set your story apart from the myriad of other stories with a similar plot. Let me stress that this is meant as an encouragement for you to be thinking creatively and not as criticism towards your choice of plot. Seeing as you've just started with the fic, I thought I d say that before anything else.

Next, I'm going to talk about the limited characterization in the piece. I say 'limited' because the story hasn't yet gone into too many character interactions so there's room yet to develop the boys/men further than the stereotypical 'I wanna be the very best' character. Note that when I use the term 'I wanna be the very best', it doesn't just refer to the Pokémon series, but also to any ambitious rags-to-riches story. In this case, I'd say the GTA series would be a close approximate to the kind of characters you may want to develop here. Still, since I haven't seen much interaction, I can't say much so this is, again, meant as an encouragement to help you think outside the box by presenting you with character types you may want to study or avoid using if you want your characters to be unique.

So yes, I'm seeing good things for this fic as the ending you've left is quite open-ended, and I can't do anything major apart from some guessing and encouragement to push you in the right direction. Good luck.

I do have to say that I enjoyed the idea for this fanfic. A look into the lives of Team Rocket members right from the very beginning. Though I do agree with anon that the beginning was rushed.

I would have loved to see more of the training given to Rocket members. Think about what the Rockets do and why, and how they would teach new members to follow those goals. You could have added more to this team by showing more of their training.

It also would have given a chance to show how Team Rocket has changed in the last ten years. Since we're not seeing them as they are now in the anime (no game basis at all?), it would have been good to see what had happened in that time. How they changed their training policies, how they dealt with threats, how they dealt with incompetent members.

It also would have given more insight into Mark's character. How he deals with the training, not just physically but emotionally and mentally. Or how he became friends with Scott, and how the two helped each other out through training.

Like I said, I enjoyed what's here as an idea. (Fics with military-style training are a weakness of mine.) There was just more that I would have liked to see, more that could have had more time devoted to it. I'd like to see more, since as anon also said, the ending of the chapter was where it got more interesting.

Skipping over the grammatical bits because anon's already covered them, but I'd just like to say that although it seems anal, it would really help readers get through your work. Sorting out dialogue is especially important because every new paragraph (i.e., separating each character's lines into separate paragraphs) helps them to figure out who's speaking. Bunching them all up runs at a risk of making a reader think that someone's saying something when you actually meant that someone else is.

Putting that aside, though (because I'd rather not get bogged down too much in details), let me just make this as quick and painless as possible by separating this into the good news and the bad news.

Good
I'm a sucker for Team Rocket protagonists. Yes, I've read fics where the main character is actually a member of Team Rocket. I've even seen people spin Jessie and James that way without making them actually do what's right. However, that doesn't mean you can't make this work. It's always an interesting idea to watch people take cogs in an evil organization and turn them into likeable characters without making them good, and I hope that you keep in mind that this is an evil organization.

From here, I feel like there's two paths you could go. You could keep Mark and Scott on the side of nefariousness, or you could go the cliché route and make them defect. Either has potential (even the cliché part), but really, if you're going to go for the former (which I get the feeling you are, given how excited these two seem to be), you're probably going to be dealing with a more challenging fic. It won't be easy to convince us that these are characters we'll want to like or otherwise take seriously, but if you manage, you'll come up with deep characters that will make us look at Team Rocket and their goals in ways we wouldn't normally think of seeing them. Kinda like watching The Godfather and thinking that the mafia isn't just a pack of trigger-happy criminals, if that even makes sense.

Also, I have to admit I was amused by the comparison to Romeo and Juliet. Normally, I'd launch into a rant about how that play is overrated whenever it's mentioned, but in this case, it gave us a nice glimpse into the mind of our dear narrator. He's well-versed in literature just enough to get the comparison, but at the same time, he has a sense of humor and enough brains to realize belatedly how that comparison sounded. In short, it was actually funny. Also, it probably makes the reader wonder about Mark, which makes this even funnier.

Not So Good
The one thing I feel could be improved above everything besides the grammar is the delivery. It felt like nothing happened in this chapter because you do a lot of telling instead of showing. Namely, you summarized Mark's training instead of let us watch him face the obstacle course full of buzz saws. We couldn't really connect to his struggle to get past boot camp because we couldn't watch him flail in nervousness or get his rear handed to him by his superiors. It's a bit of a disservice to those of us who are sadists.

Put it this way: never rely on summarizing to tell your story. Always try to present your story in scenes. Yes, it means you're going to have to start from the very beginning, but it also means we'll start getting to know Mark early on. As in, we'd be able to care about him for the rest of the story because we realize he went through Hell (nearly literally) just to get the privilege of wearing a Rocket uniform. Alternatively, start on the night of graduation without mentioning the backstory. After all, if you don't want us to connect with Mark from the very beginning, it probably isn't important to know exactly how he went about training for the position.

Either way, yes. Showing us how something happened through a scene will help us picture what the character went through. It's more dynamic and actually makes us feel some kind of emotion for the characters than just summarizing an entire event in a couple of lines. So, show; don't tell.

Side note of nitpicking: Jessie and James pay for their mechas with their own money. That's why they're frequently shown to take on side jobs and why their mechas are occasionally intensely crappy. They're not getting the funding to build those bots from Team Rocket itself. And even if they did, Team Rocket's gone through a lot worse. Their gym getting destroyed by a ten-year-old child, for example. Giovanni's business-savvy enough to more than make up for it.

I only say the above because it's the entire reason behind why Mark and the other Rockets are learning what could be a potential Chekhov's Skill. Seriously, sewing? There's so many things that could go right with that kind of skill and a bit of a creative flair.


So… yeah. It's not bad. It's got a lot of potential for a pretty interesting storyline. Just remember to show instead of tell, clean up your grammar, and… well, be careful about the Rocket research.

All right, everyone pretty much already touched upon the show not tell criticism and I'll quickly say I have to agree. Pretty much everything is rushed without the readers getting a chance to be part of a couple of Mark's training. Makes us hard to want to feel anything for Mark over some of the obstacles he has to face.

However, this is something I have been thinking. Maybe this is me not catching on early, but I'm wondering what plotline you're going with this. The last line made me think you're actually going to backtrack a bit and show the struggles Mark did before and during his training with Team Rocket. If that's the case, remember to not rely on summarizing. Instead show the scenes, the struggles Mark had to get through joining Team Rocket.

If the plotline you have in mind starts after Mark and Scott graduated though, well I still think you could show some of the training. XD But yeah, the show not tell still applies.

If you have trouble grasping show not tell, only thing is to read, read, read. Read fanfics and published works to get an idea how the writers get scenes down by mentioning the actions and emotions from the characters. It might be hard at first, but you'll get the hang of it with more practice. I still have trouble with it sometimes because I tend to want the scenes to get done as soon as possible. In short, take your time unfolding the scenes in your story.

There's actually one thing I want to say that Jax didn't mention about Team Rocket (and I'm quite surprised at that XD). Not sure if you watched the new Pokemon anime Black and White (Best Wishes for Japanese/original version), but actually Jessie, James, and Meowth are shown to be competent team members after able to get some assignments done. So far it looks like the three won't be their silly selves for a while. To me the part where you mention Jessie, James, and Meowth being responsible for many of Team Rocket's failures isn't true anymore after they gone to Unova. However, if you're making this piece AU and not have the gang go to Unova, I might let it pass, granted the explanation for this being AU is decent.

Wow, this review is more rambly than an actually review, oi. Well pretty much this story has indeed potential and the different ways you can go with it. Remember to not jump to summarizing what happened and instead take the time to write out the scenes and get the actions and emotions take place.