sudden sky - a renegade platinum storylocke

Hey there! I'm here for the Book Club review, and I'm definitely intrigued.

So, this is clearly just a taste. There's more to come, to be sure, especially because this chapter is just a short prologue, but there's already a palpable atmosphere that you're exuding here. The one weird thing is that there's literally only one word here that lets me know that this is a Pokémon fic, and that's the word itself, but who cares, it's CYBERPUNK, BABY!!

And it's not just the use of the name, either. This is pure, edgy Cyberpunk 2020/2077-style cyberpunk, complete with bodily surgery and augmentation. I'm really interested to see how the Pokémon universe and the cyberpunk aesthetic, especially since we just haven't gotten much yet.

Not much else to say, I'm looking forward to more.

chapter #1: been somewhere like this before…

he feels nothing at all.

dissociation. it's warmth and freezing cold, sound and cacophonous silence, bliss and burning pain. the sensations cycle through him with the barest of touches, there one moment and gone the next. each one pushes him further into the blue, until reality - is that reality there? behind the white dot, or within the red?

possibilities. reality's out there somewhere, his destination elsewhere, and he'll find his way once the drift is done with him.

the drift? no, the drift is just a shift, an awakening, a stepping stone. slow train at dusk, bringing him home.

his knuckles burn hotter now, the feeling distinct amidst the noise. electric. he's almost there, can almost see it, even as his eyes shut tighter and tighter.

when the sky turns solid and the vertigo catches him in a deep embrace, he remembers to breathe.



Twinleaf Town. The message floated before his eyes for half a beat before dissolving into mottled brown and forest green. No town in sight.

He took a step forwards. Then another. The world blurred around him, and he stared into the depths of the distant forest. No inviting savannah, no gentle trails, none of the welcoming comfort that past servers had afforded newcomers. This was new. This was raw, wild, dangerous.

Perfect.

His implants tingled from the artificial wind. He flexed his fingers, opened up a side menu with a tap. Checked the skill point allotments first - as much as he trusted his friends, as much as they'd delivered for him, skill points needed a personal touch.

He pumped the attack and speed stats as high as they could go, and picked out a set of techniques to invest points in - Ember, Taunt, Rock Smash and Fury Swipes. He made a mental note to splurge on Flame Wheel when he levelled up enough - the all-physical spread would be more efficient than a mixed one, but he couldn’t afford it for now. Then he turned and directed his avatar back to safety.

He found little in the town - a few motionless guides, a prompt asking him if he wanted to heal. He bought a few potions for the road, and stopped to query the guild guide before he left the smoky town.

“You need a higher level to get the Guild Tracker,” a message popped up from behind him. A private message, its account name hidden.

He didn't look around for the messenger. Instead, he asked, “Anyone in the area recruiting?” Casual, light.

"Not around the starting areas, they aren't. Clan Wake has an outpost in Jubilife, so do the Pacifidlog crowd from the third server, but they’re looking for veterans in particular."

"Doesn't work for me," he responded. Ignored the twinge of realising that he was a veteran, that he'd really been around that long. "Anyone else?"

He shifted, waiting for the response. When it came he blinked. "So you're new then, girlfriend?" Girlfriend? He opened his menu, checked the profile. Then he sighed.

He wouldn't come back with an avatar that had his face on it, obviously. So the features on the face staring back at him weren't his - they'd probably been randomised. But did he have to have that heart-shaped face on his avatar, that frame? Did he have to have a girl's avatar?

In the first instant he resolved to have words with Shawn. In the second...it wasn't ideal, but he could work past this. The face on the avatar didn't matter as much as his ability to play it, he knew that. It's my spirit on the inside, after all. The rest is pixels and noise.

The other user had logged out by the time he checked, but his last message still hovered in the air. "If you're looking for something easy, Galactic's recruiting around Floaroma, and if you beat a boss or two that's probably enough for them." Galactic - Cyrus Marsters' old team. Cyrus had left the league last season - same time I did - but his team were apparently active here.

Would there be an opening for him, if he asked? He pondered it for a second, then shook his head. If he'd wanted to hook up with another team he'd have done that. No, all he wanted was what belonged to him.

He found his way back to the town's edge. A step into the wilderness, and he dispelled the warning, the one asking him if he was sure he wanted to leave the starting area. He was sure. He hadn’t joined the Renegade server to sit around, to waste time he didn’t have. He’d come to stoke the fires.

And it was time to get to burning.



The scream tore the silence asunder.

Doubt flooded in, and his swipe came almost too slow to block the faceless Starly's lunge. He recovered just in time to blast the avatar's head off with an Ember, pushing himself up against the tree that would become his escape path. He passed two branches on the way up, climbing with quick, precise Fury Swipes that soon had him a safe distance from the ground.

The automated avatars milled through the treeline beneath him, but none of them could climb, and none of them had ranged attacks to bring him down. He was in the midst of the wilds, and still he was safe for as long as he’d like. An old trick, but a good one, and it’d been so long since he’d needed to call on it.

His reverie was broken by another scream, ripping the canopy like fabric. It wasn't the screech of the attacking constructs but a human scream. People. Players.

Trouble.

He wasn't sure why he broke cover, but he did. The Ember shot behind him gave him a boost and the lunge in Fury Swipes' animation put a little extra distance between himself and the raging avatars. Fifteen seconds in a sprint was enough to outpace the horde, and fifteen more broke their aggro, leaving him free to follow the sound from before.

“Open voice channel,” he said, as he got closer. The ambient hum of the open channel lasted a second before conversation broke through - he heard three voices, two male and one female, all low and tinged with worry.

"Came out of nowhere…"

"His voice is dead, man…"

"Raise him on the chat, maybe? He's gotta be…"

"Lost someone?" he asks, ducking into range. There was a mix of avatars there - Nidoran, Starly, Staryu, all low-levelled, clustered together in a ring.

“How you doing, girlfriend?” asked a member of the party, his voice a little too light. Trying to feign stoicism. Better than outright panic, he supposed.

"Not a girl," he spoke, his voice carrying across cyberspace to them. He waits to hear them breathe, hear them acknowledge, before he continues. "Sadly. What happened to you guys?"

"We lost Mark," said the female voice, her avatar knelt down at the forest's edge. A handful of items bobbed up and down before her, and at the right angle a Shinx' holographic specter was just barely visible amidst the green.

"Bad luck with the wilds?" he asked, craning his head to take a look. The near miss flashed behind his eyes for half a second, as the talons swiped at him from memory. He wondered if that was how it happened for them, too.

The Nidoran nodded. "Handful of them swarmed him, brought him down before we could counter. Way too fast...what're you doing here, then?"

"Training," he responded truthfully. "Grinding in the woods." Peacefully, until I was interrupted at least.

The Nidoran nodded, his avatar cycling through idle motions as he stewed in silence. The other male voice - the Staryu - spoke up. "We were planning on raiding the canopy, going after the boss up there, but Mark...he left our call when he went down and he hasn't logged back in."

"Took a break?" he asked, confused. So they were waiting for him to rejoin?

The Staryu's avatar stared at him, stock still. He'd heard people call avatars eerie before - too lifelike and yet too simulated - but the lack of a response prickled at his neck all the same. And this time, he couldn't be sure that the chill isn't just current dancing along his spine - it was too real for that.

"We have to hit it now," said the Nidoran, his voice hard. "Can't lag behind, and in a few hours it'll be gone for the day. I don't want to have to make this run tomorrow, it'll be too crowded then."

"But Mark!" the other two interjected.

"Grab his stuff, Wing," responded the Nidoran. "When we get back we'll throw it in the clan's storage, give it to him after I chew him out for logging out on us. Everyone gets surprised by wilds now and again, it's not that big a deal, but leaving like that…" He trailed off, worried he might have said too much.

"You any good?" It surprised him when the party leader speaks again, more so when he realised where the question was directed. An invite this soon? He turned on his heads-up and scanned the group once or twice, looking for a red flag or a warning. But he saw nothing but avatars a few levels higher than his, nothing to indicate skill or knowledge beyond the average.

He nodded, more to myself. Then, "I'd like to think so, yeah."

"You can fill in," said the Nidoran, his head shaking in an idle animation. "Just for now, and when Mark gets back we can work something else out."

"Any problem with me claiming some of the boss' loot?" He asked, straight up. This was the test he needed, the guarantee "If there's any Magma Piece drops, I'd like a crack at them."

"Works for me," said the party leader responded quickly, as the Staryu chuckled.

"You want Magma Pieces?" asked the water-type's player. "No dibs on new battle items?"

"Not really, no," he said, newly secure. If they really wanted battle items off a low level boss, then they wouldn't be that much better than casuals. No threat to his plans or his identity. And it was a good deal he was giving them, too - I get a party, they get carried. His avatar's face stayed smooth, which was good - his real smirk might have rattled them.

Static prickled in his fingers as he contemplated the hunt, and for a second he could hear the drift calling to him. interesting. He shook it off after a second, ignored the sparks of circuits running up against nerves, and turned to his new companions. "Wanna get moving?"

Oh snap, this is my jam.

Like, okay, first off, heck yeah, cyberpunk vibes at the beginning. Like, hello, yes, I love me some rogue dudes tinkering with cyborg tech in ways that could potentially piss off some sort of overlord. Moreover, there's just so much here that's excellent. First and foremost, that first line just grabs one's attention and yanks them in. I mean, aside from the fact that you have a literal scalpel here (as opposed to the metaphoric ones someone might be inclined to use if this were clumsily poetic, which this is not), the word choice alone is just ... spot-on. It's short, curt, and already says quite a lot about the main character. And it just launches from there, establishing not only this gritty reality full of technological implants and grime and computerized gatekeepers but also the narrator himself. For starters, he's performing surgery on himself, so that's a thing, but more than that, even when he's losing blood and jamming foreign objects into himself, he's ... precise. A little distant. Definitely a touch egotistical with that whole "half ghost and half god" thing but also self-critical enough to judge his handiwork (despite, you know, the fact that he's operating on himself). In short, the prologue is tight as hell (as in, tight in terms of word choice), with not a single word wasted. And your protagonist is downright fascinating right off the bat.

And honestly, that vibe continues right into the first chapter, although I do have to admit it takes a backseat to the worldbuilding. Not that this is a bad thing, of course! In fact, it's actually a good thing that you did that, as you've shifted the focus from the protag himself directly to what his apparent goal in cutting himself up was. Granted, yes, we still don't know why he wants to be in the game so badly that he'd jam new implants into his chest (well, aside from the whole "going home" thing—and even that's a little too vague to serve as his whole motivation), but it's ... well, the world that he's been after for what seems to be a long enough time to figure out how to cut oneself up without dying. And it's an awesome world too. Like, I don't think I've seen many people actually try to SAO a Nuzlocke—just propose it. And to be honest, it's always struck me as something that sounded like a challenge because first off, describing the tech needed to get the point across might be difficult in writing, and second, so would describing a video game. There's always a temptation to make the game edgier than it should be or going too overboard with details or worldbuilding notes. But here, there's a balance. We're shown brief glimpses of the game's interface (messages popping up here, a briefly described side menu there, voice-activated chat commands, and so on); you don't go overboard and describe the lights or the layout or push too hard to make us visualize the inside of a cyberpunk-infused Pokémon game. You give us just enough to understand and picture in our minds what's up. And even better, you do this with the background of the game too. Like ... this is a good example of using dialogue and your characters in general to convey the world to the readers. Rather than simply telling us about the clan system or about the game's history, you hint at it with that brief PM discussion—just enough for us to understand, okay, clans are going to be a problem in the future, and so will, very likely, this Cyrus Marsters. It's lightweight, brief, and allows us to get into the story without sacrificing its pacing or making us feel overwhelmed with so much information about this world all at once.

I think the only really awkward moment was the whole "girlfriend" business. I mean, reading it again, it's possible that it could read as if it's coming from a different language/culture, but I mean that I don't think many English-speaking players would call female avatars "girlfriend" all that often, you know? I know this is probably a minor nitpick, but it came up with two different characters, and it struck me as odd, if only because the first time it was used, it was almost done just to establish that the protag's using a female avatar and nothing else. The second time it happened, it was odd because it's like ... teammate just crashed out of the game (which may or may not be a bigger thing than just the kind of accidental log out we're familiar with in the MMO world), other teammate is freaking out about it, in walks a stranger, and a third teammate just kinda sidles up to stranger to go "how ya doin'" all stoic-like. On the other hand, the more I talk about this, the more I think it might also just be a cultural thing that I'm noticing this because usually—at least in American/Western gaming culture—the only time you point out a female avatar's gender or address them as "girl" is if you're intending on seeing them with their gear off, so to speak.

But! Like I said, only a nitpick, really. Otherwise, I really do feel like this is a fantastic start, with a fascinating world (I absolutely want to see more of this game) and an intriguing protag. I'm thinking this dude got banned somehow, and we're going to see all the dirty details. Also, somehow, I feel like logging out isn't necessarily a good thing. Like, I'm getting serious Matrix vibes from this, only everyone's aware, and this protag is especially not interested in going Neo on this world.

Tl;dr, will keep an eye on this!