Tried So Hard And Got So Far
A Human Veteran's Lamentations of a Life Lived
By Iron Valiant-anon
Author's Note: After much consideration, feedback, and self-loathing, I decided this story will have to become part of a much larger piece of writing and be rewritten in general to better explain details I have stumbled over or failed to emphasize on in what's essentially a very slapdash abridgement of Turk's backstory. I decided to leave this up for the sake of clarity and because it's not necessarily a non-canon story, just poorly explained to my and the character's detriment.
Please read Aura Dog Day instead for a better introductory to Turk that doesn't overburden with exposition written in a poorly moderated stream of consciousness.
I watched blindly as the verdant scenery passed me by on the wagon. Has it really been almost 15 years since I arrived, since everything happened? Time sure flies when you're sleeping in ditches and alleyways...
I remember it like it was yesterday, because the world won't let me forget. When the entire land places you on a pedestal because of your origins and the hopeful tales of ancient prophecy, you're doing your best to keep that illusion up unless you're wanting to risk losing a lot of support and momentum for that very purpose in the first place.
I sure nailed that last part. I'm maybe getting a little ahead of myself here...
The name's Turquoise, or Turk for short. I'm a human, or at least I was a long time ago. Now I'm something called a Lucario, which is typically a blue, walking, talking dog, but the caveat with me is that I have titular turquoise fur, and these days I look like I went through a wood chipper... There'll be more on that later. I was transported to the Pokemon World by the bastardly machinations of fate to become a messiah for the archeological and mining community of Stover City, partially nestled in the craggy depths of the Skyridge Mountains. From a glance, you wouldn't know the peeking structures rising above the ground were the tips of great spires that went underground. It was quite a mesmerizing place.
There was an ancient seer known as the Jewel Pokemon, Diancie, who foretold of my arrival long before I tumbled across space and time into the depths of what is known as a Mystery Dungeon. They are labyrinthine structures made of reality-defying arrangements in the environment that are full of violent, illusory Pokemon, hidden traps, and countless treasures. Naturally, such anomalies make up a cornerstone of the world's culture and economy. It was a good thing because it's what allowed my former partner and best companion, Charcadet, to find me.
"Wow, you're a human? You're joking. You almost look like any other Riolu! ...You don't remember your name? Ah... Hold that thought; this'll probably feel weird for a moment."The little spry and cheery armored creature administered a poultice of some sort to a bad cut I sustained to my leg while wandering the dungeon alone, enduring all kinds of feral Pokemon and traps. I probably would have perished long before Charcadet had found me if I hadn't stumbled my way into him. I shuddered in discomfort as the Oran berry juice and herb mixture did its thing. He helped pull me to my feet and patted me on the back. "Come on, the exit should be only one more floor away. We'll think of a name for you on the way!"
I was introduced to the Exacadrill Company, a Pokemon guild of miners, archeologists, explorers, and adventurers who plundered the mystery dungeons that manifested deep beneath the ground. It was led by the company's namesake, Foreman Excadrill, a large mole-like Pokemon with a gruff but cheery disposition who was constantly trying to beat the guild's yearly quota on resources. It was one of the Grass Continent's major sources of emera. They are magical gems that manifest within certain dungeon environments and could be set inside special looplet accessories to harness their powers. I quickly made many friends and explored the continent's many scenic locales as a member of the company. My legacy in the Pokemon World was being written with every footstep.
"Well, crack my stones. It's right here! This tablet here says a young Pokemon with an unusual color would be found in the Omenfall Vaults beneath the city! But that place was sealed for centuries! I swore we had a few more of these slabs lying around here..." Foreman Exacadrill sets the ornate crystalline slab back on a table of similar artifacts. He looked toward me with an assuring smile. "Well, lad, it doesn't matter where you actually came from, legend or not. What do you say about joining us? Charcadet vouches for you, and I'd trust him like a son! Trust me, you'll love it here! We'll be like one big family!" I rubbed my paws together anxiously, gazing at the confines of the archive room before nodding excitedly at the big mole-like Pokemon. He laughed boisterously as he led me back into the main hall by my paw.
With my arrival presumably written in stone, I felt a sense of pride and empowerment that I had never felt before in my miserable life. As a human, I was to be a 'gifted child' with great expectations for my skills. I burned out pretty quickly from those high expectations as my mental health failed from the stress, and I dropped out of school in short order and became a social pariah to the world. I spent my time getting fucked up on drugs, drinking, playing video games, and shitposting on 4chan during what was probably the height of the website's history. I was an anon with the worst of them. Was being reborn as a Riolu in this world a second chance to make up for a wasted life?
I wish that was the case...
As the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, the destiny of my arrival slowly became more clear as more prophecies of my role were found within the confines of the dungeons. I was apparently chosen to lead a team of explorers to stop the release of creatures known as Ultra Beasts. Ages ago, the Ultra Beasts were conjured from across the rifts of reality through wormholes by a mad king to become their harbingers of authority and destruction. The king's machinations were stopped and his Ultra Beasts sent back into the realm known as Ultra Space. A cult of Pokemon lead by a Kingambit claiming to be the heir of this forgotten Sternenschwert Kingdom was aspiring to continue the past king's work and regain their former glory. We had to stop them before this threat was unleashed upon our world. We fought adamantly and bravely. Many sacrifices were made that further emboldened our cause. We had become Team Dynamis, composed of my brave best friend Charcadet, the strong, reliable Mudkip, the smart, resourceful Sprigatito, and I as a scruffy Riolu with a fighter's spirit and positive attitude. Our journey returned us to where it all began, where I was first found deep within the dungeon known as the Omenfall Vaults underneath Skyridge Mountain.
It was there where that that dreaded confrontation happened...
"Ah, little Turk and his sniveling guilders have arrived, right on time as usual. Once again, you've come to try and stop my aspirations. You're too late, once and for all." The party stood before the heir apparent to the lost Sternenschwert Kingdom, Kingambit VIII. The Pokemon stroked and sharpened his bladed hand against the equally sharp edges of his mustache as he looked down upon us from the tall altar in the ancient and ornate chamber, adorned with glowing symbols and murals alluding to the mysteries of the Ultra Beasts and their place in our universe. "With the Ultra Prism finally in my possession, I will be able to open a ultra wormhole between dimensions and bring the most powerful of Ultra Beasts under my control. The Prism Pokemon, Necrozma!" Charcadet stamped his foot and furrowed his fiery eyes at the power-hungry Pokemon. "You can't control them without the eclipse crystals we took from you! It'll just consume you like it did your ancestors and your kingdom!" Each of us drew out a black crystal that shimmered with inner light from our persons and raised them as a show of our unity and conviction against Kingambit's madness. He looked perturbed as he held the orb high. "Silence! I do not need those trinkets! With this soul looplet empowered by the energy of all the Ultra Beasts you laid low, I'll have more than enough power to subdue Necrozma under my command! Behold my ascension as once and forever king!" The false king jammed the prism into a recess in the altar, awakening ancient magic that lit up the entire structure and unshackled the binds something that should have been long forgotten.
In a spectacle of blinding kaleidoscopic light, the altar chamber's walls and ceiling were consumed by an otherworldly plane of existence filled with swirling stars and nebulae. Ultra Space was bleeding through into the dungeon itself. Floating in the middle of the void where the altar was the dormant form of a massive Pokemon of black crystalline matter of extra-dimensional origin. It had a visage made of multi-colored fragments of light that were dull and unaware. It was Necrozma, the Prism Pokemon. Its eyes suddenly flared to life with color as its body slowly shook off a sleep of over several thousand years. It let out an earsplitting roar that vibrated the very space around us. Kingambit VIIII laughed maniacally as the scene unfolded. "Yes... YES! RISE NECROZMA, RISE AND BE MINE!" He held up his wrist, holding the loopet around it skyward toward Necrozma, unleashing its power alongside the glowing Ultra Sphere in an attempt to bind the Pokemon to his will. Try as he might, Necrozma's will was stronger than that of the artificial power the pretender king had made for himself with his family's stolen riches and the blood, sweat, and tears he spilled of the countless Pokemon under his servitude. Necrozma reared back, eating the very stars out of the sky as it charged up its power and blasted Kingambit in a single onslaught of blinding prismatic laser beams. "No... NO! NOT LIKE THIS! NOT LIKE THIS! GUWWAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
I recall looking onward in horror at what we were facing. This entity could absorb the light around it and funnel it into a very powerful weapon. We may have been way over our heads and under-prepared for something of this magnitude. I was so confident until that moment, too. We sent so many of these monsters back to where they came from until this point. Why was it that until this moment I felt unease? "Fuck! We have to stop this here and now! Everyone gets in position! We need to charge the crystals to call forth both Solgaleo and Lunala! They should be able to suppress Necrozma long enough for us to deal the finishing blows! Charcadet, we'll surround the northern corners! Sprigatito, Mudkip, you take the south! We need to summon both at once, or this won't work! Stay on the offensive, these crystals should charge from all the energy we both use and take! Use everything we have at our disposals! This is the last battle! We'll win this... We have to!" We gave a final salute to one another before we broke into combat.
We charged into the fray, dodging lasers and swiping claws. Fatal rainbows of color threatened to eliminate us at the subatomic level as we ran across a glassy horizon of stars and planets. I pelted the Prism Pokemon's crystal hide with aura blasts as Charcadet unleashed strikes of flame into its face. Sprigatito unearthed vines that bore down upon the monster's limbs to restrain it. Mudkip sheared into Necrozma with pressurized beams of water to bring the legendary Pokemon low. Our crystals began to slowly charge from the stellar energies as we fought. All felt like it would go according to plan until Charcadet was struck down into a crumpled heap by a mistimed evasive maneuver, while the others were gradually pinned down by constant showers of laser energy in retaliation for our actions. Charcadet would die right then and there, along with our chances of stopping this threat. In a panic, I ran toward the emera loopet that lay beside the smoldering mark where Kingambit VIII once stood in a grudge-filled defiance of the entire world. I scooped up the looplet and slapped it onto my left arm. It dawned on Sprigatito and Mudkip what I was about to do and they screamed at me to stop. I had to do something, anything...
I threw my eclipse crystal towards my other team mates to protect it as I activated the looplet's power and screamed bloody murder as my veins felt like they were on fire. I defied the evolutionary course of any Pokemon and ascended past a Riolu into that of a Mega Lucario as the modified emera forced energy out of me that was not typically available for use. Leaping at near terminal velocity, I intercepted Necrozma's giant fists and put fractures into its obsidian surface with punches and strikes filled with emotions for my first true friend's life. Charcadet slowly regained consciousness only to watch in shock the scene that was unfolding. A Mega Lucario remniscent of the Riolu he only just saw moments earlier with crazed eyes was single-handedly holding back a titan of a Pokemon as aura tangibly perspired from my flesh in a blue haze. "TURQUOISE! NO! PLEASE STOP YOU DON'T NEED TO DO THIS!" The empowered emera continued to drain me of energy into direct volatile force. It was a shortcut with a heavy cost. I was killing myself to give everyone else the time they needed to prepare without me. In a moment of awareness I looked back at Charcadet's teary eyes as he reached out at me. We were heroes, weren't we?
I taken off guard and was struck down against the floor with a bone-shattering crunch as stones splintered around me. I was hoisted up by my left arm as Necrozma stared me down with its flickering eyes. I could tell it hated every fiber of my being and wished to rip those very fibers from me. It then grabbed and wrenched my left leg at the same time, twisting and pulling as its body glowed with the energy it had absorbed from the stars once more. I howled like the dying hound I was being reduced to as I fought back against the crushing pressure of a literal all-enveloping void of darkness made manifest. I heard my flesh rip and my bones splinter beneath the skin as blood misted out of me. The pain was too much to bear and I was fading fast. I used my free arm to unleash a Meteor Mash into Necrozma's face to try and give everyone just a few moments longer. It did not take kindly to my attempts to survive and blasted me with searing rays of light. Everything went white, and then black. As the overwhelming pain and injury made my body shut down, I heard the proud roar of a lion and the screeching cry of a bat. Did my colleagues succeed? Will we win?
I would later wake up under the care of a nomadic tribe of worldly Pokenomads who traveled across the Skyridge Mountains and the world abroad. I was told I was dropped off by a group of friendly scavenging Pokemon who found me mortally wounded not far from a fissure in the ground by the scent of my blood. My wounds were apparently already roughly cared for to but it looked like I was abandoned in a hurry. I still wonder if it was one of my teammates that tended to me. Did that mean they survived? The shock to my body and soul simultaneously took some time to accept. I had been restored from my Mega form and was now a Lucario. I was far from an exemplary example of one though. My left leg was gone at the knee, my left arm at the elbow, and I was completely blind, with only the feeblest control of my aura to perceive anything around me due to how harsh the effect of the looplet's awakening was on me. I dared not use it ever since. My flesh was marred with wounds and burns as a testament to what I was reduced to. It would take ages to heal, and probably to not full effect.. It was nothing short of a miracle how I managed to not die. With no other options, I set out to ride on a caravan the Grass Continent with the Pokenomads as I healed, and hopefully to learn about what happened back in Stover City.
From what little I was able to learn, neither Stover City or the Excadrill Company existed following that battle. No one had any knowledge of these places and acted as if I made them up in my head following the trauma I endured. In that region's place was instead a deep cavernous gorge that dropped into the depths of the earth like an all consuming maw. I couldn't understand at the time what had happened. It was like everything I experienced up until now simply wasn't true. To the contrary of whether this was real or not, there were other survivors like me. They were not my allies. They were the remaining vassals of Kingambit VIII's Sternenschwert cult.
I suffered at least a few attempts on my life by Pokemon with nefarious tricks and deceit. I thankfully found sympathy and protection from the nomads who cared for me during my stay with them. I honed my strength and aura, despite my crippled body, as best I could, growing strong enough to make it on my own. During my stay with the nomads, I fell back into an old coping mechanism I had as a human in the form of drugs and drinks that were offered on my journey. Various exotic herbs passed through my lungs as fermented berries passed through my stomach and liver. I felt myself grow numb to the world and turned inward, using the high as a way to empower and strengthen my aura through years of intoxicated meditation and martial training. I became a more capable Lucario than my damaged appearance would present, although I can't say with honesty whether my mind had come out just as intact. I eventually left the nomads with some new apparel to hide the worst of my injuries, and a custom fitted prosthetic leg that worked on some sort of exotic spring-powered ingenuity. I continued my trek across the land alone ever since, taking up what work I could without a guild affiliation while fighting and avoiding those that still sought my death. Even with how long I managed to live like this, I doubted I could keep it up forever.
And that has led us here. I step off the wagon being towed by a Tauros, giving him a tip of what few Poke coins I had left to his fee satchel in appreciation for the smooth ride and not setting off a migraine. He snorted and smiled in appreciation as he trotted off while I looked toward my new destination. My aura senses use the volume of the life force in the air to gauge the shapes and depth of everything around me. The sign before me apparently said Capim Town.
I wonder if they have vagrancy laws here too... Maybe a nice cold drink and somewhere to sleep that isn't a hole.