Submitted by: FallaffaTheLamaQueen
Claimed by: UnisonRaider

Title: In Your Shadow

Plot:

Rhine is your normal, average, everyday Vulpix. Her battling skills are maybe a bit above average, but that's common on her trainer's farm. In any other circumstance, that would be perfectly fine, but now it isn't. Rhine's brother, Riko, is a shiny, which means that he gets all the attention and special treatment and love that he wants, while Rhine is left behind in the dust. Even though the two of them are twins, Riko even got to evolve first into a beautiful Ninetales with luxurious grey and blue fur.

An alternate idea could be to make Riko younger than Rhine, which could contribute to her jealousy and make Rhine's dislike even stronger since it would mean that she used to have a caring trainer before he was born. He stole her trainer away from her. Riko's evolution could also be an event in the story, with Rhine noting that he went to having kind of ugly colors to being beautiful. This farm is probably somewhere in Kanto, since all of the Pokémon mentioned in this summary originate from the Kanto region.

Because of her neglect, Rhine finds friendship in the other Pokémon of the farm, an ever rotating cast because the others often go away to trainers who paid the breeders on the farm for a specific Pokémon. Rhine wishes that she could go away as well, to a trainer who will actually love her, but since she has a trainer already, she knows that's never going to happen. She's stuck to a Poké Ball, able to be tracked if she ever tries to run away. So she just fights and trains with the other Pokémon in the farm, trying to get stronger so that maybe someday her trainer will realize her true worth.

At some point later in the story, a battle between Rhine and Riko could take place, with Rhine winning because Riko has no idea how to battle. He's being trained to be a contest Pokemon who exclusively performs in the performance round rather than the battle round. After this, Rhine gets in trouble with their trainer for potentially hurting Riko, and Riko doesn't understand, since he actually had a lot of fun during the battle. That night in secret, Riko sneaks into the pen where Rhine is being kept as a punishment and asks her to train him to battle, since he thought it was a lot of fun. More fun than contests anyway. It's up to the writer whether or not Rhine agrees and can coincide with whatever ending the author picks.

Later on, Riko is set to perform in a contest alongside a Rhydon meant to be for the battle round, but he gets really bad stage fright. This is his first contest, and he's never performed in front of so many people before. He gets cold feet and runs off in fear, leaving their trainer to go look for him. Rather than getting in trouble, he gets coddled for the next few days because he was such a scared little boy, and he's so coddled. (Alternately he could be punished for the first time, leading him to like contests even less and maybe contributing to the second ending.) This story can end a couple of possible ways:

1.) Rhine manages to make her trainer realize that she has worth as a battler, and she and Riko manage to repair the rift that they've formed as siblings. Rhine would enter contests as a battler alongside Riko as a performer, who's managed to get over his stage fright.

2.) Rhine manages to destroy her own Poké Ball and run away from her neglectful trainer to live in the wild or find a new trainer. Depending on whether or not she decided to train with Riko and whether or not she still dislikes him, she could take him with her, destroying his Poké Ball as well, since he clearly doesn't like being in contests, and she hates him slightly less. Originally, there was a planned sequel to go along with this ending where Riko is the main character and he has to adapt to living in the wild and avoid being captured by poachers, but the writer doesn't have to do anything with that if they don't want to.

Character(s):

Rhine: She is a normally colored Vulpix with slightly above average battling skill, she dislikes her littermate, Riko, for getting so much more attention than her and tends to make it apparent in the way she acts around him

Riko: He is a shiny Ninetales who always gets the attention of their trainer, he is a bit vain but otherwise very kind and sometimes slightly dumb, he doesn't understand why his sister seems to dislike him so much, he could also be slightly feminine as a result of how his trainer raised him to be a beautiful Ninetales

Unnamed Trainer: A trainer who gives more attention and love to Riko than Rhine, to the point where Rhine feels neglected and unloved. There may be other Pokémon characters as well, since it takes place on a farm where Pokémon breeders breed strong Pokémon for other trainers.

Setting:

Kanto, a farm

Genre:
Poké-centric