Upon arriving in Sinnoh, Michael took to the rest of his group fairly easily. Though he'd only had his four humans and Janet before, he was in the same boat with these people, and they clearly all needed each other. He even made a special effort to be nice to them! What he didn't take easily to was the concept of Pokemon. He'd never so much as encountered a living animal before, and these ones had lost their personalities entirely, so while he was willing to tote his around and feed it and all that, he didn't initially really give a shit.
The emotions and willpower of every living thing in Sinnoh had been erased, and the group was given the task of traveling to the three lakes to help the gods living there, who might be able to make things better. Along the way, Michael wandered into some guy's house because he has no regard for laws or boundaries. Though he initially totally disregarded the guy, he ended up chatting with him some and realizing that some of the people were still locked into the emotional troubles they'd had before, just with no ability to process it. The man, whose name was Liam, said that Team Galactic had taken his daughter, so Michael promised to see if he could find her, and thus began the first of his personal sidequests.
The group traveled to the next town and confronted one of Team Galactic's admins, Saturn. Michael proceeded to lecture him about ethics over the course of a dinner, and then everybody left. He'd grown closer to several of the group during the course of that trip, and so was very upset when the first of them vanished (due to being dropped from the game). He drew closer to his particular friends in response, particularly Jake, Camilla, and Zelda, and through imitating them started to bond more with his Pokemon as well.
Next they went to one of the lakes and met Liam's daughter Maylene, who had been brainwashed by Team Galactic but was fighting it all the time and being a thorn in their side. Michael took to her immediately, and agreed that he would try to find her friend Candice, because Michael's personal sidequests have multiple stops.
The group spent several weeks traveling to the far north. Michael learned that he hated the cold, and also experienced a human illness for the first time. He also met an ancient Pokemon god in a temple and upset everyone present by being completely irreverent, naming it "Big Blinky", and teaching it to do a thumbs-up. They also encountered another Galactic admin, Jupiter; the encounter went worse this time, but on Michael's end, the most important thing was that he learned that some ghost Pokemon are actually the departed souls of humans! Michael, being from the afterlife and also having come to regret some of the things he did there, decided that it was now his responsibility to see to the ghosts. He caught a Gastly to help him, and proceeded to chat with, feed, and Disney Princess all over all the local ghosts in every location they went for the rest of the game.
During a group meeting, he also casually stated that he would be preceding the rest of the group into all possibly-mortal danger, and got yelled at by all his friends. He thought it was only logical for the immortal to take the brunt of the risk, but the strength and sincerity of the response cowed him a bit.
In reaching the second lake, the entire group was nearly frozen to death by two angry Pokemon. They then met the local god, Uxie, who was upset about having been tortured and had accidentally wiped Candice's memory in response. Michael, familiar with doing both of these things, identified strongly. He was also badly shaken by the near-death experience; despite being a leader and caretaker of his humans at home, this really made it sink in that he was now pretty powerless to protect his friends from danger. He ended up freaking out at Jake about it, and Jake gave him some...somewhat questionable wisdom about how humans just kinda have to deal with the possibility of their loved ones dying all the time.
One of the next major stops was Canalave City, where Michael immediately ran afoul of Darkrai, the Pokemon god of nightmares. He was knocked unconscious and had an extremely vivid dream about being lost and unable to find his friends, while the memories of them were slowly stolen from his mind. As this was his first actual experience with dreaming like a human would, he was extremely upset when he woke up, enough to freak out the people he ran to for comfort, since Michael generally never shows that kind of vulnerability. They were all very kind to him. Left anxious and aimless after this encounter, he decided that he should try to take better care of the humans like they did him, and started teaching himself how to bake.
The next major encounter was with the last lake god: Mesprit, the god of emotions. It wanted to have a real heart-to-heart with everyone before it let them help it. Michael being Michael, this was a problem. Faced with his own unwillingness to admit to vulnerabilities and also his total lack of emotional intellgence, he reverted to some old habits and picked a verbal fight with Mesprit. The rest of the group could only hear his side of the conversation, so they thought Mesprit had insulted him, and promptly began piling on compliments. In the end, Michael ended up frustrated, overstimulated, and flustered by the entire experience. He took some time staying away from the rest of the group, trying to sort out his feelings and why he felt them, and again Jake was extremely helpful just by being patient enough to talk him through stuff.
Around this point, the group was intercepted by Galactic Leader Cyrus, who caused another apocalypse. Yay!
Despite his intentions, the group survived, but all the changes they'd wrought in Sinnoh were undone. Michael got over himself enough to try reaching out to comfort them, to mixed results. The next three months largely consisted of tracking down the Galactic admins, talking them down, and freeing the gods they held bound. Somewhere in there, Michael went and visited Liam again, finally closing the chain on that particular quest.
As far as Michael goes, this was a lot of being Uncomfortably Faced with his own past sins. A lot of what Team Galactic did - manipulating people's memories and emotions, torturing people, rebooting the entire damn universe over and over as plans continued to fail - was eerily reminiscent of his own actions. While he had no desire to return to his old ways, he'd also never really confronted any of the things he'd done. Things had been hectic, and Michael's always had a tendency to ignore the past in favor of the future. Being faced with the suffering victims of similar treatment kinda brought things home. Combined with some time to think when things weren’t constantly high-tension, he started to focus a little more on trying to make amends in some way for things he’s done in the past. Appointing himself Ghost Caretaker was part of that. With the new freedom provided by having a guaranteed safe dimension to keep his people in, though, he’s starting to form new grandiose plans about possibly liberating everyone from hell. None of that’s gone anywhere yet, but he’s workshopping it.
Making a wider network of friends made him a little bit less desperately dependent on his original social circle, yet spending so much time with mortals made him a lot more keenly protective of everybody he cared about. Despite getting yelled at repeatedly, he continued to put his frail old man body between the group and every sign of danger they encountered.
He also gained an appreciation for talking out conflict that he hadn’t had at all before, simply because of how everyone just yelled at Team Galactic over and over until they stopped. In the end, the day was saved by just offering Cyrus sympathy and also repeatedly pointing out how he’d failed to address his own issues in any kind of emotionally intelligent manner. Michael, who also has no emotional intelligence and tends to freak out all over everything when a vulnerability is pointed out, came really close to learning something from this? It was the very end of the game, so it remains to be seen if any of that sank in or if he’s just not going to be that self-aware. At any rate, he's at least learned to be more considerate; that was something he was learning already, but the task of having to befriend total strangers meant that he accidentally pushed peoples' buttons with his general callousness a lot more, so he quickly figured out that he should be more gentle at times.
no subject
The emotions and willpower of every living thing in Sinnoh had been erased, and the group was given the task of traveling to the three lakes to help the gods living there, who might be able to make things better. Along the way, Michael wandered into some guy's house because he has no regard for laws or boundaries. Though he initially totally disregarded the guy, he ended up chatting with him some and realizing that some of the people were still locked into the emotional troubles they'd had before, just with no ability to process it. The man, whose name was Liam, said that Team Galactic had taken his daughter, so Michael promised to see if he could find her, and thus began the first of his personal sidequests.
The group traveled to the next town and confronted one of Team Galactic's admins, Saturn. Michael proceeded to lecture him about ethics over the course of a dinner, and then everybody left. He'd grown closer to several of the group during the course of that trip, and so was very upset when the first of them vanished (due to being dropped from the game). He drew closer to his particular friends in response, particularly Jake, Camilla, and Zelda, and through imitating them started to bond more with his Pokemon as well.
Next they went to one of the lakes and met Liam's daughter Maylene, who had been brainwashed by Team Galactic but was fighting it all the time and being a thorn in their side. Michael took to her immediately, and agreed that he would try to find her friend Candice, because Michael's personal sidequests have multiple stops.
The group spent several weeks traveling to the far north. Michael learned that he hated the cold, and also experienced a human illness for the first time. He also met an ancient Pokemon god in a temple and upset everyone present by being completely irreverent, naming it "Big Blinky", and teaching it to do a thumbs-up. They also encountered another Galactic admin, Jupiter; the encounter went worse this time, but on Michael's end, the most important thing was that he learned that some ghost Pokemon are actually the departed souls of humans! Michael, being from the afterlife and also having come to regret some of the things he did there, decided that it was now his responsibility to see to the ghosts. He caught a Gastly to help him, and proceeded to chat with, feed, and Disney Princess all over all the local ghosts in every location they went for the rest of the game.
During a group meeting, he also casually stated that he would be preceding the rest of the group into all possibly-mortal danger, and got yelled at by all his friends. He thought it was only logical for the immortal to take the brunt of the risk, but the strength and sincerity of the response cowed him a bit.
In reaching the second lake, the entire group was nearly frozen to death by two angry Pokemon. They then met the local god, Uxie, who was upset about having been tortured and had accidentally wiped Candice's memory in response. Michael, familiar with doing both of these things, identified strongly. He was also badly shaken by the near-death experience; despite being a leader and caretaker of his humans at home, this really made it sink in that he was now pretty powerless to protect his friends from danger. He ended up freaking out at Jake about it, and Jake gave him some...somewhat questionable wisdom about how humans just kinda have to deal with the possibility of their loved ones dying all the time.
One of the next major stops was Canalave City, where Michael immediately ran afoul of Darkrai, the Pokemon god of nightmares. He was knocked unconscious and had an extremely vivid dream about being lost and unable to find his friends, while the memories of them were slowly stolen from his mind. As this was his first actual experience with dreaming like a human would, he was extremely upset when he woke up, enough to freak out the people he ran to for comfort, since Michael generally never shows that kind of vulnerability. They were all very kind to him. Left anxious and aimless after this encounter, he decided that he should try to take better care of the humans like they did him, and started teaching himself how to bake.
The next major encounter was with the last lake god: Mesprit, the god of emotions. It wanted to have a real heart-to-heart with everyone before it let them help it. Michael being Michael, this was a problem. Faced with his own unwillingness to admit to vulnerabilities and also his total lack of emotional intellgence, he reverted to some old habits and picked a verbal fight with Mesprit. The rest of the group could only hear his side of the conversation, so they thought Mesprit had insulted him, and promptly began piling on compliments. In the end, Michael ended up frustrated, overstimulated, and flustered by the entire experience. He took some time staying away from the rest of the group, trying to sort out his feelings and why he felt them, and again Jake was extremely helpful just by being patient enough to talk him through stuff.
Around this point, the group was intercepted by Galactic Leader Cyrus, who caused another apocalypse. Yay!
Despite his intentions, the group survived, but all the changes they'd wrought in Sinnoh were undone. Michael got over himself enough to try reaching out to comfort them, to mixed results. The next three months largely consisted of tracking down the Galactic admins, talking them down, and freeing the gods they held bound. Somewhere in there, Michael went and visited Liam again, finally closing the chain on that particular quest.
As far as Michael goes, this was a lot of being Uncomfortably Faced with his own past sins. A lot of what Team Galactic did - manipulating people's memories and emotions, torturing people, rebooting the entire damn universe over and over as plans continued to fail - was eerily reminiscent of his own actions. While he had no desire to return to his old ways, he'd also never really confronted any of the things he'd done. Things had been hectic, and Michael's always had a tendency to ignore the past in favor of the future. Being faced with the suffering victims of similar treatment kinda brought things home. Combined with some time to think when things weren’t constantly high-tension, he started to focus a little more on trying to make amends in some way for things he’s done in the past. Appointing himself Ghost Caretaker was part of that. With the new freedom provided by having a guaranteed safe dimension to keep his people in, though, he’s starting to form new grandiose plans about possibly liberating everyone from hell. None of that’s gone anywhere yet, but he’s workshopping it.
Making a wider network of friends made him a little bit less desperately dependent on his original social circle, yet spending so much time with mortals made him a lot more keenly protective of everybody he cared about. Despite getting yelled at repeatedly, he continued to put his frail old man body between the group and every sign of danger they encountered.
He also gained an appreciation for talking out conflict that he hadn’t had at all before, simply because of how everyone just yelled at Team Galactic over and over until they stopped. In the end, the day was saved by just offering Cyrus sympathy and also repeatedly pointing out how he’d failed to address his own issues in any kind of emotionally intelligent manner. Michael, who also has no emotional intelligence and tends to freak out all over everything when a vulnerability is pointed out, came really close to learning something from this? It was the very end of the game, so it remains to be seen if any of that sank in or if he’s just not going to be that self-aware. At any rate, he's at least learned to be more considerate; that was something he was learning already, but the task of having to befriend total strangers meant that he accidentally pushed peoples' buttons with his general callousness a lot more, so he quickly figured out that he should be more gentle at times.