Killing them wouldn't matter unless we cared about them; I have the twin benefits of fanon and canon to help people care, but even so it was tricky to do. I had a lot of trouble. But I'm glad I did it, it opened up so much, some of which I haven't even touched in this story or in outlines for continuations.

I'm really surprised that no one has ever taken on Pokémon cloning or hacking before. I mean, you can digitize living beings and then get them out the other end. What's to say you couldn't make copies and screw with their stats and do who knows what to them? And Giovanni would be all over that. And so I had to try it. I'm glad you think I did it well!

I don't think trans is the only way to handle how N doesn't fit into Unovan gender roles, but it works, and Pokémon doesn't have any canonically trans characters I can think of. I hadn't actually realized this was a thing other people thought, I just... it made sense to me? I am glad that it worked for you.

Handling Silver's anger was really hard and I am still not sure I got it quite right. He's furious, he's livid, but he's also spent the last fifteen years with Kotone learning not to let his anger overtake him, learning to respond by bending instead of breaking, and now when it's almost appropriate to break he is just curling up into a ball instead. But still trying, because for all that he is insecure and terrified, he wants to do right. To me the most important part of this story and the reason I felt like I could end it here was that Silver got from being in complete shock to choosing a path forward --- not having it pushed on him by Looker, not running away from Cynthia, not blindly following his father. And Julie, for all that she's also damaged, is a huge catalyst for that.

I love Cynthia so much. Cynthia is my favorite everything. :) I am glad you do too!

Thanks so much for reading and for your comments! I am really glad you enjoyed this story and hope that you enjoy any continuation I do as well.