Can we write a story that has the same kind of monster-catching and taming like Pokemon has… but without making it anime?
Let’s brainstorm, vote, and write together, because today we go where science has dared never go before!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we write a story with the same kind of monster-battling action as something like Pokemon, but making it an non-anime as possible.
After a ton of great ideas from chat, here’s the one they voted that we write: A poor kid moves into a trailer park and is sad, then finds out that in this trailer park, at night the trailers become like Gundam-style monsters that the kids all battle with.
And here’s the story that we came up with:
The first night she spent in the trailer park with her mom, Micah was woken up by a crash that shook her bed like an earthquake. Rustled around under her covers as if the small quarters of her bedroom were grabbing her and shaking her, she fell to the metal floor, snapping awake.
“Mom!” she yelled, tremors of the crash still vibrating through the walls and floor. But there was no answer. A quick glance at her phone showed that it was one in the morning, definitely not the time for Mom to be revving up the engine or anything. A bright light pierced through the blackness in her bedroom window, moving around with incredible speed. Whatever the source of the sound was, it was coming from outside.
Micah shot to her feet and dashed down the narrow hall, through the kitchenette, to the hatch to the outside. The moment she cracked it open to look, a worry hit her. She wasn’t in her safe suburban neighborhood of Springston anymore. Going outside at night, and coming in contact with the wrong people, could get her shot. Or thrown in jail. Her instincts were going to have to harden if she was going to survive until high school graduation here.
But even with the door only open a few inches, what she saw outside turned her legs to ramen noodles.
Two trailers were standing up on their back-wheels. Yes, standing. All of their lights were on, and their front-wheels were pressed against each other, whirring and smoking hot stinky rubber. Metal crunched and groaned beneath the weight of the two trailer-monsters sumo wrestling each other.
Off to the side, surrounding the two standing trailers in a circle, were the other kids from the trailer park. Micah had only briefly seen some of their faces when she and Mom had moved in earlier today. Then, all the kids had given her glares, or ignored her, but now they were all waving flashlights, brightly lighting up their excited faces.
Micah slammed the hatch shut and ran to her mother’s bedroom.
“Mom!” she yelled, throwing open the creaky door. “Holy crap, look outside!”
Mom’s bedroom was even smaller than Micah’s, with her mother having to curl up on her small cot just to fit. But the window was aimed right at the trailer battle going on outside. One of the trailers was pressing down hard against the other now, looking like it was about to slam it to the ground, like an arm wrestler finishing their opponent.
But Mom didn’t budge. She lay there, snoring, passed out after working all day at Supercuts. It had been her part time job before Dad died, but now, she was commuting to three different locations just to barely make ends meet.
Micah shook her, but nothing changed. Mom was apparently determined to stay unconscious until six a.m., no matter if literal trailer park mechas were doing battle right outside.
Another crash rattled the room around Micah, and she forgot about Mom as she looked back outside. One of the trailers had fallen on its back, shaking and squealing like a beetle. Broken glass shards and metal scraps littered the ground around it, and the other trailer pumped and revved its tires in victory.
Micah didn’t know what to do. Mom was a lost cause, as was trying to go back to bed at this point. What would she do? Curl up under the covers and pretend like this insanity wasn’t happening? She had a hard enough time getting to sleep after just watching War of the Worlds with Dad that one time.
A knock came at the hatch door. Suddenly, War of the Worlds was the least scary thing Micah could imagine.
Slowly, as if walking in a dream, she headed down the hall to the door, and opened it with a click. All of the other trailer park kids were right there, staring at her, lighting up their eager faces with flashlights.
“So,” one of the kids at the front said. He was a boy Micah’s age with a torn jacket and a bandanna around his hair. A faded patch that read Drake was on his chest. “A couple people said they saw you watching. Did you like what you saw?”
Micah stood speechless. Her mouth tried to form words, but failed. Behind the kids, the trailer that had been on its back was righting itself up, and the victorious one was giving it light nudges of encouragement with its front cabin. None of this felt real.
“Hey!” said another one of the kids. “You know the rule. If it’s your first night, you gotta fight.”
The others nodded and howled in agreement. Micah just felt her blood run cold.
“That’s right,” Drake said. “Why don’t you come out and introduce yourself.”
Micah wanted nothing more than to slam the hatch shut and run away to bed and wake up and have this all be over. But no amount of want seemed to make a difference here. All the faces watched her expectantly, especially Drake.
She stepped onto the clay ground, shrugged, and figured she might as well get this over with.
“I’m Micah,” she said, starting her introduction. “And I have no idea what the hell is going on here, but—”
Drake cut her off with a hand wave. “Not introduce yourself to us. Introduce yourself to your mobot.”
He pointed behind her, to the trailer she’d come out from. Micah gasped and covered her mouth as soon as she turned around.
The trailer had grown an eyeball where the sideview mirror was, fully white, with a pupil staring right at Micah. And it blinked at her.
She wanted to scream, but no voice came out. The shock was just so overwhelming, that it burned away all of her other functions. She could only stare at the trailer, as it stared back at her.
Around the front engine, a slit opened up like a mouth, and the trailer gave off a smoky growl, as if it were a dog trying to get its owner to play fetch. The wheels rotated back and forth slowly in anticipation, ready to kick up some dirt and speed off straight ahead.
“Go ahead,” Drake said. “Touch it. Find out its name.”
Micah was still frozen solid, but somehow her hand moved on its own accord, pressing her fingers against the cold outside of the trailer. Only it wasn’t cold. The metal was warm, and it pulsated with a faint electricity, like a pulse running through the entire beast. She could feel it expanding and contracting, small metallic creaks coming from inside with each of its steamy breaths.
This was no longer Micah and her mom’s trailer. This was Violencia, the mobot.
“Her name is Violencia,” Micah said. “I think she combined mine and my dad’s names. He was Vincent. We worked together to build her, you know. He was a crazy good mechanic.”
Drake nodded, as if everything Micah was saying made perfect sense. In a way, in her own head, it did.
“Those dreams you and your father shared,” he said. “Those are what brought Violencia to life.”
“And now!” yelled another kid, throwing her fist in the air. “Let’s see Violencia smash against some other mobots!”
Drake led Micah through the process. Violencia wheeled her way into the fighting ring, a massive circle made up of whatever the kids could find: used charcoal, empty cans, ripped boxes of Pop Tarts. When she asked how her mother was going to be safe inside while the battle took place, Violencia answered for her. She stood up on her mobot wheels, squeezed hard, and Micah’s mother popped out the back, still in her bed, and still sleeping soundly. Micah wheeled her over off to the side.
“Attention trailer park league!” announced Drake to everyone. “We have a new competitor tonight, Micah and Violencia. Who would like to give them a warm welcome by breaking them in?”
“I would,” grunted one of the trailer park kids. He stepped forward, a short, fat kid greasier than a hot dog from 7-Eleven. His face shone in the light of all the trailers and flashlights, grinning eagerly as he gripped his tight denim jacket proudly.
“All right, Goose,” Drake said. “You and Maczilla are up. Micah, you and Violencia take your places.”
Violencia eagerly drove into the ring, with Micah standing on the outside, ready to cheer her on. Across the other side, Goose was cracking his fingers as Maczilla rode into the ring too. Maczilla was nearly twice the size of Violencia, with fake jet wings screwed onto the side. It looked kind of cool, but as Micah’s dad would say, Coolness doesn’t keep your ass out of the garage.
“Micah!” Drake shouted. “Just give orders to Violencia, and don’t worry about winning. Tonight’s just for learning, got it?”
Micah nodded, but in her heart, she knew that she wanted to win. Not only to prove herself as one of the group, but to show off the power of one of the few things she and Dad had built together. Seeing Violencia come to life… Micah almost felt as if he were alive again, with her.
“Ready and go!” Drake yelled, starting the match.
Immediately, Maczilla revved toward Violencia like a speeding bull, shooting clouds of hot clay up behind it in its wake. Having only seen the end of one mobot battle before, Micah didn’t know what to do, so she shouted the only thing that made sense.
“Violencia! Jump up and take it.”
At her command, Violencia shot up on her back wheels, holding herself diagonal up to the sky. Maczilla slammed into her undercarriage, pushing her toward the edge of the ring but no further. Despite all Maczilla’s revving, Violencia wouldn’t budge the last bit.
Micah didn’t even need to command her for what to do next. Violencia shifted to the side, bringing her heavy body back to the ground with a crash, then sped forward, away. Maczilla nearly shot over the boundary himself from his pent up speed, but caught himself at the last second, and cranked it in reverse.
Micah needed a plan, something to do to beat the bigger mobot. She racked her brain for an idea, but all that came to her were her dad’s words again: Coolness doesn’t keep your ass out of the garage.
Then, she realized, that was it. It was time for some ass indeed!
“Violencia!” Micah shouted. “Whack him right behind that stupid wing, while he’s reversing!”
Violencia pulled a hot u-turn, skidding in the clay dirt, rushing straight toward Maczilla. The bigger mobot had just finished reversing and was about to change direction, when Violencia whacked into it, head on, right in its weak spot.
The waste container.
A horrific explosion of liquids shot out from the side of Maczilla, spraying through the air, thick with the smell of old feces. The wave of goo sailed over Maczilla, coating it in the waste, and lapped up against Goose, standing on the outside. The other kids ran away from him, but Goose just stood there, taking the steady stream like a champ, until nothing of his skin was visible anymore. He was more poop than boy at that point.
“I forfeit the match,” Goose said, streams of thick sludge dripping down his face and jacket.
With that, Maczilla’s stream weakened to only a slight gurgle, and Micah was the winner. This may have only been her first mobot fight, and she didn’t really have any idea what was going on, but she still jumped in the air, throwing her fist, and yelling for joy.
“Nice work, Violencia!” she shouted. The mobot slowly wheeled its way back to her, the front windshield splashed with a few puddles of brown sludge that would need to be cleaned. But that was a problem for tomorrow-Micah.
“Well done, Micah and Violencia!” Drake said from the center of the ring. “It’s not often that a first timer wins, but—”
“Well, well, well,” came a new voice. All heads turned to a collection of encroaching bright lights. It was a group of mobots, nice ones at that, each one even bigger than Maczilla, shined to a pristine finish. Riding atop the one at the front was a boy with rolled-up polo sleeves and a disheveled tie, glaring down with his big ears and slicked-back hair.
Oh no, Miach thought to herself.
“Oh get out of here,” Drake growled at the newcomers. The new group of mobots stopped right at the edge of the ring, and the disheveled-tie boy slid down the front of his beast, landing on his feet.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Drake. Others began to exit their mobots behind him. Most were dressed like him, the boys in collared shirts and the girls in fancy skirts. All of them with condescending smirks. “You can’t handle a little real competition?”
Drake snorted a laugh. “Real? Please. You all bought those mobots off poor kids, the ones with real dreams, big enough to power them. Your weak-ass dreams couldn’t power a toaster.”
“Well at least we can afford proper sanitation,” the boy said, pinching his nose. “What happened here? I know beans are poor-people food, but honestly, control yourselves.”
“We had a newcomer today,” Drake said, nodding toward Micah. “She had a bit of a unique strategy, you could say.”
The boy turned to Micah, and yet again, she felt herself freeze up. But not in fear or terror this time, in anger.
“Well, well,” the boy said, smiling at Micah. “That makes sense, I suppose. I didn’t expect you to revel with the fecal matter so quickly when you left, Micah, but I suppose it suits you well.”
Micah clenched her fists together, but Drake stepped in between her and the boy.
“You know this guy?” he asked her. Micah nodded. She wished she didn’t, but she did.
“He’s Bruce,” she said, sighing. “My ex-boyfriend.”
…well, we tried to write it non-anime, okay!
To be fair, we learned an important lesson when writing this story. Even if a restriction can help get your creativity flowing, if the story pulls you in a different direction, let it.
The restriction of “non-anime” is what got us the cool idea for trailer-park-mecha, but as we wrote the story, it practically begged to be pulled back in an anime-direction with big battles and whatnot, so we gave in.
And that’s not a bad thing! When a story starts to have a life of it’s own, it should be embraced. So even if you start writing a story about a space station with no romance… but then a romance starts to develop, go for it!
Don’t hold yourself to arbitrary restrictions, even if that arbitrary restriction is what inspired your story. You don’t get more points for writing a story with a restriction, so just make it the best that you can.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso