“How to Excel at Containing Devastation for Fun and Profit” – Armando Pedraza, Headmaster of Suocé's Lega Runa Battle Tower.

Entry for Serebii's "Interpretations" Contest, 2013-2014. Scored: 3rd place.

“Built for Risk” is my entry to the Interpretations contest held on Serebii Forums during late 2013 and 2014. The prompt was simply put “interpretations of the Pokémon world”, and the staff meant it in a very fairly broad way. For this entry I chose to focus on an often overglossed aspect of Pokémon combat: the arenas, and how are they supposed to interact with creatures that can imitate or initiate small-scale geological disasters.

This is my first story officially placed in the Suocéverse, describing a day in the life of the operators of a Battle Tower-like facility, and officially introducing Inka, and it served as an entry point to cameo guest starring some of my fellow writers of WAAPT as well: Umbramatic, Corvus Atrox and Tagg among others have their characters present in this story - in a canon way.

Functionally speaking the story is split into four sections each exploring both a part of the battles going on in the arenas, and events going out of the arenas describing how various features work or how do people interact with the arena setting and its surroundings. The sections are:

1. Kurma vs Bottles (also showcasing the audience before the fight and the access to the arena)
2. Pandinus vs Milo (also featuring battle commentators as well as the Facilities' headmaster)
3. Gino vs Shaun (featuring the facilities' in-arena security protocols and apparatus, and engineering floors)
4. Roc vs Inka (character-focused on the Facilities' headmaster).

Lega Runa aka the Lega Runa Battle Tower (unnamed in the original) is a recently opened Battle Facility built as a tower at least 600 m high somewhere in Suocé, featuring three huge arena chambers and a number of facilities related to the logistics of a stadium, such as cashier booths, an Engineering level and a heliport. It was conceived and executed under the direction of Headmaster Armando Pedraza, a private Caledorian entrepreneur (native Suocéan in the original) operating in Suocé.

Built for Risk in its preliminary release does not have any explicit indication about its placement in the Suocéverse chronology. Only the fact that Roc and Machalí sol Linaros exist points the story towards a time period close to that of the main games. For a more definite statement -which should be included in the eventual rewrite- the story takes place in the time period between Generation I/III and Generation II/IV (that is, between 3733 and 3736 of the The Present Era), leaning towards the later half of that time period given Inka is in Nidoqueen stage.

Suocéverse incarnations of Tagg and Tracer show up although in the preliminary they remain unnamed. The shared background of the Suocéverse and the WAAPTverse as sharing elements of PEFE indicates the organization exists in the Suocéverse as well, but there's no plans for the rewrite to indicate if the characters are participating in the Octagonal in official representative capacity.

Starring

• Armando Pedraza
• Machalí sol Linaros
  • Inka
• Tower Staff (Accounting)
  • And their Ninetales
• Tower Staff (Security)
  • And his Scyther

Also Starring

• Tower Staff (Logistics)
• Tower Staff (Cashiers)
  • And their various Bug-types
• Tower Staff (Engineering)
  • And their Espeon
  • And their Noctowl
• Tower Staff (Zeppeliport)
  • And their Luxray

Guest Starring

• Tagg
  • Roc (Suocéverse debut)
• Tracer
  • Shaun
  • Milo
  • Bottles
• Lina
  • Gino
  • Pandinus
  • Kurma

Cameos

• Mezzopiano (Mezzopiano)
  • And Yin
• memyselfandi (Every)
• Corvus Atrox (Crow)
  • And FeSO₄

• Nominated Serebii FFA 2014, “Best Characterization in a Short Story”, “Best Expansion of Canon”, “Most Original Overall”.
• Awarded Interpretations Contest, 3rd place.

• With the publication in AOOO in 2018-04-17, Pandinus (Pandinus) becomes the first ever Drapion tagged in the Archive Of Our Own platform.