'Wait! Not now, Manaphy!'

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Alola is a beautiful region, with wonderful pokemon, beautiful scenery, lovely local tales and a unique spirit of welcome and family. It's in this region Troy calls home. A passionate young trainer, Troy looks up to his second-cousin Kaiwe for many reasons, and tries his best to emulate him. Shirts are for chums, fire types are the best types, and he's way too cool to be taken lightly (you can tell by his cool-guy scarf and gloves.)

Of course, he has mixed results. Somehow he hasn't gotten many fire types aside from his partner and starter Toast, hatched from an egg his family's litten, not a battle pokemon herself, entrusted to him, but his makes up for it by being way too passionate for shirts to contain him and shoes to hold him back. His parents are less enthused but what can you do?

Something he does keep from them is the very special friend he made as a kid. Back before he was old enough to officially become a trainer, and was but a kid with high hopes and bright dreams, he and his best friend Gordon came across an equally young Manaphy in a lake. Neither knew what it was exactly, only that it was a pokemon and willing to play. That little encounter started what would probably be a lifelong friendship between the Sea Guardian and the two boys.

Manaphy likes Troy better, though. Troy goes along with the heart swaps a lot more than Gordon does, who tends to be more of a worrywart about it.

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I finally got around to getting art for this character of mine :) I've actually had ideas for him for a while. He's part of a gaggle of characters I call the 'Alola Boys', a handful of OCs for me and my friends. We never really did anything with them, but I have built up some headcanon for him (like his pokemon theme, a handful of quirks, that sorta stuff.)

The Manaphy angle came from  Bluey_The_Battlebug which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who pays attention to my long blurbs XD We have plans. Even stuff like minor appearances from some form of badguy out to catch Manaphy for nefarious purposes. You know, standard pokemon fair. But body swap was already someone on our long list of shared Interests, Quirks and Kinks, so Manaphy was just providence, and oddly fitting for a region like Alola.

I have to admit though,  Poke789 was a massive influence for this. We both love his heartswap series and I've had this idea on my art list for a while. Thanks for the inspiration, Poke789! :D

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Edit:
I forgot to add the artist! RougeDoodles (twitter) never fails with giving me awesome work :D