"Has he shared any of this supposed knowledge with you?" a soft feminine voice asked.

"No, my lady" Mr. Pokemon rarely needed to justify himself to them, now however was one of those times. Favors would need to be expended for the identification and the paper trail. For the mundane things there was plenty of money.

"You claim he knows where the Bell is." another voice questioned. There was a hint of greed within it, a chance for a stain on their family's honor to be washed away.

"The boy knows far more than he should." Mr. Pokemon replied. At times it worried him to consider just how much Gray might know and how much damage that knowledge could cause.

"Perhaps a leak? The Sky Pillar guards have been growing restless lately." another voice asked.

The posting was a punishment detail and a duty that really should have been done by the Draconids. They however had been lessened in recent generations. Time and duty cared not for mortal misfortune. That barren rock of an island still had to be protected and it had fallen to them to see it done.

A male voice spoke, "It's not them. There's been some grumbling but that's expected. This Gray has had no contact with any of them. He has no records of any kind in any region. His recent online activity doesn't indicate any connections either."

That put an end to that line of questioning.

The man added after a moment, "I would like access to the remains of the laptop he brought with him if possible. A computer from another world could be quite interesting to examine."

"So he really did appear in the woods one day." a woman mused "Are we to allow this outsider to wander around the region causing who knows what mayhem spouting secrets that should not be shared?"

"And are we to do so receiving nothing in return?" Another added.

"We receive much in return." Mr. Pokemon paused, "Johto gains what I believe will be a strong trainer."

In time maybe something more. Roots were already being laid in Kalos for another branch, the youngest of the ladies would flourish there. If Gray could be brought in, they'd have an agent that blended well in Unova, and Galar as well. In time, maybe more than just another agent. He wasn't getting any younger and as for his sons, time and duty cared not for mortal misfortune.

"Meh, we have plenty already. I doubt his knowledge will make up for what he lacks. He's starting far behind the others." a voice lazily replies

"I would not dismiss his knowledge so easily. But perhaps the greatest thing we might receive from him is forewarning. I showed him the Orbs."

A great silence followed.

"You shouldn't have done that."

"I tested him. They told me much." he paused remembering. It had been a bit of a dirty trick and the look on Gray's face of utter confusion still made him chuckle. But that look had quickly changed. "He reacted in horror when he saw them. He knew them by sight and he wanted them protected because of the harm they might do. The past few days he's not so subtly asked about meteors. It's not clear just how far his knowledge extends into the past, the present and perhaps the future."

Moments passed as it was considered.

Eventually the eldest spoke, "You'll have our support. Now, To other matters, that rabble from Kanto has been poking around and our sister to the north has some concerns about this Team Galactic...

----------------------------------------

Slowly ever so slowly the pokeball came to a rest. An audible click was heard, a successful capture.

Then it popped open.

Porygon flew out of it giving a cry, "Reeee!"

He quickly sought out the phone I had been given and made the transition to cyberspace. I had to laugh at the scene.

"Okay buddy no pokeball. But I did catch you and that means I get to name you." I grin evilly "Your name is Mallardware or Mal for short."

An annoyed grumpy sounding, "Pory" rings out from my phone.

"Hey, it's a great pun and a name that will strike fear and confusion into the heart of our foes. I don't think they know what a mallard is." after his lack of a response I concede a little, "Eh, we'll test it out buddy."

I wasn't surprised Mal didn't seem to like a pokeball. He couldn't seem to stay idle for long. While I was studying he would often spar with the locals. It seemed like he was a bit of a battle maniac or maybe he just wanted to test things. With all the sparring he was doing I was expecting him to break out a new move any day now.

The moves pokemon learned changed from one generation to the next, so I couldn't be sure what move it would be but I suspected it would be Thundershock. His line learned a variety of electric type moves naturally and seem to have a certain affinity for the type. All the time they spent in electronics/cyberspace might give them a feel for the energy. He would be happy and I would be happy. Then he would realize the pidgey's won't spar with him anymore and I'd have a moping duck.

Mal's start as a battle ai might have colored his new existence just a tad. When he wasn't sparring with the locals he was usually off trying to satiate his hunger. Mal was hungry, hungry for data. To that end he spent a lot of time in cyber space. I wasn't quite sure how abilities worked here but I was leaning towards him being analytic. When he wasn't surfing the pokenet or poking around in computer systems he kind of slept within the hard drive that I had removed from my old laptop. I guess it still felt like home to him.

Picking up the pokeball, I shrunk it and added it to my belt. There was a system of magnetic clasps to keep them connected. I searched out and found the cool shade of a berry tree. I didn't get much time outside, I was too busy studying most days. Resting against it's trunk I relaxed as a soft wind blew. The perfect place to have a long think about things.

It had been a week since I fell into this world and I was cramming like I had never done before.

Four to five hours every day was set aside for reading. The content was mostly regulations and all sorts of things I needed to know for a trainer license. Anyone could have a pokemon. Pokemon ownership for lack of a better term was an inalienable right. Life, liberty, and pokemon. I suppose it was happiness of a sort.

Often pokemon taken as companions would end up serving in the same role as a pet would in my own world. They'd rarely get into battles except for a spar or two maybe once a week with some friends. Some people never even got more than a single pokemon that they'd go through life together with.

If you were serious about being a trainer though, you needed a license. When your pets could control elemental forces, warp reality around them, and cause massive destruction... well there were gonna be some regulations. Ones like the six pokemon carry limit, that applied to proper trainers. There was no ownership limit for trainers, the real limit there was how deep your pockets were. Pokemon had to eat after all. Most other people had an ownership and carry limit that was lower. It kind of explained why there were so many 'trainers' in the games that only had one to three pokemon.

Where you can battle, how you can battle, when you can battle, that was all regulated in ways meant to keep civilization from imploding as people unleashed the great and terrible power of their 'murder pets'.

That old adage about power and responsibility? That held true here as well. Trainers were expected to help out in a kind of almost first responder role. You were expected to provide aid if you were able and might be called upon by a gym leader, ranger, or other official in case of emergency. Maybe you would help put out a fire with a water type, or do some search and rescue with a flying type, the situations varied. You did get subsidized housing in Pokemon centers and other benefits however.

Two to three hours a day was set aside for care of pokemon; grooming, diet, general care. Mal didn't really need much of that, being made out of code. I was slowly learning most of the practical skills by caring for Mr.P's pokemon and some of the locals like the Oddish.

For example Bubba the Slowbro that had healed me up, his skin needed to be kept a bit moist and his shell sometimes needed scrubbing. The Shellder that made up the shell would glare at me the entire time. I could only shake my head at it. Slowpoke tails were a delicacy, eaten widely throughout the world. The tail would often break off and being kind of like a giant salamander the tail would grow back. It really was no wonder their hidden ability was regenerator. The tails also leaked a sweet sap like substance. Usually it was used as a fishing tool, however shellder really liked it. It had given up its independence to suck on Slowpoke's tail for sap and eat his scraps. It could glare all it liked.

Two hours a day and mealtimes were dedicated to etiquette and cultural studies. I could mostly pass as Unovan. However, I was living in Johto and needed to fit in to an extent. Johto was based on a region of japan and so I was taught manners and culture I associated with it. There were things that were uniquely pokeworld however. This world valued strength and cooperation very highly, together they led to strong trainers which in turn ensured society was protected. There were other things that I mostly got, but well a different culture that was shaped around pokemon and living in a world full of them safely was always going to be different.

Something that was clearly different from the games and anime were the ages. I was what was considered a late comer to the trainer scene. Most people started their journey at the age of sixteen or seventeen. Often they had been training on and off for it since their early teens. The others my age would already have a season or two under their belts.

That whole let's send ten year olds out into the wilds by themselves thing? Yeah that didn't happen here. Ten year olds didn't take down mob bosses by themselves and they didn't become champions. I had to assume the entire thing was the creation of a marketing department back in my old world. Make the characters the same age as the target audience to sell more toys. Though, I couldn't help feeling they had missed an opportunity as pokemon's real audience was much older than that by their own metrics.

Another key difference was how the championship and all that worked. Getting all eight badges didn't give you a chance to just challenge the E4 and Lance for the crown. It was more like the anime or manga where there was a conference and eight badges were your ticket in. One huge tourney at the end of the season, with different divisions based on how many seasons you had been training. It was usually the biggest media event of the year for a region, Johto had the Silver conference and Kanto had the Indigo Plateau. If you won your division then you got a shot at the big boys: the E4 and Lance.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The world might be based on the games but that didn't mean there were only a few hundred people in all of Kanto or a dozen people in a town. It was a real world and in each region thousands started their journey every year. Not all made it to eight badges, it was a lot less than even half of that. Even still that was a lot of people and the positions of E4 and Champion were important. They couldn't stand in a big empty room all day brooding quietly waiting for a challenger, they had jobs to do. Thus the conference system.

I sighed, dinner would be ready soon, followed by a movie. I was usually a bit restless during the film wanting to study or research but it was used as part of my cultural training. I preferred the recordings of Mr.P's radio show we sometimes used instead. He had been very skilled with it. From what I had gathered he had an almost Bill Nye thing going on with the older generation. It really was a good cover. Cultural studies aside, I had to think about some things. I had finally checked out the pokenet.

It was vast and much more developed than I had expected. Gyms and leagues had dedicated sites that would often stream battles. Social media was a thing and I tried to stay far away from that. There was a twitch equivalent called Battle Switch usually just called Switch focused on streaming battles and contests. Some people even streamed their journey by bringing along a rotomdrone. They got streamed sniped a fair amount. But it could help pay for their journey through donations or maybe even a sponsorship deal so I guess it was worth it to them in the end. The Youtube equivalent was a site called PoliTV: its mascot was a Polywrath with the center replaced with a tv screen. Videos of battles and contests again tended to dominate. There was even a kind of Tinder clone but for battles. You could find hot single battles in your neighborhood.

The site I spent the most of the little free time I had for the pokenet on was Pokebattles. It was a large forum with a lot of subforums for pretty much everything imaginable. Battles were always the big topic of discussion. It held a similar spot that sports had held in my own world. This of course led to fans and arguments. Who would win? Who was the better trainer? Who had the better team? It just went on and on. Some fans were absolutely savage. The fans of female gym trainers and champions, those people scared me sometimes.

With how developed the internet here was, it meant that some information was pretty wide spread and accessible. People could research their opponents and might even find some recordings of past battles to study. I spent most of my limited time on the Normal type specialist forums where people loudly sung praises to Whitney, Lenora, Larry and the almighty Norman. That made me start looking some people up, but I had to be careful.

The cult was obviously watching me and what Mr.P had said about gratitude seemed to be coming true to an extent. The cult worked fast. There had been a constant stream of deliveries over the past week of supplies for me; Sliph Co. bag that was bigger on the inside, camping equipment made by Devon, clothing, laptop, cellphone, pokemon food, first aid supplies, Porygon's pokeball with a few empty ones at my waist, a travel fund was even set up. It... it was a lot.

Training was expensive and very competitive. A lot of money was quickly being spent to outfit me. There was one more thing, probably more valuable than any of the others. I had a legal identity now. I was officially a Johto citizen and resident of Ekruteak city. I had been born in Unova and moved with my parents to Johto. They tragically had died/never existed. I had a paper trail and a legal identity that would hold up to scrutiny.

What did the cult ask for all of this?

Nothing, and that scared me. I kept waiting for them to ask for knowledge, a favor, something, anything. Yet it didn't come. They were enabling my dream of a journey. Anytime I asked about repayment or an exchange Mr.P would do his stupid 'Oh Ho' thing he did, get a smug smile and laugh telling me not to worry about it. I was starting to think his 'Oh Ho's were actually him praising or calling upon Ho-Oh but trying to be sly about it. Cultists...

Still they were watching me. The gratitude I was starting to feel aside I didn't trust them to not act on something I might let slip. If I just directly looked something or someone up the cult might start paying a bit too much attention to them. Most of my knowledge was future knowledge, I was near the beginning of the game timeline. If the cult acted on something I let slip, they might butterfly away much of what I knew and expected was coming. So I had to try and play a little game to try and hide what I was doing.

There existed in my world a little game called Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon. He had such a long career with such a large body of work that by naming any actor you could get back to him in seven connections or less. There was another version played on wikipedia sometimes but with Hitler. You started on a random page and you needed to get to him, that only took five. So that's what I did from the forum posts about champions and gym leaders. I jumped making connections in what I hoped was a fairly random method. If I actually found a page for the person I was interested in I'd give it a brief look over and then throw in some other pages of similar people. For now it was enough to know if the person existed or not.

The good news was Ash did not exist. I did not have to deal with the protagonist and the wacky adventures he got up to.

The bad news, there were protagonists.

It started with Norman and Blue. Blue was proudly displayed on some Kanto pages as the Viridian City gym leader while Giovanni was on 'sabbatical' training. The entire Team Rocket thing from the first games seem to be mostly covered up. Having a gym leader and pillar of the region connected to that was a big ole black eye to all of Kanto, and so they kept it quiet as far as I could tell. Giovanni was off on a long term training trip and Blue had taken over. He was hailed as the second coming of his grandfather, and rated as one of the best trainers of Kanto. His more rabid fans claimed Lance was just keeping the champion seat warm for him. Being just twenty Blue was one of the youngest gym leaders and had a long glorious career in front of him. He was seen as the great hope of Kanto, sure to make a huge impact on the world stage. Fans put together battle compilations of him demolishing his opponents and they heavily featured his...

Mega-Charizard Y.

Most people thought that the earliest game in the mega timeline was the ruby and sapphire remakes. Instead it shared that spot with Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee. The events everyone knew from red and blue still took place but Red wasn't the one that took down Team Rocket.

Someone else did.

At the start of every game there was a choice, one that would color and change your entire journey. The choice at the start of Red and Blue had been debated endlessly in my old world. The pros and cons of each weighed and in the end everyone had to make a choice.

You always had to make a choice.

Charmander, Bulbasaur, or Squirtle.

Red had to make the same choice.

Instead of Charmander he chose Bulbasuar, and that might have made all the difference. This choice had rippled out changing things that most people would have been familiar with. Red didn't beat Team Rocket. I don't know if he ever even ran into them. He was still known as a strong trainer. I don't think there's any timeline that will ever be where Red isn't a strong trainer. His first season he got all the badges, got into the Indigo Plateau Conference in the rookie division and in the finals he faced his rival Blue. Mega-Charizard Y against Mega-Venasaur in a battle that was still talked about sometimes.

He lost.

After that Red disappeared, presumably he's off training on Mount Silver. Blue went on to win his division and get a chance at the Elite Four and Lance. Oak probably talked him out of actually going for it in order to train him up more.

As for who took down Team Rocket or at least helped do so. I didn't know their name, Let's Go didn't offer any default names. I felt like I was doing an impression of Professor Oak. Are you a Boy or a Girl? I didn't know. All I knew was that they had an Eevee.

Why was it always an Eevee?

I had been able to come across the rival of the game, Trace. On the Kanto discussion boards he was listed as a trainer to watch for from Pallet Town, his team was listed in the same thread. He had a Raichu, which meant the mystery protag had an Eevee. They had made their choice. Trace would be starting his third season this coming year. That was as much information as I was willing to risk looking into for now. If I had started combing through the Indigo Plateau conference for trainers with an Eevee, I felt that might bring just a bit too much attention to them.

As for Norman, in the Normal type forums I came across a picture of him and his family. Him and his wife smiling with their daughter, May. She and Brendan Birch were starting their third seasons. Up in Sinnoh Dawn and Lucas should be starting their first. Here in Johto, Ethan, Lyra and maybe Kris would be starting theirs. The mystery protag should also be running around somewhere out there. With some luck I'll never run into any of them. I can have my nice normal journey.

"Brooooo!" Bubba, the slowbro called out, shaking me out of my contemplation.

"Hey, Bubba. Dinner time?"

He smiles and I return it. Together we head into the house. He walks with a bit of a waddle that makes me chuckle when he has to move fast to keep up with my longer strides. The smell of dinner and noises from the kitchen strikes me as we enter. It's fish, probably a magikarp. Entering the dining room something on the table catches my eye. It's a sealed great glass tube and within it lies an egg.

Ah... for there to be a protagonist there also had to be a plot.

Lonnie's words echo back to me, It all starts with an egg