“Hello Azalea, I am Professor Juniper. My colleague Professor Rowan asked me to get into contact with you about your Hisuan Zorua.”
Insert nonstop internal screaming.
Professor Aurea Juniper. THE Professor of Unova. Capital P Professor, named after a tree. Signature light brown hair done up in a bun and white lab coat, most influential researcher in Unova. THAT Professor Juniper was talking to me on video call.
Dude I’ve literally only been here for a few days and literally just began to do normal shit…
Last thing I expected was someone this important wanting to talk to some random trainer who hadn’t even challenged in any gyms or participated in any tournaments yet. I literally had no notable achievements that they should know about yet here we were.
And did she just mention Professor Rowan?! How do they know about Winnie? Why? What the?
Winnie climbed onto my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “is she talking about me?”
Clearing my throat, I glanced at Winnie and gave him a short nod before replying.
“Um. Yes. Uh, his name is Winnie by the way.”
“Oh, his name is Winnie? That’s adorable! My, I can’t believe I’m actually seeing a live Hisuan Zorua!”
“Thanks.” I did a double take as a registered the last part of Professor Juniper’s sentence, “I’m sorry, what do you mean about a live Hisuan Zoria?”
“Well, part of Rowan’s team is doing research that has to do with extinct Sinnoh variants. The Hisuan Zorua line has been officially extinct for over two centuries, so imagine his surprise when one pops up in Unova!”
“Wait what?” My eyes widened and my mouth dropped open. “Wait, but there are other Hisuan Variants out there, the Lily of the Valley Conference just this year had some guy with a Hisuan Goodra!”
Professor Juniper chuckled at my reaction, “Not all Hisuan variants are extinct. Though Rowan and the others are very sure there still are members of species thought to be extinct out there, they’re just haven’t been able to confirm it by league standards, so they stay officially extinct.”
“Actually,” I heard some click clacking from Junipers keyboard as she pulled something up on her computer.
“Because of that, were curious about where you found Winnie.”
I raised an eyebrow, “Oh. I’ve been with him ever since I can remember” getting to this world, “so I don’t really know.”
I am not explaining to her that whole incident with the Unown and Giratina and all that ultra wormhole stuff.
“yep, we’ve been a team ever since we were little!” Winnie chipped in. Juniper probably just heard him saying Zorua a bunch of times but she seemed to get the meaning behind his words.
“Hmmm, that’s too bad. Do your parents know where he came from?”
I grimaced a bit, “Nope. Cause they’re not with us. Or any other family.” Cause they didn’t come to this universe with me.
I felt a bit bad pulling the orphan card but again, I wanted to avoid talking about anything that could lead to my dumbass spilling shit about encountering legendaries or how Winnie or I got here.
Pausing, Juniper mouthed an O, “Oh dear, I’m sorry! You don’t need to talk about that Azalea. Here, we’ll move on then.”
She briefly glanced at another computer screen before continuing, “The Sinnoh Regional Lab is offering to pay at twenty five a thousand dollars per week to do some research with Winnie. The pay for the flight there and back, and living expenses are included as well.”
That sounds like a lot of money, is a thousand the average pay for this sort of stuff? I’d rather stay in Unova cause I haven’t explore the rest of the region yet, but it would be a great opportunity to see Sinnoh and go tour some places before coming back. It’s not like I have anything else to do.
“Oh. Hmm, let me talk to Winnie first. It’s him they want to research so he should be able to decide.”
“I understand, go ahead!” Professor Juniper smiled and gestured for me to do so.
I muted the microphone and turned the camera off, lowering my shoulder a bit to make it easier for Winnie to hop onto the table so we could talk face to face.
“So. What do you think? Are you willing to let them research you? From what I know it’ll probably be something like researching your diet, maybe what moves you know, maybe some genetic stuff to compare to the Unovan variant?”
Winnie tilted his head and shrugged, “i’m fine with that. if you trust them then i’ll trust them. It doesn’t matter were we go, i’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.”
I smiled and gave him some cheek scratches, my boi’s fur was super frickin soft and I just couldn’t resist the floof.
“When’d you get so poetic?”
Winnie let out a squeaky laugh and jumped back on my shoulder, “i’ve always been classy, how’d you not notice? come on, lets tell em. i wanna go eat dinner soon.”
“Alright then,” I unmuted the microphone and turned the camera back on.
“Yeah, we’ll accept.”
Juniper smiled, “Great! I’ll send you the paperwork right away, tell me if you have any questions about it. I’ll also be giving you the contact information for the Sinnoh Regional Lab’s Hisuan Variant Studies office.”
“Ok thanks.”
I was given a bit more information on who to contact about the airplane ticket and other stuff I kinda wasn’t paying attention to before the call ended. It kind of felt like a blur, also I was hungry and thinking about what to make for dinner. I probably should’ve been paying attention.
The moment the call disconnected, I leaned back in my chair and sighed. That was more stressful than it should have been.
At least I was able to get her to not grill me more about my past. Oh yeah by the way, I’m from another universe where Pokemon is just a game franchise. I also met Giratina and a bunch of Ultra Beasts and the Unown brought me back to life!
“Now that I think about it, we’re gonna have to come up with a reasonable backstory for the two of us. It’s easy enough to explain how we met Sahara and Kaiju, but how should we explain our own existence? I have no idea how to explain having no parents or other family.”
“you already said that you don’t have any living family, so why not have a dead family?” Winne jumped back down onto the desk.
“That’s the same thing.”
“nah, nah, i mean you can say that your family are ghosts! cause i’m a ghost. and my gang are all ghosts too!”
I raise an eyebrow, “Your gang?”
Winnie gave me a sheepish smile, “ahhh, i haven’t had the chance to tell you yet.”
Hopping up onto the PC, Winnie loudly spoke, “come on out guys!”
The lights in the room flickered and I could hear the murmuring of a bunch of children’s voices, one of which went “Psst psst psst psst.”
My shadow extended into the middle of the room. Multiple smaller shadows rose from mine and formed into a group of ghost Pokemon consisting of a Shuppet, a Ghastly, a Misdreavus, two Driftloon, a Duskull, two Litwick, and a handful of roaming form Gimmighoul.
They were hiding in my shadow?
“FINALLY! I though you were never going to tell her!” Shuppet yelled as it floated up and twirled in the air, its rag dress floating outwards like it was stretching it’s nonexistent arms.
Winnie waved Shuppet over and proudly pointed at the rag ghost, “this is shuppet, my second in command.”
Rotom flew out from my bag and happily buzzed at the others, who all said some variation of “Hi, nice to see you!” to Rotom.
I wasn’t impressed, “Winnie. Explain.”
Winnie grinned sheepishly and explained the whole story to me, with some helpful commentary from the other ghosts. He beat Shuppet and became a leader of a bunch of ghosts that followed us from Trevenant’s haunted forest.
Well, it was unexpected but I wasn’t as surprised as I probably should’ve been. What I was most worried about was having to feed like, ten plus more Pokemon. I had funds, but no source of income, and taking care of my current team was already pretty expensive.
Shuppet waved me off after I voiced my concerns, “Nah, it’s fine. We don’t have to eat food like you living folk, Trevenant and Dusknoir’s energy kept us fed with ghost energy while we were in the forest but out here life energy is more than enough.”
“Berries are yummier than that though!” The Misdreavus commented. The other ghosts voiced their agreement to each other.
I frowned at the implications for that, a scene from the anime where Team Rocket’s life energy was drained by a bunch of Litwick to the point that they might’ve almost died came to mind.
“Aaannd, where are you getting this ‘life energy’?”
Shuppet zoomed up to my face with a grin, “You of course! Why do you think we were hiding in your shadow? For funsies? Well actually yeah we kinda were but that’s not the main reason.”
Shuppet was talking as if it was obvious they were feeding off of my life energy. Like we had discussed this previously and agreed to this arrangement.
“Wait what?! I do NOT have enough life energy to be feeding a bunch of ghosts! I’m not an ultra powerful ghost like Trevenant or Dusknoir either! I’m a very normal, very non-ghosty human!”
Everyone paused at my outburst.
Shuppet shot Winnie a confused glance, who in turn shrugged.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“umm.. az? i’m you are in fact not a very normal, non-ghosty human.”
I crossed my arms. “Oh really?”
“yep.” Winnie replied with an emphatic nod, “you’ve got a whole ocean’s worth of energy. the entire group can probably only drink a few gallons at most each day, and that’s filled up faster than they can drink.”
“And it’s ghost flavored.” Shuppet ever so helpfully added.
I stared at them with a grimace, “And why am I learning about this now?”
Winnie awkwardly laughed and kneaded his tail, “well…cause you’re always explaining stuff to me i thought you already knew about this stuff.”
I rubbed my face and sighed, “No I didn’t. And even though I know a decent amount of stuff, I. Do. Not. Know. Everything. Next time please tell me about this stuff.”
“will do.”
“And how long have they–actually I won’t ask, I don’t want to know.”
There was an awkward pause. Then I turned to Shuppet. “By the way, why in the world am I ‘ghost-flavored’? What the fuck does that mean?”
Shuppet lifted the corners of its cloth up in a shrug, “I dunno. Your life energy tastes like ghost. It’s like how salt tastes salty or sugar tastes sweet. Ghost is ghost. Maybe it’s because Trevanant curse slash blessed you so you could talk to us.”
“That’s the only part of anything that makes sense.”
So I’m basically a walking, talking buffet for ghosts. I don’t suppose they know why the hell I have a, “whole ocean’s worth of energy’ as Winnie phrased it. How much does a life energy normal person even have? I bet this has to do with those creepy little Unown.
One of the Driftloon raised a string, “Are we still allowed to eat your life energy?”
Ghastly chipped in, “Can we still prank people?”
Driftloon number two smacked Ghastly in the back of the head with a string, harshly whispering, “We might get our food source cut off and you’re worried about pranking people?”
Winnie nudged me with his tail, “it won’t harm you, i wouldn’t let that happen if it was going to. and it’s only until they evolve and don’t have to rely on another for energy. i mean, you didn’t even notice it before we told you.”
As if to support Winnie, Rotom buzzed and pulled up some random and rather unhelpful article about how cool ghost Pokemon are.
What Winnie had said was true, but it didn’t help with giving me any peace of mind that a bunch of ghosts were literally drinking my life energy for sustenance. I wasn’t particularly scared of dying again, but it certainly would be inconvenient if I let a bunch of ghosts drink me to death.
I mean I trust Winnie, and Rotom to an extent but a bunch of unfamiliar ghosts? Urgh, I don’t want to deal with this shit anymore.
“Ok. Fine, sure. Just…” I sighed. I just won’t think about it. Yep.
“I don’t mind you guys hanging around or… drinking life energy from me. Just don’t make it obvious. I guess.”
I took a deep, calming breath before speaking again.
“But you guys will have to listen to me or Winnie. Harmless pranks are fine, but if you guys cause too much of an issue then I will be held responsible and get in trouble for it. Also you need to pull your weight if I ask for help. You guys got it?”
There was a chorus of yes’s and okay’s from the ghosts. Good, now I could toss this memory into the back of my head until it was needed again.
“Okay, yeah, getting back on track…Backstories. So I guess I should just say I was raised by ghost Pokemon? That still sounds a bit far fetched.”
There definitely were cases of kids being raised by Pokemon. N was the biggest example, he could talk to Pokemon too. And there also was that one kid that was raised by Zarude after their parents were murdered.
“Bzzt!” Rotom pulled up another search on human children raised by Pokemon. There were a LOT of articles of thousands of different cases over the years, but most of them were children raised by humanoid psychic or fighting types.
This is a lot more common than it probably should be. Are human parents just dying or leaving their kids all alone to be raised by Pokemon on a regular basis? Where’s CPS?
“Okay, lets keep the story simple for now. I was found by one of the ghosts in the forest as a little kid and they raised me cause they felt bad for me. You guys will say that you guys don’t know how I got there and you didn’t ask. Winnie you’ll say that you don’t know how you got there, you just remember being there.”
I paused and looked around the room as everyone nodded in agreement.
“Then once I got old enough, I was given a bag of stuff that you all found from other places and I left the forest with all of you to go explore the world.”
More nodding and ok’s.
I clapped my hands together. “Alright! That’s done. Kaiju and Sahara are waiting for us, I’m hungry, let’s go make dinner.”
One of the Litwick jumped up and down, waving its stubby little hand in the air, “Oooh! Oooh! Can we try some food too? Winnie said it was really yummy!”
“Sure, I have some food that needs to be eaten before it goes bad anyways.”
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My room certainly felt lively with the addition of a bunch of ghosts. It was like a party. A ghost party.
It was nice to see that Winnie had made some new friends, though I made it very clear that it was his job to manage these guys. I’d help out if it was needed, but otherwise, his underlings, his responsibility.
It kinda felt like a parent telling their kid to be responsible for a pet but instead of a pet, it was a gaggle of kid ghosts out on an indefinite field trip.
They made it pretty clear that they were with us to basically tour the world outside of the forest they came from, not battle for humans. And I was fine with that as long as they pulled their weight in other ways. I already had my hands full with just three Pokemon on my team, no way could I handle like, ten more.
Sahara was less than pleased about the new additions to our group. The ghosts were wise enough to not bother the grumpy shark dragon brooding in the corner, and I promised her most training time before we went to sleep to quell her distaste for the newcomers.
On the other hand, Kaiju was actually doing quite well in not trying to eat the ghosts on sight. Well that was until they tried to steal some herb mystica from his food.
I was digging into a prosciutto sandwich and listening to Shuppet and Winnie talk about the haunted forest when Kaiju roared and began chasing Ghastly around the room with absolute murder in his eyes.
This was the first time I’d ever seen Kaiju even get mad at something. I was beginning to wonder if he was Hydreigon’s kid or not.
I watched as Kaiju leaped off the bed as Ghastly flew for the ceiling and caught the ghost with a dark type infused Bite. Then came the ragdolling as Ghastly squealed for someone to save it.
“I’ll get Kaiju. Winnie, make sure the others know that they’re not allowed to mess with Sahara or Kaiju’s food. Or any food really. That’s a real fun way to get attacked by an angry Pokemon. And give Ghastly an Oran berry for the dark type damage.”
Besides that one incident, dinner went fine. I gave Kaiju a good brushing to clear all the dirt from the crevices in his scales and he fell asleep as I was doing that. The lil guy was tired out from exercising all day. The other two would get some brushing after they were done training.
Sahara was still up for another hour or so of training Sandstorm and she had already mastered it enough to create a decent sandstorm and keep it going for a few minutes.
I had her begin adding in moves like Twister and Sand Tomb and hiding them in the storm to create even more of a field hazard for future opponents. Hopefully this would become muscle memory to her when she set up Sandstorms in the future.
At my request, Winnie practiced some Pachirisu illusions, before working on the power and accuracy of Shadow Ball and Night Shade.
Shadow Ball was straightforward enough and easy to master through practice. Night Shade on the other hand was a very interesting move. At its base level, it created a dome of ghost type energy around the user, but once the most was mastered, it could be used like another part of the user’s body. Basically it was the perfect move to combine with an Illusion.
I didn’t really have to do much after the initial training prep and just sat down on a bench to watch the two train.
Now that they didn’t have to hide themselves, I could hear and see the ghosts hiding in my shadow. They were just whispering to each other about food or about cool stuff they saw in the city today. It was a bit distracting but I quickly got used to it and was able to ignore them as background noise.
Now that Winnie wasn’t the only Pokemon I could talk to and understand, it just kinda felt weird. I mean I was cursed by a powerful ghost to be able to understand ghosts and could now talk to specifically ghost Pokemon like N.
Kinda weird cause I wasn’t planning on specializing in any specific type and still wasn’t. It was just a useful tool. I though back to before I could understand Winnie, Thank you very much mister Trevenant.
I blinked at I thought of something and spoke aloud, “Wait, isn’t Rotom part ghost type? If I’m supposed to understand ghosts, why can’t I understand what Rotom is saying?”
Shuppet phased into sight and sat on the bench next to me. “Don’t know. Rotom doesn’t talk to us either, it just buzzes.”
“What about the other Rotom in the forest?”
“There aren’t any so we don’t know. Most of them usually stay where humans live because they prefer eating electricity.”
“Huh. That’s interesting.” Rotom wouldn’t be giving any answers though, it was sitting in my pocket and could clearly hear us, but didn’t respond or comment on out conversation.
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and took it out. Rotom let out another “bzzt!” and opened my messages.
It was from the contact info to that Hisuan section whatever lab that Professor Juniper sent me.
This is the start of a conversation between Justine and Azalea:
Justine: Hi, this is Justine from the Sinnoh Regional Lab. I’m contacting you about your plane ticket to Jubilife City.
Azalea: Hi! Yeah, I can leave anytime. I’m guessing the sooner the better, so I can take the earliest flight starting from tomorrow.
Justine: Oh, lol. I wasn’t expecting you to answer since it was so late. The earliest flight I can get you is tomorrow morning, you’ll have to wait more than 24 hrs for the next flight into Sinnoh.
Azalea: Tomorrow’s flight sounds good. Is there anything else I have to know?
Justine: Ok, the tickets will be emailed to you. We’ll send someone to pick you up. Look for a guy with a Zoroark, shouldn’t be hard to miss.
Azalea: Ok thx!
Justine: No problem. We’ll see you soon!
----------------------------------------
Airports in the Pokemon world were completely different. The only security that I could see were a few uniformed security guards with Growlithe, Mightyena, or some low level psychic types. No long lines for security to check our bags and for people to get scanned.
Large Pokemon, especially large dragon types weren’t allowed outside of their Pokeballs in the airport or on airplanes for obvious reasons, so Sahara was kept inside of her Pokeball. She wouldn’t have liked the airport anyways, too many people for her taste.
This was a pretty good chance to further reinforce Kaiju’s training to not bite stuff upon finding a new thing, and he was doing really well. He was kept occupied with snacks and pokedolls to destroy instead of stuff in the stores.
Winnie, now disguised as a Pachirisu, comfortably sat in my hoodie and looked around at all the new stuff with wide eyes.
Now that I knew how rare Winnie was, I didn’t want to draw too much attention to us. Even a normal Unovan Zorua would’ve drawn a lot of unwanted attention so it would be best for him to pretend to be a squirrel.
Though Kaiju was already drawing a lot of attention just for being a Deino. The Hydreigon line had a reputation worse than a Gyarados and people were kind of giving us a wide berth, and that was fine with me.
Ignoring the weird looks people kept giving us, I answered the questions Winnie and Kaiju asked about stuff they saw in the airport. Especially the ones about the snacks that were being sold in shops. They was really interested in those snacks and just wanted to talk about them and nothing else, they totally didn’t want unhealthy snacks that tasted really yummy.
Damn kids teaming up on me. I guess this was a glimpse into what it felt like to be a parent traveling with kids.
At least the ghosts were quiet. They were nocturnal so they just stayed in my shadow and slept during the day.
Because I had expected a long wait time to get into the airport, we got to our gate way earlier than necessary. At least I had enough pokedolls to keep Kaiju occupied for a few hours, and once Winnie knew that I wouldn’t be buying him all the candy he wanted because it was bad for him, he curled up in my hoodie and dozed off. He probably stayed up late with Shuppet and the ghosts doing some sort of ghost stuff, I didn’t ask.
I was impressed though, he now was able to maintain his illusion of Pachirisu even when he was asleep.
Well now that I had time to myself, I had some questions to answer. To the Pokenet!
I needed to know what meta knowledge was okay to say and what wasn’t. For example, Z-Moves, Dynamaxing, and Terrestrialization were all well known phenomena. I actually had the upgraded Terra Orb in my bag, probably should try using that sometime.
Mega evolution on the other hand had no mentions besides in an old tourism article about the Shalour City’s Tower of Mastery. Diantha’s Gardevoir was well known for it’s mega evolution but people just thought it was some sort of hidden ability for the Gardevoir line. No other champion seemed to be able to mega evolve their Pokemon either so they probably just didn’t have the mega stone or keystone needed. There was no way they didn’t know.
There was a lot of Kalos history stuff, including myths about the Kalos War, the ultimate weapon, Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde, and even King AZ and his Eternal Floette being brought back to life. But curiously no connections to mega evolution.
Team Flare isn’t a thing either, just a company named Lysandre Technologies that was well liked by Kalos as a whole. What a creative name Lysandre.
Gee am I going to have to wait for the best mechanic in the games to be revealed in a few years when Ash finally gets to the Kalos region?
I wonder if I could find mega stones where they were in the games. That will be worth checking out.
And Ash Ketchum. From the league records, he recently finished in the Hoenn League, so he was probably heading for the Battle Frontier next.
Teams Aqua and Magma were gone, having recently suffered from some ever so annoying main protagonists and the Hoenn League actually being competent in taking them down after years of investigation.
Most of the leaders of teams Aqua and Magma had been caught, with only one admin still on the run. No mention of the red or blue orbs in Hoenn and only vague myth stuff about the weather trio. Looks like they didn’t get to Kyogre or Groudon.
From what I could deduce, this world had some mix of stuff from the games and anime because Brandon–May’s older brother–had a hand in tracking down and defeating important members of Aqua and Magma. Ash Ketchum and his friends somehow got involved too, but the details weren’t really clear.
Well, the more protagonists the better, that simply meant the world would be better protected. Right?
As for the other evil teams: Team Rocket had met its downfall a few years ago and was now just a shell of its former self. I guess Hunter J must’ve replaced them in the Pokemon trafficking market.
Team Galactic wasn’t known at all, but there was a large company in Sinnoh run by Cyrus, called Galactic Corporations. So yeah, they definitely existed.
Team Plasma were now good guys because the events of black and white happened not long after Team rocket fell. No sign of the main characters Hilbert or Hilda from the Black and White games. They both existed but had disappeared after Team Plasma was exposed, so I would have to watch out for the events of Black and White 2 and Team Neo Plasma.
Paradox Pokemon and Ultra beasts were completely unknown. The only thing close to an ultra beast were a ton of articles about alien sightings in the Alola region.
The Aether foundation was obviously still going strong, as shown with me seeing a few members in the Marine tube in Humilau, they had spread out to other regions. These guys had a spotless, pristine reputation.
I remembered that Chairman Rose was a bad guy in the Galar games right? He wanted to bring back Eternatus for some reason. And there wasn’t much on any Professors Turo or Sada or their time machine besides some scientific articles they wrote that confirmed their existence.
I let Rotom fly back into my pocket and rubbed by eyes. I needed a bit of time to absorb all that information and decide what the heck I should do with all this meta knowledge.
Even if I didn’t know the exact timeline that was going to happen, I knew how to summon one of the creation trio, control the weather trio, and activate the ultimate weapon. That was all very dangerous information.
And what to do with knowledge of all these evil organizations? Well, at best, this was a universe where some of the bad guys were actually good guys. Worse case was that this was one of the universes where the villains win. Team Rainbow Rocket’s mere existence in the games made that a possibility.
Would it be okay to let things just happen as they should? This clearly is an alternate universe of the games and anime so things might turn out worse than they would have if I don’t intervene, but they might also change for the worse if I do.
But what could an inexperienced trainer with no backing like me even do? I was excited about mega evolution but I can’t even do shit about it cause any info given to Sycamore would just inadvertently end up in Lysandre and Team Flare’s hands.
I honestly felt a little in over her head with this stuff. All I wanted to do was fun Pokemon stuff with my team, not deal with evil organizations who would like to do destroy, conquer, or change the world because (insert crazy ideal) using (insert crazy plan involving a legendary that will most definitely destroy the world or cause mass death and destruction).
What was I expecting? If all went well, the protagonists and the Pokemon League would do something about all that stuff. If not, well we’d either be doomed or I’d have to find someone powerful enough to use my info to do something about it.
Actually, getting acquainted with a Professor like Rowan or Juniper would be a great start. I guess I got lucky on that front.
That was the start of a plan. Find a bunch of people I could trust who had the power to oppose these groups. Besides regional professors, a champion would probably work. Probably not Diantha because she’s friends with Lysandre, and I don’t remember how friendly Cynthia was with Cyrus. I feel that Steven is probably too busy with managing a post Team Aqua and Magma Hoenn, and Alder doesn’t feel reliable–
A pleasant ding interrupted my thoughts and I looked up at the desk next to the boarding area.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now ready to begin boarding Flight 1234 to Nimbasa City. We will be boarding by groups. Please have your boarding pass and identification ready. We would like to invite passengers needing special assistance and those traveling with young children to begin boarding at this time.”