"What happened, Marcus? I saw Kisses hovering," my mom asked as she gave me a quick hug and then looked me over at arm's length.

"Nothing bad. Just got in a quick battle with a new trainer and Hobbes tore his rag, but he should have it all patched up in time for dinner."

"Oh, that poor thing," my mom commiserated, before turning to me with a calculating look on her face. "You know, if you go on your journey this'll be happening a lot. How will Hobbes be able to repair it all the time without his sewing kit? Maybe you should..."

"Mom!" I exclaimed, cutting her off. "We've talked about this before. It's all planned -- we're going."

My mom sighed. "I know, I know, I just worry." She pulled me into another hug, which lasted for a full five seconds before I wiggled out of it. "Your dad will be home in time for dinner in an hour. I made your favorite!"

My eyes widened. "Ribs?" she smiled and nodded. "I'll be there. I'm just gonna go to my room and finish packing."

My mom's smile turned somewhat brittle before she nodded again and returned to the kitchen. Smoking my favorite ribs was an all-day affair that I was extremely thankful for, and I focused on that feeling rather than the small bit of resentment over her attempts to persuade me away from my journey. Her desire to keep me at home was honestly somewhat ironic, considering my desire was a trait I'd inherited from her.

My dad had gone on his journey as well, but his had been a more typical experience: a month-long vacation with his starter where he'd challenged, but failed to beat, a single gym. Only about one in ten of those who went on their journey came away with more than one badge, and only the top one percent could boast about having acquired four badges like my mom. But I was determined to match and surpass her. Not out of any desire to be the 'champion' and get all the responsibilities that came with the title, but rather out of a sense of adventure. I was in a pokemon world, after all, and I fully intended on making the most of it.

I walked into my room and tossed my backpack on the bed. My room was fairly clean, with just a bed, desk, and bookshelf in the corner, along with the fully-enclosed wooden addition that was Hobbes' room. While this world had amazing technical innovations in some areas -- like the alternate dimension containment unit that was pokeballs -- it was extremely lacking compared to my old world in others. Namely, in the use of personal computers and the internet. I'd be bringing a cell phone with me on my journey, but it was a brick of a device that could only call and text, and I would likely be out of service the majority of the time I wasn't in cities, rendering it somewhat redundant. Regardless, my parents had bought it for me in an effort to ensure I checked in regularly with them, so I dutifully packed it away in my bag.

Next to be packed were my pokemon supplies and the reason I'd been traveling the day before. While Lavender town wasn't small in comparison to many of the tiny towns that dotted the Kanto region but were excluded from the games, neither did it have the same amenities as larger cities like Celadon. I hadn't gone all the way to Celedon -- I didn't have any need of the specialized supplies that the Celadon mall offered with its ridiculous upcharge -- but Saffron was close enough that I was able to get there and back within twenty-four hours. Digging through my backpack, I pulled out the items I had recently purchased and rearranged them for optimal access, depending on the item.

Three pokeballs -- expensive, but a necessary item for anyone setting out on their journey. A set of five potions -- hopefully not necessary, but better to have them and not need them than the reverse. And most importantly: a pokesplicer, the revolutionary item that allowed humans to force a fusion, replicating what inexplicably and occasionally happened in the wild. Like pretty much everything else of importance developed over the last hundred years, it had been invented by Silph Co., the leaders in pokemon technology. I carefully tucked the splicer deep into my bag, wrapping it in one of my spare shirts. The lady at the pokemart had claimed it wouldn't break even under heavy impacts, but I wasn't taking any chances. I had a very specific plan for that splicer, and it cost too much for me to casually go out and buy another -- at least not until after I'd been on my journey for a bit longer and had a chance to win some more money.

A few minutes later, I sat on my bed and stared at my fully packed bag, a blend of apprehension and anticipation filling me. Hobbes crawled out of his room, his cloth fully repaired, and climbed onto my lap with a soft "Miii...", apparently feeling the same way.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"It's really happening," I said softly, my mouth almost pressed against his pikachu-like-costume. "Tomorrow, we start our journey."

I couldn't wait.

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

"You ready, son?" my dad asked with a smile around a mouthful of ribs. "All packed up and excited?"

"Yep and yep!" I answered, smearing barbeque sauce from my lips with the back of my hand. Normally, my family was a bit of a stickler for table manners, but ribs were a bit of an exception. It was almost impossible to eat ribs 'politely', and my parents had embraced the notion, treating the meal as a chance to live our 'wild side' as my dad called it.

While I'd inherited my skill with pokemon training and sense of adventure from my mom, pretty much everything else I'd gotten from my dad. Tall with spikey green hair, it was rare that someone in town didn't comment about how I was looking more and more like 'Mark's son.' And while he hadn't embraced his own journey the same way my mom had, he made up for it in his enthusiasm for my journey.

"Know where you're going first?" he asked. "Gonna be traditional and head to Pewter gym?"

I hummed. "Maybe eventually. But I've got an errand to run first down near Merraga," I said, mentioning one of the small towns that didn't exist in the game world of pokemon.

My mom frowned. "What are you doing there? There aren't any gyms in Merraga. Unless that's changed recently?"

I shook my head. "No, no gyms there. But it's got something else I need..."

My parents stared at me expectantly, and I smiled.

"It's a surprise."

My mom sighed dramatically while my dad exhaled a huff of laughter, Kisses barking out a laugh along with him from her spot at the table eating pokechow. My attention turned to the pet pokemon as my parents dug back into their ribs.

"...have you given any more thought into getting a sun or leaf stone for Kisses?" I asked, and my parents sighed.

"We've been over this. Evolution stones are expensive, and we can't afford to waste one testing out your theories," my mom answered, and I withheld my sigh in return.

That was one of the things that had baffled me about the pokemon games in my youth -- how little everyone knew about pokemon. Professor Oak would always go on about how little people knew about pokemon, and how Ash needed to help him discover and catalog the many species with his pokedex. But really -- with only one hundred fifty in the original series? And even with a thousand after all the new regions? How hard would it really be to catalog that many pokemon after decades of study?

In this world, however, it made a bit more sense.

Being in the Kanto region, the vast majority of the pokemon I'd see were Kanto natives, though the diversity had skyrocketed over the last twenty years as relations with neighboring regions had strengthened. But in addition to the thousand or so possible original pokemon from different regions, this world also had fusions between each of those different pokemon -- resulting in a total pokedex list of a million unique pokemon -- and that wasn't even counting regional variations. It wasn't unusual at all for someone to encounter a pokemon, either in the wild or as part of a trainer's team, that they'd never seen before and would likely never see again.

Of course, with my game knowledge from my old world, I knew that the million pokemon could simplified as combinations of a thousand different pokemon, but the people of this world didn't see it that way. They saw each fusion of pokemon as a unique species unto itself, one whose abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and evolutions had to be discovered and explored individually.

And so despite the fact that I knew Kisses would evolve into either a vilebat when exposed to a leaf stone or a bellobat when exposed to a sun stone, my parents refused to buy one to test it out. Because in their eyes, the chances of that were just as high as the chances of Kisses evolving when exposed to a fire stone, and they didn't have the spare money to throw around on such a large expense upon the insistence of their kid. Because to them, Kisses was a unique, never-before-seen pokemon that they had no way of knowing his evolutions beforehand.

And, to be entirely honest, I couldn't completely disagree with them.

I knew Kisses was a fusion of crobat and gloom, and I knew how each of those pokemon lines evolved -- in the pokemon game world. But this wasn't the pokemon game world. This was an alternate universe where pokemon were real and the consequences of actions were even realer -- a lesson I had learned the hard way in the first weeks after awaking here. In part, I wanted my parents to try the evolution stones as a test of my own insider knowledge of the pokemon world. As a safe way to see how much I could trust what I thought I knew about raising pokemon.

"And besides," my mom continued after swallowing her mouthful of rib meat. "Why would you want kisses to evolve? He's perfect the way he is."

"Gloo? Gloo!" Kisses said as he looked up from his bowl of pokechow, the drool that was dripping down his chin flinging through the air and landing on Hobbes' rag next to him at the sudden motion.

"Mi! Mii mii!" my pokemon shouted in outrage, and a shadowy tendril reached out from under his cloth to steal a portion of Kisses' food as payment for the transgression.

As the two pokemon bickered, I smiled. My mom certainly had a good point there.