Now that I actually had some money beyond what Professor Rowan was lending me, I went back to the Poké Mart to pick up some more supplies. A sleeping pad and bag, some cooking supplies, a tent, and all manner of other useful items made their way into the my shopping cart

I did grimace a little bit every time I looked at the price tags and mentally subtracted them from how much money I had remaining, especially considering that at the moment this was all the money I had in the world. Somehow I would have to figure out how to get a job or something, although I didn’t exactly have a whole lot of marketable skills. A degree in medieval studies doesn’t exactly help when there wasn’t a single speck of shared history between the two worlds.

Venus stopped at one particular display, tail swishing eagerly before looking up at me with wide eyes.

“Poffins?” I asked incredulously, and her tail picked up speed.

Looking a little closer at the price tag, my eyebrows nearly disappeared into my hairline “Woah! Talk about being proud of their product! I don’t know if-“

The expression on Venus’ face nearly broke my heart, and I sighed. “Okay, don’t give me that look. Don’t get me wrong though, these aren’t going to be a daily treat okay?”

I had a feeling that that particular promise wouldn’t be kept.

She purred happily and wound her way through my legs like a cat, and I sighed again before reaching down and scratching her behind the ears.

The rest of the shopping went fairly well, until we got up to the main counter and I noticed a few things I hadn’t seen before on the back wall.

“Why are those bags different than the ones at the clothing store?” I asked curiously, pointing at a selection of rather normal looking backpacks and purses.

“Hm?” The clerk, somebody other than Courtney, looked over with a bored expression. “Oh, those are the Silph Bags.”

“Silph Bags? What makes them special?”

“You don’t know?”

I sighed, getting a little tired of not knowing apparently basic information in this world. “I’m from a little island, we don’t get a lot of modern inventions there.”

“Huh. Well it’s about eight years old or so, but they’re made using the same kind of technology in Poké Balls. Don’t ask me how it works, but you can stuff a ton of stuff in there. Like their advertisement “For the Trainer who wants it all,” y’know?”

I didn’t know, but I was definitely interested. I mean it broke the laws of physics, but that seemed like a good reason to actually buy one. Was this how the game and anime characters always managed to carry so much?

“And how much are they?”

“The standard models are one hundred thousand dollars. The bigger ones with more storage go up in price from there.”

I nearly choked at the price. It would be a long, long time before I was able to afford one of those.

Deciding that my current hiking pack would do just fine, even if it didn’t break physics, I instead turned my attention towards the small collection of electronics locked behind a glass counter.

“Is that one of the new Rotom Phones?”

“You’ve heard of Rotom Phones but not a Silph Bag?”

I glared at the man, and he held up his hands in defense. “Alright, yeah, they are.”

“How much are they?”

The man said a number, and I numbly rubbed a finger in one ear, trying to make sure I didn’t have any wax that was blocking my hearing.

“I’m sorry, I must not have heard you right, what was it again?”

The number didn’t change, and I swallowed thickly before pointing at an old, battered, obviously pre-owned Poké Gear.

“And how much for that one?”

I left the Poké Mart almost fifty-five thousand dollars poorer, but at least I had some supplies to last us for a while, and I had even bought the Poké Gear. It couldn’t access what passed for the internet here, but I could still make phone and video calls, as well as listen to the radio and some music. The clerk had even been kind enough to throw in some cheap headphones for free, which was nice considering how much money I was spending.

There wasn’t a Map Card installed on the Poké Gear, but that was fine considering I still had the map that Professor Rowan had given me, as well as the fact that I probably could have navigated around the major routes on Sinnoh just from my memories of the games.

I stopped by Dawn’s house and had a good conversation with her about living with divorced parents, then got her phone number and plugged it into my Poké Gear, promising to call her every now and again.

Despite not having practically any money left, I couldn’t really complain about any of my purchases, especially considering how happy Venus was once she got a Poffin.

/^\

“Are you sure about this?”

Professor Rowan asked as I double checked to make sure all of my possessions were ready to go.

“I’m sure.” I said, stuffing some socks to the bottom of my bag. “I’ve imposed on your hospitality long enough and besides, it’s time for Venus and I to get out and start exploring this brave new world.”

“Then in that case, I suppose I have a going-away present from all of us here at the lab.”

Stopping from my packing, I turned to the doorway of my room where the professor was standing.

“A present? That’s awfully kind of you professor, but like I said, I’ve already taken too much.”

“Then consider it a gift for Venus.”

That… was a bit harder to turn down. It had been a long time since I had gotten a present, I wasn't fond of most surprises, but if it was for Venus…

Professor Rowan was certainly crafty.

“Come on.” With a cryptic half-smile he turned and left, heading towards the common room.

Sharing a mystified look with Venus, who was currently splayed out on my bed, I started following Rowan. Venus hurriedly got to her feet and jumped down off the bed, catching up to my side in a flurry of motion.

My eyes narrowed at the selection of boxes laid out on the table, with the grinning faces of the research assistants gathered around them.

“I thought you said it was just one present.”

“I did. But this is a gift with options, you understand.”

I didn’t, but for some reason Venus was getting awfully excited and curious over the presents, sniffing at the air.

“Do you mind?”

The research assistants, George, Lucas, and the others, all reached down and opened the five cases up, revealing glittering stones the size of my palm. My eyes practically bugged out of my skull at the sight, and I gaped at Professor Rowan.

“Are those…”

“Evolution stones? Why yes, they are.”

“Professor!” I cried. “You can’t just give me one of those!”

That half-smile tugged at the edges of his mustache again. “Ah, but I’m not giving you one. I’m giving Venus one.”

“They’re still worth a lot of money! Tens of thousands of dollars! More!”

I had looked up evolution stones of course, practically as soon as Professor Rowan had allowed me to use a computer. My first Pokémon was an Eevee, naturally I would want to see how available the stones to evolve her would be. As it turned out, not easily available at all.

Different regions had different supplies of the stones, but even the cheapest options still costed at least fifty thousand dollars. The most expensive was well over five hundred thousand, which was over twice the amount of the reward money I had gotten for defeating some poachers. It would have been out of the realm of any normal person unless they did some saving for a while. To be just given one like this…

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Alina, what is my specific area of research?”

“Pokémon evolution… oh.”

“Indeed.” His smile got bigger. “And while we have seen Eevee evolutions before, it never hurts to get more data. If it’s okay with you two, we would love to record the entire affair.”

I opened my mouth to try and object again, but he held up a hand. “And before you try and tell me again that the stones are too rare, Leader Roark in Oreburgh City specifically sends me a collection of evolutionary stones that he digs up in the Underground. We have several just laying around, waiting for us to find a Pokémon willing to evolve for us.”

My mouth opened and closed like a Magikarp, until I sighed. “I don’t really have a choice to refuse this, do I?”

“You do not.”

“…Thank you.”

“The both of you have been a pleasure to have around. It’s an honor to help such a new and interesting Trainer such as yourself in the beginning of her journey, especially with such an obviously loved Pokémon.”

Professor Rowan stepped back to join the rest of the researchers, and I knelt down in front of Venus. She had barely paid attention to the conversation, the entirety of her focus being dedicated to the collection of stones on the table.

“Hey, Venus.” She looked at me quizzically. “You can sense those stones, can’t you?”

Venus nodded eagerly.

“Well, they’re evolution stones. You remember how I was telling you about how you could evolve into different forms?”

Her brown eyes were wide as she swapped between staring at me or the stones.

“That’s right, these stones will let you evolve. You can only choose one though, or you can choose not to evolve at all! Or there are other evolutions you can go through that don’t require any stones, but… well I mean that requires evolving at different times of day or with a certain kind of move you can know. It’s complicated.”

I floundered a little bit, hearing some snickering coming from the researchers.

“Regardless, I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to force anything on you, okay? It’s your choice, not mine. Think about it carefully, but just know that no matter what you choose, you’ll always be my partner. If you don’t want to evolve right now, or at all, that’s totally fine, and I’ll always be happy with you just the way you are."

Venus placed both her paws on my knee and stretched up to lick my face. Then she dropped down, and padded towards the table with the stones. I picked her up, placing her on the table, and she stared with wide eyes at the boxes.

Off to the side Professor Rowan made a small gesture with his hand, and I only just then noticed some machinery in the corner of the room. I didn’t recognize most of it, but I could make out some cameras and other lenses and figured they were probably a way of recording what evolution Venus would ultimately choose.

She stayed a respectable distance back from the stones, sniffing each one intently. Pretty much instantly though she had disregarded the Leaf and Ice Stone, and the lab assistants drew them back with quiet grumbles of discontent. I thought I might have seen some money change hands in the back, but I wasn’t sure.

“Just… do whatever feels right.” I called, and Venus shot me a thankful look.

Turning back to the stones, she shook her head at the Thunder Stone, leaving just the Water and Fire Stones left. She stared at them for a long moment, then stepped back entirely, turning and bounding over to me.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, and she leaned in to nuzzle my hand. “You don’t want to evolve right now?”

Venus looked up at me and blinked, then hopped up into my arms.

A wave of disappointed sighs quietly echoed around the room, and the researchers began moving to turn off and pack away the cameras and equipment. More money changed hands, and I could have sworn I saw Professor Rowan take a twenty dollar note with a satisfied smile.

Looking at the happy expression on Venus’ face however, I couldn’t be disappointed.

/^\

I hesitated at the door of Professor Rowan’s office. It was late at night and while everybody else had gone to bed, I knew that he would still be up.

The going away celebration had lasted a bit longer than any of us had intended, and eventually I had decided that we would spend one more night, then leave in the morning. Before we did though, there was something I had to do.

I knocked on the door, and received muffled “Come in.”

The door swung open quietly, revealing Professor Rowan sitting at his desk, reading an old leather bound book.

“Ah, Alina.” He said, looking over in surprise. “I thought you would be asleep in preparation for tomorrow.”

“There’s something I have to do first.”

His eyebrow quirked up, but he put the book away and gestured towards a chair, and I nervously sat.

“Well, what can I do for you?”

“I… I’ve tried to be as honest as I can.” I licked my lips. “But there’s things that I haven’t told you.”

Rowan’s eyes narrowed.

“Nothing bad! I mean, nothing… it’s hard to explain. I didn’t want to tell anybody at first because I was scared of what would happen to me, or that nobody would take me seriously, and I need to be taken seriously.”

“So what’s changed?”

“I’ve gotten to know you. I think you’re a good person, who wants that best for the world, for Sinnoh, and for Pokémon and people in general.”

He nodded. “I would like to think the same.”

“It’s just, I don’t know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning.”

I let out a deep breath. “Okay. In the world I come from, there are no Pokémon.”

He frowned. “Then how do you know so much about them? You were able to identify many different species, and use your Eevee in a battle quite adequately. Do you mean that there used to be Pokémon, but not anymore?”

“Not exactly.” I licked my lips again. “It began in the year 1989, with a man named Satoshi Tajiri…”

/^\

Professor Rowan leaned back, staring at me with unreadable eyes.

I was completely exhausted, the explanation had taken several hours, much longer than I had anticipated. Rowan had been silent for most of the confused ramblings, except every now and again when he asked a clarifying question.

Now that I was done though, having covered everything up to the most recent Pokémon release of Scarlet and Violet, he stood up.

Still not speaking, he moved over to a globe of the Pokémon world he had in the corner, then opened it up. Inside was a collection of bottles and glasses, and he poured out two servings of amber liquid into the glasses.

“Whiskey.” He said, striding over and giving me one of the glasses. “Imported from Galar. I acquired a taste for it when I was researching Farfetch’d and how they evolve into Sirfetch’d.”

I hesitantly took the glass and sipped at it. To my surprise, it was incredibly smooth, and didn’t burn at all like any other whiskey I had tried back home.

“Thank you.”

Rowan was quiet a long time after he sat down, but didn’t touch his own drink.

“I hope you know.” He said slowly. “That this is quite… difficult for me to believe.”

I ducked my head, feeling my face heat.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that if I didn’t tell somebody…”

“I didn’t say that I don’t believe you. It’s just difficult for me.”

My head rose, and my heart started beating faster in my chest as I began to hope.

“You… believe me?”

“I do. Some of the things you know have been kept secret, for fear that if the knowledge got into the wrong hands people could do great amounts of damage to the world. I must admit that I don’t know about a lot of the things you said, but I’ve had a number of suspicions for a while, and your information has confirmed many of my theories.”

I let out a shuddering breath as relief swept through my body.

He doesn’t think I’m crazy!

“So, what are we going to do?” I asked hesitantly.

Rowan didn’t answer at first, instead staring off into the distance with a pensive look on his face as he took a sip of whiskey.

“Right now? You’re going to go to bed.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“It’s well past midnight Alina. It’s far too late to be making any kind of serious decisions. We’ll both get some sleep, and come back in the morning when we’re more refreshed.”

“But… I mean…”

He raised an eyebrow. “Will any of these things destroy the world in the next day or two?”

I bit my lip. “No.”

“Will they destroy the world in the next five years?”

“I… possibly?”

“Yet you yourself admitted that most of these catastrophic events will be stopped by a number of people, including our very own Dawn.”

“Yes?”

“So right now, if we do nothing at all, things will still work out in the end?”

I gaped at him. “You can’t be serious!”

“I am very serious.”

“But, all of these disasters, they’ll kill hundreds, maybe thousands of people and Pokémon!”

Rowan sighed, and a small smile touched his lips. “That’s if we do nothing at all. I am not suggesting we do nothing, merely that we wait until tomorrow to discuss it more. Besides, even if I wanted to do something now, I could not act on everything you told me at the moment. I believe your stories because I’ve gotten to know you, and know that you wouldn’t lie about something so serious. However, other people may not be so understanding.”

“Then you’ll have to make them believe!”

“And I’ll try my best to do that. But these things take time, Alina. I have to reach out to my fellow Professors, to get in contact with the Champions and the Pokémon Leagues of their respective regions. There will be a lot of convincing that will have to be done in order to get people to listen. But I promise you this, I will try to get people to listen, to get them to act before these events come to pass.”

My shoulders slumped as a weight I didn’t realize had been on them lifted. “So, what do I do? Nothing?”

“Not at all. Tomorrow I’d like to go over this with you again, preferably with a recording device present so I can refer back to it later. Then once we’re done, you’re going to go on your Journey.”

“After all that, you still want me to be a regular Trainer?”

His smile widened by a fraction. “Don’t you want to be a “regular Trainer”?”

I froze. Damnit.

Rowan had a point. I did just want to be a regular Trainer. All my life I had wanted to live in the Pokémon world, to just be happy, and now this chance was in front of me.

“That’s what I thought.” He said. “I’m not saying that you’re done with this. Not by a long shot, and in fact I’ll probably have to ask you to help out with things in the future. But right now, no offense, you aren’t strong enough to take care of any of these problems.”

It stung, but he had a point.

The enemy teams like Rocket, Aqua, Magma, Galactic, Flare, Plasma, all of them were incredibly dangerous in their own way. These evil teams didn’t just have the desire to change or destroy the world, they had the power to do so, or were actively working on getting that power. Their lowliest members, the Grunts, had Pokémon that could take me out with a single move right now, and their leaders could probably threaten some of the most powerful Trainers in existence.

As much as I loved Venus, she wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to deal with them.

“So for now, rest.” He said. “And then tomorrow? Start training. Start getting stronger. Soon enough I’m sure you’ll get more involved, but for now you should focus on the little things. Those are what really matter.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to say that there was more I could do, more I should do. But he had a point.

Maybe I had done the best thing I could anyways. I had told somebody the truth about what was going to happen. Even if I disappeared back to my old world tomorrow, I still might have changed the world for the better.

I felt very, very tired, and I tossed the rest of the whiskey back.

“Sleep sounds like a very good idea professor. Goodnight."

/^\

“We’ll be back!” I called as Venus and I started on the dirt path out of Sandgem Town.

“You better!” Lucas called, waving excitedly.

Like we had agreed the night before, Rowan and I ended up going over what I remembered about the world of Pokémon and the events of the games and anime, and how to stop a lot of the disasters that were coming. He also gave me his own personal phone number, in case I needed remembered something and needed to get in contact with him.

Then he had slipped me five Poké Balls, which I had tried to refuse. He had made a very persuasive argument about the price of Poké Balls and how it was his job to prepare young trainers to start their journey, which often included handing out Poké Balls. I had grumbled, but ultimately accepted them and put them into my backpack, thanking him all the while.

The air was crisp and clean, and the breeze was cool and relaxing. Everyone from the lab had come out to see us off, and my steps were light and filled with excitement as the future seemed truly bright for one of the first times that I could remember. I didn’t know how long it would take for Rowan to get people to listen, but with Venus by my side I knew that no matter what, everything would be okay.

As Sandgem Town and the laboratory slowly disappeared behind us, a tune came to me, and I started singing softly as we walked along.

“I wanna be the very best…”