The remainder of our walk through Ilex was un-fun to the extreme. It had gotten really dark under the cover of the trees, so dark that I could only see about a foot or so ahead of me clearly. It made talking to the others impossible since we all had to focus entirely on where we were stepping next, and it also made it much easier for the wild Pokemon to randomly attack me. I could see now that I wasn't a special target, though; they focused on all four of us humans, though they left Drowzee (and Hoothoot, once she returned) alone.

But after a painful few hours of warding off attacks, fighting through the vines and Spinarak-webs that occasionally covered the paths, and privately wondering if we might get eaten by something, we finally found ourselves stumbling out of the forest, only temporarily harmed. The change was much more abrupt this time; we went from being in densely-packed trees to standing on the edge of cleared ground in less than a minute. A few old stumps that still hadn't been dug out of the earth told me how that had happened.

The stumps weren't the only thing I could see, unfortunately. The pink creature standing right before us that was even taller than me was much more prominent.

Florence managed to clap a hand over my mouth before I screamed, which was probably good; we didn't need Isaac thinking I was a wimp or something. She looked pretty spooked too, though, with her shoulders back and eyes wide as they were. In front of us, Michael had stepped into a defensive position automatically, and Hoothoot looked like she was ready to launch herself off of his shoulder at a moment's notice. Even Drowzee was somewhat alert for once, since he had his eyes fully open and his fists up in the air, breath coming more quickly than was usual.

Isaac, however, was unperturbed. He kept his arms flat on his sides and bowed from his torso with a smile. "Greetings, Samuel. Any news from the town?"

I waited with every muscle uncomfortably tensed and Florence's hand still clapped over my mouth as the pink thing turned its head towards us incredibly slowly. It – he? – was giving me the chance to observe him closely, so I took it. His torso was white and striped, but the rest of his body was smooth and pink, chubby; his only distinguishing trait was a giant shell that was stuck onto what looked like it might be a tail, a shell which had eyes. Those eyes moved faster than the creature's own, darting this way and that occasionally.

I breathed deeply through my nose and made myself relax. Slowbro weren't particularly dangerous, after all.

It took a few seconds for me to yank Florence's hand off of my face, and that was also how long it took before a voice rang through my head, a very deep and echoey voice. It reminded me of dark caverns and trickling waves. No, it said, the word drawn out painfully slowly.

That was what tele-something was like, I decided. I just needed to get Drowzee to learn how to use it properly.

"I'm glad to hear it," Isaac replied with a smile. Then he motioned us forwards, out towards the area stripped of grass that stood before us – a road! An actual road! Not paved or anything, but it was clear-cut and a welcome sight all the same. I practically skipped onto it, indescribably happy at the change made by an even surface under my aching feet.

I glanced back once at the Slowbro, curious, to find that he was (slowly) turning his head back to its initial position. Perhaps the town was using him as a guard? Still, it was odd to see a Pokemon out there by himself, no trainer close at hand.

Also, Isaac had called the Slowbro Samuel; the Pokemon had a name. I felt like slapping myself on the forehead for being surprised about that at all. Of course he had a name, lots of trainers either nicknamed their Pokemon or asked a handy psychic for the creature's natural name soon after they had been caught. My surprise was just another sign of how the different time was getting to me. Did Michael have a nickname for his Hoothoot, one that he only used around her? What about Richard and his Tentacruel? I surreptitiously glanced at Drowzee at that point, since he was walking next to me on the road, as quiet as ever. Did my starter have a name? I tried to think of him as a Desmond or a Nick, but I could only really envision him as Drowzee.

Why did he need a nickname, anyway? Wasn't I still bitter about him not being an electric Pokemon? My priorities had gotten all mixed up.

We finally reached some of the outlying houses at that point, which helped to distract me from my mostly useless thoughts. I was eager to see what this real Johto was like, three hundred years in the past.

Azalea was different from Enrui in many ways. For one thing, the people who walked about the town were more nicely dressed, though they still wore old-fashioned outfits, and colors and styles were obvious all around me. The buildings were nicer, too, and they looked much more permanent. Out on the outskirts we passed an inn, a few large houses, and a gigantic farm that had an orchard taking over all the land behind it. I saw a little kid peeking out at me from behind the fence of that farm, a boy no more than six years old, probably. He bit his thumb while staring at Drowzee and Hoothoot, and his eyes narrowed dramatically.

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The Slowpoke effect was blatant, much more obvious than I'd ever seen in Azalea before. Most houses were painted in shades of pink and cream and almost all of the shops we encountered while walking had Slowpoke-themed decorations. In the town proper the Pokemon were lazing on doorsteps, rooftops, and in the middle of the street everywhere you looked. Everyone treated them with great respect, and they occasionally yawned in reply. I saw one other Slowbro sitting in a general store's window, watching life outside pass by, but the evolutions were nonexistent otherwise.

My conclusion overall was that, besides the absence of technology, old Azalea wasn't all that different from the version I was used to. Present-day Azalea was a very historical place (probably due to their obsession with Slowpoke again), so that wasn't too much of a surprise, but it was still all a sight for my sore eyes. I kept craning my neck around to see as much as I possibly could, especially the things they used to replace our more modern solutions. There were real street lamps out on the corners that needed to be lit and hand-drawn wagons being pulled by other people through the streets. I watched with fascination as someone on the other side of the street opened a second-story window to dump something out of the window and onto the road before the house. Wait. Had that been a chamber pot?

I was disgusted enough by that revelation to not look too closely for others. At least the Enrui people had done their business in latrines, which had felt almost like scouting to me.

Isaac lived in a decently-sized house near the middle of the town, which made me think that he was rich. Most people who lived in the center of Goldenrod in anything other than a tiny, tiny apartment were wealthy, after all. He had a fence with a gate before the house and a lock on his door, and it almost felt like home again when I walked inside.

Then I was barreled over by a younger girl who came running in from a side room and knocked me flat on the floor, which kind of ruined the illusion.

"Papa!" she cried out as she pushed past me with her long, light brown hair streaming behind her, and Isaac scooped her up into the air and spun her around once before setting her down. They both had wide smiles on their faces, which would have been cute if I hadn’t been knocked to the ground. Florence, who had walked in beside me, glanced at me and then looked away in rapid succession. I couldn't tell precisely, but it seemed like she actually felt guilty for being so negative about Isaac before. Anyway, at least she helped me off the floor instead of making some snide comment about me never being able to defend myself, even from little girls.

Actually, Florence had been quiet for almost the entire walk through the village. I hadn't been paying attention before since all the new sights were too exciting, but I peered at her more closely then. "Something wrong?" I muttered as I rubbed the shoulder that had slammed into the ground.

Florence shrugged and looked back at the two adults. I took it as a 'no', but filed away her odd behavior for later consideration.

We hadn't missed much; most of the first minute was occupied by the little girl peppering Isaac with questions about how his visit to the shrine had gone. He asked her whether Maisy had behaved herself, and I quickly deduced that Maisy was the almost-slender Slowpoke who wandered into the room long after the girl, looking even more bored than Drowzee usually did. My Pokemon wasn't bored at the moment (he was far too interested in sniffing around Maisy with his eyes scrunched up), but I figured it was only a matter of time.

"And you are a trainer as well!" the girl suddenly exclaimed, running away from Michael and up to me. I realized belatedly that some of the high-pitched questions that had been asked before were from her to Michael, about his Pokemon doubtlessly. I glanced over at the man, unable to hold back a snicker at the annoyed look on his face.

"Yeah," I replied, sticking my hands in my pockets nonchalantly (and squishing one of the berries in there in the process). "Name's Monroe, and my, uh, partner is Drowzee, over there."

"Yes, yes, but I plan to be a trainer too," the girl insisted, bouncing over to the Slowpoke and picking her up with a little twirl that sent her dress billowing around her. "My Maisy and I shall be the strongest team in all of Johto – in all of the world!" The Slowpoke's tail swung back and forth as the girl twirled her around, but the expression on the pink creature's face didn't change at all.

Isaac laughed a little uneasily in the background. "Charity," he said warningly (which left me plenty confused until I figured out that it was the girl's name), "let's not be too fanciful. You know girls do not fight with their majū like boys do."

I immediately looked over at Florence to see her reaction. Yep; her face was a thundercloud. Not that I could blame her when so much casual discrimination was being thrown around. People sometimes said that modern Johto was more conservative than the other regions, but it was nothing like what I had experienced so far in the past.

Charity sighed and pouted, and I blinked at her. She wasn't all that much younger than me, just one or two years, maybe. Did I act that silly and immature? Surely not. I was a Pokemon trainer, after all, I was supposed to be grown-up and responsible and... and terribly lost in another time. Well, getting lost was supposed to be part of the experience. I was just overdoing it a little.

Charity didn't give me a chance to think it over, though, since she placed her Slowpoke carefully on the floor, grabbed my right hand and Florence's left, then started tugging us both towards the side door she had initially emerged from. "Come on," she told us brightly, "let me show you the house!"

So we were dragged off away from the adults to see who-knew-what, like it or not. Maybe that was for the best, anyway. Sure, I wanted answers, but it didn’t feel safe to tell the adults about the predicament I was in. Maybe talking to the other kids would help me find the information I needed to know.