"Hello there, glad to meet you! Welcome to the world of Pokémon!"
The enthusiastic voice of an old man familiar to Kirito rang out, as out of the darkness a light became more and more defined, gaining a shape and defining features. As his eyes became accustomed to the light, Kazuto could see a man with grey hair and dark, bushy eyebrows. He was wearing a lab coat and was familiar to anyone who had played a Pokémon game.
"My name is Oak, people affectionately refer to me as the Pokémon professor."
The man carefully put his right arm forward with palm facing up and angled it slightly upwards at a 20-degree angle. With his left index finger, he swiftly swiped from the bottom of his palm down his arm, opening a menu screen in midair right above it. Pushing his finger down on a button unseen to Kazuto, the professor caused a red light to appear and snake diagonally down to the ground, surrounded by silver light in a shape of a zigzag that resembled lightning. As the light hit the ground it exploded briefly in a sphere of white light, and a moment later, a purple rodent-like Pokémon materialized in its place. The Pokémon had big oval ears with purple spikes running down its back and a small horn in the middle of its head slightly above the eyes. Its eyes were red and had a hard glint to them which contrasted with the Pokémon's single long tooth sticking out of its mouth, reminding Kazuto of a caricature of a human baby. While the Pokémon had not been introduced, he recognized it as the poison-type Pokémon Nidoran immediately.
"This world... is inhabited far and wide by creatures called Pokémon. For some people, Pokémon are pets. Others use them for battling. Some view them simply as tools to be used."
Kazuto didn't recall that last line being in the original games or in the beta. Looking up from the Pokémon at Oak's feet towards the professor himself again, he thought he momentarily glimpsed the old man's eyes dimming and a grimace emerging from where his cheery smile had been, but they were back to normal in what couldn't have been more than a millisecond if it had happened at all. Puzzled, his eyes were drawn back down to the Pokémon as another red and silver line of light shot down from the Professor's arm to where the Nidoran was crouching. The Pokémon's body was encompassed in an instant before fading into nothingness. No sign of its existence remained as the Professor continued his speech:
"As for myself… I study Pokémon as a profession. But first, tell me a little about yourself. Now tell me, are you a boy? Or are you a girl?"
As Kazuto chuckled to himself softly, an option menu lit up in front of him asking him to select boy or girl. Below the standard responses appeared a third option, 'Recover Saved Character Data'. While this obviously wouldn't allow beta testers to recover their original Pokémon or levels, it would save him time in selecting his preferences and having to recreate his character. With his eyes, or rather his vision as he had no avatar currently, he moved the toggle down to the third option. He had already painstakingly designed his character in the beta to a look of his pleasing and this option would allow him to skip the rest of the professor's fairly generic speech. Blinking twice, Kazuto selected the option before Oak could explain how to select an option using the VR interface. With one final bright flash, Kazuto felt his consciousness shift again as the familiar feeling of virtual gravity brought his attention to his newly recovered virtual body. Clinching his hands into fists and hearing the beeping sound of teleports around him, he opened his eyes as Kirito, a Japanese man with an athletic body and a handsome face that was exceedingly unlikely to get him mistaken for a girl. Around him he saw 20-30 others opening their eyes and surveying their surroundings, many of whom he had recalled seeing once or twice in the beta test.
After clinching and opening his fists again and stretching his arms behind his head in a way he knew had absolutely no effect on his virtual body, Kirito began jogging through the courtyard towards where he remembered the Pokémon Laboratory being. As he briskly exited the gigantic courtyard area, he found a sprawling grassy area running through a town with a grey cobblestone pathway connecting the various houses. Most of the houses in this part of Pallet Town, the beginning area of the game where no Pokémon would spawn and attack you, were occupied by NPC's that would give various quests or dialogue intended to help beginners with the exception being the large building in the center towards which he was heading. Looking back over his shoulder, Kirito could see the much larger 'Player Area' which surrounded the Courtyard on all sides; there must have been enough residency and food options for nearly the entire 12,000 strong player-base that had gotten their hands on an initial copy of the game here. While Kirito had automatic access to the full game as a beta tester, he had seen TV reports of people camping outside of stores for days to have a chance of getting the game. The sheer size of the 'Town of Beginnings', as the Beta Testers had called the gigantic residential area, still confused Kirito. Almost no one would actually take up residency here when they could continue to advance through the game and find better boarding options even a single town over. Perhaps the extra rooms were created for when the next batch of players inevitably got access to the game. Regardless, Kirito turned back towards his destination as he approached the door.
Twisting the knob and pushing forward, he entered Professor's Oak Lab. Diagonal silver tiles lined the floor and there was an abundance of space, far more than one would have expected from looking at the building from the outside. It was filled with bookshelves, gadgets, and a number of Oak's aides, a few of which were talking to some of the other players. Ignoring the aides so as not to get swept into a tutorial on how to use the 'Pokélink' on his arm, Kirito walked towards the back of the room where he could see a sign marked 'Pokémon Selection Center'. Selection in this game worked differently from the other Pokémon games in which you got to select your Pokémon from 3 options. In order to allow large numbers of people to choose Pokémon simultaneously, stepping on one of the warp panels by the sign would move him to an instanced location where he would basically be on a separate map from the other players. There, he would be asked a number of seemingly random questions which the machine took into account along with a number of other unknown criteria to select his first Pokémon for him. In the beta, the testers had been allowed to go through the selection process as many times as they wanted in order to bug test the algorithm used. Many people had been displeased with receiving Caterpie or Magikarp no matter how many times they took the test and the GM's had promised to fix it before the official release. Kirito hoped this was true as he didn't want to start the game off with another especially weak Whismur that would take weeks before evolving into the more useful Loudred.
Stepping onto the panel in the middle, he felt his consciousness being whisked away into a small, dimly lit room. On the wall ahead of him was a machine with a number of rapidly blinking lights and a display in the middle that was displaying his vital signs and a blank screen. The screen lit up and text started scrolling through it as he heard a high, neutral voice ask him:
"Do you prefer strong or rare Pokémon?"
Kirito had decided to answer all of the questions honestly ahead of time but hesitated briefly before clearing his throat out of habit and speaking in a loud, clear voice:
"Strong."
The test continued for the next ten minutes and Kirito answered all kinds of questions ranging from his favorite school subject to his experience with Pokémon games, and even to what he would do in a situation where he was running late for a test and an elderly woman fell in front of him. The device then whirred intensely as the words 'Processing Results' showed up on the monitor in front of him. The whirring suddenly stopped and Kirito heard the announcement as he noticed the new words on the screen 'Results Processed: Pokémon Selected'. The same red and silver light as before shot from a dispenser on the machine towards his arm and encompassed his body, teleporting him from the instanced room back to the Pokémon laboratory. It was noticeably fuller now as people had no doubt begun to finish designing their characters, and he quickly exited the lab.
As soon as Kirito left the lab, he began running in the direction of Viridian Forest. The route would give him ample time to train his Pokémon and could be done in a few hours, allowing him to make base camp in Pewter City. Logging out in this game was risky to do outside of a safe zone as wild Pokémon or players could still attack your avatar, and dying in the game would cause you to lose experience, some Pokéyen (the form of currency), and potentially one or two randomly selected items.
As he ran, he brought his arm into the position required to initiate the Pokélink and stroked down with his left index finger to open the menu. He selected 'Pokémon' while turning a corner and abruptly ran into another man, accidentally kneeing him in the groin and causing both of them to be repelled backwards into the ground by the Safe Zone's anti-combat features.
Grasping his groin and groaning in pain, the handsome red-haired man with a bandana grumbled:
"What the hell was that for."
"Whoa, I'm really sorry man I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, sorry about that. You... you don't actually feel any pain in here though, do you?"
"Oh yeah" the man sheepishly exclaimed with a grin, "force of habit I guess. This is my first time in a VR game and it all seems so lifelike. Speaking of which, you seem pretty experienced. Would you mind helping a total noob out? I've played a Pokémon game or two before and some MMO's but nothing like this."
Kirito groaned to himself internally but he had just run into the man and kneed him in the privates. It wouldn't take too long to show him how to play, and worst-case scenario he could just complete some of the nearby quests and get some XP if he couldn't make it through Viridian Forest before dinner.
"Yeah sure thing, I have some time to spare and I don't mind. I'm guessing you haven't gotten your Pokémon yet, right? Go over to that laboratory over there and step on one of the warp gates in the back. I'm gonna stock up on potions and activate a few quests now but I'll meet you in front of the lab in 10 minutes."
With a nod, the man dusted himself off as he got up and gave Kirito a quick handshake.
"Thanks a lot man, I really appreciate it, the name's Klein. What's yours?"
"It's really no problem, and I'm Kirito."
