Disclaimer: I do not own anything recognizable.

Professor Juniper looked down at the lone pokeball sitting on top of the metal cart next to her. Inside the pokeball was a small green and yellow Pokémon that slightly resembled a lizard, but cuter, that was a Snivy. In front of her were two brand new trainers, a blond girl with a green hat name Bianca and a boy with dark blue hair and glasses named Cheren. The two were to begin their journey through the Unova region today. Professor Juniper had chosen them specifically from Nuvema Town because of their close friendship, but she had truly wanted three people to go on a journey and complete the Pokedex together. However, they would do.

Professor Juniper watched the two teenagers in front of her, the corners of her lips tilting up as she saw them introducing themselves to their Pokémon. Bianca had chosen Tepig, a small red and black Pokémon that tended to snort smoke from its snout. It, of course, resembled a baby pig. Her eyes then skimmed over to Cheren, who was greeting his Oshawott, a small blue and white Pokémon that had a shell it kept on its chest called a scalchop that it used for battle.

Professor Juniper sighed as her eyes then darted back to the pokeball next to her. Cheren had originally tried to choose the Snivy, but Snivy had rejected him. Professor Juniper had hoped the Snivy would allow a trainer to choose it and tame it a bit. The Snivy, unlike the Tepig and Oshawott, had been caught from the wild instead of bred and hatched as eggs in the lab, and was a stubborn little thing that would not let anyone near it except to feed it. Juniper feared the Snivy would never allow a trainer to befriend it, and it would be alone and unhappy forever.

Juniper quickly shook those thoughts from her mind as Cheren and Bianca stood next to their new partners, waiting for her to give them further instruction.

"I would like you two to go home and tell your parents—" the professor began, but she was abruptly cut off as two of her assistants came running into her lab yelling her name.

"Oh, my. What happened?" Professor Juniper gasped at the sight of a limp, unconscious girl in the arms of one of her assistants. "Come on. Let's get her into a bed so I can take a look at her."

The professor began to jog toward the back of the lab, where the rooms her assistants lived in were located, as the assistant that wasn't carrying the girl began to explain. She didn't even notice when Bianca and Cheren shared a look and began to follow after them, Tepig and Oshawott close behind.

"We found her on the bank of the stream about half a mile from the outskirts of town when we were looking for the autumn Deerling," the assistant said quickly.

The professor nodded as she swept into one of the unoccupied rooms, motioning for the assistant to lay the girl on the bed. Juniper quickly got out a flashlight from her lab coat pocket and began to check her eyes. Though Juniper went to school to become a Pokémon professor, she was required to go through medical school as well. They said it was because they needed to learn how the human body worked before they could understand how a Pokémon's body worked.

The professor sighed in relief as she finished checking the girl for a concussion and spinal injuries as well as her breathing and heart rate.

"Will she be okay?" Bianca blurted out worriedly. Cheren took the moment to face-palm, and Bianca quickly slapped her hand over her mouth. They had been as quiet as they could so far, thinking that if they were noticed, they would get kicked out and not be able the girl's status.

Instead of throwing them out, Juniper gave them a small smile, thinking it admirable that they would be concerned for a girl they didn't even know. "She will be fine."

The tension in the room dissipated as everyone let out a sigh of relief.

"When do you think she will wake up?" asked the assistant that had carried the girl.

Juniper shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not really sure. From what I can tell, she could wake up anytime, as she is in perfect health. At this point, it seems she will wake up when she is ready."

Cacia's POV

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the pain shooting through my temples. My body ached and felt heavy, as though I had been asleep for two days. I went to open my eyes, only to find a bright light shooting a bolt of pain to the back of my skull. As much as I hated the pain, I hated not being able to see even more, so I started grinding my teeth together, giving out a quiet grunt as I peeled my eyelids open once more.

"Well, I guess she's ready," I heard someone to my left say. The voice was distinctly male, and my body automatically tensed at the unrecognizable sound.

My vision was blurry when I finally got my eyes to open enough so I no longer felt pain in my eyes, and I had to blink a few times to clear my vision. My body no longer felt as heavy as it had when I first woke up, but it still ached in places.

"Look, Professor. She's awake," an excited female, who was also to my left, said.

I sat up quickly to see who was talking before discovering that was a bad idea. My pain-splitting headache came back full force, and I began to massage my head with one of my hands. Even though my head was killing me, I wanted to know where I was. So, being the stubborn person I am, I forced my eyes open once again and began to look around me.

"The hell…" I muttered to myself, looking around the unfamiliar room. The room was pretty empty, seeing as there was only a dresser, a lamp, and the bed I noticed I was laying on.

I glanced to my left to see who had been speaking. My eyes widened as the first person I saw was a girl, about my age, with blond hair. She was wearing a green hat that kind of looked like a beret, a white dress with short sleeves that went down to her knees with an orange vest layered on top, orange stockings, and yellow shoes. Her choice of an outfit was….interesting, to say the least.

Next to her was a boy, who was, again, about my age. He had navy blue hair and glasses. He was wearing a white button up shirt that was red around the collar and along where it buttoned. Over that, he had a blue jacket. On his lower half was a pair of dark blue jeans and a pair of dark blue sneakers.

I concluded quickly that these were the two voices I heard as I was waking up. In the back of my mind, I noticed a flash of blue and white, and then a different flash of red and black, before my attention was called away.

"How are you feeling?" asked a mature female voice to my right.

I whipped my head around to see a woman that looked to be in her late twenties to early thirties. Her light brown hair was pulled into a bun on the back of her head, and she wore a lab coat over a white t-shirt and a green skirt. White and red tennis shoes adorned her feet.

"Uh….okay?" I answered, unconsciously moving a little further away from her.

Are you sure you're all right? came a voice that sounded feminine.

You look kind of funny, said a different voice that was more masculine.

I glanced toward my feet, expecting to see two more teenagers I hadn't noticed before in my perusal of the room. Instead, I saw a little blue and white thing that kind of looked like an otter with a shell on its chest and a baby pig that was red and black.

As I looked at them, the otter thing reached over with a little white arm and tapped the pig in between its ears. As it did this, it also opened its mouth, and, in the same feminine voice that asked me if I was all right, said, Tepig, that was rude.

The little pig jerked away and shook its head quickly, as though it was trying to get the feeling of the otter thing touching it off. It opened its snout, and, in its deeper voice, said, Sorry. Geez.

I could physically feel my eyes widen.

"Is Oshawott bothering you?" the blue haired boy to my left asked, noticing my stare. Without waiting for a response, he then plucked something I hadn't noticed from his belt and held it toward me. "Oshawott, return."

I watched as he opened a sphere that seemed to fit perfectly in the palm of his hand. A stream of glowing red light came from the opened sphere and engulfed the blue and white before pulling it back and into the ball. As the boy went to put the ball back into the slot on his belt, I noticed the top half was red and the bottom half was white. In the middle, where the seams connected, was a whited button about the size of the pad of my thumb surrounded by a ring of black. It looked suspiciously like….

"A pokeball…." I breathed incredulously as my mind connected the dots of why the scene that just occurred was so familiar to me. Just as I realized the sphere was a pokeball, my mind spun as I turned back to the piglet that was still on the bed. I gingerly reached out to touch the top of its head as I whispered to myself, "A Pokémon…."

"Have you never seen a Tepig before?" the voice of the blond girl asked. I didn't even turn my head to look at her, and instead shook my head as my fingertips brushed against the warm, smooth skin of the piglet, which I now knew was a Pokémon called Tepig. It snorted happily, murmuring something under its breath as it nuzzled my hand.

"That's odd…." the blue haired boy muttered.

"What's your name, dear?" the woman in the lab coat asked me.

"Cacia Jasik," I answered absentmindedly as the Tepig climbed into my lap.

"And do you know where you are, Cacia?" she asked, her voice soft.

I finally glanced up at her, taking in the sincerity on her face, and shook my head slowly.

The woman's face softened further, and she got a sad glint in her eye. "You're in Nuvema Town. Does that mean anything to you?"

I absently stroked the Tepig in my lap as I searched my memory, trying to find even a small amount of familiarity in the name. There was none, and I found it odd since I knew every town in Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh. Of course, I knew most of the Pokémon in those regions as well, but had never seen either of the two Pokémon I had seen since I had been here.

Something clicked in my mind, and instead of answering,I asked, "What region is this?"

"Unova," the boy answered immediately.

"That makes sense then…." I muttered to myself. That would explain why I didn't recognize the town or the Pokémon here. I haven't read anything about this region or its inhabitants.

"What makes sense?" asked the blond girl, tilting her head to the right like a curious puppy.

I opened my mouth to answer, but stopped myself a second later. Could I really trust these people? I thought to myself, looking around the room at the three people in it. I looked at the blond girl, her face reading like a small child's in her open curiosity, then at the blue haired boy, seeing he seemed sincerely concerned as well, though his expression was a bit more masked than the girl's. Finally, I looked at the older woman, seeing the face of a teacher concerned about why her best student had suddenly started doing poorly on her tests.

These people sincerely cared about someone they don't even know, I concluded. It was weird to me, but welcome. I decided.

"It makes sense why I don't recognize where I am or these Pokémon," I said, pausing for a moment to think about how to word what I was going to say next. "I'm not from here."

"Oh, we know you're not from here," the blond said cheerily, a small smile on her face. "Cheren and I have been able to name everyone who lives here since we were five. It's a small town."

I was impressed that she was able to say that all in one breath.

"That's not what I meant," I said, shaking my head, lips pursed as I tried to explain myself. "I didn't mean I'm not from this town. I'm not from this world."

The blue haired boy's eyebrows knitted together in confusion, and the older woman's face became even more concerned as she walked towards me, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"What do you mean, dear?" she asked, her voice reminding me of a concerned parent. I stared into her green eyes, trying to see if there was any disbelief in them. After all, it wasn't every day that someone claimed to be from a different world, and I didn't know if I really believed it myself. I didn't find any.

"Where I come from," I started slowly, trying to find the right words to explain, "Pokémon are fictional animals, and Unova is a fictional country. It's part of a story."

All three of them stared at me, and I began shifting in my seat. It was unnerving, and I wanted them to stop looking at me like I was crazy.

"Okay," the boy said, slowly nodding. "Say you aren't crazy. If this is all a story in your world, then how did you get here?"

I shrugged to myself, looking down at the Tepig and smiling lightly as he nuzzled my stomach, scratching under his chin. "Maybe it's a dream."

The boy raised his eyebrows at me. "Have you ever had a dream that was this straight-forward and logical?"

"No," I sighed. Suddenly, a random memory of a book I once read popped into my mind and out my mouth. "I read a book once that toyed with the idea that authors in one world are actually seeing into another world, and that's where they get their stories from."

"There are actually studies on that here as well," said the woman next to me. Her eyes met mine as she said, "It's not as far-fetched as you think."

"Okay, so that explains how she got here," the boy said, looking at the blond before looking back at me and the woman. "But that still doesn't explain how she got here."

The woman sighed. "That's true." She looked at me. "Do you remember what happened to you before you woke up here?"

"Yeah," I nodded, noticing how at ease I was with these people. I had never felt as comfortable in my own house with my mom and step-father as I did in this room full of strangers in a world I even didn't know. I didn't even know their names. That's sad. "I was walking to the library right after school when I bumped into this weird guy with white hair. He grabbed me, and two clones of him popped up. I tried to escape, but just ended up being grabbed by the other two. They talked to each other, then touched my face while I panicked. Next thing I know, I woke up in here, with you people."

The woman's eyebrows knitted together in thought for a few moments before she asked, "Do you know what they said?"

I raised one of my own eyebrows as I told her, "The only thing they really said was something like 'she will show him the truth', or something. That was it?"

"Does that mean anything to you?" the boy asked, his hand on his chin.

I shook my head. "Not a thing."

"And you say they touched your face?" he asked inquisitively.

"Yeah," I said. "It was weird. Two of them touched my cheeks, and the other one touched my forehead. And they all did it at the exact same time."

"Then maybe that's what brought her here," the blond piped in, though she said it more like a question. We all looked at her. "What? Maybe these three guys somehow have the power to move through worlds."

"Bianca," the boy said softly. "That actually made sense."

The girl's, Bianca's, face flushed, but I couldn't tell if it was from anger or from the kind-of-sort-of compliment.

"Actually, it makes perfect sense. Good job, Bianca," the older woman praised.

"Okay. So does that mean Cacia would have to find these guys to get back to her own world then?" the boy asked the woman.

Hey, now, I thought to myself. Maybe I don't want to go back.

But at the same time, I knew I would have to go back. I didn't belong here, even if I was more comfortable after seventeen minutes in this world than in the seventeen years I spent in mine.

"That seems to be the case," the woman responded. "And even if they weren't the ones who brought her here, they might know what or who did, considering they are the last ones she remembers seeing in her world."

"That's great and everything," I interrupted, "but how am I even supposed to find them? They could be anywhere in the region by now."

I was smiling on the inside, thinking about how great it would be if I never found them and got to stay here instead. The Tepig in my lap nudged my hand off of its head. I gave it a questioning look.

Well, if you aren't going to pet me I'm going to go to someone who will, he said indignantly. I rolled my eyes as he climbed off my lap and jumped off the bed, running to Bianca and jumping into her arms. She cuddled him tightly, and he nuzzled her chest.

"Well," the woman said, smiling a little. She looked like she had a plan, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to hear it. "Bianca and Cheren are going to help me collect data on the different Pokémon in Unova using the Pokedex I gave each of them. Perhaps you could go with them?"

Bianca's face lit up. "That'd be so much fun! I think it's a great idea! Don't you think so, Cheren?"

The boy, who I now knew was Cheren, was much calmer in his response than Bianca, as he shrugged his shoulders with a small grin and said, "It's perfectly fine with me, Professor."

The professor turned to me. "What do you think, Cacia?"

I had to admit, I really wanted to see the region, especially if I might end up leaving it. It was a tempting idea. There was one thing that was bothering me about the offer, though.

"Isn't it supposed to be dangerous to travel if you don't have a Pokémon?" I asked, remembering how many of the adults in the past Pokémon manga repeatedly warned the protagonist against traveling in the tall grass—or anywhere really—if they didn't have a Pokémon with them.

The professor sighed, sounding slightly sad as she answered, "Yes, but the only Pokémon I have to give you is a Snivy, and he is rather—"

"SNIVY!" someone screamed, followed by a huge crash.

"What was that?" I asked, panicking a little as another crash sounded and the floor shook slightly.

"Oh, no!" the professor exclaimed, hopping off the bed and rushing to the door. Bianca and Cheren followed her, and I quickly hopped down from the bed, trailing after them and into the hallway.