I spend the next hour or so trying to find Calem and understand what Dara is telling me.
"So what happened to Calem?" She asks
"I don't know. We were just headed to Cyllage City by boat, and a storm started. The ship got wrecked."
"Can't you just surf or fly back there?" I think about that for a second. She's not going to say it, but I know what she's thinking. It hits me like a thunderbolt to the face.
Calem is dead.
Memories of everything we did together as kids flood through my head. Getting our starters. Beating the gym leaders. Defeating team flare. The mega ring that seemed so mysterious to us, but later so simple.
Tears rushed out of my eyes. Dara seems surprised.
"He's gone." I say. Dara kind of just sits there, not sure how to react. It takes me what feels like forever to calm down.
I let Dragonite out of his pokeball.
"Get on." I say, kind of frustrated with her. She slowly puts one leg over Dragonite's back. She clearly hasn't rode a pokemon before. She starts to climb on and then falls into the cold water.
I have to help her up the second time.
"Ok, hold on tight cause there's no water to fall in where we're going. Dragonite, go to Lumiose City!"
We take off.
"Why Lumiose City, weren't you going to Cyllage City?"
"Yeah, but just for fun. We had nothing to do there. You have something to do."
"What?"
"You're going to get a starter!"
We land in Lumiose City and walk to the lab. As we walk, I try to understand the world Dara says she's from.
"Ok, so you're not going to believe this, but in our world there are no pokemon. Well, not real ones. There are video games about pokemon, and shows, and comics, but that's it."
"I find that hard to believe."
"That's not even the surprising part. In the games, you get a rival. It is a boy or a girl, the opposite gender the player is. The male rival is Calem and the female rival is you."
What? She must be joking.
"Yeah, right. And Giratina is a Luvdisk evolution." I laugh but she looks at me, dead serious.
"Does that mean I'm being watched? How did you get here anyway? Maybe we're trapped in the game and this is part of the plot, right now." I laugh.
"Or maybe we're both fake and we're just part of a cruddy fan fiction."
Hah.
Now that's impossible.
Right?