Derek waited with anticipation as he sat on his family's old, beat up couch. The worn brown leather was patched in many places from the many tears that had accumulated over the years. He absentmindedly scratched at the tape as he waited for a knock on the door. His brother Cyrus was coming home from college for the weekend, and Derek was excited to see him. The two had been very close when they were younger, which had made it hard for Derek to see his older brother go off to earn his degree in music. Cyrus had promised that he'd be back for holidays and breaks, but to Derek it seemed that he was never around enough.
A knock was heard on the door and Derek lept to answer it. He unlocked the door and opened it quickly to see his brother standing in front of him. Cyrus was rather short at about 5 foot 10 with lightly tanned skin and messy blond hair that stuck out in odd directions and could never be convinced to stay down. Derek himself looked similar to his brother, being only three years younger. He was paler and thinner than his brother, and lacked his brother's unnaturally unruly hair, but the two shared many facial similarities.
"Cy!" Derek called excitedly, opening his arms to embrace his brother.
"Derek!" Cyrus responded, giving his brother a tight bear hug. The older brother stepped back to get a better look at his sibling. "Dude, you grew! Guess I'm the short one now!" he exclaimed jovially.
"Yeah, I guess I am" Derek said and grinned. Derek had grown a solid inch in the last couple of months, putting him slightly taller than his brother. Cyrus had played the father role in his family for a long time, picking it up after their father had left more than eleven years prior. Their mom had gone through several boyfriends, but had never found a man that seemed to stick.
"Where's mom?" Cyrus asked as he looked around the room.
"She had to take another shift today because one of the regular employees didn't show up" Derek responded, a bit of sadness creeping into his voice as he spoke. Their mother was overworked, and did everything she could to keep their family afloat financially. Both Derek and Cyrus understood this and tried to help out whenever they could, with both boys taking summer jobs to try to take away some of the stress running a family could bring. It helped, but Derek couldn't help but wish that his sister understood…
Speak of the devil…
"Ugh, quit getting all emotional!" Amanda's voice greeted Derek's ears like the screeching of nails on a chalkboard. Their sister lay on the couch, lazily texting on her phone. "If I wanted some family reunion I would've jumped off a bridge like Dad."
"Shut up!" Derek shouted at his sister, "That's not what happened and you know it!"
"Yeah, whatever." Amanda responded. Her voice carried no emotion and she coldly glared at Derek.
"Look, both of you, stop. This is supposed to be fun." Cyrus interjected, placing himself between the two siblings. "I've got a little surprise for Mom for when she gets back, but for right now…" Cyrus grinned as he reached into his backpack, slowly pulling out a plastic game case. "This is for you, Derek"
Derek looked at it and smiled. It was a copy of Pokemon Sword, a welcome gift to anyone, but it held deeper sentimental value to Derek. Him and his brother used to play Black and White all the time together and bonded over it as a shared distraction from the world.
"Where'd you get the money?" Derek asked in amazement.
"That's part of the bigger surprise for Mom," Cyrus said slyly, "You'll see later, but I have to say, it's pretty sweet!"
Amanda rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath that Derek couldn't quite hear, but at the moment Derek didn't care about what his sister said, at the moment it looked like things were turning around. Derek was home, and with an announcement as big as he was making it out to be, it had to be good news for the family.
"Hey, do you want to go try this out?" Derek suggested, holding up the game.
"Sure, why not." Cyrus responded, "Why don't you join us, Amanda? We could all work together to beat the Galar region."
Derek rolled his eyes. Cyrus had always had this crazy idea that the three of them could get along and become good friends. He'd always tried to explain to his older brother that their sister just wasn't going to get along with them on multiple occasions, but on each one Cyrus had just brushed him off saying that Amanda was family, and that family stuck together, no matter what. Derek waited for when Amanda would rudely refuse and they would be done with her until dinner, but to his surprise she didn't.
"Ugh, if I do, will you get off my back in front of Mom? Whenever you're home she always gets this idea that I'm not "using my full potential" or whatever." Amanda said in exasperation.
"Sure!" Cyrus responded cheerfully. Derek groaned.
Soon, all three siblings were seated in front of the TV with Derek's Nintendo Switch hooked into it. Cyrus inserted the game card while Amanda sat off to the side.
"I can't believe that I'm going to play a children's game with my two older brothers!" she loudly remarked as Derek fiddled with the controller. The game popped up in the console's menu screen and Derek selected it. Nothing happened.
"That's weird" Cyrus commented, "I'll try taking the card out and putting it back in again"
As Cyrus completed the age-old maneuver of ejecting and re-inserting the disk, the TV screen suddenly turned black and the overhead lights in the house began to flicker ominously. Derek looked around in a state of panic.
"Uh, Cyrus, you broke the house" Amanda said nervously as she too looked more than a little spooked.
"I didn't do anything! I just took the card out and put it back in!" Cyrus shouted as he ran over to the console and hit the power button. As he pressed it, the lights stopped flickering and the TV showed NO INPUT on it's screen.
The three siblings had a second to look at each other with stunned expression before they were sucked into the TV.
When Derek opened his eyes he was standing in bright green pasture. His knees felt shaky and his stomach was doing backflips, but he was alive as far as he could tell. To his right, about ten feet away, Cyrus stood shakily. He was wearing a strange outfit, like the kind that Pokemon trainers wore in the games, and he carried a strangely designed backpack on his back, and from the way his brother was looking at him, Derek guessed that he was dressed in a similar manner.
The two brothers had exactly the same idea at the same time.
"Amanda!" they both called in unison, hearing a muffled shout in response. Turning around, they came face to face with a large wooly creature staring back at them. Derek walked a few steps back in surprise, realizing that the creature appeared to be a strange sheep with braids.
Cyrus pointed to where the creature was sitting, and underneath it's wooly body stuck out a pale arm.
"Amanda! We're coming!" Cyrus shouted as he proceeded to push on the strange sheep. Derek joined in and soon realized the futility of the situation, the beast seeming to weigh more than it at first appeared.
A sharp whistle caught the boys' attention, and apparently the attention of the fluffy creature, which slowly got to its feet and… rolled?... away.
Amanda quickly got to her feet and brushed little clumps of wool off her arms with a scowl on her face.
A middle aged man approached the siblings, looking rather amused.
"Ay, did my Wooloo cause you any trouble?" he asked kindly, his voice carrying a thick Scottish accent, "I do apologize if they caused any harm. It's just that we don't get many visitors out here."
Derek froze upon hearing the name Wooloo. His mind raced as he tried to remember where he'd heard that name before. Suddenly it hit him, and the pieces began falling into place.
"Wooloo, as in the Pokemon?" He asked cautiously, hoping he was wrong.
"What else would I mean?" The old man said as he let out a small, confused laugh. "I can tell you aren't from around here, are ye?"
Cyrus looked about ready to say something, but Derek knew from the confused look on his brother's face that he hadn't quite pieced everything together yet.
"No! We're from the Hoenn region and we just kinda…" Derek struggled for a reasonable explanation as to why they were here, in the middle of this man's field, "Dropped in?"
"Wait a second!" Amanda shouted loudly, and the look on her face revealed that something had finally clicked. "Are we in that stupid game?!" The man looked confused, but Cyrus quickly jumped in.
"She, uh, hit her head when we landed. She's a bit…" He, as well, was struggling to come up with good explanations.
"And we were just…" Derek added, pointing a finger back over his shoulder, to the edge of the field.
"Ah," said the man with an understanding look, "A bit lost, are ya? Well you'll want ta head over that way, towards the fence on the far side of the stream. The fence borders the main road an' it'll take ya back ta Postwick town. I trust you'll be able ta find your way from there?"
"Uh, yeah" was the only response an exasperated Derek could muster. The three siblings exchanged glances before Cyrus shook his head and began walking in the direction the man indicated, with Derek and Amanda following close behind.
Amanda finally broke the silence after several minutes of walking.
"Nobody is going to recognize that we are stuck inside of your stupid game?!" She shouted.
Cyrus shook his head, "I'm just hoping that this is a dream", he responded calmly, but Derek could see that his brother was taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself.
"But what if it isn't? What if we're stuck here forever?" she asked, her voice becoming increasingly more desperate, "I don't want to die in a children's game!"
"We might just have to beat the game" Derek offered, "You know, like in that Jumanji movie?"
"The one with the Rock?" Cyrus asked lightheartedly, "Man, that movie seemed so unrealistic. Irony is a bi-"
"Will you two stop acting like everything is alright?" Amanda interrupted, "What if we can't beat the game?"
"It's a Pokemon game" Cyrus responded in an amused tone, "How hard could it be? Speaking of which, we should check our stuff. Just to see what we have."
The siblings began digging through their backpacks, revealing that each backpack had a Pokedex, five empty Pokeballs, and one Pokeball that contained a Pokemon within. Cyrus was the first to release his pokemon, revealing a small, purple creature that the Pokedex identified as Toxel.
"Check it out guys, we have Pokemon!" Cyrus announced as he reached down to pet his Toxel. It instinctively recoiled and bit him on the hand, giving him a small shock in the process. "Cool! It likes me!"
"Whatever." Amanda responded sourly, "You won't see me using any Pokemon. I just want to get out of this stupid place!"
"You have to beat the Pokemon league in order to win the game!" Derek explained frustratedly, "And that requires a lot of battling, so you'll have to use your Pokemon in order to get us out of here!" Derek released his own Pokemon in response, revealing a water lizard that was identified as Sobble.
The small blue creature looked frightened, backing away from the bigger human. Derek recalled it to the Pokeball and looked over to where Cyrus was currently attempting to pet his Toxel again.
"We should get moving." Derek decided, fearing what kind of powerful Pokemon roamed this world at night, and he wasn't eager to be out in the open when that happened. As the three siblings carried on, Derek couldn't help but feel a bit worried about the task that lay before him as well as a nagging thought in the back of his mind.
There could only be one champion.