I wandered through most of the rest of my first day in the pokémon world in a trance. Hala left after what I told him about Nebby. He was dead set on reporting the stolen pokémon. Professor Kukui stayed until Hau swung by to drop off Popplio and Litten. When everyone left me alone again with my little seal creature, I decided we would have to lay some ground rules. Namely, not scaring me again if breakfast was overdue. She had to let me get used to her companionship.

The sun fell on a September day according to a calendar in the kitchenette. All I could think of was dinner. I took Popplio outside after cooking us a standard meal of spaghetti and meatballs with tomato sauce. A boring dish by my standards. I was no good at diversifying what I ate. I'm the type of person who always bought the same things at the grocery store.

Spaghetti would have to do.

I discovered some dark, worn sneakers by a side door to a porch I hadn't noticed before. Frankly, I forgot existed it in the games. Too late to mention how similar this new place of mine was to the protagonist's home in Sun and Moon? Those sneakers I found reminded me a lot of the pair I wore back home. The orange grips on the insides had deteriorated like them. They might as well be the same pair I had before my awakening today.

Outfitted also in an orange floral shirt and blue shorts I found in a closet, I no longer felt embarrassed whenever strangers and their pokémon walked by and stared at me sitting on my porch. People let me be besides the occasional, "Alola, new neighbor!" Some of them included a two-handed gesture arching from their faces to their sides.

"Alola," I would answer. Sure, I could return a child's enthusiastic greeting… With a degree of embarrassment if this attracted others' attention. Elderly folks also weren't a problem. They simply smiled at me if I were to stutter and welcomed me to Melemele.

I kept to the porch no matter who came around. My muscles would tense if I heard people coming. They grew weaker the longer I stayed outside. There was a name for this: exposure. Back home, I had been in therapy. They told me this was something I needed. I rarely listened to that suggestion. I was afraid of embarrassing myself.

Here I was now in someplace new. There was no better time to try and change my attitude.

"Alola!" called an older woman with a cane trailing a tan-furred wolf-like pokémon.

"Alola," I said.

Her Lycanroc's ears swiveled. When it located Popplio, it paused its walk to bark at her.

"Lio lio!" Popplio shouted, waving at it.

Damn. Everyone back home was never this friendly. Perhaps if they had known kindness, I never would have fled into seclusion.

"Hey, Popplio," I said when the old woman and the midday Lycanroc finally left us. "Your final form looks a lot like a mermaid. Primarina is known for its beautiful singing. Is a nice voice something you want someday?"

Popplio chewed a small meatball I set aside for her and rolled her eyes.

"Figured I'd ask. Do you want a nickname?" I twirled spaghetti with my fork. "I like nicknames. But it's you who should have the final say. I don't want you to be forced to do anything you don't want to." I considered my plate. Normally I'd pick my food clean. Not today. "I think I've had enough. I've already eaten enough spaghetti to last me two lifetimes."

Popplio gasped when I placed my plate before her. She glanced at me with uncertainty.

"My blood might as well be tomato sauce," I said. "Go ahead."

She grinned the width of a croissant. "Plio!" She nudged a meatball at the top of the tiny mound of spaghetti.

I grinned back. "I'm glad you like this. All of those times I've made pasta have paid off."

Enormous clouds drifted over the waves not far from home. I barely remembered my early years. I remembered enough to know the last time I lived by a beach was when I was four. Mom would often drag me there against my will insisting us getting sand in our bathing suits and being sunburnt would be worth it. They were, to an extent. I blame the seagulls for making a lot of those trips difficult. I will always blame the seagulls. Those rats in bird form stole my sandwich.

"You must know Lillie more than I do," I said.

"Hm?" Popplio answered with a cheek full of food. Red spots were splattered all over her snout.

"Has she always been "difficult"? Aether is helping pokémon and Lillie brought a mostly harmless creature here with her. What would Aether do to them if Cosmog were found to have been with her all along?"

"I suspect Cosmog would not fare well if its path crossed with Lusamine again."

I jumped. As far as I could tell, there was no one else along the earthy path outside my home. I hadn't seen a passerby for ten minutes now.

Dirt shifted. Footsteps. Someone was nearby.

I bolted to my feet. "Wh-who's there? Where are you? What's your business here?"

"You're the woman who asked to speak with Aether?"

I found nothing around me except dirt, grass, palm trees, and the sea. "Answer my questions first, yo-you coward," I hissed.

Seriously, where were they? The voice must have belonged to a man if I believed its shallow drop in octaves.

"I wasn't expecting you to be hostile."

"Why are you hiding?" I said. "Are you with Aether? Why the secrecy?"

"I share associates with Aether. They told me about you. And you can never be too cautious."

I hoped the extra air in my lungs would soothe my tightening chest. "'Associates'?"

"You ask a lot of questions." Geez, Louise. He must have been trying to trigger my anxiety on purpose!

"What's it matter to you?" I asked.

"The Kahuna met with my associates. They decided against speaking with President Lusamine. She's gotten desperate, they say. She's made them uneasy. No one at Aether knows Cosmog is here on this very island still.

"However, I am."

I could have blinked. Wouldn't have changed how a man materialized right before me. Despite the threat I made this morning to ambush any unexpected visitors, I froze as still as a Deerling about to be struck by a speeding truck.

The man's golden irises traveled from my worn shoes to my uneven, curly hair. I wasn't who wore inappropriate clothing this time. The mere presence of his thick lab coat made me sweat. The thing seemed more equipped to handle northern Sinnoh's frigid climate than Alola's heat. This absurdity almost distracted from the swirling cowlick going from the left side of his face, behind his head, and stopping under his right eye.

"Your expression is curious," he said. He offered me the smallest of grins. "I suppose you know who I am?"

Heck yeah, I did. "I would have had to be hiding under a rock. You worked with the second iteration of Team Plasma."

"I've been exiled from my country of birth as a result of my naivete," he said. "Word around Melemele is that Professor Kukui has someone doing research for him. Is she you?"

I crossed my arms. "You can't say you got exiled, then move to a different topic. Why's an ex-criminal visiting me? What's Cosmog got to do with you?"

He pinched his glasses. "Back to questions, I see. I'm starting to wonder if they don't come from a place of curiosity."

Shoot. He pegged me. The longer we had this discussion, the better the chance I would need to call a moment to steady myself. "Um…"

"I understand if you need time to process."

Shoot again! He pretty much read my mind. "Yeah…"

"There's much I'd like to discuss of Cosmog and its evolutions," he said. "Particularly, how you know about them. Their species is relegated to legends. I thought they were solely known to my associates, the Tapu, Aether, irrational librarians, and myself." He whirled on his heel. "What do you say about some drinks at the pokémon center's café?" The man paused to study me again. "Ah, wait. I came all this way yet never caught your name. A mistake on my part. I heard "Cosmog" and took the next boat to Melemele."

"I haven't told you," I said. "I'm Emelie."

"I assume you know my name."

"You're Colress," I said. Otherwise known as Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge because of his ridiculous cowlick. "Um, alola?"

"Popplio!" I groused, taking another napkin to her face. "My half-decent cooking's no excuse to eat like you've been starved!" I rubbed her pink nose to finish the job.

She shook her head when I finished fussing over her.

Another, and hopefully the last, of our surprise guests today was seated across from a burly man at an aged wooden counter. The former fiddled with his arm. I could hear the mechanical beeps and boops from whatever the machine ln his arm was from my table across the room.

"Here you are, sir," the burly man said, placing two drinks on the counter. "Komala coffee and a tapu cocoa." He reached under the counter. "We're running a promotional campaign where we're giving away treats from other regions. Today's item is an old gateau from Sinnoh."

Colress stopped messing with those noisy buttons on his glove. "Thank you." He grabbed the tray the items were placed on.

I ducked my head. Would be weird to have those two know I'd been staring.

"You were staring," Colress said, sitting across from me. "Was it at me or the wall?"

Well, kill me gently with a chainsaw. Wasn't his mind, though brilliant, supposed to be a bit of a mess? I was obvious enough even for him! "Sorry."

"No need to apologize. I often do the same."

I bit my lip. "We were going to talk about Cosmog?"

He put a finger up. "Not yet. I spent most of my day on a boat. I need my coffee."

Oh boy. More waiting.

I did a mental review of the plots of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. Colress had no real bearing on the plot until the Pokémon League, where he popped out of nowhere to give the player some devices to combine Necrozma and the box legendaries into one being. He appeared again in the postgame at Lusamine's mansion. The protagonist swept through the mansion defeating each of the evil leaders from generations one through six. Colress would then send them home to their original worlds. The only bad guy he didn't get to deal with was the leader of the thugs.

Some good news to have come from this was getting this autonomous scientist instead of Aether. Aether probably wouldn't be kind to some stranger raising their sentient test subject. More good news would be the Ultra Recon Squad, whichever two of the four were here in this universe, weren't harassing me.

"I understand you're a couple of years out of college?"

I took my cup of cocoa from the tray. "I thought you didn't want to talk."

"Small talk is more than fine until this coffee has got me energized," Colress said.

I ran a mental scan of the information I read from the packet I found this morning. "I'm a graduate of Kanto University. I majored in pokémon-human relationships. Professor Kukui is having me do field research here."

"What a strange man he is letting pokémon assault him."

"He's a trained professional. I'm more concerned with how he…"

"Doesn't wear a shirt?"

Damn straight. I get Alola's a hot region. Still, geez!

"I'd be found dead before doing the same," Colress said. Right. He donned a suit under his attire in Black 2 and White 2. Could that still be true here in Alola?

I wasn't about to pull a Silver to find out. "You must be sweating."

"I built a cooling mechanism into this lab coat."

I remembered now. Colress liked to make stuff. His inventions numbered over a thousand by the time of the Alola games. I don't think they ever made their way into anyone's hands aside from a machine to awaken sleeping Crustle. …Okay, well… There were the devices to fuse Necrozma and a box legendary. I came early enough into this timeline for him to have not completed those yet.

"Your inventions must be a hell of a lot better than whatever Dr. Kaminko over in Orre cooks up," I said.

"That bizarre inventor who lives in seclusion?" Colress took a moment to think. "I hear the people of Orre are never happy with what he sells them. Though I do believe the second hero of the region, Micheal, found a purpose for a robotic Kyogre?" He sighed. "I can't tell if Dr. Kaminko tortures those poor folks on purpose. A real scientist would never hand out defective products unless they had ulterior motives."

We went for a time not speaking.

I swiped at the steam coming from my cup. Trying to drink the cocoa right now would scald my insides.

Popplio chewed a piece of the old gateau.

I shifted in my seat. Eager to get the ball rolling again, I said, "There's a festival tomorrow. Not the kind I'm used to. I've been dragged to so many amusement parks I immediately think of rides when I hear "festival" or "carnival"... Or something."

Colress remained silent. His golden eyes stared straight ahead. He drank from his cup.

I pinched my nose. "Uh, sorry."

"What for?"

"Everyone on Melemele knows there's a festival tomorrow."

"I didn't."

Yeah, yeah. Sure. Reasonable. "Sorry. I'm no good at carrying on a conversation. People wouldn't want to talk to me if I said whatever the hell was on my mind. The only person willing to listen to me ramble is my little sister."

Colress lowered his cup. "Hold on a second."

I blinked. "What?"

"Don't take this the wrong way. I've dug into your domestic history. You belong to a prominent Unovan family, the Avenues, who are behind the creation of Join Avenue. Their interest in your success is what propelled you through college."

I tried to not let the realization show on my face. Join Avenue was a place I rarely made use of during generation five. I only started getting serious about the Unova titles after the official DS servers were closed, making Join Avenue pointless unless you visited it daily or connected to fan servers. Even then, the fanbase's fanaticism for Black, White, and their sequels deterred me from getting super invested.

"There's no record of you having siblings," Colress said. "Do you have a friend you consider a sister? Or am I correct when I say your prior history is, hm… Semi-false?"

Slapping the table, I shouted, "What?" I cringed at the sting spreading through my left hand. "You sound ridiculous."

Popplio squeaked. Another chunk of the gateau dropped from her mouth.

Colress' smile was the smile of someone who knew he won. Freaking bastard. "I know there was never an "Emelie" who was part of the Avenue family until this morning. I would be speaking with the authorities right now were it not for your already "extensive" history in this world. Wouldn't be a good look for me after all the mistakes I've made in the past. Thus I must ask how this happened. Do you have any clue?"

Good job, me. There went my masquerade. I might as well go to Professor Kukui and inform him my entire existence was a lie. "How should I know? I went to bed last night and woke up in another world. I got as far as I did today because of a paper packet I found while digging around my new home. I went along with what it told me to prevent having a mental breakdown."

"Fallers lose most of their memories upon entering another world. This wasn't the case for you?"

"I remember! Where I'm from, pokémon are fictional creatures based on animals, who have no magical powers and aren't as smart as humans-"

"Your point is you've always been aware of pokémon," Colress said.

"Pokémon is a franchise that started a couple of years before I was born. I was introduced to it around generation three, which gave us the Hoenn and Orre regions."

Colress took the time to think.

I sipped my cocoa to calm my nerves. Air conditioning did wonders for the drink's excess heat.

"The franchise made you privy to such things as Cosmog," he said.

"Pretty much," I said. "We got Alola, Cosmog, and everything else to do with them in generation seven. The franchise was drip-feeding information on Paldea, the ninth generation, when I left my world."

"Pop?"

Our focus turned to the pokémon settled between us. The truth returned to slap me in the face. Colress wasn't the only soul privy to my past life. Gears were shifting and switches were being flicked somewhere in Popplio's head.

"I should've told you," I said. "I'm sorry. Finding myself in a whole new world and getting caught in a conflict between the professor and his assistant was a bit much for me.

"...Their argument hit close to home."

"She'd be better off learning this now than later," Colress said. "Trust is a vital component in drawing out the power of a pokémon."

"I'm aware," I mumbled.

Popplio nudged her old gateau.

I downed more of my cocoa.

Colress stared off into space.

"I'm all too damn aware," I said. "Just ask the overpowered affection bonuses in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl."

Awkward silence sucks.

"...Cosmog's final evolution depends on the universe it's in. You can tell which form it'll take by the name and symbol of Poni Island's altar."

"You mentioned the altars' names were Sunne and Moone," Colress said, stopping me with a hand. He surveyed a map he asked to borrow from the center's staff. "Poni Island has an Altar of the Sunne. Seems likely Cosmog's final evolution will be Solgaleo."

"Necrozma can't absorb the URS' Solgaleo and Lunala if they're kept inside their poké balls," I said. "I don't think it can hurt Nebby if it stays unevolved."

"Necrozma would still search for ways to return to its former self," Colress said. "Your foreign particles may attract its attention. Who knows what would transpire if it got you?" He squeezed his coffee cup. "Two years ago, I-"

"I've seen it happen!"

He pushed on his glasses. "A fusion?"

I gripped my kneecaps. There went my mouth moving before my brain. "In… In the "original" story of the generation seven games, President Lusamine was driven insane by a Nihilego's toxins around the same time her husband went missing. She fused with one of them at the game's climax."

"'Her husband'?" Colress thought aloud. Made sense for a Unovan to not know the backstory of the Aether family- "Ah! You mean her first husband, Mohn."

I could have asked him to slow his roll. I couldn't while leaping to the conclusion, "She's remarried?"

"I assume she never found another spouse in either of your known universes?"

"She left for Kanto to be treated for poisoning in one universe and quit pursuing him in the other."

"Fascinating."

"Who's she married to now?"

I wasn't prepared for the stare the scientist threw my way. He did a good impression of the family cat whenever he thought of jumping someone and was waiting for an opening.

I crossed a leg over the other. They locked tight.

"Would you mind telling me some more about this fusion of a woman and beast?" Colress asked. "What ensued when she was confronted?"

Sure. Why don't you throw my question to the wind? "She… She didn't attack anyone in her new form. Her pokémon fought for her as any trainers' would. They also seemed to be affected by the ultra beast's toxins."

His shoulders drooped. "How disappointing," he said. "Reasonable, nonetheless. She must have not wanted for it or her to get hurt." He huffed. "In another life, I would've been ecstatic to study her with no respect for her safety. True scientists would never stoop to those lows. Conducting science means having a code of morals. I lacked…"

'In another life,' he said. Another life. Why did those words stick with me when I could've been asking him to phrase his rambling thoughts in the easier-to-digest twenty words or less? I ended up here for unknown reasons. People other than Colress would insist I always existed. Could it be I was brought here for a reason, like reincarnating?

No. If I reincarnated, I wouldn't be in the same short woman body I had always known. The phenomenon of being sent to another world even without reincarnation had a foreign word for it. Isekai.

This immediately brought another question: I got isekaied? Hold on, now. Had I died? Why couldn't I remember my death?

"Emelie, you seem unsettled. Is something the matter?" Colress' eyebrow was raised. His coffee got pushed to the side.

Popplio's head dipped sideways.

"I had a stray thought," I said. "Probably wouldn't matter to you."

Colress shook his head. "Oh, no. Tell me if you think it's important. The smallest ideas can blossom when given a voice, I find."

Here I went. "I had this funny feeling," I said. "We know I don't have a fallers' signature memory loss. Is it possible I could've been brought to this world another way?"

"Do you mind elaborating?"

"There's this sort of popular book and TV show genre back home called isekai. Some characters are reincarnated and either keep or regain their memories. Others are pulled to new worlds as they already are. What if that's what's happened to me?"

"You're still emitting ultra wormhole particles," he said, shoving his hand into a lab coat pocket. His arm was halfway out of the pocket when he came to a pause. His palm left the pocket and he scraped his face. "Searching for them again is what I should've done before I spoke to you. My curiosity overruled my common sense… So I suppose we could put your theory to the test now if you'd like."

"Go away!"

I startled.

"What's the matter, tough guy?" another voice chuckled. "You lost. Now you owe me money. Give it up."

"Ple-please! I have nothing! I'm sorry I bumped into you! All I wanted was to have my pokémon healed!"

"Where's my prize money?!"

Colress left his seat. "Excuse me for a moment."

I shook my head and fetched Popplio from the table.

He smiled. "Well then. Let's go."

We stepped outside to a largely empty street. Two dozen street lights were lit along the linear path to soon cover for the setting sun. Hau'oli City's blacktop roads were cut in half by a dashed yellow line I hadn't noticed before. The games never featured any of the cars on the road. What reason would they have to depict real-world traffic laws? For me, this served as yet another reminder of the whole new world I lived in.

Several people stood in the middle of the road despite the dotted line's presence. Two of them, standing right in front of us with their backs turned, were dressed in similar dark clothing broken by the occasional white stripe or the caps on their heads. Silver chains hung from their necks. The guy on the left leaned forward. The girl on the right hugged an arm and brushed her neon pink hair with the other.

"I'll remind you again," hissed the guy. "I won our battle. Give me your money."

"Couldn't you tell Emolga wasn't in any shape to-"

"Shut up, you little brat!" roared the girl. "Ugh! Why don't you just rob him? We've had enough trouble with me having to cover for your sorry hide when you smack-talked that hiker."

"You shut up!" the guy said. "He looked at me funny. And I won this battle fair and square! Pay up!"

Somebody coughed.

I gulped.

Popplio shifted in my arms.

"No way!" the kid said. "Siccing your Raticate on us wasn't cool!"

"Put a sock in it before I give you a wedgie," the guy growled.

"I hate you both," the girl groaned.

Somebody coughed louder.

The trio's conversation came to a prompt end to focus on the door to the pokémon center. The glow of the building illuminated the rest of the folks involved in this impromptu gathering. A.k.a. a scientist, a seal- Or was Popplio a sea lion, oh geez- And me.

"Who the hell are you?" spoke the guy through the mask over his mouth.

"What seems to be the problem here?" Colress asked.

Feet pounded the pavement towards us. "He-help!" whimpered the small dark-skinned child who came into the light beside me. "They attacked us outta nowhere!" He showed us the small white-and-black-colored squirrel he clutched to his chest.

Popplio leaned over my arms. "Popp?" she said. Her pink nose scrapped the squirrel's dark ear.

Its eyes opened. White pupils locked on us. "Molga…" it whimpered.

She needed nothing else to leap free of me. "Popplio!"

"Whoa!" I said, watching her land on the ground.

Popplio tossed her flippers in the air to steady herself after landing on her tail fins. Once she gained her balance, she fell forward and glanced at me to give her first battle command.

The guy laughed. "Your Popplio wouldn't put a dent in my pokémon!"

My muscles clenched tighter than a nail fastened by a wrench. "Oh, yeah?" I spat. "How'd you like me to prove you wrong?"

He got a standard poké ball from behind him and tossed it to the ground. What emerged in the resulting light was a chunky rat with puffed-up cheeks. A Raticate. To be more specific, this was its Alolan form.

Before I could call for Popplio to shoot a water gun at the ugly rat, an arm got between me and the scene.

"I admire your willingness to fight," Colress said. "Your involvement won't be necessary. Leave this troublemaker to me."

Popplio glared as he withdrew his own standard poké ball from under his coat. She let out a sharp bark.

"Aw, someone doesn't want another child to get wrecked for overstepping her bounds," the dark-dressed goon said. "Take your wonky hairdo and go back to the lab where you belong."

Colress stepped forward. "My companion here is around your age if my glasses' in-built scanner is correct." He lifted his poké ball to his face. "I must further disagree with your other hypotheses. How I look is none of your business. I'm a freelance researcher!" He threw his poké ball at the ground. From inside, emerging in white light, was a metallic creature. Four legs on spikes carried its wide diamond-shaped head.

"Gro!" it barked.

"Wh-what's that thing?!" the little boy asked, reminding me that he was still here hugging his Emolga.

I both did and didn't have an answer for him. My mouth ran dry.

The female thug's eyes went wide. "Are you sure you wanna fight, dude?" she shouted at her friend. Her arms flung about an inflatable tube man found outside a car wash. "This mad scientist is packing heat! Your pokémon stands no chance!"

"Raticate!" called the male thug. "Use crunch!"

The plump rat jumped on all fours and dashed toward Colress' behemoth of a pokémon by comparison. Its sharp teeth opened wide. Their edges glowed with dark-type energy.

Colress pushed on his glasses. "Xavier?" he said. "Let's end this quickly. Meteor mash!"

"Gross!" his pokémon roared, taking to the air to meet its approaching foe. Spikes on the end of its front left leg glowed gray. Its other legs retracted into its body.

The force propelling Raticate forward prevented it from dodging in time. Metagross' punch struck it head-on. The poor rat went flying in the direction it had come from before slamming into the ground.

"Raticate!" both of the thugs yelled.

The man rushed to his fallen partner's side. He lifted its poké ball. Raticate's body evaporated into a stream of white light and slipped inside the sphere.

"What did I tell you?" the girl said, hands on her hips. "He's too strong for us. We should've run away!"

"I'm not a coward, unlike a certain someone who could've battled with me!" the guy groused.

"I'm no coward. I'm a million times smarter than you are!"

"Nuh-uh! You're a billion times dumber!"

"Should we stop them?" I asked, creeping over to Colress.

"They'll sort themselves out," he said.

His Metagross hovered over us. When beside its trainer, its legs emerged from its body again and it landed beside him.

"Good job, Xavier," its trainer said, putting his hand on its head.

"Metagro!" Xavier hummed, squeezing its eyes shut in a manner I found an odd sort of cute.

"Thank you, mister!"

We found the poor youngster still clinging to his weak Emolga and standing beside the pokémon center. His sandy face glowed in the doorway's leaking light.

"Not a problem," Colress said before inspecting the scratched-up squirrel's body. "You better get inside."

The boy nodded. "See ya!"

We watched the center's sliding door close behind him.

The duo who dared to mess with an experienced trainer still argued. Whatever the hell they were yelling about had devolved into pure gibberish.

"I'm surprised that odd fellow who lost a vacation home in Po Town wasn't here," Colress said. "He's been a fixture on the regional news for his antics with Team Skull. He and his Ludicolo have been following them wherever they go to rain on their parade."

Yet another thing not from the games! I guess foreknowledge couldn't take me far here. All it did, on reflection, was risk me getting into a fight with Lusamine over Cosmog and bring an ex-criminal scientist into the equation.

Hold on a second. My eyes grew wide. That's it! This ex-criminal scientist! While it was true I didn't know everything about this universe, I learned its peace was still threatened by Necrozma. Instead of everyone doing their own thing and risking the region losing its light, what if we could all…

Shit.

Attempting to negotiate for Cosmog with my prior history would be a no-go. I'm pretty sure I wasn't brought here to get involved in Lusamine's familial drama. The people I used to live with were crazy enough. Could I get Colress to talk with her instead? I already gave him all the information I could on Cosmog. He had ties to the Ultra Recon Squad, the extradimensional folks I was one hundred percent sure were who Hala met today. Colress was in a good position to advocate for Cosmog's safety.

Were he to deal with them, how would I handle the other side of the aisle? Something could be, or was, off about Lillie. Professor Kukui and Hau would know the most about this alternate version of her outside her immediate family. Maybe the best course of action was to talk to her more by myself. I might have been too quick to jump to conclusions.

"You there."

I hadn't noticed the newcomer until now. She must have just gotten… Oh. Yep. I knew this girl and her pink and yellow pigtails. Her eyelids were garnished with heavy makeup. Her top was almost non-existent. This woman wore what amounted to a sports bra with intersecting straps underneath.

"I don't appreciate you picking on my friends," the woman hissed, her golden irises burning into Colress' matching pair.

"Maybe they shouldn't have been antagonizing a five-year-old," he replied. I respected his restraint. Being confronted without preparation wasn't my style.

"If I hear you're bothering them again, I'll give you a bad time."

Colress smiled for reasons unrelated to the woman's dumb yet funny words.

"Yeah!" the guy thug shouted. "You better leave us alone!"

The woman nodded at her friends. "Meet me at the dock. We're going home."

The guy wheezed. His eyes spoke for him when his facial expressions could not. They were backed by a, "Why?"

"What do you mean "why"?" the younger girl thug spat. "You already forgot what happened to Raticate?"

"Aw, come on! Big Sis could take on that robot 'mon. Let me watch."

His friend grabbed his arm. "We're going." She yanked on him with surprising strength.

They were gone before long. His protests still filled the air on the next street over.

Their "Big Sis" turned her back on us. "What's your name, lab coat?"

"Colress," he said with no hesitation.

"No one messes with Team Skull," she said. "I'll have my full team to even the odds if we meet again, Colress."

"Sounds great!" he declared in a cheery tone. He waved after her despite her having not glanced at us since turning away. "Goodbye!"

She huffed. Yet unlike her younger friend, she willingly walked from the scene of the crime. She turned the corner and, after giving her a few more seconds, maybe out of earshot.

I released the hefty breath I held this entire time. I wandered over to the Metagross. A giant "X" went through the center of its face. Two eyes reminiscent of the creepy moon from Majora's Mask stared into mine.

"Emelie," Colress said. "Would you know who she is?" He fingered his chin. "I've seen her before. I never got her name."

"She's Team Skull's second-in-command," I said. "Plumeria."

"Grow!" the Metagross bellowed.

Colress patted it over the head. "This is Xavier, one of my long-standing partners. While Metagross doesn't have definitive genders, mine favors being referred to as male." Now he regarded Popplio. "Does she have a nickname?"

"I was trying to name her before you showed up," I said. "I'm letting her decide if she even wants one first."

Popplio bobbed her head. "Popp popp!"

"I believe that's a yes," Colress exclaimed. "What kind of nickname were you thinking?"

"Something to do with music," I said.

"Might I suggest Adagio? Maybe Aria? Or Sonata?"

I frowned. This, let me say, was a deep frown.

He watched me with curiosity. "Why the long face?"

I bit my lip. "Hey. If you're not careful, I might start thinking you know more about where I'm from than I let on."

Adagio. Adagio. Adagio. Adagio meant "slow tempo". Opera, the theme behind Primarina's specialized z-move, could be slow. Hell, even boring. I remember being impatient for the move's animation to finish whenever I used a Primarina in the games.

…Uh, no disrespect meant toward my starter. What I meant to say is Adagio was now Popplio's name.

After an evening as eventful as this morning, Colress and Xavier walked us home. I was standing at the steps to the porch when Colress spoke again.

"I'll be returning tomorrow evening." Seeing my confusion, he flicked his gloved pointer finger in the air. "For the festival, of course! I wish to see what it's all about."

"O-oh…" I guess my rambling earlier wasn't for nothing.

"You'll be there?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Wonderful! I'll see you then!"

When I blinked, the blond scientist man and his Metagross had disappeared.

Adagio glanced about. "Hm?"

I sank onto the porch steps. "That happened, I guess." This new universe wasn't about to let me take a vacation just because I ended up in pseudo-Hawaii. The "canon" I knew both broke itself and snapped at my hands. Tomorrow was bound to be full of more surprises. I would have to be ready for them. "I'm sorry you were led to believe I was, you know…"

Adagio clambered into my lap before I could finish my sentence. Two blue flippers were pressed on either side of my neck. Her big round head settled on my right shoulder.

I wrapped my arm around her and returned the hug. "Thanks, Adagio." Watching the moon rise from behind the ocean waves extending for miles ahead, I could never be any more sure I would settle into this new life. Everything from now on would be just fine.