Chapter III

When I pulled the goggles back up, they were gone. But as soon I readjusted them, the creatures appeared. A Braviary in the sky, circling the downed player. Loudreds near the band making all the drums and trumpet noise. Multiple Scorbunnies running around on the grass.

"This... this is strange," I mumbled.

This was something I needed to check out immediately. My curiosity took over and I started walking towards the field.

"What are you going to do, idiota?", Sara yelled when she noticed me heading for the pitch. "Don't embarrass me, OK? No streaking!"

Walking on the grass I all of a sudden found myself the target of dozens of beer cans and lighters from the other supporters on the stands. A big "Boooo" rose up, then a bunch of Spanish insults.

"Hey Sara, turn them off for me?"

Almost instantly the thousands of fans and their cheering vanished. We were now in a private instance. Leaving only the echo of the players, their coach and a ball getting kicked in the enormous stadium.

Sara ran towards me, joining me on the field.

"What are you doing?" she kept insisting. "You're not going to sing, are you?"

"I uh, I see Pokémon here. Must be a glitch. With the goggles, I see them right here on the field."

"Idiota. Don't play your little kids' game on sacred ground."

"It's not like that. They shouldn't be here, it is weird."

"Si, it's very weird. Now get off the field or I'll unleash my army upon you."

"Wait, let me try one thing!" I pleaded.

Sara rolled her eyes. I took it as a sign of permission. Immediately I threw out a Poké Ball at one of the Scorbunny. In a flash the little fire bunny went into the ball that shook once, twice, a third time and then sparkled a bit.

My amazement grew further, but I knew it was best to hide it from Sara and walk back to our seats.

"OK, that was that. Sorry for interrupting your Sunday mass," I said, giving my pissed off guerrilla princess a smile.

"Don't joke about that, idiota. Next week I will take you to church for atonement."

The rest of the match I made sure not to mention any Pokémon. But while trying to participate with Sara and her ultra friends, I pulled up an incognito tab to study the Scorbunny I just found. The fact I could see the soccer inspired Pokémon was one thing, but that I was able to catch it was even stranger.

As far as I knew you could only take Pokémon out of their balls on Satoshi. Otherwise I would've used a whole bunch of them during the Battle of Castle Anorak. And there were also no records of Pokémon appearing in the wilds on any other world. But here in this football stadium I counted two dozen of them before putting away the Silph Scope.

After the match I told Sara that I had to meet up with Finn and apologized that I forgot to mention that earlier. She told me I did good as a Boca Juniors fan, as if I just passed a test and gave me a quick kiss.

I didn't tell my brother about it, but our relationship had already reached the kissing stage since a trip to Genesis a couple of weeks ago. A world where you could experience stuff from the Old Testament. Our first kiss had been on the bottom of a split Red Sea.

She initially wanted to show me the Garden of Eden, but forgot that it would involve seeing each other naked and that was something we clearly didn't do. Accepting her faith was one of the first tests I had to pass, I think.

"Dale, dale, Bocááá!" I sang and teleported back to my ride, waiting in orbit.

From the yellow submarine I started dialing Finn until he finally picked up. He was offline, about to have dinner with his girlfriend.

"Meet me at the gym, right now!"

When I arrived back on Satoshi, Finn was already waiting in my office at the Azalea Gym.

"What's the matter Leo, date didn't go as planned?" he asked. "I told you it was a big fat dude."

Seeing me gasping for words because I didn't know where to start, his face turned more serious.

"Everything OK?"

"Yes! Breakthrough! Big, big breakthrough!"

I told Finn everything that happened in the soccer stadium with all the Pokémon appearing. Then I brought out the Scorbunny I caught. It was totally legit and the only difference between it and other Pokémon was the place of capture in it's biography.

"You do know what we need to do now, Leo?" he said. "Try this everywhere else too."

My brother logged out to let his girlfriend know he wouldn't be joining for dinner anytime soon, then returned quickly to embark on what would be an all-nighter.

Everywhere we went the Silph Scope unveiled Pokémon. The whole OASIS was crawling with them. And they were not just randomly scattered. The creatures we found were different on every planet and actually fitted the theme of their world surprisingly well.

We went by a couple of our favorite places. Even planets that had restrictions on lore-breaking clothing and equipment, allowed the use of the goggles.

On Tamriel, the world of The Elder Scrolls, we discovered Pokémon inspired by knights, elves and wizards. And there were desert Pokémon when we drove around The Wasteland, where you could take part in the Mad Max universe.

We caught a bunch of them and all of our new Pokémon were completely fair to use on Satoshi in quests and competitions. To Finn and me this was all mind boggling. Some of the Pokémon we encountered tonight were pretty rare and would normally take days to hunt down.

"You know this means they collaborated with Gregarious Games? This event is huge. Bigger than anyone could expect!" I told Finn after we captured some bug type Pokémon on Klendathu, the capital of the misunderstood Arachnids in Starship Troopers.

"No doubt. But how does all this tie in with the contest?"

Finn brought up a good point. We had to reevaluate the riddle. The scope certainly just got a lot wider.

We decided to try and grab some sleep and eat a bit before getting back to the hunt. Finn had some explaining to do at home and only now I noticed a bunch of messages from Sara who had been getting increasingly annoyed every hour I didn't reply. I was too tired to explain now and told her I would get back to her after a quick nap.

I didn't get much sleep. My head was cracking with new theories on the riddle. When Finn messaged me he was awake, it was well in the afternoon. We decided to meet at the most secure place we had available. The recording studio that was my private chat room.

Private chat rooms were supposedly just that. Private. Although lately there were rumors about Wade Watts creeping around in them. I was a bit out of the loop on that and had no idea where that story was coming from. But I was pretty sure the famous Parzival wouldn't be interested in eavesdropping on me.

I invited Finn to the chatroom that I carefully built when I still posed as a rock star. There were guitars on the wall, comfy couches, the lighting was dimmed. And of course a lot of instruments and a huge mixing console catching dust. I didn't come here that often anymore, after I bought some real estate on Satoshi and had the Azalea Gym as a base of operation.

When we entered the studio, it still instantly brought back memories of virtual sex, fake drugs, but very real rock 'n' roll.

Being a superstar was the number one teenage fantasy. When everyone was living out his dream as a singer or sports hero there were few people left available as an audience. I only recorded and released one original song, "Raging Loner". After fifteen years the view count was a little under 500. There was just a single comment. "Lolzor," a user named Pandasaurus wrote.

"Which couch was safe again?" Finn asked with his annoying grin.

I wanted to give a snarky comment, but a message notification popped up.

"LET ME IN!"

It was from Sara. I forgot to message her after my attempt at a nap.

Another message.

"Who are you private with? Let me in NOW!"

"I am sorry," I said to Finn, "but we are going to have company."

Before he could ask me who, an angry Disney princess materialized in front of us.

"Hola! You must be Sara," Finn said.

She didn't reply, but walked around the recording studio, looking for another person I might have hidden here.

"What are you up to, idiota?" she started interrogating me. "You always reply fast. Oh, I miss you, need you here, want to spend Valentine's Day tomorrow, bla bla. Now you are online all night and ignore me?"

I noticed the puzzled look Finn gave me. Why was this cartoon figure acting as if she and I were an old married couple, he seemed to wonder.

"Take a seat, let me explain."

"No, I don't want to sit on your dirty couch!"

"You see!" Finn interrupted. "You really should get some new furniture in here!"

Then he faced our angry visitor and told her not to worry, that he was with me all night and that we were hunting Pokémon.

"We made a big discovery," I said.

Sara let out a deep sigh.

"Alright. Tell me everything. Why is the kids' game so important?"

We told Sara about how valuable a captured Mew would be. Not only on Satoshi, but as one of the rarest artifacts in the OASIS. And how much of a game changer our discovery was that Pokémon now appeared all over the simulation. But also that it just made solving the riddle even more difficult than before.

"Tell me the riddle," she said. "It's for kids, so it must be easy."

"It's not for ki... never mind," I answered, before citing the riddle from memory.

To find the one you must face,

get a broader scope of things,

grab gold in a rainbow chase,

perform the song everyone sings.

"It's bad," she said. "It rhymes. But it's no poetry."

Ignoring her literary criticism, we went on explaining how we managed to solve the first two lines, but now we had to figure out "grab gold in a rainbow chase".

"So, I'm thinking there is a rainbow somewhere, with a leprechaun at the end, guarding a pot of gold," Finn said. "Those nerds at Gregarious love that stuff."

"I'm not feeling it," I replied. "I still think we should stay close to the source material. Gold is clearly a reference to the video game. But the rainbow, that migh..."

"Bah," Sara blurted out. "You're both wrong. I told you it was easy."

Her confidence took us by surprise. Did she really just solve it, or was she bluffing?

"Grab gold. You must win, take first prize, become champion," she said. "Rainbow chase. It's a contest. A car chase. On a rainbow. Yes?"

Fuck. She wasn't bluffing.