Author's note:
Hey all, this is my first serious attempt at fanfic. I drew a lot of inspiration from Fuggmann's "Borne of Caution", though this story will be much more lighthearted fantasy, and also probably way worse (seriously, if you haven't already, go read it, it's unreasonably good)
Chapter 1: The Improbable Forest
Nate was tired. Very tired. Sean called out again so he ended up having to stay until closing.
"At least my paycheck's gonna be fat this week," he grumbled as he opened his front door. He quietly walked into the kitchen, grabbing a box of granola bars, before ambling to his bedroom. While he had intended to eat his impromptu dinner before sleeping, his bed was a tempting mistress. He fell face-first into his mattress, and was out.
"This isn't my bed" was the first thought through Nate's groggy mind as he woke. It may not be memory foam, but Nate's bed wasn't this hard. Nate opened his eyes to see... nothing. He was still lying face down, the same awkward position he had fallen asleep in. He closed his eyes, and slowly oriented himself facing upward, the task made more difficult by the fact that he hadn't even taken off his backpack before falling asleep last night. Once he had finally gotten into position, he slowly opened his eyes for a second time.
"Green..." thought Nate. Indeed, Nate's entire field of vision was taken up by a carpet of green far above him.
"This isn't even my bedroom"
Clearly Nate still had some waking up to do.
As it turns out, panic makes an excellent substitution for coffee. Once Nate's brain realized he might be in danger, he shot up. Ignoring the brief bout of dizziness from getting up too quickly, Nate glanced all around himself in a panic. This was... a forest? Surrounding the clearing he was in were enormous tree trunks. Nate panned his head up... and up... and up. Above him was the canopy of green he saw earlier, but now that he understood the scale he was hit by another bout of dizziness.
"Find out what's going on first, panic later." Nate told himself. Ignoring the stiffness of his body from sleeping on the hard forest floor, Nate forced himself to stand. He began walking towards the nearest tree to get a better estimate on its size. Nate had seen pictures of Sequoias before, but these trees made the California giants look like matchsticks. The base of the trunk was the size of a house, easily 50 feet in diameter. The tree was similarly tall, at least 500 feet tall by Nate's best estimate. The farcical size of the tree wasn't the only thing about it that put California's giants to shame. While redwoods generally kept their branches close to the trunk these trees spread out their leaves like a gargantuan umbrella. "I didn't wake up in a clearing" Nate idly mused as he continued circumnavigating the tree, "These trees just take up so much space that they have to grow that far apart." Indeed, while the dense canopy above made the forest floor just as shady as any woods Nate had been in before, the trees were spread so far apart that you could easily fit a large apartment building between them with room to spare.
"This isn't Earth." said Nate, to no one in particular.
Nate had been mulling over his circumstances while he was circling the tree. The most convenient answer would be that this was a dream, but a quick pinch and slap to the cheek disproved that hypothesis.
Next he considered whether he might have been kidnapped, but nothing about that theory added up. Sure, he was tired last night, but Nate was generally a light sleeper. Furthermore, even if he had been kidnapped, that still didn't explain how he ended up in this improbable forest. There was no sign of footprints or tire tracks around where he had woken up. Which left Nate with his final hypothesis.
Teleportation.
Now, Nate was pretty sure teleportation didn't actually exist. Sure there were experiments with teleporting single particles, but a single particle Nate was not. Also, Nate was pretty sure that skyscraper-sized trees didn't exist either, yet here he was. After running his mind in circles for a bit, Nate leaned against the tree and slowly slid down until his butt hit the ground.
Nate could feel panic beginning to well up in his chest, and he had to deliberately slow his breathing to try and calm his heart. Nate was no stranger to isekai stories. In fact, one of the few perks of his job was that the store was empty most of the time, giving him time to read on his phone.
"Step one:" Nate said to himself "Find out what kind of world I've been sent to."
"PIIIIIII!" Nate was brought out of his thoughts by the shrill cry of a wild animal. A bird the size of a cat landed about 50 feet in front of him. The grey and black bird pecked at the ground a few times before pulling up an earthworm and swallowing it in one gulp. "PII! PIII!" The bird happily chirped as it took off and flew out of sight.
"Step one completed." Muttered Nate.
Nate's thoughts were running a mile a minute as he paced around.
"That was a Pidove, no doubt about it." thought Nate, "Which means I've been sent to a pokemon world. A pokemon world, not The pokemon world. I need to work out if this is the anime, manga, main series game, mystery dungeon, or some hybrid."
Nate was brought out of his reverie by the growling of his stomach.
"Correction, I need to not die in the woods, then I can work out where I am."
Luckily, food wasn't an immediate concern. The box of granola bars he grabbed last night made the journey with him. Nate took one out of the box and slowly ate. Once he finished, Nate decided he needed to take stock. He took off his backpack and emptied it's contents on the ground, then he emptied out his pockets. First order of business was to figure out exactly what he had on him and how any of it could be used. After a few minutes sorting everything out, Nate had his inventory:
One box of granola bars, 7 remaining, one wrapper
A one liter water bottle, empty
"Intermediate Biology" textbook
"Intro to Modern European History" textbook
"Environmental Science" textbook
A mediocre sci-fi novel "Guess the library isn't getting this back"
Three spiral notebooks
4 ballpoint pens, 3 mechanical pencils
A smartphone; no signal, battery bank, and wall adaptor
A wallet and its contents
Driver's license
Student ID
Debit card
$65 cash
"Not a great inventory for wilderness survival," Nate mused. "At least I have some food, and an empty water bottle is better than no water bottle. I could maybe use the books as firestarters if I need to. Luckily this forest seems pretty temperate." At the thought of the climate, Nate turned his gaze to his clothes. Sneakers, cotton socks, jeans, t-shirt, and a long-sleeve button-up shirt with his store's logo on it. Again, not great, but could be worse. Nate shuddered at the thought of trekking through the woods in business casual.
Nate re-packed his backpack, making sure to take the granola bar wrapper with him. "The last thing I need is some forest guardian blowing me to bits because I littered." With his inventory taken care of, Nate set out for the first order of business: water. Nate picked a direction at random and started walking. "I know they say you're supposed to stay still when lost in the woods, but that supposes you are being looked for." The trek proved surprisingly easy compared to Nate's previous experiences hiking through woods. The absence of smaller trees made navigation easy too. People tend to walk in circles without landmarks to guide them, but the colossal trees solved that problem. All Nate had to do was walk towards a tree. Once he reached it, he looked for a tree further past, and repeated.
"Pretty quiet for a forest," Nate said to himself. Other than the occasional faint chirp, Nate had no contact with any fauna beyond the initial Pidove. After a few hours of walking, Nate sat down for a break. He idly wondered if he should eat another granola bar before deciding against it. For now, they were his only food source, he should ration them. Besides, Nate still didn't have water, and their high sugar content would only make him thirstier. As Nate rested his feet, wishing he had some proper boots, he looked up towards the canopy once more. It was hard to tell due to the thick foliage, but Nate reckoned it was probably 10:00 AM. As he stared at the carpet of leaves far above him, he saw faint movement. It was hard to tell from this distance, but it looked like the silhouette of a bird pokemon. He strained his eyes to follow it's movement, when suddenly another bird silhouette crashed into the first. The two silhouettes fought "at least I think it's fighting, it's hard to tell from down here," for a few minutes before they both flew their separate ways. With the show over, Nate decided he had rested for long enough, and continued his trek.
"Hours of walking down here and I've seen literally one pokemon, yet 30 seconds of staring at the canopy and I see a fight between two." Nate pondered this for a while before it clicked into place. "Of course the forest floor is barren! Hardly any light reaches down here, which means there's also hardly any plants. No plants means no primary consumers, which means no secondary consumers. The only food for animals down here is detritus that falls down from the canopy, meaning the floor is inhabited only by decomposers like the worm and things that eat decomposers. This forest is like the open ocean, where only the top bit exposed to the light is full of life." Pleased that he had worked out that mystery, Nate continued his search for water.
Finally Nate heard the best sound he had ever heard, water. He followed the sound until the promised liquid came into view. A small stream, maybe ten feet across, carved a channel through the forest. After a slightly perilous climb down to the stream bed, Nate looked down at the water's surface. His face's reflection greeted him. Green eyes, straight blonde-brown hair that was slightly too long for his liking, stubble born from his neglect to shave yesterday. "At least I haven't been de-aged, or sent into someone else's body, or any other isekai nonsense." Nate filled up his bottle from the stream and drank deeply, then filled it up again and climbed out of the gulley.
"I know drinking unfiltered river water is a terrible idea, but I don't have a way to start a fire right now, and even if I did, I don't have a vessel to boil water in. Besides, Ash probably drank plenty of river water and he never got dysentery." After securing his questionable water supply, Nate decided to continue following the stream. Unless this forest existed in an enormous basin, it should eventually lead him to a river, which he could follow towards the ocean. Presumably he could find his way to civilization eventually.
A few more hours of walking and little had changed, until Nate saw something in the distance that gave him pause.
"Is that... sunlight?" Nate thought. He turned away from the stream, confident he could find his way back to it, and walked towards the unusual bright spot in the distance. As he neared the light, Nate realized what it was that he was seeing. One of the giant trees had fallen down, creating a gap in the canopy where light could reach the floor. "A treefall gap, if I remember correctly". After a whole day spent in the monotony of the dim forest floor, Nate was excited for a change of scenery. Already from the distance he could see new shoots reaching into the newly available light, and the undergrowth in the gap looked significantly denser than the sparse ferns that were present in the rest of the forest.
Once again the scale of the forest had messed with Nate's senses. Those "new shoots" were the size of regular trees! As Nate looked up at the 30 foot "saplings," Nate gained even more appreciation for the giant trees that made up the forest. When he neared the patch of sunlight, a wave of sound hit him. All manner of bird calls, howls, screeches, and more noises Nate had no words for echoed around.
"Pokemon." Nate grinned, and ran towards the light.
The rational part of Nate's brain was yelling at him to exercise even the tiniest bit of caution, but unfortunately for it, the excitable nerd part of his brain was yelling much louder about how awesome it'll be meeting real-life pokemon. As he got within 30 feet of the gap, a particularly angry sounding screech grabbed Nate's attention. He looked around for the source and found a furious-looking puffball with spindly limbs and a long, thin tail.
"That's a Mankey" thought Nate, grinning even wider than before. The mankey, it seems, was much less happy to see Nate than Nate was to see it. The pig-monkey picked up a small stone and threw it towards Nate.
"Oh crap!" he yelled. Nate dove to the ground with far less elegance than he would like to admit and scrambled away from the angry fluff. After Nate fled a sufficient distance, the pokemon, seeing that it's territory was satisfactorily defended, slunk back into the underbrush.
Nate hid behind a large wall of roots, waiting to see if any other pokemon were attracted by the sound of their (admittedly one sided) fight. After a few minutes, he poked his head above his hiding place. "Coast seems clear," he thought. Nate stood up, dusted himself off, and started walking back towards the gap, but at a much more cautious pace than before, until he saw something that gave him pause. A massive furrow in the ground. The cause? The small stone Mankey casually threw at him.
"Holy shit." Nate swore. "If that had hit me, it would've gone straight through me." Nate looked back and forth between the patch of greenery where he last saw Mankey, and the trench carved by the pokemon. "Maybe I need a different approach."
