"GAH!" I gasped out a breath doing what I could to stabilize my racing heartbeat. As my retina burned from a sudden bright light. Rubbing the pain from them I squint at my surroundings. A multitude of bushes that have grown a little over knee height and numerous trees greeted me from my position on the floor.
"WHOWHATWHEREWHYHOW!?" I shout out as I jump to my feet in a semi-uncoordinated stumble.
Did I just get FUCKING KIDNAPPED! How!? I was at school during my passing period reading. Wait then I couldn't have been- no it's not impossible I could've been abducted but it is highly unlikely. There's just too many people around my campus at 1 in the afternoon for that and I definitely don't remember leaving the school grounds for the day.
Okay, then what are other possibilities?
Possibility #1 I got wasted/drank a spiked drink.
Pretty sure that would entail having a hangover right now.
Possibility #2 I'm missing that memory due to a head injury.
Pretty sure that I'd have signs comparable to a concussion unless I'm suffering from a series of multiple amnesia-inducing injuries. Which would require me to get injured, forget my past, wander to wherever here is, and receive another injury that possibly reversed the process where instead I now remember my past but forgot any memories between then and now. And that's way too complicated and nonsensical to be the truth.
okokokokokokokok
What were the events leading up to this exactly? Something is bound to clue me in on what happened. It was a normal-ish day, dressed nice in a white button-up and slacks, I ate lunch early, then went to class, did my presentation, came out of the class, and went to the library for my break where I looked up CYOAs to enter..tain…
Son of a bitch, did I actually find one that worked? Well then… at least I know that I did this to myself. Umm… those things always come with a "buy equipment" tab so if I can find wherever the things I bought landed I can get a decent idea of where I am.
Doing a minor check through the foliage around where I had woken up tells me nothing. So cautiously exploring outward I eventually come across a black messenger bag hanging on the branches of a tree. Sadly the dangling bag is about a half-foot out of my reach forcing me to attempt to climb the tree. Something I've never done before.
Shut up.
Luckily the tree split into two main trunks fairly low down allowing me to find a loose grip on either branch and pull myself up like I'm exiting a pool. Luckily that is something I do have a lot of experience with. High school swim team for the win.
Throwing my left leg over the branch on that side so I'm now straddling it. I only just realized that I'm facing the wrong way. Looking at the other branch as I'm sitting on the one that has the bag on it. I give a frustrated huff before bending myself back and flailing/stretching my arm out as far as I can go. I brush against the fabric of the bag a few times before, in a feat of acrobatics I did not think myself possible of, leaning my back completely against the tree trunk allowing me the distance to grapple the bag strap. Before I lose my balance on the tree and tumble off of it. Freeing the bag as I plummet and land in a roll.
My head swivels at how my body instinctively came out of the roll-on one knee, one hand a little ahead and just to the side of my other leg, which I actually have semi curled into my chest, and I can only think of one thing. "Superhero landing, nice!"
Letting my ass drop to the floor I sit cross-legged and pull the pack into my lap to start digging through it. The first and largest pocket of this bag seemed to be empty except for a metal case filled with six discs. As I go to put the disc case back I see something further in this pocket. Reaching my entire arm into the bag I grab the corner of another metallic object and pull it out.
Revealing a silver laptop with a Pokeball engraved in the place of a company's logo and a multitude of stickers all in the same theme of the emblem. A large depiction of Rayquaza curling itself into the air takes up the left half while three smaller images of a Flygon, Umbreon, and Blaziken are placed on the top right, bottom, and bottom right sides respectively.
I nod my head in appreciation of the hardware, even I could tell it had some pretty modern specs. Okay so I have a bag of holding, a laptop, and CDs what do they all have in common? Jack-shit, so we're going to boot up this sucker and play some random mixtapes.
God that was just an awful, awful joke.
Flipping open the computer and pressing the power button lets me watch as the lights sitting beneath the keys begin to glow a cyan blue. The screen flashing white momentarily before dulling to a pattern of blues and an animation with another Pokeball rolling across the middle of the screen before stopping in the middle. Then everything splits diagonally and reveals a fairly standard desktop setup.
You know I'm starting to get a few ideas on where I might be. And these discs sure as hell aren't fitting in here. I think as I realize the laptop doesn't have any sort of input for outside sources. Unless of course you're referring to the USB ports. Powering the laptop off for now or at least attempting to. Apparently the thing has a different layout than a normal Microsoft pc. Since I accidentally opened the camera of all things.
My own slightly boyish face greeting me. Honestly, I was kinda worried I'd end up ten or in a different person's body or hell in Ash's body or as a girl! Oh god, I just had the worst shiver run up my spine at that. Instead, I'm greeted with the same brown eyes, thin, somewhat tall face, middle-of-the-back-length naturally black hair, dyed an inky purple halfway down its length that fades to a silvery-white.
Spending a few minutes feeling relieved at my lack of physical change. I figure out how to shut down the laptop and proceed to replace everything back into my bag before searching the rest of it.
While I'd love to troll through the google/reddit/4chan equivalents to see if my guess is correct. I can probably figure it out when I see what else I have as starting assets. Next zipper has a hat.
There's just a hat but it is a nice hat. It has that whole black, steampunk tophat look. With the red-orange, chitinous wing of some overly large insectoid placed on the right side like a feather would normally be. No goggles or gears though.
I'm gonna need a jacket or vest if I'm gonna wear this. It just doesn't look right with only the dress shirt and black pants. Maybe something in black? No, that would give me too much of an edge. Maybe blue though? Wait I need to get back on track. I can't sit here forever.
One small pocket on the side of the bag has two headsets like what you'd see in an old spy movie or mission impossible. Though I guess that would be considered an old spy movie now, wouldn't it? Third to last zipper has exactly what I was expecting.
Motherfucking Pokeballs…. oh yeah!
The starting set of five Pokeballs are placed right back where they belong. While the last of the bag is emptied out revealing three potions, a white and blue box-like device about as long and wide has an Apple tablet but an inch or two thick, a smaller red device that could only be a Pokedex and a set of keys.
~Pokemon gotta catch em all~
Don't fucking judge me. This place can be some great fun, though it has been absolutely forever since I've played a game. Actually it's been a while since I've watched the show as well. Jeez, I hope I'm not in… Kanto….? Johto...? Whichever one of those the first season of the anime is in.
Oh wait, I could be in the games. Actually, that poses a good question that has a really obvious answer now that I think about it. Will battles work on anime logic or game logic? The answer is probably anime logic considering I'm pretty sure no sane person would set up a series of leagues and gyms for essentially chess matches with the pieces shooting elemental attacks that destroy boulders and move mountains.
Oh crap, nuzlockes are a thing. Oh crap, I just realized that means I'm sitting in a forest filled with a stupidly high number of normal, bug, grass, and flying types. Oh crap, I just pulled the Pokeballs back out and I realized I don't know how to use them. OH CRAP I FIGURED OUT HOW TO OPEN THEM AND ALL OF THEM ARE EMPTY!
Faster than I've done anything in my life I throw the bag's strap over my shoulder so it's sitting on my right side and book it in a random direction.
Which I immediately regret as I hurdle over (what I think was) a blueberry bush. And find myself falling a solid 15-20 feet because I was on the top of a goddamn hill with a sheer cliff.
Needless to say, the fall was not fun. Landing was less so. Almost rolling my way to the bottom of the hill was even less amusing. Laying there in pain was probably the highlight of my impromptu lesson on "keep a cool head, idiot" I have a sneaking suspicion it won't be my last lesson on the subject.
After a few minutes, I roll onto my front and stand myself up. Doing my best to check for anything worse than bruising. Confident I didn't hit anything hard enough to break something I dust off as much of the dirt as I can from my clothes. Make a quick check to ensure I didn't drop anything. Then proceed to actually use the thing sitting in my head. And no it's not the air that makes up the majority of the space between my few brain cells.
Ok, let's be calm and rational for a minute. Freaking out will just mean hurting myself and dragging unwanted attention from Pokemon I have no real way of combating. So I need to get into the closest city, right? That'll put me in a safe spot where I can plan further. My other option is to try and single out a Pokemon to catch and then proceed to town with a little protection from said Pokemon.
Now while that last option would be nice I have to consider the world of Pokemon as being identical to my own in terms of technology. Hell in all likelihood it's further ahead in some areas since I don't think Earth had anything similar to Pokeballs, the scanning a Pokedex can do, and whatever the hell those healing machines are in the Pokemon Centers. Meaning guns, other Pokemon, and gangs/criminals that are probably equal to Earth equivalents but hopefully are as competent as Team Rocket in the anime.
So even if I'm not in a Nuzlocked version of the Pokemon canon things are gonna be dangerous. Avoidance is gonna be my best friend until I can reliably outrun dangerous Pokes in the wild.
Actually I did get that blue device. What is it? It's definitely not the dex, so that leaves… a PokeNav? Maybe PokeGear instead? Whatever the little machines are that the more recent versions use to explain away some of the things like maps of the region and how you can get calls from other important characters.
If so then I can probably pop this sucker open and figure out how to get where I need to.
Almost thirty minutes (or in other words far too much time) of fiddling with buttons and trying to read what I think is Japanese (please have the people I meet speak English). Failing to understand any of it and just jumping around in various apps. I found the right icon for the Navigation system.
If I'm reading this right I'm on the southwest peninsula of a continent. With an island to the west and the rest of the continent continuing north and west for at least a few hundred miles if I have the scale of it right.
And the closest town for me would be… south of here. Oh sweet the main road leading to it is pretty close to me.
Doing my best to keep an eye out for any Pokermon that feel like I might be a good playmate while also watching the blinking icon showing where I am relative to the road. It takes a few minutes and a close call when I almost got spotted by a 3 foot tall pink furred Pokemon with big ears and a tail like a rabbit that I would've scanned when it started turning the other way since it was well over 10 feet away. If, the moment I started unzipping the bag for my dex, it didn't immediately look in my direction.
I just covered my mouth and stood as still as possible. It took a minute but whatever it was finally decided it wasn't curious enough to figure out what it heard and scampered off.
I waited a bit longer to make sure it wasn't coming back and continued on my way. That could've ended badly. If it had the ability to determine my location from the sound I have no doubts it could've produced sound waves that would've done some serious damage to me. Pokémon tend to be themed like that.
It was less than ten minutes after that little run in that I found myself jogging down a hill hopping over the forest's brush and landing on a fairly well-kept dirt path. That carved itself cleanly through the forest. Now then pulling out my blue tablet/map thing I'm sitting somewhere between two towns near the end of the peninsula. I'm closer to the one further south based on the walk I took to get to the main road I'm probably less than 30 minutes away. Only problem south leads to the edge of the peninsula. So I'll have basically nowhere to go since I have no cash to pay for any transport.
Going north to the town in that direction has its own set of issues since it looks to be at least a day-long walk. With no Pokemon partner, food, water, or money that option is essentially impossible.
"Patrat!" "PATrat!" "Pa-Pa-Patrat." "PATRAT!" "Rat." ...I'm sorry what now?
Following the sound of, Pokemon cries I assume though a 'Patrat' is not one I'm familiar with, I quickly spot a bend in the road where a section of the path has been heavily disturbed. A large divot having been dug that leads a dozen (maybe two dozen) feet into the forest. Almost subconsciously I determine it was a vehicular crash with how the ground is dug into and how the plant life is mostly unaffected it was something small. From the depth of the damage probably a bike with a more heavy-set person on it or a motorcycle.
Diving in to help I trail the damage quickly only to find a silver motorcycle laying on its side with five, brown squirrel-looking Pokemon. Two of them are trying to move or lift the motorbike, two others are… cheering(?) on their friends, and the fifth is standing on the exposed engine and looking at its own feet before letting out another cry of its name before hopping up and stomping back down on the machine.
It takes me a few moments of watching before I barely hear a whimper over the commotion the gang of unruly Pokes are causing. The noise having been made from a small canine Pokemon (if the little black ears I spot are anything to go by) lying beneath the motorcycle. Cowering from its attackers.
Oh, I just got fucking pissed.
Before I fully thought questions like, "How dangerous are these Pokemon? What typing could they be? What possible level are they at/what moves have they learned by this point?" I had sprinted the remaining distance between me and one of the cheering Patrats. Alerting the one on top of the bike as he turned to look in my direction with his tail having straightened out completely.
Before its friend could react to this shift though I was already behind it and punting it with a well-placed kick. The Patrat that had spotted me finished getting about half-way through its name before getting smacked in the face with its now airborne comrade.
"Scram you overgrown squirrels, SCRAM!"
Considering how fast they picked themselves up and ran I successfully put the fear of Pokemon Jesus into them.
"Damn pack of shitty rats, no squirrels. They're a shitty pack of squirrels cause a group a Rattatas would be rats." I mumble as I watch them scurry into the brush. With a small 'tsk' and a sigh to try and get my annoyance in check. Crouching where I am to try and get a better look at the small dog-like Pokemon I had caught a small glimpse of. What stares back at me from beneath the bike is a red-eyed human child with bright blue hair that goes to his shoulders.
The kid couldn't have been older than three or four, was either naturally small or malnourished, and (s)he was wearing a hairband with black animal ears on it, an oversized white T-shirt, and I hope something else underneath.
"Umm… Hey." Well done, jackass. "You...uh...you doing alright there?"
Dear god, I really didn't think any of this through.