To the Chapter 4 reviewer who asked about the SI's age "being twenty-five but also less than twenty-five": In Chapter 1; they mention both that they are being rendered 'ten years younger', and that they have experienced 'fifteen local years'. They've also made references to their age in Chapter 2 (having 'an additional twenty-five years of life experience') and Chapter 3 (mentioning being 'sixteen again' on Day 402, the day Evan evolves into an Espeon). In short, 'mental' age and 'physical' age are a bit inconsistent.

Meaning, they were 'taken' on their Chain on Midnight of 2021's New Years Day, and they were born in 1995. Therefore, they were ~twenty-five when the Chain started, and due to their decision to be 'inserted' at age fifteen (and then experience fifteen years of life compressed into a seven-and-a-half hour 'deep sleep'), they are technically forty, but since the oldest they've ever been is twenty-five, they either 'act their age' (fifteen to twenty-five, depending on how far along the Jump is), or act maturely 'when the situation calls for it'.

Also, something I should address for everyone reading: I'm not a fan of RNG in JumpChain and in most cases, it's getting replaced with free choice. Specifically, in choosing Age and Location rolls, though other things might be included in the future. If I wanted to accurately write myself before-puberty or older than I've ever been, I would probably struggle for one reason or another, and if I tried to write myself mid-puberty… I'd have to willingly write while unnecessarily aroused, I'd have to write things I'd really not put up on a public forum (especially one my parents have access to), and I'd have to risk being banned for inappropriate sexualisation in the sense that, being under-fifteen, the SI would find other people 'their age' attractive, and that's not okay when you're much older than you 'think' or 'feel' you are. Even if I wrote him in-character as being disturbed by that moral shift, I'd still want to explore those righteously-sensitive themes. All around, not worth it, and not happening. (And if it does in the future, such 'age-inappropriate' things will not come up. They are, thankfully and justifiably, well outside the scope of this story.) And Location-rolling is often detrimental to where I want to 'focus' the story, so it can go fuck itself too.


Pokemon: Hoenn; City Life50 (Fortree); Actual Starter: Eevee (Shiny50); Freerunning; Swarmed+100 (100)

Priority: Physical Fitness100; Survival Training100; Master Ball*3100; HM Collection50; Rebreather50; Psionics300; Savant600; Blend In300; Egg Move4 (Flail, Wish, Stored Power, Synchronoise)200; Combat Training100; Aura600 (2500)


-Day 2565-

The rest of yesterday had been a rush of questioning and slightly-manipulated answers, and by the end of it, Evan was willing to put off her own curiosity until tomorrow. Something I was very grateful for, mind you. I'd been left a bit frazzled by my balancing act of giving only most of the truth to stay out of the ensuing shitshow.

After a short argument, the four of the Grunts had begrudgingly surrendered and been escorted to a closed cabin that could be locked from the outside. A quick phone call to the International Police Force (in which I had to lean on my status as the Unovan Champion to get some respect from the smarmy American prick on the other side of the phone), and my physical part in what happened next was pretty much done. But even with Looker having vouched for me, there were questions. A LOT of questions.

They wanted to know who I was (I'm anonymous and registered as such, I'm not giving Cipher an easy way to track me); they wanted to know how I'd known about the attack (I'm psychic and I can see the future. Or just put down that I stumbled on Citadark Isle, Evan can Teleport and no-one will care about the specifics of how I knew) and they wanted to know what I planned to do about the corrupted Lugia I'd just caught (I know an Aura Adept in Sinnoh, Riley, who can break mind control, and he's already promised to help). That last one had very nearly caused an international incident when one of the 'bad cops' demanded I turn over the Lugia, which I flatly refused: even if it was safe to do so, which it definitely wasn't and they had plenty of testimony from the last time Cipher created Shadow Pokemon to know they could attack even their own trainers, the Lugia had been caught by me and was actively registered as my Pokemon. She had nothing, she knew she had nothing, and she continued harassing me until I told the two-way mirror that if she wasn't fucked off and replaced by a more reasonable officer right now, I was going to Teleport back to Hoenn and they could deal with the fallout.

Suffice to say, everyone got a lot more reasonable when they realised how bad it would look if they tried to arrest a five-time Champion after restraining a dangerous Legendary, and how many people would be in deep shit with the Hoenn Elite Four for stealing from one of their citizens, and the Unovan Elite Four for attacking a literal life-saving Hero.

Thus, after over two hours of questioning and watching the IPF scramble to get a local task force ready to retake Citadark Isle within the month (which would most likely be more than enough time for Michael to have his fateful run-in with that one Cipher Spy and set off the whole Gale Of Darkness plot), I simply got Evan to Teleport us home.

After stuffing ourselves with stress-eating takeout (mostly fried comfort chinese food), waking up fresh and early the next day (thank you, jetlag-resistant body), and sharing a good, long shower to take the rest of the edge off yesterday's stress-fest, I sat down at the Elegant Table with Evan. This, was going to be a difficult-to-communicate conversation.

"So. As I promised, you wanted to know how I knew about Cipher, and how I knew about Hoenn and Sinnoh and that one thing with Giovanni. Thing is, I'm not… really sure how to explain this in a way you'll understand. So let me go over a few things first. You remember the Many Worlds Theory I showed you a while back, right?"

[Yes. Anything that could happen, has happened in an 'alternate universe', a world nearly-identical to this one but different in some big or small way.] She repeated, mind alert and active in preparation for whatever I was going to dump on her.

"And since we have reason to believe Giratina exists, along with the Distortion World, you understand that some beings are powerful enough to pass from one 'world' to another?"

[Somewhat. I know about the legends, what proof do you have that Giratina exists?] She paused me, clearly a bit off-put by my 'assumption' that Giratina was not a mere myth. To be fair, my completed Pokedex doesn't really mean anything by itself. A library book of Arceus is enough to fill out their entry, having Giratina's isn't proof of anything.

"That's, something I'm just about to get to, that'll make this make a bit more sense once you get your head around the idea. Okay?" She nodded back. "Okay. You do know about the Legendary Beasts in the legends of the Brass Tower being burned down. So if you accept that Ho-Oh can revive the dead in some way, you know about reincarnation too, yes?"

[…not much.] She admitted. [Reincarnation: you believe that when you die, you come back to life in a different body, but with little or no memory of your past life?]

"Pretty much." I confirmed. "The idea is that you soul contains your memory, and personality, and everything that makes you who you are. When you die, your soul is 'recycled' into a newly-born body. In this way, people are 'immortal' in the sense that while their bodies die, the part of them that is self-aware will be reborn as a different person."

[Makes sense, in a go-along-with-it way.] She agreed. [People have souls, Ghost-types prove that, but… why does this 'reincarnation' matter?]

"Read my mind." That, brought her train of thought to a screeching halt, and she flicked her eyes up to mine in shock and I sighed. "Yes, I usually hate it when you do that, but it's the simplest way to explain the biggest and most difficult part of my story. This one time, you have my permission to view my memories."

It still took her a moment to accept, which I used to focus on my last night home as she joined me in my thoughts: not much really remained, but [I still remembered my parents; the leftover chicken, ham and pork from Christmas dinner that took us the full week to finish, the 2020 New Year's resolutions… and then waking up in a pitch-black void, nothing but a floating, holographic monolith with the Pokemon Trainer Jump by Quicksilver on it, fully interactible and following my every movement to always be in front of me. The fear and excitement as I spent what had to be an hour going through the available Supplements and deciding my purchases, certain it was just a dream or some elaborate prank I couldn't imagine anyone in my family pulling. The confirmation, the sudden sleepiness, and the fifteen years I re/lived compressed into seven-and-a-half hours as I slept… only to wake up to a brand new life, the one opportunity that I'd never find in the real world, and my 'Starter' was a cute little Eevee that I'd saved from a shelter six months ago.

I decided right then and there that Evan was family now. And one way or another… I was going to tell her about my Chain, about me and what it meant for us, and I was going to ask her to come with me. It might not even be necessary, she might not have a choice and I'll probably wait until after the main criminal plots have been resolved, but she was my symbol of what I could become. She deserved to know the truth, just like any other Pokemon I caught.]

And then her presence faded from my mind and I opened my eyes to find her staring deeply into mine, eventually smiling as my mirth at her super-serious silence grew.

Then she finally opened up to me. [Are you Jason Townsend?]

Perhaps not the way I expected her to, though. "I, what?" I thought that over and picked out the connotations before I reopened my mouth. "You literally just saw my memories, who do you think I am if not your Trainer?"

[My Trainer rescued me from a shelter six months before your journey began.] She stared back, a mixture of resolution and worry in her eyes. [He didn't see me as much more than a pet, but he grew to care for me as I did for him. You…] She paused, taking her time to struggle through her own words. [You might look and sound and feel like him, but you haven't lived the same life as he did. You're older than him, more experienced, and you're… hungry for power, in a way he, wasn't… really?] She shook her head. [I never got to see inside his mind, I wasn't an Espeon like I am now, but… are you really him, or are you someone else, and neither of us knows-]

"Evan." I interrupted her, deeply uncomfortable at where she was taking this. "I can assure you, I have spent plenty of sleepless nights pondering that exact question, and several more besides. Going down that path of paranoia won't lead you to any concrete answers, it'll just trap you in a web of conspiracy theories that eat away at you until you're jumping at every loud noise in earshot and every random event that you didn't expect, until you have an actual nervous breakdown. I never got to that point myself because I eventually rejected the whole mess as 'not worth thinking about', so please, don't focus on my personal identity. For my sake, if not your own."

[…but…] She obviously couldn't just let that go. [You're not even using the same name anymore.]

"I don't want to." I bluntly stated. "The person I was… was content with his lot in life, but he had all manner of physical and mental health problems, big and small, that I don't. Since I began my 'Chain', even if I'm not Jason Townsend anymore, I still use my new name, because it's one that means a lot to me, and it represents a fresh start. I've been happier in all the time I've lived in this world of fantastical creatures of myth, as I ever was back home, where I was trapped by the same limitations as everyone else, and unable to do anything about all the shitty situations across the world. Even if I die here, I theoretically go home with superpowers. Not enough to change my lot in life, I sure as hell can't fight an army equipped with AK-47's, let alone Stealth Bombers and whatever horrific bioweapons my old world's governments can throw at me. But if I keep going, as long as I survive, I get more. One day, whether I complete an appropriate challenge and earn a Planeswalker Spark or fail and return home, I'll still be ageless, invincible and mobile enough to change things. That is why I need to grow stronger, why I 'hunger' to acquire the best powers I possibly can: because the only thing required for evil to succeed, is for good to do nothing."

My impassioned speech/rant bought silence to the room, which I used to take a sip of my hot chocolate (made with homegrown Occa Berries) to soothe my slightly-dried-out throat. Evan… didn't seem to know what to say, so she simply levitated her own straw up, and joined me in enjoying one of life's simple pleasures to try and relax the still-tense atmosphere.

[] Despite not actually thinking anything at me, I could still hear the 'intent' in her thoughtspeak before she actually started thinking her concepts to me again. […I can sorta see that. The Jason I first met was… obsessed with becoming some sort of ageless hermit who could 'live off the land' and not be bothered by anyone else if he didn't want to talk to them. But… I never really got to know him all that well, did I? He still respected me, but… he thought of me as a Pokemon first and as 'family' a distant second. You… You were the one who taught me, who trained me, who raised me and instilled the idea of being independent. You were there for me when we defeated Roxanne, you were there when I Evolved, and you were there when we defeated all of Japan's Elite Four's. You never stopped thinking of me as family, and… that means so much to me,] She admitted, face burning red with embarrassment at baring her feelings. [that I can't see 'you' as not being my Trainer. I just… don't know what to think of the, wider implications, that you somehow 'became' another person. And, you hid this from me for years.] She tried not to let her pout seep through at the end, but it was a foregone conclusion.

I offered her the best reassurance I could, by 'reaching out' in full 'view' of her senses with my Psionics, using my Savant-enhanced memory to replicate the feeling of scratching her behind the ears, and 'turning on' my Aura to confirm that she wasn't scared or disturbed, or otherwise upset with my long-ranged contact. "I didn't really know how to tell you. If you weren't an Espeon who could just read my mind whenever I needed to share sensitive information with you, what could I have told you? That I secretly came from another world, and I was going to be sent to another world ten years after my journey started, and that you may or may not even have a choice as to whether or not you get dragged along with me? Even after seeing my memories, you're still having trouble believing me. If you couldn't… and even now, you obviously still have a million questions I might not be able to answer." I paused. "I'm sorry. I really need to just say out loud that I am sorry about not telling you, it just… got more and more difficult to bring up as the years rolled by." I quietly finished.

She definitely enjoyed the contact, once she got used to the odd sensation of being pet without skin contact or warmth behind the motions. [I understand. I know you really don't like me reading your mind, and letting me see your memories now is a huge trust-thing for you. I'm just…] She clammed up for five seconds, then metaphorically girded her loins. [It scares me, when I don't know what the future holds.] She quietly confessed. [I always trust you, but then you decide that we have to fight Team Aqua and Team Magma, then Team Rocket's top members, then Team Galactic, and last night… you captured a Lugia, and I never know about this kind of thing well in advance.]

"We, captured a Lugia." I primly corrected her. "Don't sell yourself short, you may very well have been crucial in accomplishing that feat."

[Maybe.] She agreed. [But the point is, it's not just about the danger. It's about you knowing about the danger, and me… not.] She finished, a little lamely.

"I understand that. You trust me, but… I'm not really returning that by trusting you back." I acknowledged. "Telling you about all of the things I could have… was a bit awkward in this case, because I didn't know exactly when events were going to pan out, but yes, it wouldn't have hurt to have shared this information before things always get out of hand."

[In the interest of making sure there's nothing else we have to worry about for the n-oh, great, what next?] Y-eah, probably pretty obvious that I knew something here.

"In two years, assuming things happen the same way they should, Team Plasma's going to pop up in Unova and their figurehead, an actually-pretty-okay guy by the alias 'N', is going to get ahold of either Zekrom or, more likely, Reshiram if he acquires one of the Dragon Stones from either Dragonspiral Tower or Relic Castle beforehand. And the Relic Castle 'Black Stone' that contains Zekrom is most likely on display in the Nacrene Museum right now, whereas the 'White Stone' that contains Reshiram… well, we've already been to the top of Dragonspiral Tower, almost two years ago." I trailed off, smirking and recalling exactly where our tour through Unova had 'conveniently' led us.

[!-That rock you took from the top of the tower!] She boggled at that. [You had Reshiram on you this whole time?!]

"Not really." I sighed. "Zekrom and Reshiram can only be summoned by someone with a strong connection to 'ideals' or 'truth', respectively, and I'm definitely not a font of truth right now, despite my preference for Special Sweepers. Maybe if I was in a deadly situation, I'd be willing to do something drastic like pouring my Aura into it to see if I could commune with them, but if Reshiram chose to become an inanimate stone, I'm going to trust that it had a good reason for that, and not interrupt it's slumber."

[Then… is this 'Team Plasma' still going to be a problem without either of their Legendary Pokemon?] She relaxed a bit.

"Probably not, though now that you're fully aware of why I want it, I'm hoping that you'll help me steal the Black Stone from Nacrene Museum, solely to safeguard it." I added. "I don't plan on even trying to bring them with me, not if I can't obtain permission first, but I really don't want some random Grunt to stumble on it and make life harder for us. Even if I can free Lugia, or at least render them controllable enough to defend us from one of them, I would really rather not deal with that whole mess."

[Okay.] She slumped back down. [Okay, that's fine, I can help you with that. That's a good act, on balance. Anything else?]

"While Team Plasma are responsible for genetically-engineering and cybernetically-enhancing and ancient now-Bug/Steel-type Legendary they call Genesect, as far as I'm aware, the whole project either hasn't happened yet, or will be shut down in the near-future before they can deploy it. Either way…" And now I have to address the complicated part. "It didn't show up in the Games back home, so I'm not expecting it to show up here. Other than that, nothing else should come up in the last year, or for the rest of this year."

As I worried, a period of quiet sipping followed as Evan thought over the 'basis' for my future predictions. Namely my metaknowledge, and the implications of having metaknowedge. […when you were, making your choices on that… whatever-it-was,] She skipped past her relatively-limited vocabulary, [you already knew about our world. You were thinking in terms of 'Generations', and 'Sweepers', and 'Movesets' and all sorts of technical terms that come from this world, but… you didn't get it from being here. You were thinking about a series of Video Games, and Cartoons, and Comics, and…] She trailed off. [Where did it come from? How did you know of all this?]

I'd had plenty of time to think my response over. "Skipping over the stuff that won't make much sense to you: back home, a company called Gamefreak tried to make a new game around nineteen-ninety-five. At least, that's when the finished product was published, it was probably started earlier than that, but when they got Nintendo's approval and finished it, Pokemon turned a profit practically overnight. Granted, Pokemon Red and Green were initially limited to Japan, with a revised Pokemon Blue being released with various fixes later on, which then got turned into the internationally-released Pokemon Red and Blue that turned it into an international success story. Initially, the 'first Generation' of Pokemon Games only had Kanto and a hundred-fifty-one Pokemon to show off, then Gen 2 introduced a hundred more along with the Johto region about five years later, then Gen 3 took place in Hoenn, Gen 4 in Sinnoh, Gen 5 finally left Japan for Unova, and so on and so forth. Twenty-five years after I left, they'd added the Kalos, Alola and Galar regions to the 'mainstream' series, and places like Orre, Fiore, Almia, Oblivia, and Ferrum through 'side entries'. Last I checked, Pokemon's the second-most-profitable series in the world."

Another period of quiet sipping. […So, the whole of the world of Pokemon is a game franchise in your world?]

"Well, they've expanded into a lot of other media, as I'm sure you saw. Animated series is one of the longest in the world by now, and the merchandise…" I snorted. "I don't think there's a person who lives in a major city on my world who hasn't at least seen or heard the word 'Pokemon' as a noun before."

[And… how, exactly, does that tie into this world?]

Now for the big stuff. "Something a lot more recent in my world, is the advent of 'CYOA'. An acronym for 'Choose Your Own Adventure', named after a popular kids novel series where every page or two would offer you a choice of two different paths, depending on what the reader themselves chose. This particular genre of media was used as writing prompts, to help people envision entire custom-made worlds using shared guidelines that made it easy to compare and contrast different decisions and opinions. And one of the subtypes, was 'JumpChain'." That made her ears flick in recognition. "What you saw was the first one ever made, the 'Pokemon Trainer' Jump. The original author made at least five more, each based on a different setting, but since it was a work of 'fan fiction', other people who saw them decided to create their own, eventually leading to… the last time I checked, there were well over a thousand unique JumpChain documents kept in the biggest online repository dedicated to them." Not even counting the pornographic ones, but I am not approaching that subject right now. "Being the 'first', and somewhat of a prototype, the Pokemon Trainer Jump sets up the metaplot: a 'ROB', short for 'Random Omnipotent Being' which are commonly used as plot hooks for this kind of thing, called Jump-chan decided to grab you out of your world and send you on an extremely-long adventure. Every ten years, you get placed in a new Jump and get offered a selection of Perks and Items. You can even take Drawbacks to increase your 'Choice Points', which I did with that Zubat Swarm that never stops following us around, by the way." That got a particularly-violent twitch out of her. "In my defense, that paid for my insertion and the excess went into your Shiny coloration, so it's not like it was wasted, but it was that or sacrifice either my voice or a leg for ten years, and I think I know which of the three I prefer."

And that got her to jerk in shock and stare horrified at me. [Wait, what?!]

"Normally, you get a thousand 'Choice Points' to make your purchases right before the Jump begins, and that's it." I clarified the 'original' ruleset. "But a 'Supplement' I designed myself was available, which replaces your starting stipend with a Point for every day you survive. Given that the more expensive things like Psionics and Aura are normally six hundred points apiece, starting with no points and earning almost four times what I sacrifice is well worth it for me. But, while I was guaranteed a few basics like a filled-out Pokedex, a Bag that holds a lot more than it should be able to, and a 'Starter' Pokemon to begin my journey with, almost everything else costed points. So, I needed at least one Drawback."

[That!-…doesn't seem worth the trouble of waiting, then.] She struggled to keep calm and focus on integrating what I was telling her. [What about the 'Origins', and 'Locations'-…]

Noticing her sudden pause, I gave her time to think. "Locations decide where in the world you find yourself when the Jump begins, and often influence your other choices slightly. Origins decide how you get 'inserted' into the world, and provide various advantages and 'discounts' based on what that Origin would likely specialise in. I could have taken the 'Drop-In' Origin, which would have dumped me on the nearest road with no memories of this world, no connections to earn a living, and a physically-unhealthy body, and I would have found you on the side of the road being attacked by wild Pokemon, and you would have willingly joined me after I saved you. But while not having a family I have to leave behind in a decade would have been appreciated, I'm way too far away from self-sufficient to risk that in the here-and-now. Instead, I chose the 'City Life' Origin, which gave me the 'Freerunning' Perk for free and established my identity in my Location, Hoenn. It also had me encounter you six months before the Jump started in a shelter, but it followed the same theme of me wanting to be a Trainer and you deciding to join me for one reason or another."

More silence, but no sipping this time, stretching on for what had to be thirty seconds before I finally spoke up about what I knew she was worrying about. "I was scared too, you know." Ear flick. "I didn't know what 'being given' a Starter entailed, or how much control I'd have over the Starter I'd be given, and thankfully it was mostly out of my hands. All I could determine was what species they'd be and that three of their IV's, which determine your genetic potential in one avenue, would be maxed out. Your Attack, Special Attack and Speed are as high as they can be for an Eevee-slash-Espeon, and if I'd been willing to pay, you could have had Magic Bounce from the start instead of all the work you did with Magic Coat to awaken it. Everything else, I had no influence over: Nature, Personality, even your Gender. As far as I know, you're just another Eevee."

[A rare Eevee who fit your specifications and was in the exact right place at the exact right time.] She bit out, overwhelmed and distressed. [Who arrived the same day you did.]

"Evan." I grabbed her attention. "If you were somehow magically made out of thin air, or had your fate altered to put you in the right place at the right time, then either I had no more control over it than you did, or I would have specifically requested that your personality have an exception that made you okay with it. I would not have willingly created you or manipulated you, in such a way that you would be unhappy with being created or manipulated, or learning about either one after the fact. As far as I know, you really are just a random Eevee, with three of your six IV's set to maximum, who happened to be in the shelter when I came to visit it, and that's it."

[…I know that, in my head.] She muttered. [You're too damn kind for your own good. And I know I wasn't created, I was bred for fighting and dumped like all the other Eevee who didn't make the cut because I wasn't perfectly healthy. But, was that the reason why I wasn't 'perfect'? Or was I thrown in as an extra Egg just because you needed a Starter?]

Thankfully, I had a point to be made here. "Here's a better question: are you unhappy with the life you've lived?" The visible flinch as she lowered her head worried me, but she needed to hear this. "Evan, don't be ashamed because you disagree with some of my decisions, or because your life wasn't as perfect as it could have been. That's normal for everyone to feel, regret that their every waking moment hasn't been as good as it could have. But that's the trap of hindsight, you can't blame yourself for a decision you genuinely had no control over, or a call you thought was right to make in that particular moment. Everyone spends a good portion of their life without control over it: I didn't have any until I turned at least fifteen in this life and eighteen in my last. That's what I'm trying to escape." I shifted my stance. "I don't believe children are obligated to serve their parents for the 'service' of being born, it's not something the child has any control over and it's not something they can ask about. In the same vein, you don't have to let where you may or may not have come from define who you were or who you are now. You are in control of your own life, even if you'd rather leave that control in my hand, and you can and have made your own decisions. And if you think you haven't? Then just keep living. You don't have to change yourself arbitrarily or hold yourself back arbitrarily, to feel like you're not being controlled by some unknowable force beyond mortal comprehension. Just be who you want to be."

[And what if I only want to be the Pokemon I am right now, because I was made to want to be your Espeon?] She whipped her head up and stared into my eyes, challenging me.

"Then at least you're happy, and you'll have plenty of opportunities to change who you are in due time." I calmly answered. "If you get brought along with me, you'll have access to a lot of the same things that I do: powers to create planets, destroy stars and outright warp reality itself at the upper limits. It might take a few millennia, but one day you'll be so powerful, that the difference between you and whatever or whoever sent me on this journey and tied your destiny to mine, will be academic and almost completely meaningless."

It didn't even take her ten seconds now, before she relaxed back into her chair and started sipping her Hot Occa again. [You make it sound so simple.]

"I studied the subject matter pretty thoroughly in my first life." I smirked. "It might take time, but it's not like time is the real problem here. It's just, figuring out what you want to do with that time. I'm not kidding that one day, we'll enter a Jump with comparably-godlike powers to the local setting, and we'll be able to lord it over anyone we want in any way, shape or form we want. Steal from the rich and give to the poor, rule everyone with an iron fist, act like immortal messiah's and start a new religion, whatever you want to try and experience, we can do that. It'll just take us some time to get there, but it's not like we can't enjoy that time. Okay?"

[Okay.] She mentally sighed, then turned contemplative. [Being worshipped like a Legendary does sound kinda fun…]

"Atta girl." I gave her another psychic scritching. "Always knew you had some catty superiority in you."

[Of course!] She mock-preened, which was somewhat ruined by how she kept leaning into my TK. [I'm a five-time solo Champion, I deserve all the worship I get.]

"And if you keep setting yourself up on a pedestal like that, I'm going to have to tickle you off it again." I teased her.

[You wouldn't!] She only-partially-melodramatically gasped, making me laugh out loud and setting off some 'tinkly' psychic giggles from her.

"You know I would."

[Only because you're a jerk.]

"Aw, I love you too."

[Flattery will get you nowhere.] She turned her nose up at me, then paused, staring at the ceiling. […we're going to have to move out, aren't we.]

"Probably." I sadly acknowledged. "I don't know how much control I have over what comes with us from our first Jump, but after this decade's over, I should gain access to the Cosmic Warehouse Supplement, a massive pocket universe we can keep all our stuff in and more than big enough for a good-sized house whenever we want to get away from 'real life' for a few weeks. Hopefully the Arena and Body Mod Supplements too, but they're a bit more superfluous outside of power testing and Gaunt-lets, and I'm going to need to explain a lot of things about JumpChain that I normally take for granted, don't I?"

[Yes. You do.] She gave me an exasperated look. [And anything else would be nice, too.]


AN: This chapter is both noticeably longer and noticeably earlier because it contains… mostly an explanation of JumpChain mechanics, and the points of discussion that have nothing to do with JumpChain's mechanics and everything to do with existentialism and forwardness is a bit too small for me to justify holding this back as a 'completely-genuine' chapter.

And for anyone who's interested: the Life Experience Supplement that I developed (and mostly swear by) replaces the 'normal' Points you start with, with a 1-Point-per-day rule (subject to various exceptions, depending on the relative length of a Jump. Something Like Kill La Kill might have ten-Points-per-day, whereas spending 12,000 years in the Civilisation Jump might limit you to ~1-Point-per-three-years). If that's too complicated for you, you can always use the Alt-Chain Builder or Universal Drawback Supplements, or run through each Jump once per Origin, or simply say you're running Creative Mode and have the Benefactor award Perks and Items upon request and the completion of various 'quests' or 'achievements' and lean into the RPG element of JumpChain. At the end of the day, they're all writing prompts. Just write first, and worry about the 'rules' later!

Everything else below this line is also part of the chapter, but is almost exclusively an explanation of JumpChain mechanics, so it's okay to skip if you really don't care. Assume in future chapters that anyone who is interested in following (in one form or another) the SI gets an explanation of similar thoroughness, because I'm not repeating this every Jump.


"Alright. The Cosmic Warehouse comes with a Key you can always find on your person, and whenever you stick it in a door, it opens into the Warehouse. When you get it, it starts out as a forty-thousand-square-foot concrete floor with metal walls and roof lights, but you also get a stipend of points to spend on it that upgrades it by adding, for example: an infinite supply of electricity, an infinite supply of water, heating and cooling units, a force field that keeps out anyone you want, a gravity-decreasing-field for stacking heavy stuff, a terminal that keeps track of what you bring inside, the ability to create eighty-square-foot portals instead of having a key, double the size (even though it's 'height' is suppose to be limitless), a supply of food to keep five people fed indefinitely, and a few other structures like a House, a Workshop with infinite generic parts, and a Medbay that can keep just about anything alive from just about any injury. I am hoping whatever's in charge of sending me around will let me place our Secret Base in there, or at least keep all of our belongings still in here."

[So you can use it anywhere there's a door, but you need a door unless you get the portal upgrade?]

"Pretty much, but since you're replacing that door's function, you really don't want to use it somewhere that someone will stumble on it because the door's blocked off. And since time freezes inside the Warehouse when it's closed, and any living beings are 'ejected' if it gets shut, it's not terribly subtle to use in most cases. Best idea is to get a mobile home and keep an unattached doorframe inside it that you can use whenever you want, instead of having to rely on mounted doors. On the other hand, the Earthbound Jump has a Perk that lets you create doors outside inanimate objects that can pass through them, so you can use the Key on that, and you could theoretically make much larger-than-otherwise-possible doors with normal-sized keyholes to fit anything like a spaceship inside. But in most cases, it's easier to take Portals and just find a Jump with shrinking technology."

[…you know how insane you sound when you just casually speak about spaceships and shrink rays, right?]

"Trust me, it'll start sounding a lot less insane when you experience it for yourself. The Arena Supplement is a Warehouse Add-On, which as the name implies, adds a sub-area dedicated to re-fighting enemies you've already defeated. You can't get all that much value out of that one, but for you and any other Pokemon I catch, it'll be of great use."

[Yeah, that sounds cool. And the 'Body Mod' Supplement?]

"You'll probably gain access to it once you go through a Jump with a Human form, but the simple explanation is that it lets you enhance your body in various ways and then treat that 'modified body' as your 'base' for which Perks run off. The first Perk I got after the Jump started, the Physical Fitness one that made me muscle up, probably wouldn't be worth all that much if I already had the Body Mod, since you can make yourself anywhere from peak-olympic human to outright-superhuman. It's fairly basic, but it's very useful for someone like me with underlying health problems, and it has an additional use: some Jumps use a ruleset where you start with no Points and no Perks or Warehouse access from previous Jumps, but dying doesn't end your Chain and completing them gives you various 'bragging rights' rewards that are usually very valuable. These Gauntlets only let you take in two things: your 'base' body, which is usually specified to include your superhuman 'Body Mod' body; and Drawbacks which are either 'mandatory' or make the challenge even harder, but give you Points to purchase various useful Perks and Items which function as normal. Gauntlets in general are either short and full of violence or puzzles, or long-term survival challenges in worlds where survival would be considered abnormally-difficult by any reasonable person. Either way, they are serious challenges."

[Well, dying sounds like a pretty severe punishment to me, even if you do come back! What do they offer that makes them worth that risk?]

"The ten I can name off the top of my head: Clustertruck offers two very useful rewards and many powerful Perks; Distant Sky offers an 'Unbreakable Will' reward but not a whole lot else that you can't get anywhere else; Exalted: Mortal Hero takes place in the overarching Exalted setting and offers a lot of in-Universe combos and out-of-universe conceptual abilities; Generic Stick Fighters has a decent variety to offer and some very exploitable tricks at the higher-end of the Gauntlet; Hatred doesn't offer much worth the psychological trauma, but you can 'buy back' your Perks and Items for the duration of the Gauntlet which makes your 'quota' a complete joke to fulfil; Long Live The Queen has you act as a spiritual advisor for forty weeks, and is mostly about getting a cute girl Companion out of the deal; A Knight's Tale is more of the same, but the challenges are mostly-physical, highly-varied, and offer up to thirty-two Princesses as Companions, if you can somehow figure out how to make that work; Monopoly can be finished within a day and holds zero risk, but only really offers economy-based bonuses that mean barely anything to me; Robot Unicorn Attack offers lots of useful early-game stuff, and isn't especially easy or difficult unless you take the really bad Drawbacks; and Subnautica is a mostly-water-based planet you need to escape from in two weeks, or go through a sidequest to purge an alien disease before it kills you which only extends your 'timer', so to speak. There's a few more that are difficult to describe, but they're generally less scary than they actually seem. It's all about being smart with your Body Mod choices, and approaching each challenge sensibly. What Perks and Items make it easy, and which Drawbacks are the least impactful, that kind of thing."

[I'll take your word for it. Any other common terms of speech or phrases associated with 'JumpChain'?]

"Um… 'Follower' refers to anyone who is allowed to 'follow' you on your journey, but isn't allowed to interact with the 'JumpChain' aspect. They tend to remain static in power and are more like groupies or employees than frontline fighters: good for entertaining Jump-chan, which is technically a 'Chain-failure' condition since they can pull the plug if they ever decide you're not being entertaining enough, but they're mostly there to keep you sane against the constant swapping of settings, or helping you deal with things that don't require raw power like running a business to justify your financial holdings. 'Companion' refers to anyone who is 'imported' into a Jump: they typically get an Origin free and a small stipend to purchase Perks and Items from the Jump, as well as access to a smaller pool of Drawbacks to increase their purchasing power if they really want to make a given build."

[You said I'd be 'imported' into a later Jump as a human. How does that work?]

"Throughout the Chain, in most cases a Jump will specify that anyone imported needs to assume a given species. If we went to a world without Pokemon, and I can assure you that they are a rarity, you're probably going to be assigned an 'Alt-Form'. If you have any, you can swap between them in some way that I have yet to have explained to me, which ensures you can use biological abilities and setting-unique forms from outside the current Jump. The Drop-In option often renders that redundant and is fairly prevalent in most Jumps, so you can choose whether or not you have setting-relevant memories and friends or families, but in most cases I'll be taking other Origins solely for the different discounts they offer. If it's an Isekai setting, where a character is already being sent to another world, there's often the opportunity to just 'not have' a history, regardless of Origin."

[Makes sense… when you said you were 'early-game', what kind of scale are we working on here?]

"An 'early-Chain' Jumper is typically one with less than ten Jumps under their belt. What that means obviously varies a lot depending on which Jumps you take, but the original author's intention was that you could always be taken down by a squad of normal, highly-trained soldiers with AK-47's, so I use that as a simple benchmark. Mid-Chain, I see that as anywhere from ten to a hundred Jumps, in which even if you're not trying to become powerful enough to break a given setting over your knee, it's pretty much inevitable by this point that you'll reach this mark sooner or later, just by taking whatever random Perks and Items you feel like. Late-Chain, after a hundred Jumps, you'll be pretty much invincible barring extreme high-end Jumps like Dragon Ball or Warhammer Forty-Thousand-"

[!-Dragon Ball is a setting you can visit?! The one where Buu can just, blow planets up by flying from one to another?]

"Yup, I wasn't kidding when I referenced 'Planet-creating' or 'star-destroying' earlier. And furthermore, Dragon Ball and at least one of the Warhammer Jumps qualifies as an End-Jump wherein you have an additional challenge, but conquering it will give you an Oldwalker Spark, a Planeswalker power from Magic: The Gathering that lets you freely wander between settings with minimal effort, and being 'Post-Spark' will usually unlock some additional elements of Perks and Items that would make a Spark unnecessary or trivial, at the cost of no longer being able to access settings through Jumps. Though ironically, Oldwalker Sparks aren't even that powerful anymore, compared to most Xianxia settings…"

[But-how, do you survive in a setting like that, let alone fight on par with the local planet-busters?]

"Either you use the in-Jump method of training your ass off, or you bring in stuff from outside that setting. All Perks and Items have a certain level of Fiat-backing, which means they always function as described and can't be permanently stolen or destroyed. Abilities naturally return fairly quickly, and most paid-for Items 'respawn' usually after a week of being 'used up' or destroyed, the same way that different Perks can stack or combine to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, or Items can be 'Imported' in place of other identical Items you buy in future Jumps to stack their unique attributes. And trust me, if you stroll into Dragon Ball with a sword that holds hundreds of legendary powers in a single blade, or an Outside-Context Power that lets you teleport people inside suns or trap them in pocket dimensions, you can do a lot more than you might think."

[…I, guess that makes sense. Even Trick Room is usually enough to really trip other Pokemon up, but… how long does that kind of journey take?]

"Depends on the Jumps. If you know a reasonable way to cheat a high-power Jump, you can always take the risk. Otherwise, you take it slow and steady like anyone else would. Some Jumps different amounts of time to complete: some can be completed within a single day, I believe the Kill La Kill Jump naturally only lasts for a year, and some Jumps have Drawbacks that extend how long they are. You can choose how long to take the Civilisation Jump, up to twelve thousand years if you want to start at the very beginning of 'history' and don't complete any of the early-win conditions like conquering the planet through force or sheer cultural influence. A lot of Xianxia Jumps also freely offer letting you stay for decades or even centuries longer than normal due to the need for outrageously-long training montages. But most Jumps are just a matter of finding stuff to do for ten years. If that means taking a thousand years to complete roughly a hundred Jumps and become nigh-omnipotent, there's not much to complain about, is there?"

[I… guess not, but what about living conditions? Are we gonna be stuck living out of a Warehouse that whole time?]

"No way, certain Jumps (including, incidentally, the Pokemon Ranger Jump) let you purchase properties that either 'attach' to the warehouse or can be 'imported' into the settings of other Jumps as-you-go. Wouldn't be much fun if you couldn't spice up where you sleep… if you even choose to sleep. We might move past that within the first twenty Jumps!"

[I can certainly see you liking that. Not so much myself, I enjoy my naps, thank you very much.]

"Almost all Perks have some level of control over how much of their 'benefit' they grant you at any given time. Some can even be shared with other people, though those tend to be very rare. Other than that… I think I've covered almost all of the terminology you're likely to run into. There exist a few sub-types of Jumps that I haven't mentioned yet: 'Fanfiction' Jumps that take place in variants of known settings that were popular enough to get their own Jump docs; 'Generic' Jumps kinda like this one that are meant to substitute for multiple settings that don't have Jumps yet, like a 'Generic Time Loop Jump' for that Groundhog Day movie we watched when I 'Discovered' the Aura Perk two months ago, or the Generic First Jump which is basically full of cheap Perks that offer really important long-term benefits like protection from mind control and handwaved-away income sources, but is only for those who really need it; Joke Jumps that I'm pretty sure I won't have access to because they exist as explicit comedy with little logic or justification for including in a 'real' Chain; and 'Lewd' Jumps, which… well, they tend to be dedicated to non-reproductive breeding, if you catch my meaning. I don't plan on taking any unless they have something really important to me, which I seriously doubt is going to be all that many, if any to begin with." I thought it over for a moment and wrinkled my nose. "Scratch that, there is one other I can think of that are really important: some Jumps have Scenarios that place challenges on you, akin to Gauntlets, but provide great rewards and typically don't come with a failure penalty. And speaking of which, a great way to fail your Chain, and the most reviled and 'common', is to take anything that involves 'Scaling Enemies', which means an opponent that the Benefactor will make your equal in raw power, one way or another. Even early on, they tend to be the 'hate you with the passion of a thousand fiery suns' type that will kill you the moment you let your guard down, and if you enter a much weaker setting with one… well, 'when the gods war, it is the mortals who suffer'."

[Could you be any more aggrandising about the subject?]

"Just trying to ram home how stupid they are to willingly fight, and how unlikely it is that I'll ever take one, Points be damned. The entire Chain is rendered meaningless if you die, and while some Perks grant 'extra lives' that will resurrect you in a safe spot once-per-jump, it's not something you should ever need, because that just means you're careless."

[...it won't be meaningless to all the people you help along the way.]

"…no, it won't. That's about everything I haven't mentioned yet, and if anything comes up later, I'll explain as we go. But them's the nuances, as much as you'll likely need to know. Want another Hot Occa?"

[Damn right I do.]

And delicious Hot 'Chocolate' was had by us both before we turned in for a good night's sleep, freed of the 'weight' of questions and answers withheld.