Author's Note:

Hello everyone! Sorry for the missing update last week! I was out of town and all my down-time when I was planning to write got eaten up by family requests related to technology. Unfortunately, next weekend will be a similar story. I'm not looking forward to it. I lose a day of writing and a day of VR work outside my internship. But yea. I've been totally addicted to VR stuff as of late. Maybe some of you might already know this, but I have a very visionary mind capable of vividly subconsciously simulating and experiencing fictional alternate realities with logical timelines and sequences of events. My username comes from the largest of these by the way, which is where I gather a lot of my inspiration for my writing. Well what is so cool about VR is the possibility to allow others to experience these worlds in full consciousness! Anyways, I'm working right now to create a demo VR test-suite for different types of room-scale inputs, and I'll probably make it Pokemon themed for practical reasons. Anyways, if you are interested, you should PM me.

Dusky Flareon: Celestia? Oh! Wait! I see where you are coming from now. Interesting… If it doesn't make more sense by chapter 24, it'll make sense by chapter 26. As for the moon shard, Kieren did admit that the "guardian" gave it to him, so it is an issue of validation and explanation. But don't worry! Things will definitely go down, eventually.

But hey! An event submission! I definitely wasn't expecting that, given the name suggestion thing is a much higher priority at the moment, but that is totally I thing I do. I'll be honest, the moment I read it, I had a vision come to my head that instantly made me start cracking up.

Phillip Harbindinger: Dang! And that was my longest chapter too! No promises moving forward, but hopefully by the time I finish this story I will have all the chapters updated error-free.

Thanks to everyone for all the name suggestions so far! Keep them coming! I won't stop accepting entries until I upload chapter 26!

As for this chapter, it's a bit shorter than the last one, but after this, the next few chapters will be long again. Also, in my visions, the term "nightcore" has a very different meaning to what it means in the real world. In my visions, it is a fusion between pop music and hard rock/metal with a heavy emphasis on melody. Basically it has the power of metal, but actual singing instead of screaming. No drugs either. Those are the Roxy mockoffs. Sorry for the rambling. Here is your chapter! Enjoy!

Today is 7/9/2016 and this chapter is 1300+ words.

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon, just dream it.

Chapter 23: Eon Park Square

The air was beginning to cool as the sights and sounds intensified around a befuddled umbreon. The area looked just like downtown. There were shops, food courts, benches, and lots of pokemon. But that was it. Just pokemon. Not a human to be seen. The fact that these pokemon could be so humanlike was a bit shocking. Then again, this also seemed like the kind of place Melody would hang out at. She could read all the signs, manage paperwork, and all that other city stuff. Were all these pokemon just like her?

"So I know you can read and write and stuff, but can you speak human?" Kieren asked Leon as they entered through the gates.

"What kind of Pokemon speaks human?" Leon choked, on the verge of laughing out loud.

"I know a few," Kieren answered casually. Recognizing that the conversation would likely lead to telling a long story, he quickly changed the subject. "So what kinds of things do pokemon buy and sell?"

"Whatever a pokemon might want," Leon answered. "Headwear and jewelry are pretty popular. Food is obvious. There's a lot of different places tailored towards different kinds of pokemon. Oh, and electronics."

"Electronics?"

"Yea, like sound systems, headphones, video games, navis, not the 'Hey, Listen!' kind…"

"Huh?" Kieren asked, not fully comprehending the minun's rambling jargon.

"Nevermind. You'll catch on later," Leon dismissed. "This big building to your left is the grocery store. They've got so much stuff sometimes trainers will send their pokemon there."

"What kind of pokemon is that?" Kieren asked, pointing at the logo next to words he wished he understood.

"You've never met a tropius?" Leon asked. Kieren shook his head. "They're really nice."

Before Kieren could ask more, the two were nearly run over by a couple of phanpy shouting "Mama!" as they ran up to a donphan exiting the grocery store. Kieren turned towards where they had stampeded from and noticed what appeared to be another man-made attraction with all sorts of odd structures young pokemon were bouncing and swinging on.

"That's the park playground," Leon explained anticipating Kieren's next question. "It's where a lot of kids let out their excess energy. Eddie's over at the merry-go-round as usual. Up ahead is the bank where I need to make a stop. We'll go through the walk-through."

Kieren followed the minun as they approached an odd building with an outdoor roof, or was it an archway? Kieren wasn't sure what the appropriate term for it was, but that was where they went. Leon walked up to a window on the side of the building, and was greeted by a psyduck on the other side.

"How can I help you?" the psyduck recited. "Oh, Leon! It's you! I got a client for you. A liligant from one of the gym move-ins was planning a Sunday gig at 9 and was looking for a little backup. I told her you two were perfect for the job."

"Sweet! Thanks Clyde!" Leon answered enthusiastically.

"No problem. What brings you here t…" The psyduck paused briefly as he realized Kieren's presence. "My apologies. I didn't even realize you had someone with you."

"Oh. This is Kieren. He's new to the city, so I'm showing him around. He's entering in the Eon Invitational coming up."

"I see," Clyde nodded. "Now that you mention it, I do recall seeing his portrait on a poster by the splash park. So what's it for you today?"

"Yea...I know I'm running low on funds, but I got to make a withdrawal of about 2k," Leon answered fidgeting.

"Relax. We received your aftercut from your last gig in Sentos." The psyduck explained much to the minun's relief. "Besides, you're a good group to keep around. Most in the music business hit the red and take years before they are back in black. You still don't even have a loan on record yet!"

"Thanks. I guess I didn't realize how fortunate we've been," Leon confessed while rubbing behind his ear. "So did the liligant mention a style or genre?"

"Nightcore," the psyduck answered while handing over several notes to the minun.

"Whoah! Was not expecting that!" Leon uttered. "I'll catch the details later and figure out arrangements. First I gotta finish showing this guy around."

"Sounds good. I'll see ya later," Clyde waved.

"I don't expect you to understand a quarter of that conversation," Leon told Kieren as they departed.

Kieren unintentionally ignored Leon. He was too busy wrapping his brain around what he had just observed. All the equipment inside the window was so human-y, and yet a pokemon was the one managing it all! There were sheets of paper on the walls which must have explained some kind of policies or something. There was that hi-tech machine with all the small buttons and a movable clicky one. There was even a nametag on the windowsill that somehow read the name "Clyde". And the craziest part was that the psyduck was running everything, bashing away at all the buttons, and counting the currency just like a human would. Pokemon here seemed to live just like humans, as if they were humans. It was so different from the world Kieren came from. He always knew humans were crazy about these kinds of things, but he never guessed that pokemon could be the same way.

This sudden realization only continued to manifest itself as Kieren was introduced to all the different shops selling hats, winter gear, jewelry, specialty foods, and strange rectangular devices resembling the ones the humans on the benches handled with bizarre interest. Speaking of those strange rectangular devices, he was now admiring a row of them on a shelf, and each one was painted with a cryptic image of symbols and text. One of the rectangles had a much clearer and vibrant version of the cryptic image painted on it. Wondering what made it so different, Kieren took a closer look.

"Holy…!" Kieren failed to pronounce as he jumped back and nearly toppled the shelf behind him when the image on the rectangle changed. The electric charmander with a modified vaporeon necklace laughed at him from behind the counter.

"Country guy, eh?" the lizard-like creature commented.

"Seems that way," Leon answered to the pokemon Kieren had never seen before. It was a helio-something by the way it pronounced its words. By the time Kieren and Leon left the store, it had finally clicked that those rectangles called "phones" used the same technology as the giant stage screen at the Evelecense Ceremony. He had also managed to pick up the fact that the first two characters in the "tenfold" symbol actually meant "ten" when Leon read the time from one of the "phones" on display at the doorway.

"Eight-ten, huh?" Kieren repeated. "I'll have to get going soon if I want to find my way back to where I'm supposed to be tonight."

"Where ya staying?" Leon asked, seemingly unsettled by Kieren's announced departure.

"Hotel downtown. It's a temporary deal with the golf people," Kieren answered.

"Mind if I show you one last place before you go?" Leon asked quickly.

"I guess?" Kieren answered, slightly curious and slightly uneasy about what Leon wanted to show him so badly. The two began walking down the tiled road that was surprisingly comfortable for walking.

"May I ask you something?" Kieren asked the minun next to him.

"Fire away," Leon sang.

"Not to be rude or anything, but why are you showing me all this?" Kieren asked.

Leon chuckled at the question. "Well one, it's my way of making up for Eddie's rudeness earlier. Two, you're an umbreon from da Valley. Nevermind your past, that makes you pretty badass. And three, it's a good excuse for me to not watch Eddie for a little bit. Anyways, there's someone I want you to meet!"

Author's Note: Who's Kieren going to meet? Find out next chapter! It's one of my favorite characters to write! This time, for the bonus chapter, I'm requiring 7 name submissions with their meanings listed (because the meaning of the name is important to the plot). You have two weeks, so don't let the quantity faze you. Next chapter is over 5k words, so it'll be worth it. I'd start a forum thread, but I'm not sure if you would use that, so I'll leave that up to you. Anyways, I got a lot of writing left to do today. See you all in two weeks! ~Dreaming I'm Latios