Tanya allowed herself to smile at her bunk. Not in appreciation of it – what little appreciation she had felt for the unwashed mass of stains, threadbare sheets, and mysterious lumps had faded a month ago – but in satisfaction that she was leaving it behind. She'd managed to get herself a raise last month, and now she'd saved up enough to move into a micro-apartment. The place she would now be staying at wouldn't be much – barely more than a large closet's worth of space – but it wouldn't be here.
Tanya sniffed as she looked around the cramped room. Landlord white walls, a ceiling that was barely twice her own diminutive height, row after row of unkempt bunk beds constructed with subpar plastics and metals, and personal effects scattered everywhere.
No, she wouldn't miss the place in the slightest.
Gathering her belongings was simplicity itself. Her wallet and phone were placed in her knapsack next to her clothes and water bottle, and that was it. Then Tanya began walking towards the door.
She bid farewell to the faces she recognized as she walked out, not having done much more than that during her time at the place. They gave her goodbyes of their own, though they were all still dejected after what had happened yesterday. A group had been caught battling, and while the defense Tanya had provided Ichigo saved them from being kicked out, much more stringent rules had been enacted.
Considering how often they had kept her awake or distracted from research, studying, or planning during her stay, she wasn't really that torn up about it.
She smiled at Mildred at the front desk and waved goodbye as she'd done dozens of times already, turned to the doors, and pushed out into-
OOMF!
In a burst of movement, Tanya found herself on the ground yet again, feeling more annoyed than worried or anticipating an attack as she had the first few times. She sighed as she looked up at her now former bunkmate. "I suppose you couldn't help yourself but to send me to the ground yet again?" she sighed as he leaned down to help her up.
The tattered cuffs of his threadbare black jacket itched her hand as she grabbed hold of his hand. He smiled down at her. "Hey! Is blaming me really the way to go? You should pay more attention-"
"'To where I'm going,' yes, I remember," she finished for him. He pouted, which clashed greatly with the man's imposing height.
He shook his head. "I thought you had today off?" he asked. She smirked. "Actually, I'm leaving for good. The place I'm renting isn't the best, but I've finally got enough in my bank account to prove I can pay for a while."
The man's eyebrows rose and he looked to his shoulder. "You hear that Sentret? She's moving up in the world!" The animal chittered in response. "So close to Christmas, too. Not spending the time with your family?"
For an infinitesimal moment, Tanya's mind's eye flashed to her and the 203rd sharing a small meal in a rickety house somewhere on the eastern front. It had been wholly unimpressive and depressing compared to anything else Tanya had experienced for Christmas, in terms of the food offered and the gifts exchanged. The fact that it had been Christmas hadn't mattered to the Communists, obviously, nor had it mattered to the General Staff – their meal had been interrupted by a hail of artillery fire and an order to push forward once the enemy was routed. It had been a miserable affair.
Yet still it had jumped to her mind.
Resisting the urge to tug at the already loose collar of her second-hand shirt, Tanya washed away the memory with disdain for the religious pageantry of the holiday that was being celebrated in under a week. She drew her lips into a thin line as part of her response. "Yes, well, that would be quite hard for me."
Ichigo's face cringed. "Ah, right, sor-"
"It's no problem," she replied, moving the conversation onwards.
Her attempt to move things along was fruitless. They stood there in awkward silence, for a moment, and when the man's eyes seemed to stare off into the middle distance, Tanya looked pointedly at the door behind the man's back. "Could you move now?"
"Well, you're not going to say goodbye to me?" he asked, false hurt lacing his voice. She rolled his eyes at him.
"Ichigo, I'm half convinced you're going to stalk me and stand outside of my apartment waiting for me just to knock me down again."
"You have to admit," he said as she shuffled to the side, "that-"
"The first time, when it was an accident?" she began, "Yes, I suppose it was amusing. The second? Sure, doing it on purpose was pretty funny."
"After three months of doing it once a week? I think even I can confidently say that you've successfully killed the bit," she groused good naturedly.
He let out a bark of laughter. "Perhaps, but how funny will it be when you knock me down?" he asked. Tanya gave the man an obvious once over – he was taller than she had once been, in her first life, though he seemed smaller because of his slouched posture, and though the dark clothes he wore were all third-hand and worn, the amount he wore to combat the frigid weather was an appreciable fraction on her own body weight.
If she wanted to, magic would have made it beyond trivial. With her height and strength?
"That would be funny. You won't ever let me, though, so I would really appreciate it if you didn't try to set it up," she replied. She held out a hand to shake his.
He held up his hands in front of him. "Wait just a second. Before you go, I figured I'd give you a Chrsitmas present."
Tanya blinked rapidly. "I-" she stuttered. She hadn't gotten him anything because she hadn't expected to be getting anything. Everyone here was, by definition, poor, and almost everyone had already contributed at least a meager amount of money to the potluck that was going on, so why-
"Don't look so nervous," he said as he reached into the bag at his side. "Most of my gift is advice, actually!"
Tanya raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. If this was-
"Okay, go back to looking nervous. That much skepticism isn't healthy for anyone," he muttered. The animal on his shoulder chittered again in response, and then, when he was still struggling with his bag, it climbed across his shoulders and down his arm into the bag.
Ichigo muttered a friendly curse at the animal. "Fine, fine. Anyway, my advice to you is that…"
He struck a pose and pointed out into the street, setting his brows into a serious expression. "You should go on your journey!"
Tanya rolled her eyes at his pronouncement. It was the same advice he'd given her when they'd first met, the same advice he'd given her almost once a week, and the same advice he gave her whenever she looked 'too busy' while she was on her phone.
"I know you're very set on getting a job, but I would really recommend it! Autumna isn't all there is to Kanto!" he began. Tanya tuned out the rest of his admittedly well-thought out argument.
It was remarkable at how good he'd gotten at trying to market it. His arguments that it would give her life experience and that it would help her meet people who might become friends, also known as people that she could use and that could use her to further their goals, were much better than his first attempts. She'd struggled not to laugh when he'd argued that going on a journey was supposed to be fun and exciting.
She had plenty of excitement during the war.
Perhaps, if Tanya didn't actually know anything about Japan, she might have considered it more deeply after her first night of research. The fact that the government and private organizations helped provide the journey to every Japanese child by paying them enough to live had sorely tempted her when her prospects had been so much more murky, to say nothing about the experience she would get in honing her survival skills and how missing a key cultural touchstone might impact her career and relationship with her future coworkers.
She shook her head once as his arguments wound down. "I have to applaud just how much better your arguments have gotten," she said, "but I'm still not going."
He collapsed, with the animal in his bag finally crawling out and sitting on the man's back and twisting around in a manner she mentally admitted was cute. She snorted at it, and Ichigo shot back up. "Fine! But I'm telling you-"
"Yes yes, you made the same decision and now regret it. I've thought it over, and if I regret it, I'll swear your praises up and down," she replied flippantly. Making promises were easy when she would never have to fulfill them.
"No!" the man said, refuting her interruption. "Don't you feel like you're rushing through your life? I can count the number of times you've taken a break on my bad hand," he said, gesturing towards her with a hand that only had two fingers on it – he'd lost two to an explosion during the third World War and the third shortly following the conflict to a Sharpedo, which seemed to be an analogue to a shark from her own world, minus the obvious magical powers.
She gave him a small smile. "Ichigo, my life sucks," she said. "Of course I'm working hard. I've got goals." That was all she said on the matter.
She kept herself from bringing out her inner instructor that criticized the people around her who hadn't done what she had, that wanted to ask Ichigo what he'd been doing for the past three months, and that wanted to question why he'd apparently been at the place for years with very little to show for it.
Even without saying any of it, though, the implication caused the man to wince. The man's pet hissed at her. Tanya eyed it warrily for a moment, but her gaze returned to Ichigo. "If that was all?"
He shook his head once. "Well, I said my gift is mostly advice." He turned to the Sentret, looking at it expectantly. It glared at Tanya for a moment and then turned its head from Ichigo with a huff.
"Sentret, c'mon. I know you found it," Ichigo said, and Tanya, for what felt like the millionth time, was struck by just how… expressive the animals here seemed.
She hadn't been anywhere near animals in either of her two lives. Her family had never owned a pet in her first one, making pigeons the closest she'd regularly gotten to animals during her life as a salaryman, while she'd only ever seen the horses used by the Empire for logistics during the early and late days of the war from afar.
Surely they hadn't been this way in her last two lives?
Finally, after glaring at Tanya one last time, it whipped its tail around and riffled through it until it brought out a Pokeball and handed it to Ichigo.
She stared at it. Despite its relatively unassuming appearance, the two hemisphere of shiny metal, coated in an eye-catching shade of red on top and pure white on the bottom, had the power to hold a living, breathing animal inside.
Tanya's eyebrows rose even higher as she looked up at Ichigo's bearded face. "I hope that it doesn't have a Pokemon inside it. I've-"
Ichigo sighed in frustration. "I know! You made your opinion clear, and I've already told you that staying away from all Pokemon because of your past isn't exactly realistic, and you've told me you know," he said, recounting an argument they'd had once or twice already.
He popped open the metallic capsule to show her there was nothing inside. "It's just… I wasn't anywhere near as smart as you when I was a kid, but I thought I had everything figured out too. But…"
He sighed again, closed the contraption, and held it out to her. "Only Psychics can see the future, and even they aren't always right. Life is always uncertain, so make sure to take time to watch the Bellossoms."
Despite not knowing what a Bellossom was – perhaps an animal that looked like a bell of prodigious size? – Tanya got the gist. He thought she should relax.
She let out a sigh of her own as she leveled a hard stare at the device, making it clear on her face that she was thinking. She knew the basics of how to use it. Even if she hadn't vaguely remembered it from the games, quite a few corporations utilized the action of throwing the ball in their branding or marketing, and the educational material she had looked over in preparation for getting her license had given very helpful instructions.
She didn't want it, however. Even having it on her would make others think of her as being an actual trainer rather than somebody who just so happened to have gotten the license like everyone else.
On the other hand, Ichigo wasn't one to usually make heartfelt requests like this. Part of why she'd continued talking with the man was his generally humorous, laidback attitude – it helped to take the edge off of her long work days and reminded her of the camaraderie of the 203rd.
The other being that he had never once failed to treat and respect her as if she didn't appear to be a thirteen-year-old desperate to be seen as an adult rather than an adult who'd been forced into another life by an overblown being that thought itself god.
Not taking the gift might damage their relationship, and Tanya had already debated the value of speaking and interacting with Ichigo, especially now that she was moving into an apartment of her own.
Sighing again, she placed a hand on the top of the ball and opened her own bag. Actively hurting their relationship for no good reason was completely illogical.
Ichigo smiled triumphantly and Tanya scowled. "I am going to keep this," she said.
"Not because I'm going to use it," she continued as she moved aside her clothing and stuffed the ball into the bottom, "but because whenever my bag bumps into my side, the ball will annoy me just as much as you." And, if she ever desperately needed the money, she could sell it at a shop for a few hundred Yen.
His smile didn't shift in the slightest. "You wound me!" he cried as he aped having been hit in the heart. She just rolled her eyes and walked to the door.
She paused and looked to the side and stuck out her arm again.
The degree to which Ichigo had to lean down to shake her arm was comical. "Ichigo. Thank you for the gift and for trying to help me, even if I keep refusing your advice," she said, as if it were a failure of her own that she wanted more out of life than making animals fight each other for entertainment.
He shook her hand, and then the man's pet climbed down his arm onto her's. She swore as it climbed onto her head and fussed with her hair, and only Ichigo's timely plucking of the animal from her head saved it from being grabbed and thrown bodily into the ground with all the strength a thirteen-year-old could muster – probably not enough to do more than annoy it.
Ichigo was snickering while the animal chittered once again, and Tanya frowned at the pair of them. "I'll get you a gift before the week is out," she said. Ichigo started to respond – probably to get her not to – but she left before he could say anything else.
It was only proper she returned the favor, even with the hassle of moving into a new home and looking for a new job.
-OxOxO-
As Tanya sat down on her new bed, she allowed herself to feel satisfaction.
It wasn't much. Tanya's lack of citizenship or proof that she'd been legally allowed into Japan had greatly limited her options to basically the four wards that had made up the city of Ochre – the Bayward, Current, Lake, and Sleet wards of Autumna. The fact that she was currently working at the docks in the Lightning ward required that she live fairly close to the train that would take her there and to wherever her next job was.
It was no more than 80 square feet – the legal lower bound for what defined an apartment. The bed was in a loft above a table where she could eat or work. There was no closet – she would be hanging her clothes on hooks stuck onto the walls. There was an undefinable smell lingering in the air that she couldn't quite place – she knew it wasn't mold because she'd smelled plenty of that during the war. It was on the outskirts of the Current ward and the city as a whole. It was smaller than the room she'd inhabited at War College and she was expected to do more in it. It was on the first floor.
But it was hers.
Besides, life was all about perspective.
Sure, the room was spartan and snug, but she didn't care much for decorations or knickknacks, and as long as her health wasn't at risk then it was better than a foxhole on the western front or an open field on the eastern front. It sure as shit beat the shelter.
Tanya laid down on the bed, staring into empty space. She had the rest of the day off from work, of course, but that just meant an opportunity to plan and prepare for the future.
She had secured proof of her proficiency in written English and German two weeks ago. Having just taken the tests to get her Secondary School Proficiency Certificate and excelling in the English portion had cut a clean five percent of the cost off the tests because she was expected to pass, which would simplify the paperwork. She was still working through the differences between the bits of the other languages she knew and the versions of them here. If she was going to get a certification in any of the other languages she actually knew, it would probably end up being Polish, Danish, and French.
Food Assistance had been more difficult to secure, but she had managed with proof of her employment and her Trainer Card. The food she could get with it wasn't great, but it was better than going hungry and better than some of the rations she'd eaten.
With a place to call her own, the chances of her dying due to the elements virtually gone, and a growing list of skills she had the accreditation to prove she owned, it was time to move on from her work at the docks.
Unfortunately, the pace she'd been pushing herself had had a noticeable impact on the quality of her work. She'd started getting lost and tripping over her own feet, and she had also briefly fallen asleep on top of one of the beams of the cranes that lifted the cargo containers after climbing up to replace a lightbulb.
She'd been told by her shift manager three weeks ago that she was pushing herself too hard, that their boss agreed with the woman's assessment, and that her hours were being limited, which meant no more overtime.
Tanya scowled up at the ceiling. It was positively un-Japanese!
Of course, she'd contemplated getting a second job, but she'd decided to instead spend the time studying for her tests and figuring out where she would go next career-wise.
Her prospects were not great, but they certainly weren't horrible. With an ever-present labor shortage, she wasn't even especially fussed for choice…
Though recreating what she'd had in her last life seemed unlikely – rising to become a Human Resources manager as fast as she had relied on the high scores she'd achieved and the connections she'd forged at Tokyo University, admittance to which she was very unlikely to get with her current paltry funds and lack of documentation.
Tanya pushed a hand into one of her pockets and felt her phone. With just how much information access to the internet opened to her, it was undoubtedly the most crucial thing she owned. Spending the rest of the day sitting at her desk searching for and applying to jobs would be a very efficient way to spend the rest of her free time.
She glanced out of the window to her side, and Tanya suddenly felt the metallic shell of the ball she'd been given pressing into her side.
On the other hand, there were other things that she needed to do. Obtaining a better wardrobe that whispered instead of screamed 'pauper' was the first on the list, while deciding exactly what she was going to be learning first was next.
Well, that question was already answered. Learning how to learn and retain information was the first skill she needed to obtain – it wouldn't help to learn something to counter whatever Being X had in mind for her next if she forgot it by the time he finally uprooted her life again. After that, however, was quite the list of skills.
Survival training and how different technologies were created and operated would be useful if Being X decided a lack of civilization itself would inspire faith in her, while any information she retained on technology could be invented to give herself or her allies an advantage. The latter would likely require looking into chemistry and physics, though the nature of her work as an Aerial Mage gave her a leg up in the latter category.
How to fight – with and without weapons, whether they were sharpened sticks or the latest guns – to ensure that she would hold her own against any other person was high up on her list. Being X had killed her the second time by separating her from her weapons and having a saboteur stab her in the gut, which Tanya had no desire to repeat.
History, with a focus on war and politics, would also be high on the list. He'd thrown her into a parody of the first and second World Wars in her second life, which she had been familiar enough with that her knowledge had given her an edge. How much greater of an edge would it have been if she'd been more familiar?
She would endeavor to gain that edge in locations around the world across as many different time periods as she could, so that even if he put her somewhere she was unfamiliar with, she could draw on her knowledge and use examples from the past to identify how to move forward.
Tanya sat up on her bed, scooched to the ladder, and climbed down. Hell, Pokemon had changed from a video game franchise into her life. Who was to say Being X wouldn't take inspiration from humanity's creativity or collaborate with some other being claiming to be a deity and throw her into another franchise?
Tanya nodded to herself as she pulled on her coat. She would take a train from the Current ward to the outskirts of the Central Saffron ward to get some more respectable clothing and do some research on her phone while she was out to see who was hiring and where she could go to learn the skills she wanted to know.
The library and internet had been and would remain her greatest assets for the more cerebral subjects, but this was Japan, magical creatures or not. There had to be somewhere she could learn martial arts.
-OxOxO-
Tanya had learned quite a bit about the place she was now heading into after three months of being in this world. It was roughly analogous to downtown Tokyo from her own world, although it was not all neon lights and futuristic technology that boggled the mind, despite what one might expect from a metropolis sitting in the place Tokyo had been in her own world.
For one thing, it was only just after lunch, which meant that most of the signs that did light up during the night were not currently lit.
As the train sped towards its next destination, Tanya observed that the buildings were slightly more tightly packed and a bit taller, but they otherwise did not look very different compared to what she recalled, if one ignored the decorations that she assumed were reminiscent of Pokemon.
The train slowed, and Tanya stepped off. The crowds that bustled out of the train and around her as she stepped off the platform and made her way down to ground level were much thicker than they were in the Lightning ward, though her phone told her that apparently they were even worse closer to the center of the city, where some of the world's foremost company's had offices.
Tanya walked along and took note of the various places businesses around her, taking care to eliminate the ones that she reasoned might pick apart her history and keeping an eye open for places she could learn the skills she wanted.
As the hours ticked by, Tanya couldn't help the exasperation that began coming out in frustrated sighs of near-visible breath. She knew that Pokemon were integral to this world and that Pokemon battling as a sport outpaced the popularity of soccer in her first life by a very wide margin, but it felt like every other business she looked into was partially or wholly centered around them!
Daycare, grooming services, and supply stores? Seeing a salon for Pokemon with fur next to luxury beauty product stores had been odd this far into the economic heart of Japan, but not exactly unexpected.
Stores selling equipment wasn't unexpected, either. They had been mentioned in the materials she'd studied for her Trainer Card, after all, and it made sense, in a twisted way. What better way to increase the spectacle of watching animals beating each other to a pulp? Despite that, it had been odd seeing what appeared to be an old applecore and a helmet with rocks embedded in it being sold alongside weights, for more than the weights.
It had been even more odd that the apple apparently regenerated when a Pokemon ate some of it and restored a sixteenth of the Pokemon's health, and that an opponent that attacked and made contact with a Pokemon holding a Rocky Helmet, not even with the helmet itself, lost a sixth of its health. Tanya had gotten the impression that the magic of this world made much less sense than the magic of her second life, but it seemed almost unbelievable.
Some of the shops, however…
A Pokemon 'name rater?' A shop where all of the clothes had been 'made' by spider-pokemon? Deals being offered for service to specific species? Pokemon consultation services?
It seemed that her desire to avoid the whole practice was even more unrealistic than she had expected.
The upside to having that desire tested so thoroughly – and not finding a single place that taught martial arts – was the number of businesses that were hiring. As opposed to her last life, Japan's birth rates had finally started to improve, though they weren't close to replacement level. Those recovering rates, the automatization of a lot of menial work, the advent of much more capable AI, and even a much more open immigration policy than in her first life were not enough to stop the shortage of labor, however.
So far, she'd seen a lot of interesting possibilities, despite the coming holidays. There were three different companies focused solely on providing translation services that were hiring, though one was openly tied to the government, which meant Tanya couldn't apply for the job. Or, she couldn't without proof of her being in Japan legally, anyway. She'd seen a few tourism companies, but Tanya's skills were way acting as a tour guide, in her estimation.
Of course, she'd seen the headquarters of some of the largest companies in the world when she'd passed through the forest of skyscrapers in the center of the city. Mitsubishi, Sony, and Hitachi were familiar names, while Siplh, Hynautica, and Devon were names she didn't recognize and seemed Pokemon-oriented. Getting into any of them was a pipe dream she wasn't interested in fueling in the slightest, however.
Tanya crossed a street and looked down at her phone as the crowd around her thinned out dramatically. Perhaps an accounting firm would take her at her word after she showed them how well she'd done getting her credentials?
She shook her head at the thought – that relied far too much on good feelings and hope for her taste, especially in a city that was analogous to Tokyo – and looked around her.
She frowned and began striding forward, intent on getting through the area as fast as possible. All of the shops around her were for Pokemon. Vitamins. Pokeballs. Tents and outdoor equipment. Beds and blankets and clothes and creams and a gym and a courthouse and a spa and treats and-
Tanya blinked, turned her head and saw that no, it wasn't a courthouse.
She turned around and apologized to the people she was pushing through and moved backwards and found herself at the entrance to the 'courthouse.'
It was not what she'd first thought it was – rather than a courthouse, she'd merely seen the character for 'court' alongside the large building behind the sign and assumed it was a courthouse. Instead, the full sign outside of the high walls of what appeared to be a traditional dojo painted purple rather than left the usual white and surrounded on most sides by towering skyscrapers read 'The Psychic Court of Saffron.'
She frowned, puzzled, and read the plaque in the wall by the front gate.
WELCOME TO THE PSYCHIC COURT OF SAFFRON, IN OPERATION FOR OVER TWO THOUSAND YEARS! OUR'S IS A STORIED TALE OF BREATHTAKING HIGHS AND TERRIFYING LOWS! TOURS GIVEN ON TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS ONLY FROM 8 AM TO 8 PM. FOR HELP OR APPOINTMENTS REGARDING THE PSYCHIC POTENTIAL OF YOU OR A LOVED ONE, REACH OUT TO US AT OUR WEBSITE!
IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE SAFFRON CITY GYM, IT IS NEXT DOOR.
Tanya blinked. Gym?
A few dozen paces and Tanya stood outside an similarly sized plot of land that could have held a skyscraper. In the far back was a similar-looking dojo, though it was done in more traditional colors. In front of it was a much more modern-looking building – rectangular and made of concrete with a bright red roof and gray, featureless walls, with the symbol of the Pokemon League – a simplified Pokeball. Around the two buildings were some small gardens and four plots of unused land she assumed were for training. The sign in front was written in bold, black lettering.
SAFFRON CITY POKEMON GYM
LEADER: Hammond Takenori
The King of Fighting-type Pokemon
Tanya continued staring between the sign and at the modern three-story building, an idea beginning to form in her mind. Perhaps the reason her search for somewhere to learn martial arts was the gym? With somewhere with notoriety and resources that other businesses couldn't compete with, it stood to reason that it had sucked up all of the good teachers and people who wanted to learn in the area, even with the services it provided to Pokemon Trainers.
The next hour flew by, after she explained to the receptionist that no, she didn't need to know when the next Gym Battle was and didn't need help setting up a Gym Battle and that yes, she would ask him questions if she had any. The flyers she had found in the entrance of the building helpfully explained plenty of things she didn't care the slightest bit about as well as the things she was interested in.
The gym and the Fighting Dojo behind it offered a number of services catered to Pokemon, of course – tutoring for Fighting-type Pokemon and Pokemon that wanted to learn Fighting-type moves, classes for trainers that wanted to catch and train Fighting-type Pokemon, and badge certification.
It also offered classes for a variety of hand-to-hand combat including jujutsu, judo, aikido, karate, as well as basic fitness classes, a gymnasium, and classes for different traditions for fighting with pre-modern weapons – swords, spears, knives, and more.
When she finally did get out of her seat and studiously ignored the sounds of animal violence and cheering crowds taking place a few rooms over, the look of surprise on the receptionist's face when she asked what the price of their basic fitness and jujutsu classes almost made up for how annoying they had been previously.
-OxOxO-
When the indescribable kaleidoscope of everything stopped swirling around her, she almost felt herself throw up-
No, she definitely should have, but why-
"Another traveler?"
She spun around, somehow. Was she flying? How in the world-
"Your soul is from his flock… do you perhaps know Tanya von Degurechaff?"
Her eyes somehow widened further. "How did you know? Are you-"
The creature, for whatever was standing or floating before her was no human, shook its head. "I am not your God, though if you stick around for a few…"
Despite the immense creature's face not changing in the slightest, something in the air changed and she got the feeling that it was frustrated. "Time and space do not work here as they do in the lower dimensions. Suffice to say, it would be a while if we were to wait for your God to appear."
She didn't know what to say. If this wasn't God, then what was it?
Her mind raced in the all encompassing silence of their surroundings, and the creature chuckled after a few more moments. "You seem to share a reluctance that Tanya von Degurechaff did. Are you her friend?"
She answered automatically. "Of course." She waited a moment. "Is… she here?" she asked anticipatorily.
The being shook its head. "No, I have sent her to another world. Her story was quite the tale to hear," it said. She scowled at that. That was certainly one way to put it.
"After we reached an agreement, I sent her to a life of her choosing," it paused, humming for a moment. "Do you wish to join her?"
Despite how confused she was, that was an easy question to answer. "Yes, please!"
It nodded, and rings of light twinkled into existence behind it. Her expression shifted – she still had stuff to ask about! "Oh, uh, do you know why I'm… here? Instead of…"
She was puzzled for a moment. "Heaven, I guess? Or maybe Hell-"
It cut her off again. "I am not quite sure. I thought Tanya von Degurechaff's presence here to be a result of her tumultuous past, but if you do not know about it…?"
She stared at it blankly. "You mean… the orphanage, where she was born? Or do you mean her actions during the war?"
It shook its head. "If you do not know, I think I shall let thine friend enlighten thee," it said. "Though I do not know why you are here, I can surmise that thine God will enlighten me upon his arrival. Doth thou have any more questions?"
She paused once more. "What is your name?"
It chuckled again, though it didn't tell her why. "I am Arceus. And you?"
She told it, and it nodded. "Well then. I shall send you off to meet your friend once more. I cannot offer you any aid as a consequence of my agreement with her. If thou were to travel to another world or know more-"
She shook her head. "No!" She wasn't going to give up a second chance at life, a second chance of…
It nodded one final time, and the light around them began to build once more. "Very well. Please offer my apologies to her that I have already bent the rules of our agreement. I will do my utmost to keep her safe from her God."
Before she could ask what that was supposed to mean, or what it even was, or what that swirling tunnel of color and smell and pure sensation had been, the world around her was turned into a sea of white light.
-OxOxO-
"Evening, Tanya."
"Good night, Angela."
With that, she was past the front desk and walking towards her room.
The New Year had just come and gone. Ichigo had enjoyed his belated Christmas gift and claimed she'd see him wearing it in his beard next time they met.
She'd handed in her two weeks right before the docks had shut down for Christmas and had managed to land a job at a small translation company in the southern part of the Central Saffron ward. CCTS, or Cheryl and Chosi's Translation Services, was a middling company of middling size whose middle-ness made it more than happy to hire a 'teenager down on their luck' and underpay her compared to the more competitive rates that could be offered at larger businesses where they might ask for more than her Trainer Card as proof she was in Japan legally.
Tanya sighed tiredly as she got her keys out of her newish handbag.
Though the advertising tried to make it seem better than it was, the company did very little else but translate user manuals for cheaply made products from around the world for sale in Japan, most of which boiled down to 'don't let your kid eat this.' The best it got was apparently rush work from larger companies that didn't have the staff on hand to manage a sudden uptick in throughput. It was work Tanya could do easily enough, and the sample work she'd done two days ago at the behest of soon-to-be new boss – the son of Cheryl and Chosi, Charles – had him singing her praises for the speed she did them at.
The number that were for Pokemon – dolls and feather toys and lotions and plastic balls and a staggering variety of foods – was astounding and had her wondering if this world was supposed to be closer to her original what the hell the other worlds looked like that were less like either of her homes.
She struggled with the keys for a moment, scowling as the lock got stuck for a moment.
She was unlikely to be transferred into the company's accounting department, considering how small the company was and the seniority of the three already working there, but she could hope… or, alternatively, look into bettering her lot.
Tanya was not getting into Saffron University, which was a parallel school to Tokyo University from her original life, except not quite as grand despite it being decades in the future. Luckily, in this day and age, the number of resources available at libraries or online was staggering, even if, in the case of the latter, the ever present guarantee that websites were 'protected and certifiably hazard-free' by the State of Japan and the Congress of Nations that always flashed before she opened a website made her feel like she was being watched.
Though she supposed it was actually better than her time in her second life with Being X constantly watching her every move.
She finally got the lock to unstick, and Tanya sighed in relief. She had no desire to lose her deposit to an old lock.
Gaining citizenship was no small task, but if she managed, it went without saying that getting into Saffron University would be a-
Tanya's eyes widened comically as she pushed the door all the way open.
Her room was not empty
-OxOxO-
A/N 1: If you'd like to donate to support me monetarily, search for Sugarcane Soldier on the website of the Patrons.
Thank you to WarmasterOku, Afforess, and UNSC_Kawakaze for supporting this story and everything else I write.