Before he saved the world, Roger McKay was a waiter. A charming enough fellow, he stood at 6'1", had light brown hair, dark brown eyes, fair skin, a slender build, and a constant look on his face that screamed this place wasn't giving him back what he put in. This was patently untrue, as Roger was also a student at the local university, studying English. He held straight B's, kept quiet in his classes, and wanted little more than to, quote: "Get this shit over with, for the love of God."

That evening, God did not love him.

That evening, after a day at work wherein a customer asked for a non-spicy version of the wasabi chicken, then refused to tip him when he did not comply, Roger stomped into the kitchen of his two bedroom apartment just outside the university campus to find a dead bird in a cardboard box on the counter.

At the very least, he thought it was dead. Upon closer inspection, the little brown and beige creature breathed softly through its clay shaded beak, its matching feet and white talons twitching as it slept. Its left wing was injured, spread out, bruised.

With huff and a roll of his eyes, Roger shouted out beyond the kitchen, across the living area, toward the open door of the dreaded second bedroom of his home.

"What the hell, Jay?"

Jason Dubilier was a stout fellow with an unfortunately optimistic outlook on the human condition. He stood at 5'8", had ruddy skin, pale blue eyes, and dark brown hair. Due to an unfortunate incident when he was a child involving a BB gun and a lack of parental supervision, he was missing his left pinky. He studied fine arts at the university and collected vinyl records in his spare time.

One such record, an old album of country music from 1974, played softly in the background as a bashful Jay slowly peeked through his bedroom doorway. He looked across the space to see Roger, still in his work uniform, long sleeve t-shirt and black slacks, glaring between him and the bird in the box.

"What were you planning on doing with this thing?" chided a half-eyed, exhausted, and exasperated Roger, his index finger bent as he pointed downward at the 'thing' in question.

This 'thing' stirred in its sleep at the raised voice, but adjusted itself under its wing and found a steady rest as Jay whispered.

"Little thing got hit by a Jeep," Jay answered as he closed the distance between him and Roger. "I'm helping it."

"How, exactly, are you helping it?" Roger asked, the sardonic nature of the question plain in his tone. He gripped the kitchen counter with an unsteady hand as he stood over the sleeping bird.

Jay took another step forward to look at the birdy as well. He answered, "I wrapped it up in a pillow case and got it some sugar-free juice from the store. It drank and fell asleep. Now you're yelling at it."

"I'm not!" Roger stopped himself, clenching his jaw. "I just don't get why you have to bring a flea farm into my kitchen."

"Your kitchen?"

"Since when do you cook?"

Jay steeled himself from Roger's words, a curl to his lip as he rested a gentle hand on the bird.

"Maybe…" Jay said, voice low as the music continued to play, reaching a crooning crescendo as he added, "It just felt like the right thing to do."

The appeal to his better nature worked a charm, as Roger sighed the deepest sigh he had that day, quite the achievement considering earlier he'd been asked by some lady to get the manager when she didn't understand the difference between Chipotle the restaurant and chipotle peppers.

"Let's get it a blanket, or something," murmured the defeated Roger. "Let it stretch its wings."

As Roger got a blanket from his bedroom, the one next to Jay's, that stouter young man carried the box to the living area, which was really just a TV, a couch, and coffee table with an epic poem's worth of stains on it. That was the best they could get.

As Jay lifted the bird from the box, Roger came in with a black fleece blanket. The taller young man laid out the fleece, folded in half for extra support, then Jay carefully set the animal against it. With a silent acknowledgement that said they did what they could for it, Roger and Jay sat on the couch and turned on the TV.

As some movie about a strange gentleman who felt it his sworn duty to slash up teenagers carried on in the background, Jay excused himself to go turn off his music. Pedal steel guitar wasn't the best soundtrack for this murderous occasion.

It was only when Roger was calm and alone as he saw the bird fully splayed against its new black background that he noticed its accessory. There was a stunning silver anklet on its right side. The alternating pattern of circles like moons and triangles like teeth wrapped around tight, and was accented by a tiny pearl that shimmered with the lights of the television.

Roger stood up, drawn to the pearl. He knelt down over the bird, touching the pearl with the tip of his middle finger. Aside from a bit of static electricity, it was all rather warm and pleasant to the touch. At least, it was pleasant until Roger realized what such a piece on a bird could mean.

"You see this?" Roger asked as he looked over the couch at Jay.

Jay raised an eye as he left his bedroom. Closing the door behind him, he followed Roger's gaze until he too saw what was on the bird's ankle.

"Oh, shit," Jay whispered. He shook his head and asked, "Are you telling me this was someone's pet?"

Roger nodded and noted, "Would explain why it wouldn't fly over traffic. Clipped wings."

Jay stepped around the couch and sat pretzel legged next to the birdy on the floor. As the slasher went and slashed up a young couple who dared to have a relationship in its presence, Jay rested a gentle hand on the birdy's feathers.

"You'll be alright," he said with a small smile.

Standing up with a grunt, Roger took to the couch immediately. He took off his shoes and stretched his arms. "If we're lucky, we might even get a decent reward for returning it. Gotta have some money to buy jewelry for your bird," he said through a couple yawns.

"I guess I couldn't see it until it had something dark behind it," Jay said as he pointed at the piece, eyes widening with a start as it gave him a shock. He dismissed it, took off his gray wool sweater, and added, "You have a long day at work, man?"

Roger couldn't help but laugh at the question. "I'm never working Saturday again," he lied, plainly. "Short staffed, overworked, and some guy kept trying to make me get a margarita for his clearly underage daughter. I'm done."

"Did I tell you what happened yesterday?" Jay asked with a smirk, turning to face his roommate.

Roger shook his head. "Hit me."

Jay could barely contain himself as he relayed the tale. "This guy asks for a macchiato. We make him one. He goes to a table and starts reading a book. Cool. Regular customer."

"Right, right," Roger nodded, waiting for the fun part.

Jay continued, his index finger raised for emphasis. "One minute later, he orders another. How he drank the first one so fast, don't even ask me, but we make him one. Then another. Then another. He comes back one more time and he's looking at us like we just stepped out of a UFO. 'Do you even know what's in a macchiato?' he asks us."

Roger tilted his head, incredulous. "Was he testing you, or something?"

"Man, I don't even know," Jay said with a laugh. "We spent ten minutes with this guy, but by the time I got done going over what exactly was in our macchiato, and after the manager explained it all to him too, this guy was embarrassed as all hell."

Readying himself, Roger asked, "Now why's that?"

Jay bit his lip. He could barely contain himself. "He thought a macchiato was just a fancy mocha. He wanted a grown up chocolate milk." He laughed again.

Roger just shook his head, not finding the story nearly as amusing as Jay did. He turned up the movie, screams aplenty, as he said, "People don't even know what they want, and they complain when they get it."

"What is in a macchiato anyway?"

Jay explained, "It's an espresso with foamy milk. This guy was hyped up on four of them and-"

Hearing Roger let out a half-yawn, half-gasp, Jay's head shot over to the source of the voice. The bird he nursed back to health was awake now, brown eyes wide as it stared at its caretakers.

"So, uh," the bird asked in a young woman's voice as it stood up on the blanket, "What kinda pokémon are you guys?"

As some brain doctor on the TV explained the killer's convoluted origin story, Roger and Jay let the question rattle around their heads for what the bird deemed an uncomfortable amount of time.

Nova was a pidgey from the Unova region. She stood 1'0" tall and had no visible skin because, and please note, was a fucking bird. So far, she'd lived through eighteen years of hardships and had little to show for it. Still, in spite of the odds, she always stayed determined.

It was her job, of course, to deliver a pearl of wisdom to her village to ensure the general happiness of the population and to ward off the vicious and deceitful, or whatever. They'd keep it in a display case until it stopped being shiny.

So was the job of many who came before her. It would be her coming of age, and serve as proof that she was ready to become a guild member, an explorer, and a rescuer for the mystery dungeons of the region.

It was all going quite well for her. Battle after battle, she only got stronger as she overcame foes ready to take the pearl for themselves from its own cavernous mystery dungeon, the tiny trinket capable of catching quite the pretty poké on the dark market. With great purpose, after securing her prize, she flew high and steady until a strange night carried her beyond her realm. Unfortunately for her, she had no memory of what happened between falling asleep only a day's flight from her village to waking up in Roger and Jay's place.

These boys, humans they were called, were apparently not pokémon at all. The extended explanations that pokémon didn't exist, but they clearly now did, went on for about two hours. By that time, the terrible horror movie was finally over.

"But I have to go back home!" Nova said, standing on the coffee table, stomping her foot as her jewelry rattled, her talons scratching against the old wood. "Sylvian needs this pearl."

Sylvian, that was her home. They were missing her there. They needed her. She needed them.

She definitely didn't need these weirdos, that much was for sure.

"I don't know what we're supposed to do about that," Roger deadpanned as he held his head in his hands.

"The video game is talking, and it's mad," Jay whispered while sitting on the carpet, still having trouble with that part of the equation.

Nova whipped around to glare at Jay. "For the last time, I'm not a video game!"

"Okay, fine, but that's not the point!" Roger yelled back, eliciting a knock on the wall from an annoyed neighbor. "No, you shut up!" Roger shouted at the source of the knock.

The knocking stopped.

Nova breathed sharply through her beak, taking a moment to search for the most precise words that would handle this situation both swiftly and honestly.

The best she could come up with was, "Whatever's going on, I gotta get back home. That's the biggest thing here. All this 'I'm not real, I'm a video game, I'm not even supposed to talk, Unova just sounds like New York, which is where you guys live,' that can wait."

Jay stood up. He brought the blanket onto the coffee table. Nova, after a glare, nestled into it with a defeated sigh.

"We could try, but that'd take time," Jay said gently as he could, patting the feathers on Nova's uninjured side. "At least we both have a day off tomorrow."

Roger stared at Jay through his fingers while Nova looked up with drowsy eyes, both of them wondering exactly what his plan was.

"We can try looking stuff up tomorrow," Jay decided for the rest of them, no one in a position to argue. "Right now, we just need to relax and recover. Now promise me, Nova, that you won't leave. Okay?"

Nova wiggled as Jay's hand let go. "Yeah, cuz I'm so fake," she deadpanned.

"Do you know how crazy it would be if someone saw a pokémon in real life?" Roger asked, doing his best to keep his voice down. "You'd get a lot of attention you don't need. We all would. If you wanna go home safely, you gotta lay low."

"Okay." Nova said, looking around the little place she was in, noticing the dark stain in one corner of the white ceiling, the white walls and their uneven coats of paint. The dirty, blue carpet and scuffed up hardwood floors. Her temporary abode. Her prison cell. "Fine."

"'Okay' and 'fine' indeed," Jay smirked, sitting down next to Roger on the couch with a thud. He reassured her, "You'll be alright. I promise."

"At least you guys have a TV," Nova said, staring at the screen with the message asking whether anyone was still watching.

"Oh," Roger gasped, a stunning realization coming over him. He looked over at Jay, who had the remote in his hand.

"What's going on, man?" Jay asked.

"Show her the show," Roger said while pointing at the television, as if doing so would reveal the secrets of the universe.

Maybe they would.

Nova tilted her little head. "What show?"

"Pokémon isn't just a game," Roger explained, giving Nova a nod. "It's a cartoon too. For kids."

Jay's lip curled. "You sure?" he asked, his voice wavering. "What if that's a bad idea?"

Roger shrugged. "How? It's not gonna kill her."

"No way," Nova chirped, giving the screen a smile as she looked at her reflection, a bit battered on her left wing from her injury but still doing quite well in spite of it. "Besides, I wanna see what you humans think pokémon are all about."

"Okay," Jay whispered, raising the remote with a shaky hand. "I guess there's gotta be something on here."

In a matter of moments, a narrator caught the three of them up on how a boy's journey with his newest friends was going so far.

Could have been better, could've been worse.