Chapter 0 - The Game

Shossk feels a brief flash, an image of each of his companions emerging from a portal one after the other which then closes behind them. He sees confusion begin to set into their faces as the sudden premonition fades.

It was supposed to have been over. Except, Iris didn't get to return home. Quite the opposite, in fact. She now stood, once again, somewhere she was not only completely unfamiliar with but also had no reason to believe she would ever end up at. This time, at least, she wasn’t alone. Three others, two human girls and a Pokemon, stood with her, surrounding a floating head of fire that nearly imitated various facial expressions, dipping into the uncanny valley.

Too many questions and not enough answers floated through Iris’s head, so she focused, refusing to be drag herself down with uncertainty that she could not fix. First, she needed information. She listed closely to the fire head’s talk so that she would not miss any of the precious information that the head gave to everyone, but also keeping in mind that everything could be a lie or half-truth. Then, in a little bit, she would need to inspect her equipment, which had just been deposited in a shower of fire upon the marble(?) plinth in front of her. Suspicious and more than a little iffy to be using items created or even just summoned in such a manner, but she would need to make do with what was given. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, after all. She’d learned that already.

Once the explanation ended, though, and the eight ways rose out of the ground for the gamers to choose from, Iris drew her attention inward to her most important piece of equipment: her body, which now felt just a little bit off. Checking the class thing AL mentioned showed her why. Her stats had, in a sense, been dropped to a lower level and rearranged. She had lost a lot and gained very little. Annoying, but not the biggest problem. She could always relearn about the gems and legends she had forgotten and as she still had her gifts, she just needed to retrain them. No, there were things she missed far more than her powers.

<Gerard. Xenna. Nico. The kids. Mrs. Goodwill. Everyone. Are they safe?>

She hoped they were. She prayed that they were. She thought that they were. None of the three with her looked like any of them.

Then what about her Pokemon?

<Turk. Amy. Dot. Bruno. Dratini. Where are you?>

She couldn’t find their Pokeballs anywhere on their body, and the idea that they could have been safely taken elsewhere without her was unimaginable. It was an unwritten rule that Pokemon in Pokeballs didn’t work that way in her world.

<And of course, Victini. He’s not on my back as a sword, but I suppose I don’t have to worry about him, being a god and all.>

While the others acclimated to the change of scenery in their own way, this was how Iris worried all while moving forwards. Greetings were shared by the others as Iris moved around some sort of computer terminal thing. Wow, it had been a long time since she saw one of those. Never one that was particularly good at technology, she ignored it for the moment, subconsciously expecting someone else to figure it out and share the knowledge and consciously deciding to move on to the next step.

Then, very deliberately, she walked up to the stocked plinth.

On the way there, she pauses once. Amid everyone else’s bustle and introductions, the strangest one of all had asked the exact same question she had. Iris stared blankly at the unknown Pokemon, she assumed he was a Pokemon and that he was a he, and then gave a sympathetic smile. ”I wonder that too,” her first words were a response to the Pokemon that could speak the same speech as humans.

<Strangers, right> Iris remembers, <That’s what they were to me once, too, so on this adventure I’ll also grow close to these people, I guess?> as she gets a good look at everyone for the first time: the two costumed girls and the talking Pokemon. Another first was the realization that her first adventure had ended only to be thrust into a second adventure. It felt a little strange, such a dissociated view. She’d never considered the island’s challenges and all the chaos involved in trying to stop a doomsday vote as an adventure. It had always just been a matter of survival with a healthy dash of discovery mixed in, but nothing like “adventure 1.” It was interesting to think about, but with a shake of her head, Iris refocuses.

She turns back around to her plinth and looks at her last hope. Her last hope for her Pokemon, that is. She could feel it. Why? Because at the very tippity top of the pile of supplies was one Moon Ball, an obvious starter if Iris ever saw one. Incidentally, she had also received Amy and Turk in a Moon Ball. Of course, in this situation, her starter could only be one of them. However, if that had to be the case, then she hoped that within the pokeball one of her two companions awaited her. She had to believe in the little things.

<It makes sense,> Iris convinced herself as she took the last few steps to the plinth, <and if that’s the case, then I have a chance of finding the rest somewhere in these eight zones AL talked about.>

However, just in case that the Moon Ball contained neither of her trusted partners, she hoped for, <At least an Eevee,> something she had some confidence in training, raising, and loving as any Pokemon deserved to be.

Iris paused with her hand on the ball. Part of her expected an answer to her prayers. Expectations of disembodied voices like that sort of came with the whole experience of being trapped on an island with frequent contact with gods. She received none, but of course, that was the obvious likely result. The gods were fickle, and now that she was no longer touched by Victini, there were no legendaries who had any reason to bother with her silly questions. Alone, Iris popped open the Pokeball, and in a spray of light, she finds herself facing…

She faces…

”GYAAAAAH!” without warning, a sudden scream from Iris echoes through the small room. The stress and anticipation that had been building up since starting this game explodes in that instant to take the shape of a wild, yet unnamed conclusion. With a grimace, Iris stumbles back and away from the reason for her distress, her emotional high ending in an accusatory, ”Y-you!”.

The “you” in question, a red and black fox-like creature, stands frozen in shock, very clearly startled by the greeting her trainer had thought fitting to give. Such a cute little thing. No apparent reason for Iris’s outburst could be seen from either her demeanor or appearance.

The situation quickly devolved around Iris at such a rapid pace that there was no way she could miss it. Another Zorua appeared on the scene. Someone yelled to ask if anyone had a bowl for their Remoraid. The other girl, the one who released the second Zorua looked like she was about to murder it. The Pokemon had just released another Pokemon, the latter of which was laughing at them.

On top of that all, Iris's own Zorua was still there, staring at her. The Zorua's stare had only broken once, to look warily at the other Zorua when he was released. Iris couldn't yet rule out the possibility that had unnerved her so much, the possibility that this Zorua was just some scheme by her enemy Zoroark to break her into tiny little pieces.

However, it looked like if her Zorua really was out to get her, then it was going to win this time. Apparently, no one seemed to have a flying clue what they were doing with their Pokemon. Seriously, who just calls their starter "Heartless"? Who in their right mind would try to travel with a fish bowl? Iris couldn't just sit back and let this chaos continue, especially as she felt like she was responsible for starting it. Fitting, Of course utter chaos would work to that bastard's advantage, assuming Iris's extreme suspicions were correct.

Whatever Iris thought, a starter was a starter. She might have considered using Judgement on her Zorua when it first appeared, but she was quick to recede to a more careful position that didn't involve hurting her... "partner." This was even truer for the trainer of the other Zorua, the one who didn't have terrible memories tied to Zoroark. Iris was partially responsible for whatever misconception the key-wielder had, so she had to fix it. "Layl! Wait! It's Layl, right?" she sought to fix things by shouting, "What are you doing?! Heartless or whatever their name is, that's your starter, put your... weapon? thing? down!".

"And you," there was a simpler matter to fix as well, "Yoko, was it?". As someone who felt responsible, she was backpedaling hard from her own panic to try and instill some semblance of order back into the group. However, Yoko's problem perplexed Iris in its... um... completely unneeded flailing? <Why is she panicking over not having a bowl for her Remoraid? Sure, it's better for her Remoraid, but it's not like they're going to die without one,> was what Iris really thought but it sounded a little mean, so she instead said, "Um... You... You're not planning on walking around while holding your Remoraid in a bowl, are you? It'll be better to just... carry it..." The advice felt sound. Iris was pretty sure in it, but again, the simplicity of the matter made her doubt that she had answered the right question. That sort of feeling.

It seemed that the Pokemon duo were doing just fine.

To each person Iris addressed, she turned her head to look at them and rather rudely jabbed a finger in their direction when she called to them just to make sure she got their attention. Although, once attention had been gotten, her finger, hand, and armed lowered politely.

Remoraid?  Heartless?

"Do you knnow of these creatures?"  Shossk asks aloud to anyone who might.  "And thesse summoning orbs?"

Now that you have all started to get your bearings and have had time to acclimate to your current location you manage to get a better idea of the room and its contents.

When you give the material the room is constructed from a closer inspection it is apparently made of some sort of crystalline substance similar to an opaque white quartz, hard and smooth with fine cracks and occlusions running through it that cannot be felt on the surface. Every inch of the room covered in organic patterns that are almost fractal in nature repeating from the very structure of the room down to the smallest point the eye can see. They seem to be fluid. When your eye leaves them they seem to change ever so slightly. Structures in the room seem almost like liquid patterns caught, suspended in time.

The room is circular, around 200 feet in diameter. it has a high domed ceiling, at least 30 feet up. There are eight large pillars at equidistant points spread in a circular pattern halfway between the wall and the center of the room. Each pillar has support struts jutting off of them at odd angles connecting with the floor and ceiling almost randomly, looking like cobwebs hanging off of some great ancient bone. The contraptions that had appeared out of the ground are around 4 1/2 feet tall, each seems to have been formed directly from the floor, seamlessly blending in as if they had originally been carved from the same piece of material. Each one has a different symbol embossed on the base, one is a coin, another a Pokeball, a third has a fence and the last has a simplified version of the face of AL. They are located near the center of the room at equal points. At the center of the room are a raised dais and the four plinths on top. the room almost seems to flow toward this central focal point, all the patterns spiraling into the rooms central singularity. Around the wall, there are the eight archways each leading to their designated location but between each is a door. They are each also embossed with a stylized symbol of their own. A knife and fork, a bed, a flexing arm, a toilet, a couch, a field, a hot spring. The last door remains unmarked. 

When you stand before each archway and give the landscape beyond a good long look this is what you see.

The first you stand at (arbitrarily) shows a deep lush jungle beyond. The landscape choked with a variety of foliage filled with the trunks huge trees, vines and colorful blooms. You can see the half buried remains of some sort of red clay structure jutting out amongst the leaves, mostly consumed by time and moss. A large river runs languidly through the background, dark and turbid. It too is dotted with plant life, the occasional ripple belies life beneath. Through a few scattered patches, you can see light filtering through from above the canopy. The hint of a blue sky just beyond the wall of green. As you watch the landscape seems to bob up and down slightly in the archway, the motion isn't violent and if you hadn't been sitting there staring you would not have noticed but it is there. You can almost feel a perceptible wave of muggy heat emanate from within.

The next archway you approach contains a dark and dreary landscape. An obscuring fog seems to engulf the land, it seems to ebb and flow like waves. As you look at the scene a castle standing on a large cliff seems to jut out of the fog, large and imposing the edifice seems to cause the very fog to shy away. You can see that the structure is very old, ivy and moss speckled the sides of the building. It has several high towers twisting out from within the solid walls, dingy red banners drape from their windows. As you watch the other portions of the archway you can make out more cliffs, almost as if some giant had taken a sword and rent the very land. A village can be seen on another of these cliffs, barely visible amongst the fog. You can also make out that the landscape is dotted with small gray protrusions, they are hard to make out and seem well worn.

After the dreariness of the last arch, the next contains a fantastic burst of color. Giant coral reaches above waves of brilliant blue green. Each piece of the mass is a different bright shade and each has its own unique shape. As they reach above the waves they intertwine with one another making a web of connections that stretch beyond your ability to see. The bright blue sky frames the vivid colors making it almost hard to look at. At the bottoms of each cluster, there are golden sandy beaches dipping deep into the crystal clear water. In the distance, a few ships can be seen sailing between ramshackle ports. The smell of fish and salt hangs heavy in the air just beyond the archway.

A web of chrome, neon, and clean plastic can be seen through the next archway. It appears to an assembly line of some sort, large arms complete a variety of tasks such as placing pieces onto conveyors, fitting delicate machinery together and welding components to one another. What the arms are building is not easily discernable as none of the arms appear to be working on the same project, each completes its task and the piece moves on through the wall. High above the factory floor tall mirrored glass windows stand like sentinels watching the bustle. Several side passages are open in alcoves on the walls leading off in random directions. As you watch you notice that every so often the entire operation shifts, arms that had once been completing a task shift to a different conveyor and begin working on something completely different. It's hard to make out the pattern in it all but it seems to be working on one.

A huge mountain climbs into the sky in the following archway, near the top it is capped with snow and a lava flow can be seen seeping down one face. Near the bottom, there is a ring of dense pine trees that slowly becomes sparser the higher up the slope your gaze goes. As the vegetation becomes rarer it becomes easier to see that the face of the mountain is covered in cave faces, marking the peak like holes in a termite mound. The surface is uneven, covered with shelf and secondary peaks that sometimes allow a copse of trees to grow far higher than any of the others. At a point that there are no more trees, you can also see that there is some sort of buildings built into the face periodically on the side that is unmarked by the lava.

The next shows a cityscape filled with massive buildings that seem to claw toward the sky like a twisted hand. When you stare hard at the buildings it's clear to tell that they are of poor construction, large portions are left unfinished and some of them seem to be barely held together. As if a construction crew had been paid by how many they could construct rather than having them stand for any amount of time. They are covered with colorful advertisements and banners haphazardly placed on the learning shells. Every once in a great while they all seem to sway as if they are trees in a breeze, afterward they settle back to their original position without a sign of collapse.

This archway shows a vast sprawling desert dotted with bright green cacti and the occasional bright blue of an oasis. In the distance light green clusters of cacti seem to for dense forests that stretch out to the horizon. From the center of one of these a large red pyramid emerges, hazy in the heat haze. Closer to the archway smaller pyramids and other smaller constructions can also be seen, made of yellow sandstone and half buried by the blowing sand. A ramshackle village can be seen clustered around one of the pyramids that also has an oasis nearby. The wave of dry heat from the arch is almost overpowering.

Immediately in front of the final archway, it appears to be nighttime. A stack of strange rough objects sits in the gloom. Each appears to be a large differently colored rectangle that varies in height, they are covered in different colored runes and symbols. The stack appears to reach to the top of the ceiling which itself consists of extremely wide wooden bars about as wide as you are tall that have about the same amount of space between. In the spaces, some sort of fuzzy fabric can be seen poking out. In the distance, you can see a large wooden pillar and a wall of dark fabric covered with stars at the edge of the ring of light that the archway projects into space beyond. The floor is also made of wide wooden boards and appears to be covered in a thick layer of dust. You get a musty taste in your mouth just sitting on the edge of this archway.

Shossk blinks.

"Iss that your word for common animals?"  Shossk shakes his head, causing his dorsal spines to sway to an fro.  "Nno.  I am lizardfolk.  We are reptiles, but we are nearly as intelligent as the humanns, the elves, the dwarves, and most of the otherr races.  You are nnot the first to make that mistake.  Many humanss have never seeen my kind."  And if Shossk had been most other races, being mistaken for some common lizard might have been insulting.  As it stands, Shossk's gravely monotone indicates he is merely stating what he sees as fact.

Shossk to the 'pokemon', narrow pupils examining each in turn.  "Are thesse creatures not of the Feywild?  They look to bee colorful echos of the owls, the foxes, and the fish founnd on the Prime Material.  Thiss owl is clearly morre intelligent than those found in most foressts.  It undersstands humor."

The dartrix rubs the back of its head in pleased embarrassment, blushing invisibly underneath his feathers at the praise.

The human girl was smiling.  Is this the appropriate time to smile?

Shossk makes an effort to pull the corners of his mouth backward and up, baring his sharp teeth in a facsimile of a reptilian smile.


Shossk holds the smile there for one, two, three... then he lets the smile instantly drop, his face back to its usual neutral state.

The dartrix quietly edges a few steps away from the big lizard.