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"Please choose your destination Pocket World from the following selection: Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova or Alola. Pictures and general statistics are displayed. Consult the Regional Guide for more information prior to your choice, if you wish to learn more about them."
Alia glances at the vistas displayed before her, hardly paying attention. She's almost finished with the process of choosing a new virtual life before her. The tedium of being guided through it, configuring her settings - why would she want to have a setting called "true pain" on? - by this annoying voice had eroded almost all her little initial interest. This was just another thing to keep herself occupied while she was waiting for…. something.
These worlds were all vastly different sure, some based more on the real world, others almost entirely alien, with extraterrestrials inhabiting each. Alia trailed her finger over the displayed worlds, no investment or real interest in any of them.
Climate, inhabitants, all the other parameters didn't seem like useful information to Alia. What kind of experiences was she going to have, what people would she meet, why would she enjoy the experience of any world over the others? At least she could always delete her progress if she didn't like the world.
I guess I'll take that second pocket world, it doesn't seem too full at least.
The instant she makes her choice, the world snaps to black around her, then returns.
"New Bark Town: A town where the wind blows and tells of impending change."
The same annoying voice guiding her through choosing a world droned on again, hopefully for the last time. Town is an entirely false descriptor, Alia thinks. Wind may be blowing, but the 'town' consists of literally four houses. She's standing in front of the largest, a two-story building with twin chimneys and a sign that reads 'LAB OF PROFESSOR ELM' in big, sprawling script that took her a moment to decipher.
The door slams open, and a tall man steps out, papers flying around him. He pushes up his glasses and beams up at her.
"Ah! Hello! So good that someone else signed up."
Alia did not sign up for anything but exploring the world, she was pretty sure.
"Here's your first mission parameters" - he hands her a small envelope - "and that's really all you need. Find yourself a partner, set off on the mission, and don't step in the tall grass".
He pushes her forward a bit, in the direction of a small path through the forest.
"Oh and I'm Professor Elm by the way!"
Then he disappears back into the building, slamming the door behind him again.
Alia stares at the door, confused, note in hand. She was going to head to an actual town or city anyway, to see that this world was all about, so at least now she knew what direction to head in. So she walks through the forest for a while, following the main path and admiring the scenery. It's not too different from what she knows from home, but the trees are strangely tall to her, and the lack of insects and normal wildlife doesn't strike her as odd until she stands at the mouth of the forest, almost at the next city.
It makes sense, she supposes, that in any virtual world there doesn't need to be any eating or animals to be part of the food chain.
When she reaches the city, she finds a bench on the sidewalk to sit on and looks around for any interesting buildings. But it all just looks like a smaller, slightly less advanced city than back in real life, so she decides to read the note that this supposed Professor - what did he call himself again? Elm? - gave her.
BUG CATCHER #0371
FIND ERRORS IN THE SIMULATION AND REPORT/FIX THEM
IMPORTANT: VERY THOROUGH DOCUMENTATION OF BUGS
OTHERWISE, HAVE FUN!
Seems like something to do, at least.
A week later, she's still in Cherrygrove City. She's climbed the hill by the city, swam the waters, searching for oddities and secrets hidden in the world. Fittingly, everything seems just a little boxed in, an intricate set of railroad tracks she's traveling on but can't leave, at least not just yet. Which still leaves her with a lot to explore. So she buys some supplies at the Pocket Mart and heads out.
She's found some small bugs and glitches thus far. The first one she found, she spent more time trying to figure out how to report it than actually seeing it. It turns out she has a notebook in her inventory that she can record things into by thought as well as an extension to generate reports out of notes. This world was seeming much more convenient than the last.
That first glitch she encountered was a small Pokémon - the slang term for Pocket Monsters, the extra terrestrials who inhabited these worlds alongside humans like her - halfway stuck in the ground. Alia managed to pull it out, then figure out the process of reporting bugs.
That first trickle of reward money made her uncommonly proud.
On the path to the north, Alia chooses to ignore the house she comes upon - there'll be time to go there later, if she should feel like it. Though she rarely feels like spending time with people in the first place.
Instead, she stops at the small lake, leaning down and gazing into it. There were Pokémon in the water too, she knew, but would an extraterrestrial spend their free time in a random pond? Some sort of odd investment in the roleplay aspect of it?
The sound of a door opening and footsteps behind her are both ignored, as Alia stares down into the water, trying to see if there are Pokémon in it.
Next to her, the visage of a Pokémon does appear, though it is not a water type. The somewhat rodent-like face - a Typhlosion, she's learned, after encountering more Pokémon every day - glances over at her, the collar of low fire above its shoulders. She pauses for a moment, not reacting, before trying to get up and failing miserably, stumbling and falling in the lake.
The Typhlosion just stares at her. Then backs away a few paces and sits down.
Luckily, Alia is a good swimmer, and manages to get to the edge of the lake without issue, clambering up, wet and soggy. Cold, though only because she's enabled that setting in the simulation. Maybe she should change that.
"I - what. What was that".
The Typhlosion paws at its neck, where the fire lines its collar.
"Ah, right, I suppose just jumping in water isn't, uh, great for fire types. But, do you not talk?"
She has encountered Pokémon that did and did not speak, so she feels the question is justified.
"Prefer not to".
One of those then. The only other Pokémon from the plane of fire she's really met in her short time here was incredibly talkative, to the point of being annoying. Though it didn't take much talking to annoy her, it was still irritating. At least this one wouldn't be like that.
"Well could you dry help me off maybe? Kind of regretting leaving swimming immersiveness turned all the way up right now".
The Tyhplosion - Alia should probably ask its name at some point - crouches down to the ground, blowing out a small trail of flame near the ground, to her feet. She fights the urge to back away, back into the lake, and watches the flame curl around her feet, warming her bottom to top.
"Cool, thanks."
Somehow, a few days later, she's teamed up with the Typhlosion. It doesn't care much about a name, or any specific pronouns, but she's managed to weedle at least a preference in being addressed out. He didn't care at all about names, his culture apparently didn't have the concept of names or pronouns. Alia didn't want to just use whatever however, so she asked and finally got an answer, though it was more in the sense of "if you must". Good enough.
In his silence, he makes for a rather pleasant traveling companion. The fire plane is apparently looking to explore more of the worlds for some reason, since they haven't been charted in their entirety yet. Which is fair enough, and aligns reasonably well with her (somewhat forced upon) goal of finding bugs.
Though he doesn't appear to need as much sleep, or get exhausted as easily as Alia does. With irritating regularity, she leans on him while traveling, which leads to insistence that she should just get on his back (which, really, it's not like she couldn't walk longer, but she does get tired, and Typhlosion's warmth makes here even sleepier so). Of course, when she does give in and seats herself on his back, she always ends up falling asleep soon after. It is comfortable, sitting on his back, surprisingly enough, warm and sways just so to lull her to sleep.
The mornings after she falls asleep on the Typhlosion are the only ones she wakes up in the Typhlosion's… arms? Either way, she's not about to mention the way its pressure feels at her side, or on her if he rolls over in its sleep. Alia feels it would be rude to complain, even if it may not be complaining so much as just a mention of it. It being how it felt nice to wake up this way, not how she quietly wishes this were how she woke up every morning. She simply doesn't know Typhlosion well enough to be anything short of stoic and monosyllabic around him.
Wishing for something more interesting to happen is almost always a mistake, Alia has learned.
If breaking the tedium of traveling around for hours, exploring for days and finding and logging some minor bugs every few weeks meant being chased by costumed gangs and now this, she could very well do without.
They'd managed to outmaneuver those oddballs calling themselves 'Team Rocket'. Not too difficult with them reciting their theme song or whatever it was and not paying attention, but still. It was really weird and annoying, and she hoped she wouldn't have to encounter these people again, ever, if possible.
In the process of creeping away from the creeps, however, Alia and Typhlosion stumbled upon an oddly feral-looking Pokémon, eating blotchy, miscolored apricorns from a twitching shrub. Definitely not normal. Prime glitch collection material.
As Alia holds her Pokédex up to identify the thing, it looks over, teeth sharp and menacing, apricorn juice coloring its mouth deep red and running down its jaw.
"Feraligatr," the 'dex says, toneless as always.
Fitting .
It draws itself up to its full height, and, Typhlosion is impressive, just a bit taller than her, and Alia is fairly tall, but this thing must be a half meter taller at least at full height, near towering over Typhlosion and her. It drops back down to the ground on all fours, clawing away at the ground, gouging out grooves in the ground. Roars.
Alia has come to expect stoicism from Typhlosion, mostly grunts and short sentences at most. Here, however, he is completely silent, muscles tensed under his pelt, collar of fire flaring up. The Feraligatr does not seem impressed, and Alia is getting increasingly nervous.
It shoots, seemingly without warning, a stream of high-pressure water at her. She stumbles backward, making herself small. Typhlosion, in turn moves in front of her, taking the brunt of the attack. Steam rises off of him, an angry hissing sound. He stays up high, covering from the still low Feraligatr.
Rather than using his fire breath on the water-spewing monster, which could hardly have been effective, Alia thinks later, Typhlosion rushes forward. He finds purchase at its neck, the space between its crowns of spikes. It flails wildly, claws catching Typhlosion in the eye, causing him to loosen his grip. Just enough for the beast to reposition itself and fire a burst directly at Typhlosion's chest. He crumples, onto the Feraligatr.
Searching around near her for a stone or some thing to throw, Alia takes her eyes off the fight for a bit and when she looks back, Typhlosion is putting pressure on the Feraligatr's neck, attempting to get at something embedded in the underside of its jaw.
And suddenly, the Feraligatr vanishes.
"What - the. What? What was - are you bleeding, what is?"
Alia stops herself from yelling and asking questions she won't get answers to right now. Instead, she rummages in her bag for medical supplies. They may be in a simulation, but experience has shown her that the pain is still very much real, and lasts after leaving the simulation. She tries, first, to bandage some of Typhlosion's wounds, only to find that the bandages slowly curl up and shrink away at his body heat. So instead she begins by smearing salves on him, and Typhlosion's core body temperature must be even higher because even here the temperature difference is noticeable.
Once she manages to sanitize his wounds, she turns to making a place to rest. They're not far from where the weird gang members were, but there's an outcropping of a hill that they can hide behind somewhat. So she goes and starts a fire there, small and covered so the smoke should not be too obvious.
Typhlosion immediately sits on it, and it hits her how weird this entire situation is. Her questions come bubbling back up.
"What the actual fuck."
"I am made of heat. It heals me."
"I. Ok. But, what. "
It's been some time since Typhlosion has spoken to her apart from single words, Alia realizes. The difference in his voice, of pain and gritted teeth, is only barely noticeable.
"Are yout going to be alright?"
"The glitch is gone, and I am healing already. We will be fine."
'We.'
They sit in silence again, for a few hours while the fire courses through Typhlosion and warms Alia. She leaves her questions unsasked, especially those that have been sitting unphrased at the back of her mind for weeks on end.
Nearly two months and another encounter with a dangerous glitch later, this one involving flying goo and duplicating items, Alia and Typhlosion are summoned back to the professor's lab.
They've hit some sort of benchmark and been granted a reward for their achievements, apparently.
Which means their first run as debuggers is now finished and she now has to decide whether to continue working with Typhlosion. Though it isn't really a decision. Over the months, she's been returning to the analog world now and again, just to check up on things. And without fail, after a few days she would wind up not just missing this new sort of virtual home, but its inhabitants, and Typhlosion especially among them.
He might not be talkative all the time, but she enjoys his presence, steady and comforting. The warmth Typhlosion radiates is a nice bonus.
End her time as a bug seeker wouldn't mean leaving this pocket dimension, just restricted access to the more dangerous of its regions she's come to enjoy in their odd, wild, unfinished beauty. They were the most interesting and least populated. Both of which appeal.
A second bug catching tour would be half a year, with stricter goals to pursue and tests at the end to determine eligibility for a full-time program on success.
Not that she needs the money, but a challenge is always intriguing. She doesn't expect she'll necessarily be the very best about it, but she can damn well try and continue to have this engaging experience she's been enjoying so much.
She spends a few days thinking, and not at all being stubborn in New Bark Town, before handing in her application. She doesn't consider her journey to have started here, it feels more like it began at that house north of Cherrygrove.
As her preferred partner she enters Typhlosion.
Only hours later, they're called in, confirmed as being in the next stage of bug catchers, and sent on their new mission.
Alia hasn't often been excited, and certainly never this much.
Alia's stubbornness will surely one day go down in history. For half a year, she knows what she feels and what to say, the name to put to this thing. Instead, she pours every hour she has into this, mastering the identification and removal of bugs.
Whatever progress towards speaking up she made while waiting in New Bark Town, it was gone outside its boundaries.
Her stubbornness wanes a week before their assignment is over. She doesn't blurt it all out, but she says enough that Typhlosion will remember and make her say.
The last few days, like the weeks and months before, fly by. Soon, they've passed the test and are one rung higher on the ladder of bug seekers.
They're granted access to the member's quarters, bug catcher lodging houses and discounts on almost anything almost anywhere. It's like being a government official, but way cooler.
Typhlosion waits until they're back under the night sky, camping, where they've come to be more comfortable than in cities or villages, to make her talk.
She tries to pass it off at first as her wanting to be partners with him permanently - not technically wrong - but he does not relent. So she admits to it, to herself and to him. She tells him she wants to stay here, with him, as partners, as maybe something else she can't fully define or say for herself just yet, in as many words. They're short, and through grit teeth, but the message gets across.
Typhlosion does not respond, like he so often does. Instead, he rolls up around her, and mumbes something to the effect of "me too" - or "me poo," how was she supposed to know with him mumbling, and he falls asleep.
She takes her time, as always, picking apart and understanding what she wants from this.
Eventually she comes to find the words, and the courage to say them.
They, Typhlosion and her, are among the best bug catchers and enjoy the still nights under a digital moon.