Chapter Text
Dawn crashed into the bed of her FlyBnB, exhausted. It had been a long day of training, and somehow she was still even more underleveled than she'd been when she took on the Sinnoh League. Still, her Alolan Raichu had done such a good job.
"Here you go Pancake, you deserve some Pokébeans," she said, feeding her a few, while patting her head. Pancake squeaked back happily. As she started to make a schedule for the next day, she drifted off to sleep, her phone still in her hand.
After a few hours of not-quite-restful sleep, Dawn opened her eyes. When she opened them, she was not in her bed. She was somewhere dark.
Empty.
Cold.
"This is...definitely not Alola. Or Sinnoh. Or Galar. Or Kanto."
She waited, expecting a response from the empty void, wishing for someone to hear her.
"Well, either I'm dead, or I'm in Orre." She laughed nervously at her own joke.
The silence made it painfully obvious that no one else was there.
She looked around frantically, trying to see any source of light, but it was so dark that she could barely see her own limbs. She also noticed that wherever she was, there was no gravity. She tried kicking her legs and waving her arms to propel herself into a semi-upright position, which didn't do much other than sending her into a spin.
"If this is a dream, it's a really sucky one," She muttered angrily.
After a few minutes of spinning aimlessly in the void, she decided to come up with a plan.
First, she'd see if her location was able to be tracked on her phone, and if she could communicate said location to anyone. Second, she'd see what she had in her pockets, and come up with a better plan once she knew what her options were.
Unfortunately, when she tried to unlock her phone, her shaking hands fumbled it into the void. She wasn't able to reach it in time, so it drifted far enough to guarantee she wouldn't be able to grab it again.
"Crap."
She started to panic, but she took a few deep breaths to calm herself down. After all, she could have something useful in her pockets.
She reached into her pockets, but didn't feel anything in them. She then rushed to turn them inside out, for the slight chance of finding something small that could help her.
But nothing fell out.
No Pokémon, no items, and no way to escape.
She was alone, in an unfamiliar place, where she didn't even know how she got there, and with no way to get home or to tell anyone where she was.
She was scared, scared that she'd never go home, scared that she'd never see her Pokémon again, scared she'd be alone forever in this dark place.
She was frustrated too, frustrated that she let her phone slip out from her hands, frustrated that she didn't have anything in her pockets, frustrated that she let this happen to her, even if she couldn't do anything about it.
As she bit her cheek to stop herself from crying, she saw a glimmer of light. Then another. Then the void was lit up by many more flashes of light, like the constellations of the Sinnoh sky. However, the lights weren't random, they were all converging into one spot. The light started to take form, and as more lights converged, the shape got brighter and clearer, until the true form was revealed.
"ARCEUS?!" Dawn shouted in confusion. "Am I in trouble for catching every Sinnoh, Kanto, and Galar Legendary Pokémon? I promise I haven't caught any Alolan Legendai—"
She was cut off by a stern look from the God Pokémon. She understood that she was not in trouble, but that she was entrusted on a journey. Her phone began to glow like the lights did earlier, and she started to be sucked into the glowing light. As she grew closer, she felt calm, knowing she'd be safe on the other side. As the light consumed most of her body, a single sentence echoed throughout her mind.
Seek out all Pokémon.