Chapter Text
Alright, let me get a few things out of the way first. California traffic, suuuucks. You just sit there staring at the other person’s headlights trying to will them to move forward. Pretend that you have magical superpowers to push people out of the way. ANYTHING to shake up the monotony. But it never works. You’re always left waiting and waiting.
Normally, whenever this happens, it’s when I’m coming home from work or school. When it happens then, it’s the most infuriating thing in the world. Just wanting to get home and eat? Watching the fast moving cars on the other side of the median?
Gross.
But today was a different story. Today, I graduated from UCLA as a business major and CS minor. Still decked out in my regalia, I strolled down the 210 at snail-speeds, humming along a pippy tune.
My iPhone told me that the traffic was caused, in part, due to an accident. That meant sitting in line with a bunch of other people for hours.
But it was alright. Nothing was going to stop me now.
*RING* *RING*
I looked over at the screen in the center console. My CarPlay showed that it was my mom calling, probably to talk about the traffic nightmare.
I answered, “Hey, mom.”
“Hey Samantha! You’re stuck in this traffic too, huh?”
“Yeah. We’re barely moving!”
“Same here. We can see the accident up in front of us, and it looks like the police are having us merge into the far left lane.”
“Ohhh, so that’s why it’s super slow.”
“We’re about to merge now. Still gonna meet at Buca di Peppo right?”
“Of course. It’s saying I’ll be there in thirty-ish minutes.”
“Alright, sounds good. I’ll see you there.”
“Okay, love you.”
“Love you too.”
*CLICK*
I couldn’t wait to get to the restaurant. My stomach was growling with raw ravenous hunger. You know, sitting in a chair for three hours in California heat makes you very hungry and sweaty. My mouth was just watering at the cheap Italian food of Buca di Peppo right now.
The meatballs, the spaghetti, the sauce, oh my! I didn’t even notice we were beginning to come upon the accident. I looked out to my right to try and observe what had happened. Sure enough, right on the side of the road, there was a pretty good sized accident. There were a few police cars all blocking traffic from proceeding as well as around the wreck itself. Thankfully, it didn’t seem all that big. It looked like one of the cars had a scraped side and the other’s front seemed bumped in. However, there were no ambulances and all of the people were walking around.
All in all, it seemed like everyone was okay.
I breathed a sigh of relief at that as well as the rapidly increased traffic speed. I hummed a nameless tune to myself as I sped down the 210 freeway, excited to finally get to my destination.
I almost didn’t notice when my tires lost track.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know what happened until it already happened. One second I was thinking about spaghetti; the next, I spun out; finally, I hit something.
My airbags deployed immediately as my face slammed into the inflated balloon of air, my graduation cap flying off of my head and into the back seat of my car. I was completely out of it, stars filled my vision as my mind tried to catch up with what I was seeing. I grasped my head as I shook around violently, trying to get the stars out of my head so that I could actually see correctly.
The first thing that I noticed was a very annoying beeping. I looked over to my dash and saw some kind of glowing color coming from where my phone was.
“My phone… My phone! Emergency!” I reached out and grabbed my phone from its slot in the vent, somehow not getting loose from its holder. I blinked out the stars as I put all of my effort into focusing on my phone.
It looks like you’re in an emergency! Swipe to dial 911.
“Swipe. Swipe. SWIPE!” My finger swiped over and the phone showed that it was dialing 911. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was gonna be okay.
*DRIP*
What?
*DRIP*
I looked down at the white airbag, stained red. Red? Oh shit. I swiped under my nose. Blood.
“Shit. Shit. Shit!”
I looked down at my center console and noticed a loose napkin. Jamming it into my nose, I looked down at my phone, and my heart sank.
NO SIGNAL
“No signal? What the fuck do you mean no signal!” I opened my phone and checked. Sure enough, there was no signal. But the interesting thing is there was no SOS or satellite! “W-What the actual fuck?!”
I finally looked up at my situation.
I froze.
I was in a forest. A FOREST. I had hit a tree.
Now, to those of you who don’t live in Southern California, there are no forests around the urban part of the 210 freeway. It is all urban, and over the main living areas.
How the heck did I manage to hit a tree?!
I felt movement inside of my nose, and removing the napkin, led to a large drop of blood falling onto the airbag.
“Shit!” I jammed the napkin back into my nose.
“Okay… What the actual fuck is going on…”
I reached over and grabbed the door handle and yanked it open as hard as I could. The car door opened with a whine and I stumbled out. Aside from the bloody nose, I was pretty okay, although that seat belt was going to leave a massive bruise. My eyes adjusted to the world around me and, sure enough, I was in a forest. All around me were the lushest and greenest trees I had ever seen. There were no animals around, but I had no doubt that there were some within this forest.
My attention then turned to the steaming hood of my red Kia. It was absolutely totaled. My car challenged a tree to a duel and the tree won. The whole front of my car was caved in and crumpled. Both headlights didn’t work at all and I could see some faint water vapor coming off of the front hood.
“Fuck! My car!” I exclaimed, putting my hands over my head.
Okay, so first I crashed my car. Second, I’m in this weird ass forest that just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of urban California. AND my phone had no signal. I started to panic, my breath increased, and my heart was beating out of my chest. I tried to calm myself, but the adrenaline of the crash was still taking its toll.
I tried to step back to the car, when, “-GAH! Shit!”
I tripped on a loose pile of mud.
Luckily I didn’t just ruin my gown and dress, but looking down at my heels, they were goners. Although my napkin almost fell out of my nose, but a reflex pushed it back in.
I shimmied my way into the car and took off my heels. “The last thing I want to do is ruin these two-hundred dollar heels,” I muttered. Not sure why my brain focused on them. Maybe it was the stress. But despite my best efforts, I had to ruin my freshly done nails.
I had a spare pair of old tennis shoes in my trunk, and those would have to do for now. I made sure to map every step out in my mind, I knew that if I let my mind wander, my mental state would too. So I methodically leaned down and pulled the lever that unleashes the trunk.
*CLUNCK*
I breathed a sigh of relief that at least one thing works on this car.
I shimmied my way out of the car again and placed my feet carefully into the mud. The last thing I needed was a cut foot, so I very carefully stepped to my trunk and opened it. Grabbing the shoes I repeated this process again until I was inside the back seats.
I made sure to wipe off and avoid as much dirt as I could and slipped on the tennis shoes. Unfortunately, I wasn’t wearing socks, so I would have to go without them for a while, but hey, at least my heels are okay.
I got out of the car, now with proper footwear and shook off my medals and tassels and what other regalia I had on. Placing them next to my hat I returned to the driver's seat and checked my phone.
“No signal… No fucking signal! UGH!”
Tossing my phone back onto the passenger’s seat, I checked my car’s console for any signs of life. The console did (somehow) still have power, so I quickly removed the keys from the ignition and trekked outside to inspect the car again.
Upon closer inspection I noticed that the front wheels were slightly bent, so this car was indeed totaled.
“Great… My mom is gonna kill me…”
But luckily for me, still no fire, and no leaking fuel.
I sighed to myself, “Where the heck am I… (This can’t be happening. This can’t POSSIBLY be happening…)” With no signal right here, I need to find a way to contact the police, and my parents. If I stay here, no one will be able to find me. Plus, it gave me something to do.
I went over to my passenger door and grabbed my phone. Still… no signal. Sighing to myself I grabbed my keys, locked the door, and stepped away from my car into the forest. It was absolutely jaw droppingly gorgeous, and I mean it! Every nook and cranny of this forest was nothing but clear and green. In SoCal, you can climb the mountains to hike in a forest, but they are nowhere near as high quality as this one.
In SoCal, all of the trails are well worn and covered in trash. You can still hear the sounds of cars rolling past on the freeway. But here it was quiet and serene. Too quiet. There was the rustling of leaves upon the wind, but no birds or scuttling of little animals. “(Odd…)”
And the smell, oh how fresh the smell was! The smell of fresh leaves and grass filled the air. I closely observed dew covering every surface, and coating the bottom of my gown. It felt like a fairy tale with how pristine this forest looked.
I walked through the forest, making sure to always keep my car in sight. Holding up my phone, I tried to snag a signal from one of the overhead satellites.
“(No… No… NO!) Why am I not getting a signal?!”
I frantically started to walk farther and farther searching for any sign of civilization. But there were none in the immediate area, just game trails and lush forest.
I’m not going to lie, I was starting to hardcore panic. My brain just could not comprehend what I was seeing. The ground felt real. The smell of the car and forest was real. The seatbelt bruise was starting to hurt. This was real.
Right as I was about to completely lose it, I spotted something. Dashing up to it like a madwoman, I saw it was a trail. But unlike the game trails before, this one was too wide to be one. It had to be a real trail.
“Yes!” I shouted. Civilization was near. I retreated back to the car to make sure it was still good. When I approached, I noticed some rustling in the grass. I stopped.
“(Great, the last thing I need is some raccoon or something raiding my car.)”
I watched in silence as the rustling approached the car and… out popped… what looked like a raccoon.
It had brown and white stripes, with large claws on its paws. Its fur was extremely spiky and so was its bushy tail. It looked almost like a bundle of straw. It also had wide and rounded eyes. Much larger than any normal animal she’d seen. But the most defining thing was that this raccoon was wearing a small satchel bag on its back.
“What. The actual. Fuck.” I muttered as this creature came into view. It froze in its tracks and looked at me. But what it did next I was NOT expecting. Its eyes grew wide with fear as its vision traced all the way up to my face. Its tail tucked underneath its body as it began to visibly tremble with fear. Its mouth morphed into a crooked frown and its ears clenched as well. It seemed… to talk as well, releasing a small noise that I didn’t catch.
“Uh… hello?” I shouldn’t have said that. Because the raccoon jumped up and bolted in the opposite direction making noises as it did. “Umm. Okay? (What the heck was that thing?! That was no raccoon. It did look familiar somehow.)
Putting that to the side to save my sanity, I double checked the locks and I pushed away from the car and through the forest, back to the trail that I saw.
Once I reached it, I had to make a choice. Left or right? “(Well, this forest does seem like it’s on the side of a mountain… somehow, so right for the view)” Right it was. I needed to see where I was. I knew the San Gabriel Mountains like the back of my hand, and I could tell where I was from the view.
I tracked up the path, mentally and physically marking where my car was with a large stick I stuck in the ground. This path was just your standard footpath, however there was absolutely no trash in the area whatsoever. Completely and utterly spotless. “(This can’t be the San Gabriel Mountains, there’s no trash! And now that I think about it, the trees look more like New England trees rather than SoCal trees.)”
I hiked up the trail as fast as I could, careful to log where I was going. The last thing I wanted to do is to get lost here in this forest. If help was coming, I needed to be near my car. I also kept holding up my phone, hoping that any sort of signal would hit it. But alas, nothing. Luckily, I was charging my phone before the crash, so it was at 70% battery. I could do this all day. But every time I got no signal from a cell tower or satellite was a knife in the gut.
After around five to ten minutes of hiking, and forever grateful that I had tennis shoes in the car, I finally saw something different. It looked like the slope of that path was running farther up, and I could see the sides of the mountain start to appear. There were also less trees on the sides, so I knew that there would be some sort of clearing up ahead soon.
Sure enough, cresting the hill, I saw what I had wanted: a clear view of the world around me.
Approaching the edge of the cliff, I looked out to see…
My heart stopped in its tracks.
It was indeed a city, but not the kind of city I know. I’ve lived in Southern California all of my life. I know what this place is like, and this city is not that. For one, it was small, like really small. It looked like Lone Pine or Bishop rather than Pasadena. For those dear readers who aren’t in SoCal, Bishop is a small town in Northern California. A rural, but large town. That’s what this one is. And boy was it colorful.
It seemed every single building was some bright color or pink or blue or anything in between, all shining in the sunlight. Next, it was close to the ocean. I was absolutely nowhere near the ocean when I crashed. Uh oh. The ocean itself stretched as far as the eyes could see.
To the left, I could see wide open plains and small mountains. Nothing like the ridges and foothills of SoCal.
Oh dear lord.
“W-What…” I was failing. My brain was failing. My legs were failing. This was not SoCal. The sprawling suburbs. The endless car noises. This is not my home nor any place I know. It was too perfect. Every fiber of my being wanted to run. The fresh air, the lack of trash… this couldn’t be real. It was impossible. Then I remembered that raccoon with a satchel. That was no raccoon.
“Ampha?”
I froze. Behind me, there was a voice. Something that didn’t sound human. I didn’t want to turn around, I really didn’t, but I knew I had to. I had to see who inhabited this world.
And so I did.
There were multiple of them. Some large; some not. Some curious; some weary. But they looked just as shocked to see me as I did them. But the second I laid eyes on them, I knew what they were, who that one “raccoon” I saw earlier was, and I knew what had happened to me.
I was not on Earth anymore.
I couldn’t possibly be, even though my brain fought otherwise.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I simply couldn’t.
Pokémon were staring back at me.