Chapter Text
I was freezing and shivering. Despite the mound of blankets I had heaped upon myself, I still felt cold. I knew I wasn’t physically cold, which was little comfort. I was out of tablets to alleviate the symptoms, and it was too late for me to get any more, I was well and truly fucked.
Watching a nature documentary on some free-to-air TV station wasn’t my best idea of a Friday night; however, it was free, and my splitting headache didn’t give me many choices in what I could do. So watching an old man walk around a forest and expound a long-winded platitude about the beauty of Britain’s trees and flowers was the best I had alongside the audible music from next door.
Pushing up the blankets, what little heat I did have on me evaporated, and my body shivered even worse than before. I went to check my cupboard for what had to be the fifth time today. What stared back at me was a pack of stale salt and vinegar chips that I had got in the off chance that somebody might visit my dingy apartment after I made some friends. I let out a hoarse sigh; even without coughing my lungs out, it felt horrible. At least for now, it was even worse than being broke. However, it's still better than working for those assholes.
I checked my old microwave for the time. 11:27.
I couldn’t sleep because I felt like shit, and I probably felt more like shit because I wasn’t sleeping. When I did it, it was just intermittent; I’d be half-conscious in some absurd fever dream. Last night, I had pirates shouting at me to start firing at something I couldn’t recall. At the very least, it was something to write in my dream journal in the morning. I would be enjoying the absurdity of them a whole lot more if I didn’t feel terrible the entire time.
The worst of it was yesterday. I had a job interview and, without a doubt, blew it. It’s not a great look to show up like a corpse in a suit. Sure, they went through the motions of an interview with all the cordiality that it deserved. I smiled, he smiled, and if I could see his notes, it’d probably be a big red line through whatever he had written during the talk. I couldn’t even keep my thoughts straight the entire day.
It took a whole month to even get that response. A degree in engineering can take you anywhere, except for getting a job, it seems. It’d be put to better use if I wiped my ass with it. I can’t believe I wasted five years of my life on that. Whatever, I still have another month to try.
I glanced back at the TV. The old man was resting on one knee next to a bundle of bright blue flowers that he called the alpine forget-me-not, explaining its limited spread in the northern parts of the country. All very interesting stuff. Grabbing the remote, I turned off the TV. I was going to have some weird flower-themed dreams with how much of that I watched tonight, well, maybe. That pirate dream came out of nowhere.
Gathering the pile of blankets into my arms, I tossed them onto my bed and laid them out evenly. My neighbours' music was far louder in my bedroom than the living room. If I could, I’d be shouting at them to shut the fuck up. The moment I even speak up higher than a weak talking voice, I don’t even make a sound. Instead, I decided to smash the wall.
Considering I’d punch a hole through the wall if I hit it hard enough, I tried to keep it as light as possible. I felt like I was wailing at the wall, two arms up, and I was hitting as hard as I could get away with. The music turned off.
Thank God for that.
I got changed, brushed my teeth and slipped right into bed, resting under the heavy covers. Cold and still shivering. I should have saved my tablets for when I was going to bed. I didn’t even wait before I started rolling around. Five minutes later, my neighbours turned their shitty music back on. I wish I could fucking kick their speaker until it turned into a pile of garbage. Better yet, leave this dump so I don’t have to deal with them, ever.
Sweating and shivering, I tried clearing my head instead of letting some feel-good revenge fantasy keep me up all night. It was time to try to get some sleep. Maybe thirty minutes passed, maybe an hour or more, but eventually, I drifted out of consciousness.
My sleep was eventually interrupted by a state where I was half-conscious. Not really awake, but definitely not asleep either. All I knew was that I was uncomfortable and feeling completely out of it. I turned myself over, and my covers felt light. At the same time, I could swear I could hear the ravings of birds. and they sounded like a bloody alarm going off. At least the music had stopped.
Without a doubt, it was the product of a fever dream I was unable to get myself out of. One more turn and some time in the fever dream, and I drifted away again.
However many hours later, I managed to fall asleep, and I was still dreaming of those birds when I woke up. A small amount of light went over my eyelids, and I turned over to get it out of my face.
Huh?
That doesn’t make any sense.
My room had a window, which I pulled a curtain over before I went to bed. How is there light coming in? Rolling myself over, I opened my eyes just a little.
Looking up high, I could see the source of light. It came through a paper-like material in a lattice shape, with a window behind it. It was at the midpoint between where I was sleeping and the roof.
I had to be dreaming, considering I still felt like shit; it was the most delusional fever dream I’ve ever had. This was not my room. The best way to regain some sense was to wake myself up with some cold water. Climbing out of bed, I almost tripped putting my feet on the ground. My bed was ridiculously low.
Looking back, it might have been as tall as my hand; the mattress looked like two pieces of thick cloth stacked on top of each other. On top was a white quilt and a pillow, which I had gotten myself out of. This had to be a normal dream; I’m not sure why I’d dream myself practically sleeping on the floor, though.
I guess that meant I was lucid dreaming. I tried to will myself not to feel like shit, but my nausea and headache didn’t go anywhere. That didn’t work, so the next attempt was to try to shut those annoying birds up. Didn’t work again. I wish I had searched up how to control lucid dreams. Was there a technique to this that I was missing?
This had to be the most vivid and clear dream I’ve ever had. Fever dreams were vivid and complete nonsense; normal dreams were hazy, but at least they made some sense. There would be a lot to write in the dream journal when I got up. I wasn’t going to bother ‘waking’ myself up, at least not yet. I doubt it’d do anything for my sickness that followed me into my dreams. I wanted to see what my mind had conjured for me.
The room had a wooden look to it, white walls and a mostly brown floor divided by thick black strips. The paper window was just on one side of the room; on my right was an even larger paper door. It was a traditional room, which I knew, l was pretty sure it was Japanese.
The door slid open, and I looked around more. The rooms were similar. Although for some reason, there were plants and flowers in nearly every corner and shelf that would fit it. Hanging photos that I couldn’t quite make out, I could turn the lights on, but I think it was rather atmospheric. Maybe a monster would chase me in the hall? That’d be fun to write about.
I ended up finding the bathroom; it was bright, I had to squint when entering, and it wasn’t helping my nausea. The bloody window was open. Presumably, there would be insects in here because of it, but not a single one. Dream logic, I guess.
I didn’t pick up on it before, but everything in this building looked like it was made in the 90’s, the other half looked like it had come out of a tourist trap. I turned on the cold tap and felt the water. For a dream that was cold. Wetting my hand, I wiped my face and grabbed for the towel.
Drying my face, I looked up.
A girl stared back.
I whipped my head around, expecting to see her behind me. I looked in the corner of my eye to see her follow my movement. What the hell? The only logical conclusion here is that I am this girl. Black medium-short hair reaching right to her neck, a mix of grey and brown eyes. She looked kind of Asian, but not really. But what was nagging me was that I swear I’ve seen this girl before, but where from?
A loud, sharp chirp came from the window that shook me out of my line of thought. I turned to it with the full intention of wringing that annoying bird's neck, but before I took one step forward, I had a good look at it and paused.
Is that a fucking Pokemon?
I took a deep breath and left the room, went to the kitchen, opened the paper cover of the window, and sat down to drink some water. I managed to find the pantry in hopes of making some hot chocolate, but there were only tea leaves, all in the form of cakes, and I couldn’t be arsed figuring that out. So instead, I got a cup of cold water and found a pillow to sit on.
I wasn’t really going to strangle the bird. More like angrily shoo it away. Luckily for me, it flew off with one sharp look. While water wasn’t as good as a nice hot chocolate, it’d do to calm my thoughts. No sense freaking out, that won’t achieve anything. Pretty sure they tell you to do that in survival training, too.
More importantly, this was not a dream at all. Or at least, I’m pretty sure. It feels far too real to be otherwise; my addled mind didn’t catch the very obvious signs that I was in an entirely different body, which in hindsight was just stupid. Of course, being in a different body and seeing a Pokemon is also stupid, an utterly absurd premise which I would reject if not for my current experience.
Being in the body of a random woman unnerved me. I could feel the difference. There was the obvious missing piece, but this body moved differently and had a different weight to it. The dissonance between my mind and body was only worsened by my half-lucid state of mind.
So, I have to figure out a few things. First, where am I? Second, who am I, and finally, how do I get back? The first point could be narrowed down by a lot. I have to make the assumption that I am currently in a world with Pokemon, which is the least insane assumption I can make. I hadn’t paid attention to the series for about a decade, so while I’m aware of the existence of places like Galar and Paldea, I have no idea about them.
Taking into account what I do know, the annoying bird was a Pidgey, which came from Kanto and Johto. I’m pretty sure they also exist in other regions, but I can’t remember for the life of me, so it wouldn’t help. There’s also the faux-Japanese aesthetic, which helps pin the potential regions down. But I’ve very helpfully narrowed it down to 20% of the Pokemon world now.
Where exactly I am can be narrowed down once I’ve gotten any identification for who I currently am. Which brings me to another problem: I have no idea where she would keep it. I mentally made a list of the most likely locations: her bedroom, near the front door, or in a cupboard near either.
I put my cup on the counter, near a small box of tablets, which was also next to one of the dozens of potted plants littering every nook that could hold one. The packet said they were painkillers, but the ingredients were complete nonsense to me; for now, I wouldn’t touch them. I was more interested in looking around.
Making my way back to the bedroom, I opened every window cover along the way; the shock from before only slightly lessened my fever since my mind was preoccupied with other things. But I wasn’t going to wallow in darkness and make it worse. Best to get some sunshine in, it also makes finding anything a lot easier, which should have been my first thought.
The cupboards, or better said, wardrobes in the bedroom, were stuffed full of clothes. Notably, dresses. Nearly all of them were kimonos; they were carefully folded and placed in smooth stacks, which fit the whole traditional aesthetic of the house. It gave more credence to my idea that this was somehow a tourist trap, because who the hell would wear almost exclusively a kimono every day?
The other wardrobes weren’t very helpful for figuring out who the girl was. Hairbands, pins, underwear, and a multicoloured collection of ribbons. The bedroom was a dead end, and more likely to be part of some Japanese museum exhibit than an actual house.
There wasn’t a safe anywhere, not that I could open it anyway. I didn’t know where the front door was, so I had to do some searching, opening every door and window along the way. I got to a door with a window that looked out to a path leading to a gate, meaning I had found my entrance.
Closing that door, I looked around. There was a collection of uncomfortable-looking wooden sandals put into boxes, and a single pair of normal-looking running shoes alongside it that looked largely unworn. On the other side was a cupboard with numerous handbags, picking the one closest to the door, I opened it wide.
There was an inordinate amount of makeup inside. What I was looking for was a wallet, and I found a bright green one. Inside were a few notes of unoriginally named ‘Poke-dollars’, but most importantly, a card with her face on it.
Trainer Erika
Erika?
…
Oh.
Gym Leader Erika. I happen to be in the body of Gym Leader Erika, the tired, soft-spoken, indolent, man-hating grass-type specialist from Kanto who surrounds herself with an entourage of sycophants. It could be worse; I could have been some faceless grunt awaiting a hyper beam to the face. Or prison for life, executions don’t fit the vibe of a children's game.
It was rather remarkable that I still felt calm. What kind of shit have I found myself in? No wonder this house was so traditional and full of plants; that’s her entire vibe. Hopefully, I’ll be one sleep away from waking up back home because the last thing I know about is how to do her jig.
I clasped the wallet in one hand and took a deep breath.
At the very least, I should try to figure out as much as I can while I’m here. It’d be fun to write down for when I get back. I’m praying that she owns a computer or something because the local library sounds like a terrible idea.
A bit of searching later, and I was very happy to find exactly what I was looking for. A computer, the password was written down right beside it, Erika123, nice OPSEC from Erika here. There was a form of Internet connection, except with the ‘Poke’ addition to the start of it, making it ‘Poke-net’.
I started on a very generic-looking web page that looked like it had been designed in 2000. It contained links to various forums and video-sharing sites, but typing in any general query here returned nothing. Seemingly, the entire Internet had been centralised into a very small group of websites.
BattleWatch
PokeLife
KantoTalk
Indigo League Press
Hoenn League Press
Following these were a dozen other regional forums or news sites. Interestingly, there was nothing mentioning regions outside of Indigo and Hoenn. Maybe they are on a different Internet? Erika had an account for the first three; the first thing that greeted me when I clicked on them was a login page with all the details already filled out. I clicked ‘continue as guest’ instead.
All three of them were traditional forum layouts; thankfully, they had the sense to add a search bar, so I didn’t have to crawl through thousands of posts to find anything specific. BattleWatch was a collection of videos of Pokemon battles, which people could comment on. PokeLife was a general lifestyle, and Pokemon problem-related forum and KantoTalk was in part PokeLife and part Kanto politics.
Out of curiosity, I searched up Lance. Turns out the man had just won his bid for Champion against Pyrce; the fact that he was only twenty-three was constantly mentioned in the news articles, which was considered exceptionally young for such a position. What will they have to say when two ten-year-olds grind him into dust?
The battle on BattleWatch had over a thousand pages of replies. Watching the battle was something else; no wonder people loved battling so much in this world. Lance’s Dragonite literally burst the air with every attack, and chunks of ice coalesced over Pyrce’s Glaceon into a monstrous storm of hail as large as a person. This was a decidedly way cooler sport than soccer.
Leaning back into the creaking chair, I searched for Erika. Every thread on Lance was absolutely massive and filled with something interesting; Erika’s was not so much. She got the most attention on PokeLife, where she acted as a rare celebrity poster on one of the many subforums, notably the gardening one.
BattleWatch had a few of her battles catalogued, none of which were particularly popular, and they had only started two years ago with her inaugural battle as Gym Leader, going up against Lorelei, who both thrashed Erika with a brutal 6-2 victory, and also had most of the attention in the thread.
Erika’s Pokemon struggled with Lorelei. Admittedly, I had no idea how Pokemon battles worked, but it didn’t look good. Interestingly, most comments about Erika were positive, congratulating her for such an impressive start to her time as Gym Leader. One poster went on about how Blaine would have crushed her without a single loss.
KantoTalk was the most helpful for figuring out anything about Kanto and Erika, thanks to the politics threads and local news reports being posted here. Erika became Gym Leader at twenty after the former clan holding it went and disappeared. To find a fill-in, the mayor, in agreement with the League, held a city competition for Celadon, with points given for the popular vote and by the League’s judges in a local Pokemon tournament.
Erika stole the popular vote; she was well known from her work with community programs, and, as some posters pointed out, being an attractive young woman helped. Her performance in the tournament was admirable, enough to get a high position from the judges, but she didn’t win the judges’ vote. That was another girl called Julia. In the end, it was Erika who won thanks to the popular vote, becoming Gym Leader at the age of twenty.
Quite a few posters outside of Celadon were confused as to why the strongest trainer didn’t get the position, but the popularity part was deemed absolutely necessary by the people living in Celadon, with the justification that Gyms would be ruled by a rotating cycle of Ace trainers if it were solely the strongest who took it.
I had to think, how much did a Gym Leader make? With a little bit of searching, I learnt that they had a monthly salary of 18000 Poke-dollars from the League. From what I knew from the games, Poke-dollars were sort of based on the Yen, so this was a pittance. I searched up the price of milk to just make sure, two litres of Moomoo Milk were 3.5 Poke-dollars.
Well. Good to know that Poke-dollars worked in the same denominations back home, which also meant that Erika was raking in almost a quarter million a year. Comments elsewhere discussed their incomes outside of the League salary, which was the majority of what Gym Leaders made.
They had a few sources of income, first were Gym challenges, where challengers, after the first attempt, had to pay a small fee so they couldn’t just hog the Gym’s schedule. Gyms associated with clans also had an independent estate, which helped pay for their upkeep, as Celadon had. Finally, the personal connections and businesses of the individual Gym Leader.
I recall that Erika ran a fragrance store attached to her Gym in some way, and it was fairly popular from what I saw. The Gym Leader who was associated with business was Giovanni, and he continuously flexed his wealth through acts of charity. The public image of a highly respected philanthropist was a far cry from the terrorist leader of Team Rocket I knew him as.
Finding Erika’s exact income was pretty hard. Nobody on either PokeLife or KantoTalk could agree on an exact number. But everything pointed to her being a middle-of-the-road Gym Leader in everything. Not that rich, but not a poor Gym Leader either, not a powerful Gym Leader, but she wasn’t a pushover.
I continued to crawl through various websites for random tidbits, made myself lunch and dinner in the kitchen, where thankfully she kept normal appliances and a very well-stocked pantry. I think I managed to figure out how to use the tea cakes, considering it wasn’t too terrible when I had it. Still not as good as hot chocolate.
As the day ended, I decided to take some of the mystery tablets for my splitting headache. Just before I got ready to go to bed, I found a thread on KantoTalk. ‘Unofficial Kanto richest trainers’.
Giovanni, Professor Oak, Koga, Agatha, a few trainers I had never heard of before, and, just a little down, Erika.
Estimated Wealth: 2.8 Million Poke-dollars.
I think I wouldn’t quite mind if I didn’t wake up back home.