[Pokemon World] Mage Quest

Chapter 1: welcome home?

Nick awakened in what they thought was their bed. The direction of the light from the window seemed to tell otherwise. They opened their eyes, finding it hard to focus. Muddles memories of a dream soon forgotten. Prophecy and turmoil. A cry for help. A warm bed.
Nick sits up and they soon realize something.

This is not their beautiful house.

---

A woman in her late 40's is asleep in her own bed, while her trusty companion, a Mr. Mime (in a dress, of course) is downstairs, cooking breakfast. Bacon and eggs. The smell fills the house.

---

Nick takes a whiff. A familiar scent. Somehow, despite in what seems to be the wrong house, it almost feels like... Home?

They look around. They find their hat, glasses, and pokeball. Familiar affects.
Nick lets the pokemon out of the pokeball.

In a beam of red light, a sizable squat figure appears, with a rather noteworthy tail.
It's a slowpoke. But not just any slowpoke. It's Slope. She lets out a great yawn, name tag jingling from her lavender collar.

"Well, at least there's someone familiar here." Nick pets their companion on the head. Slope seems to be in high spirits today.

Nick puts on their hat and glasses, and adjusts their prosthetic leg. They make their way downstairs, Slope trailing behind.

---

Mr. Mime sets out the plates, still steaming hot. Though Chris will likely sleep a bit longer, the new guest will surely be hungry.
You can't hide from a psychic type so easily.
Speaking of which, here's the new guests now.

Nick and Slope arrive downstairs and are greeted by a Mr. Mime... In a dress? A maid dress at that.

"Uh... Hi?" Nick nervously greets the Mr. Mime.

"Mister mime!" Mr. Mime greets back, doing a curtsy. They gesture at a plate of eggs and bacon. A dish of kibble can be seen nearby as well.

"A-are you sure?"

Mr. Mime nods. They insist.

"Well if you say so." Nick sits down and begins eating breakfast. Slope soon follows.

---

Thoughts swirl as Nick eats their eggs and bacon. It seems harmless enough. After all, Mr. Mime insisted. Can't say no to a host like that, especially first thing in the morning.

They think back to last night. The spaghetti dinner at the lab. To put it lightly, they made quite the scene. Between their desire to do something against the hepian government, their anxieties over causing misfortune in poor execution, and general worry for the wellbeing of their friend Mei, it was just too much to handle. The gravity of the potential consequences...
It's a thing that seems to pop up sometimes, though they wonder if they just use it as an excuse to act out in public. They say that they want to have an impact, but do they really?

Shortly before taking off, Nick had been informed of a rune reading, one that the group had seemed to think applied to them. The conclusion was that they needed to heal.
They needed to take a vacation.

Like sure, Nick could probably open their sylladex and pull out any number of wonderful artifacts to take them back to their own world, but perhaps they're here for a reason?
Maybe they should try to enjoy this vacation?

---

Nick finishes their plate, licked clean. It's hard to go wrong with eggs and bacon.

"Thank you very much. I needed that." Nick hands over the plate to Mr. Mime. They gladly accept it.

Nick walks outside a short distance. A cool breeze greets them. Distant dandelion pokemon drift upon the wind. There's something almost familiar about this place.

And then they find it.

A gravestone, with their deadname written on it.
1992-2007.
Mauled and eaten by a Snorlax.

Nick stands there, almost shaking.
Slope plods over to see what's going on.

Nick falls to their knees and bursts into tears.

They know exactly where they are.
This is the world where Pichu quest happened... Except it never did.

Slope nudges against Nick for emotional support. Nick crouches down and gives her a big hug, still crying.

Chapter 3: You need a license for that?!



After a brisk walk, Nick and Slope arrive in Crossroad City. It's weird. Nick never could really picture this place all that well when they were writing the original story. Regardless, they have a pokemon center to visit. That place has gotta have what they need to be recognized as a trainer around here, right? They sincerely hope they won't have to go to like, the rough equivalent of the DMV to get their trainer card.

Letting their feet guide them, Nick manages to locate the pokemon center.
As expected, Nurse Joy is standing behind the front desk, being assisted by her trusty chansey.
"Welcome to the pokemon center, how may I help you?"

"uhh... I'm kinda new around here and I only recently got my first pokemon. Is there a way for me to like, get a trainer card around here?"

Nurse joy looks Nick over. nothing particularly seems out of the ordinary. Like sure, its impossible to tell their gender, they wear a prosthetic leg, and their eyes are an uncommon color, but Nurse Joy has seen far stranger folks walk through her doors.
"My, you must be new around here. You'll need to sign up for a day-course to earn your trainer's license."

"Huh, really?"

"Yes. As per the rules of the Pinto League, trainers must pass a test after attending a class in order to get a trainer's license. Thankfully like most essential services offered to pokemon trainers, this is payed for by the govenment, since proper pokemon handling is considered an important skill to have."

"...Huh, okay then. Where do I sign up and where's the class held?"

"You can sign up on the website. We offer free wifi here so you can easily get online for whichever reason you need."

"Ah nice. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Nick then finds a spot to sit on a nearby couch. Slope follows along at an ambling pace. Nick pulls out their captchalogue camera out of their pokebag and uncaptcha their gamer laptop while nobody's looking. They turn on the laptop and it connects to the internet!
Unfortunately, Pestercord doesn't seem to want to connect to any of the memos they usually frequent.
Perhaps its for the best.

Thankfully though, most other websites they use seem to still be able to connect.

Following a url printed out on a flyer, Nick makes their way to the Pinto league official website. They search for the signup form for the trainer class and manage to find it. Some of the details are hard to fill out, such as home address (used the address of their parallel mom), but thankfully it seems to accept their efforts. They were almost worried that they'd be disqualified due to their parallel being dead, but thankfully going under their current name seems to have mitigated that. (either that, or pokemon training isn't just limited to members of the living. Considering ghosts and ghost types exist, it is within the realm of possibility.)
It appears the next class being held in this town is tomorrow.
Nick signs up for it.

In the meantime, they decide to do some drawing for their webcomic. They pull up some files and fix up some things to hash out two quick panels. They upload them and put up the pages.
Realizing they're probably making the others worried, Nick decides to write a letter, to be sent via fairy circle.



They pull out their token necklace, the one given to them by Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness of the Winter Court. They need to think of a good target where their letter won't be missed.

Nick decides to set the target to Gene's Garden on planet Desertia, on top of the largest table in the bar. With firm resolve and focused desire, they make a circle of mushrooms sprout right there in the pokemon center. They briefly get up from their seat to place the letter in the middle, and soon enough it gets whisked away, mushrooms disappearing with it.

It may not be instant, but at least its something.

Nick looks up from their computer work, hearing their title in a place where few to none should know it.
It hits them like a brick to the gut.

They see this girl before them. Something feels... Intensely familiar about her, but they can't quite place it.

"...um, uh..." Nick isn't sure what to say.
Are they safe here? The girl before her has ultra balls, clearly she's been places before, but it's also very possible that she stole them.
Nick wracks their mind to find some way out of this confrontation.

"...I'm on vacation. I try not to focus on my main line of work while I'm here."

Thankfully they managed to think of something truthful to say.

Nick is still on edge until the mysterious high level trainer reveals her trainer card.
It all clicks into place.

"Wait, are you like, the Hazel I met years ago? Or like, a parallel version of her? Looks like you're pretty well seasoned."

Meanwhile, Slope finally notices what's going on and stares at Chim.
"Sloooow?"

Nick thinks for a moment.
So they're Connected...

"Well, if a friend of mine trusts you, I suppose I can trust you too. I'm planning on going on a journey to take on the gym leaders in this region. I still need to take the day-class for my trainer license though. I just signed up for the class being held tomorrow across town. I figure I'll probably pass with flying colors if it's mostly focused on theory. I'm pretty knowledgeable about that kinda stuff."

Slope has a warm smile in Chim's presence.

She finally found it.

After what was only a few hours in the Otherworld (being twice as many in Gene), Brae had found the right entrance that would get her to the Pinto Region. Universe hopping with fairy circles was, usually, more complicated than just normal teleporting, but that's a conversation for another time.

She looked younger here, and human, in an attempt to better blend in. Sprinkle hopped along at her side, the other three tucked away into their pokeballs on the strap of her bag. She didn't know the name of the town, but the best place to find anyone in a new city was the Pokémon Center. If Nick wasn't there, it was possible Nurse Joy would have seen them and knew where they went.

Luckily, she had caught Nick just in time. Pushing open the doors, she spotted the Mage and waved excitedly.

"Found you!"

"Everyone was really worried when you disappeared that second time! Even though you sent that note, it was still making everyone anxious."

Sprinkle, a female eevee, bounces over to Slope and climbs onto her back, wiggling happily. The little fox-like Pokemon had so much energy, like it was made of pure sugar.

Brae looks around, her hands on her hips. Even here, she was dressed in all yellow. "I don't know how long I can stay, but now that I've been here, it'll be easier to come back again."