Chapter Text
Prologue: I am Stuck??!!
“We will be reaching Lumiose City Station in 5 minutes. Passengers, please prepare your luggage for the stoppage!”
A crazy mechanical announcement woke me up.
Yes, I was napping since I barely got to sleep over the last two days!
There’s a short tale behind this situation or a long one which can be told over time.
My name is Arka, which was a strange name in a way for these lands but I am unofficially a Faller or someone who ended up in another dimension due to some scientific anomaly based incident back in my home dimension.
But my entry to these lands was not peaceful. It instead started with my mind, soul and memories getting ripped into a recently dead trainer. Arceus has to do something with that possibly with laws of different dimensions being strange anyways.
That idiot got stomped over by a bunch of rampaging dragon pokemon from different regions, fighting over winning the favour of a shiny Alpha Female Garchomp, all of whom strangely ended up in the deep forests beyond the boundaries of Nacrene City in Unova region (maybe due to migration patterns).
The revival came with a funny escape situation thereafter despite no one chasing me since those dragons were busy fighting amongst themselves, showcasing that deceased trainer whose soul has departed from that danger, had been foolish enough to come between a battle royale like battle between aggressive dragon type pokemons. Note that this had happened when I was of the age of 10 years, way beyond the permissible age for being a trainer in Unova which normally was around 14-15 years of age.
Now, moving onto why I didn’t get my sleep. It came down to two words: Treasure Hunt.
That’s right as given that currently, I have been enrolled in Uva-Naranja School (both schools are combined here) in Paldea for over 3 years and found ways to avoid that exercise or at least going outside school boundaries for the first 3 years, until Headmaster Clavell found an ingenious way to stop that. But do note that, I already went through 3 Pokemon league circuits with tournament qualifications in Unova, Hoenn and Johto (starting from the age of 13 years and in that order).
That happened as the headmaster ended up calling up freaking Diantha, the Kalos Champion, which made me wonder how that even happened (or what kind of favours he owed to the champion whose battling status was on a decline after her disastrous showing at the Masters 8 Tournament against Leon) despite knowing that Paldea and Kalos share a border literally.
The actress+regional champion when arriving into the headmaster’s room, kind of shocked me and the headmaster, because of strangely wearing a casual incognito attire with a particular T-shirt with the logo of ‘Death to the Grookey Line’ in traditional Kalosian language.
She looked with a strange sense of familiarity at me in response and the Headmaster & the Champion in the room, talked a bit about my circumstances and thus decided that my assignment would involve travelling to Lumiose City and noting down how things have been like in the city after the Kalos Crisis that took place 5 years ago.
She explained further why this treasure hunt assignment is important.
This comes on the premise on the fact that the Kalos League is running on stability of sheer fumes and after the Master’s 8 World Tournament, every league employee was fired and was investigated through trusted internal and external agencies due to existing members possibly having links to the notorious Team Flare organisation (like all the social or wealthy elites of the country before the crisis).
Only the Elite 4 and herself as the champion stayed on but with that incident in mind and Kalos’s poor performance in the Masters 8, even they are not willing to stick around. Malva (with her ex Team Flare background) has volunteered for house arrest in Kanto before more serious charges can be handed to her, Siegbold left his role to focus on his cooking career while Diantha herself would leave after the renewed Kalos league will be established (but she is unofficially not a champion in a way).
Many who were directly responsible for the Kalos Crisis and firing of the ultimate weapon in way, were arrested with isolated life sentences or for more serious roles & also ending up with a mix of torture and execution (for the most serious cases) in often gruesome ways. With all kinds of pokemon present and the abilities they possess, that could not have been pleasant.
This process hasn’t taken place right after the Kalos crisis since the regional rebuilding and economic stabilisation was the focus with the assistance of Paldean pokemon league and others (barring Galarian groups for historical reasons).
Also many ‘non Team Flare’ aligned companies or groups like Quasartico Inc., etc took over a lot of those processes with the company named here taking over Lumiose City Redevelopment Project. But all these breakdown of the League functions and its current disbandment meant that no one knows what’s going in Kalos at both regional & local level at least and ones who survived the Kalos crisis focused on regional recovery which was an extensive amount of work with how the Ultimate Weapon ripped the region like a metaphorical knife rather than focusing on the usual local news and info communication. Diantha suspects there is a lot of political secrecy and tomfoolery going around which is enabling suppression of info about how the region is recovering and if at all.
Thus, I need to note down and inform what officially is going on in the city that the league will use that data to develop a renewed version of the Kalos League without the corruption of a deep seated genocidal organisation like Team Flare.
This is especially necessary according to the Diantha as according to the league, the companies or groups responsible for redevelopment in Lumiose City and many other major cities there, have not given any proper official update for the last 5 years along with the fact that the Lumiose City gym has been shifted to an empty field beside a national power grid substation system due to the tower itself going through renovation.
What a terrible demotion to Clemont - who should deserve better due to being the face of modern communication! He did develop the rotom phones as well as updating the poryphones for current technological level - both of which everyone uses now. It's possible due to this reason that he has focused on his research rather than pokemon battles as per the rumours I have heard about.
Given the pressure from two very official and well-connected figures in the pokemon world, how can I even refuse that task for my treasure hunt?
Moving back to the present, I feel mentally tired already and hope that it would be a nice place to go as a tourist. Nothing bad will happen at all, right?
I have kept two long-time pokemon with me for safety reasons as well. It helped that I only had a small backpack with some clothes and pokemon essential. For the stay, maybe some cheap hostel should do since I would be here for a week or so, right?
It seems like my internal questions are sounding more and more doubtful. Let’s nap for a few more minutes rather than watch more short form videos on an app which evolved the functions of the Holo-Caster though not in a good way (showcasing the addictive features similar to the social media apps of Earth).
Someone woke me up with some spilled water. In a normal world, this would be a prankster’s doing, but here, if you have a water pokemon, the responsible party would be easier to gauge.
It turned out to be a Swampert, who I named Hyde and was also my starter pokemon (in form of a mudkip) of my journey though not the first pokemon I owned. But I ended up with him due to the fact that my dad is from Hoenn or more precisely Sootopolis City, which is how he acquired it, not liking the Unova starters at all. Hyde is what I would consider as more pragmatic & intelligent than most kids and preferred to relax and read books on geopolitics or global economics while not fighting.
My first pokemon as I mentioned above was met shortly after I got my soul pulled into the so-called deceased trainer. He was known to be a notorious Karrablast (most likely abandoned by a Team Plasma Grunt) patrolling that part of the forest. But back then, he found something unique about me (most likely the soul being that from another world) and joined with me without any issues.
By now, he's an Escavalier named Pierce and his role is making sure that I don’t do anything foolish on my mum’s order. But for now, he’s busy resting in the pokeball.
Hyde looked eager to go to this new region and thus he decided to wake me up. The train was mostly packed but that cleared out as everyone moved out.
He’s using a teary look to get me going. Clever but you are not a kid anymore and almost an adult.
Ages of pokemon can get murky but through Professor Birch, my dad told me that the mudkip who was brought was also of the same age as mine since he refused to work with any of the local trainers in Hoenn looking to start their pokemon journey with regional starters.
This kind of makes me wonder whether both of my oldest pokemons chose me since I am a Faller and knew a lot more than the average trainer.
I am already 20 years old and will be turning 21 this month which looks to be September (the calendar here is funnily the same as our world’s calendar) so my Swampert is an adult like me, looking to explore the world. I guess he inherited that habit from me and just reading books doesn’t cut it like the real thing to learn about the world.
“Alright, I am moving out. Wait a moment!” I blankly said to him as he cheerfully moved out. Like a certain legend combating pokemon, he doesn’t like the pokeball at all though I normally refuse to bring out Pierce too at the same time.
Otherwise they end up challenging trainers for prank based reasons - which is a sign that they are way too intelligent than the average pokemon and can also inform me about something even without speaking which might be something to do with pokemon aura or something.
But there are only a few experts on that subject and they are too famous to approach or hard to search for. Thus no way to learn more about their intelligence for now.
Taking the bag out, I moved out with Hyde jaunting his steps and curiously going through the place. I need to exit the station to go to the city proper, right?
Before going there first, I tried contacting my dad or my mum to inform them that the trip went safely and I will be going to the city.
However strangely enough, none of their contacts are reachable. Panicking a bit, I also checked that even most social media content I had was Kalos based only which normally doesn’t happen in this globally connected world.
I looked and thought about the situation with some confusion. What is going on? Hyde also looked at my confusion with a similar expression. Not the time to be confused before battle!
Compared to me, rest of the people on the station must be from Kalos mostly as they didn’t react much and must have came from other Kalos station which kind of taken over the region as the more reliable travel methods as the wilds of Kalos have grown too dangerous after the weapon firing and is not suited to most civilians without an experienced trainer travelling with them though the trend from what Diantha told, has increased 2 years ago especially after the Masters 8 Tournament which kind of acted as a distraction to reduce the Kalos’s population worry about their homeland issues.
A chilling announcement stopped everyone almost on whatever they were doing.
“Kalosian League is announcing that the Lumiose International Airport has been attacked by wild pokemon and has seen extensive damage such that air travel to other regions has been shut down. Further updates about the recommencement of public airline travel will be announced in due time! Visitors of other regions except the ones from Paldea & Kalos, are cautioned to report to the nearest Pokemon Centres for necessary information and arrangements that can be made for them to live here until international air travel is operational. Communication methods are also available there as the public communication network towers have been damaged in the attack as well so be careful!”
Though it caused some murmurings, no panicked people were present. That might be due to all the people present at the station now, might be from Kalos or even Paldea in case of students like me despite having Unovan & Hoenn citizenship.
But now, what can I do? It seems like things will get worse out there and I am kind of being reminded of something which I don’t like.
Let’s move out! Everything might get worse but we have to stick together!
Hyde cheered in response while Pierce launched himself out of the pokeball. He was most likely reminded of his duty. His presence got some of the trainers nearby with grass-type pokemons a bit weary.
After all, to them, a well trained Escavalier is a big threat and I had trained Pierce to parry attacks that he's weak to and find unorthodox ways to move quickly since he inherently is not a fast moving pokemon.
We next moved towards the city with a famous tower and with some connection with my mother (something to look more on)...
Here we come, Lumiose City!