Into the Dark - A Pokemon Isekai

Waking up the morning was not nearly as pleasant as falling asleep had been. I hadn’t even realized how tired I’d been, and I’d passed out pretty much as soon as I’d laid down. Waking up however? I found myself in a strange contorted position, uncomfortably pressed up against something big and warm.

Blinking sleepily, I stared at the brown… thing next to me. It was big, with soft brown fur that stirred as I started to back away from it. A Bidoof of all things raised its head and stared at me before yawing, it’s mouth opening wide to show off massive front teeth. It dropped its head back down to the ground, and within a few seconds was already back asleep.

I swallowed nervously, then continued extracting myself from the Bidoof. It grumbled a little in its sleep, but I managed to get myself out without waking it up again. Carefully walking over to the river, I took a deep drink of water before staring at my reflection.

“At least I’m not ten years old again.” I muttered. “Thank God for small miracles. Or would it be Arceus here?”

Typically the protagonist of the Pokémon games was pretty young, which always seemed like a horrible idea to me as soon as I was old enough to realize what an idiot I had been when I was ten. I mean, I was almost twenty-three years old and my brain still wasn’t fully formed yet, but kids started going on journeys alone in the wilds of the world before they even had gone through puberty! I shuddered to think about having to go through puberty again, what a nightmare that would have been.

Now that I had some sleep, some food, and some water in me, it was time to really figure out what I was doing. I probably should have been more worried about the whole “disappearing from my home and reappearing in the Pokémon world” thing, but really? I was fine with it. Sure I would probably get a little homesick, but when I thought about trying to find a way back home, the thought just didn’t appeal to me.

Really, what did I have to look forward to if I did return? A family that I hadn’t spoken to in five years after they had disowned me for being trans? A dead-end job that barely paid the bills, and was provided just enough healthcare benefits to make me feel like myself?

Why would I ever want to return to that?

No. There was nothing for me to go back to on Earth, and nobody would really care if I went missing. That hurt a little bit to think about, but sadly it was true.

My job wouldn’t care, they would just find somebody else they could pay minimum wage to in order to fill my spot. My landlord wouldn’t care, he probably had a list of people as long as my arm looking for a place to stay. And my family? They would probably rejoice that they wouldn't have to think about of the black sheep of the family any longer. Back there I was a nobody. Here?

Well, here I was still a nobody.

I mean, I hadn’t existed in this world until yesterday, and there was no paperwork at all in my name. But the difference was that I could make something of myself here. Was I a great Pokémon battler? Not at all. I had tried some competitive matches online, but I was much more of a recreational player. Even if I didn’t become a champion or anything, I figured I would be much happier with a basic job here in this world if I could have a companion Pokémon or two with me.

This was my new life, and I was going to make it the best life that I could.

With the existential questions figured out, or at least put on hold for the time being, it was time for the practical part of figuring out what I was going to do now. The goal was still to find people and actual civilization – as nice as being in the forest was, I wanted to have my creature comforts back.

Coffee for example would be ideal, and a nice meal. And a real bed, my back was killing me from sleeping on the ground.

But wandering through the woods wasn’t exactly the smartest idea for trying to get to actually find said civilization. I needed a plan, some way to actually find where I wanted to go, and after a minute I realized the obvious.

“Just follow the river, duh.”

A lot of towns and cities had been built along the banks of rivers, and if this particular river was relatively small, well it would probably meet up with a larger one soon enough. Turns out my medieval studies degree wasn’t entirely useless.

Nodding decisively, I finished eating my last Pecha Berry, and began to head down the path of the river.

One interesting thing that I learned during my trek was that there was in fact regular bugs in the Pokémon world, an entirely unfortunate discovery that I discovered when a mosquito had bite me. After a couple of hours I was completely covered in bites and it took all of my willpower not to constantly scratch the bumps on my skin. Other insects also existed beyond the infernal mosquito, like flies, ants, and even regular bees, which actually made a certain kind of sense.

Bug Pokémon were relatively big, all things considering, and couldn’t really fulfill the role of regular insects. Sure I had seen some Combee gathering nectar, but they had been going around to only the biggest flowers that could support them. Naturally smaller insects like ants and flies had to exist so life could carry on, as well as arachnids like spiders – which was also quite the upsetting discovery when I had walked into a web. Although I supposed regular small spiders were preferable when compared to something like Spinarak, or especially Ariados.

I shuddered to think what it would be like to come across a three-foot tall spider.

All-in-all, the day passed by relatively quietly as I walked along the banks of the river, although I got plenty of chances to admire the local wildlife. I didn’t think I would ever get tired of walking down the path, staring at real, live Pokémon.

Well, I did get tired of the walking bit pretty quickly since back home I wasn’t exactly fond of walking everywhere. I guessed that I would have to change my views on that pretty quickly, since it seemed walking was one of the most common means of getting from place to place here.

At least the constant stops to catch my breath or rub my feet just meant that I had more time to stare at the Pokémon around me.

I had managed to travel for most of the day without seeing a single person before I decided to bed down for the night, finding another small patch of soft grass to lay down in. Some more Pecha Berries found in a nearby tree continued to go well with river water, and I decided life was good as I laid down for the night.

So it was a complete and utter surprise when I woke up in the middle of the night sweating and staring around in confusion, looking for whomever had just called for help.

/^\

The night was deathly quiet as I stared around in a near panic, trying to find where the call for help came from. Something rustled in the trees and I froze before carefully tilting my head to try and see what was moving.

A pair of bright red eyes stared unblinking at me from a tree branch, and I wavered under its gaze. I wanted to run but the eyes seemed to pin me in place against the ground.

Is this how I die?

I didn’t know what kind of Pokémon it could be, and that terrified the hell out of me. It could be anything; worst-case scenario those eyes belonged to something like a Gengar. They were rare in the wild, but they could be actively malicious if they were in a bad mood.

A malicious Gengar would be incredibly worrying, if not terrifying, to most trainers, but to me? A squishy human without any Pokémon to defend herself? It would be lethal.

What seemed like an eternity stretched out in the space of a few seconds as those red eyes stared into my soul, before the tension was finally released. They eyes disappeared for a second as the Pokémon blinked, then a soft hooting came from the tree. I slumped like a puppet with its strings cut, the terror draining out of me as I realized my mistake.

“A Hoothoot.” I laughed at myself, trying to ignore the trembling in my legs. “It was just a Hoothoot.”

The forest around me started to get some sense of normalcy again, Pokémon and bugs staring to move and talk to one another again. They didn’t just repeat their names over and over again like they did in the anime though, instead their cries were much more… natural. And terrifying.

I started to relax again, trying to get back to sleep, until I remembered something. I had been woken up by a call for help before I had seen the Hoothoot, not after.

My natural desire to just ignore the weird call for help warred with the other part of me, the one that said if somebody needed help you help them. Eventually the helping part of me won out, and I got up from the bed of grass, intent on trying to find whomever has asked for help.

My phone was at half-battery, but I hadn’t gotten a signal all day and I figured that if somebody really did need help then using the rest of the battery as a flashlight would be a good trade off. Besides, if it did run out of battery I could maybe try and get a Rotom to power it up, or enhance it like it did with the smartphones in the games and anime.

The light somehow made the surrounding forest feel even more dark and oppressive as only brief patches of it were illuminated at a time. Leaves rustled in the darkness as nocturnal Pokémon fled the bright light, and I was starting to wonder if this had been a bad idea.

Nighttime was when the more dangerous Pokémon tended to come out after all, and I still didn’t have a companion to help protect myself. As well, the more I thought about the call that had woken me up, the stranger it actually felt.

I couldn’t be entirely sure, but I was almost certain that I hadn’t woken up because I had heard somebody calling out for help. No, somehow that cry for help had been more… personal? That wasn’t the right word, but I struggled to find the correct way of putting it. It was almost as if I had felt the need for help, and my brain had interpreted that as somebody calling for me. My doubts weren’t helped by the fact that I hadn’t found anything yet, nobody struggling or in need of assistance.

Did I just have a bad nightmare and imagine it?

I hadn’t had a nightmare that bad in years, but I supposed I couldn’t rule the possibility out. It was as if the call for help had just been imagined, something not real something…

I smacked my head in frustration at how stupid I was being.

“This is the Pokémon world.” I whispered in irritation. “Of course I didn’t have to hear it! They have psychics here!”

The topic of psychic powers in Pokémon was something that had always puzzled me when I had been a kid. Sure there had been magical animals that could alter the very fabric of reality, but somehow the idea that people could communicate telepathically or move things with their mind seemed to strain my imagination. Regardless of how I had felt about it at the time though, it was a known fact that people could be psychic, and that changed the entire situation here and now.

The person who had called for help could have done so psychically, and that would explain why I hadn’t actually heard anything! It had just been something that had been telepathically beamed into my mind.

With a fresh sense of urgency I began looking even harder, trying to find who had sent the message while running through a list of possible trainers in my mind. Sinnoh didn’t have a lot of Psychic specialists that I remembered, mostly it was just Lucian in the Elite Four although maybe Fantina counted, though she specialized in Ghost Pokémon, not Psychic. Even then, I didn’t know if Lucian or Fantina were actually psychic or not, or if they just used Psychic Pokémon.

There were the real psychics like Sabrina, if I remembered correctly in the anime she had been able to turn people into dolls. I didn’t know if that was actually possible or not, but I wouldn’t want to run into her on a bad day regardless.

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I didn’t even notice when I walked into another clearing, at least not until much too late.

Two men spun around at the sight of my light as I entered the barren patch of forest, although one of the men was so big I honestly thought he was a Hariyama at first. He was carrying some kind of bulky contraption in his arms that looked vaguely a gun of all things. The other man was much shorter and skinnier, and was holding a tablet-like device.

“Oh.” I said, nervously. “Uh, hi there. Sorry I didn’t mean to intrude on whatever… this is.”

I made a vague gesture at the clearing, although something about it seemed off. Looking a little closer there was a shape on the ground, dark against the grass. Shining my light on it, I frowned as it revealed the yellow fur of what looked to be an Elekid of all things.

The two men shared a look, and the big one took a step closer to me, forcing me to bring my light off of the Pokémon on the ground.

“What are you doing here?” The big man said, his voice sounding like he was chewing on gravel.

“I uh, don’t know?”

“You don’t know?” The other man said skeptically, his voice thin and reedy.

“Yeah I just kind of… woke up here? Is that Elekid okay?”

“Don’t worry about the Elekid.”

“Yeah, but I just thought I heard…” The big man took a step closer, forcing me to take a step back.

“I said, don’t worry about the Elekid. If fact if I was you, I would just turn away from here and go back to wherever you came from.”

I was about to do just that when the memory of the cry for help came back to me. “Listen, I thought I heard somebody asking for help. I don’t know if you all heard it or not, but somebody out there is in trouble.”

They exchanged another look, and the reedy voice man sighed and nodded.

“Alright.” The big man said before switching his attention back to me. “Somebody is in trouble here, but right now it’s going to be you.”

He took another massive step closer, putting him within arm’s reach of me. This time my feet felt like they were rooted in place as I stared up at him, easily seven feet tall if I was an inch. He cracked his knuckles, and I had a very bad feeling.

“This is going to hurt isn’t it?” I asked, and a grin spread across his face.

“Oh yes.”

The last thing before I blacked out was his fist, blurring towards me impossibly quickly.