My name is Dokuro Homika. I’m an indie rocker, and for the last seven years I’ve been the Gym Leader of Virbank City. I think you know the story by now. Everything seems fine, and just when the new trainers start coming in on the Gym Challenge, some chucklefucks come out of the woodworks with some grand master plan of evil. And sure, maybe the Plasma Gang wasn’t that bad the first time around, but the fact they came back two years later far, far more willing to take lives? Yeah, I was pretty damn well occupied keeping my city safe. At least the years following that were a fair bit more peaceful. Not counting various other threats like those strange wormholes dotting the sky or the rise of those Macro Cosmo assholes. Honestly not sure what’s worse, having to shove my dagger into a strangely hot bug woman or finding out that some dickweed thought triggering the apocalypse would help with an energy crisis a thousand years in the future. I swear, people these days…
Okay, so flash forward a couple months after those Galar shenanigans.
I’m in my room at the back of The Dive, practicing some new killer songs- Liar, she was just laying on her bed eating pizza. She wasn’t even doing anything remotely musical, her Scolipede-themed bass just lying at the foot of the bed. Frankly, the only thing close to musical she was doing was listening to the occasional song that came up in her RotoYou playlist. -When the weirdest thing happened. And I gotta say, since that Plasma Gang incident a few years back, weird things have happened to me pretty damn often. But this. This was really fucking weird. As she reached for another slice of pizza, a technicolor burst flashed on her ceiling, flaring from purple to pink to blue, settling on a light cyan. Thinking nothing of it, she attempted to bite into the slice of pepperoni, only for the pizza to glitch the fuck out and shatter in her hand. Grief at the loss of her late lunch flashed in eyes for a moment, for the shock to be overwhelmed by surprise.
The swirling vortex ripped her off her bed with such force she almost couldn’t right herself in the air, and only barely managed to snag the strap of her bass before being sucked right in.
That damn thing threw me through a fuckin’ drug trip tunnel and ping-ponged me against a bunch of buildings before tossing me in front of a harbor. It looked a lot like Virbank City, but… it wasn’t. I knew everyone in my city, and not a single face on the people milling about looked familiar. Not to mention, there wasn’t a single Pokemon in sight.
“What… what is this place?”
“Geez, dunno if I should mad or glad that I didn’t end up here in such a dramatic fashion.”
Leaning against a nearby wall was a man with hair as white as hers, though his eyes were two different colors and his expression only conveyed annoyance at the fact that he realized he was likely going to have to babysit a brat. At least, she looked like a brat. So in his mind, she was a brat.
“To answer yer question, you’re in Vasteria City. A place that a bunch o’ different people have been dragged to, regardless of what world they originated from. You’re currently in the Main District. I’m honestly surprised you didn’t die from all that crazy ricocheting you were doing.”
She should also be glad that she didn’t collide head first with the fountain. Likely because as the only adult in the area, he’d have to pay for the damages and he’d take that frustration out on her through the form of assigning menial tasks.
He’d dealt with Platinum enough to know how brats like her worked.
“Name’s Ragna. If you don’t want to be caught in that incoming rainstorm, I suggest you follow me. I’m headed back to my apartment in the Residential District. And yes, you have an apartment too. Everyone does. Somehow. It’s weird like that. Just gotta look for your name on the registry.”