victory_road | audio || optional action

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--ome in! Anyone!

[Yikes, man, tone down the yelling. The voice is frantic. Rightfully so, considering the last thing he remembered was being ejected into space. This is not the planet he thought he'd wind up on. There are humans here, and it looks like Earth.]

[But there's weird animals here. And no one seems concerned about a yelling, very upset man who just appeared out of nowhere.]

I don't know what's happened! I -- I need pickup, immediately!

[Yeah, he maybe only half listened to the explanations, but seriously, things were bad a minute ago.]

Pidge! Coran! [And then, almost grudgingly:] Lance -- someone pick up! This is Shiro and something's gone wrong! I don't know where I am -- I don't know what's happened, but I need someone to answer me now!

[Give him a few minutes to calm down. To pace and refocus himself. To listen and read up on the situation. Anyone who happens by the area sometime after the basically panicked broadcast can find him in New Bark Town. Under a tree, just...]

[What is he supposed to do now?]

[There's an Aron huddled up by his leg, but he doesn't seem to pay it much attention, right now.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Ah, the lungs of a mecha series protagonist. It would almost seem familiar to Ash, except for the 'frantic and upset' part.]

The Pokégear's network only covers these regions, so there's no pickup from home coming. Whatever went wrong before you got here, you can't do anything about it right now. However, know that it won't get worse while you're gone, either. This place is... kind, like that.

How do you know that for sure?

[He doesn't mean to snap at this guy, especially if he's right, but at the same time, if he's going to accept it, and chill out for a second, he needs to know.]

Because people have been returned home and brought back here again for years. Always without warning, always for no apparent reason, always with tales of being returned at the exact moment they were taken.

[Ash sighs.]

Besides, I never managed to receive any signal from home, friendly or not. If there's a way to communicate with our worlds around here, it's not the Pokégears.

Always.

[He'll have to believe that. Believe that and take a few deep breaths.]

Has anyone else tried to?

Many, but not nearly everyone. A lot of those who show up here come from worlds that don't even have telephones, much less more advanced means of communication, and those who might otherwise send a message through magical means lose that power the moment they arrive. Never heard of a single success story.

[This is one of those moments where you wish your technical genius teammates were around to fix this problem. Together, those two could probably get a message out.]

[... but they're not here.]

If there's a way in, there's got to be a way out again.

Certainly. The problem is that since we cannot control how we're brought here, we have no idea how to reverse engineer it. We do know that people only show up in two locations, barring the biannual weekend madness, but as far as anyone can tell there's nothing special about New Bark Town.

[Except Mom and her never-ending stack of bags, of course.]

What about the other location? Has anyone looked into that?

As it's probably the base of a region-spanning criminal empire, we'd have to find it first. Be glad you didn't end up there.

Criminal empire? This place seems pretty calm for having something like that around.

They don't attack all that often, but when they do they show no mercy. They steal Pokémon from children just as easily as they set off bombs in public buildings.

Why hasn't someone done something about it?

[Wellp there goes the Dad Instinct.]

People do a lot about it when there's an attack, believe me. It's the 'finding them during a down period without having access to our usual resources and networks' part that's being more difficult than it should be. Apparently they choose their new employees for their ability to keep their mouths shut.

You can't tell me that no one in their group is willing to talk. That's just not possible.

Well, if any of them talked, they talked to people who did not see fit to share the details with the rest of the world. Then again, it could just be that they haven't been interrogated enough to become more talkative, but we'd still need to grab one in the first place for that.

[Damn.]

... You'd think someone would have figured this out.

Maybe someone did, but got sent home before they could act upon it. Or maybe Team Rocket's better at sneaking around than it is at battling. Hard to tell, without knowing just how much they're hiding.

Any files or other information someone could access?

Not from this network, and not from the Pokémon Center's PCs either. They might have access to stronger locks than the usual, or they have their own closed network.

... And the best computer whiz I know is still at home.

That's too often the case. And those few experts that are brought along tend to despair from the lack of resources and available information.

I can see why.

But... knowing Pidge, that wouldn't end up being an issue for long.

If you're lucky, your friend will show up soon and be just as good as you say. The chances are low, but it's happened before.

Being 'just as good' is exactly what would happen.

... 'If' is the only variable.

That one's tricky. Sometimes people from the same world arrive in waves, but others never see so much as a hair from anyone they know. There's no way to tell what will be the case for anyone.

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