Nick Atmos

“I think it’s a bit straaange.  Seems like a pointless thing to change.  Maybe it’s so that every trainer received the same information at first…”  Ban shrugged, not really caring about the answer to the question all that much.  He wasn’t particularly attached to the idea.  “At one point, in certain regions you could pick up other starters that you didn’t pick the fiiirst round.  They got rid of that because it’s unfair, I guuuess.”  Another shrug.

They were quickly approaching the lab.  His rather foggy memory of certain events that happened during the Beta test was making it hard for him.  These didn’t seem like important changes to him, but Nick seemed extremely invested in the idea so he attempted to think as hard as he possibly could on the subject.  “Oh, yeah.  The PokéDex’s you got at the lab only had enough data storage to add all the Pokémon from that region.  Once you filled it you got an update that allowed you to add Pokémon from other regions…it was limiting, so I fiiigure they changed it for that reason.”

So Ban had started in Kalos and the professor offered some help and emphasized exploring. That may have been a minor hint about the area in that region being important specifically but it wasn’t all that likely.

The part about Unova however caught Nick’s attention. The importance of filling out the Pokedex definitely supported her hypothesis about the legendary Pokemon being important. She wasn’t sure if all of them had to do with the inner workings of the game, but Nick had a gut feeling about Mew.

The comment about the starters was logical; it would only make sense for trainers to get the one they choose and nothing else.

“It may not be helpful just yet, but if we find something out that we need to look back on, we’ll have it just in case.”

Looking around, Nick saw that they were approaching the lab. Swiping at her menu, she closed her notes and walked down the path with Ban. She looked up at him before knocking on the door.

“Boy, he sure does move fast.  My Pokémon all take their sweet time no matter where we’re going.  They’re a lazy bunch.”  He wondered, momentarily, what it was like to have Pokémon that actively listened to their trainers directions.  Releasing Nick’s shoulders, Lucas placed his hands in his lap and watched the scenery whiz by them as the Water-type quickly pushed its way through the river.

“Ah, I probably should have warned you,” Nick said, scratching the back of her head apologetically. “Lapras is a girl, and she really doesn’t appreciate being called a boy....”

Lapras was quite a special Pokemon for Nick because despite her large size, she insisted on becoming one of her fastest Pokemon in the water. Nick enjoyed the trips they took from region to region together, but Lapras always wanted to take the fastest route where Nick often liked relaxing a bit more.

“I’m not particularly sure yet,” she said, looking ahead of her. She couldn’t really see how much farther they had to go.

“Honestly, I just want to see how much he knows about the creator’s plans for all of us. For instance, does he plan on watching all of us stay here forever? Or does he maybe want to just torture us a bit? Or maybe he’s lying about dying in real life. Who knows? That’s some of the stuff I’d want to know at least.”

Nick thought for a moment before continuing. “I’d also want to know where Mew might be hiding. I doubt an NPC would know many details on that or if it’s buried deeper in the database, but if Orochi could lead us in the right direction, Mew may know something we don’t.”

With that he turned on his heel, his Zorua quickly on his heels to follow its trainer.  Ban wasn’t entirely sure he knew what they were going to find at the lab.  He wasn’t sure how many dialogue options the Professor had; however, the Pokémon professors were some of the most fascinating learning AI’s in the game.  Maybe there was a never ending list of dialogues you could open with them, based on what they learned.

“Why would they decide on making the starter Pokemon different?” Nick asked aloud but mostly to herself. “Maybe it was intended to stay truer to the regions’ histories.” She jotted down that there were different starters in the lab notes and then stopped. “What else was different that you can remember?” she asked.

“We better get moving then.”  Lucas turned around and stuck two fingers in his mouth to let out a piercing whistle.  “Shin!  Get your penguin butt back here, we gotta skedaddle.”  After a moment the Water-type returned to Lucas’ side, looking a bit disappointed to have his fun cut off so early.  “I know, you wanted to play in the snow some more.  But we’re gonna visit my old pal Orochi!”  Shin didn’t look too pleased to hear that, but waited patiently to see which direction they planned on moving towards.

Nick watched as the little penguin Pokemon bounded its way over to Lucas. Nick kept up a steady pace to follow Lucas as they ran toward the river. At his comment, Nick replied, “I would doubt the river would freeze over. It expands pretty far across the region, right? It’s probably a good sign it hasn’t.”

Upon stumbling at the edge of the river bank, Nick clicked her Pokeball again. “Lapras, we need a fast ride!” In a burst of light, Lapras appeared floating in the water in front of them.

The pair exited their room and meandered into the front room again.  Nick was patiently waiting for him, scrolling through her menu lazily.  “M’rning.”  Ban yawned and scratched his chest, rolling his neck as he tried to wake himself up.  “So, which one of your bizarre quests are we going on todaaay?  Finding the elusive and legendary Mew, or hunting for the equally elusive creatooor?”  He at least understood where she was going with the Mew hunt, but creator hunt…well he wasn’t so sure what Nick planned on doing once she found him.

“I think these might be some good places to start,” she explained again. “Some of these places make more sense than others. Like here,” she said, pointing to the first on the list, the Pokemon Laboratory. “There has to be some kind of significance to where your journey begins, right?”

She scrolled a little further and pointed. “I know Mount Moon is pretty much shrouded in mystery, and no one’s really been there yet.”

He tilted his head as she pulled out a PokéBall, assuming she planned on throwing out a Flying-type.  “Flying…?  Oh, no.  I mostly walk everywhere.  Or take boats, or trains.  In Kalos I sometimes take the cabs.”  He shrugged.  “If I flew places I would miss lots of neat stuff.  I suppose teaching Shin Surf wouldn’t be terrible idea…”  Lucas waved away the thought before giving Nick a sheepish look.

Nick smiled and took out the other Pokeball. “If not, it would be a good chance so let my other Pokemon walk around a bit. We could always catch the train together.”

“Well then, that’s thaaat I suppose.  I’ll see you tomorrow and I’ll show you around, scope out some good stuff you’ll find interestiiing.  And there are quite a few interesting things to look at…”  Ban swiped open his menu and pulled his room key out of his inventory.  As it materialized in his hand he began walking down the hallway to his room.  He gave Nick a small wave to send her off.

Hearing her Nidoran whimper softly in its sleep stirred her from her thoughts and she made her way down the hall.

The following morning, Nick was up rather early and made herself some tea in her room. It was cozy enough for her, but only her and Nidoran were actually able to curl up on the bed together with Ninetales on the floor beside them.

Lucas was surprised to hear how eager Nick was to meet his NPC friend.  Generally people found his affinity for befriending NPCs rather off-putting, or at least weird.  He was glad someone appreciated the hard work he put into discovering more about this game.  “Ah, his name is Orochi…I call him ojiisan though, because he’s so old.”  Lucas tilted his head curiously to one side.

“He lives in Hearthome City…would you like to visit him?”  He had quickly lost interest in building the fort; a new adventure seemed to be brewing on the horizon and he was eager to show his new friend Orochi’s house.  “We can ditch if you want.”  He glanced around at their teammates who seemed to have the fort building under control.  They wouldn’t miss two members sneaking off.

“You know, your business is pretty great, Lucas. The only thing is that I’m not from around here, so I don’t know how much of a help I would be to you. Though, back in Kanto, there’s a lot of uncharted territory toward the mountainous areas, and I’ve heard of trainers getting lost out there.”

“Orochi? That’s... quite the name,” Nick said, trying to keep her voice even. She didn’t want to surprise Lucas, but her studies in Japan had taught her an awful lot about the culture. And with a name like Orochi... Well, that spelled some trouble.

“There isn’t much left for me out there, but that doesn’t mean I want everyone to be stuck in this god-forsaken game foreveeer.”  He leaned forward and rested his head in his hand, giving Nick a thoughtful look.  “So what do you plan on doing with the information I’ve offeeered to you?  Your spitfire personality leads me to believe you might go looking for him yourseeelf…?”  After pausing for a moment he sat back in his seat again, picking at his nails nonchalantly.

“Ya’know, I like you Nick.  I wouldn’t mind helping you ouuut.  Either on your suicidal quest to find Mew or to find the creator.”  His eyes roved to the front door as a few more players entered, laughing among themselves as they got keys for their rooms and dispersed.  As terrible as this game was, it seemed people found their own ways to continue living a semi-normal life.

“Spitfire, huh?” she scoffed. “Not like I haven’t heard that one before.” She gave him a playful smirk, making a decision. “I appreciate your opinions, Ban. It’s helped me get a new perspective on the game here. And I think your help would prove really useful in helping out the other players.”

She leaned back, cracking her neck. “What do I plan on doing with it? Well first I need some sleep, so be honest. Don’t you?” She glanced at the clock on the fireplace, seeing that it was well into the late hours of the night. As she turned, Nidoran noticed her and crawled over away from the warmth of her Charizard’s tail and buried in Ninetales’  fluff to hop into Nick’s lap and curl up in a ball. She backed up her chair, carrying the now-sleeping Nidoran in one arm and recalled her other Pokemon with the other.

“That has all the completed maps as well as the maps I’m currently working on.  When you open them up it shows you the main map of the entire region, but you can zoom in on any area and see the nitty gritty details.  Some of them have pictures attached if I thought an area would benefit from photos.”  Lucas shrugged before opening up Nick’s message again to go back to his browsing.

“Boy, this stuff is all super detailed.  I’m really impressed with all the work you’ve put into this!  I thought my maps were pretty crazy, but this must have taken you forever!”  He sighed a little, a small smile playing at his lips.  “I suppose this is what happens when you don’t have time to do much anything else.”  Finally Lucas sat up again, brushing snow off of the seat of his pants.

“This... is absolutely amazing,” she said quietly. “It has so much detail....”

As she was commenting on his work, she looked up to notice how much he was appreciating her work as well. She nodded in thanks as he commented on how much time she had put into it.

At the mention of someone that can help them, Nick beamed. “You do?!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands together. “Maybe we can sell our information to the NPC and continuing working on it, at least to sustain an income, not really for profit, ya know?” she suggested. The last thing she wanted was to benefit from people’s desperation. But it was true that not going for badges made getting an income difficult.

At the mention of not knowing if the NPC should know as much as it does, Nick gasped slightly. That NPC could contain coding that would help them figure out the core mechanics of the game and maybe find information on how to free everyone.

“How many players do you think will believe you, huuuh?  Just thiiink about iiit; if we told people the creatooor was in the gaaame, they’d paniiic.”  He sighed lightly.  “Everyone would be suspicious of one anooother, and we’d get nothing dooone.  Player on player deaths would just get wooorse, since everyone would be trying to weed one another out.”  Ban shrugged, hoping she’d get his point.  In his opinion, it was best to keep that idea to yourself – or at least only share it with people you believe won’t take it to the extreme.

“Aaas for why I stay here…simple: life is better in here than it is out there.  Outside of this gaaame I have no future.  The only reason I’m here is to stay out of jaaail for a Robin Hood-esque criiime…isn’t that why you play video games?  To escape real liiife?”  Ban shrugged again, leaning back in his seat to stretch his arms.

Hesitantly, she opened up her menu again and erased the data she had just entered. She sighed, “You’re probably right. I’m sorry for accusing you.”

She listened intently on his reasoning for staying here in the world. And Nick had to admit that she really didn’t have an ultimate reason for returning to the real world herself.

Ban was a criminal, apparently. But if he was telling the truth, then there wasn’t anything to worry about from him. After all, there wasn’t exactly a decent justice system. Most criminals here were just killed in battle for acting out.

“I suppose for most people, that is the case,” she said, referring to escaping the real world. “I didn’t though. I’m just not bound by anything in the real world. I live for freedom and to explore. I don’t really have much to miss in the real world. But I figure... I think most people want to return. And since I don’t care too much one way or the other, I feel like the right thing to do is give them the tools to escape, isn’t it?”

“Who knooows.  They at least have to be places that are important to him in one way or another.”  He shrugged slightly, glancing down at his cup.  He was a little depressed that his hot chocolate was all gone, the warmth it’d left in his stomach had dissipated and was replaced with a rather uncomfortable sensation.  Shifting his weight in his seat, he continued, a serious look on his face.

“All I can assume is that if the creator is walking around with us – which we can assuuume he is based off of evidence – he’d be hanging around those places semi-frequently…otherwise they wouldn’t be there.  Still, he must have some way to hide his presence.  I’m sure other people have come to the same conclusion as meee.”

This presented Nick with a problem. If there were other people that knew the creator was walking around, why hadn’t he been found yet? Was he maybe an untouchable force in the game that anyone had yet to come close to? Like a Champion or otherwise like Ban had suggested?

Nick frowned. She wasn’t sure how to process this information. She decided that she should make this public knowledge rather than keep it to herself. She swiped at her menu and typed in the information into her book about the world. When she looked back to Ban, she sighed.

“Why don’t you think this information is all that important? Your enthusiasm about the creator possibly being here is astounding,” she added, sarcastically. “I don’t know about you, but I think everyone should know about this. Maybe someone out there is looking for him right now and could use this knowledge to free us from here....”

She thought for a minute before asking the question that had been prickling at her lips since they had met. Since she had known that he enjoyed the small pleasures here - like this inn - it had been bothering her.

“The kinda maps people could only dream of.  Of course, it’d require that I completely remap my areas again.  Since I’ve already done it once it’s not that bad, but you’d have to come with me.  Plus…there’d be a lot of standing around for extended periods of time to make sure we register every Pokémon its possible to catch in any given area.”  Lucas tapped his chin for a moment, contemplating the idea.

“Sorry about that, she tends to get as excited as I do,” she said, raising an eyebrow at her Lapras. The Pokemon seemed to smirk back in mock embarrassment.

“Anyway... Here,” she said, swiping at her menu. A message popped up in front of Lucas asking him if he wanted to open a book. “These are all of my notes on the wildlife in every region I’ve been to. They’re listed my region and then in alphabetical order by city first, then numerical order of routes. Depending on how detailed your maps are, we might be able to find an NPC vendor that can just combine the information we found.”

Originally posted by kylse

 Nozomi was confused. A gym leader without a gym seemed strange. She was still getting used to the idea of the game but wasn’t sure how this worked. So far she had learned how to open the menu and access it and to never use all Pokemon in a pvp battle. Nozomi didn’t question it. She, of course, had no idea that whether it was official or not.

“Okay, then I’ll send you a formal battle request, but before I do, shall we move on to the arena?” Most Pokemon Centers had either an indoor or outdoor battle arena. She began making her way there and hoping the girl would follow. “Can I ask what your gym rules are?”  

 The gym she had gone to before had specific rules, it was a 3v3 battle and items were allowed. Nozomi was lucky as she only had 3 Pokemon in her party and managed to win with only one of them standing. Nozomi noticed that the gym leader had multiple parties prepared in his PC by the conversation he had with one of his assistants. She also noticed that, by the way he worded his sentences, it was neither common nor uncommon.  

“Well, you see, I’m not a real gym leader. It’s just a little nickname I sorta picked up from staying here the past few weeks.” She shrugged, hoping the girl would laugh, taking it as a minor joke too. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist keeping it up for a bit longer.”

“Anyway, I’d be happy to give you a fair fight! I love battling for fun. Would you be willing to?” she asked politely.

He shrugged, not wanting to elaborate.  It was likely because his quiet demeanor when he was outside the game made him a target for bullies, but he was so used to it that it hardly seemed out of the ordinary to him.  “I’m just glad I landed in a big pile of snow.  I’d rather get hit with a rock inside a snowball than just…a regular old rock.”  It didn’t bother him enough to continue talking about, so he quickly changed the subject.

“I’m originally from Sinnoh, but I haven’t been back here in a long time.  As soon as I mapped every square inch of this place I moved onto other regions to map.  Occasionally I hear word of secret locations and try to map those as well, but for the most part I’m hanging out in the smaller regions like Oblivia to make maps for them as well.  Most of those super detailed, fancy maps that are free to download are all thanks to me.”

She smiled at him musing about his travels and how he enjoyed helping the other players in the game. She was so glad that her initial impression of him was proven right; he was most definitely a nice, sweet boy.

“I think that’s a really great idea. In fact, I’ve been doing something pretty similar, I guess.” She hadn’t even really thought about sharing her findings with the rest of the players, but she knew now that maybe she’d be better off if the rest of the players could help her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help other players, she just genuinely hadn’t thought of it.

“I’m just throwing out suggestions based on what I’ve seen personaaally.  I guess the only one who really knows what’s going on is the creator.”  Or maybe, as she had voiced earlier, Mew.  Nick seemed to grow upset slightly at the thought of players dying – at least he assumed that’s were the watery eyes were coming from – so he welcomed the segue-way back into the previous topic.

“Ah, well in almost every major city there’s a section that seems too…reaaal.”  He stuck his pinkie into his ear and dug around for a moment, flicking invisible ear wax off as he pondered that thought.  “In Nimbasa there’s a street that has several shops that are…reminiscent of stores I’ve seen in Tokyo.  The food is…out of plaaace.

What if the creator of the game was Mew?

She quickly shook the thought from her mind, terrified at the prospect that the creator was in the game at all, never mind controlling a Pokemon that could surely strike down anyone at a given time.

Directing her thoughts back to the conversation, she realized that Ban was definitely right; certain regions didn’t always stick to their themes. Hell, Nick’s own apartment back in Cerulean City was too specific not to be close to real with the intricate design. She wondered if all the apartments looked the same or if maybe each was modeled after something.

“Ban...” she said slowly and carefully, “if these places are modeled after something, do you think we’re actually getting an inside look into the creator’s mind in that way? If there’s so many places that represent Japan in unlikely regions, maybe the creator is originally from somewhere in Japan.” she mused. “And what if the buildings and residential places are places he’s been... maybe even grown up.” She winced at the thought that her apartment could have been home to a creep like the man that made them stuck here.

 3 months since the LOG OFF button removal.

“Okay, so where do I go now?” Our heroine asked herself. She wasn’t familiar with the game at all. The only reason she managed to get the 1 badge she had was based on pure luck and random command inputs. She was looking for somewhere in where she could could get her hands on a tarot deck, sadly she’s had no luck. 

  Her Eevee, Junai, evolved into an Espeon pretty quickly. Nozomi didn’t question it but she also didn’t know exactly how that happened. She didn’t know anything at all except that everybody was going crazy trying to get “badges”. She managed to get one of them but only miraculously. Weeks after her victory in the Oreburgh Gym she finally made it to Floarama Town. She figured that the best thing to do was to find the nearest gym, so she decided ask the nearest player. 

Floaroma Town was one of the most beautiful places Nick had ever seen in her travels throughout the regions. It was a quiet town but bustled with visitors every now and again while she was staying there.

She enjoyed taking the time to just wander the flower fields and sit by the creek just outside the town. She learned how to plant berries here from the local NPCs, and she found the place pretty relaxing. There were a few people that came to know her as the Floaroma Town Gym Leader in the few weeks she had spent there since she enjoyed battling but never a fight to hurt anyone.

One day whilst in the Pokemon Center, a girl seemed to be wandering around. She didn’t want to bother the girl, so she let her browse while Nick watched T.V.

When the girl came up to her, she smiled politely. “Well there’s not really an official Gym here, but if you want a Gym Battle, I’d be happy to oblige.”