In the world of Pokemon, the nd of magical creatures, adventure, and a concerning amount of world ending scenarios- sits a girl in her room.

  Hair spit in pink and blue, she zily kicks around while ying in bed, posters of electric pokemon litter her brightly colored room.

  “I'm so boooooorrrreeeddd”

  Rolling around in bed, she scrolls through PokeTwitch for anything interesting to watch. As a streamer herself, Iono knows that the market is very… amateur. Aside from her and maybe one other channel, every stream is just talking and pokemon battling.

  Sure, she's guilty of doing the same thing, but as a gym leader she has a certain level of standards for her craft.

  So most content feels unfinished, and painfully amateur.

  Out of pure curiosity, she sorts the page by viewers, maybe there's some kid pying around with their mom's Rotom phone, streaming to nobody just for fun.

  But then that's when she sees it.

  A stream that started not long ago, from an official user (they have a checkmark near their username) called “Joshua Abrams”.

  The title of the stream is simply called “Day 1”.

  “...ooookay”

  She's hooked.

  Tapping on the stream, the first thing she notices is the absurdly high quality of it. There's no overy, or any typical streaming stuff, just the empty chat in the bottom left.

  The second thing she noticed is the camera pcement, it seems to hover, is it a drone? There's no noise proving that, and the way it follows is too smooth to be operated manually.

  “Is this an ad for a movie or something?”

  Then there's what's actually happening on screen.

  A young man, wearing a nondescript bck hoodie and jeans, with a mop of bck hair and white- almost golden eyes.

  He's in… a Pokecenter?

  Strange, why is it in the middle of nowhere? Iono knows that Pokecenters are mandatory in all towns and cities, no matter how small as enforced by the Pokemon League.

  But here? There's nothing but grass and stuff.

  And it looks… worn down.

  “Hmmm…” She taps her chin.

  Casting her screen to her TV, she grabs a pillow to prop her head on and watches along.

  “I'll stick around for a bit!”

  …

  Joshua pushes through the shattered gss doors and stumbles into the main lobby. Old and decrepit white tile worn with age line the ground, the walls are littered with cracks, vegetation, and cobwebs. It looks almost like a hospital, with patterned walls and a professional looking counter standing at the front.

  There's a design on the floor, at the center of the room.

  It makes Joshua pause for a bit.

  “Is that a pokeball?...”

  It's been a while since he's pyed any of the games, but it's hard to see this as anything other than a pokeball, even with it being faded.

  Was this some kind of… fan thing? He isn't sure what they're called, but it's when someone makes a recreation of something in a show.

  But why here?

  Regardless, it looks abandoned, and it is the only building he could see in the pins, so what much else could a man do than explore it?

  The main room is… remarkably empty. Old pamphlets he found under the counter are too weathered to be legible, and the small drawers are empty aside from the occasional office tool.

  But as he rummages through the drawers, he notices something. A strange aura surrounding an old stapler he sat to the side to move out of the way. It has the same, familiar pale gold hue as the strange boxes that greeted him earlier. It doesn't seem to be casting any light, like his brain is merely conjuring it up.

  The screen appears again.

  [DISMANTLE: Pstic (3), Metal (1)]

  “...”

  Not too sure what to make of it, he tries touching the box, only for nothing to happen as his hand phases through.

  Then he tries confirming it verbally.

  “Yes”

  He isn't sure if that was the trigger, but the stapler disappears, and so does the aura.

  About to question where it went, another box appears in front of him.

  A grid of squares, 4 by 9, totalling 36 squares. The bottom line is separated slightly by a thicker space.

  Above that is a simple outline of a man, like a chalk drawing a child would make of their friend lying on the concrete. Four squares go down the length of the silhouette's left side. Rough outlines of armor fill the empty space.

  To the bottom right of the ‘man box’ is a smaller square with a “+” in it.

  Right of the ‘man box’, he isn't sure what else to call it, is a 2×2 grid with an arrow pointing to another singur box.

  Lots of boxes.

  But strangely, he seems to recognize the yout.

  “Minecraft?...”

  It's a little different, but he's sure it is.

  Joshua, like most else he's experienced today, isn't sure what to make of it. But with seeing two “inventory” spaces being filled with simple symbols of pstic and metal, he at least gets the general idea of it.

  If it's anything like that game he used to py as a child, back when his mom would let him py on her ptop, then it shouldn't be too hard to navigate.

  But… why does he have an inventory? Why did he just accept that he has a damn Minecraft inventory? Is he still in shock from meeting… “him”?

  Is this even real?

  Is he in limbo, and his soul is simply waiting to be sorted? Is this some illusion created by some higher power?

  No matter how much he pries into these thoughts, he can't seem to find the answers he's looking for. But the inventory itself, as far as he can tell, is real.

  He went around the desk, ‘dismantling’ small objects he could find, only because he could. Aside from the small bits of pstic and paper entering his inventory, there isn't much else to say about the process.

  Oh, he doesn't have to verbally confirm it to dismantle something, he figured.

  But what is interesting is when his aura highlighted the desk itself. Only a meter of it though, the range seemed to cut off beyond 3.3ft.

  And no matter how many times he tried, he couldn't put it in his inventory or dismantle it.

  The rules of this ‘aura’ seem strange, but Joshua didn't fuss over it for now.

  Maybe testing out this strange ability helped take Joshua's mind off things, it certainly helped at least. But he needs to focus.

  Deciding to hold back on using the ‘aura’ on the walls, he moves to the door to the side of the main desk.

  “A backroom?”

  Joshua goes to open it, but frowns when he's met with the resistance of a lock.

  Scratching his chin, he gets an idea.

  He focuses on the doorknob, and is pleasantly unsurprised when the golden white aura appears around it.

  Mentally giving the command to ‘collect’ it, the doorknob disappears, leaving behind a hole in the door it was installed in.

  God… or at least what he believes is God, gave him these powers for some reason, and he's using them to break into and loot buildings.

  Joshua questions the morality of this. After all, as someone who was given a divine resurrection (maybe), shouldn't he be held to higher standards?

  What would “he” think?

  After a moment of silence, Joshua snorts to himself and opens the door he's been hovering a hand over the whole time.

  “I'm starting to sound like my mom…”

  Joshua does as he does best.

  He moves.

  …

  Iono watches with morbid fascination as the man enters the back area of the Pokecenter.

  Normally the area is restricted to all but Nurse Joy and Chansey themselves, but with it being abandoned, who could stop him?

  She's never seen what's back there! So she's bouncing in excitement to see the dirty secrets all the Nurse Joy's hide in the back room.

  “...”

  It's just nursing stuff.

  “BBOOOOORRRRIIINNNGGG”

  She slumps.

  “Ugh…”

  With exaggerated disappointment, she groans into her pillow, only looking back up to hear the man speak to himself.

  There was something odd about him, Iono could gather, but she wasn't sure what until now.

  He's not a streamer.

  Well. He technically is, he's doing it right now, duh. But what she means is that he's not acting like his every move is being streamed live, like at all!

  Is he even aware he's being streamed?

  If so, then who is filming this? Maybe this is some weird ad. She doesn't recognize the pce at all, so it's fair to say it's part of a set.

  But as she thinks, a feral smile grows on her face. Grabbing her phone, her duty as a viewer must be fulfilled! Who cares if it's an ad, sacred w must be followed!

  …

  Joshua sees a small flicker in the corner of his eye, and when he looks over he sees the same regal looking translucent box from before. But this time, its empty space is instead repced by a single message.

  [IonoZone: First!]

  A name he doesn't quite recognize, with a message he's intimately familiar with as an internet user, but given the context only adds to its surreality.

  “...congratutions?”

  He looks over at the other one.

  [VIEWERS: 1]

  Oh. He's forgotten about that.

  Wait, he's being filmed?

  From where?

  He doesn't see a camera.

  Before he can dwell on that, he sees a small flicker in the corner of the room.