Joshua, having already ‘died’ once, is no stranger to heading towards mysterious lights.
But in this case, instead of Heaven, he's met with a rge ‘box’ with six circur slots on top of it. One of the small lights on its backboard flickers weakly, honestly with how run down this pce looks, Joshua is surprised that the light is still functional.
His gaze moves downward, and he swears that the longer he spends here the less he's ever going to understand. Because right in front of him, in the back of one of the slots and under the flickering LED… is a pokeball.
An honest to God pokeball. Red and white, with a button in front and everything. Just like in the games.
Even with its worn colors, it stands out amongst the rundown machinery. It seems still somewhat preserved.
“This pce must have been popur…”
To have quality replicas like this, a pce like this would be a hit where he lived. Which again adds another yer of confusion as to why it is here, in the middle of seemingly nowhere.
Joshua huffs, slightly agitated at his confusion and picks up the pokeball.
Inspecting it, he's increasingly impressed at its design. Praying softly that it's not housing a family of roaches, he pushes the button and opens the pokeball.
Joshua, having experienced the strangest st few hours of his life, wasn't expecting much. Cobwebs? Sure. Roaches? That's fair. Maybe it was one of those massive clumps of tiny spiders. He was expecting something like that.
What he wasn't expecting, however, was for a bright light to pour out of the pokeball, arching down onto the floor while something manifested from it.
The sound of a pokeball opening was nostalgic for his ears, but he pushed that to the back of his mind as he saw what now stood a mere foot away from him after the light retreated.
A strange horse-like creature standing just over 2ft tall. With pale white fur, fluffy pastel purple and light teal mane and tail. Large, dark purple eyes look right at him, with a strange blue sheen in them. A small bck and white horn sits on their head.
It takes a moment for Joshua's mind to catch up. When it does, he reacts exactly as a mature and responsible adult should.
He crouches down, and holds out a hand.
“Joshua”
The creature, without skipping a beat, puts a hoof out and they shake.
“Ponyta”
“You have any idea what's going on?”
“Pony”
“Figured”
His gaze flickers to the ‘chat’ box once more as he sees movement.
[IonoZone: OMG SHE'S SO CUUUUTTTEEE]
[IonoZone: bABY!]
[IonoZone: r u in Gar???]
Joshua reads it and looks back over at the Pokemon.
“Can you see this?” He gestures to the box.
Ponyta nods.
“Are we in Gar?”
The small mare just shrugs.
Well that's great.
Joshua asked the small unicorn a few things, and while he learned small details, his most important questions remained unanswered.
Ponyta has no idea where they are either, and she (yes he confirmed she was female) is basically a newborn, cking memories of what happened before she was pced in the slot.
While still extremely strange for him, he asks Ponyta if she wants to come with him. Even if she's a strange, potentially powerful fictional creature, she's just a small child now, and his soul can't accept just leaving her here.
What's even stranger is how she accepted before he even finished the question.
Are pokemon just naturally trusting?
Joshua silently ments how crazy he sounds, thinking about the concept of pokemon stranger danger.
He puts the pokeball in his inventory, not needing it if he's keeping Ponyta out, and continues looking around the pokecenter.
Trying to put the… ‘healing box’ where Ponyta was in his inventory didn't work, maybe he's missing something? A tool perhaps? If the inventory is based off of Minecraft it may not be that big of a stretch.
This whole thing is just so… off.
He tries to pretend he's calm and collected, but how else is a man supposed to react when something like… this happens?
Joshua wishes he could just… flick something on in his brain that will just magically make him okay with all this, but he knows that he's just compining about nothing.
Oh, you have a Minecraft inventory and are being livestreamed to an unknown audience, stuck in the middle of nowhere with a damn pokemon!
“Pony”
The cry of the small unicorn breaks him out of his thoughts, looking over he sees something in her mouth.
“What is that?”
“Pony!”
He crouches down and grabs it. Chuckling slightly as she sits on her haunches like a dog.
It's… something, alright. Some kind of device, worn tan paint with a blue gss sphere in the middle. It fits in both hands quite comfortably.
He presses down on the sphere, and the top half of the device lifts open, extending and turning until it reveals and pushes forward a screen.
“PokeNav…”
The screen flickers on with those words, before loading for some time. Wiping away the dust on the screen, it changes to… a map?
A top down view of his area, with a small yellow arrow showing where he is and what direction he's facing. The map is unfinished, only extending a distance before meeting gray bnk space the map seems bordered in.
Judging from the slight deviation to the left, does the map only show pces he's been?
That's counterintuitive, but it does show a lot more of the area. It's mostly pins like outside, and a forest to the southwest, but he sees the top of some structure in the northeast.
Well. At least he has a destination now.
“I feel like I should give you a name”
Ponyta stares at him with the same eerily calm smile she has, but from the light twitches from her tail he can tell she's curious.
He's never named a magic pony, or he guesses it would be a unicorn, wouldn't it? Anyways, he's going through his mind for any names, but everything that comes to mind is either too weird or two awkward.
“Twilight Sparkle”
“Pony…” She hates it.
Joshua’s niece loved the show where that name came from, so it was worth a shot.
“Hm…”
Damn, this is difficult.
Oh, actually that one sounds good.
“Jophiel”
Ponyta tilts her head.
“It means ‘beautiful and wise’... I think, something like that. You like it?”
Ponyta thinks for a moment.
Then Jophiel nods.
