She lands in a well-stocked alchemical laboratory near... what might be a shockingly humanlike pokemon, or might be a startlingly pokemon-like human, with sweeping zubatlike wings and a pair of impressive horns. This entity fixes her with a stare as her feet touch the ground, and every muscle below her chin freezes in place.

"Good. Needle!"

A more elongated, slightly less humanoid pokemon straightens at the sound. "Yes, mistress!"

"Retrieve the gatecrawler."

The pokemon salutes, then teleports away.

"Uh, hi."

The entity nods pleasantly, and Lucy finds her body moving without her input, removing her shirt and sitting in a reclining chair. "Good evening. I apologize for the rudeness of my summons... among other things."

"Wait, that was on purpose? Why?"

"I had need of a subject meeting certain criteria. You were the nearest that I could straightforwardly access."

She picks up a small knife with a blade that is difficult to look at directly.

"...and for what it's worth, I am sorry about this," she says quietly.

Aw, fuck. 

With her muscles frozen, there really isn't much she can do about this. 

"Please leave my pokémon alone."

"Don't worry," she murmurs. "This will only hurt you."

But it does, a great deal.

Well, that was incredibly awful. But--it is a comfort, the promise that she was the only one hurt.

"You did well," whispers the stranger-mother-demon.

And then

The first thing she sees, after the mirror-snake 'mon, is cracked and barren earth. She's being hurried along on a stretcher.

Her chest hurts a great deal.

A cold, metal-covered hand touches her forehead and a strange man says something. Her chest hurts a little bit less.

"Help," she croaks. 

"We will," the man growls. "Someone get Terendelev! You there, boy!"

"But I'm busy enjoying your fine festival! All of this medical drama is rather spoiling the occasion, isn't it? Couldn't this poor soul be carted off to, oh, I don't know... an infirmary? Or some accommodating ditch?"

"Enough," says a calm feminine voice. "Let me through."

Heal. It's like being running face-first into a wall, except it isn't like that at all, because Lucy wasn't moving and it doesn't hurt, it does the opposite of hurt. It heals. But it's closer to running face-first into a wall than it should be, given all of that.

Lucy's chest still hurts, but only in the dull, throbbing way of an old scar before a storm. Something one could live with.

She levers herself up cautiously, one hand pressed against her throbbing chest and one hovering over the segment of her belt with her pokeballs on it. 

"Where am I?"

"You're in the city of Kenabres," the woman says. "Everyone, let's give her some air? Go back to the festival, enjoy yourselves – I'm including you in that, Hulrun – easy, there, don't rush it." She offers a steadying arm.

She takes the arm. "I don't recognize the name Kenabres, I'm sorry. What region is that in? I ran into--I don't know, a pokemon I didn't recognize, presumably with Teleport...?"

"We're in the region of the Worldwound, which was once Sarkoris. You say you were teleported by some kind of magical beast? I'm sorry, your translation spell isn't catching the specific word."

"Teleport? The Move? Do you not have that? I mean, I don't know for sure that's what happened..." Worldwound is an incredibly ominous name but then again the world nearly ends ever other year or so so maybe it's fine. 

"No, that other word. 'Pokemon.'"

"Living things that move around and aren't human? Move around volitionally, I mean, not, like, trees waving in the wind."

"...that is a very broad category, but I suppose it's a coherent one. What did this Pokemon look like?"

"Sort of snakey, with a flat reflective face."

"Hmm. I don't recognize it offhand... the parsimonious explanation is that it's some kind of demon, but parsimony will have you right nine times and eaten the tenth." She sighs. "I'll do some research, on that and on why your chest wound might have been so reluctant to heal. I think you should stay within city limits for at least the next day, in case it opens back up; would you like to stay at the barracks, or an inn room?"

"What's a barracks?"

"It's where the soldiers stay. There are always a few beds free, but you'd be in a room with other people; the advantage is that you'd be somewhere I know how to find you."

"Oh, I don't mind sharing, I stay at pokecenters all the time." 

Terendelev gives her a shining smile. "Then I think the next order of business might be for you to enjoy our humble festival."

"Thanks! What kind of festival is it, and can I have directions to the barracks for later?"

"It's a celebration of the Wardstones, the blessed artifacts that keep the Worldwound sealed. Without them, powerful demons would stream forth into the world at large; with them, and the efforts of the crusaders, the threat is contained." She lowers her voice. "Between you and me, it's mostly a harvest fair. But it's a military town, and the spin helps morale."

"...Huh." She's seen harvest festivals with all kinds of local traditions plastered on top, but she's really starting to be concerned by the implications of this whole "Worldwound" thing. Terendelev seems busy though so she should probably ask someone else what exactly is meant by "demon" here. Sounds ominous though.

Terendelev walks off into the crowd.

The festival is in full swing! There is drinking! There are hand-to-hand combat dummies! There are archery targets! The world is her cloyster.

...Lucy boggles at the dummies and the archery. These people are fighting with their...selves? Not their pokemon? It should be, like, a machop hitting that straw thingy, not a human being. Archery takes longer to figure out, she doesn't even know off the top of her head of a 'mon that does that. 

"Aren't they silly?" asks a girl with pointy ears, glossy black eyes, and severe burn scarring covering most of her body. (Who isn't wearing shoes, despite the autumn nip in the air.)

"I don't think I have enough context to say if they are or not."

"They think it protects them. Being strong, like that. When really it just makes you more able to be hurt."

"Well, yeah, no matter how good you are at punching something with your own fists, you still shouldn't wander into tall grass without a pokemon. But Terendelev didn't even know the word pokemon, which is really confusing!"

Blink.

"I don't either. Soot, do you know?"

A black bird pokes its head out from her tangled hair and croaks.

"He doesn't... Soot knows so many things, but he doesn't know pokemon. What are they?"

She squints at him.

"Is...is he not a pokemon???" 

"He could be," Ember says dubiously. "But wouldn't he know, then?"

"I--maybe? If he's not a pokemon, then...what is he instead???"

"He's my friend!"

Soot caws reproachfully.

"And an animal," she amends, giggling. "And maybe something more than that? But only a bit more. But –"

She glances around, and her eyes light upon a little tabby cat. She scoops it up in her arms.

"Tiger, here? Tiger is an animal. And I'm not his friend yet. And I don't think there's more to him like there is of Soot. Just an animal."

"'Friend' is not the same kind of thing as pokemon versus not pokemon. Obviously I'm friends with all my pokemon. And I guess I could only be friends with pokemon, but that's not the case, I have human friends too. Tiger also looks like a pokemon, although I don't know of any specific pokemon that Soot and Tiger appear to be. I think 'animal' is more, uh, relevant, but I...don't...recognize it...any more than you recognized 'pokemon?'"

"Hmm... an animal is like a person, but usually they're less clever, and smaller or bigger, and covered with fur or feathers or scales. They eat each other, sometimes, some of them, but others of them just eat grass or fruit. They can't do anything very strange, like breathe fire, or they'd be a different thing, like a demon or a dragon or a beast. Does any of that help?"

"They eat each other!?!?!?"

"Yes! Tiger here would eat Soot, if he was hungry enough and I wasn't here to give him a treat instead."

Serenely, she sets Tiger down and draws a bit of fish jerky out of her pocket to feed him.

"Pokemon eat berries. And stuff that's made of berries. And human food, too, sometimes, but mostly berries. And loads of them breathe fire, and dragon is a pokemon type. And demon and beast are words that gets used to describe pokemon sometimes, but not, like, specific subsets of pokemon, like a type."

"They sound nice! You said you're friends with some?"

"Yeah! I have six. That's the most anyone can have with them at a time, like, as a Trainer. You get herds of Miltank or whatever that are bigger than that, but the people who take care of them aren't properly bonded to all of them."

"Six!" Ember's eyes sparkle. "It sounds lovely, having six friends with you all the time... but I think I have more friends than that around the city, and I wouldn't like to choose. Maybe it's for the best."

"Well, you can be friends with pokemon who aren't yours. Especially if you stay in one city instead of traveling around like I do, although that doesn't mean I'm not friends with any other pokemon. ...Maybe it will clarify anything whatsoever if you meet mine." 

"I'd love to!" says Ember predictably.

There was festival food, right? If she's bringing everyone out they should get a treat.

There is festival food! Fried dough features prominently, as does squash soup served in little hollowed pumpkin bowls.

Little hollowed pumpkin bowls! That's so charming! She will get some of each. 

She puts food in a set of dishes she pulls out of her bag and then pulls her balls off her belt and calls out her pokemon. 

"Chika!" Tess plants her forelegs against Lucy's leg and nuzzles her delightedly. 

Oooooh! Novel food! EXCELLENT. 

"Rike..." Dana the electrike circles Ember. She smells WEIRD.

"And that's Linty," Lucy points at the pink spiky one, "and that's Maggie," the borb, "and Ava." The sleepy yellow one. 

"Ohhh," Ember coos delightedly. Her fingers cats-cradle around each other and she whispers something, and then she says "Hello, little friends! May I pet you?"

Tess bounds over to her. She LOVES pets!!!

...So like, it's not that she's not allowed to pet Linty, but like, is she sure she wants to, Linty is SUPER pointy.

Ember barely has sensation in her hands anyway! Pets for Linty! (And also for Tess.)

Nom is definitely too busy eating right now for pets but like check back in later. 

Instead of pets Dana would like to be LESS CONFUSED about why Ember SMELLS WEIRD. 

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're smelling! Is it smoke? I know I smell like smoke sometimes..."

No, no, Dana has smelled smoke before, Lucy doesn't have any fire-type pokemon but she battles them sometimes and also makes campfires on the road. Ember smells MOSTLY like a human but ONLY MOSTLY.

"Oh! I'm not a human, I'm an elf. We're like humans in most ways but we live much longer, and we've got a little extra magic."

Like they can bond to more pokemon? That is the magic that humans have, mostly, is bonding to pokemon. 

Wow, this conversation is SO interesting. Maggie is going to stand on Ember's head. 

"No, like the thing I'm doing to talk with you! That's a bit of my magic. Or I can put people to sleep, or heal them a little bit, and that's magic too."

That sounds more like things pokemon can do than like things humans can do! Even the talking part, pokemon can all talk to each other but talking to humans is different and harder.

zzzzzzz worth it though... zzzzzzzz

Well. Yes. Obviously. And communicating with your trainer is easier than communicating with random humans regardless.

Ember giggles. "Maybe I'm the pokemon, not Soot!"

Oh hi Soot do you have any insight into what's up with any of this?

Anyone may change the world around them, if their will is strong enough, Soot croaks. Ember's will is strong, and she believes.

"I just know some tricks," Ember demurs.

Hm. "Anyone may change the world around them if their will is strong enough" resonates with Maggie's understanding of the world, it's just, usually having a strong enough will also involves having pokemon and a good relationship with them. 

Ava has finished her treats, would Ember like some sleepy cuddles?

Ember would love some sleepy cuddles!!!!

But then Soot caws urgently. Something bad is going to happen!

...That is another weird smell, only this time it's bug-type pokemon instead of humans.

The locusts come out of nowhere, crawling out from thin air and swarming and eating everything they can fit into their little mouths. The feast tables are covered with them in seconds.

Then, festivalgoers start shedding their disguises, cackling and revealing weapons or claws that they use to butcher the nearest panicking humanoid.

Then, a hole opens up in the sky, and a vast and horrible creature steps through. Its body is that of a great locust, its arms wield a scythe of razor chitin, its wings are a droning swarm.

Welp, that's a legendary pokemon engaging in apocalyptic behavior. 

Wait, holy shit, those other ?pokemon? are killing people, what the fuck. Like killing them directly, by stabbing. What in the Distortion World???

Suddenly there is a giant silvery dragon, swooping at the legendary and blowing an icy gale in his direction.

"Deskari! Begone from my city!"

What the fuck? You see legendaries fighting, sure--or hear about it, Lucy's never personally been at the site of a catastrophe like this before--but they don't kill each other!

Her first instinct is to run up to the giant bug-legendary and try to talk to it but apparently it does murder. 

She starts calling her pokemon back into their balls. It's likely she's going to need to move fast and trying to do that as a group is both cumbersome and unnecessary. 

One of the spear-wielding murder 'mon observes her doing this. It would like to offer its own input: spear? Murder?

Tess, still outside of her pokeball, swings the leaf on her head, flinging razor-sharp plant matter at the creature. "Chika!"

The spearbearer doesn't appreciate that! It goes to stab –

– and then its eyes flutter closed and it slumps to the ground, snoring audibly.

Ember doesn't look afraid. But she does look sad, terribly sad. The way people look when their friends fight.

"We should leave," she says quietly. "I can't protect them from each other... they're all soldiers."

"Is this what soldiers do? Kill people?"

"They think they have to. To protect themselves, and to protect the people they love. They never understand that they could just stop."

"How do you just not notice that if you don't kill people, people don't die?"

"But they do."

Deskari's scythe comes down.

The earth opens beneath their feet.

Lucy shrieks and grabs for Ember--she's so young, if Lucy can cushion her fall--

They fall for a very long time, and land in a dark place.

Miraculously, while they hit the ground with some force, neither of them is significantly hurt. A few bruises, nothing more.

"...Well, that could have been worse..."

"It could!" Ember says. "We're not dead. I'm not even really hurt, are you?"

"No. I'd've expected to be hurt a lot worse, from that kind of fall."

"Usually, yes... I wonder if we were falling slower? Magic can do that, even though I don't have the spell for it."

"There are definitely pokemon who could have cushioned our fall...Ava could learn to do that when she gets stronger, but not right now, and anyway none of them were out."

"Maybe someone is helping us."

Ember calls forth a little petal of heatless flame, which hovers above her head and casts a radius of soft white light. This reveals details about the cavern they're in, including "covered in blue moss," "not actually connected to the larger rift Deskari cut except via a hole in the ceiling," and "full of hand-sized white spiders which scurry away from the light."

Lucy immediately crouches down to try to get a better look at the spiders. 

spider spider spider hand? hand? frighten. spider. spider hand frighten. frighten scare

(It's a bit more on the crustacean end than properly arachnid, with sharp chitinous chelicerae and serrated pedipalps. If she tries to touch it she might get bitten, the little guy is pretty freaked out.)

She's not going to try to touch a random wild pokemon "animal" without its permission, that sounds like a great way to get zapped or poisoned or, yes, bitten. 

Then it will scuttle away unmolested, its pacifist streak maintained.

"I want to ask what pokemon that was, but I guess I have to instead ask what...animal...it was."

"A spider! They spin webs, and some of them have poisonous teeth."

"Spider is another term that gets used to describe pokemon, and most of the pokemon you'd call 'spider' have webs, and some of them are poison-type..."

"Huh! So you've got pokemon that are like animals... Maggie looked like an owl, a bit. And Dana was sort of like a dog. But Linty and Nom and Ava and Tess weren't very much like anything I've heard of."

"Linty is a corsola. I've heard them described as a 'coral' pokemon...Nom is a ditto, and Tess is a chikorita. Ditto is a 'transform' pokemon, and chikorita is a 'leaf' pokemon, but transforming and leaves are, like, normal words, that have meaning outside the context of describing pokemon, which isn't true of coral or spider or owl."

Ember nods. "Would you like to see if we can find a way out of this cave?" she asks. "I don't think anyone will likely find us down here."

"Ava could Teleport us back up to the square but it's still full of...murder guys."

"Yes, I don't think we'd be safer there... honestly I don't know that we'd be safer finding a way out, either, it's only that we'll do badly if we can't find food and water."

"Well, I have some on me...although really I ought to try to do something about the murder guys, it's not like murder is okay just because it's not me being murdered."

"Most of the demons are stronger than the one I put to sleep," Ember says carefully. "That's not to say we shouldn't! But... we should be careful. If we die we can't help anyone."

"...Yeah. What--man, if they're really not pokemon, they wouldn't have types, would they..."

Ember blinks. "...no, what do you mean?"

"Well, Tess is grass type and Linty is dual water and rock type. Water and rock are both weak to grass, so they'd take more damage if Tess used Razor Leaf on them than Dana would."

"Oh... well, demons like fire and ice," she says thoughtfully. "And they can't be hurt by lightning. I think they don't mind poison, either. But they really don't like cold iron. Or priests can do some things that they don't like either."

"Cold iron? Like steel? Like...steel and ice together?"

"It's a special metal that doesn't melt until it's hot enough to melt rocks. It hurts demons very badly."

Nod. "It's called steel type, and most steel-type pokemon have steel on them, or something like it; but it could be any metal. ...You said something about priests?"

"Yes, they get some powers from the gods and some of them are good for hurting demons with." (This is not a feature which Ember approves of.)

"...What's a god?"

"A very big, very powerful person. So powerful they can give power to people who serve them, and hear when people need them, and pretend they aren't afraid..."

"Well, of course, anyone can pretend they're not afraid."

Ember smiles sadly. "But most people don't try so hard. The gods pretend so hard that they believe themselves."

"I've met some people like that but admittedly they mostly weren't pretending in the face of masses of murder guys so that's probably easier."

"They're also strong enough that it's very hard to kill them," Ember notes. "That helps, I think."

Distantly:

"Is anyone there? We could use some help!"

Whoah.

"Hello, we're here!" She hurries forward. 

Followed by Ember, she comes upon the voice's source before too long: a barrel-broad woman wrapped in plate armor, standing over a pile of rocks.

Which just groaned with pain. Upon closer inspection, there's a lady under there.

"Oh no! Are you okay?"

"No, I'm under a cartload of rock. Okay is a different thing."

"I'm not strong enough to get all that rock off her," the armored woman frets. "Not without making it fall over and crush her worse."

This is actually a kind of danger that Lucy was prepared to deal with! Unlike murder. She pulls a Halligan bar out of her bag and starts levering rocks off the first woman. "I mean, are you very badly injured."

"Yes. I'll live, if we live, but I wouldn't say no to a healing potion if you've got one in that bag."

"I have healing, but not potions."

"Good that I'm not too thirsty, then."

"I have a canteen of water, if you were."