Joshua sits on his porch, running his hands through the criminally soft mane of the unicorn that's ying across his p.
Chat has… slowed down. Going from being completely unreadable to only somewhat readable.
He wasn't expecting to be doing a Q&A today, but in hindsight he should have expected it, he'd be curious too about the guy who's from another world.
How much should he tell them..?
On one hand, it wouldn't really matter what he tells them, he's not physically in their world so he's detached from the consequences of his words.
And the existential dread he'd probably cause would've made him ugh before this whole mess.
But… that's fucked up. There's no need to be needlessly cruel. He'll tell the truth, he'd be a hypocrite if he made a big deal about following Christ and immediately turned around to being cruel and distrustful.
“Okay, I'll answer questions, but I actually need to SEE them first, if you all could slow it down I'll pick out some of them”
The chat seems to accept this, slowing down considerably, Joshua’s able to pick out some questions, most of them just variations of the same.
“Alright… let's do this”
Taking a deep breath, he runs his eyes through the chat and begins.
[Are you really from another world? Are there really no Pokemon?]
Joshua leans back.
“Yup, and… yeah… no Pokemon at all”
Jophiel already knows this from the times she skimmed Joshua's mind, but her ears still perk up at the, frankly baffling, statement.
[What was it like?]
The use of past tense makes him frown a little, but he quickly gets over it.
“Normal, I guess? Went to school, got a job, got hobbies. Usual stuff”
[I can't imagine not having my growlithe…]
[How does that even work?]
[Sounds sad…]
[ (/′△`＼) ]
A mixture of curiosity, confusion and… sadness, comes from the chat. I guess the idea of not having companions who love you unconditionally sounds extremely lonely to them.
[How old are you? Actually, is your name really “Joshua Abrams”?]
Joshua blinks.
“Yeah, that's my name. I'm 21, why?”
[Some people thought it was a stage name]
“A… huh? No… no, it's not a stage name”
Who even thinks of that?
[Where are you from?]
“I'm from the US- wait- The United States of America. It's a bigass country in the western hemisphere, that's made up of fifty states that make up the collective. I lived-LIVE in California”
Luckily not in any of the big cities, where it seems the people get dumber and meaner the closer you live to them.
This literally means nothing to them, but Joshua still feels uncomfortable sharing information like this, years of internet etiquette screaming at him to stop.
[StevenStoneOffical: Joshua. If Pokemon weren't real where you were from, how did you recognize what a Pokemon was? Who Iono and I were?]
Oh fuuuuccckkk.
Should he tell them?
Joshua rubs the back of his neck.
Fuck. How do you even go about bringing that up?
His voice is caught up in his throat, the words dying as soon as he opens his mouth.
He feels a nudge in his arm, looking down, Jophiel sits up and nuzzles into his cheek, making him calm down.
How she was able to tell that he's stressed without the link, he doesn't know.
Okay. Try and be smart about this, Joshua.
“Steven, we DID have Pokemon. Just… they weren't real. We had… games, and shows and stuff. I used to py them a lot, and… you're in them, so…”
The chat goes quiet again.
Joshua braces for another explosion, and it does, the chat does scroll by extremely quickly, but surprisingly not as bad. It's like a lingering feeling of dread permeates through the chat.
Did they learn from st time?
[StevenStoneOffical: Our world is… fictional?]
“In my world, yes”
He doesn't see Steven respond for a while, but eventually he sees him pop up again after a few minutes.
[StevenStoneOffical: I'm sorry Joshua. Work is catching up to me. I will be back, good luck my unfortunate friend.]
…friend?
“See ya”
He breaths out, seeing his view count drop by one.
[So… who's your favorite champion?]
Joshua almost chuckles at the abrupt change, of course the Pokemon world citizens want to talk about their champions, they're like super celebrities and government officials all at once.
“Cynthia. At first I hated her, but she grew on me… almost ruined my nuzlocke run”
He still remembers the panic of getting jumped by her the first time.
[( ≧?≦)ノwho do you think is the strongest?]
“Also Cynthia”
Okay MAYBE that was a mistake, chat is heating up more now. But, again, they're all polite and well mannered. Very weird sight for a stream chat.
[Not Lance???]
“I truly believe that if Cynthia locked in, she would beat, at the very least, most of the other champions. Her Garchomp haunts me in my fucking dreams”
…
Cynthia, in her office, chuckles at her phone at a clip that was just sent to her, her assistants look at her in slight worry.
…
[That's fair]
[No it's not! Team Lance 4ever!!!]
[I like Iono :)]
[IonoZone: (^-^)/ ]
[IonoZone: So… who were you praying to?]
“God. It's…”
He's definitely not touching that subject today.
“Complicated, anything else?”
The Q&A carried on, with most questions being rather… basic. He can tell that some of them really wanted to ask more personal questions, but didn't.
[What did you want to be when you grew up?]
“Veterinarian. I took an internship at the San Diego Zoo whenever I was in high-school but it just… never worked out”
Didn't have the time nor the money, unfortunately.
[You like animals?]
“Ehhh, they're okay”
He loves them, he just won't admit it.
His grandparents own a farm, and as a kid he would take every excuse he could get to meet the animals when he and his parents went up to visit them.
Jophiel chuffs knowingly. He flicks her ear, in which she immediately turns her head to lightly nip at his other hand.
White Horse is definitely not beating the White Horse allegations.
[What do you think this pce is?]
“...I… don't know. I humored the idea of this being some of pocket dimension or something, like some evil wizard fucking with me. All I know is that I was sent here on purpose”
By God, for… some reason.
[You have wizards in your world??? Is that how you can do the block thing?]
“No. I couldn’t do that before I got here. I'm… kind of figuring it out as I go”
[What hobbies do you have?]
“I used to draw a lot back in the day, and games too. But as I grew older and had to get a job I just kind of… stopped? Happened, I guess”
[Any hobbies you have now? I like knitting!]
“Not… really. How about you, love? Got any hobbies?”
Her eyes go unfocused for a bit. Her hoof lightly taps the ground as she's deep in thought.
Joshua chuckles at her prolonged silence.
“Looks like we're both hobbyless losers, huh? Surprised you didn't say ‘hitting shit with shovels’”
Taken out of her daze, she chuffs and pyfully rolls her eyes.
“I should show you chess ter, you might like that”
“Pony” She nods, but with only mild interest.
[If Pokemon were introduced into your world, what would happen?]
“War. Almost instantly”
[What's the most popur Pokemon over there?]
“Pikachu, but… I don't really see the appeal]
[Second favorite?]
“...Charizard? Gardevoir and Lopunny are up there, along with… Vaporeon…”
[What? Why?]
Joshua pretends he didn't see that question.
[What's war like with no Pokemon? Can't imagine it was too bad compared to the Kanto-Sinnoh war back in the day]
That happened? He doesn't remember that.
“The st major war the US was in resulted in around… eighty? million people dying? It only ended because…”
Joshua freezes.
“...a major event happened”
He's NOT introducing the idea of nukes to these innocent people. Absolutely not.
For some odd reason, he feels sick at this train of thought. Odd, normally he doesn't really have an opinion on them.
[80 million…?]
[Arceus above…]
[I'm sorry, did you say 80 million?]
The citizens of the Pokemon have had their fair share of conflicts, but nothing to this scale.
[What even happened?!?!]
Politicians happened.
“Long story”
…
Steven sits at his desk.
“That's how he knows of the suit… it was fiction to him…”
Rubbing his eyes, a long sigh escapes him.
On his monitor is an email from the Aether Foundation.
“How much do you know…”
…
[AzumarillEntOfficial: Good Morning Mr. Abrams, I am a representative of Azumarill Entertainment and many of us are wondering if you would be interested in selling merchandise in your image? Plushies, shirts, etc. Please let us know if you are interested!]
Joshua blinks.
“How the fuck… how would that even…”
He sighs.
“Tell you what, if you can find me a way out of here, sure, why not”
(A/N: Don't worry, there'll be more Q&A bits ter on. Let me know of other questions that would be interesting for chat to ask!)
