Joshua wonders if he should go back to that Pokecenter to grab that healing… thing.

  He remembers that it was at least somewhat operational, and more importantly he had an idea of what it did.

  These machines, however, he has NO clue.

  With chat, he's able to piece together that these are the Pokemon equivalent of various machines used in hospitals.

  To put it in yman's terms, one is an analysis machine, the other tracks type-energy, and the rest are derivatives of those two. There's others, but it's not notable as of this moment.

  Pokemon healthcare is crazy.

  He's not jealous, he swears.

  *flick*

  The lights flicker, just briefly turning on before sputtering off again. He shields his eyes, and while it was startling, it was more annoying.

  “The fuck…?”

  He waits a second for the lights to do it again, but it doesn't.

  This pce has working power? Or at least SOME working power?

  How?

  Knowing this pce is from the Pokemon world, his expectations are… a little skewed, maybe the school really has some hyper-efficient energy system he's not aware about.

  He still wants to find a computer b.

  After grabbing the machines, making sure NOT to dismantle them, Joshua walks back out into the hallway, now with a new perspective of this being a school not from his world.

  [Why is a school here?]

  [And why does it look so… empty?]

  “Beats me” Joshua answers honestly.

  “If I had to guess, this pce creates ‘structures’ that ‘spawn’ wherever they want I guess, they aren't built. With this?... Maybe it took a snapshot of some newly built school and plopped it here? No idea”

  “Pony” Jophiel nods, her horn buzzing in confirmation that she's feeling a noticeable ping in her rhythmic psychic pulses. Nothing may be alive here, but like that corpse in the cavern, it's a generated structure.

  He opens a few more doors of more cssrooms and what he thinks is a break room. Coffee machine? He doesn't really need it, but the electronics would be nice. He does find a chess board though.

  This is getting repetitive, so he's starting to skip some of the rooms he KNOWS are cssrooms.

  Seriously, how big is this school?

  He resorts to just looking through the windows in the doors, if it looks like a cssroom he just keeps going.

  Is it ineffective? Sure, but he doesn't exactly have a surplus of time.

  *flick*

  The lights flicker again.

  “I should check where the power is coming from too…”

  …

  Joshua has to admit, he was expecting something more.

  He came into this with the expectation of something going wrong, that he would be attacked by… he doesn't know, the spirit of a dead kid? That's not impossible for a pce like this, he thinks.

  But so far, it's been… boring.

  Just empty cssrooms with the occasional miscelneous room, don't get him wrong, he'll take boring any day, but he was at least expecting SOMETHING.

  At least until he found the gymnasium.

  “...what the hell?”

  The big, solid blue doors are barricaded.

  Lockers and piled up against it, a wall of dull green metal hastily thrown on their side, stacked on top of each other.

  He looks over at chat.

  [Yeah, not sure what this is]

  [You could go around? There's normally more than one door to the gyms]

  [Try moving it!]

  Joshua almost forgets that he doesn't really have to move these by hand, his strange Minecraft powers… GOD that is still odd to think about… should allow him to just put it in his inventory.

  He holds up his hand.

  Nothing.

  Okay… too big. He'll just dismantle it then.

  [DISMANTLE? (IRON ×16)]

  OKAY DAMN, he's definitely coming back here to dismantle all this, that amount of iron is crazy for just a single locker!

  Wait, is it…

  He tries to “open” a locker, and just like he expected, a UI inventory grid appears. The format is a little different, but it's close enough.

  “So it's basically a iron double chest?”

  Huh. Cool.

  Anyways, after dismantling the lockers, he slowly opens the gymnasium door, pokes his head in and-

  *SLAM*

  “Pony?!”

  “Mr. Joshua?”

  Immediately sms it back shut.

  Joshua feels hot bile crawling up his throat, he doesn't have to respond to the concerned mares before he retches and purges his breakfast all over the carpet floor.

  His head swirls, he feels dizzy- NO. Calm down. Calm down Joshua.

  While he can't bme everything on the aftereffects of the Link, God forbid Jophiel doesn't need more guilt piled on her, he does find it… difficult, sometimes.

  It's easy to say that his mental state is getting better when he's been actively avoiding thinking about it, distracting himself with things to do.

  Looks like he's talking to Dr. Ambers tonight.

  After catching his breath, he finally turns to Jophiel.

  “Hey, uh… love?”

  Her face shows clear worry, her gaze goes towards the door, then back to him.

  “Do you remember when I showed you what… uh… ssher movies are?”

  She gives a slow nod. Not really getting it, but like all the other details of Joshua's home, she does treasure it and has it cataloged in her mind, even if shes… not really a fan of the “genre”.

  Following his gaze, she looks back at the door, and at Joshua's slightly sick expression, recognition gleamed in her eyes.

  He doesn't know what she picked up from his mind, but from the way she winces, it seems she got the gist.

  They look at each other, and nod.

  “Gabriel… can you stay out here for a moment?”

  “Why?”

  “Jophiel and I have to… check something real quick, promise it won't take long, okay?”

  Gabriel seems to take it at face value, tapping her chin (the bowl) and humming in thought. Then with a wide smile she just chirps a simple “Okay!” and sits down on the floor.

  If she weren't made out a “fuck you” cloud he'd find her pretty cute.

  “Alright, we'll be back in a sec”

  “Oakie dokey!”

  Joshua takes a deep breath and opens the door again, he motions for Jophiel to follow him, and they both step inside before closing the door behind him.

  Death.

  It reeks of death, the smell seems to linger across the chilling air, making him gag as he gets a whiff of it.

  Corpses.

  Dozens and dozens of corpses.

  Of Pokemon.

  The gymnasium is rge, with stands and rge circur lights that remind him of spotlights, and judging how the paint on the ground resembles a typical Pokemon battle arena, it just might be.

  Most of its details are hidden, either from the stagnant darkness that's only encroached by the creeping rays of light coming from the overhanging windows, or from simply being blocked by the bodies of who knows how many Pokemon.

  He recognizes some of them, a Pichu, a Bidoof, a Growlithe, and… what he thinks is a Chansey? The rest he can't recognize at a gnce.

  There's a small hope in him that this is just another generation, a fucked up simucrum of real life. Jophiel must have thought the same, as a quick psychic pulse erupts from her horn, she turns to him and…

  …oh.

  They're real.

  OH.

  THEY'RE REAL.

  oh FUCK!

  He can hear Jophiel hyperventiting, quickly coming out his stupor, he crouches down and runs his hand along her back.

  She comes out of it rather quickly, but still visibly shaken up. Shaking her head violently, the mare regains focus.

  “Are any of them…”

  Jophiel shakes her head.

  “Fuck”

  *flick*

  The lights flicker again.

  For the briefest of moments, he gets a full view of the entire room.

  Parasites.

  He recognizes the bck tendrils that hang from some of the corpses, the mutition of the body to maximize infection to others.

  His head quickly snaps to his chest, looking at his cross.

  Quiet.

  Are they… also dead?

  Fear quickly turning to confusion, he quietly instructs Jophiel to move the ball of light over to the middle of the gym.

  The entire room looks like a battlefield, scorch marks and rge jagged holes left in the walls and floor.

  “What the fuck…”

  There's a rge hole dug into the floor, and deeper into the soil. Do Parasites dig? What were they doing?

  “Let's just… let's just check out the power”

  “P-Pony”

  Heading back to the door, he makes one st look at the corpses.

  One day, he will come back and give them a proper burial.

  …

  How Joshua managed to find the school library before a single computer b is beyond him.

  Chat has been quiet.

  He doesn't bme them.

  Instead, his focus is on the books in front of him. There's a cute little cardboard cutout of a Kirlia holding a book as he walked in, probably the first decoration he's seen in this pce.

  He just grabs the bookshelves (they take up surprisingly little inventory space) and leaves, he'll look through them ter.

  Eventually, after a while of walking through identical hallways, he finds what LOOKS like a power room.

  There's a strange static-y feeling in the air, it makes him wonder what the hell they're using to power this pce.

  *flick*

  Speaking of, the lights flicker again.

  There's a lightning bolt decal on the door. God PLEASE invest in some signs, whoever owns this pce.

  Opening the door, he flinches as it shocks his hand.

  “Fucker” He whispers, throwing the door open.

  Lights rapidly flicker in this small room, a constant buzz of electricity makes the air feel like it's shaking. The room, like the rest of the school, is spartan, barebones. There's a generator-looking machine in the back corner.

  “P-Pony! Ponyta!” Jophiel suddenly perks up, eyes widening and taking a few steps in front of him.

  “What?”

  Jophiel leads him deeper into the room, the chutteting of dying machines cry out beside him.

  She goes to the generator, Joshua looks closer. The buzzing in his ears gets louder.

  The generator is broken, not surprising, but there's a giant fucking hole in it, like a cannonball smmed into it.

  But… what really catches his eye is the swirling, yellow radius of erratic electricity that seems to sit inside it.

  And what sits inside the ball… is another ball.

  A Pokeball.

  Joshua freezes.

  “There's… a Pokemon?”

  Jophiel must have picked up on their presence.

  With a pastel pink aura, she grabs it with her telekinesis and brings it to him, it tingles in his hands. As soon as the pokeball is removed, the machines immediately shut down.

  Worry rises in his gut, but also a bit of excitement. Another Pokemon? For someone who grew up pying the games, the excitement of Pokemon is very much there.

  So, he decides not to stall it.

  “Please don't be dead. Please don't be dead…”

  Running a thumb over the old Pokeball, he breathes out and presses the button.

  The nostalgic sound of a Pokeball opening rings in his ears, a white light erupts from it, forming into a figure on the floor.

  Joshua watches with excitement, but as the figure forms his face slowly morphs to bafflement.

  Thick double-winded white stripes wrapped around a bck body, a rounded muzzle and rge expressive blue eyes. Hair running down its back, arched as a lightning bolt, with a small white tail and white boot like fur on its…

  Equine…

  Body.

  “You have got to be kidding me”

  He cant fucking believe it.

  What are the goddamn chances?

  [StevenStoneOffical: It seems you have a theme, Joshua.]

  “...”

  It weakly raises its head, shallow breathing huffing through its nostrils.

  Joshua remembers its name, he used to keep one in his PC, as he liked the design.

  Blitzle.

  [IonoZone: AWWWWWWWWW <333]

  [NEW HORSE!!!]

  [Is his entire team just going to be horses?]

  [LOLLLLLL]

  [Horse Trainer Joshua]

  [He HAS to be doing this on purpose LMAOOOO]

  [Arceus has blessed you with the supernatural ability to attract horses, Joshua. Treasure it]

  At this point he wonders if that's true.