“It’s so small, though?” Weaver says, uncertainly poking the tablet.

  “That’s what happens when you can use computers to make the things to make more computers,” I say, floating the device back in front of myself. “Here, this is what I was going to show you.”

  I slowly and carefully tap the letters to look up ‘pokemon wiki,’ and click the first result that has ‘pedia’ in the name that isn’t the Wikipedia article. A bright green webpage, clearly dedicated to pokemon, greets me, and I find this websites search bar before putting my actual query in.

  “Here it is, a page on weavile,” I tell Weaver tuning the tablet to face her as I overlay the Sinnohan translation.

  Weaver blinks at the device, “Sharp Claw Pokémon, hmm. That’s a pretty good drawing. Although… kinda simple, too?”

  “It’s a cartoon,” I shrug. “Scroll down.”

  Weaver raises an eyebrow at me, and I sigh. “Drag a finger up the screen.”

  The dark type looks at the tablet, looks at her claws, turns those over and looks at the pads hidden under said claws, and then raises and compares their curvature to the flat screen.

  I toss the stylus I’ve been using at her face, drifting in a circle behind her so I can continue to see the screen. She swipes the pen-like object out of the air in a blink before pressing it to the screen and scrolling it down.

  “Huh. It’s kind of bare,” She comments, “Although the art is nice. Game data… Pokedex entries?”

  “Yeah, mostly flavor text from the games,” I say. “I’m not sure how accurate they’ll be.”

  “‘Evolution made it even more devious’?” She asks. “And only writing after evolving. Yeah, packs writes stuff in stone, but not because of evolution, they just don’t share the meanings with sneasel.” She silently reads a bit farther before, “What?! What kind of idiots would attack a iceshrew? The parents are never far enough away to do that, and steel types are a nightmare to fight.” She then blinks as she reads the next line. “Increased intelligence.” She flatly states.

  After a few more seconds, she finishes reading. “It’s weird how many of those just repeated the same thing, only phrased differently.”

  “Or the exact thing word-for-word,” I say. “I think they got lazy.”

  As she keeps scrolling, I notice a lot of game names I don’t recognize, and then one that stands out. Doubly so for the location listed next to it. “I figured,” I sigh.

  “Figured what?”

  I point a sleeve at the line ‘Ranger: SoA – Almia Castle,’ “That. What happened last year makes a lot more sense now.”

  We share a glance before mutually deciding not to dig into that. We’d definitely need strong drinks.

  “Stats?” Weaver queries, indicating a colorful block on the page.

  “I did tell you they were video games. We’ve only got the classic, vintage style consoles back home, but they’ll get more sophisticated. We’re probably only a few years from something that makes the SEC look awful in comparison.”

  “I guess you’d know.”

  I giggle at a realization, prompting Weaver to glance at me again. “I bet they’ll call it the SEC-OND.” Weaver’s brows furrow, and I wave her off, “It’s a pun. Those always seem hit or miss.”

  My friend shrugs, going back to looking at the article. “Type effectiveness… What is fairy type? And resistant to ghost– No, that makes sense.”

  “Fairy type? I… have no idea. Probably part of the whole mystic subset, but…” I shrug, “Yeah, no idea.”

  “Huh,” Weaver says, dismissing it for the moment as well. “Ooh, learnset?”

  Disappointment crosses her face as she sees how small the block is, then vanishes as she sees the second one. “By leveling or ‘TM’ hmm? That’s a lot under TM. Why are there little disks next to these?”

  “That’s what TMs were in the games?” I reply. “Not sure how they were supposed to work, really. You just kind of used them on the pokemon.”

  “I’ve seen some of these used in tournaments. I can do a few of these myself, but…”

  “It doesn’t feel right, looking at it like this.” I finish. “Yeah, I remember it took me a bit to shake the mindset of moves. But gods was it helpful when I did.”

  “Yeah,” Weaver says. “And look at this one. ‘Dark Pulse,’ sure, I could make a pulse of dark power, assuming that’s what it means, but I could also make it into a spike, or a cloud.”

  “Or a shadow to vanish though?”

  “Yeah! Or that,” Weaver says, then she starts laughing. “‘Hyper Beam’? I think only a few pokemon ever have used that in a tournament. So, any weavile can do that, right. Sure.” Then she stops. “By breeding?” She asks, a manic cackle rising in her voice. “Wha– Bite?! Every sneasel learns how to do that while they’re young!”

  She continues to scroll, raising her eyebrows occasionally, though not commenting much through the next block. “You weren’t kidding about there being a lot of these games,” she says, reaching the end.

  “There are a lot more than there were, last I knew,” I tell her, having followed along.

  Weaver hums, reading the section labeled ‘Evolution data.’ “Razor claw at night? I guess that makes sense…” She pauses for a second, looking at the sneasel in the chart. Then she taps it with the stylus.

  “Couldn’t help yourself?”

  “Nope!” She replies brightly.

  We both go silent once the page loads.

  “…Hisuian sneasel,” Weaver observes.

  “I have no idea,” I say, a bit stumped.

  We quietly read the biology section before Weaver scrolls back to the top. “I don’t like how it flatly calls sneasel vicious,” She says, frowning. “And again with the iceshrew.”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Are they?” I ask. “Vicious?”

  “Isn’t anyone, when they have to leave safety and learn to hunt and fight or go hungry?” Weaver asks, her tone marking it as rhetorical. “It’s what the wilds can be like, you’ve seen it. Put anyone in a survival situation, watch what they do.”

  She’s right, I have seen it. “I suppose it’s part of the general idea a lot of people have about dark-types,” I muse aloud. “Speaking of, sneasel teaming up?”

  “Eh…” Weaver waggles the claw holding the stylus, “Not that I know about, at least.”

  Part of the ‘prove thyself’ attitude the weavile packs in Almia have, I suppose.

  “Hey,” Weaver says, obviously getting an idea, “Why don’t we look you up?”

  I roll my eyes, but it’s only fair. “Let me see that for a moment,” I say, gently pulling on the tablet. Weaver capitulates, letting go of the pen-shaped aid a moment later.

  After typing my species name in, I turn the screen so Weaver can see. She looks at the illustration, then at me, then back at the illustration. “I mean, the general shape is right, but it’s missing some things and you aren’t purple. Also, ‘Magical Pokémon’?”

  “I’ve told you, there’s a level of design when recovering. And do you want to say I can’t do magic?” I challenge.

  Weaver rolls her eyes, but concedes, “Fair. What else is there?”

  Reading through, we have to stop at both how accurate and yet wrong the biology section is.

  “‘Capture mismagius as if their life depends on it,’” Weaver quotes. “I doubt that actually happens, I’ve seen how deep your bag of tricks goes.”

  “To be fair,” I giggle, “It doesn’t say they succeed.”

  “Could you really make people fall in love?” The weavile asks, her tone skeptical.

  “…Maybe…” I mutter, already thinking about what I’d need to do. “Probably,” I conclude. “I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable doing it, though.”

  “So many old stories about witches make sense, if they’re all just mismagius.” Weaver says, continuing to read.

  “I thought we established that when you read me your book of fairy tales last year.”

  “And how witches always hold grudges so long!” Weaver happily chirps. Both of us pause before cackling for a moment.

  Refocusing, we continue. “Headaches, hallucinations, and dreams,” I comment, Weaver and I sharing a look. “Pretty accurate, I guess.”

  “And when they sleep? I’ve never seen you actually sleep.”

  “If you scroll up,” I tell her, “You’ll also see a little bar where it said we’re male and female.”

  “Weird how it can get so much right, and then so much wrong,” Weaver remarks. “But you’ve been saying stuff like that since we met. Oh, ‘Found roaming around lakes and mountainsides at night.’ That sounds exactly like you as well.”

  “It’s a sea, not a lake,” I scoff. “And the mountains are always right there, that doesn’t count.”

  “No,” Weaver corrects, “It shouldn’t count. Which means it still does.”

  “…Godsdammit, you’re right,” I say, aghast. “Shall we see what the pokedex says?”

  We scan through it quickly, neither of us saying a word for several seconds. Weaver decides to break the silence first. “That’s a lot of tormenting and incantations. It’s not wrong about how you sound, but it just keeps using the word ‘torment.’”

  “It says we sometimes bring happiness,” I defend, weakly.

  “Obviously,” Weaver agrees. “It does make me feel a bit better about what the weavile and sneasel entries said, if they’re all like this.”

  We scroll through the next several sections without really reading them, it’s all just game stats that don’t mean anything, even if we both raise an eyebrow at the ‘Type effectiveness’ graph again. Then we reach learnset.

  “This doesn’t look right,” Weaver says, looking at the seven moves it says mismagius learn. At level one. “You were a lot more limited before you evolved, not after.”

  “And?” I reply.

  “Fair enough,” Weaver nods, plucking the stylus out of the air and scrolling fully into the TM section. “You really do have an answer for anything in here, don’t you. Hah! Draining Kiss. I bet you and–”

  Weaver cuts herself off as the screen and lights flicker, the radio, which Onaga left behind when she realized going out would be easier if she didn’t look like a ranger, crackles ominously.

  “Too much, today?” Weaver asks apologetically.

  “Maybe,” I sigh. “I didn’t mean to let that out. But…” I look around meaningfully.

  “Yeah,” Weaver nods. “Just a bit too much. Back to distracting ourselves?”

  “Please.”

  Scrolling farther, we reach a section that was empty on the weavile page. Prior evolution.

  “I know the first three here,” Weaver says, “But ‘Perish Song’?”

  I sing a single, lethal note, causing Weaver to flinch and the electronics to fritz again.

  “Oh. That’s what it’s called,” She states. “Yeah, I’d say that’s accurate.”

  Choosing not to dwell on that any longer, she scrolls the tablet I’m holding down past more inconsequential game information before reaching evolution again. “Dusk stone, huh?” She says as we share a look.

  There’s silence for a bit as we do think that over.

  “I should just tap misdreavus now, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Once it loads, Weaver guffaws. “Screech Pokémon?”

  “It has a point,” I tell her, smiling at the memories.

  “Yeah, it’s the best one yet.”

  The biology section on this one is rather short, but something near the end catches both of our attention. “Flutter Mane shares a resemblance to Misdreavus. It was theorized to be a giant Misdreavus reborn as a pterosaur ghost,” I read out.

  “What’s a flutter mane,” Weaver asks, cocking her head.

  “Well, it’s blue, so tap it and let’s find out.”

  She does so, and we end up looking at some kind of reptilian misdreavus art. “Huh,” we say in unison.

  “Paradox Pokémon,” I read. “Interesting.”

  Looking down at the biology section, we’re rendered speechless.

  “Th– This–” Weaver begins before descending into mad cackles.

  “What the fuck,” Is all I can say.

  “It reads like one of those awful sci-fi magazines!” Weaver howls, falling back onto the floor.

  “There’s no way Dialga would let something like that happen,” I hiss. “A time-machine?!”

  “Oh yeah, absolutely not,” Weaver agrees, hopping back to her paws. “Also, ‘albeit a highly fierce and aggressive misdreavus’? Don’t they mean, ‘like every misdreavus’?”

  “And I let my hair go in the wind every time I fly, why does it mention that part specifically about this pokemon?”

  Approaching. Friends.

  “I have no idea,” Weaver smiles. “You did mention something about getting lazy earlier.”

  “Yeah,” I sigh, returning the smile. “Or maybe whatever they were doing to be able to see across realities like that stopped working. Who knows.” I glance at the door to the house we’re in, “Ryu and Espeon are almost back. Feels like they found them. We might not be here much longer.”

  “Ooh, let’s do espeon and show them, then,” Weaver says, bouncing slightly.

  “Sure, why not,” I grin. Honestly, they’ll probably need it too, after seeing how my old world has done things differently to ours.